One of the most perplexing things I found when trying to adjust to Western society and its conceptions of how reality actually works was the reversal of subject-object relationships. I still find this extraordinarily difficult to cope with. It always takes me by surprise. It seems to me that within Western culture, subjects are not obliged to act under any circumstances. Rather, they are morally committed to sit around and wait for "objectivity" to make its move.

Although it sounds very odd when stated like this, the point can be stated rather more theoretically. Within the Western cultural system at large (there are exceptions to this rule in terms of small subcultures) reality -- including subjective reality -- is deemed to be the product of various kinds of "invisible hands". There is, for instance, the invisible hand of the market, the invisible hand of fate, and the invisible hand of other people's judgements about you. These determine your destiny. To act on your own behalf, on the other hand, is deemed to be egoistic and arrogant.

Westerners generally don't act on each other's behalves either. Instead they sit around and wait to see what the "invisible hand" has to say about the matter. To do anything other than remain perfectly passive whilst waiting for this hand to make its point is deemed to be mindblowingly conceited. "Who am I, a mere mortal on this Earth, to override the will of some potential (but not as yet visibly manifested) invisible hand?" One simply has to wait for fate to pronounce its verdict.

If any invisible hand wants you poor, it will certainly stamp on you in this way. Or alternatively, it might want you to prosper. In that case, any human intervention prior to fate calling forth its child would surely take the shine off such a momentous event, making it seem less valuable. Any invisible hand must surely be allowed to do its work, without others risking their own spiritual sanctification by speaking up. Far better to Rest in Peace.

I find this notion that "objectivity" alone creates subjects (and that it should be left alone to do so) to be laughable!

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Patriarchy is not noble. Taking the easiest approach in life is not noble. "Well," you say, "women are weaker than me, so how can I show my strength unless I step all over them?"

A lack of skill in expressing one's power, coupled with a failure of imagination is not noble, either.

If women are really weaker than you then for you to demonstrate a lack of intellectual and physical gumption in relation to women will not demonstrate your strength.

Patriarchy is not noble.

"Well," you say, "in terms of my culture, I'm still gonna say it is."

Pick your nose and you have an oyster! -- in terms of your particular culture, that is!

Patriarchy is not strength.

Consider the Idealism that defines the contemporary bourgeois personality structure as kind of dissociation. In this sense, what it allows is a kind of shamanistic journeying. One can be whatever one dreams one is, simply by dreaming it. One is not limited by physical reality or necessity, in terms of this mode of consciousness. I can run with the swiftest athletes, or deal with information as perfectly as any of the most refined thinkers.

The issue, then, is not whether I actually have the skills or basic building material to do these sorts of things. Rather, the deciding factor is how much self esteem I have. So it is when bourgeois consciousness takes its shamanistic journey: If I believe I can do any of these things, I surely can! Physical factors shall not limit me! I am only limited by my ability to dream (which is, in turn, limited only by my levels of self esteem!) The sky -- the sky alone -- is the limit and outer parameter for bourgeois consciousness, simply because it is a consciousness separated from material reality and from one's body.

Physical reality and material limits can nonetheless obstruct one's real progress at times. One realizes one doesn't fly, after all and perhaps one understands implicitly if not altogether clearly in the mind that there are concrete limits to what one can do. Despite Oprah and The Secret, these limits have nothing to do with the level of one's self-esteem, but with concrete factors -- which an actual shaman makes it a life's work to understand more fully.

Bourgeois shamanism is different. This particular shamanistic dissociation enacted by those who want to be upwardly mobile will inevitably bring no knowledge and experience back to the individual at the level of material awareness. When this becomes apparent, it turns out to be not shamanism at all, but rather a pathological state of dissociation.

The mind that wishes to fly ever upwards, economically, might wish to accuse those who have effectively accepted their concrete limitations of having "bad self esteem" for not living beyond their means. But this is not the nature of shamanistic realism, which understands that accepting one's material limitations and working with them is the key to harmony.

The bourgeois "shaman" nonetheless expresses irritation at any manifestation of reality that doesn't directly meet his standards (whereby one simply becomes whatever one wants to become). When he blames those who fail his standards, he ultimately blames himself -- for he, himself, will also fail his standards to be whatever he imagines he can be.

"Heads will roll!" he says, over and over, and over, again. Without end. That is his final cry: the expressed outcome of his basic faith.