The problem with the Western mode of moralizing is that it is inherently capitalistic. I have found this to be true in general, that unless somebody has some really substantial intellectual training (and sometimes even then), they will tend to take the moral position that will enable them to capitalize. That means they want to shine at very little cost to themselves -- or at a cost to you, rather than to them. Ask them to do something difficult, so as to be really superior and they will not even have a clue what you are getting at. "Take a difficult position in order to be genuinely righteous, rather than seem to seem to be moral at a little cost? That doesn't make sense!"

When it comes to Westerners and what they take to be "morality" one has to lower one's expectations to the lowest level possible. They are brought up to compete -- to look for any moment that advantages them over you and to capitalize. It is very hard for them to mitigate this competitive tendency with anything solid. So, one must lower one's expectations absolutely to the breaking point.

And then lower them again.

Richard Chinheya writes as follows:

There was a long held view by white citizens in Zimbabwe to conclude that it was pointless to pay a black man much money as 'he would spend it on beer'.

Whereas whites had a solid foundation where they would plan for their children so that by the time they were of age they had a car, and/or house and a job they thought the blacks did not have these owing to their laziness and stupidity. These circumstances justified a superiority complex and perpetuated an impression that blacks were stupid, dull or unintelligent.

Perhaps the domestic employees were the basis for these perceptions but these were important to make whites feel intelligent and the blacks dull. sadly even now both blacks and whites are victims of these syndromes.

Certainly, what your write is true, especially of past Rhodesia, although it is less true of present day Zimbabwe, but still the racial divide persists along these lines, to some degree.

I want to suggest the presence of an alternative reality, however, even in the midst of all of this unfairness. The logical assumption that all whites cared for their children by setting them up with the material benefits of life could prove to be occasionally mistaken. Injustice is only perpetuated when it is assumed that one been given all the positive things in life, which will set one up in good stead for a middle class existence. Some parents -- even in Rhodesia -- might find that scenario to be all too easy. Their own children might not necessarily be favoured in this way.

So it was with my father, who didn't necessarily want to transfer benefits to me automatically. The common sensical assumption that he would, or did, has always followed me like a bad smell.

His failure to do so, however, was a fact, albeit one not likely to be believed.

In KG1, for instance (I was five), me, my schoolfriend Nicky, and my father took an afterschool walk in Ballantyne Park. "I'll buy an ice-cream cup for anyone who can walk along those bricks without falling off!" This was my father's challenge to me and Nicky.

So we stepped onto the line of bricks that formed the exit to the park, and walked along them, one foot in front of the other, wobbling. After a few seconds, I fell off, but Nicky kept on going for a few more seconds.

"Nicky wins!" proclaimed my father. "I will buy her an ice-cream."

"What about me?" I wanted to know.

"No, I only have enough money for one ice-cream, so I will buy one for Nicky."

That's what happened -- and Nicky ate her ice-cream in front of me.

I don't hold a grudge against my father for whatever he thought he was demonstrating on that day. He taught me quite directly that I couldn't depend on him too much, and that his judgements were unlikely to count in my favour.

The problem is I have been punished for having been given all sorts of unfair advantages in life -- those that pertained to being born white in Rhodesia.

The fact is that most of those advantages I am assumed to have had did not really exist.

It has taken me a long time to realise that in the eyes of Westerners, my father's was pretty abnormal behaviour.

But then again, it is also the reason why Westerners themselves have always seemed to irrational to me. I mean, in the sense that they have treated me like I've had unfair advantages by being brought up in a colonial society, when to my mind it is the Westerners who have lived in the lap of material luxury. They would be insisting on a very crazy interpretation of life if they think that somehow I have been set up very well for success in life, and need to face "reality" by being brought down a level or two.

The real poison of patriarchy that is fed intravenously into all children growing up today is the mystical feeling that patriarchal perspectives are always and inevitably transcendent perspectives. In relation to women, that is, they are "The Perspectives" that offer a birds-eye view on everything.

What that means, in practice, is that whenever there is a patriarchal perspective to be offered, women's perspectives are automatically wrong. One has to remember that women's perspectives are by definition NOT patriarchal perspectives, no matter how much the right wing has worked to make it seem like unusual intelligence in a woman will make her see the world in a patriarchal way. The metaphor of transcendence is employed here quite implicitly, but it remains only a concept, without any relation to social and cultural dynamics as they actually are.

Let me explain how the idea that patriarchal perspectives are the transcendent ones actually works. This concept CREATES the social dynamics that relegate women into a position of inferiority -- the set of gender relations that it would appear merely to "interpret". But this is not at all possible without a lot of faith. Therefore, a man must believe in himself and never come to doubt his own perceptions. It is out of this attitude of faith that his "transcendence" pours. (This faith is henceforth known as "self confidence" and/or "virility").

But let us refer to the attitude that claims transcendence as its own (as"faith"), for that it the function that enables all patriarchal perspectives.

The man of faith confronts a world in which there are many opposing perspectives. He notices women's perspectives are often in opposition to his own, and this puts him into a state of self-doubt. "Maybe my transcendence is not all that it seems to be?" echoes a constantly nagging doubt. At that moment, he calls on faith to help him to resolve the issue of epistemological discrepancy.

"After all, I have the Transcendent View," he says. "All patriarchal texts affirm so."

What of women and their points of views -- the ones that are genuine and therefore necessarily anti-patriarchal?

"Women are inherently manipulative, and exhaust all their energies in trying to make higher individuals lose their ways," he affirms to himself. "All patriarchal texts assume so."

HAZCHEM!

As per my previous post on the enormous difficulties one necessarily has, in writing within a context of cultural anomie, I'd like to address a related issue.

This second issue concerns intellectual paradigms, and the difficulty one necessarily has in figuring out their presuppositions. For, it is the rarest thing in the world for the writer of a paradigm to announce (that is, self-reflexively) the very presuppositions of their own paradigm. The reason for this is that the premises on which any paradigm is based cannot be taken to be artificial or arbitrarily imposed. Much rather, they need to pass as "common sense". Otherwise the whole value of the paradigm is in doubt, in terms of its ability to point us to a deeper level of truth.

So it is that one must do a lot of intellectual sleuthing in order to try to find out the hidden premises, (those unstated presuppositions about the world) without which the paradigm would not be effective as a means for interpreting reality.

One way to find these out is to approach the paradigm with one's own particular version of "common sense", and then wait to see what produces a sense of dissonance. This dissonance does not imply anything about premises being right or wrong, but rather suggests the presence in the paradigm of presuppositions that one experiences as alien.

Let me demonstrate how this works. Let me consider, for example, the intellectual presuppositions of Freud.

The aspect of Freud's work that produces dissonance most within my mind is that which seems to be a wholly uncritical positive regard for the status quo. To depart from acquiescence to the status quo, indeed, to become critical of the status quo, marks one in Freudian terms as a "discontent". This is Freud's "polite" way of saying that one is starkraving balmy. Yet to accept anything -- including and up to the status quo -- in an uncritical way is not the mark of an intellectual. So what is going on here?

Mike has clarified the issue for m, yesterday, with his suggestion that the intellectual anchor for Freudianism is actually a particular appropriation of Darwinism. This particular appropriation lends itself to the idea that those who define the status quo are the healthy members of society (and thus, on the basis of this implicitly Darwinist argument) guaranteed to be sane. Conversely, those who do not adopt the standards defined by status quo are those who are less fit to survive. If this is so, then we can say that Freud has high estimations of the value of the status quo on the basis of a certain appropriation of Darwinist theory. (In other words, he is not uncritical of the status quo at all, but rather positively applauds it.)

Once one has discovered what seems to the intellectual anchor -- the hidden presupposition -- of any particular paradigm, one understands what it is capable of doing, or not doing, as a whole.

Freudianism does not lend itself well to making a radical critique, simply because it is a core part of this paradigm to affirm the value of the status quo.

Some paradigms have inherently different capabilities, and should be able to do some tasks better than other ones can.

The unconscious mind  will always strive to certain ends, depending on your goals and needs. When somebody treats you in such a way that they undermine your self-esteem and make you doubt your own judgement  they are working to create dependency in you to draw from that, even if they do not recognize this themselves.

In terms of finding friends who will listen, I really like Zimbabweans. There is still enough humanism in Zimbabwean culture for Zimbabweans to be able to listen to others, most of the time. In contemporary Western culture, we are going through a post-humanist phrase, where the person doesn't really matter. It is like Kleinian "object relations" where a person is only important in terms of the function they serve for me. If they nurture me, I will accept that nurturing function, but I will not get to know the person since to do so is a strain and a burden and doesn't serve my immediate needs.

The post-humanism of Western society is infantile since few people can afford to represent themselves as whole human beings, because they just get cut down.