1. What shamanistic systems do that moralistic systems do not is to put you into a relationship with yourself. Moralistic systems are actually designed to avoid this, since they are constructed in order to prevent you from succumbing to harm/danger, but one cannot learn anything in relation to oneself without risking oneself.
    You solitary one, you go the way of the creator: you will create a god for yourself out of your seven devils! You solitary one, you go the way of the lover: you love yourself, and on that account you despise yourself, as only the lover can despise. The lover wants to create because he despises! What does he know of love who has not despised that which he loved! With your love and with your creating go into your solitude, my brother; only much later will justice limp after you. With my tears, go into your solitude, my brother. I love him who seeks to create beyond himself, and thus perishes. [Nietzsche/Zarathustra (emphasis mine).]
    In HUMAN ALL TOO HUMAN, Nietzsche also says that intellectual truth has nothing in common with morality.  Group based morality preserves human nature, but it is intellectually in error.  

     Is there a desire to transcend the human, here, and is it part of Nietzsche's Icarian complex? To transcend one's humanity is to destroy oneself.

    Bataille was at least more explicit as to what his Nietzschean proclivities involved. To go against morality -- to transgress -- was explicitly to self-destruct. The fall from grace is forever. Bataille held that Nietzsche's quest for self-destruction was indirect and thus unconscious  -- an "Icarian complex". Bataille's philosophical paradigm makes out that self-destruction ought be undertaken in a way that is conscious and understands that human destruction is inevitable. Not only is it inevitable to the degree that we must necessarily transgress against morality in order to "find ourselves", but it is also so in that we are mortal creatures, doomed to die. So, by embracing this reality directly (rather than indirectly, as Nietzsche does) we can -- paradoxically as it happens, for human nature is contradictory and paradoxical -- actualise our own natures more fully.
    Common to both Nietzsche and Bataille is the following paradoxical understanding of human nature and philosophical dialectic:  moral systems have a  preservative effect on humanity, but at the cost of truth as well as at the cost of creative self actualisation.  Not to seek to preserve oneself is, by contrast, the way to individual self-actualisation, but at the cost of self-destruction.
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  5. Why Terrorism Happens | Clarissa's Blog

    Identity politics really is something new. It now has the hegemony when it comes to left and right populist discourses.

    Of course, I have read Marechera concerning the ‘war of liberation’, which the Rhodesian forces called “terrorism”. There were, indeed, quite a few acts of terrorism — which is to say, gratuitous violence. The roots are clearly in something other than contemporary identity politics. In a way, I think, reading Marechera, it was in a desire NOT TO have the particular identity ascribed by the colonials. The guerrillas wanted to refuse an identity, rather than to accept one. So they refused, for instance, Christianity, which they identified as a white man’s religion. They also wanted to throw off the servile identity of the black servant.

    Having done all that, and had a successful revolution, now Christianity is in full bloom like never before, and class hierarchy remains, with servants who are exclusively black working for their black and white masters. Furthermore, identity politics has begun to take a hold, especially in the liberal, artsy circles of contemporary Zimbabwe.
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  7. Sunday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog

    Nobody’s perfect and we all have different health foibles. Our bodily weaknesses can be instructive in all sorts of ways. To have a weakness could be very useful indeed — like the proverbial canary in the mine, it could give you all sorts of warnings. For instance, today’s society has, as we have considered, a lot of narcissistic people in the workplace, making it toxic for everyone. Now, I was one of the people that succumbed to their pressures. My digestive system broke down. I would say this is a sign that has meaning beyond myself. It implies toxicity of a more general sort and my bodily reactions were indicative of just how toxic that workplace was.

    Had I chosen not to remain alert as to the broader implications of remaining in a toxic workplace, I would not have changed my lifestyle for a much healthier option. I could have stayed in such a place, and read everything in terms of myself: “I should try harder…I should medicate myself so I don’t feel anything…I should submit more…” Instead I made the judgment that the issue was bigger than I. It was social.

    Imagine, now, if more people would refuse to put up with sub-par treatment. Instead of medicating themselves (the tendency of liberals) or blaming themselves (the tendency of rightists), they could take action. Others would surely benefit from their ability to take action, as the abusive treatment would become less acceptable, less normalized, the more people refuse to accept it.

    But people want to take what seems to be the easiest option, so they choose not to feel, choose not to see, choose not to reflect and experience. This means that the legacy of the abusive workplace is passed down to the next generation to try to solve.

    On the other hand, if one listens to one’s body, one might learn to refuse bad treatment, poor food, contaminated water, and a host of other negative qualities in the environment. After a while, things may start to change.
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  8. Sunday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog

    I have my suspicion that it’s down to having been imbued with a philosophy of life wherein anything negative that happens to you is seen as material to be discarded and/or disowned. Actually, that’s like requiring that one have nothing in one’s diet that forms roughage. One insists on tasting only that which seems good to the palate. It has to taste sweet and smooth and go down easily. Only, what tastes sweet and smooth and goes down easily leads to diabetes. So one takes medication in order to keep the diabetes under control. Having convinced oneself that one has one’s bodily machine in order, one then ventures forth to the chocolate factory for a gigantic binge. One believes oneself preserved and protected from any harm afflicted by one’s tastes and actions.

    I think people need to redevelop a taste for roughage if they don’t want to become depressed. Enough difficulty and challenge mixed with the sweeter flavors of life can actually prevent one from sinking into depression. If one has a problem that one simply has to solve, one will not experience overwhelming depression.

    People are cynical about this fact, because they think it’s just a way of lying to them and sugar-coating negativity. The problem is their philosophy of life is so cynical and to this extent so negative, they can’t understand what is being said.
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