STAY SANE AND SAVAGE

2012-06-01T13:09:27.858+08:00

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

I don't agree with a lot of Hedges' morali...

2012-05-14T18:04:38.594+08:00

I don't agree with a lot of Hedges' moralizing generally. For instance, he ends his polemic with the suggestion that we ought to denounce historical oppression. I think that is an empty gesture and glib suggestion.

This is and excellent thought, excellently express...

2012-05-14T05:14:36.545+08:00

This is and excellent thought, excellently expressed.

Ok, I watched this. It has the usual problem with ...

2012-05-12T13:10:59.252+08:00

Ok, I watched this. It has the usual problem with USAsians and their desire to turn over a new leaf by becoming 'ambassadors for [their] mitochondria". This is the weird moralizing and hyperbole of everything USA. Just try to look to Africa, folks. Eat closer to nature. Try some raw, crushed garlic in your food.

You're cuter too. That was the best writing ...

2012-05-10T16:57:24.060+08:00

You're cuter too.

That was the best writing on period pain that I've ever read.

The higher its type, always the less often does a ...

2012-04-30T08:40:21.242+08:00

The higher its type, always the less often does a thing succeed. You higher men here, have you not all been failures?

Be of good cheer; what does it matter? How much is still possible! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as you ought to laugh!

What wonder even that you have failed and only half succeeded, you half-shattered ones! Does not man's future strive and struggle within you?

Man's furthest, profoundest, star-highest issues, his prodigious powers, do not all these foam through one another in your cup?

What wonder that many a cup shatters! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as you ought to laugh! You higher men, oh, how much is still possible!

And verily, how much has already succeeded! How rich is this earth in small, good, perfect things, in well-constituted things!

Set around you small, good, perfect things, you higher men. Their golden maturity heals the heart. The perfect teaches one to hope.

I have a very similar outlook, and experience. I g...

2012-04-23T09:53:44.979+08:00

I have a very similar outlook, and experience. I grew up in a small town on the Texas/Mexico border with white skin. That made me a little less than a 2% minority, even though my family is largely from Mexico, everyone spoke Spanish, I grew up eating Mexican food, etc...

Having a background like that give a person a sense of perspective than most people don't get to experience. The strongest bit of culture shock I've ever experienced was when I lived in Kansas City for about 6 months. Until then I assumed that the kind of "White" culture stereotyped in movies, and satirized by comedians was mostly a myth. There I realized that such a culture existed, and now than I'm in North Texas, this is the culture that people automatically ascribe to me. People started to try to get me to recognize my "whiteness," as though there has ever been a time in my life that I wasn't aware that I had white skin.

As you've said in a more recent post, identity politics has nothing to do with universal social justice, it's just a way for some folks to fight over who is more innocent, and therefore who is more worthy of gaining advantage. Shelby Steele hit the nail on the head, by stating that this is all about fighting over who gets to be more innocent, or less guilty. It's all about power. The bullshit, anti-racist rhetoric you've been pressured with is just a way for these folks to gain back their own feeling of innocence in a battle for control and advantage. It's a bargaining strategy, no different than the kind that black Americans had to resort to in order to gain access to White society.

The inwardly held attitude that nature per se is d...

2012-04-09T11:13:34.648+08:00

The inwardly held attitude that nature per se is dangerous to our psychological well being, or that one should not lose oneself in nature, or one would risk losing one's spiritual health -- that is peculiar to a Christian mind-body dualist perspective. This is the attitude I see enshrined in Lacanian ideals.

So you, and anyone else who has had different expe...

2012-03-28T07:08:34.845+08:00

So you, and anyone else who has had different experiences, would not easily become a school teacher in the Australian system.

" The mother is authoritative so long as she&...

2012-03-27T20:17:14.227+08:00

" The mother is authoritative so long as she's nurturing. Her authority is, in effect, a nurturing authority, not a commanding authority like that of the child's father, who is more genuinely freed of the emotionally delicate role."

- You should so meet my parents. :-)

Thanks! Nice to meet you, too. Of course, many p...

2012-03-20T08:11:43.612+08:00

Thanks! Nice to meet you, too.

Of course, many people may have their communication disregarded and this may not always have to do with gender. Gender is a traditional mark of inferiority in terms of the Judeo-Christian paradigm, which is also inherited by psychoanalysis. Race may be another. Or, one may be marked as inferior comparatively, in relation to people who are narcissistic and/or who deem themselves to be successes.

Your article struck a resonant chord with me, prov...

2012-03-20T08:02:51.910+08:00

Your article struck a resonant chord with me, proving that your situation is not gender specific, but rather, quite human specific. In other words, regardless of gender, we all go through the same winnowing path, with some being more aware of it than others. (if in some cases, at all.) Thanks for posting. Tom Wright A Course In Shamanism.

I just happened to be looking at one of my very ol...

2012-03-08T12:27:30.758+08:00

I just happened to be looking at one of my very old posts when I received this comment.

This one:

http://musteryou.wordpress.com/2006/06/19/soyinka-and-group-therapy/

Thanks for the link love! :-) "What I really...

2012-03-08T12:20:16.814+08:00

Thanks for the link love! :-)

"What I really don’t get is why there is no therapy for those who choose not to castrate their existence. "

- Actually, therapy only exists for such people. Those who decide to castrate their lives never seek a second opinion.

I also don't see "normal" as a useful category. Which celestial authority will decide for us what is normal and what isn't?

True.

2012-02-28T12:23:50.920+08:00

True.

Also, all the ideas about difference that lead to ...

2012-02-27T16:02:15.379+08:00

Also, all the ideas about difference that lead to discriminatory treatment are based on psychological projection of unwanted character parts onto the other.

When people stop projecting parts of their charact...

2012-02-27T15:59:57.254+08:00

When people stop projecting parts of their characters onto others, racism and sexism will cease.

Is there a difference between racism, segrigation ...

2012-02-27T10:56:51.211+08:00

Is there a difference between racism, segrigation and aparthied? And second, can racism ever be erradicated, if so how?

Thanks, Barbara. The "innocence" I menti...

2012-02-23T08:37:40.863+08:00

Thanks, Barbara. The "innocence" I mention is the key point. The innocence is the ironical pivot of the whole book, since some would claim that "colonials" can never be innocent. It's the historical and developmental issue I interrogate and the key to the self mockery I engage in throughout the book.

The wounded healer is of course the fundamental sh...

2012-02-21T07:42:06.261+08:00

The wounded healer is of course the fundamental shamanistic notion.

"A lot of Jesus’ recommendations are thorough...

2012-02-21T07:02:40.976+08:00

"A lot of Jesus’ recommendations are thoroughly shamanistic"

- I like to call them psychoanalytical. :-)

Sure, the issue is formalism. Intellectual shaman...

2012-02-16T15:27:58.731+08:00

Sure, the issue is formalism. Intellectual shamanism deals with this issue in particular, by using the alienation that results from ideological formalism, to jettison the subject into novel modes of being and becoming.

This results in the subject becoming largely incalculable -- to some degree, they are outside of Hegel's constructs of historical determinism.

One crosses "the bridge" from conventionalism to self-actualisation "as spirit" -- that is, neither concretely, nor formally, but by means of an incalculable quotient of will.

Deep knowing goes all the way down to the individu...

2012-02-16T14:41:08.453+08:00

Deep knowing goes all the way down to the individual. One can get a superficial notion of a person by observing how they fit into generalities which, in turn, fit into idee fixe, memorised for quick reference. Collective guilt's advocates are proven false by putting their notion out there as truth, without examining down to the individual, the concrete. Even an Idealist like Hegel could see that the truth is concrete:

"But there is also an a priori aspect of thought, where by a mediation, not made by anything external but by a reflection into self, we have that immediacy which is universality, the selfcomplacency of thought which is so much at home with itself that it feels an innate indifference to descend to particulars, and in that way to the development of its own nature. It is thus also with religion, which whether it be rude or elaborate, whether it be invested with scientific precision of detail or confined to the simple faith of the heart, possesses, throughout, the same intensive nature of contentment and felicity. But if thought never gets further than the universality of the Ideas, as was perforce the case in the first philosophies (when the Eleatics never got beyond Being, or Heraclitus beyond Becoming), it is justly open to the charge of formalism. Even in a more advanced phase of philosophy, we may often find a doctrine which has mastered merely certain abstract propositions or formulae, such as, ‘In the absolute all is one’, ‘Subject and object are identical’ — and only repeating the same thing when it comes to particulars. Bearing in mind this first period of thought, the period of mere generality, we may safely say that experience is the real author of growth and advance in philosophy. For, firstly, the empirical sciences do not stop short at the mere observation of the individual features of a phenomenon. By the aid of thought, they are able to meet philosophy with materials prepared for it, in the shape of general uniformities, i.e. laws, and classifications of the phenomena. When this is done, the particular facts which they contain are ready to be received into philosophy. This, secondly, implies a certain compulsion on thought itself to proceed to these concrete specific truths. The reception into philosophy of these scientific materials, now that thought has removed their immediacy and made them cease to be mere data, forms at the same time a development of thought out of itself. Philosophy, then, owes its development to the empirical sciences. In return it gives their contents what is so vital to them, the freedom of thought — gives them, in short, an a priori character. These contents are now warranted necessary, and no longer depend on the evidence of facts merely, that they were so found and so experienced. The fact as experienced thus becomes an illustration and a copy of the original and completely self-supporting activity of thought." http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/slintro.htm

In general, everything posted on this site must be...

2012-01-23T10:04:47.809+08:00

In general, everything posted on this site must be assumed to have at least some element of irony intended.

Yeah, I realized that. I also noted it was alarmi...

2012-01-23T10:02:32.369+08:00

Yeah, I realized that. I also noted it was alarmist.