The Forces Underlying

Naming things is one of the privileges we assign ourselves.  We = humans.  We name our children and pets/our boats and land/the species of our surroundings/the seasons/the days/types of clouds/planets we will never visit/galaxies that will never be ours.  It gives order, allows categorization and can signify relationships.  And we really, really like it.

I used to name things before I started, essays, relationships, jobs, short stories.  I did it to give myself direction — to say that this will be all that I say on the matter – a definite beginning and an end.

I was a child.

Even to this day I am a child; though not in age (ah ha! another naming mechanism) but in other ways.  To be a child requires humility.  There are the contrived means of causing this – the control denied to those under 16 or 18 or 21 over their own lives.  And there are natural causes too – the inability to feed yourself upon birth, your size in relation to those around you, your necessity of mimicry as a means of learning.  These lists of course go on.

Childlike does not mean childish – this should be attributed to someone else but I don’t know who.

The helplessness – it never really goes away.  Not the feeling – maybe you accept the social constructs that allow you to feel in control.  Maybe you accept ideas of relinquishing control completely and allow that to push the helplessness down.  Maybe our global network of social networks binds you to the moment and keeps your eyes from wandering, your mind from wondering.

It’s not an inability that causes the feeling that lingers.  We grow taller and learn how to open our own juice boxes.  We memorize the routes to travel and the websites to visit to find what we need.

It’s not a mastery of knowing there is no mastery, for the duality of the mind means structure is chaos and the ideas are not two but by existing bind one to the other.  So there comes the fear if all ideas exist in this motif of think not two.  Security and fear are one, you do not feel one without the other – the opposite must then be absence.  Hate and love, success and failure, we know things in categories and we name them.

You cannot reject or refuse this inherent piece of reality.  In refusing to name something you give power to the name.  For example, stripping someone of a title gives power to the title.

“The ultimate condition of production is therefore the reproduction of the conditions of production.” read more

We’re fantastic at this – of course Althusser (Algerian philosopher) referred to Marxist capitalism in this and is discussing production by way physical means – but the concept is sound.  It’s part of the scientific method – the collection of empirical data is tested by mimicking the method and conditions under which the results were obtained.

This idea is why socially unproductive things like racism/mental illness stigma/homophobia/religious radicalism/sexism/right wing politics and wealth disparity will seethe beneath a surface while we attempt to rework them.

The conditions which caused these ideas to exist are being reproduced every day, yet we expect the resulting world to change.

How lovely would it be to break down the gross of factors that lead us now to systems that punish based upon race and class.  Punish meaning anything from the cost of bail for parking tickets to death.  read more watch more

Because Althusser is still applicable: “In other words, the school (but also other State institutions like the Church, or other apparatuses like the Army) teaches ‘know-how’, but in forms which ensure subjection to the ruling ideology or the mastery of its ‘practice’. All the agents of production, exploitation and repression, not to speak of the ‘professionals of ideology’ (Marx), must in one way or another be ‘steeped’ in this ideology in order to perform their tasks”.

At which time a majority of people say enough regarding failing social structure then maybe the ruling ideology will change.  In the meantime we will continue to name things – pointing out racism, social injustice, the invisibility of the disenfranchised.

It’s painful to watch shows like Intervention or Hoarders.   But we do – that is who we’ve become – because these are things we can name – addictions, mental health disorders and thus distance ourselves, allowing the moment you stop watching to flood yourself with relief that the images you’ve just seen are not your life.

So how do we fix it?

Well, let’s start by not demonizing anything “other.”

Let’s examine the idea of other – it’s a name I put on something that I don’t feel is representative of me.  It is an excepting factor.  I think back to what was being taught when I was in school.  We were not nearly as multicultural in the 90’s as I’d like to admit and growing up in a Southern California suburb at that time being mixed was not something you talked about.  Still, my 6th grade class was made up of the following (from memory): 3 african american girls, 8 white-ish (I never asked) girls, 4 african american boys, 5 mexican-american boys, 3 mexican-american girls, 4 white-ish boys, 3 mixed race girls and 2 mixed race boys.

We had numerous lesson plans on “Celebrating your differences.”  Now here’s the thing – this was a school/class/district/general educational mindset.  I was fed this stuff for years.  VERY formative young-one years.

Looking back, I ate those up.  I was one of the mixed race girls but I was raised by 1st/2nd generation American white-folk.  So to me those multi-cultural lessons felt more like they should’ve been called “it’s okay your best friend is brown.”  Because she was and it didn’t feel okay at home.  And I didn’t self identify as anything browner than printer paper until much later in my life (when I accepted that other half, I already feel another blog post coming on).

I really hope they do this better now because this is the stuff that shapes what our society’s underlying ideology is now.  Hence – nasty things we are in denial about – racism, sexism, homophobia, religious zealotry and the long list of other things that plague us.

I still struggle to change the mindset that bad things come from the darkness.