2. Jennifer Armstrong's answer to What was Nietzsche’s view of Darwinism or Darwin himself? - Quora



    Jennifer Armstrong
    Jennifer Armstrong, studied Nietzsche since 1996
    Nietzsche was Lamarckian rather than Darwinian. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck -was Darwin’s rival at that time, with his own competing theory of evolution, in terms of which (as I was taught in high school) giraffes progressively got longer necks in an effort to be more effective at reaching the tree tops.
    Similarly Nietzsche thought that one’s ancestors either comprised a line of ascendancy or a line that falls away from cultural and social ascendancy. This would mean that each generation either produces a child that is superior to the parents, or a child that is inferior to the parents, successively.
    As for the current way that Darwinism has been popularized, it has to be said that Nietzsche had a better understanding than those who currently embrace the popularized Darwinian theory via Herbert Spencer’s interpretation of the meaning of evolution for human society.
    Nietzsche was aware of what “survival of the fittest” in the logical sense of its impact on human culture. To explain more in my own terms., it is tautological, meaning, “those who do in fact survive are the fittest to survive”. The way we misunderstand the principle these days is that we suppose “fittest” means “biologically superior”. It doesn’t. It means “capacity for survival”. And “capacity” always depends on context. For example, because of environmental changes, the dinosaurs, which were physically superior to human beings, have disappeared, and nearest we have to Tyrannosaurus rex looks like my rooster back home.
    Thus, my rooster was “fitter to survive” than Tyrannosaurus rex, simply because he is very presently here but Tyrannosaurus isn’t, and the larger and more impressive beast simply failed the test of survival.
    But the tautology still holds, and there will be those who are fitter to survive at any historical time, depending on the nature of the environment.
    I think Nietzsche wanted to change the nature of the cultural environment so that a different type of person might be more likely to survive in the future.
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  3. (1) Jennifer Armstrong - Quora



    Jennifer Armstrong
    Jennifer Armstrong, Educator ESL and Western business knowledge
    I’ll tell you one major way that I see a difference between myself and those who were brought up under modern systems, with modern values. Now, before I do that let me say that I am not personality disordered, although I am sure that in the past I was extremely emotionally repressed to the point of not having any concept of free will or personal choice. This was partly due to ignorance and not having been brought up in Western modernity, but my conceptualization of things was that we just had to do what society demanded of us.
    It was my traditional upbringing and my sense that one must operate from duty and not from choice that gave me a very different level of expectation of others, and also misunderstood their manner of speaking, as they did mine. This ended up with me feeling like I had been living with my hands tied behind my back whilst being punched in the body numerous times. It’s on the basis of this crisis in my mid-twenties that I recently laid claim to having “some schizoid traits”. I had realized that there were, in effect, some significant differences between myself and others who had been brought up in Western modernity.
    But let me talk about the positive side of this, if I may, and how it plays out as a more calculated way of thinking.
    The key point is that I do not look to emotion directly for my answers. I find for instance that the solutions presented to problems in Western modernity are always emotional. For instance, let us look at how so many people, even on this forum, complain of being afflicted by narcissists. The prescription for their affliction, even coming from the victims themselves, is always for more empathy.
    My natural instincts on the other hand, lead me to side with Brian Bryant’s views, which is to see the matter as an issue of morality and justice, and not of emotion and relationships.
    In this sense, my views and reactions to things have a very calculated quality. If someone is behaving toward me in a manner that is unjust, then they make themselves my enemy, and all of my reactions to them will be based upon my code of justice, consistently and firmly.
    Actually, having this code of justice is my reflex. It kicks in most strongly when things are not going well, rather than when they are going fine. I reciprocate the treatment I have experienced.
    By contrast, I do not find any value in getting into somebody else’s mindset and understanding them better as part of the process of determining how to behave with justice. That is self-contradictory, and in fact when I have tried it, I do not get a more positive impression of the other person by understanding them. I see, instead, the limits they have, their weaknesses, the contingencies that shaped them, but these are not the other person’s fundamental human qualities as far as I am concerned. What humanizes somebody to me is when I am able to see that they acted with righteousness. Apart from that, I may as well be dissecting a body on a table.
    Perhaps I am not really that calculating, however, it is just the way I would seem from a modern perspective. I do look forward to seeing the higher features of humanity — the sense of honor, or bravery and self-respect that could be part of our beings, but I don’t believe that humanity should be defined by its emotional features. I find that idea quite amoral in fact, and it doesn’t interest me to indulge in it as part of a way to gain moral insights.
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  4. (1) Jennifer Armstrong's answer to Why are Americans sensitive and easily get offended when something does not follow their agenda? - Quora



    Jennifer Armstrong
    Jennifer Armstrong, PhD African Literature & Psychology, The University of Western Australia (2010)




    If we are talking about people on the Internet, for instance YouTube, the Americans honestly believe that their point of view is the universal one, and that they are simply taking a common-sense approach when they say whatever it is they are saying. They do not take into consideration that there are other cultures, or other ways of experiencing the world. In fact they are walled in by their own “common sense”, which prevents them from even understanding what someone outside of their perspective is saying.
    Consider, for instance,that I have used the expression “other cultures” in the paragraph above. I have met hundreds of Americans (no exaggeration —I’ve been on the Internet a long time) who will scold me for referring to differences as having something to do with culture. This is despite the fact that it is part of my own “common sense” to do so. They will insist that we cannot talk about culture in this way, and that biology is the only determining factor which has anything to do with how we experience the world. They will stand on their views that "race" or sexual difference make us what we are.
    They cannot understand what I am saying. But I do understand what they are saying. It is always the same error, repeated all the more loudly to try to make it true.
    The final resort of these Americans when their insistence by repetition does not make their world view true is to get extremely angry. Sometimes they insist also that they have been misled by my views, which suddenly do not make any sense to them.
    I think they have been misled by Internet ideology and by the paucity of their educational system, especially the lack of training in the humanities. It makes them overconfident in the first instance, and then angry when others do not eventually respond in the way they had initially been expected to.
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  6. Jennifer Armstrong's answer to Since Africans have the lowest IQ in the world that is proven by science, should Africans marry those with the highest IQ, such as the Chinese, Japanese, or Koreans, to bring up their IQ levels to normal? - Quora



    Jennifer Armstrong
    Jennifer Armstrong, Educator ESL and Western business knowledge
    I don’t believe that “Africans” have the lowest IQ in the world. Plus, who is it that is so lacking in basic geography that they think all “Africans” share the same biology or culture? I’m from Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia), and there is no way that I have this view, based on experience.
    Anyway, I used to think that Africans were not all that intelligent, as I was brought up to expect so, as a white Southern African. But I found out I was wrong. I was blown away by the intelligence of some of them, most notably Dambudzo Marechera. And overall, I found that they were by no means less intelligent than me.
    I did find a much higher level of humility, reciprocation and a profoundly deeper notion of fairness in black Africans than I have so far encountered so far in the rest of the human race.
    Oh, and intellectual conscience! I found fairness in the writing of Dambudzo Marechera, even toward his ideological enemies, when nobody in the rest of the globe would have cared two hoots if anyone was fair to African whites. I could not believe this, when I found it.
    Africa is still where it is all it. There is a depth and profundity in areas of Africa that escapes the understanding of Western whites.
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  7. (1) Jennifer Armstrong's answer to Why are the terms 'post-modernist' and 'marxist' being thrown around a lot these days? Do people understand the true meaning of these words? - Quora



    Jennifer Armstrong
    Jennifer Armstrong, PhD African Literature & Psychology, The University of Western Australia (2010)
    It is alarming how little is understood.
    Now, I myself have also been angry at “postmodernism”. This is because as an undergraduate learning the ropes of a new culture (I had come from somewhere totally different, done two years of high school and then on to university), I found the teaching I received about life in general to be extremely lacking when viewed purely through the lens of postmodernist theory.
    In fact, what I felt is I should have had some steep practical training to cope with incoming artillery fire, but instead I was taught that life was about playfulness and differing perspectives.
    My circumstances and context was a little different from most, though. I’d come from an extremely right wing, militaristic, patriarchal and ultra-Christian culture, in which I — as a female — had not had very much say, or even had much knowledge bestowed on me about it. Then, out of university, I’d got a job in a left wing workplace, where I was treated unfavorably, in large part on the basis of these things I didn’t know. I also had an auto-immune illness at this time, which was extremely exacerbated by the stresses I had experienced. And I thought, “Damn! Postmodernism did not prepare me for any of this.”
    No doubt postmodernism itself did not deserve my angry outrage, but I did feel distressed considerably that I had not been taught anything about actual power relations, or how to defend myself. Instead I’d been kicked in the teeth, and my health condition was much, much worse.
    But, I did at least have an understanding of what postmodernism was, although at that time since it was only at the level of an undergraduate, my knowledge was not deep, and mostly (after the power harassment) focused on the deficiencies I found when one had to rely on postmodernism as a practical theory for life. As I’ve suggested, my unusual circumstances (which I did not know were so unusual at the time) made me look on things that way — I was very hungry for a “practical theory for life”, and when postmodernism wasn’t it, and that was all I had been taught, I felt the situation to be quite distressing.
    And I do still feel a huge gap between the range covered by contemporary theory of any sort and the actual practical realities I have experienced.
    Be that as it may, there are situations that are even weirder, which have to do with the complete tone-deafness and utter incomprehension of North Americans. For instance, on a video that as I recall was defending certain features of my colonial upbringing (a limited, but right wing stance, in some ways, if there ever was one) , I get bizarre and crazy comments from North Americans (see below on the actual YouTube video itself).
    The title of is was, “THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM”, with the subtitle: “Parts one and two of :What were the colonial identities really like?”i.e. IT WAS NOT A DEFENSE OF MARXISM OR POSTMODERNISM.
    *****
    Nonetheless here is “YT’ to tell us differently:
    Y T replied to your reply on Glue Eater's comment
    Y T
    Jennifer Armstrong Pretty sure the message was that you're a neo-marxist pseudo-intellectual whoring off the public coffers.
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  8. (1) Jennifer Armstrong's answer to Does it make you sad that no one can ever understand you completely? - Quora



    Jennifer Armstrong
    Jennifer Armstrong, PhD African Literature & Psychology, The University of Western Australia (2010)




    Well, this has been a very important question for me, not because I have had an innate desire to be understood, but rather because I have invested a tremendous amount of artistic, intellectual and emotional energy in trying to make myself understood. I suppose it would be like putting your life’s savings into a particular group of stocks and then seeing their value plummet in a few months. That is very different, I think, from having a demand that even though one doesn’t invest in anything, one should get a two-fold profit one whatever one has just because. (I believe there are people like that who, without putting in any effort, do feel bad that others do not understand them completely.)
    Anyway, it has taken a long time, but now I realize that perhaps being understood by others is overrated. The original reason I wanted to be understood much better was that I desired a certain kind of psychological torture to stop. Specifically, I did not think that I should have to continue to pay the costs for having been a “white African” who was forced to emigrate in the early eighties. I just wasn’t in a position to suffer more than I had done, because my health wasn’t very good at all. I put all my efforts, therefore, into writing a book, with the plea that I should be understood. if that was to happen, I reasoned, people would not longer use me as a scapegoat for their own politics and feelings of distress.
    But, in the end it didn’t work out that way. I found that what people understand, primarily, is themselves. When they read about another person, unless they have also already experienced very similar things, they are only able to encounter a version of themselves in the text. And so I found that everyone who read my book came back to me with a different version of themselves. There was only perhaps one reader whose life experiences were similar enough to mine, despite living in another country, that she came up with an understanding that was similar enough to mine. The rest were way off.
    As you might guess, it made me very sad that I was not, for the most part, understood. I held out a lot of hope that something about this could change, until I realized there was no hope.
    And so now I find a different way of looking at it. There is value to be had in struggle, and in the degree of authenticity this brings about. One can develop in this way that capacity to be true to oneself, and this also seems to be a path to wisdom.
    It’s very tough, to be this self-reliant, and it can produce a high degree of anxiety once one realizes just how much one has left the possibility of being understood behind. Sometimes I have experienced the fear that I no longer even understand myself. This path is difficult. It is the one I am on now.
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  10. Jennifer Armstrong's answer to How can I convince skeptics that gender is not a social construct? - Quora



    Jennifer Armstrong
    Jennifer Armstrong, Educator ESL and Western business knowledge
    You have to come up with scientific evidence that throughout history, women have always done one type of thing and men have always done another type of thing — and not because they they had no choice, but because it was completely natural, indeed biological, for women to do “feminine” types of things and for men to do “masculine” types of things.
    You need to prove that this has never changed, unless it has changed as a result of biology itself changing. But, otherwise, it has always remained the same.
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  11. (1) Jennifer Armstrong's answer to Why does Nietzsche despise pity and compassion? - Quora



    This question previously had details. They are now in a comment.
    Jennifer Armstrong
    Jennifer Armstrong, studied Nietzsche since 1996




    That is not exactly correct. Nietzsche did not despise pity and compassion. Rather he rejected pity, and he thought compassion should not be made into a self-justifying principle, as it would cause shame to focus on someone who seemed lacking and then try to give them what they were seemingly missing.
    Caleb Beers in his response to this question says a lot of apt things, especially about the infectious nature of pity, once it takes hold as a social mannerism. It’s no the most elevating of emotions, but it may seem seductively so, if we feel that by pitying another we can also go one-up from them and feel superior. That kind of stimulation seeking is very opportunistic, because really one should be aiming to achieve something more culturally perfect and glorious in its own right. Stooping to exercise pity is for a certain type of person that does not feel that they have the ability to be glorious in their own right. It embraces a totally different logic and set of feeling sensations than seeking to elevate oneself does.
    That said, I think a word of caution is absolutely necessary. Nietzsche is the king of subtle concepts, and there is the danger of turning his ideas into something else, for instance a division of the world into winners and losers, in a manner that is cheap and ungracious.
    Despising the weak would be something extremely ungracious, moreover even more so if one turned it into one’s principle to do so. Nietzsche himself was not “a success” in his lifetime. By all surface appearances, he was one of the losers.
    We should put all crude and especially contemporary notions of winners and losers aside, since winning big in the material stakes, or being superior influencing others with one’s ideology are modern ideas of success. They are not Nietzschean.
    To live with a sense of spiritual elevation, however, is Nietzschean. It means having a different focus other than pity. One can, through cultural self-elevation, learn how to expand one’s spirit to take care of one’s own wounded. That is not against the principle of a warrior class or warrior society. One can in fact do all sorts of things and in fact every sort of thing. It’s not prohibited to show a caring streak. In fact, when I grew up within a warrior society, it was very common to do so.
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  12. Jennifer Armstrong
    Jennifer Armstrong, Educator ESL and Western business knowledge
    I have had the same problem, in some ways, which may be to do with the style of my intelligence. Mostly, it comes down to the fact that I say things in very technical ways. I’ve usually spent more than a few years thinking things through on a very abstract level, so that when I finally say something, the meaning of the word differs very much from how most people would intuitively use the same word. This is a very horrible situation.
    I can give a couple of examples, from when I tried to get some psychological counselling recently.
    One point of deviation from normative meaning: I expressed that some people I had met “did not appear human precisely”. I was trying to express the idea I had alighted upon that they were more like “a lizard brain”, but I thought that term was too tacky for that situation and what it could imply, plus unwieldy, so I did not express it as such. That does not mean I hadn’t give it deep thought. I just did not trust the terminology to convey what I had conjectured as an underlying theory about mental development, so I did a half-way job of it, which was confusing.
    As a second example, I stated something in terms of a conventional cliche, when I did not at all mean at all in that way that a long time after I presumed it had been taken: I announced my sense of having “a chemical imbalance”. And I should have known, and recollected, that this term is used by psychiatry, to justify medicinal intervention. But what I really meant is, “this menopause experience is really unbalancing me.” I just didn’t say it in the right way, because my thinking doesn’t follow those emotional lines, and nor does my expression.
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  14. Jennifer Armstrong's answer to Do you think people have taken political correctness too far? - Quora



    Jennifer Armstrong
    Jennifer Armstrong, Educator ESL and Western business knowledge

    Answered 1m agoes. 
    Jennifer Armstrong
    Jennifer Armstrong, Educator ESL and Western business knowledge
    As I said in another answer, I think there is a problem of emphasis these days, because what is the most difficult thing for humans is to understand something from another’s perspective when that differs from one’s own. Conversely what is easiest for humans is to police the perspectives of another and to require conformity in language and tone, whether or not what the other person is saying has been understood.
    It’s interesting that political correctness grew up in the cultural West, because the West has always had a problem with its fundamental supposition of universalism — that is, it presumes that others OUGHT to think exactly like us (on the one hand), or failing this default, that it may be possible that others ALREADY think exactly like us. Interestingly enough, political correctness came about because people in universities thought it wise to correct this Western reflex to presume that others should think as we do. It was said that we should not presume that these others have to do as we are doing, or that they have to think the same way. Instead we should allow them to think the way they happen to be thinking, according to their culture and its mores. So, Western universalism was marked for revision.
    But now, instead of a genuine pluralism, we have a flattening of meaning, so that all cultural meanings are presumed to be about the same. We do not talk time to understand how they may be deeply different from our own meanings, as thinking in these terms is deemed to be deeply offensive.
    Why? Because the ideology of Western universalism still holds that those who do not think exactly as we do much have something wrong with them. So, our half-measure of correcting the original demands of Western universalism (to force everyone else to be the same) is just to put a shield over our own eyes and deny ourselves the ability to see anything remarkably different in others in relation to ourselves.
    Perhaps the underlying problem could be construed as political correctness not being taken far enough? It could be taken to the point where Westerners self-censure not only their desire to make everyone the same (which arguably has been done, since we do permit some superficial cultural differences from our own), but to the more radical point that we actually allow ourselves to SEE, as if for the first time, that there really are some very deep, even unbridgeable cultural differences.
    When cultures are unbridgeable with our own, does that really have to mean that the other culture is contemptible and beyond reason? No—not if we learn the difficult task of stepping into someone else’s shoes.
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