Some famous passages are so vitriolic that I laughed the first time I read them, and never forgot them. Here R.D. says, among other things, “I detest life and the era in which I happen to have been born.” It is all so marvelous: he writes of princesses, kings, imperial things, and visions of faraway or impossible countries; he feels he cannot greet the President of a Republic in the same language in which he would address Elagabalus, whose court of gold, silk and marble he remembers in dreams.
R.D. is invoking and evoking decadence in a certain spirit of social critique and that is one thing we are doing here, in a more revolutionary way.
*
Friday, Oxalá‘s day, was lovely in New Orleans. On the way down I had imagined the road I will take sometime soon from Mexico City to Xalapa to the coast; riding back to Maringouin I left the highway for a while and took Highland Road through Baton Rouge. Gliding past oak after oak for miles in the beautiful night I thought everything was at last all right. My house is very beautiful inside, and when I fell asleep I had the impression it was dedans la ville.
In the morning I awoke to a new nightmare, one I had not had before: I was being married off. The groom seemed to be a nice person and was accepting of the situation out of respect for tradition. But he was modern and grown up in aspect, and I surmised he must have the same doubts about this plan as I did. If we go through with this, I thought, it will be harder to undo than it will if we end operations now. But how could I interrupt the proceedings, given that it was impossible to caucus with this groom since he had been assigned to seat guests in some faraway part of the room? And no family or friends were present — only dignitaries, neighbors, and coworkers.
I began by complaining about my dress, which had been rented but not by me, and which did not fit. My attendants prevailed upon an audience member my size, who was wearing an off white summer dress of Indonesian rayon that was more my style. The plan presented was that we should trade dresses, so I could wear something I would be happier with. I objected that this was still her dress, not my dress. I did not want her to have to give up her dress, and certainly not in favor of the rather odd dress I had; furthermore, it would not solve the problem since it was not my dress. My other objection, not voiced but truer, was that this audience member was someone I have had trouble with at work, and I did not trust her dress.
My refusal to wear this dress caused serious trouble: plaster and gauze were brought, and I was put into a full body cast. This was tapped into shape with a hammer; it covered my mouth and hair. As the hammer was brought up to tap the cast into shape around my teeth, I awoke in absolute horror and proceeded to pass a rather unsettling day. All vivid dreams are good signposts, however.
*
And the fact is that Maringouin is not me. It is interesting indeed, but it is not only not me; it is also antithetical to me in many ways. Adaptable though I am and try as I do, I do not succeed in accustoming myself to it because it does not offer a context in which I can be who I am and who, for practical purposes as well, I must be. I do not want to believe this because I am indoctrinated to believe that my feeling — which is actually an expression of basic needs — is intolerant and also excessively demanding.
Notice, however, that in the dream there is nothing wrong with the groom. The problems are that we have no relationship, and I am not wearing my own dress. Were I to recognize this in waking life it would be wisdom, perhaps.
*
I had a dream a few nights ago, in which I was moving to California. I was elated for two days — in fact, I do not know that I have been this elated since the sixties or the seventies. Then I realized why, and that I had been elated about something which was not real, and I began again to struggle with that enclosed feeling of Maringouin and of our university where the few windows which exist, do not open. Psychically, though, perhaps the dream indicated a shift.
*
This post on the cult like aspects of academia may be worth considering. I had written a very interesting post on it, which quoted several marvelous poets and linked to a variety of other resources; that post was lost and I cannot reconstruct all of it now. Very briefly, it suggested that academia is not actually a cult, but that many of its members think and behave in cult like ways. One is often coerced emotionally to take measures which do not serve any rational purpose.
In my case, that has tended to mean living in situations where I cannot be who I need to be to truly do the job. I was always told I should not be an academic because I would have to publish and I might have to live in a place where it snowed. These things did not deter me. Had I been informed that in so many academic places being an intellectual would be a problem, I really would have reconsidered everything.
*
Bright Eos has come over the horizon, turning the clouds gold and rosicler as she steps across the dewy fields; this day will be beautiful. Tous les matins du monde sont sans retour.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Is there any country in the world where it is harder to be an intellectual?
The friend I met up with in New Orleans is from rural Louisiana, and has now lived elsewhere for some time. She said, almost out of the blue although not quite, that Louisiana was a very hard STATE in which to be an intellectual. So, you and she are quite synchronized… 🙂
OK, I’m working on the post. Here’s a piece I put in, but am going to cut out, because it’s too prosaic and long for this post (I think), but that I don’t want to lose. More to come re your comment below.
*
“Notice, however, that in the dream there is nothing wrong with the groom. The problems are that we have no relationship, and I am not wearing my own dress. I know would be better off if I simply allowed myself to have the feeling I do about Maringouin and also my institution, and arranged my life in a way that would take that into account. Since I do not have the means to do this easily, I feel I should adjust. I fall into that American obligation to be happy, perhaps. I think it is more accurate to say that I miss my own general tendency toward enthusiasm.
“I have also listened to a great deal of what I would actually classify as abuse about what my living situation and tastes say about me: most people disapprove strongly of my dislike for the suburbs; members of the United States disapprove of my residence in the Confederacy; denizens of pirogue-pulling fisher folk take personally my insufficient interest in our mosquito-laden waters. Most of all, professors who themselves participate in the criticism of my Confederate address have lectured me on how, if I were really interested in my work, it would not matter where I lived. Others, whose own universities have large libraries and archives, insist that with Interlibrary Loan and JSTOR, one can ‘do research anywhere.’
“I really question the intelligence and also the motives of these people. I think that while I do not have the means to absent myself from Maringouin on all non teaching days and weeks, I should at least drop my efforts to adjust completely. This would be wisdom, perhaps, as in fact I do not fit in and the attempt to do so means some form of mutilation, and the work of constantly playing what is in fact someone else’s role.”
*
The post was to be about the cultish aspects of academia and the Orwellian doubletalk that is used to get people to think that any problem that exists is a problem with them, not with the system, that they should gratefully put up with just anything, that they should not imagine any other worlds, and so on.
*
Anyway, you hit the nail on the head with this comment and the friend I met up with in NO on Friday says Louisiana is a particularly hard state to be an intellectual in. All of this really needs to be remembered, at least by me, because it helps me understand why I have such a hard time (and yes, I know Reeducation would say I am now “blaming a situation” when I ought to “take responsibility for it” and I say Reeducation has no intelligence or life experience or capacity for rational analysis of anything).
As has also been discovered before on this blog: being an academic does not necessarily imply being an intellectual, a fact I did not learn until after graduate school — to my very great dismay.
I was always told I should not be an academic because I would have to publish and I might have to live in a place where it snowed. These things did not deter me. Had I been informed that in so many academic places being an INTELLECTUAL would be a problem, I really would have reconsidered everything.
*
It is why I like Mexico City, and why in Brazil I insisted on living in S. Paulo. Also, Berkeley is for intellectuals and that is why people don’t like it.
“I was being married off. The groom seemed to be a nice person and was accepting of the situation out of respect for tradition. But he was modern and grown up in aspect, and I surmised he must have the same doubts about this plan as I did.”
-Seems like you had a nightmare about my life. 🙂
“I was always told I should not be an academic because I would have to publish and I might have to live in a place where it snowed. These things did not deter me. Had I been informed that in so many academic places being an INTELLECTUAL would be a problem, I really would have reconsidered everything.”
-Beautifully said!
Perhaps I should put that into the main post, then…
OK, here are some notes on the question of cultishness: http://stinkin-thinkin.com/2010/07/05/angie-the-anti-theist-on-al-anon/#comment-8080
I found this blog, Stinkin’ Thinkin’, that is critical of the 12 step movement and got fascinated because that is, of course, a big element in Reeducation and these bloggers have reached a lot of the same conclusions I did. Through it, I found another site for people trying to detox their minds from the 12 steps. They have 12 alternative steps and step 7 turns out to be what I’m in, according to me: learning how cultish behavior works, so I won’t be caught again.
I realized that in fact, although I am sick of discussing Reeducation, there are ways in which I still need to get stronger against it, and so I would follow the steps this XAA site has for that (they look good to me). This means I am interested in cultish tactics, and in how to recover from recruitment by cultish types, because I really think I’m a sort of victim of that and that this is a large part of my general problem in life.
I realized that the ways I was guilt tripped into accepting certain academic situations and situations in academia also resembled cultish recruiting in the same way Reeducation had, and that for me, since all of this happened in the same period, they are intertwined and the one reinforces the other.
That is actually why I created the term Reeducation: it refers to my experience as a professor, my experience listening to peers and also talking past me as they tell me what to do, repeating rote truisms to protect themselves from considering an actual situation, and also my experience with ACOA based therapy and Alanon.
P.S. The original post, that I lost, had more in it, as a subtext just for fun about R.D. and his outrageous drinking problem. It wasn’t a main discussion of the post but there were deep links and they had wild information for those who don’t know.
It linked to his house, which is a museum now in Leon, Nicaragua; you can see the bed in which he died of cirrhosis and the life size painting of him in agony.
It had quotations from a couple of important poems on life and death from PP and _Cantos de vida y esperanza_. It also had links to information on Paul Verlaine, a symbolist R.D. greatly admired and who is also very influential.
Verlaine had an affair with Rimbaud and shot him in the hand in a drunken rage; he served 18 months in prison for this, after which they went on to do further outrageous things. Rimbaud is the author of the famous poem _The Drunken Boat_.
(I had thought as I reviewed all of this: what a great period for an alcoholic male professor to study — he’d relate; it might be a bit too affirming, though.)
OK. On to the question of cultish mind control, or more scientifically, ideology and propaganda. How influence and persuasion work.
1. How one is taught to frame things. Frames define issues and send into the background / the ether / invisibility elements which may in fact be important. If it is repeated and repeated that things must be framed in a certain way, that eventually molds people to think in a certain way, even if they’re uncomfortable doing it.
2. Repetition of truisms.
3. Projection: make assumptions about someone and keep treating them as the person you imagine/want them to be; they fall into role (if you’re a person who has power over them, and they do doubt themselves enough or you have gotten them to do this enough so the projection sticks, or if you let them know that whether or not they take it in, they will always be treated as though it were true).
4. Undermine either their belief in self or their sense that they will ever have credibility. Then give contradictory instructions on how to get themselves out of this maze. Or incorrect instructions, that you present as a great secret and sacred truth.
5. Tell me more…
You see through it. I am absolutely appalled at how many don’t ever figure this out.
But what is “it”?
… I think the main way indoctrination or mind control works is perhaps the refusal of conversation or exchange: the authority talks at the person, to define them and define the world, and only lets them talk to repeat back or fall into line — and also treats all questions as ignorance, recalcitrance, etc.
They say: “You can’t see this, because you are flawed/less intelligent/less advanced than normal or than I, but you have this terrible defect and you must believe me on that, it is a defect, and you must do as I say…”
Anyone is welcome to join in on figuring out how mind control works; I don’t think what I’ve seen on cults works well enough for mind control in academia etc. …
Here is a thought: Are the people around you really interested in you? Do they talk to you willingly? Do they want to hear what you have to say?
I’m thinking something similar:
* Are they talking past you?
* Are they discounting contexts or your own experience?
* Do they know what your interests are (or just surmise)?
* Do they insist that questioning the wisdom and universal applicability of standard advice, or wanting to build upon it or add to it, indicates not having understood the standard sentence in the first place?
* Do they seem concerned to reconfirm their own authority and beliefs?
* In sum, is this an actual conversation?
Another one: telling you you have said or done something that you haven’t, and that this has had an effect that it (obviously) hasn’t, and that you are now to submit, and so on.
This is more of the technique of them getting to force you into a role, and getting you to misinterpret yourself.
And: what all of this seems to mean is that I’ve taken seriously people who weren’t taking me seriously even more often than I realized.