Anti-colonial knee jerks

I was one who was born in Rhodesia, and was forced to emigrate whilst still a child (as this was my parents’ decision, not mine). Regrettably, I found my ‘welcome’ into the First World to be anything but. To this day, I keep up that the general level of moral reflection and self-discipline among much of the populace in my current milieu are frighteningly low. I wonder if it could cross the minds of some of the moral ideologues on the evils of colonialism that acting upon their unchecked assumptions about colonial whites could give the colonial white immigrants, to whom some denizens of the western left are pleased to give short thrift, imputing to them collective guilt. This only leads to the blindsided newcomer learning complete contempt for those who wish to punish us for nothing we had done wrong. To act to punish without even the preliminaries of an introduction to the person whom you are punishing is quite without morality or decency, in my view.

Ashis Nandy, the Indian post-colonial theorist and intellectual cautions us against making monsters out of the ex-colonials. To do so, he says, is to reinforce colonialism as a psychologically potent force. These disempowered colonials as victims of Modernity, dwarfed in relation to the gigantic mechanisms and devices of modern warfare.

Nandy’s position on colonialism lends itself to a psychological appraisal of the colonials, who and what they were, and how they are really in relation to contemporary manifestations of power. The children of the white colonials are particularly vulnerable, even compared to their uprooted parents. My generation is also the victim of colonial secrecy about what went on, and religious shame, which prevents free communication, and makes us victim to both right-wing and left-wing propaganda.

A simple-minded anti-colonialist position, by contrast to Nandy’s more enlightened perspective, only contributes to a highly unethical and destructive blaming of the generation of the white colonial’s children, who did not play any part in the politics of the era.  Identity politics theorists who have a reflexive need to condemn the colonialism of the past, whilst not looking at the issues of the present, are reinforcing the violent psychological legacy of the colonial era, and is creating more of the anguish which the astute Zimbabwean writer, Dambudzo Marechera, railed against:

“We are refugees fleeing from the excesses of our parents,” he said.

Marechera, hardly a partisan for the order that preceded colonialism, went on to say, “Tradition, on closer examination, always reveals secrets we prefer to flush down the toilet.”

My memoir and the theory behind it

An interview with Allan Shore

QUOTE:

His training as a psychoanalyst was critical in highlighting the importance of the relationship between the mother and the infant. But there was a struggle within psychoanalysis – in particular between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein – about how much was really a creation of the infants mind., a phantasy. Bowlby began to fervently argue and bring in data from other disciplines to show that the real relationship, that the real events, not only were there but they were indelibly and permanently shaped there in a way that would affect the way that the personality would develop over the lifespan.  [EMPHASIS MINE]

This is precisely what I was interested in studying when I wrote my memoir!

 

Primary process thinking and relating

Primary process thinking is the form of adaptive thinking we are all born with. It at the foundation level of human nature. Just as a tadpole turns into a frog, or a worm into a moth, we all engaged in primary processes in our chrysalis stage.

It’s related to an original state in the womb (and later in early childhood), where subject and object are one. The child and the mother are one bio-system, rather than being individualized and separate. Rationality has not started to develop. Nor has the awareness that one is separate from others. This way of thinking lends itself to the feeling that anything could happen. The imagination, and not logic, tends to predominate.

Primary process thinking also has an instrumental role when people have to adjust to larger systems, under strain. Humans are equipped to become one with an organisation, by projecting and distributing various facets of their personalities and needs into other members of the institution. Thus the institution functions as a whole organism, or one mind, rather than as separate people going their own way. This is very adaptive, but at the cost of rationality and individuality.

Humans are extremely adaptive in a positive way too.  We use primary process thinking all the time.  For instance, primary processes are the basis for empathy — the capacity to think oneself into the other’s skin in relation to basic human needs and desires (The lowest rungs of Maslow’s pyramid of needs).  In all, it’s what lies behind our ability to relate most directly with others.

Accepting you have become corrupted and recovery

Let’s Spread the Word: Wetiko | Reality Sandwich:

‘via Blog this’

An article, linked to above, worth reading.  It may come across as New Age, but I also arrived at the same conclusions through my careful, far more academic study and observation.

I also concluded that the patriarchal religions perpetuate this deformed state of consciousness, by encouraging men to project their darkness onto women.

Intellectual shamanism reverses this process by insisting that one develop a relationship with oneself.  As the article says:

[The pathological person's] will becomes dedicated to hiding from the truth of what they are doing, a truth which endlessly pursues them, as they continually avoid relationship with themselves.  [Emphasis mine].

My intellectual shamanism is concerned with the structuring of the human psyche and with remedies through restructuring and forming a relationship with other parts of yourself, that may have become alienated from the whole.  Accepting one’s dissociated and split state, one goes looking for them.  This does not involve blind searching, but active and reasoned looking.

The moralistic tone of the article, especially where it suggests that “excess” or boundary-crossing are always “evil” reveals much of the limitations of New Age psychology.  Whether these are “evil”, or corrective of pathology depends on how you use them.  Otherwise, it’s like saying that dynamite is bad under all circumstances — because it causes destruction. Few things are intrinsically bad in and of themselves — and sometimes a degree of destruction is necessary, in order to recover full health.

Shamanism and the reworking of memory

The shamanistic view is different from the psychoanalytic view that holds that psychological projection is an anomalous attitude of reprobates.   In terms of shamanism, absolutely everything one sees, hears or encounters is a projection.   Neurology makes it clear that perception is a function of the brain’s incorporation and rearrangement of data.  According to Atul Gawande:

Richard Gregory, a prominent British neuropsychologist, estimates that visual perception is more than ninety per cent memory and less than ten per cent sensory nerve signals.

The information we take in from our ears and eyes is not the same as what we experience.   The brain takes a huge amount of information from the senses and then rearranges it in such a way that a human being can gain advantage from it.  We see what makes sense to us, often by adding to incomplete information by producing information from memory, so that we often encounter precisely what we expect to see. We are the creators of our own realities.

 To go a step further, we don’t visually experience the far sides of the color spectrum that beetles and bats may do.  But, had we the needs and desires of insects, our brains would have learned to give us a different range of information.  We would have learned to sense a far wider spectrum including infra-red and ultra-violet.  Becoming aware of these light waves perhaps does not serve us as humans, since this may not give an advantage in indicating  food or sudden danger.

Humans and beetles inhabiting the same space will nonetheless experience different qualities to their environments.  What comes to the foreground and what pales into insignificance will not be the same aspects of the terrain.  A friend tells me that on taking LSD one hears all the background noises to life that would ordinarily be filtered from awareness.

 To  have the benefit of vision  enables us to navigate our human worlds effectively as humans.  A parallel world may exist for other species.  Each takes from the sensory environment what will nourish it in terms of what it is.    Taking in too much of reality would obstruct us in our normal activities.   We do well to leave a lot unnoticed.

 On the basis of being separate peoples and cultures, we also automatically impose filtering mechanisms.   I see what I need to see to nourish myself according to my particular needs, desires and capabilities.   I am convinced that others who enter the same environments would not see or experience the same network of meanings that are available to me.  I switch off when confronted with young children, for instance.  I can’t focus on them and my brain attempts to block them out.  I’m learning to notice social tensions, but they don’t intrinsically interest me, so they are about the last thing I recognize when I enter a new environment.

 When I began my life in Australia I didn’t “see” social relationships — only natural ones.   When I began a new job many years ago, I didn’t “see” institutional relationships.  I saw only postmodernist metaphysics, by virtue of which I had been trained to see the world.  I began reading Marechera later and had to get rid of a lot of postmodernist assumptions to understand him.

 Contemporary humans get to move through their environments by throwing off one reality to enter another.   Shamanism enhances the process of gaining knowledge of our worlds by encouraging us to switch off from what we think we know, which is just a neurological projection however useful.   We can’t enter another environment so long as we are certain of what we know.   This is only possible by entering a state of uncertainty.  As Bataille says of Nietzsche, out of this striking moment of dissolution a philosophy is born:

Let no one doubt for an instant! One has truly not heard a single word of Nietzsche’s unless one has lived this signal dissolution in totality; without it, this philosophy is a mere labyrinth of contradictions, and worse; the pretext for lying by omission (if, like the fascists, one isolates passages for purposes which negate the rest of the work).

In terms of what I have described of shamanism, Nietzsche’s way of writing, whether intentionally or not, actually invites a radical rewriting of consciousness on the basis of a fundamental dissolution of reality.  By means of such shamanistic reworking, one’s existing projection gets dissolved and is replaced by another, superior reality.  This would be a result of  including a different network of memories in one’s perspectives.

The new Philistines

Contemporary culture, including intellectual culture, appears to have taken a very philistine turn, whereby everything that is written must necessarily be taken in its most literal sense. Therefore you get entirely stupid interpretations, such as the one that my memoir is about “getting things wrong”. Sure it is, if you lack a sense of humor and are not ready to take a distant stance towards political correctness.

A lot of Jesus’ recommendations are thoroughly shamanistic in that he elevates subjective knowledge over official, authoritarian or materialistic perspectives. This is not to say the subjective knowledge Christians advocate is necessarily wholesome and good, but I’m talking about the abstract form of it.  This attention to the value of experience is the core of Christianity that is worth saving — the patriarchal stuff, not so much.

One absolutely has to be able to take things in a non-literal sense and sometimes in an ironic sense to be any kind of higher human being. Literalness is for those who are still struggling.

Nietzsche, for instance, interpreted literally, ends up being a boorish, misogynist pig with very little to say for himself. If you interpret “masculinity” to mean “males” and “femininity” to mean “women”, then we are left with a prescription for a very rigid social order, where men go about and act heroically and women can’t figure out what they hell that means, because women are too base and uncomprehending to be able to figure out much of anything.

At the same time, there is an equal and opposite danger in not realizing that when religiously based politicians pronounce, “We are loving women best by restricting their freedoms,” they are quite literally being vulgar and contemptuous of women’s intelligence, whilst using a religious veil to cover their ugly demeanor.

Perhaps the resort to literalness is a natural result of people feeling so often tricked. Dorpat says that one resorts to a very literal frame of mind when one senses a relationship has become abusive. One is no longer open enough with oneself or others to be able to dig deeply into one’s psyche.

Jesuitical cunning

A lot of what many conservatives say can seem like random ideas or speculations, not necessarily coherent, until you unpack them.Consider the poster below I made from the leader of the Australian opposition party’s words.

Click to engorge

Try to ignore the images, in the first instance, which I supplied to show the ramifications of this conservative’s agenda.On the surface of it, the speaker is simply calling for honesty and for balance in our thinking. We could read his words as saying, “Let’s not get all overwrought just because a boss, or other male representative does something wrong, sinning a bit. Instead, let’s open our hearts and realize that he does more good than harm.”

In fact, this seeming call for leniency and kindness hides a fundamental patriarchal ideological structure which is directly patterned by those right-wingers in the US who argue that it’s not so bad to be raped because at least that brings a child into the world.

So, Tony Abbott,  our opposition leader, is implicitly arguing that male energy, no matter how forcefully or wrongfully applied, is always for the good.  His words appeal to a traditional, metaphysical view that female energy is only ever passive and reactive, so it requires male energy to give it meaning, force and shape. That is why having a rapist’s child might be a good thing in the dark minds of sordid fellows — because a rapist is the embodiment of male energy and women allegedly need male energy if they are to become something other than dark matter.

Similarly, even a vicious boss or wife-battering husband could be considered to be doing women some good, by exposing women to the necessary male energy that she needs to come into being in a meaningful way. This is actually the conservative ideology that underlies a text that could otherwise seem benign or genteel to some ears.

2. “Metaphysical” means imaginary. It means it has no relationship to reality. Nonetheless, many people live their lives as if metaphysical notions about the world were true. If enough people do that, it can change the real texture and experience of reality for a lot of people. To take one example, if women believe they are inherently passive they will wait for men to act, and not enjoying life on their own terms. That is why metaphysical precepts are so insidious.

Utterly fundamental to understanding shamanism

1.  Shamanistic usages of language

Shamanisms learn to speak very indirectly about reality.  As Georges Bataille points out in his Unfinished System of Nonknowledge  verbal communication sets itself at odds with the physical body and its vicissitudes.   To communicate completely, one does not communicate with language, but non-linguistically.  ”We feel each other through our wounds,” he said, thus suggesting shamanic access to  another dimension of knowledge, not through suffering as such, but through the internalization of knowledge as a result of wounding.  To draw a distinction here between two levels of communication is vital.

Crude psychoanalytic interpretations would tend to make out the shaman to be one who whines about wounding whilst justifying false ways of seeing the world, to make himself feel better.  So, psychoanalysts may set out to defeat what it sees as a competing system of interpretation of the world, by distorting its claims.  The willful nature of this misunderstanding is obvious because it does not distinguish between a wound and the person who has it.  Whereas psychoanalytic distortions would have the wound seem to speak for and on behalf of itself, in shamanism, the shaman masterfully speaks on behalf of his wounds and furthermore uses his incidental wounding and the understanding it brings to heal others.

In the case of Bataille’s form of shamanism, the “wounds” are the sexual organs, which he considered a wound to language itself, as a system that aims to be closed and complete, capable of accounting for everything and making all of reality seem rational.   The physicality of the body itself  prevents the formal dimensions of language to close the circle of meaning, in terms of giving a full account of everything in the world.

This suspicion of language is expressed in all forms of shamanism, which attempt to address the problems associated with the body in a more direct way than via language.   To the end of addressing the body and not the mind, language may be “twisted” so that the shamanic seer can use it to “look around corners”. Marechera uses this expression in The Black Insider, where he criticizes logical formulations for degrading the more human dimensions of reality.

The tyranny of straightforward things is more oppressive and more degrading than such idle monstrosities as life and death, apartheid and beer drinking, a stamp album and Jew-baiting. One plus one equals two is so irrefutably straightforward that the unborn child can see that even if man was wiped off the face of the earth one plus one would always and forever-equal two.

The “unborn child” is one who cannot yet speak, who can be readily victimized by narrow forms of logic that would easily be able to erase humanity.  The “unborn child” is also the non-rational state of the shamanistic seer.   Huge aspects of reality are more readily observable when one has learned not to depend on language.

2.  When shamans work with “energy fields”, they are referring to the ability one needs to have to defend oneself against projective identification.  This term has gained meaning in psychoanalysis as implying that someone has injected their own needs and values into another person to get them to play a particular function on their behalf.   These functions are to express emotional attitudes that area already in another person but which he doesn’t have the confidence or the courage to express.

Shamans work to develop a strong “energy vest”  for the one who has become ill, to enable her to resist future attempts to control her.   A shaman’s incantations are sung to create a sense of wholeness about identity, defined as integral bodily sensations. Future assaults against the integral wholeness of the victim will from now on be understood by her in terms of what they are, and not being unconsciously accommodated.

Having developed a sense of energy fields, one is cured, since one now understands when one’s own energy field has been violated.   Should a “dart” be fired in one’s direction, one can choose to ignore it, or to return the dart to the original owner.  There is nothing mysterious about the fact that darts and energy fields exist, except for the terminology.  The means by which assaults take place, as well as their psychological meanings,  can be accounted for in the earlier mentioned term of projective identification.

Shamans take knowledge of energy fields a step further than others do in psychoanalysis, however.   An advanced shaman will conduct effective ideological warfare by observing another’s energy field and sending “darts” into the field of another to disrupt their mental ability to work. It was said that shamans used to lob mountains at each other.

Don’t try to mold others

A Surprising Realization « Clarissa’s Blog

Clarissa’s writing yesterday got me thinking.  I hadn’t realized it was possible to suffer from formlessness.  I may have suffered from it in my early twenties, when I craved a rite of passage to test me, teach me the lessons of adulthood and what society means and how it works.   That was a period in my life when it would have been good for me to begin learning martial arts.  More generally, though, she and I are polar opposites. Whereas she agonizes over formlessness, I have had to try to find ways to escape the imposition of too much form.This is why people who come along and try to shape me for any reason earn themselves the status of my mortal enemy. I have my own internal structure and I’m capable of reaching a fever point in self-discipline.   What I don’t need is someone coming along and arbitrarily trying to impose some structure on something they can’t see.   What I need is to extract the heat, to take off some of the pressure of being fully formed and to be allowed for moments at a time to enter formlessness.I have nothing to fear from formlessness, unlike the fear I have of too much structure, especially when the new structures imposed are unrelated to my existing structures.   To calculate multiple opposing principles and conform to all of them means the temperature rises to the point that I can no longer think. I need simplicity and clarity in order to continue to achieve my tasks.

Psychological structure  has always been a part of my life to the extent that I’ve internalized a sense of structure fully.  I never have to fear losing control or devolving into a state of formlessness, because my early childhood life had more structure in it than I’ve experienced since.   Above all, my primary school had an extremely military structure.  We marched everywhere in single file, recited our times table and greeted our teachers by standing up whenever one entered the room.   We were yelled at, threatened and sometimes subjected to corporal punishment — a ruler on the knuckles for inattentiveness.  That was how I grew up, by internalizing the necessity for such discipline.  Should I drink alcohol or move away from places where form is directly imposed, I still retain this form within myself.

But impose yet another layer of form on me that takes no account of my early training, and I’m in danger of losing my cool.   I have a form of my own and I don’t need two or three more layers of someone else’s necessities imposed on top of that.  A Christian cultural tendency for strangers to come along and morally shape others I find reprehensible. Let people be as they are and function according to their identities.   Don’t come along and try to mold or rearrange them!

Skydiving (static line) in Zimbabwe 1999

Shamanic death and regeneration

I had cause to revisit my knowledge of the so-called “death instinct” after reading the following article.

ON THE DEATH OF WHITNEY HOUSTON: Why I Won’t Ever Shut Up About My Drug Use | xoJane

Herein, a very beautiful ape expounds:

The life instincts are those that deal with survival, reproduction, pleasure—in other words, instincts that are crucial for sustaining a person’s life, as well as the continuation of the species: thirst, hunger, pain avoidance, love, human interaction and other prosocial actions.

You follow?

But eventually Freud determined that human behavior couldn’t be explained by life instincts alone—and introduced his theory of death instincts, or death drive, or Thanatos.

Freud posited that “the goal of all life is death”, concluding that humans hold an unconscious desire to die—and that self-destructive behavior is an expression of the energy created by the death instincts.

According to this theory, then, if you are not a self-destructive person, your death wishes are under control because they overridden by healthier life instincts.

I shall both add and subtract from this formulation on the basis of my shamanistic understanding.

The “death instinct” is not a self-destructive drive that kicks in automagically in the same ways cells are biologically programmed to die.   Instead the death instinct is the underside of the life instinct, and its constant monitor and guarantor.  The death instinct makes sure the life instinct is on-track, or if not, it withdraws its support for whatever you are doing and forces you to reformulate your goals:

Even in your folly and despising ye each serve your Self, ye despisers of the body. I tell you, your very Self wanteth to die, and turneth away from life.

No longer can your Self do that which it desireth most:- create beyond itself.

That is what it desireth most; that is all its fervour. But it is now too late to do so:- so your Self wisheth to succumb, ye despisers of the body.

To succumb- so wisheth your Self; and therefore have ye become despisers of the body. For ye can no longer create beyond yourselves. And therefore are ye now angry with life and with the earth. (Nietzsche, Zarathustra)

Nietzsche speaks of those who have succumbed to the death instinct, because they have embraced a lie about the nature of reality.   They think reality is spiritual and not physical, and therefore the death instinct has  taken charge and is forcing them to either rethink their proposition or to get out of life altogether.

As I have outlined via my interpretation, the death instinct serves the life instinct.   These are not two distinct instincts that could gain the upper hand. The reality is close to Taoism and far removed from Manichean formulations.

That the death instinct is always in service of the life instinct is very good.  Wilhelm Reich, by the way, also noticed that when one does not believe in oneself enough, one sacrifices oneself to those whom one more easily believes in.  This is the death instinct at work, functioning as an evolutionary principle, and removing those who don’t believe in themselves so that they do not clutter the scenery.

Why does one not believe in oneself? Because one is on the wrong track, because one has turned against what is ecstatic, vital and good about life, and has adopted negative formulations.

The intervention of the death instinct is not supposed to be final, except in the worst of cases. Mostly, it is just death tapping you on the shoulder, telling you that you have gone off-track.  It may be difficult to figure out where one has erred.  When I received my warning from death, I was in a mode of extreme conformity and emotional repression.  That’s when death alerted me that I had to change my ways. I’ve since done so, and nothing has been the same since.  All my relationships are extremely positive.

Shamanistic death and regeneration works in the same way. One has to face death in order to learn where or how one might have strayed from life’s purposes.  Once one has discovered this, one can get back on track. Death no longer has its hold, and Eros (the life instinct) takes over.

Why early childhood states have something to offer

Draft Chapter 14: my father’s memoir

I was determined always to stay in Africa.   I just thought I’d gradually come to fit in Africa.  By the time I was a young adult,  all the things I loved were in Africa.  The untamed wildness appealed to me, because I grew up when Africa was darkest Africa.   Darkest Africa was because nobody knew what was going on there.  All the missionaries went out there to answer the questions.  Livingstone went out there and he and his ilk wrote books about it.

My grandfather set out to write a book.  I have no idea where it is now.   It was written in ink on flimsy sheets of paper.   It was about early days in Rhodesia.  His name was de Smidt.

I was born in Africa and so I felt like I fit,  but I didn’t fit all the time.  There were lots of occasions in school days that I didn’t fit, which I have already spoken about.

What I loved was the whole mystique of the place.   On one occasion I was sitting on a rock and a cat or something got on the rock next to me.  I think it must have been a servile.  I just remember sitting on a rock and being aware something was next to me.  I turned around and there was a big cat with spots all over it.  I looked at my mother in the hope that she would look at me and see I had this thing next to me,  but she didn’t.  Afterwards when I spoke to her she was very offhand.   She must have thought it was just any cat as she didn’t seem to hear me.

Mother was always away on a planet of her own.  She did her job and looked after us but she wasn’t very perceptive.  But then it was quite good because I would do the same.  I would take off on my bicycle and just go and see someone.  One day I didn’t come back until after dark and my mother was very upset with me.  When she was I’ve that she would just keep talking about how I must be careful.  We hardly ever got spanked but she would let fly with her right hand and smack you on the head.

On one occasion we had visitors and I walked up to ask her a question.  She said say good afternoon.  I just stood there.  She said say good afternoon or I’ll hit you around the head.  She had a pair of secateurs in her hand.  One day the same thing happened and she had a carving knife in her hand.  She said say something or I’ll clobber you.  I thought I wasn’t going to put up with that so I ran away and was away for at least half a day.  When I apologised me father said to my mother,  well there’s your reputation reinstated.  If I had run into a neighbour and said my mother was going to hit me with a knife,  that wouldn’t have gone over well.  But it’s not a good feeling to think your mother might have hit you with a knife. If the knife had been a stick,  she would have hit me with it.

She was babysitting for her sister one time.  Evonne had two kids, graham and Raymond.  Graham was an undisciplined little bugger, so she whacked his bum.  According to that,  it fixed everything.  She’d cured the little bugger.  That was the story she used to tell.  I thought that’s typical mum.   If you upset your sister and you keep seeing her,  you have to deal with that all the time.   Granny was an embarrassment to grandpa because she was so loud.   She would call out to grandpa in public,  Jack,  Jack.  She didn’t worry about what others thought about anything. In their own way, they were all wonderful people.

Psychological projection as political attack

Yesterday, I spent the largest part of my day loafing in the bed, in retreat from the cold, and reading Teresa Brennan’s book, The interpretation of the flesh: Freud and femininity.I must say that in her conclusions, she agrees with something I had been contending all along: That the treatment of adult women in the public sphere can have a profound ontological effect on their very beings.

Here is what she says:

“Of course the notion that this projection can castrate the other presupposes that psychical energetic connections work not only within but between beings. [...] For the subject, the advantage of this projection is that it disposes of the affects and anxiety that otherwise inhibit his ability to follow a train of thought, and/or linguistic chain of association; the disadvantage is that this ability depends on maintaining critical blind spots.” ( p 233)

Here we have an example of the way that psychology can assert itself into the realm of the political. Brennan certainly sees that there are cultural-historical influences that determine how masculinity and femininity are constructed in the society, but she does not go so far as to label these constructions as being also political.

That does not mean that these projections onto the other of a state of “castration” — which we can understand as mental and political helplessness — are not facilitated by political mechanisms, making them profoundly political. Rather, Brennan is writing in 1992, and advancing a novel thesis about psychological intersubjectivity, that was hardly recognised at that time. Seventeen years later, we are more familiar with post-Kleinian theory, and we are able to draw more conclusions concerning the interlinking of the political sphere with our inherent psychological mechanisms.

It becomes clearer after reading Brennan’s book that the projection of “castration” onto an other — which, as Brennan points out, can be one who is biologically male or female, but for psychoanalytical reasons, is generally a woman — is a political feature of the psychological division of necessary labour.

This is because, as humans, we are all physiologically complex — which is to say, made up of both rational and irrational drives. So it is that if one is to politically represent and uphold exclusively the rational side of one’s identity, it is necessary for one to somehow do away with the irrational side of one’s self (both as representation and as, far as possible, as conscious experience).

To maintain a rational self-image, the inherent irrational aspects of human psychology — (those which intrude at times to seem to prevent the work of narrow rational thinking) — will be denied, or sublimated of projected, depending on the level of the level of the psychological resources and skill of the subject.

Brennan deals with the issue of projection in the last few pages of her book, and it is fortunate that she does so, since these days it is tacitly acceptable, within the Western socio-political complex, for projections to flow from male to female, but not for them to flow the other way around: That is, the political rhetoric that maintains ideologies imputes that “it is irrational to impute irrational characteristics to men.” It does not seem to be irrational to impute them to women, however. So it is that individual men are lifted above the possibility of criticism, by virtue of the tacit acceptability of the logic of projection.

But projection isn’t merely rhetorical: that is, there is more to it than expressing the idea that “it isn’t me, its you!” as a way of putting women back into their (traditional) places. Rather, at a deep psychological level, the subject who projects also actually believes that it is not he, but her, who is responsible for a disruption of his chain of thought.

Consider the nature of the political divide in terms of this tacit division of psychological labour: Phenomenologically, those positioned as “masculine” (which can be upper division women as well as men, in the managerial classes) experience only annoying interruptions to their rational train of thought, which seem to come from the outside of their own psyches, and need to be crushed or put down. Meanwhile, those positioned on the alternative side of the political divide, those allocated to do “feminine” work, will have a variety of experiences depending on their degree of psychological and political awareness.

Those who find themselves positionally on the “feminine” side of power systems will not have the same view of the world and of established systems of morality as those who find themselves on the “masculine” side (due to factors dominated by psychological symbolisations of gender and social status). At the lowest level of consciousness, women who are projected upon will find a certain need fulfilled, in that an identity — albeit a weak and shaky one — is projected upon them. Their narcissistic sensibilities (whether weak or strong) are enhanced.

At a higher level of consciousness, one encounters the male projection of “castration” as a constant assault on one’s processes of thinking, as well as on one’s capacity to maintain a sense of identity. The males who project are inclined to expect women to identify with all of their failed processes of thinking, as if they had originated from the women themselves. In the case of ongoing assaults of this projective sort (which I have experienced), which sometimes appear to be specifically designed to weaken one’s resolve, I find the only solution is to get away from the situations that allow for these power dynamics, and to take refuge as a hermit. Otherwise, one will not be able to think very much, if at all.

When one has no choice but to associate with those (including organisations and systems) which engage in this process of projection, it does feel masochistic, despite the fact that one is on red alert for combat, and is not masochistic at all. This is because these projective attacks work against one’s inner ontological awareness — the part of the self that governs a sense of identity.

Handing out and taking criticism

I will be interested in taking a lot of criticism in order to improve for my grading coming up.  I’m already making videos to determine the substantive areas where I need to improve.

In individualistic cultures, you are taught to believe that you have a certain amount of inherent genius, AKA “potential” that has to be liberated. Instructors thus become the means to liberate that mysterious, precious, hidden capacity.

A very different way of looking at the situation — my way — is that each person has an inherent value, but this is not in what they can do, but in what they already are. Their ability to walk on the face of the Earth is the fundamental miracle, irrevocable and perfect in itself. Beyond this, what a person has to do is develop a skill, a field of knowledge, some capability. An instructor helps you to do that. Understanding it in this way, no matter how harsh the criticism, it ought not to impact on the ego.

This is the state of mind that I am returning to, having been brought up with it. You do need to accept your inherent value as a given, and then work on improving what is wrong. The alternative idea, of working to gratify or establish your ego, puts too much at stake and makes improvement psychologically fraught.

It’s also perfectly fine to say that something you are doing or have done is crap. It’s better than the sadomasochistic surprise when suddenly people alight upon you and proclaim that you might have thought you were great, but really you are crap. Communication opportunities shouldn’t go wasted.

One of the main problems with contemporary, Western society is too much of our involvement being ego-based, rather than skill-based or knowledge-based at their core. I always want to be told how to do something, but in contemporary culture it’s always too little and then too much. There are only two roles available for anyone. You are either “the consumer” who must not be criticized, or you are the provider of a service, who can be criticized to death. There are no gradations and no other optional roles. This means if you are providing a service, say some sort of education, you don’t get to criticize those receiving the service, even if it is constructive criticism. You will lose business if you slightly overstep the lines. Service providers are afraid of taking initiatives, because they know they are being policed by the consumers. Consumers don’t really get what they are paying for, in turn, but at least they keep their egos intact.

But what about egos anyway?

In my experience, an ego can be kept intact even despite harsh criticism if the criticism is delivered in a measured fashion and with good intent.

Biologism

The capacity for intellectual shamanism is based on having superfluous energy to spend on exploring inner, psychological dimensions.   The prerequisite for engagement puts intellectual shamanism at odds with many, perhaps most, other philosophies of life that demand one’s time and commitment in other ways.  Even holding other implicit philosophies, such as a prevalent one of our age — biological determinism — moves one several steps away from understanding how intellectual shamanism is expressed.  Those whose purpose in life is sex and reproduction will not find anything of value in this paradigm.

Somebody whose life is guided and determined by biological imperatives would experience intellectual shamanism as only threatening to take them away from their allotted tasks.   A typical misunderstanding I have found in those who read Nietzsche is in the idea that one can use one’s reading as a means to gain the kind of “wisdom” that would enable one to fully express one’s innate biological urges.   Yet, the desire to move in a direction that fulfills one’s needs as a creature of one’s biology is exactly opposed to the desire to further one’s knowledge about subjectivity and inner worlds.   To follow a biological deterministic path requires a calm and yielding disposition.   Any emotion or sensation that is not in this vein is a threat to one’s determined destiny.

By contrast, with regard to shamanism a lot of actions may be done and a lot of words spent, which have no biological purpose whatsoever.   The meaning of looking into one’s inner worlds is not to lament anything, but simply to look around at one’s leisure.  There is nothing to win or lose here, in terms of any sense of necessary or inevitable destinies.   One has all the time in the world to waste and no purpose to achieve except that intrinsic to looking.  One can scream and shout all one likes.   This is actually encouraged.

At the same time, those in a hurry to take things in the opposite direction will, of course, not find anything here.

Morality and the shamanic void

In much of my experience, I haven’t been a “valid human being” at all. I think that is the starting point for shamanic initiation — where one recognizes that one is not a valid human being in some sense. Then one loses one’s humanity and regains it — that is the definition of initiation.

You have to enter non-being. Then, that kind of sticks with you, and you don’t employ moral categories so readily.  There are no longer any ““valid human beings”, just the totality of human experience, for better or worse.

A “valid human being”, for instance, is a moral category implying person-hood, with all that this entails according to people’s trained or educated notions as to what differentiates being a “valid human being” from being an invalid one. So, on the basis of my education and training concerning “validity” I may come to certain conclusions about the kind of person who is valid, what characteristics they have, how they conduct themselves, their ontological status (as being redeemed by “God” or by morality, or by virtue of the state granting them their “rights”) or what have you. So, I’ll have a certain image of that person, perhaps very distinct, or perhaps rather fuzzy. In any case, I’ve created a categorical demarcation as to what constitutes validity in a human being.

This logically and practically also implies that I have it in the back of my mind as to what would make a human being “invalid”. So, maybe that kind of person would be immoral, evil, strange, not my color of skin, or whatever. In any case, I’ve set up a mental barrier that mediates my experience of the world on the basis of categories of “valid” or “invalid”.

For instance, like a certain male feminist writer does, I might mentally erect a category of oppressed people who have great validity as human beings. On the basis of that, I’d start to show great indulgence and forbearance in relation to these oppressed people. It may happen, though, that mediation of reality through defining a category of oppressed (versus less oppressed or not oppressed) means I can’t experience the shades of grey that make up the world as it actually is. There’s too much mediation of reality and not enough direct experience of it. That’s what moral categorizing does.

By contrast, entering non-being means we can open our minds a bit more, after we are not afraid of losing some structure and entering the void.

The meaning of amoralism, according to Nietzsche and Bataille is to become wilder, stronger in oneself, more independent and less tame. This is not a moral injunction that everybody has to do it. You can try it or not attempt it. It’s not even an issue of having the power of free choice. One can be seduced into trying shamanism, or one can avoid it. There are no transcendental principles governing this choice.

***

NOTE: Nietzsche’s amoralism is viewed most commonly as lauding the rights of the oppressors to oppressor whomever they please. But that is still morality, as it makes it out that he was maintaining a moral position on who gets to oppress who. He isn’t.

Bataille’s dalliances with prostitutes have also been criticized for their immorality. But that was precisely the point of Bataille’s actions, to slip out of the grasp of morality.

Thirdly, the idea of renouncing judgement on people would need to acquire a moral motivation since it is a categorical distinction — i.e. that it is a good idea to renounce judgement on others.

Shamanism is not about establishing a moral position but about exploring a psychological void where making moral distinctions has not yet become automatic for you.

Mass “morality” and the mob mentality

Nietzsche understood correctly that so much of the mass indoctrination into modes of morality is about moving the swamps. In making this judgement, Nietzsche was drawing on his understanding of mass psychology — that the masses regularly feel a need to release the tensions that come from being squeezed together into a massive conglomeration of human feelings, needs and desires. When the tension starts to build because of the pressures exerted on individual minds in relation to the cause of becoming massively ONE (one state, one national identity, one Führer), another force starts to demand its recompense. It achieves the alleviation of tension through blaming others. “Since I have had to sacrifice so much, in order to become one in mind and heart and soul with my community, others who seem different from me and who may not have suffered as I have, will now also have to suffer.”

Thus the nature of so much of mass morality is to reward oneself for all of the efforts of delayed gratification by going on a psychologically bloodthirsty rampage in order to impugn outsiders — those whom, presumably, have not conformed to the programme quite as well as Thou has. Or maybe the masses vote out one governmental party and put another into power to express their moral indignation.

Consumers and their identities

I think it’s perfectly fine to say that something you are doing or have done is crap. It’s better than the sadomasochistic surprise when suddenly people alight upon you and proclaim that you might have thought you were great, but really you are crap. Communication shouldn’t go wasted. There are a lot of opportunities for it. I think one of the main problems with contemporary, Western society is too much of our involvement being ego-based, rather than skill-based or knowledge-based at their core. I always want to be told how to do something, but in contemporary culture it’s always too little and then too much. There are only two roles available for anyone. You are either “the consumer” who must not be criticized, or you are the provider of a service, who can be criticized to death. There are no gradations and no other optional roles. This means if you are providing a service, say some sort of education, you don’t get to criticize those receiving the service, even if it is constructive criticism. You will lose business if you slightly overstep the lines. Service providers are afraid of taking initiatives, because they know they are being policed by the consumers. Consumers don’t really get what they are paying for, in turn, but at least they keep their egos intact.

But what are egos? An ego can be kept intact even undergoing harsh criticism, if the criticism is delivered in a measured fashion and with good intent.

pathological inwardness?

I’ve spent a couple of days reading this book:

The Claustrum : An Investigation of Claustrophobic Phenomena

 

 

It actually relates to the negative aspects of having parts of one’s mental and emotional functions trapped in a regressive mode in terms of the pre-Oedipal condition. Those who act from this place see the world differently than those who do not — and there are varying degrees of trappedness, with different parts of one’s emotions or mind becoming victim to this underworld. The general state is of a paranoid-schizoid mindset, but with a sensation of omniscience and omnipotence, and a feeling of being an initiate into a hidden world. (There is nothing shamanistic about this, since the initiate is, and remains, a victim to hidden forces, which he or she is unable to tame.)

 

It’s very interesting, especially the metaphor of being in the bowels, and having an attitude which views all sorts of human relations cynically, in terms of power, rather than in terms of genuine expressions of emotion. The reality that is experienced when stuck in the bowels of the mother is by no means the only reality there is — but from the perspective of looking out from the Claustrum, it seems as if it is. That is why there are often arguments — that take the form of misunderstandings — about what the real reality is, when talking to those who more or less succumb to the lures of the psychological underworld. It is as if to the degree that they are trapped, the superego collapses into the instincts, so that there is only superego’s authoritarian commands and drives, but no mediating ego. That is in the case of those who do not become merely mad, but become “double agents” who can still function quite effectively in the real world, except that their relationships are based on dominance and submission, rather than communication. Life with them is like living in an eternal authoritarian bootcamp– no reprieve.

 

It seems some people are stuck in this Claustrum, where they know only how to manipulate rather than to relate to others (They *ACT ON* on rather than *communicate with* with others).

 

It seems that language of power (by which people are unconsciously manipulated) and the language of communication are two worlds at odds -and that one stuck in the Claustrum might well give the impression to others of charisma, but they’re actually functioning without certain aspects of themselves, which they’ve either killed, repressed, or projected into others.

 

 

2 a positive side to the pre-Oedipal?

 

On the other hand, not everything about the way we function in a dependency structure has to be seen as negative — unless society itself is perhaps negative, and we should all be alone as isolated individuals, lest we infect others with our “sinfulness”.

 

The way “the Claustrum” can be renewing (as per Jung) is it that is focuses the primeval level of the mind on learning (or in the case of the adult, relearning the emotional values of a culture), as per Bion [ http://www.human-nature.com/free-associations/glover/chap4.html ] This is the relationship of the infant learning the meaning of its identity and the meaning of what it means to be human, from its mother’s reactions, who interprets the infant’s emotions into an intelligible form through her expressions or words.

 

So, I will suggest that the Claustrum (in a way that the author does not address in his particular book), could also be in principle, a zone of relearning, and potentially, therefore, a temporary zone of experience that can lead to healthy psychological and social reintegration.

 

However, for some it becomes the only way to be, or think, or to imagine the world. These people remain permanently locked within the Claustrum, which is like a permanent bootcamp of authoritarian discipline for them, from which they are able to take nothing (since unable to use the energy of ego to re-emerge).

The nature of ideology: reversing cause and effect

IDEOLOGY makes appeals to the idea of an invisible, essential identity. It is thought that women are, by nature, dependent. Therefore, if they act independently — which is to say, “as they are not” — they must necessarily be acting masochistically. It’s interesting how the very function of ideology, as such, is to get things back to front. There are a very few people who seem to realize that ideology functions by reversing cause and effect and making things seem the opposite of what they are. Most people don’t see how this works, and thus you have such abominations at the Men’s Movement, whereby thoughtful men try to correct ostensible female masochism, by demanding a return to Kinder, Küche, Kirche.

Shamanism and Buddhism are sisters

Shamanism has an affinity with Buddhism, due to the fact that both aim to achieve a state of tolerance of life without metaphysics (at least, for moments at a time). In the case of Buddhism, one transcends the ego. In the case of shamanism, one trains to tolerate the ambiguities inherent in immanence (nature, animality, chaos, states involving various forms of destruction). 

The point is not to become animal or destructive principle permanently, but to learn something from these states. Obviously, there is nothing transcendentally positive about tolerating immanence, or indeed, about various manifestations of immanence. 

Precisely what one may learn from shamanistic immersion is that morality is in fact needed under certain circumstances. The point here is that one learns one’s lessons for oneself. Indeed, one initiates one’s own lessons for self-teaching. From an intellectual shamanistic point of view, this is better than simply adapting to the demands of authorities and trusting them implicitly. There’s more honor to be had — and possibly more rigor.

 

NATURALISTIC THEORIES OF MORALITY: NIETZSCHE & SADE

See below how both use the same sets of imagery as a basis for propounding the same naturalistic philosophy of morality.

NIETZSCHE:

That lambs dislike great birds of prey does not seem strange: only it gives no ground for reproaching these birds of prey for bearing off little lambs. And if the lambs say among themselves: “these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey, but rather its opposite, a lamb-would he not be good?” there is no reason to find fault with this institution of an ideal, except perhaps that the birds of prey might view it a little ironically and say: “we don’t dislike them at all, these good little lambs; we even love them: nothing is more tasty than a tender lamb.”

To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength. A quantum of force is equivalent to a quantum of drive, will, effect – more, it is nothing other than precisely this very driving, willing, effecting, and only owing to the seduction of language (and of the fundamental errors of reason that are petrified in it) which conceives and misconceives all effects as conditioned by something that causes effects, by a “subject,” can it appear otherwise.

[GENEALOGY OF MORALS, FIRST ESSAY #13]

**************

SADE:

“The man I describe is in tune with Nature.”

“He is a savage beast.”

“Why, is not the tiger or the leopard, of whom this man is, if you wish, a replica, like man created by Nature and created to accomplish Nature’s intentions?  The wolf who devours the lamb accomplishes what this common mother designs, just as does the malefactor who destroys the objects of his revenge or his lubricity.”

“Oh, Father, say what you will, I shall never accept this destructive lubricity.”

“Because you are afraid of becoming its object — there you have it:  egoism.   Let’s exchange our roles and you will fancy it very nicely.  Ask the lamb, and you will find he does not understand why the wolf is allowed to devour him; ask the wolf what the lamb is for:  to feed me, he will reply.   Wolves which batten upon lambs, weak victims of the strong: there you have Nature, there you have her intentions, there you have her scheme.

[JUSTINE, GROVE PRESS, p 608)

Feelings, emotions and traumatic residue

These days, I have a certain problem with coffee. In effect, it makes me insane — although there may be a benefit in going deep into this madness it produces. Unlike so-called “depressants” like alcohol, which take you lower into the self and the emotions, a stimulant like caffeine acts to block off my emotional awareness. This is not at all a good thing, as when I cannot access what I am feeling, I suspect that certain aspects of my environment may be getting out of my control.

The horse beneath my seat may be walking, trotting, cantering — but I have no sensation of the reins, hence no control over my decision-making processes. I wouldn’t know if I were pulling too hard or not at all. I’m not quite sure what I’m feeling about anything. In times like this, I exercise perfect control and say nothing at all. I won’t be able to tell until the caffeine wears off and the flood gates allow my sensations to pass through again.

Caffeine triggers a traumatic center in my brain. Since I am unable to draw sufficiently from my emotional memory, I jump to the most negative conclusions about the-nature-of-reality-itself. It all seems very sordid, rather scary, deadly and refusing to reveal its layers.

An occasional drink of wine, on the other hand, is not just beneficial but practically essential for my health, for otherwise, with caffeine or no caffeine, I tend to lose touch with what I need to recognize in order to maintain my mental well-being. I can reintegrate my emotions by going deeply into them in a positive way, whilst building plans and formulating my ideas. This is what a glass of wine achieves for me. Not engaging in this bi-weekly ritual, however, returns me to my early-adult self. My 16-20 year-old self had repressed everything to do with emotion and feeling. This was the effect of post-migratory trauma; also of the tactics I’d developed from a very early age to deal with emotionally confusing and disturbing experiences. I switch off.

It has taken me years to realize the damage I was doing to my health in not maintaining emotional awareness. I had no idea I was so impersonal and detached from everything, until a crisis made me realize I had been repressing a huge amount of sadness and anger. I made a tremendous effort, from then on, to switch on to my actual emotional states. My physical health immediately improved with my self-understanding.

My ongoing tendency is nonetheless to switch off and thus to become a mystery to myself again. I hold my breath and hope nobody asks me what my motives and intentions were, because likely as anything I will not be able to know — until I have consulted with myself. And, who knows how long or short such a consultation with one’s inner being might be? It could take forever. Or a very limited time. Still, one has to begin the query first and then, wait and see.

Because of my tendency to hold my breath, I sometimes need to learn what I’ve experienced retrospectively. I haven’t really been taking it all in. I’ve been waiting for someone to be an ass — and then I’ll deal with it. I handle crises of most sorts and people behaving like asses very effectively — because it’s this I have been waiting for. I can think extremely logically and unhindered by any emotion or doubt, once I’ve decided to take action. My views and values become sharpened, clearer, in a crisis — and this is really paradoxical because it’s just the regular stream of life where I often can’t get enough emotion to flow through to think clearly. In a situation resonant of my trauma, it is difficult for me to “be myself”.

I retain an odd, Rhodesian personality — which I have, nonetheless, modified to some degree.

I take time to decompress, to feel what I have been experiencing. I have developed a much higher capacity for emotional integration than I had in those early days of post-migratory trauma. Despite this, I’m never going to be an “emotional person” or even a very personal person because focusing on feelings in their own right, rather than as building blocks of culture, puts a huge strain on me. I genuinely can’t understand the importance of having emotions that don’t supply substance for analysis.

It’s the resulting analysis that counts, which is the source of every deeper pleasure.

Communism flirting on our borders

I was supposed to be an extremely conservative young lady, very oriented toward the family and warm and deferential — conservative.  Oh, and dutiful.   I have the opposite personality, which would have meant trouble enough, except that my parents (especially my father) also attached profound importance to bringing me up all Bible reading and unreasoning.   I’m convinced this was because of the war and what it cost him.  This was how the war has started:

“We have struck a blow for the preservation of justice, civilization, and Christianity; and in the spirit of this belief we have this day assumed our sovereign independence. God bless you all.”  http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1965Rhodesia-UDI.html

So, Christian belief and a certain idea of “civilization” became a huge factor in my parents’ consciousness, whether they were aware of that.

When we migrated I was fifteen.  That was when the battle started to keep me on the straight and narrow.  I had entered a society that was much more liberal in many ways, and I’m sure this represented the “communism” my father had fought against, in the war, to keep outside of our borders.

As a funny aside that confirms my thesis, about five years ago, I came across a badly written  blurb on a free publishing site a while back.   The writing was by an ex-Rhodesian, who spoke of “Communism hovering on our borders”.  Actually, the phrasing was worse than this, something more clumsy and funnier.   So amusing was it that I used the sentence in my Facebook update and immediately some guy living in Johannesburg (in exile from Zimbabwe’s poor economy) popped up in chat and said, “It’s me!  I’m the communism lingering on the border!”   This was how I got introduced to the members of the Zimbabwean Revolutionary Youth movement, who turned out to be two in number.

It seemed to some people, including myself, that I may have become the betrayer of the war and everything “Rhodesia” stood for, the more I adapted to liberal ways.  My parents waged a really strong psychological battle against me.   It was quite extreme, involving physical “discipline” at times, but mostly chasing me around and attempting to undermine my self-esteem by telling me I was “grotty”.

Such is life.

Draft chapter 13: my father’s memoir

My experience with the military began as a baby, sitting in the sandpit and watching aeroplanes going overhead. These planes used to make a lot of noise as they were on training flights. It was near the end of world war two. My aunt used to take me for walks though town and lecture me on pronunciation. I can hear her saying not motee-car, Peter. Motow-car. I frequently used to see platoons marching though town. Also nuns, who seemed to be marching as well. Then suddenly I didn’t see them anymore. It was very common to see people in uniform walking about.
Uniforms belong to a previous life. Right from a baby, I was brought up with uniforms. My step father was in the police reserve and used to go out on night patrols. He wouldn’t get in until ten or twelve at night. I went into the police reserves myself quite a bit later.
Once in a while, the army would put on a reunion for the people who had been in the war, and my mother would take me along to it. Seeing all the people in dress uniform made me feel a bit spacey because I knew it connected to my father, but I couldn’t see the nature of the connection.
Then I got to high school and, at that time, the British empire was held together by the thin red line. The problem was that I was growing up in a colony where whites were outnumbered more than ten to one. So the realization always was that we could be outrun any time, so we had to have as many people capable of firing a gun, as possible. So at the age of fifteen I was required by the state to enroll in cadets.
This involved putting on uncomfortable clothes and spending hours marching up and down. Part of the uniform was army boots with steel studs, with hose tops and putties. Our kit was inspected every Friday, which meant we had to spend hours of preparation. Our broad-brimmed bush hats had to be flat up on one side. To make the hat stay in that shape we had to mix up some water and sugar, then iron it through a handkerchief and dry it flat. In one occasion in the rain, I tasted the sweet stuff running into the corner of my mouth. Then I realised it was from the hat.
We had to spend quite a lot of time in doing dummy combat. We used fixed bayonets. It’s amazing more people didn’t get hurt. We also had a band. I can hear the bagpipes playing to this day. The band went to England and won prizes. They must have spent a lot of money on that band.
We’d also do regular camps. It was nothing special except in winter Inkomo barracks was a horrible, cold place. They would take you to the firing range and train you to fire a rifle. Each of us had to fire 35 rounds. For a young boy, that was quite an undertaking, as that rifle had a kick like a mule. It was a 303 Endfield.
Some people came back from the range with bruises all over their shoulders. At the rifle range I learned I was never going to be able to fire a rifle. My eight inch group wasn’t up to par. What I most remember about those days on the range was nothing to drink. You took a water bottle with you but that didn’t last long. You’d have to spend at least a whole morning there. You also had to do butt duty. The place where you fired to is called the butt. It was like being in a trench. The noise was horrific. By the time the bullets get over your head, they’re breaking the sound barrier. If you’re in the butts when someone is firing the machine gun, that’s very loud. One time, we had a very bad-tempered staff sergeant and we said we’ll get him. We shot directly at the top of the bank rather than into the bank, so all the gravel went up toward him. We got him. It made him more bad-tempered than ever.