Nas2EndWork "Pamela's Blogs":
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Blog 1: "You Know How I Know You're a Slave?"
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Blog 2: "Where the Hell is Vasquez When We Really Need Her?"
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Blog 3: "How Do I Con Thee? Let Me Count the Ways...Or: What Is 'Individual Freedom'?"
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Blog 4: "Is It Never Too Late to Be the Parent I Should Have Been?"
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Blog 5: "Are We Innocent When We Dream?"
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Blog 6: "To Enlarge the Realm of the Possible"
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Blog 7: "Bury the Corpse!"
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Blog 8: "Just Say NO! Make Coke the First Corpse to Go!"
Blog 9: "Compassion Always Comes Too Late"
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Blog 10: "To Live and Die a Slave?"
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Blog 11: "Crime Is The Flip Side"
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Blog 12: "Rocket Science Ain't Rocket Science"
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Blog 13: "The Fuck-It Factor"
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Blog 14: "How Do You Organize (Our World) Without Hierarchy?"
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Blog 15: "Eating What The Earth Gives Me"
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Blog 16: "When You Become A Voice Of The Voiceless"
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Blog 17: "You Got To Sucker The Corn Or the Ears Won't Be Worth Nothin'"
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Blog 18: "Packaging Our Children For The Podrunks"
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Blog 19: "The Good Livers"
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Blog 20: "Is There Such A Thing As "Voicelessness"?"
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Blog 21: "Brandon Terrell Jones"
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Blog 22: "Our Real Work"
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Blog 23: "Gennenice Chapman Johnson"
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Blog 24: "What Is Your 'Theory of Change'?"
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Blog 25: "The Plum Tree"
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Blog 26: "Wholism Is A Health Issue"
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Blog 27: "Who's Loving You Michael?"
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Blog 28: "Getting Busy"
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Blog 29: "Depopulation"
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Blog 30: "Growing A Mass Movement"
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Blog 31: "Ridley's Choice"
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Blog 32: "Children Of The Technology"
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Blog 33: "The Devastated Earthscapes From Lawrence Summers' "Logic""
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Blog 34: "How Do We Grow A Mass Movement?"
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Blog 35: "We Have To Make A Loud Noise"
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Blog 36: "The Phoenix"
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Blog 37: "Wind-Blown Seeds Need Roots"
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Blog 38: "Embracing The Plural"
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Blog 39: "Round And Round And Round We Go But Not Merrily"
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Blog 40: "Unplugging"
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Blog 41: "Thank You Sandy From Petaluma"
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Blog 42: "You Got City Hands Mr. Hooper"
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Blog 43: "Letter to Michael Reynolds"
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Blog 44: "The Last Civil Rights Movement"
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Blog 45: "The 4 R's: The Ruses Used To Rend Us...Race, Religion, Reason, and Recognition - 1"
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Blog 46: "The 4 Ruses - 2"
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Blog 47: "The 4 Ruses - 3"
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Blog 48: "The Responsibility Of The Intellectual"
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Blog 49: "The Hidden Malevolence: AKA Michael Moore's Dilemma"
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Blog 50: "Wading Into The Muck Of State"
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Blog 51: "Seeing The Communal Alternative"
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Blog 52: "Becoming The Function"
Pamela's Blog 46
Part 1 Published on Sunday, September 13, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org
“The 4 Ruses Used To Rend Us: Race, Religion, Reason and Recognition – 2”
Part 2 In Progress:
by Pamela Satterwhite
Waiting in line at the Farmington, New Mexico Post Office I watched two earthy, down-to-earth-aura women play with a plump, happy, little boy. They traded off holding place and giving chase. The narrow one swept him up in her arms and turned him upside-down while he laughed and cackled. He was lovin' it. He was the center-of-the-world in the best possible way.
Just now, sitting in a cafe in Berkeley, California I watched this "center-of-the-world" game, upper-middle-class style.
More cerebral, less physical.
The little boy strode authoritatively around the cafe, firing questions, picking things up and slamming them down, while the mother, pushing a baby in a stroller, followed closely in his wake, answering questions, offering suggestions:
“Now that makes too much noise so we're not going to do that....No....No....Let's go over here. What? What is she doing? [referring to a photograph of a grim woman on the wall] She's picking coffee beans....What? What is he doing? [referring to a man sitting in the cafe] It looks like he's reading. Why don't you ask him? [He does. He was.]”
(The middle class is way too literal. [See "Part 2" below.] To me all his questions boiled down to one: "How tight, do you think, do I got her by the short hairs?")
Western Individualism / Narcissism Training starts with the intense focus on the single child. ** We tell him he is the center-of-the-world – which is true in a spiritual sense. But it's learned by the child in a literal sense.
Once they're taught they're the center of the world they're sent out to be taught they're not.
That they must ‘earn’ recognition, the ‘right’ “to be seen.”
Whether they're at the abyssal or the elevated end of Narcissism a lifetime of unanswered questions and unmet need (to be seen) awaits...
...an unconscious longing to return either to the time when Mama hung on your every word...
...or maybe to the time when your happiness mattered...or...
...maybe the womb...or maybe...
...not even that...
The hoops we're presented with we leap through for a while, as we're a hopeful and creative species. When we're young we take what we're given and try to fashion ourselves a ‘reality’ in which we rise above the rest.
Our parents essentially tell us, “forget the ‘others,’ just be ‘the best.’”
If white skin wraps you in a warm welcome...“fine, don't think about it, take it.”
If you're told you're smarter because your tribe is ‘Science,’ or ‘Art,’ or ‘Reason’... “fine, don't think about it, take it.”
If you're told you're better because you've got ‘Religion’... “don't think about it, take it.”
We aren't told it's all a con...
...that we're all just people...
...whose nature is still ‘One.’
"The middle class is way too literal."
This is the occupational hazard that comes from living in our heads.
But while the conscious mind of the system-trained is literal...
...the unconscious...
– so long as life clings –
...thinks metaphorically.
...But what this means essentially...
...is a lifetime of mistrust and misery...
...as nothing is what it seems....
(...False faces abound in Podrunk-town....)
Now the podrunks' goal is to keep our unconscious very very busy...
...a whole lifetime of unconscious busy-ness...
...is what they hope for us...
They long...lust...
...desire for us...
...to die as utterly confused...
...as when we left school:
"How much nicer [children] are, and how much more they know, than those who profess to teach them." (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)
...like most of those who in the end come to think for themselves, he was a slow grower. By far the greater part, moreover, of his education had been an attempt, not so much to keep him in blinkers as to gouge his eyes out altogether. (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)
...a conspiracy of silence about things whose truth would be immediately apparent to disinterested inquirers is not only tolerable but righteous on the part of those who profess to be and take money for being par excellence guardians and teachers of truth. (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)
"The system" is wired to cast glances back...
...to say, "look at yourselves"...
...when we start to delve...
...into the questions...
...that inevitably come...
...when we notice how...
...completely insane...
...'our' "world" has become....
And our narcissism-training plugs into this nicely...
...since we are the "center of the world"...
(...obviously...)
...it makes perfect sense...
– as we cast about for causes –
...to see our 'imperfect' selves...
...at the center of all of it...
...it just must be us...
...when you stop to think about it...
...all the violence...
...deceitfulness...
(Insert Sin Or Symptom Of It ...
...Here....)
Young people have a marvellous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. Even if they are unhappy – very unhappy – it is astonishing how easily they can be prevented from finding it out, or at any rate from attributing it to any other cause than their own sinfulness....True [they] will probably find out all about it some day, but not until too late to be of much service to them or inconvenience to [this system]. (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)
This pattern will break down...
(...is it tautology to say that it will inevitably?...)
We're taking a break from the rhyme (or from getting it wrong) to elaborate on how narcissism-training, passive-obedience-training, literal-thinking, and Mind-Worship...all circle around...(one leads to the other...leads to the other...).
"Come here, my poor, pale-faced, heavy-eyed boy," She said to him one day in her kindest manner; "come and sit down by me, and we will have a little quiet confidential talk together, will we not?"
The boy went mechanically to the sofa. Whenever his mother wanted what she called a confidential talk with him she always selected the sofa as the most suitable ground on which to open her campaign....
"You know there is no one, dear, dear Ernest, who loves you so much as your papa and I do; no one who watches so carefully over your interests, or who is so anxious to enter into all your little joys and troubles as we are; but my dearest boy, it grieves me to think sometimes that you have not that perfect love for and confidence in us which you ought to have....Of your inner life, my dear, we know nothing beyond such scraps as we can glean in spite of you, from little things which escape you almost before you know that you have said them."
The boy winced at this....He knew well how careful he ought to be, and yet, do what he could, from time to time his forgetfulness of the part betrayed him into unreserve. His mother saw that he winced, and enjoyed the scratch she had given him....
...Ernest...was still so moved by the siren's voice as to yearn to sail towards her, and fling himself into her arms, but it would not do; there were other associated ideas that returned also, and the mangled bones of too many murdered confessions were lying whitening round the skirts of his mother's dress, to allow him by any possibility to trust her further. So he hung his head and looked sheepish, but kept his own counsel....(Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)
The "forked-tongue" metaphor (yet another unacknowledged gift from the First Folks on this side) is an important one – it captures the essence of class society, which is Passive Obedience...a.k.a. Deception / Duplicity.... That metaphor-reaction is a mirror in the face of Duplicity....Most of us have forgotten that this was our first reaction too...before we succumbed...to the forked tongue....
The enforced split...
...between outward performance...
...and the 'self' kept secret...
...is the horror that...
...Passive Obedience begets...
(...as we're wired to be powerful and free...
...the true self must go into hiding....)
...Duplicity will reign...
...until we choose...
...to begin again.
We start out trying with all our might to "figure out" why what the body says is always so at odds with the "official story" – the words....
Samuel Butler's Flesh could almost be summarized as a request...
...of parents to please stop mucking up...
...what the earth has given us....
...It was not much that was wanted. To make no mysteries where Nature has made none, to bring his conscience under something like reasonable control, to give Ernest his head a little more, to ask fewer questions, and to give him pocket-money with a desire that it should be spent upon menus plaisirs....
"Call that not much indeed," laughed Ernest, as I read him what I have just written. "Why it is the whole duty of a father, but it is the mystery-making which is the worst evil. If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence." (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)
(Lately it's been hard to shake off the sadness that comes...
...from knowing that what I'm hoping to show...
...has been shown before – and more –
...over and over again...
...and still...
...the mindset of Abandonment...
...prevails...
...still...
...the allure of the Sirens...
...wins....
...I guess it's time for wage work to end.)
(Art is interpretation of the soul's insistency...
...diverted to attend to this system's Duplicity:
– the divided spirit – the forked tongue –
– the child who is lost or abandoned –
....But when we're at the end of 'Mystery'...
...and the soul's clear tone rings pure and known...
...then...
...away the theater...the curtain...the display...
...away the interpreter...the manipulator...the pawn...
...away the nightmare – forgotten upon...
...each gloriously unexpected fresh dawn...
– each day dimmer...
...dimmer...
...and....)
What the child gets...
...from this craziness...
...is that 'reality' don't matter...
(...if you want "to win"...)
...that it's only 'the words' that count....
(...in this "system"....)
...This is what parents unknowingly teach us...
...when they say, "I love you"...
...and then beat us....
...Or say, "You matter more than anything"...
...right before we're booted out the door...
...and sent to the state...
...to receive a ritualized...
...inculcation....
So we learn early...(are trained early)...to hyper-attend to 'the literal'...
...as 'the actual' is a thing...
...very much variable...
...or very much subject to interpretation...
– in fact, altogether a mystery –
...which is then consigned to the unconscious...
...to find whatever patterns may exist...
...perhaps taking a lifetime...
...by which time...
...when our 'unconscious work' is done...
...we are too.
(...But then there's this matter of the generations to come....)
"And as we watch our dreams dissolve like sugar in dirty dishwater"...), we can’t help but turn, holding all our unwanted, unutilized power in our hands, to our children’s crystalline goodness, and seek to commandeer, with all the best intentions in the world, the possibilities of our children’s lives – to direct them, to ‘our’ purposes. ["Round and round and round we go but not merrily."]
By doing our Division Work of instilling Passive Obedience in children, we seek to commandeer their thought process...to "our" (i.e. "the state's") purposes....(From "Wading Into The Muck".)
So what happens when we commandeer our children's thought process?
When we seek to feed them "our" (i.e. "the system's") thoughts?
The chief 'thought'...all the others resolve into...being:
"If you want recognition...if you want to be seen...
...receive the strokes...the praise...the 'A's...
...then you'd best be 'the best'"...which...
In a "system" that depends on...
...shifting our glance away from...
...the power of our hands...
...means idolizing...
...reifying...
...objectifying...
...deifying...
...ass-kissifying...
...Mind.
...So "the best"...
...translated...
...means...
..."the smartest"....
[See "You Got City Hands" (Part 2).]
And this allure is dangled...
...from every household...
...schoolyard...
...office and boardroom...
...which means that...
...from every off-shoot of "the system" comes...
...the (so-called) thanatonic sound of sirens.
(..."so-called" because...
...none of us wants to go...
...we just want to be 'left alone'....
...because far from being "left alone"...
...from our first tottering steps....
...we're bombarded with...
...the false voice of...
..."Passive Obedience"....)
The other pathway we're trying to tease out...
...by which susceptibility to "the master's voice" is routed...
...lies through the chronic state of confusion, fear and stress...
...that corrupts our soul's clear tone like static interference....
The emotion of 'fear' makes it very hard to hear...
...our "wholeness", the 'One", the Great Spirit....
– the 'all' in which our soul is floating....
If, through fear of displeasing the parent, the child can never hear his or her own soul, he or she becomes vulnerable to any and all who seem to be able to explain "the mystery."
We all sense there's 'more'...
...than the falseness kept well before...
...our eyes...
...while the truth we're made to explore...
– the truth our soul-eye keeps searching for –
– that constant-kept-hidden-behind-things...
...that continuous-something...linking us...
...to those-who-are-coming......
...and to those-who've-gone-before –
– to find that 'all'......
...we need time...
...a.k.a. our lives....
And to keep us from seeing it...
– the muck that we're kneeling in –
...they give us "the news" to soften "the blues"...
...or jobs with command to allow us to feel "better-than"....
They're desperate, in fact,...
...to conceal their acts...
...of animus...
...hidden in......the chaos they plan for us.
And desperate, indeed,...
...to keep us from seeing...
...the callous way they hope to 'handle' us –
– dealing 'death' to some...
...'complicity' to others –
– slotting us into their sick schemes...
...their animus:
– their sheer naked greed...
...sprouting from...
...their sheer naked fear....
("The 'Division Work' they'll pay us to do"...
...may unintentionally confuse...
...as selling your spirit for pay...
– at the most minimal –
...requires dividing yourself....
...So all wage work means...
...reducing your spirit to the 'business' of dividing....
...And as "the system" means 'division of self'...
...it's up to us...
...to offer something else....)
We have to remember...
...we're 'millennial-beings'...
...and though "the system" denies this...
...we're not wired for 'passive obedience'...
...we're wired to investigate...
...ask questions and cogitate...
...we're wired to see...
...the interesting...the funny...
...the redeeming...
...we're wired to be 'light' (in a spiritual sense)...
...to be playful and teasing...
Will the man of today have strength to carry out what the spirit demands from him, and what the age would like to make impossible?
In the over-organized societies which in a hundred ways have him in their power, he must somehow become once more an independent personality and so exert influence back upon them. They will use every means to keep him in that condition of impersonality which suits them. They fear personality because the spirit and the truth, which they would like to muzzle, find in it a means of expressing themselves. And their power is, unfortunately, as great as their fear... (Albert Schweitzer, writing in 1951, quoted by Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, quoted in "The Responsibility Of The 'Intellectual'")
See also: "The 4 Ruses – 3"
** The abyssal-end of Western Narcissism is neglect and beating. Either way the child is locked within the narrow cell of self.
© Nas2EndWork (the NEW)