Dr. Jennifer Considine frequently writes about how controlling resources leads to conflicts both between nations, and also between governments and their people that can erupt into civil wars.
I read a column recently by Rohn Kenyatta, titled, “Betrayal”. The betrayer in this story is Mr. Kenyatta who had encountered a stray shepherd, obviously peaceful, looking for a home, but frightening to others. Eventually Mr. Kenyatta calls animal control who come and take away the dog. Mr. Kenyatta’s story is heartbreaking because he feels he betrayed the dog but didn’t know what else to do.
And there we go, you and I, knowing not where else to go…
Needs are the musts of a lifeform, in oder to survive. Food and shelter and emotional support…needs are all the shepherd was asking, but his needs were becoming a conflict with the desires of those who were feeling intimidated by the presence of a large unrestrained dog.
And there we stand, you and I, when we have come to presume what conflicts with what we want must be restrained from occurring…
For most of the history of life there was only the needs of the lifeform to be satisfied. Even for the preponderance of human existence this was the case.Then a group of men who had not been selected to mate, but who desired to mate, raped the culture of life to take control of the resources of the world to force the women to breed their children.
Needs of other life forms, even the needs of the earth to strive towards balancing itself in order to support its lifeforms, became consumed beneath the whips of these rapists desires.
For the most part, there it stood for everyone for the sum of the last few thousand years. For most their own needs were restricted and unconsidered while the few raped not only women, but the other lifeforms within the environment, and the environment that provided the needs of all lifeforms to these hedonostic madnesses of these rapist-controllers usurpation of other’s needs for their own desires.
Now I wish not to set myself up as understanding human economies to a greater extent than our wise economists, but I became bemused in the 1970’s when economists were shrugging their collective hands over the idea of “stagflation”. If prices raised then inflation cooled as the unemployed/underemployed stopped buying. But it didn’t happen. Unemployment and prices were both increasing.
It surely didn’t seem strange to me. Something had begun to happen in the earliest parts of the twentieth century, when the mind masturbators figured out how to offer their own selfishness over the resources to allowing others to become consumed into their own needs becoming desires. If everyone can have a refrigerator to keep their food cold, then everyone’s desire to have a refrigerator becomes a need for everyone to have a refrigerator.
And the more desires that are turned into needs–the car, the tv, the suburban home, then the more the rapists of control increase their ability to rape the environment and others with more wantonness and destructiveness. When those desiring to rape can entice the raped into raping…well that’s where we stand when desires become needs.
And so as I read of Mr. Kenyatta feelings that he betrayed a dog…
and so the story that follows is the story of one man learning to respond to the rape of the community of desires that drive everyone into assuming they need what they want. Of course the man is me—I cannot know how anyone else betrays themselves, only how I came to realize that I had done so.
My Betrayal
A peculiarity is that I never needed to tell other guys in guy-get-togethers not to talk about women as conquests. But if I entered a locker room or a chat session such talk always stopped as soon as I was noticed. I didn’t have to say anything, I only had to enter the room where the other guys knew me, and the bull malarkey of turning women into a commodity stopped because they knew the very girls/women they were talking about would ask me about a prospective male date and if he would respect them. And that those girls/women would come to me if they felt abused or hurt.
A peculiarity is that when I drove a cab and then an uber, whenever I arrived to pick up a woman that had just had a bad experience or been harassed by a man, I knew. I could tell by their manner of balancing on the very edge of the curb; by their hesitancy when they saw a male diver and almost turning away,feeling caught between needing to remove themselves and entrusting themselves to another man; and then upon entering the car, almost hugging themselves next to the closed passenger door.
Frequently all of the above, but one behavior was enough to know. Sometimes there were tears although they usually tried to suppress them upon my arriving.
And so when they got into the car, I turned off the engine.
That demanded a response, an insecurity and fear would immediately arise; it was a renewed threat of course, I knew that, but it was the way to get the necessary response to put them in (semi)control. “Hey turn the engine back on; I need to get out of here right now; you tying to get something from me you-asshole”. It didn’t, or course, matter what the words were but there was no way they couldn’t feel renewed fear.
And then I would restart the car and they were immediately reassured because their demand of me had worked—I had succumbed to the demand and they controlled the man. I suppose I could have picked up a woman who was not reassured when I restarted the car. It never happened. I suppose they could have fled when I turned off the engine. A couple of times the women did start to open the door, but they would close it again as soon as the car started up again.
As I began to drive, I forego asking for a destination,that would come later. Sometimes the cries would come;sometimes the single big sob. But they had to ask me the one question, usually it would be the first thing they would say, sometimes they would tell me the destination and I would begin heading in that direction—but the question was inevitable, although frequently only addressed to me in a sideways manner, talking for me to hear but to themselves, knowing I would lie if I answered.
Of course they expected me to exclude myself from “being like that.” Because there it is…the question…”Are all men like that?” “Yes.” (I don’t know like what…but I do know whatever the that that is the what doesn’t really matter.) But if I exclude myself from any possible that, there will be no dialogue, I have proven myself guilty by my denial and I cannot be trusted.
The answer is “Yes.”
“Are you like that?”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t know what happened…”and then they tell me they were hit…they were hit and then forced…there was an attempted rape, or once five guys took turns.” Eventually though, and sometimes they changed the destination to drive around more and talk more; eventually a small trust, a reassurance will develop.
And they generally will ask if you’ve ever done whatever was done to them. Now I can exclude myself, I haven’t done those things–but then I include myself in the exclusion of the particular action, it doesn’t mean I am not capable;as a man we are all responsible for the way all men treat women. I must include myself in the guilt because as a man I am included in the guilt, no matter my own culpability.
Of course I drove mostly at night, but I picked up literally hundreds of women having just experienced such an event. But way before I began driving a cab…
I suppose like all fourteen year olds I developed a mad crush on a girl in the eighth grade. In those days tight dresses and or skirts/sweaters were the thing, so there were not many surprises when the clothes came off. And boy did this girl have just about every curve any fourteen year old could dream all night about. We sat next to each other in all of our classes, we walked together between classes, I table hopped at lunch, she table hopped with me.
After class, we went wherever we went, together, for an our or so. A few times she came to our apartment on the base, and we necked.
But she never came to school dances; she never hung out with the other kids on weekends Hell, I never saw her in anything but her school clothes except for the clothing she removed in my room (never all). I was mad for her, I thought she was mad for me. But, as mentioned, by five she was off, and on weekends no one saw her. I asked her why she wouldn’t go to the teen dances or hang out on weekends.
But the reply was her father said she had to be home to entertain his friends.
Well we lived on a military base, and a rather small one at that time. It was inevitable that this entertainment became exposed. It was inevitable it would become the talk of the school. But she only experienced it for less than the notorious fifteen minutes; she ran out at the beginning of the first class. There were pictures someone had taken, and they were being passed around. I didn’t know yet what they were, or even if they were of her; but she apparently knew and ran out of class.
I never saw the pictures and I’m glad. I have my own pictures of her in my memories and I didn’t need to have my beautiful pictures of her in my first embraces with a woman/girl distorted by those pictures–whatever they might have showed. But they were snatched up very quickly, probably only two or three ever saw them.
But my last vision of her was wondering what they were looking at in the front row, and she fleeing from the classroom, my attention not so much on her but on the commotion in the front. I think it was only moments after she ran out that she killed herself.
There was another commotion of course, as everyone fled outside. I still didn’t know about the pictures of her, but I knew everyone was sating, “L…just killed herself. “
I didn’t go look at her body, I don’t how she killed herself just outside the school room. I didn’t want to know, I never let anyone tell me.
But I did leave class and go the other direction,to our unit and I hated that I hadn’t understood what she had told me…and I did understand what she told me so I would intervene and prevent what was happening to her…she told me and I did nothing and I was guilty for her death.
I can’t excuse myself for my naivety, for being too ignorant to consider what her words meant. I knew they meant bad things, I knew “I have to entertain my father’s friends” was somehow wrong. Did she really like me or only need me. Of course if I had responded to that need…she wouldn’t have had to like me; she would have been sent off-base somewhere and her father would have been stopped sooner.
That is depression, people. That is depression, that such things happen.
Not to her alone; to many girls and women; and eventually to all of us… not just to the one like me who lost my love that day,but to everyone in a society where such a thing happens. To the fathers who encourage it and let it happen that had lost every bit of their own dignity to let it happen. Was this father undepressed?
Depression,mental illness, is society’s child, and only by learning to understand that depression and only by acting to end such debilitating harms to others’ personal development; only when we abandon our GODDAMNED self-esteem for group esteem will we begin to end depression.
And a little bit of knowledge—but I was too damned ignorant to comprehend what she meant when she said she had to entertain her father’s friends. Or I was more absorbed by being next to her and the effect on my self-esteem of being next to her; than to try to not be ignorant.
And I wasn’t really ignorant. I closed my mind to becoming unignorant. If I acted she wouldn’t be gone. So I just took her kisses and let her die by pretending to myself I didn't understand what she meant.
I betrayed her because my desire overrode her needs and I let my desires rape her needs.
The Therapy of Selfhood; the Therapy of betrayal
A curious factor about myself in a simulated (but actual) conversation with the therapist:
The therapist presents to me that I need to develop a stronger sense of self-esteem and concentrate more on what will benefit in order to be less depressed and gain greater happiness.
I refute the therapist. I tell him that in order for me to be less depressed then those around me must assume a greater importance and their interest must be more important than my interest alone.
The therapist tells me that that makes me have less self-esteem and I can never achieve happiness if I do not pursue my own interest. Furthermore, the therapist explains to me, I will remain so dependent on others I will remain miserable/unhappy/depressed.
But I’m miserable/unhappy/depressed because those who pursue their own self interest have made others miserable/unhappy/depressed, I reply.
The therapist gives me a prescription for some pills to make me less miserable/unhappy/depressed.
I ask the therapist the sixty-four million dollar question. If I take these pills will everyone else be less miserable/happier/and less oppressed, which is what causes us all to be disposed towards depression?
Of course not the therapist replies, they will only help you feel better, but if everyone were to do so, then there were be more content among more people.
Me, in retort, “of course we may not know if we are feeling bad if we all take our soma.”
“No,no, it’ not soma, it doesn’t make you unaware of the world, only not so depressed by it.”
“Well then there is no reason to take it if nothing changes but me…which is by the way what the purpose of taking the soma was, was it not?.”
But, no, I have low self-esteem, and if I will take this test on self esteem it will prove it and that in order to increase my self-esteem and feel better I will need to take the pills.
And so umpteen times I took the self-esteem test (Rosenberg Self Esteem Test; Janis-Field Inadequacy Scale) to prove to me why I needed to take my prescribed soma. (That wasn’t soma but could accomplish all the miracles of soma). And every single time my self-esteem registered off their self-esteem charts, I had too damn much self-esteem, so now I had to take a narcissist test (NPI; PIN;TAT;MCMI;PDQ). And every single time I couldn't even register a single percentage point of being narcissistic—I had no indications whatsoever of displaying any narcissistic tendencies.
But I can’t be congratulated because the more probable scenario is the test that measures self-esteem only to the degree it measures what one believes about the relevance of oneself only in regards to oneself; and as a matter of design it cannot (or does not) measure anything about a person who feels his self-esteem has no relevance other than for the esteem the society places upon it.
It’s not a real thing, self-esteem. One lacks self-esteem only to the degree that they become untermensch and are only narcissistic to the degree they think they are, or should become, the Übermensch. Which to me, is often an indication of not too much self-esteem, but too little.
To need to be in charge, to be the boss of others; to take from other personalities, and attempt to create somatic underlings with or without the soma, indicates such a lack of esteem for oneself that one must assume control over others by taking away their individuality to even begin to assume any identity for oneself that is not an identity that verifies itself only by whom or what one is in control of.
It is not that having regards for others more than self is illustrative of a lesser sense of personal identity, but that one’s personal identity becomes enabled by a dual process of placing the community interest above self—but also the community placing your interest above theirs, when the two can act in concert.
My quest is towards this binary need of human nature. But if I step beyond myself and try to lead people then I defeat my quest. But if I do not, my quest cannot succeed because no one will follow.
If I attempt to lead; I do begin to expect to be “obeyed.” The solution though, for me, is to lead by attempting to create an enthusiasm in others to embrace their others without trying to lead them to behave in any particular manner that is not harmful or abusive (verbally, emotionally, or physical.
Becoming Nihilistic
I know young people who say nothing matters. But everything of course matters.
This nihilism of individualism is a complex feeling that too much concentration on the individual and too little respect for individual personages leads to individuals needing to be recognized and becoming, or feeling they have become, unrecognized, becoming disinterested in the community in its totality. Nothing matters when the individual feels he no longer matter.
Often Nietzsche’s Superman is not the self who believes in hs own Superstrengths of character or mind, or even Clark Kentish powers of steeled strength, but in convincing others they have such powers and therefore have the right of command. Nietzsche was a sad little unrecognized loner, who wanted to be a hero to someone, but was mostly neglected as of second tier brilliance, mostly shuttled off to low academic posts of little acclaim His self-proclaimed Übermensch, literally the “above-person” was all those whom he saw treating him as an Untermensch (under-person) and in the 1882 book The Gay Science he introduces the untermenschen who are the masses who follow or worship the Übermensch. The only thing new here is Nietzsche’ effort to self-proclaim himself as an Übermensch without finding many takers except other untermenschen like himself wishing to feel superior to their superiors. I may sympathize, but there is nothing here but desperation and the utter lack of identifying with one’s fellow. Look, I’m no Nietzsche expert,I can’t read him, I find him anathematic.
But I don’t need to complete his writing to understand his sorrow. I’ve been presented, day after day for seventy-five years with people who feel as he did. People who want to be Übermensch but are cast off and forced to seek and follow the Übermensch who keep them from becoming more than untermenschen. They see in him the Übermensch they would like to be, but all they manage is needing to belittle those they can because they remain feeling belittled. They are in fear of the Übermensch upon whom they are dependent for their survival, who destroy them by perpetuating dependence upon them.
The caveat is that the superman can never himself become unsubjected to the same fear. The Superman–the Actor, the Writer, the Musician, the Politician, or any overachiever can never achieve enough. Loss of achievement, loss of fortune drives them into perpetual depression that they can’t accept. And so Elvis, Michael Jackson, Ernest Hemigway take their lives. So did mean Joe McCarthy. Forty-eight years old when he died of alcoholism. Of course all don’t take their lives, but they take others, push them and keep them in an untermenschenship to keep their own authority. And some might find comfort within themselves irregardless of fame.
{I don’t want to suggest everyone who achieves any “fame” must be driven by the desire that has become a need to be famous, but that those so driven will not find their need satisfied no matter how much fame they may achieve.
The nihilist hopes of resistance that really is a Nietzschean plea for recognition.
The teenage angst of identity, denied of having an identity only because it is not wanted he develops an identity of his own too soon. If he makes it through the wilderness of enforced extended childhood and into adulthood, he supposedly achieves the maturity of adulthood around thirty.
This is human learning as it is. We lose our identity altogether and disembody ourselves prostrate into a leap of Kierkegaardrian hope that we will be caught in the arms of God who replaces the Übermensch as the Übergott. Or we lose our identity by identifying ourselves not as a self who is in a community but a self who does something and what the self does becomes what the self is and that identity, not as a self but as the assumption of what one is. I am Politician is not an I who is a politician, but a Politician who has consumed the I.
Consumed by desires that have become needs we destroy each other and eventually we destroy the desires that have limited our needs. 1177 BCE. The Mayan collapse.
These led to (at least for a time) a release of the resources of necessity and the resources and life forms seem to have balanced for awhile as the over-rapaciousness of the environment decreases. Other times too many would be generals increase that rapacious nature sometimes witnessed in revolutions.
And so what happens to the world now? In my own madness of hoping for the end of the raped world, I find myself hoping for the very worst from the the world’s leaders and the actions of people to move towards collapsing the societal structures of being dominated by desires.
Can humanity rise as a phoenix with wisdom enough to not repeat itself but correct itself from its desires to use and abuse? If it could, then would not the world anti-democratic turn end up being our own ticket to survival…if it becomes bad enough…if the environment makes needs more pressing than desires…
But I can’t prognosticate…and so I just keep on hoping we can walk into any room knowing no one has been demeaned or felt themselves diminished.
And so I would like to announce the availability of my ebook is available for purchase.
Thoughts & Essays on Developing Personalities v.1 The Thoughts
by ken taylor
eBook
Overview
These thoughts attempt to understand the theories on how humans learn and how they develop behavioral cognition. A critical examination of the philosophical and psychological approaches and the relationship to 21st century scientific developments and studies.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/thoughts-essays-on-developing-personalities-v1-the-thoughts-ken-taylor/1146775517?ean=2940184434100
If anyone is interested in a hard-bound copy, pre-orders are being accepted.