I was born in Rhodesia, and experienced life growing up there as a child. I’m not a keen Star Trek fan, because I think that the ideology in that series is about American Imperialism. I don’t have an American style of morality, where I would promote a superficial form of liberalism, with a corporate/capitalist agenda. whilst condemning any other point of view that isn’t easy to label from the perspective of the American system of morality. I did, however, live through a period of history, and I can state what I saw and what I experienced, whilst acknowledging that I did not experience anything like the worst there was to experience. I’m not a superficial American, however. I dedicated my efforts to understanding the Zimbabwean writer, Dambudzo Marechera, who wrote in depth about what occurred on his side of the fence. For my efforts in looking into this tragedy, and indeed elements of torture, I was deemed “sensitive” and still dismissed as needing contemporary Westerners to tell me what was racist and what isn’t. It seems that Americans and other Westerns have the authority to speak on this topic, and even my own experiences or efforts to redress wrongs do not count. To tell the truth from one’s own perspective is given the weird meaning, “tap dancing”. But I have never dodged the truth, and I am not a fan of Star Trek, and its agents.

Rhodesia was a paternalistic state, which it to imply muted racism. The racism was not overt, and there were moves to integrate the black population into some spheres. Most notably, blacks were often considered equal in the lower ranks of the army. I’m not sure how many were in the higher ranks, although they had their own battalion, the RAR. In the civil sphere, things moved more slowly, although there was no harsh racism there as such, just a very slow speed in terms of incorporating more of the black population into formal roles. Speaking for myself, and my school aged peers, we (whites) did not have any formally inculcated racial ideology, whatsoever. Instead, we had certain expectations, which regarding blacks was often lower than for whites, but not inevitably so. We did not decry or protest assimilation of black students into the white school system, when it happened. It was not unpleasant nor was it strange.

Patriarchy is a social system or structure whereby men pass their power down to the boys in the family, for the most part, and women are left to do a reproductive role, for the most part. Patriarchy is not “blaming men”, and only those with no education and paucity of understanding of history and sociology could ever say so.

Why should one wish, however, to oppose “patriarchy”? Well, for a start because even though on the surface it seems to favor men, by virtually assuring that all wealth and power gets passed down through the male line, it does not really respect men in the full sense of their humanity. (Note to the uneducated: this passing down of the wealth and power via fathers and male elders is the meaning of patriarchy, according to what it has meant for most of human history. If you see something different occurring in contemporary society, that is due to the advances made in modernity.)

In reality, when men are identified with power, and as the powerful, their emotional needs go by the wayside, because it is assumed that the powerful do not need nurturing, and that they will take care of themselves. This leads in turn to many men feeling depressed, alienated and even suicidal, whilst women on the other hand are identified with emotion and with emotionalism. Neither side of the gender division has its needs taken care of, because on the one side you don’t have to consider the needs of those presumed to have been born tough enough for anything, and on the other side who wants to give any care or attention to an emotional wet blanket? This is the problem that feminism seeks to fix.

Given this understanding that we may be starting to get now from my few paragraphs above (although a lot more reading of history and deeper understanding of sociology is necessary) we can see that the opposite to a feminist would be a traditionalist, or someone who wants things to stay as they used to be in the past centuries, and not advance or become more humanistic.

I haven’t seen it but I am sure I have seen roughly the same thing on You Tube, put together by American men. It makes me think that anything that is happening in America is so off the scale in absurdity and repulsiveness, whilst lacking in intellectual good faith and intellectual-anything, that I am prepared to damn the whole continent, and if possible scratch it out and start again.

Yes.

Leisure and Idleness. There is something of the American Indian, something of the ferocity peculiar to Indian blood, in the American lust for gold - and the breathless haste with which they work - the distinctive vice of the New World - is already beginning to infect Old Europe with its ferocity and is spreading a lack of spirituality like a blanket. Even now one is ashamed of resting and prolonged reflection almost gives people a bad conscience. One thinks with a watch in one’s hand even as one eats one’s lunch whilst reading the latest news of the stock market, one lives as one might always "miss out on something". "Rather do anything rather than nothing" : this principle too is just a noose to throttle all culture and good taste. Just as all forms are visibly perishing by the haste of the workers, the feeling for form itself, the ear and eye for the melody of movements are also perishing. The proof of this may be found in the universal demand for gross obviousness in all those situations in which human beings wish to be honest with one another for once - in their associations with friends, women, relatives, children, teachers, pupils, leaders and Princes : One no longer has time or energy for ceremonies, for being obliging in an indirect way, for esprit in conversation, and for otium at all. Living in a constant chase after gain compels people to expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion in continual pretence and overreaching and anticipating others. Virtue has come to consist in doing something in a shorter time than another person. And so there are only rare hours of sincere intercourse permitted: in them, however, people are tired, and would not only like "to let themselves go," but to stretch their legs out wide in awkward style. The way people write their letters nowadays is quite in keeping with the age; their style and spirit will always be the true "sign of the times." If there be still enjoyment in society and in art, it is enjoyment such as over worked slaves provide for themselves. Oh, this moderation in "joy" of our cultured and uncultured classes! Oh, this increasing suspiciousness of all enjoyment! Work is winning over more and more the good conscience to its side: the desire for enjoyment already calls itself "need of recreation," and even begins to be ashamed of itself. "One owes it to one's health," people say, when they are caught at a picnic. Indeed, it might soon go so far that one could not yield to the desire for the vita contemplative, (that is to say, excursions with thoughts and friends), without self contempt and a bad conscience. Well! Formerly it was the very reverse: it was "action" that suffered from a bad conscience. A man of good family concealed his work when need compelled him to labour. The slave laboured under the weight of the feeling that he did something contemptible: the "doing" itself was something contemptible. "Only in otium and bellum is there nobility and honour:" so rang the voice of ancient prejudice!

Yes. You do need to be careful not to lose your fundamental self, your real narrative. The danger is that an overlay of interpretation by a trusted authority figure can create a narrative that is not really accurate, or may be very far from accurate. Be careful too about claims to know you on the basis of “the unconscious”. There is a danger here of a weird kind of mental gymnastics, in which cause and effect are confused. For instance, if I prod you with a nail, that is going to hurt. The cause of the hurt is the fact that I prodded you with a nail, not that you already had a nail embedded in you, which I was kind enough to point out. Beware of those, then, who create a reaction, and then claim to cure the disease they created, which really began in a reasonable, and emotionally measured response to the pain they had inflicted themselves on you.

Also, read Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, to learn all about the sick priest.

“Suffering people all have a horrible willingness and capacity for inventing pretexts for painful emotional feelings. They already enjoy their suspicions, their brooding over bad actions and apparent damage. They ransack the entrails of their past and present, looking for dark and dubious stories, in which they are free to feast on an agonizing suspicion and to get intoxicated on their own poisonous anger. They rip open the oldest wounds, they bleed themselves to death from long-healed scars. They turn friends, wives, children, and anyone else who is closest to them into criminals. "I am suffering. Someone or other must be to blame for that"—that how every sick sheep thinks. But his shepherd, the ascetic priest, says to him: "That's right, my sheep! Someone must be to blame for that. But you yourself are this very person. You yourself are the only one to blame. You alone are to blame for yourself!" . . . That is clever enough, and false enough. But one thing at least is attained by that, as I have said, the direction of resentment has been changed.”