This discourse on temper is very temperate and well done.
I have difficulty controlling my rage, which is mine to work on. But part of that difficulty is what I perceive to be the societal injunction against anger. I perceive that the default reaction to expressed anger is "you have a problem." That strikes me as fundamentally unfair, and it provokes even more anger.
I want to feed my anger after getting such a response, because it reflects my long experiences of irrational and selfish injustice I was expected to take (and expected to actually, literally smile about) at home as a child.
Thank you for making sure to note that anger and rage are not per se immoral or unjustified.
I'm willing to discuss with people the individual responsibility to control anger, but *only* when the other party recognizes that anger and rage are not "deranged" necessarily. If they won't meet me there, I won't meet them either.
That story you found about one of your ancestors is amazing, and that incident with the robber terrifying! I do wonder how many of our ancestor's traits get passed down to us at times.
I was extremely shocked by my response. If you had asked me beforehand - am I fight, flight or freeze? - I would have said I’m flight or freeze. Turns out, no, I’m fight. The ancestor story is totally mad, isn’t it? I have this vision of Dubhsith being grimly satisfied and everyone else taking a step back from him!
It's sometimes hard to predict a response in an emergency because we are reasoning before that adrenaline hits. And yes, I do think that everyone would hesitate to underestimate Dubhsith after his swift revenge!
Brilliant, thank you! We may be related by some distant berserk ancestry since my blue eyes have seen red too, so wild. Great advice on harnessing the power of rage.
Have you considered that postmodern politics might be a creation of far left philosophers such as Derrida? It then grew through post-structuralism to infest the literary subjects such as journalism courses at university.
Our modern enemies are much more sophisticated than those who mounted psychological operations in the Cold War. China employs teams of psychologists and sociologists to focus its soft power attacks. China can spend a trillion dollars in the West every 2 years on this project because of its gigantic trade surplus.
I have no doubt that Foucault is behind this idea that everyone must be oppressed and oppressors (yes, I had to read him as an undergrad, eek, not doing that again, also read a lot of that other stuff).
In reality - life isn’t that easy, as any court case illustrates. It’s not all oppressors and oppressed. It’s not all about power - often it’s about lots of other things. There’s more to life than power, and to reduce everything to that is very two-dimensional.
Yes, I agree that at the individual level the victimhood and rage is apparently unrelated to geopolitics.
I also agree with: "a focus on collective and individual victimhood gives rise to a need for recognition of wrongdoing, moral elitism (a belief that one is superior because one is a victim), lack of empathy towards those viewed as oppressors, and rumination on past wrongs" and I think this is the modern zeitgeist in the West.
However, I believe that the zeitgeist in modern Western society is not an accident. Journalists are poststructuralist because it creates a simple story of good and evil. It elevates victimhood and polarises society. This was always its intention.
The ex-KGB officer in the link above describes the process of subversion but modern enemies of the West are even more sophisticated. They have changed the zeitgeist and this rattles down to even the calmness of a dispute about a hedge or the feelings of migrant about day to day discrimination. Quiet reason and tolerance have been ousted from society.
Agree that some of this feels systemic, and is no doubt encouraged by powerful subtle nations who have reasons to want the West to be destabilised. I’m familiar with KGB tactics for weird reasons - my PhD thesis involved a legal case about a spy who was a double agent for the Soviets. The guy was turned by the North Koreans after being captured in the Korean War. They basically reprogrammed him and he remained as such until he died in his 90s.
The Korean War is the "forgotten war". As you know, it was where the West first came across systematic brainwashing. You will also know how they did it: removal from society/friends/relations, high stress - even torture etc, education, group confessions, punishments for backsliding. That a mild version of this might sound like some corporate management training weekends/weeks is no coincidence. The evil people who set up cults for money also exploit the techniques.
The Chinese communists probably invented the full technique and used a watered down version across China. The United Front Work Department spreads the technique globally and is now using the financing of corporate networks such as the WEF to spread the word. The latest WEF budget was $350m.
The most visible techniques are: the division of society into victims and oppressors (polarisation is the standard pre-revolutionary method),
no-platforming opposition (opposition is to be crushed, not engaged, supporters of the cause are isolated) and changing the meaning of words (as Orwell noted, this originated with the Soviet communists).
The WEF is rolling out the method across the West. Google is a brilliant example of the power of these techniques. Their staff are like your brainwashing victim, see the video in this article of a Google staff conference:
This discourse on temper is very temperate and well done.
I have difficulty controlling my rage, which is mine to work on. But part of that difficulty is what I perceive to be the societal injunction against anger. I perceive that the default reaction to expressed anger is "you have a problem." That strikes me as fundamentally unfair, and it provokes even more anger.
I want to feed my anger after getting such a response, because it reflects my long experiences of irrational and selfish injustice I was expected to take (and expected to actually, literally smile about) at home as a child.
Thank you for making sure to note that anger and rage are not per se immoral or unjustified.
I'm willing to discuss with people the individual responsibility to control anger, but *only* when the other party recognizes that anger and rage are not "deranged" necessarily. If they won't meet me there, I won't meet them either.
That story you found about one of your ancestors is amazing, and that incident with the robber terrifying! I do wonder how many of our ancestor's traits get passed down to us at times.
I was extremely shocked by my response. If you had asked me beforehand - am I fight, flight or freeze? - I would have said I’m flight or freeze. Turns out, no, I’m fight. The ancestor story is totally mad, isn’t it? I have this vision of Dubhsith being grimly satisfied and everyone else taking a step back from him!
It's sometimes hard to predict a response in an emergency because we are reasoning before that adrenaline hits. And yes, I do think that everyone would hesitate to underestimate Dubhsith after his swift revenge!
Brilliant, thank you! We may be related by some distant berserk ancestry since my blue eyes have seen red too, so wild. Great advice on harnessing the power of rage.
Hah! Those Vikings got around. I’m glad that I’m not the only one who’s experienced it - it was REALLY strange!
Love the incident with the robber.
Have you considered that postmodern politics might be a creation of far left philosophers such as Derrida? It then grew through post-structuralism to infest the literary subjects such as journalism courses at university.
Our modern enemies are much more sophisticated than those who mounted psychological operations in the Cold War. China employs teams of psychologists and sociologists to focus its soft power attacks. China can spend a trillion dollars in the West every 2 years on this project because of its gigantic trade surplus.
See https://therenwhere.substack.com/p/forget-gender-polarisation-is-the
I have no doubt that Foucault is behind this idea that everyone must be oppressed and oppressors (yes, I had to read him as an undergrad, eek, not doing that again, also read a lot of that other stuff).
In reality - life isn’t that easy, as any court case illustrates. It’s not all oppressors and oppressed. It’s not all about power - often it’s about lots of other things. There’s more to life than power, and to reduce everything to that is very two-dimensional.
Yes, I agree that at the individual level the victimhood and rage is apparently unrelated to geopolitics.
I also agree with: "a focus on collective and individual victimhood gives rise to a need for recognition of wrongdoing, moral elitism (a belief that one is superior because one is a victim), lack of empathy towards those viewed as oppressors, and rumination on past wrongs" and I think this is the modern zeitgeist in the West.
However, I believe that the zeitgeist in modern Western society is not an accident. Journalists are poststructuralist because it creates a simple story of good and evil. It elevates victimhood and polarises society. This was always its intention.
The ex-KGB officer in the link above describes the process of subversion but modern enemies of the West are even more sophisticated. They have changed the zeitgeist and this rattles down to even the calmness of a dispute about a hedge or the feelings of migrant about day to day discrimination. Quiet reason and tolerance have been ousted from society.
Agree that some of this feels systemic, and is no doubt encouraged by powerful subtle nations who have reasons to want the West to be destabilised. I’m familiar with KGB tactics for weird reasons - my PhD thesis involved a legal case about a spy who was a double agent for the Soviets. The guy was turned by the North Koreans after being captured in the Korean War. They basically reprogrammed him and he remained as such until he died in his 90s.
The Korean War is the "forgotten war". As you know, it was where the West first came across systematic brainwashing. You will also know how they did it: removal from society/friends/relations, high stress - even torture etc, education, group confessions, punishments for backsliding. That a mild version of this might sound like some corporate management training weekends/weeks is no coincidence. The evil people who set up cults for money also exploit the techniques.
The Chinese communists probably invented the full technique and used a watered down version across China. The United Front Work Department spreads the technique globally and is now using the financing of corporate networks such as the WEF to spread the word. The latest WEF budget was $350m.
The most visible techniques are: the division of society into victims and oppressors (polarisation is the standard pre-revolutionary method),
no-platforming opposition (opposition is to be crushed, not engaged, supporters of the cause are isolated) and changing the meaning of words (as Orwell noted, this originated with the Soviet communists).
The WEF is rolling out the method across the West. Google is a brilliant example of the power of these techniques. Their staff are like your brainwashing victim, see the video in this article of a Google staff conference:
https://therenwhere.substack.com/p/google-is-your-enemy