my conversion to atheism!

Today, 12:27:58 PM– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate Jennifer F Armstrong
One of the more embarrassing aspects of my childhood: I didn’t want to be a princess, but I tried being a fairy, and I very much wanted to be an angel. The thing about being an angel is that you would become invulnerable and above all you would be able to fly. So, I made a card to God, and drew an angel on it, lest he be confused in any way about what I wanted to become. I wrote, “Dear God, please make me an angel before I wake up.” I put this rather badly drawn card at the end of my bed, above my feet, and went to sleep, in faith mode, that since I had made the decision to “act on faith” and be an angel, everything I asked would come to pass. To facilitate this transition from human to angel, I practiced flapping my arms really really hard, whilst jumping. I believed that by virtue of such flapping I had managed to stay in the air about a quarter of a second longer than if I had not flapped. Such empirical evidence gave me hope that my aspiration to become an angel was not unfounded.

When I woke up the next day, however, I had not been transported. Even the card was there as if God hadn’t even opened it and looked inside. I felt rather embarrassed that my gift, my petition, had been left unopened.

That was the morning of my first sneaking suspicion that God did not in fact exist.

But it all had to do with trying to adopt one of the options available for femininity — in a way, a kind of death.

Shamanism, Nietzsche and why I chose my theoretical postulates

I just received this ancient biology book with a symposium article in it by Paul D. MacLean. Obviously, he writes on R-complex and the triune brain. Among other things, he defines R-complex behaviour as “nonverbal” communication.

Initially I had been wondering whether or not Lacan belongs in my thesis, since I was not sure whether his paradigm has been overly culturally influenced by mid 20th Century European cultural formulations. Similarly, I had some (lesser) concerns about Bataille, since he involves some strongly cultural elements in this construction of his shamanistic paradigm — the French Catholic notions of human sacrifice, as implicitly (culturally) linked to spirituality, for instance.

In the case of Bataille, his reversal (in some senses) of Nietzsche’s metaphor of transcendence (going up) with immanence (going down), parallels the actual neurological structure of shamanism better than Nietzsche’s approach does. (For, in shamanism we return to our neurological roots, in terms of the kind of consciousness and ‘thinking’ that we access during shamanistic “journeying”.) So perhaps the cultural aspects happily duplicate the structure of shamanism in terms of Bataille’s paradigm, producing a result that is overall less misleading in terms of accurately rendering Bataille’s overall esoteric ideas, as compared to Nietzsche.

In Nietzsche’s case, an internal contradiction seems to suggest itself. We “transcend” our current consciousness.. At the same time, Nietzsche’s wants us to come to understand the unconscious as the source of a fully integrative “will to power”, working in us beneath the level of consciousness. To view this in relation to actual brain structure, one would logically have to go “downwards” {towards the archaic parts of the mind}.

To get back to Lacan: he makes a great deal of verbal versus nonverbal levels of psychical development. He also perceives a fundamental leap of consciousness (which, if I am to understand him right, radically and irreversibly alters us) as we move from a level of development that is nonverbal, towards one that is verbal. To my mind, the nature of this transition that Lacan detects suggests a movement from one system of brain processing to another — that is from an infantile reliance on R-complex mental processing, towards a state of being where the higher levels of the brain take over executive functioning. So Lacan’s emphasis on a transition from nonverbal to verbal reasoning may be precisely right, in terms of the neurological structures under-girding human development.

Even the Lacanian formulation that this process of development implies “castration” makes sense, if we juxtapose it with Nietzsche’s own equation of the unconscious with “will to power” (and of course, using MacLean’s formulation of the triune brain to forge a conceptual link between the Nietzschean ” unconscious” and the part of the brain — R-complex — that is, according to MacLean, concerned with posturing in terms of “power”.) So, rereading Lacan in this light, “castration” is the loss of a direct subjectivity when the executive powers of the brain become centred in a higher part of the mind.

Shamanism, of course, restores this broken link between the higher and lower parts of the mind. It is clear in Nietzsche’s formulation that Zarathustra’s “going under” is a “going over” or transition, übergehen, from human to superhuman. Creativity requires a downward movement (“going under”, towards the lower part of the mind). Perhaps this meaning is incidental to Nietzsche’s writing but the sense of destruction, of a supernova blowing up, is intrinsic to his idea that one sacrifices oneself when one goes beyond the norm.

Another way of looking at it is one links up two parts of consciousness as a bridge. The ancient part of the brain and the higher mind become no longer separated. The communication channels are opened up. This outcome of uniting the two parts of the brain is the “going over” towards the “superman”.

shamanism, facing death, and rationality

How shamanism makes one more rational and original – by confronting one’s cognitive dissonance about power relations, through facing death. This cognitive dissonance is normative (and likely controlled by the brain part geared to survival — lizard brain). It involves an aspect of unquestioning conformity in us since we are all inducted into systems of power that pre-existed our birth, and which we needed to adapt to regardless of our individual proclivities or will. Facing absolute loss, as an existential fact, however, enables us to overcome the superego prohibition against seeing reality more as it is, less as we hope it might be.

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/

on the gendered social order and the meaning of ‘play’

A definitive experience for me was when I was about three and at a nursery school run by some South African ladies (ie. not part of my culture). I was a loner then as I am now, and one of the hardest concepts (which I still haven’t managed to come to terms with) was how to “play” in a way that was prescribed rather than spontaneous.

When play was spontaneous — in other words, on my own, (or around the middle of primary school, with a group of friends who were similar to me), I could keep going for hours. But at the age of three, I was required to do orchestrated play, and I couldn’t wrap my mind around how to seem to be spontaneous whilst not actually being so. I believe this puzzle has been at the core of much of my orientation towards socialization as an adult. I perceive that I am supposed to act as if I believe I am free to behave in any spontaneous manner that may appeal to me, but at the same time to conform to rigidly circumscribed gender roles, in many cases. I find I can’t hold the two things in my head at once — to maintain the appearance of seeming to be free, whilst knowing that I am not actually so.

Anyway, these South African ladies would not allow me to play alone, even in a way that I already felt to be very circumscribed (because it had to be within the walls of a brightly coloured prison, crowded and claustrophobic, when I wanted to be outside.) I had taken the building bricks from the shelf to play with, and was trying to occupy myself with them, when these ladies interrupted to tell me that I was not playing in a way that was suited to my gender.

“Those are boys’ toys! You need to play with other girls. Here is a group of them, playing house…”

So, they made me join about six of them who were on a bed, playing roles of mummies and daddies (honestly, I can’t remember exactly what they were doing, but each person had a role within this imaginary nuclear family, and it seemed clear to me at the time that I had been given a superfluous role, that I didn’t really belong in this already gelled together nuclear family).

And not only was I a fifth wheel, but I couldn’t see what they game was about. I couldn’t understand the logic of what was being played out, nor could I grasp my role, or why I needed one to play.

Ultimately, what was most disturbing is that I couldn’t actually grasp the meaning of play under such circumstances. I was being forced to “play” in a way that suited the needs and values of the South African ladies, but I could not find the emotional or intellectual correlation within myself that would make the play seem authentic (and actually it was an intellectual link I was seeking).

Since then, I have had similar experiences, whenever social mores have deemed that I need to participate with groups of women, in an experience of free “play”. I am quite incredulous to the whole thing. I can’t, for instance, see the “play” that I am supposed to experience in a “hen’s night”/bachelorette party.

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/

shamanic realism & the lizard brain

Much of writing my thesis has been to unravel the patriarchal pseudoscience from compelling evidence that speaketh otherwise. Much later down the track, after I have left my focus on literature (which doesn’t actually suit me, in the sense of the narrow disciplinary requirements), I will put together some of the evidence I have found.

The reptilian brain is neither “infantile” or “retro” in any definitive sense of these terms. The important point is to become aware of it and be able to use it in effective ways, rather than have it use you.

The question of whether the grammatical subject is actually the Cartesian subject is very interesting — one I am still thinking about. A valid rephrasing of the question might be: “Do those who have not been brought up under cultural circumstances that condition one to embrace Cartesian dualism (or idealism) experience “I” in the same way as those who have been so conditioned?” I am inclined to think they do not, and I wrote something about it here.

I think the whole genre of magical realism (or “shamanic realism”) challenges this notion of the Cartesian subject as being the same as the grammatical subject always. The “magical” aspect of magical realism are from the lizard brain. But, whereas these aspects seem gratuitous, outlandish, extraneous, or whatever, to a Cartesian-conditioned mind, my feeling is that they simply convey another aspect of the “I” to those whose minds have been differently conditioned.

The reptilian brain is not the id, though. The id may be SOME of the energy — desire for pleasure and enjoyment in the immediacy — that radiates from the lizard brain. But the lizard brain is broader than this — it is the will to survival, but not only that, it is the blueprint, the general neurological schemata for survival under extreme conditions. In other words, unlike the “id” (a mere force) it has “intelligence”.

I think that shamanistic seeing, to succeed, requires opening up as wide a gap as possible between the lizard brain “self” and the ego. This way one develops a broad soul, which facilitates seeing more than others do. To conflate the self with the ego, as some do, is normal, but it is not a recipe for vision or understanding of very much. To conflate the self with the superego, on the other hand, is a recipe for pathology. In this third case, one develops a very rigid character structure that adapts itself to nothing, and can perceive nothing at all, apart from its own imperatives, which act like a pressure on the mind and body. That is the opposite of shamanism, which opens up a channel of communication between the self and ego, and often minimises the effect of superego, to boot.

To summarise my suspicions, then: Under the conditions of industrial modernisation, the grammatical “I” is that which speaks. It is the Cartesian subject, and that alone. But this is not necessarily so under conditions lived closer to Nature. In that second case, both the egoistic “I” and the R-complex “self” may combine to express a version of subjectivity that is not limited by instrumental reason but ranges more broadly through the different levels of the mind, and nonetheless conveys important information about the subject to himself (and to others).

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/

Mind body dualism: Its particular logic.

I maintain that the particular sub-culture of Rhodesian culture in which I was brought up was not a mind-body dualistic culture. I believe my peers and I were rather more Africanised than would enable them to easily conform to this standardised Western mode of perceiving and reacting to things. In my own case, mind-body dualism has been like a foreign language of the emotions, that sometimes makes sense (but only in a peculiar kind of way) and most of the time doesn’t.

The difficulties of relating to those who have an entirely different emotional outlook than one’s own can be seen in some ways as akin to a game of “battleships”. The approach to understanding the cultural other may not be warlike in all respects. Rather, what is required is good will, persistence and ongoing determination, to break through certain barriers of social conditioning, in order to see the other’s perspectives. Even then, one may catch a glimpse of such perspectives maybe just a bit. Incredulity of the type that inwardly proclaims, “Well aren’t you white in skin colour, and therefore don’t you surely know exactly how we think!!” is the least helpful attitude to work with, when good communication is the desired outcome.

Rather, the game of battleships must continue with patience and rigour: “Did I manage to understand you, or did I perhaps entirely miss the point?”

In the actual game of battleships, one tries to target the location of the other party’s ships or submarines, by trying random co-ordinates at first, and then honing one’s guesses based on whether one has made a “strike” or missed. Despite the metaphor of battling, it is in fact a game of the mind. Nothing is achieved by getting het up or distressed. Rather, cool persistence wins the day.

When one’s emotional orientation towards the world is very different from those around you, the onus is on you (not them) to communicate effectively, by directing one’s missives not into thin air (although such randomness in direction will be necessary in the first instances of the game). Rather, one must make one’s estimations based on previous experience as well as seeking to develop various modes of predictive logic. In this, the content of the other’s thoughts are not so useful, for this content is precisely what can be misleading if one over-identifies with it, because one thinks one recognises in it common mental states. First lesson in battleship warfare is that the very structure of your mind and his mind are not the same, no matter how similar are the surface tropes of meaning. That sense of seeming to hold something in common is only the heart’s desire to hold things in common, speaking forth. It’s wishful thinking and the source of a delusion.

It is the deeper structures of the other’s mind that one must aim to know if one is truly to understand him. Attention to surface content only betrays this more complex ambition.

Why does he respond to acknowledgement of having changed as if this implied personal weakness? What makes him view verbalised self-awareness as a sign of being abject? How does it come about that he fears strong emotional states, and moreover sees them only ever as coming from outside of him, from others “out there” and never from within, from his own being? What makes him believe in the possibility of implicit knowledge of the other, when he has barely engaged in any detailed conversation with them, and only has cursory information to go on? Why does he persist in believing that a quintessential moral stance is best expressed by not sticking out his own neck (either on behalf of himself, or on behalf of others)? What makes him view the person of the other gender as being extremely alien from him, and from his own consciousness, to the point that he finds it difficult even to relate casually, in a relaxed manner? Above all, why does he attribute states of mind that correspond to ‘guilt’ and ‘sin’ to the other party, when there isn’t any of that in the subjective state of mind of the other?

My answers to date point to a state of being where the mind and the body do not work in cooperative accordance, but are extremely divided. The structure of the mind of the other seems to have revealed itself, and perhaps this implies that my battleships game has now been won.

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/

Zizek’s gender blindspot: Cartesianism

I refer to the following video, in which Zizek remarks about Cartesianism, as that which had made “The West” great:

I hold that what Zizek perceives as an actuality of Cartesianism (a present benefit)is still only a potential benefit.

Zizek’s blindspot concerns gender — a blindspot that is perfectly logical, given his intellectual debt to Lacan, who tends to naturalise gender categories by making them out to be a product of “the psyche” rather than a product of “the social”.

Zizek doesn’t sufficiently understand the politics of gender and the way it is currently being played out. Elsewhere, he chastises Judith Butler for her resounding emphasis on the issue of gender, as if such a focus rightfully belonged only to the sidelines of real revolutionary consciousness. So the patriarch effectively goes “tut, tut, tut,” and merely confirms his patriarchal bias by his estimation of what really holds value — (Hint: it is not a woman’s perspective on the matter.)

In his general outlook, Zizek is not feminist, but Hegelian. He puts his faith in Modernity to lead us forwards. Modernity, with its mind-body dualism does not actually liberate us effectively enough from the shackles of gender, however, as Lacan’s own theorising adequately demonstrates.

(Lacan’s views on gender are more philosophically idealist than materialist, upholding the notion of gender positions rather than core gender identities — a nod to the structuralist approach of early 20th Century French anthopological theory. Gender essentialism is even also reinstated in the non-traditionalist dimensions of Lacan’s approach, to the extent that the structuralist ‘subject’ does not have the right (ie. avenues) to appeal against their structural position if he or she feels themselves to have been incorrectly cast.)

According to my quick analysis of Lacanian theory above, Lacan’s Cartesianism certainly does not liberate us from patriarchal oppression. It may seem to liberate us from material (ie. biological) determinism, but it stops short.

On the basis of Cartesianism, then, we only half-way free from gender essentialism. The sense of a biological determinism to gender may be, and often is, de-emphasised by virtue of the instigation of a system of mind-body dualism. Yet patriarchal values themselves do not go away, with this conceptual severence of the mind from the body. Rather, patriarchal values themselves become more idealised, harder to pin down with any concrete formulation.

This enables patriarchy systems to survive and flourish. For patriarchy, as an institution, has effectively spiritualised itself. It has conceptually detached itself from anything concrete, tangible, or substantial in terms of action or behaviour. Instead, it has taken on an ethereal and transcendental identity — a value system that is located everywhere, but in no particular individual, like the antiquated idea of God, himself.

So it is that, exploiting this conceptual divorce from a need to prove his masculinity in terms of actual actions, a male these days may proclaim himself supremely masculine because he has (via historical means) inherited the rhetorical power of patriarchy to put the little woman in her place. His own character may be in concrete fact, no more actualisably masculine than the character of the one that he upbraids. He is after all, thoroughly “Modernised”, and no traditional patriarch himself. But he is, for all that, not above using the rhetoric of traditional patriarchy to put her in her place.

That right is still his, by virtue of his structurally defined “subject position”.

And she still has no right to appeal otherwise.

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/

lizard brain and positing wholeness

I just had a short nap, (late to bed last night), and woke up reflecting more on the nature of the lizard brain. I think the whole key is that it tends towards pathology when it functions alone, but towards creativity when harnessed by the higher mind’s faculties.

One thing I am speculating about (and there are good theoretical reasons for this) is that the lizard brain has to do with envisioning wholeness. In fact, this may be behind its projective mechanism. It unreasoningly fills in the gaps that are missing with empirical evidence — especially in terms of that hoary chestnut issue of “identity”. So where as we, as human beings, do not embody anything like an internally consistent or even self-consistent identity, a lot of the time, lizard brain, with its primitive (but also “artistic”) consciousness posits that we do.

Lizard brain sees wholeness, then, where none empirically exists — and it is just a step away, in that case, from positing “essences”.

You can imagine, therefore, what it means when lizard brain becomes unhinged from the higher mind — as is sometimes inclined to happen, especially with people, or even whole communities, under stress.

In other words, essences are projected, and imagined to pertain to individuals or groups “out there” when particular communities are under stress. This is a case of seeing self-consistency in others (a kind of “wholeness” where there in fact isn’t any). In fact, whole groups — such as “women” or “[insert ethnicity here]” — can be seen as sharing the same essence, according to this vision, making them into some kind of self-consistent whole.

So much for the pathological side of lizard brain. I insist, however, that it is very wrong (and also pathological) to try to divorce ourselves from a functioning part of our brains. It is difficult to realise that we must work alongside lizard brain, because we are often trained to think it terms of purity and impurity, and therefore in terms on excising whole putatively “negative” aspects of ourselves, when the proper path is towards integrating them.

It has suddenly struck me how the lizard brain types get you sucked in to playing their game and conforming to their wishes. They employ your own lizard brain against you, in its artistic (non-pathological) drives to see them (the pathological lizard brain types) as ‘a whole’. Wanting to perceive the other in this way (as a whole being) is not only creative and generous, but also has to do with our will to power, for we desire to “see” the other in order to enjoy him, but also to conquer him through our knowledge. We desire this form of relating (non-pathologically) because it is pleasurable.

But this is how the pathological lizard brains get us sucked in. I think that deep down, they know that they are not a whole, and that they can never be a whole person (in the different sense of being satisfied with their own inner resources, as the basis for an inward sense of identity, that doesn’t rely upon others to “make it complete/true”). Somehow they manage to get us to engage with them — with our idea of them — by being disruptive, and by drawing attention to themselves. And somehow by giving them our attention, we create an image of their wholeness in our minds that the pathological ones can enjoy and feel gratified with. (Well, we all do this to some degree — try to live our lives through the perceptions of others — but I am talking about cases where people are extremely disruptive, and why that is.)

There are obviously some loose ends to all of this, for instance, concerning why the pathological ones cannot generate their own satisfying sense of wholeness, since they rely so strongly on the lizard brain for everything. It seems that what they lack is an emotional life that is in any way nourishing.

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/

shamanistic "regression" and its links to artistic creation

According to Wilfred Bion, the paranoid-schizoid position (originally prominent as infantile consciousness) is the very source of creativity. Creativity in adults involves a movement of consciousness between PS D (where “D” signifies the ‘depressive position’ – ie. the mature state of rational, adult consciousness, in which one recognises that others are also real, and that one must therefore accommodate them). PSD describes the very process of creativity itself. One can strongly hypothesise that this movement implies a shifting emphasis between lizard brain consciousness and the consciousness of the higher mind. In creative persons the result of this shift is to weave the two components of mental activity together to produce Art. Lizard brain provides a “magical thinking” element, which is a component of creativity. Yet this means nothing except perhaps “madness” unless the higher brain, in turn, interprets the creative impulses and gives them recognisable meaning.

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/

Patriarchal deviations from shamanism

Why Nietzsche writing as a form of shamanism is superficial: patriarchal values and ideas prevent one from sinking deeply into the unconscious, because patriarchal values are identified with ego, which keep one buoyant, perhaps too much so.

Likewise, Freud’s version of patriarchal shamanism is not as deep, nor does it allow for the possibilities of going as deeply into the unconscious as shamanism. Social hierarchy is built into the Freudian system, since masculinity is high and femininity is located low down within an overall model of the psyche. Only via your therapist and his priestly mediation that you can eventually become well. It employs an understanding of the shamanistic structure of psychology but only in a superficial way, so as not to disrupt things as they are.

Undiluted shamanism, by contrast, permits the subject to go much more deeply into the unconscious, and without the hierarchically based mediation of a Judeo-Christian priestly figure. Shaman masters who over-assist another in finding her initiation follow this theologically alien (and alienating) model. Properly, one needs just enough help to find one’s own way and nothing more. Without priestly mediation (which is actually a fence around the consciousness, guarding against too much experience and knowledge) one is able to catch sight of visions that would otherwise be socially prohibited.

Freudianism deploys the shamanistic method, only at a more superficial level. One has to sink to the depths of the unconscious to gain the knowledge that would unite the conscious mind (ego) with the unconscious. In Freudianism, it is not the subject/client himself who sinks into the unconscious, so much as it is the therapist who encourages some of the unconscious to come to the surface, and then interprets it. So, in a way it is a safer version of shamanism, although in another way it barely touches the surface of shamanistic consciousness and knowledge.

What is in common is a certain recognition of the psychological structure of shamanism. A well-adjusted ego will be one that has become aware of more of the contents of the unconscious, so that it will have processed this material and become one with it. This is, in Freudian terms, a “strong” ego.

The process of shamanism requires the ability to relax and let go of ego control — just as in Freudianism, the process of lying on the couch and freely associating causes one to let go of the control of ego. This is the only way to reach the unconscious, through temporarily making the ego small.

So it is that in shamanism there one confronts death through diminishing the ego. But this experience is only temporary. The SCUBA diver sinks to the depths for a while, and looks around. Then, it is necessary to rise to the surface again.

The result of such “voyaging” is that one discovers new material about one’s identity. At this point a strong ego is needed again, at least strong enough to assimilate this new material to make itself more robust. A failure to assimilate the material because one doesn’t like what one sees is actually a failure of ego to come to terms with harsh aspects of reality. Only a strong ego can digest the more negative aspects of life and assimilate them into a stronger constitution.

Nietzsche’s ETERNAL RECURRENCE

There are different levels of interpretation built-in to an esoteric text like Nietzsche‘s. The karmic notion of eternal recurrence is one level of interpretation, but I think that shamanistic/affirmative idea is a deeper level. Really, you can lose your complexes through shamanistic regression.  Then, there is no longer any error to be corrected. You and your unconscious are one. You are free.

I’m sure few people can gain a genuine recapitulation through “facing death”. Those who can say it are shamans. But paradoxically, they have had to pay for their freedom with their wounding. I am speaking in a neuropsychological sense. This is far from mysticism. Those who have some psychological wounding (a radical change in one’s society might do it to you, or certain forms of oppression/bullying) can often learn very quickly about the ways their unconscious mind functions. Their unconscious mind and their conscious mind are one.

This is hardly true for most, and the lower one’s spiritual status is, the less one will have access to the deeper parts of one’s own mind. One can imagine the lowest on the ladder of the spiritual hierarchy having no idea what their unconscious is actually doing or what it wants — hence back-biting and self-delusion, along with a general lack of courage in facing things directly:  one simply cannot face that which one does not have the courage to know.

What they sometimes attain through their suffering is actually shamanistic knowledge.   As noted, the shamanistic formula is one of “facing death”. Those who can face their own annihilation (represented as shamanic regression and “ego death“) will be healed.  By “ego death” one should not understand the demise of individualism.  In fact, the opposite is true,  Since “ego” has to do with social operations and concern with how others see one, temporary ego death liberates the true self.   Nonetheless, one only seeks this kind of healing when life itself has put one under extreme duress. One would rather not do it. But if one has received an extreme psychological wound, one will often be able to regress to a very early level, and thus get to the origins of one’s own identity in such a way that one can heal oneself.  For one to have the courage to go to this level is really rare, very rare.

So, that is the most esoteric interpretation of the eternal recurrence.  At the same time,  the karmic interpretation will be one true for many people. Perhaps we can see a spiritual hierarchy forming on the basis of how one interprets this puzzle of the eternal recurrence? Those who have healed themselves are truly free, but they are the few. The rest, who fear to go to such extremes of facing death (and it is an anti-intuitive thing to do under most circumstances) will have a karmic interpretation of eternal recurrence. Others still will see it as a sign of misery and condemnation:  as if freedom had been divinely prohibited, or  heaven denied, due to the eternal recurrence of the same.

This particular interpretation of eternal misery is the most likely one to be made by people who are unable to help themselves through shamanic regeneration. I consider that it will also be the most common – or “commonsensical” view of what the eternal recurrence suggests, in the eyes of the many too many. It suggests everlasting misery, with no escape even “at the end” of life. That would indeed be the result to logically anticipate, if you cannot access your own internal resources to create yourself anew.

the psycho-logic of shamanism: very straightforward!

Now, I can very clearly see how the logic of shamanism is interlinked. “Facing death” frees the ego from its social and ideological contraints, which enables it to recapitulate the past in such a way that one transcends not only one’s psychological limitations (eg. the unconscious habit of deference to authority, which would have been hard to resist as a child in the thrall of adults), but one also gets to make oneself anew, by accessing the lava-like heat and creative power of the “lizard brain”. Furthermore, by retracing one’s early developmental processes, but now with a more mature mind, one is able to understand that evasive notion of “human nature” so much better. Like I said, one particularly understands the little, unconscious deferential tendencies one has developed, as so one overcomes them by virtue of seeing more clearly the damage they do. So the whole of shamanism has a simple internal logic involving:

1. gaining internal freedom by facing death

2. “recapitulation” — involving the dissolution of weak aspects of the character structure and regeneration along stronger lines.

3. Controlled regression and return from that state gives one knowledge of the very structure of the self as well as how human identity in general is formed.

These are all logically (specifically, psychologically) interlinked, and straightforward.

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/

earliest stages of consciousness and shamanism

I don’t see most psychology the way it is currently practiced as being of very much value. What I have found is that shamanism goes deeper into the unconscious than this. One regresses backwards through all the stages of consciousness — ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. When one goes back to the earliest state of consciousness –which is roughly equivalent to the early childhood state and the reptilian stage of our evolution — we find the origins of identity. There is not much consciousness here. Rather there is an inherent instability of identity, a shifting and moving, without boundaries between the self and the other.

This stage is the origin of identity, because once a child starts to grow up and become an adult, the instability of the boundaries between self and other is reduced. Things become more stable. Nonetheless, there remains more instability of identity than most people are aware of. Aspects of early childhood consciousness that can and do carry over onto an adult level are projective identification, dissociation, splitting of consciousness, and magical thinking. These things don’t affect our conscious identity (which has now gained some solidity, at least in our own minds) but they do affect the way that we adapt to existing political systems. In fact, they facilitate the adaptation, more often than not.

So it is that identities are not solid and discrete in practical reality (although we still conceptualise them as such) but symbiotic unions (the leader and the led) and co-dependency is the norm within all institutions as such. Our unconscious minds facilitate this cooperation with others, without our conscious minds realising it. We take on roles — mostly because we are pressured into them. We become mummy figures, or sycophants or dominating authoritarians — all in response to others’ unconscious pressures on us to play a certain role.

NIETZSCHE, BATAILLE AND SHAMANISM

Nietzsche’s inclination to shamanism doesn’t go as deeply as Marechera’s does into the origins of the consciousness; because he was afraid that going into such depths would lead to the kind of truth that was actually destructive of consciousness. Too much knowledge would tear the veils from our eyes, and be all too likely to show the base and unappealing aspects of human existence. Such knowledge would make us give up and fail to aspire to make cultural progress (since such progress requires a limiting of consciousness and a natural measure of self-deception). Thus Nietzsche’s “shamanism” is reflexively self-limited. Traditionally, however, shamanism is not limited by such philosophical caution. One goes to the bottom of one’s being and is either destroyed by it (remaining in madness) or one ‘recovers’ to a healthier state than one was in before descending towards the temporarily regressive state (successful recovery from it implying ‘shamanic initiation’).

In regards to shamanistic ideas, overall it seems that Nietzsche was not recommending shamanic initiation for others in the active sense, so much as anticipating a period of cultural upheaval, during which time the “higher men” (intellectuals, artists, philosophers and those whose appreciation for culture were a mark of physiological sensitivity) would become shamanised (pushed towards a temporary mode of regressivity) due to catastrophic change. It is likely that Nietzsche has experiences this “shamanic initiation” himself, and wanted to prepare the ground for others, whom he anticipated experiencing it. He wanted to make sure the outcome of this inevitable crisis was positive for those whom he favoured and identified with – “the higher men”. They were to become stronger as a result of encountering the tremendous upheaval of cultural change.

Bataille takes up Nietzsche’s philosophical baton by using shamanistic initiation as part of his philosophy. However, Bataille writes half a century later (1897 – 1962), after the catastrophic changes that Nietzsche had anticipated had already occurred. Whereas Nietzsche writes for “aristocrats” of the spirit, who were still partly immersed in much of the culture that Nietzsche considered worth preserving, Bataille writes for a society that has lost its aristocratic spirit. His contemporaries are no longer the rulers of society, even symbolically, but are the “mass men” reduced to wage slavery. Bataille wants to create a shamanic awakening in just those sorts of people, since they are the people whose spirits define his day and age – the democratic masses (and proletarians), just as Nietzsche had predicted. The kind of initiation he recommends for them may be well suited to their barbaric consciousness. In any case, his ideas of shamanic initiation are more extreme, and related to outright revolution.

Both Nietzsche and Bataille show us that shamanistic initiation can be easily related to a political agenda to either managing and directing (Nietzsche) or causing (Bataille) social change. That is because, as Nietzsche correctly points out, a descent into the depths of consciousness (the epistemological benefit that sometimes accrues through temporary regression) leads to deeper self-knowledge, which can either damage us irreparably, or change us for the better. I wish to suggest that such shamanic knowledge is by no means illusory, unless we are to believe that such high calibre intellects as those of Nietzsche and Bataille were firing blanks.

SHAMANIC ‘DOUBLING’: A PARADOX

Shamanic “doubling” of the identity is paradoxical – it implies self-awareness of the lower parts of the brain otherwise designated as the source of the Unconscious – more in the Jungian sense, than in the Freudian sense. Human beings in advanced, industrialized societies have been taught to view these lower parts as nefarious, if not the source of “sin”. Nonetheless shamanic “doubling” facilitates the integration of higher and lower minds, to make one more whole.

shamanism

Don Juan’s shamanistic “recapitulation” of everything that happened in the past (in order to affirm it from a superior perspective) IS in fact The Eternal Recurrence (or to be precise, the former serves exactly the same purpose as the eternal recurrence does for Nietzsche).

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/

Why call it "Minus the Morning’?

Minus the Morning is a commentary on what it meant to me to be brought up in Rhodesia and then to lose everything. The theme of “morning” runs through the book as a metaphor for loss. Initially it is introduced in the form of incoherence. Just as a child’s view on the world is a jumble of sensations and misunderstood communications, so it was that when singing a Christian hymn in primary school, I believed myself to be singing “Minus the Morning”.

This early subconscious reinterpretation of the actual words, “Mine is the Morning”, sets the theme for the story of my life. Was my subconscious interpretation — based on a mishearing — actually the correct one, whereas the Christian, official meaning of the verse was wrong? This possibility puts the onus for interpretation of life directly back to the child in us — for it is his or her initiative to make sense of that which adults have only partly explained.

So it was that I navigated the meaning of Rhodesian politics and social life — through a series of mis-hearings, and then later a desperate attempt to catch up and understand.

The loss of the “morning” also refers to the “morning of my life”, as per the following song, sung to our departing headmistress, in Form 3:

In the morning of my life I shall look to the sunrise.
At a moment in my life when the world is new.
And the blessing I shall ask is that God will grant me,
To be brave and strong and true,
And to fill the world with love my whole life through.

It is a song that invokes the novelty and innocence of a child’s growing up in a culture where naivety — especially for children and women — was systematically culturally and politically reinforced. When one migrates from that “womb”, one effectively loses the whole social context that reinforced that innocence, thus loses touch with the sense of one’s own childhood completely. This is “minus the morning”.

Finally, “minus the morning” signifies the forbidding of mourning. For one is not to mourn that which one had never really had — and in all sorts of ways, I had never really possessed Rhodesia as my own.

Political correctness in the world at large also prohibited this expression of a sense of loss, for whites were seen as never having belonged in Africa, and therefore not to have the right to mourn their loss of it.

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/

Facebook | Why is the book called MINUS THE MORNING?

Facebook | Why is the book called MINUS THE MORNING?

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/

Facebook | Jennifer F Armstrong

Facebook | Jennifer F Armstrong

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/

How to combat regressive personalities

QUESTION:

 

What I’m looking for is a way to get people to stop with the knee-jerk lizard brain response. I’m thinking that one might fire with fire, as oftentimes merely pointing out someone’s irrational pattern is not enough to stop it.

 

You are obviously very bright, and probably could think of something that would be effective.

 

Oh! Do you think it’s a matter of people won’t stop until they themselves possess the desire to stop?

 

 

ANSWER:

 

It’s a bit like asking a martial artist, “I have a bit of a problem on the street corner. Would you be able to give me some clues about how to defend myself?” Really, nobody can give you clues so much as you have to do the training.

 

Fighting fire with fire is something I have tried, and it is a mistake. It only makes everything worse.

 

The key is in the ability not to respond. But it is not a passive non-response, either. It’s actually something you have to be trained for. Really you have to simply discern what is the lizard brain in the other person’s response. Bear in mind that this aspect is irrational, and not subject to reason. For instance, it is not able to use the logic, “if I keep doing what I’m doing to the other person, they will keep doing it to me, so I’d better stop.”

 

Also, it is very unlikely that someone will have the desire to stop, since it is very pleasurable for people to behave in a very primal way. People who habitually behave in this way can be counted on to never stop.

 

The thing is to realise that lizard brain and its behaviour is a fire (your metaphor is apt). So if you see that someone has caught fire, the best thing to do is to protect yourself from it. Realise that their behaviour may seem innane or silly or simply contemptible from the point of view of the higher mind — but to trivialise their behaviour in any way is about the most dangerous thing you can do. Somebody behaving in this way is extremely dangerous, and what seems trivial or silly about their behaviour could lead you to underestimate their power. You will get burnt.

 

Higher mind is generally defenceless against the lizard brain, actually. That is the first thing to realise — since the lizard brain is not susceptible to logic.

 

There is one thing it can do, and maybe only one tactic that I have learned, in order to defend oneself. One must not allow the lizard brain of another person to have anything to say. One must realise that the content of what it says is in fact irrelevant to its goals, which are to upset you and win by making you lose your poise.

 

So, don’t pay attention to the content of the criticisms that are directed towards you. Rather, make the person work hard to try to explain what they are saying in more rational terms.

 

The minute you put pressure on lizard brain to speak rationally, the lizard brain person will thump out a few more hysterical criticisms and depart. You have challenged them to do something that they cannot do.

 

HOW DOES SHAMANISM RELATE TO ALL THIS?

 

Shamanism is interested in observing and handling the regressive part of the personality (ie. that part which is not entirely integrally linked to the whole, but is actually a complex device facilitating survival in terms of a mode of ‘thinking’ entirely different from the rest of consciousness). I think this regressive part of the personality is R-Complex. I think that most people are unwittingly controlled by R-Complex to some degree. (This is the part of the Unconscious that deals with power relations, and issues of authority in relation to survival.) The fundamental goal of shamanism is to make one aware of R-complex. One way of looking at this is that shamanism involves a mental decoupling of the higher mind from R-Complex, so that one may better observe R-Complex at work. One may then see how in some cases it may act as a healing mechanism — (for instance, see Sherry Salman’s Jungian work). Generally, however, becoming aware of R-Complex can enable one to better combat it in others.

 

WHY DO LIZARD BRAIN ORIENTED PEOPLE LACK EMPATHY?

 

One of the reasons why it is difficult to empathise with another is that it requires a certain level of sophistication, which has been sacrificed by lizard brain types, who are oriented towards the world on the basis of survival. Really, one has to see the other being as a person to be able to empathise with them. But those oriented towards the world on the basis of power do not perceive other persons as such. They perceive only “interests” in relation to power, but they do not perceive the complex colours and textures that make up a personality. Their whole orientation towards the world is based on a philosophy that we must “struggle to survive” — and so they rely upon lizard brain, which is most adept at “surviving” in an amoral sense. There is a whole internal logic to lizard brain’s way of viewing the world that is extremely faciliative of survival, especially since it hugely simplifies the personality, and does away with the question of ethics as being too burdensome to facilitate survival. Those who experience the world predominatly in this way, in any case, will not be attuned to seeing others as ‘persons’.

the hidden persuader

Isn’t it wrong to transcend your superego?

NO. It is the only way to develop a foundation for authentic ethics — which was really Nietzsche’s point all along. His writing is simply not an injunction to descend into regressive immoralism (the most common contemporary interpretation of Nietzsche):

Wouldst thou go into isolation, my brother? Wouldst thou seek the way unto
thyself? Tarry yet a little and hearken unto me.
“He who seeketh may easily
get lost himself. All isolation is wrong”: so say the herd. And long didst thou
belong to the herd.
The voice of the herd will still echo in thee. And when
thou sayest, “I have no longer a conscience in common with you,” then will it be
a plaint and a pain.
Lo, that pain itself did the same conscience produce;
and the last gleam of that conscience still gloweth on thine affliction.But thou wouldst go the way of thine affliction, which is the way unto thyself? Then
show me thine authority and thy strength to do so!
Art thou a new strength
and a new authority? A first motion? A selfrolling wheel? Canst thou also compel
stars to revolve around thee?
Alas! there is so much lusting for loftiness!
There are so many convulsions of the ambitions! Show me that thou art not a
lusting and ambitious one!
Alas! there are so many great thoughts that do
nothing more than the bellows: they inflate, and make emptier than
ever.
Free, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of, and
not that thou hast escaped from a yoke.
Art thou one ENTITLED to escape from
a yoke? Many a one hath cast away his final worth when he hath cast away his
servitude.
Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly,
however, shall thine eye show unto me: free FOR WHAT?
Canst thou give unto
thyself thy bad and thy good, and set up thy will as a law over thee? Canst thou
be judge for thyself, and avenger of thy law?
Terrible is aloneness with the
judge and avenger of one`s own law. Thus is a star projected into desert space,
and into the icy breath of aloneness.

Why is this initiation that changes the nature of one’s conscience even necessary?

Most people think they are oriented towards ethics, but their concept of what is ethical has already been circumscribed by their relationship to power. So you get the strange rationalisations (that appear, not in words, but in terms of actions and behaviour) that it is ethical to condemn the scapegoat, because it affirms the existing order of power. This seems to be the problem with superego, in general, that it counsels “it is only moral to submit to power, and not to oppose it”. But superego seems concerned then, with power (and not with ethics). It concerns itself with power, because it is concerned with self-preservation, and it interprets its relationship with power into a framework of ethics: “It is necessary to comply with authority, because it is good for me to survive.”But this is no basis for thinking about ethics at all, and it is why it is necessary to mentally and emotionally acquiesce to death and to one’s mortality if one is to establish a foundation for ethical thinking at all. A shaman is one who “faces death” and thus conquers his superego — and in turn, conquers his blindness regarding the degree to which R-complex controls his mind. (For, R-Complex is also responsible for advising Superego concerning ethics, whenever the issue of personal survival seems to be at stake, even indirectly or symbolically).

Apart from a shamanistic approach to ethics, it seems very likely that R-complex will cause one’s perspectives to be limited by unconscious determinations linked to personal survival. One’s ethical positions will be severely compromised by ongoing interventions from R-Complex. Shamanic initiation makes visible that which was previously invisible however. It reveals to the mind the true nature of its internal hidden persuader.

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/

struggle against the biological grain: Nietzsche and shamanism

What we often see, in early childhood development, according to Kleinians, is a splitting of consciousness, whereby negative or burdensome aspects are projected away from the person and onto some other entity — like the mother, for instance. There is a typical blurring of ontological boundaries at an early age, so that the child does not have a realistic idea of “where I stop” and where “the other starts”.

This lack of realism, however, can be faciliative of safety, since the mother ends up processing the difficult and frightening ideas that the child has, (in a sense, “digesting” them for him) and thereby she mediates with regard to these feelings and conveys their content back to the child in a safer — more “socialised” — form. (See Wilfred Bion’s Learning from Experience). So this early childhood lack of realism is faciliative of a sense of safety and well-being, which shuts out the sense of being overwhelmed by dangers, and thus permits the ongoing development of the child towards adulthood.

However, consider that adults still have the R-complex brain — even though the general movement of consciousness during the developmental process is away from reliance upon R-Complex and more towards the higher parts of the brain (neo-cortex).

Difficulties still arise in everyday life, and there is bound to be a lot of material that enters our consciousness that appears to be about to overwhelm it. In the case where sensations from the world register as overwhelming, R-complex comes into play again, even in the case of the “normal” adult. There will be a tendency to project the CAUSE of the horrible sensations (those that would produce a sense of fear, loathing, weakness and terror) out onto another group of people, in that instance. My very strong hypothesis is that this natural process of defensive “splitting” is what is behind racism and sexism. Ethically, one ought to really process these terrifying sensations in one’s own mind, and come to terms with them, oneself. Practically, however, most people cannot seem to do this ethical action. They feel overwhelmed, and the minute they feel that, they project. So, splitting of one’s consciousness into positive and negative sensations, and acting as if the negativity was coming at you from the outside, is a process facilitated by R-complex.

This very common process defends one’s sense of identity against a feeling of overwhelming danger, but at the cost of distorting the truth. When such splitting and projection is codified as the norm, we meet cultural “truisms” such as “women are weak and frail and full of negative emotions” and “blacks are lazy, deceitful, and full of wildness.” These are projections of some of the qualities of one’s own that one doesn’t want to own. One wants to identify only with the positive aspects of human nature — and if one is positioned well enough in the social hierarchy, your society itself may help you to feel good about yourself, by encouraging splitting your identity and projection of the negative parts of it onto another. This is what happens when sexism and racism are socially enshrined as cultural norms.

Most humans, it would seem, are biologically adapted to sacrificing truth for the sake of a feeling of safety and well-being — that is, for the sake of their sense of psychological survival in the short-term. (This adaptation might mean a sacrificing long-term survival–that is, in not facing the issue of global warming squarely, but in seeing it instead, as an idea that was produced by certain nefarious others to frighten one). The curious thing about these splitting and projective processes is that they do not merely help short-term reality distortions, but rather, facilitate long-term “adaptations” (which can look, from the point of view of the oppressed, and silenced, as if they were long-term maladaptations).

“Competing masculinities” might be viewed in this light as a struggle for power, to project different qualities of mind away from oneself and to project them onto other groups of men. R-complex doesn’t take into perspective “individuals” as such, but takes into its perspective the idea of the sphere of humans as a mass with permeable boundaries. This allows the negative aspects that one wants to disown to be projected onto others. But, oppressed groups also experience these permeable boundaries of consciousness, and this causes them to be imprinted with the notions that have been projected onto them from the outside. So, they may start to identify with the nefarious characteristics that they have been said to have. They may start to genuinely embody those negative ideas and characteristics, since society at large (or large groups in society) are so convinced that they have them. (When what was merely projected onto someone is accepted by them as having emanated from them, this is called ‘projective identification’).

So, all of this that I have described portrays a primitive struggle for power at the level of the subconscious. This struggle is practically linked to a struggle for an identity that isn’t nefarious.

In my work I present the view that shamans such as Nietzsche, Bataille and Dambudzo Marechera are very concerned with understanding the level of consciousness that struggles for power in this way. In different ways they all seem to have the view that one should struggle, very much against the biological grain, for the kinds of insights that enable us to transcend these crude biological mechanisms — or, alternatively, we should struggle to put them to work in better ways.

ADDENDUM:

Q: Can one ‘transcend’ the primal mother?

Transcendence of the pull of the primal mother is actually possible, but one has to become “shamanised” — that is one has to have a close meeting with this “primal mother” in a way that shatters one’s previous sensibilities and causes a total revolution of the personality. In my thesis, I argue that Marechera experienced this, as did Nietzsche and Georges Bataille — so they were all able to speak from a transcendent position. Those who do not shamanise are, of course, still unconscious victims of this primal mother — or more specifically of their own self-misunderstandings concerning her.

It is very likely that this form of transcendence is what Nietzsche was trying to appeal for with his use of the term “masculinity” to describe a genuine independence of mind and individualism.

How tragic, then, that his current followers choose to read the term as if it were to prove them in succumbing to the unconscious appeal of the primal mother. They lose themselves entirely when they project their unwanted aspects onto women; and they become the victim of their own unconscious forces.

Q.  Isn’t it wrong to transcend your superego at its current level of development?

NO. It is the only way to develop a foundation for authentic ethics — which was really Nietzsche’s point all along. His writing is simply not an injunction to descend into regressive immoralism (the most common contemporary interpretation of Nietzsche):

Wouldst thou go into isolation, my brother? Wouldst thou seek the way unto
thyself? Tarry yet a little and hearken unto me.
“He who seeketh may easily
get lost himself. All isolation is wrong”: so say the herd. And long didst thou
belong to the herd.
The voice of the herd will still echo in thee. And when
thou sayest, “I have no longer a conscience in common with you,” then will it be
a plaint and a pain.
Lo, that pain itself did the same conscience produce;
and the last gleam of that conscience still gloweth on thine affliction.
But thou wouldst go the way of thine affliction, which is the way unto thyself? Then
show me thine authority and thy strength to do so!
Art thou a new strength
and a new authority? A first motion? A selfrolling wheel? Canst thou also compel
stars to revolve around thee?
Alas! there is so much lusting for loftiness!
There are so many convulsions of the ambitions! Show me that thou art not a
lusting and ambitious one!
Alas! there are so many great thoughts that do
nothing more than the bellows: they inflate, and make emptier than
ever.
Free, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of, and
not that thou hast escaped from a yoke.
Art thou one ENTITLED to escape from
a yoke? Many a one hath cast away his final worth when he hath cast away his
servitude.
Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly,
however, shall thine eye show unto me: free FOR WHAT?
Canst thou give unto
thyself thy bad and thy good, and set up thy will as a law over thee? Canst thou
be judge for thyself, and avenger of thy law?
Terrible is aloneness with the
judge and avenger of one`s own law. Thus is a star projected into desert space,
and into the icy breath of aloneness.

Why is this initiation that changes the nature of one’s conscience even necessary?

Most people think they are oriented towards ethics, but their concept of what is ethical has already been circumscribed by their relationship to power. So you get the strange rationalizations (that seem, not in words, but in terms of actions and behaviour) that it is ethical to condemn the scapegoat, because it affirms the existing order of power. This seems to be the problem with superego, in general, that it counsels “it is only moral to submit to power, and not to oppose it”.

But superego seems concerned, then, with power (and not with ethics). It concerns itself with power, because it is concerned with self-preservation, and it interprets its relationship with power into a framework of ethics: “It is necessary to comply with authority, because it is good for me to survive.”But this is no basis for thinking about ethics at all, and it is why it is necessary to mentally and emotionally agree to death and to one’s mortality if one is to set up a foundation for ethical thinking at all. A shaman is one who “faces death” and thus conquers his superego — and in turn, conquers his blindness about the degree to which R-complex controls his mind. (For, R-Complex is also responsible for advising Superego concerning ethics, when the issue of personal survival seems to is at stake, even indirectly or symbolically).

Apart from a shamanistic approach to ethics, it seems very likely that R-complex will cause one’s perspectives to be limited by unconscious determinations linked to personal survival. One’s ethical positions will be severely compromised by ongoing interventions from R-Complex. Shamanic initiation makes visible that which was before invisible however. It reveals to the mind the true nature of its internal hidden persuader.

It’s Not A Zero Sum Game

It’s Not A Zero Sum Game

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/

regressive relationships and R-complex

Strongly suggestive in nearly all the psychoanalytic literature on the topic is the idea that our early childhood mindset does not simply disappear as we enter adulthood. Rather, even in the human adult, there seems to remain a brain ‘function’ as it were (I suggest this is R-complex), that enables us to adapt to prevailing (political, social) situations by distorting reality, in order to make those situations appear more conducive to our (long term) survival than they are. So we see that psychoanalytic literature points to a particular mode of ‘adaptation’ under stress that is “regressive”. (See: Isabel Menzies Lyth’s book, The Dynamics of the Social).

My conjecture is that the neurological system that facilitates this regressive mode of adaptation is R-complex. The reason I make such a conjecture is because the literature suggests that a totally different mode of ‘thinking’ comes into play in relation to extreme stress, and that this mode of thinking duplicates, in many ways the emotional characteristics of the dependency relationship of the child in relation to its parents at very early stages of development. (There is, on the one hand, blind trust; and on the other hand,there is an intuitive and very clear perception of one’s relationship to power. The second, more attuned aspect, enables one to adapt to power relationships “as they are” without being burdened by whether or not they are rational — survival, rather than rationality, is at the heart of this primary level of processing.) R-complex is also concerned with issues of power; power relationships. Primitive tribal mindsets, fascism and its mystical perspectives on ‘leadership’, a mystical sense of union with others, a ‘lord of the flies’ mentality, all seem to have a fundamental neurological origin. At least, this is my conjecture.

AMORALITY is the feature that best describes this ethical orientation towards the world. Epistemological distortions (and epistemological skepticism, in adults) are one of its primary calling cards. (See the literature on “personality disorders”.) Impulsivity would be linked to this regressive mindset, via the sense that broader reality is not fixed, nor knowable, and hence “anything goes”. A criminal who was oriented towards the world in this regressive manner might also have a smug sense of self-satisfaction that he had found a different and superior route to happiness via his amorality; a system of thinking that enables him to ‘survive’ quite effectively without reference to higher qualities of mind, such as ethical considerations. He might feel himself to be an “overman” of sorts (reference to Nietzsche’s philosophical term), when he has merely regressed. (In actual fact, the transcendence of one’s narrow, culturally-inculcated beliefs is the sign of the Overman, and not this state of immanence.)

However, the criminal type is right to feel that there is something robust and extremely faciliative of (short-term) survival and even of domination, in this mode of regression. There is also something that feels like mystical truth. An orientation towards power rather than towards ethics has a whole internal logic of its own, for it is facilitated by an entirely different system of the brain than that part of the mind that humans normally identify with the nature of their selfhood. The pathological aspect of this brain function — how it sometimes functions in an independent state from the rest of the mind — hasn’t been my main focus.

My thesis itself is not concerned with this pathology, so much, bur rather with “shamanism” and the ways in which writers like Nietzsche, Bataille, and Marechera, try to integrate the lizard brain with the higher brain in order to produce a more complete human being — less detached from the body and less separated than usual from direct political engagement.

To escape the unconscious control of your mind by R-complex is actually possible, but one has to become “shamanised” — that is one has to have a close encounter with this “primal mother”(one’s own susceptibility to allowing R-complex to determine one’s unconscious motivations). This experience of shamanic initiation shatters one’s previous sensibilities and causes a total revolution of the personality. Those who do not shamanise are, of course, still liable to being manipulated by external forces and can too easily become unconscious victims of this regressive feature of the psyche — or more specifically of their own self-misunderstandings in relation to R-complex.

YouTube – Mahlathini & The Mahotella Queens – Mbaqanga (1991)

YouTube – Mahlathini & The Mahotella Queens – Mbaqanga (1991)

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/

Revisiting the nature of communication and the communication of nature

Most foreign to my spirit is still the heavy use of the subtext in communication.

When I look at the difference between my father’s mode of communication and my own — as documented in Minus the Morning – what has stood out to me, in retrospect, is his expectation of a subtext in every word. The idea that somebody is saying more than what they’re saying comes from anticipating a measure of emotional posturing in speech.

I now notice that, in growing up, I suffered from an inability to understand this mode of communication at the level of emotional implication. In part, this was due to lack of exposure to society’s norms, read according to conservative belief systems. In other part, the misreadings of my original intentions had started as another’s projections and have tended to continue this vein, although the misreadings have become more diversified as time went on.

Those who had been brought up to believe that there was a subtext to every form of communication were at the opposite end of the spectrum to me, in terms of relating to others in putatively “more advanced” society. In my first year of Australian high school, an migrant from South Africa sat next to me. She — in her Western wisdom — wrote about the meeting of two lovers. It was a story with a subtext, which she had needed to explain to me. The woman had inadvertently confessed to prostitution, causing the man to leave without further explanation. Even with the subtext explained to me, the strange development of the story made little sense to me. Why hadn’t he stayed to thrash out the matter in more detail? Why the snap judgement, without getting to the real causes, which could include bad luck?

The subtle acknowledgement of the sub-text, along with the ability to furnish a subtle solution to it, were not part of my original awareness. I suspect this cultural difference was due to the way that the education one needs to live in very close quarters with others whilst perhaps not desiring to do so was at least partly absent from my experience. Instead of a life of constraint, I experienced a life of free adventure. Instead of learning the dictates of proper civilised behaviour and niceties, the adults in my near environment focused on being at war.

My country was at war and I was left to fend for myself. Therefore, I learned to enjoy and become inured of lingering in the shadowy nature of things. I understood that the reference points of my existence were not in relation to axioms of civilisation, but in terms of nature.

Such a meditative approach allows me to ask deeper questions of life than those that pertain to social expectations and common mores. By developing a tolerance for ambiguity: socially, morally, and philosophically, I am able to tackle various intellectual questions with a measured degree of emotional detachment. The answers that arrive to greet me on this basis seem to be filled with the essence of robustness and veracity.

This much explains my philosophic method but also my cultural attitudes. With regard to the social convention of the subtext, I have been a slow learner so far, but I am gradually picking up speed. I’m aware of the way that implying “subtext” in the language of another is often a form of projection of one’s own fears and concerns and nothing more. At other times, when it is used more deliberately, it can be a form of subtle, socially ritualised communication.

If used as a form of projection, the attribution of the sub-text to the speech of another short-circuits necessary intellectual and experiential processes that lead to a deeper understanding of the nature of reality. This happens when we learn to respond as if social norms and conventions had a primary and immediate demand on our time and energy. At that point, it truly seems as if social conventions are the only the guiding principles of life — worthy of determining all values and the experience of meaning.CF:
http://www.amazon.com/minus-morning-version-Jennifer-Armstrong/dp/1446156176/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/