I was a latecomer to the game of bourgeois self-fashioning with an altogether different frame of reference, which frankly wasn't bourgeois at all.  Precisely, I didn't grow up to believe that the purpose of my life was to compete on a market by using my image, skills and energy as currency to be traded for status and personal possessions.

My grasp of circumstances relating to exchange-based culture has always been through guesswork.  Performing guesswork is very tiring to me, since working constantly with the ideas of exchange is not deeply ingrained.   When I switch off from an exchange-based mentality and just become completely myself, I run into trouble with those who think I'm trying to imply something about their exchange value.   It's impossible, of course, for me to know what I'm meant to have implied when I just lapse into being myself. The bare truth of it is that I engage with others for reasons apart from their exchange value. Or,  I engage with them through a sense of obligation to try to conform to bourgeois mores, even though I don't understand enough and can only comply with normal bourgeois behavior through a mighty effort.  The effort I expend to comply with conceptions of my exchange value in relation to others is always wasted.  I don't believe in the game myself, and this is bound to show.  Then when I mellow out, people think I am attacking their identities although nothing could have been further from my mind.

It's been a long time since I believed I had to make a reputation that would assure me status and market value.  That's a bourgeois value I'd picked up, which has shown itself to make little sense.   Successful marketers know that having capital and then an effective business plan is fundamental to success.   Identity and image are the products of wisely directed capital, and do not exist without it.  Those who wish to play the bourgeois game of life, but lack the monetary worth to do so, are deeply cynical about identity and image, mostly because their own images and identity have been successfully refuted so often.  There should be a lesson in that, perhaps, in that those with financial backing seem to be able to do what those without it cannot seem to do -- which is to develop an identity into which others want to invest capital.

Many subscribe to the dream of being attractive to wandering capital and that's why situations can seem to have a sub-text, defining every individual's value.     Perhaps switching off, to the extent of not allocating a value to others in one's vicinity, can seem like the worst insult of all.   Still, I've never had the ability to be able to fully switch on to bourgeois evaluations.   The time I can focus on anything in this odd way is limited.

The allocation of moral worth in bourgeois society is also very foreign to me.   I have reasons to like or dislike someone, to view them with respect or otherwise, apart from any evaluation of their moral worth.  The ability to remain "in character" -- by which is meant the ability to retain a bourgeois character mask -- is the fact most defining of a bourgeois individual's moral worth.   Quite some while ago, Prime Minister Julia Gillard was caught out in a bourgeois error when it became clear that she was cooperating with the advice of an image consultant, in order to appear more professional and polished.  The opposition party then raised the question of whether there was a fake Julia and a real Julia.

The Prime Minister's error was not in getting an image consultant but in acknowledging she had one.   Her honesty as to what went into the production of the bourgeois self was her fundamental mistake.   Her espousal of her knowledge as to how bourgeois society constructs identity led directly to the accusation that she was deceiving others.

Bourgeois society punishes guileless honesty, but rewards adoption of identities so long as this process is seamless.   Adaptability with plenty of seams -- my kind -- does not get liked at all.  I give away too many secrets when I act according to my nature.

In terms of a healthy alternative to the following not atypical bourgeois state of being:

Chapter 12:
12.1. Self-pleasing in despair
The suicide is undoubtedly a victim — but this observation is a very stupid ideology when it gives no information about what he is a victim of. In any case, it is not “social conditions” that guide the suicide’s hand: for even with the greatest wretchedness and misery imaginable, what matters is the conclusionthe person affected draws from it. And it requires a fairly crazy logical consistency in order to proceed from whatever starting point and arrive at the result that one no longer belongs in this world. After all, the suicide is not merely executing on himself the feeble judgment that life is not worth it anymore, since being dead surely ought to be a lot less worth it. With radical narrow-mindedness, the suicide candidate measures his life against a most personal idea of certain conditions, only under which his life would be worth living at all. Whatever reason he may cite for his death sentence — from the failed exam, the darling who ran off, the wayward children, career-related failure or the fear of being busted for crooked dealings in business or marriage, to the impending or actual end of his accustomed way of life, or a general lament about the unkindness of the world — it becomes a reason for ending his own life only by his taking it as an argument against himself: as evidence of the inadequacy of his own person in the face of a standard of fitness he wants to submit to completely. So it is not simply his own circumstances or the will of other people that have made his life is a failure: the suicide candidate deems his most personal moral life agenda, in which he alone wants to be pleasing to himself, to be a failure and unworkable from now on — but without in the slightest losing faith in the criteria for the character mask that he solely wants to accept himself as, and even live as. It is thus an idealism — taken seriously without compromise and without the usual qualifications of fitness for bourgeois life — of a perfect moral character, an idealism whose crazy demands the candidate sees only one chance of standing up to; namely, by freely sacrificing himself to this idealism: this is the only way he likes to be pleasing to himself. This logically consistent moral stance is easily the equal in brutality to the National Socialist program of “euthanasia” in the interests of preserving the racial purity of the national character; turned against himself, the suicide’s logically consistent cruelty serves as his last and utmost means for proving the validity of hisideal of successful self-assertion against its practical refutation in his own person, and thus for saving the madness itself, in which he has placed his entirehonor.
Bourgeois individuals from all classes and social strata, political or ideological “camps,” “unemancipated” nuclear families or “progressive” shared households — all are equally capable of such logical consistency in submitting to their self-fabricated character program. For the basis and content of the plan to remove oneself from the world is the general moral idealism of class society. And the fact that everyone subscribes to this idealism in his own special way, which he is God only knows how proud of — and which he above all has no problem regarding as a very superior criticism of the prevailing “lack of principles” and “double moral standards” — is the best guarantee that everyone, proudly believing he is taking quite a unique journey through life, can also work toward the not-at-all unique logical conclusion of murderous self-criticism, which is included in all moral idealism, but also follows only from moral idealism.

It is quite interesting to become animal, apes, just don't go in for that pointless murderous self-criticism.

It will get you nowhere.

I had a near miss with Rorty, since I was supposed to use his text (as follows) to write my honors dissertation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingency,_Irony,_and_Solidarity

Looking back, it was a good thing I withdrew at the time, since I would not have understood the argument he was making, nor the cultural context of the argument. Also, it would have been extremely *ironic* if I had to be in a position to give USA liberals “hope”, when my right-wing society had been demolished and I had no hope of my own.

Rorty is not a very good philosopher in my opinion, making the typical move of Postmodernists in combining Nietzsche with Christianity. Nietzsche was inimical to Christianity. The USA philosopher that makes the most sense to me is Quine.

Clearly, though, Rorty understood his USA liberal community’s desire for “hope”. You’ve got to keep hope alive by not making devastating critiques of authoritarianism like those made by Orwell. Barack Obama sought election on that ticket. Hope.

The whole idea is very American, self-indulgent and Christian in its idealization of “community” and “hope”.

In the past several months I have been inscribing my father's memoirs.  This involves asking him to speak on whatever subject he chooses, whilst occasionally asking questions to fill in few more details or to give a personal, subjective side to the factual basis of his narrative.

Thirteen short chapters so far show the structure of an extremely old-fashioned personality.   One rarely finds  such an identity represented nowadays.  Even "Bear" Grylls caters to modernity in the way his shows are structured, so as to makes his adventures look accessible to anyone who wants to take them on.

My father's mental imagery from dreams was slight yesterday.  He mentioned only that sometimes he saw a pond that looked like he could swim in it,only it turned out to contain an unexpected danger in the form of a crocodile.

I went to sleep and had dreams of my own.  I was drinking coffee in a poetry house, when I suddenly left and took my collection of books with me.   The airport alarm sounded at the door and I smiled then immediately turned  back as I deduced I must have taken a book belonging to another in error.  It was a miniature, but brightly-colored book on the very top of the pile.  It was a book for a one-year old or two-year old.   Every page contained at most one word, for that was all there was space for.

"The book on the top was yours. I took it inadvertently," I stated.  "The rest of the books are mine."

A small women, in modest, middle-aged attire made her way to me.  She seemed to be wearing a white towel that had been turned into a robe, with blue flowers embroidered into the sleeves.

"Don't worry," she said.  "It only a very small book."

She looked at the rest of the books.  Those belonged to the coffee-house, too.  I gave them back and the women -- for there were now five -- cuddled me, like we were long-lost friends.  We were going to go shopping together, but actually I wanted to escape from them and return home.  I began walking faster and faster until the voices of the nice ladies began to echo in the distance.  Just then, I dropped down into some construction works on the first floor platform of an overpass.

Immediately, I reached out for a foothold, but alarmingly there was nothing beneath my feet.  I was going to sink into wet mud and die in a construction work and nobody would know I'd even been there.

I began to scream out that I'd fallen into something deep, but my voice let out an almost silent scream.

Two silent cries and the realization that the pit was bottomless, the poles that made up the construction now appearing higher than they used to be.  I knew I was breathing my last  -- then, I woke up.

To me there is only truthful art or untruthful. If it’s untruthful and moral, that doesn’t interest me at all. If it’s truthful and amoral, that interests me substantially. Fiction that is bizarre or immoral doesn’t intrigue me very much, but factual writing detailing strange ways of thinking can be very artistic, in my view. This book, for instance, details the psychology of violence during a war:

Part of the training was drill and you had to stamp your feet,  which used to cause your socks to fall down about your ankles.  In cadets,  you had to wear garters.  On this one occasion,I'd forgotten my garters,  so I tied my socks up with a shoelace.  I suddenly found myself lying on the Tarmac.  I fainted because the blood couldn't circulate.  Fifteen years later,  I was in the regular army and sergeant major Griffiths came around and said your socks are falling down. You need to use string, not elastic. He put me on a charge for using elastic instead of string.  I appealed to the company commander and got off.

Griffiths would walk around and if he saw your socks coming down a bit,  he would push them down with his pace stick.   If they went down,  he would decide to charge you, as you had the wrong support.   He wanted to be nasty so that people would respect him.

We also had a regimental sergeant major,  RSM Erasmus.  Erasmus's claim to fame was he had a very loud voice.  Erasmus was quite capable of telling the sergeant major off on the parade ground.   Erasmus was marching us around the parade ground and suddenly you heard a voice shouting,  staff,  staff,  third man in the front row is wearing jewellery.  That was me with a watch on.

The army training taught me that on occasions there are things you have to do.   It did teach me to deal with obnoxious bastards.  You just suck it up and keep going.   All my life I've had these obnoxious people arrive from nowhere.  One obnoxious person was a foreman here in Australia.  He wasn't in charge of me,  but I was supplying the stuff.  He constantly out up blockages to make you have to crawl on your hands and knees to get anything done.   I would walk in and he would say did you go though reception? He would always hound me like this.

He undid himself over a period of time,  in that he got so many people to hate him that eventually all the workers got together and said we're not going to work for that guy anymore and he got the sack.  This was back in the 80s and he used to go to army surplus and buy camouflage and drive a Hummer.  One day,  our product was defective and he said, "look at this, look at this." I said we're not going to pay damages,  because the bloke I was working for would not pay damages on any occasion.  I'd been saying "Yes,  yes, yes," to him all these years,  but it was time to say no.  I had to try to increase sales, but I wasn't going to do it by going though him.  The look he had when I said "No" was incredible.

There have been lots of people who have been like that.  I think it makes them feel good to be able to put someone down.  Every time I've taken revenge on someone, it's never worked out.  You can't fly at someone.  I have an instinct for some things.  If I've put a product into a company  if I felt it was doing okay,  it was going okay,  but if it wasn't, I also felt it.  Then, I would rush around and try to fix things up.

I still dream of work.  Sometimes I dream I'm back in Africa and sometimes I'm having to fight my way out of a situation.   Fighting isn't always necessary,  but when it comes around,  you don't want to be unprepared.   I find I'm out somewhere and there's a pool of water and I think, right, I'll have a swim in that.  Then I look on the far side and there's a crocodile.   This indicates danger in places where you wouldn't ordinarily expect it.   Some of the meaning of dreams is to convince yourself you're not afraid of anything.

When I was in hospital after the stroke,  I had dreams about being in a place you don't want to be and you just have to accept it because there's no way out.  

Psychology has not developed very much in Western society.  By thorough contrast, in Zimbabwean society, people are natural psychologists, but in Western society, identity as a moral category stands in place of any organic understanding of the structure of human relations and its consequences.   Above all, people want to be assured that you're in the right category, that you understand what category you're in, and that you're not laying claim to be in a category you lack the moral right to be in.

For the most part, Zimbabweans don't view reality in these terms.  Those terms above are quintessentially Western.   Rather, Zimbabweans try to gauge your political stance by watching your behavior.   They're extremely responsive to what seems to be implied by one's actions, and will respond immediately to any sudden changes in behavior, such as moving from aggression to amicability.  In all, it's one's behavior that matters, rather than one's self-proclaimed identity.

Westerners, though, want to be moral arbiters of human rights.   They want to be in a position to determine whether or not you deserve your rights, and to what degree.  Their decisions are not based on actual behavior, but on the assumption that identities are fixed, some wholly righteous, others infinitely evil.

The Westerner's role as moral arbiter is to make sure those he or she deems evil should suffer their commupance, whilst those who deemed on the side of good should receive their rewards and recognition.

Unlike the typical Zimbabwean, the average Westerner has come into the world to teach us something.