Bill Plotkin

Limit the options and dull the minds

Standard

“It’s not easy because your heart is closed off, but yes, you must move into the future.”

Random bits – the bits that piqued my interest and kept me reading anyway – from the sort of New Age book as I finally close it up and move on to something else…

“Arrested personal growth serves industrial ‘growth’. By suppressing the nature dimension of human development (through educational systems, social values, advertising, nature-eclipsing vocations and pastimes, city and suburb design, denatured medical and psychological practices, and other means), industrial growth society engenders an immature citizenry unable to imagine a life beyond consumerism and soul-suppressing jobs.”

 

“…there are two important questions in life, and it is essential not to get them in the wrong order. The first is “Where am I going?” and the second is “Who will go with me?”

 

“They have not learned what Alan Watts called ‘the wisdom of insecurity’– that life is a hazardous adventure (which is what makes it interesting and joyous), that an artificially secure life is a dull one, and that significant security is impossible because change is unavoidable, illness and injury are common, and death inevitable.”

 

“For over one hundred years, mainstream American education has been systematically tuned to produce, on the one hand, blue-collar workers, and soldiers, and on the other, white-collar scientists, technologists, military officer, business managers, and career professionals. The idea has been to ‘keep America strong’, which means more successful than other nations in competing for Earth’s limited resources, on which all human economies are grounded. This has been accomplished in the United States and other Western societies by creating a large workforce of wage slaves and soldiers and a sizable cadre of sharp and ambitious minds capable of managing that workforce and creating technological advances for the mark of military-economic ‘progress’. Consequently, we have a bifurcated educational system successfully designed to limit the options and dull the minds and aspirations of the first group while both sharpening and narrowing the minds of the second. The education emphasis for the professional class is on thinking, but thinking in rather shallow and constricted modes. Independent, critical thinking and any kind of feeling, imagining, and sensing are minimized, marginalized, or discouraged because they are deemed irrelevant or detrimental to industrial development or personal fulfillment. Another reason these innate human capacities are suppressed in Western societies (and must be) is because they easily expose the egocentric idea of ‘progress’ for the self-destructive and world-devastating fantasy that it is.”

 

“In our society, the late teens and early twenties are often thought of as our one chance in life to sow wild oats. This way of thinking belies an unconscious co-optation of our innate wildness — our true, abiding, and sustainable vitality. Something in us is truly wild and wants to stay that way through our entire life. It is the source of our deepest creativity and freedom. When we say about youth, ‘Let them have their day, their wildness, their fun; soon enough they’ll settle down like we all do,’ we’re betraying the fact that we’ve made our human world too small for soul. We’ve abdicated a critically important part of our human nature.

Even the phrase ‘sow wild oats’ suggests that, like oats, our wildness is doomed to domestication. Egocentric society believes these human oats (and their sowers) are not meant to remain wild. Young people might briefly be allowed their ‘freedom’, but it’s rare that they are encouraged to uncover, celebrate and claim their full wildness for a lifetime.”

All quotes in blocks from Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World by Bill Plotkin, 2008.

 

Speedboat

Standard

“I always listen to Lloyd Cole in the summer.”

I feel the chill of it – the words, actions and interactions feel like the movement of a speedboat, racing effortlessly over just the glistening surface of the water. I am watching from the firm ground of the shore – he waves as he becomes a remote speck. The interaction is one-sided and fragmented, much like the speedboat’s glide, interrupted by occasional bumps, as it flies across the water.

What feels like a purposeful distance is created, preserved and extended, the boat traveling further out of reach by the second. What is it that makes this so? The not knowing where to take a deeper discussion? Avoiding having an unpleasant conversation? An inability to know where to plunge your anchor? Too many things going on at once? From the edge of the water, I can only wave back meekly, knowing I won’t actually be seen, and anything I could say or ask cannot be heard. And for some time, seemingly forever, standing stock still in the bitterly cold wind, which isn’t much time at all really, I wait and wonder.

Pierced by this whole experience, shockingly brief as it is – I am changed and restored to a better version of my truest self, but this imparts no magical wizardry – I am unable to make anyone else feel the same way as I do or to feel anything at all, really. And am likewise unable to know exactly what it is that another feels because I doubt he even knows with any clarity, or if he does, he’s sailed so far away that he can’t convey it to me. Which is part of why he is out on the lake skimming lightly across the water, possibly going so far out that there’s fishing to be done and lures to cast.

It’s strange how the more, and more deeply, you feel you love someone (and consequently want to be with them), the harder it is to tell them that – or tell them directly exactly what you feel – or talk about it in any way. Especially when you feel certain you bear your feelings alone – there is nothing mutual or shared about it.

In response, I embody a second, separately functioning person from myself, involuntarily splitting into two parts – the one I allow to feel, be open, be vulnerable and to question, and then the one I preserve for logic and analysis. Maybe this is an astrological trait (dual roles), maybe this is, as the New Age book I read cautioned, the “Loyal Soldier” who went to war for me in immature ways to foster self-preservation as a child (and whose tactics continue to drive emotional life in an immature way now that the “war is over”, as the book put it*).

Either way, both identities are paralyzed and don’t say one direct word about real feelings because revealing comes with not only the possibility of being destroyed but also feels like an imposition. Saying things aloud makes them not only real (and unerasable) but starts to force an agenda on the other person, influences them unduly, may pressure or oblige them to take on something they don’t want, are not ready for or even inveigle them into a conversation they don’t want to have. I have no desire to set a trap or inadvertently create an environment in which it’s possible to feel trapped.Thus the whole matter becomes a blizzard in the brain and heart, obscuring the words and actions that should be realized, or becomes something that is haphazardly regurgitated in circuitous, erratic, piecemeal blog posts here or there.

…And yet after some time feeling as though a part of a curious speedboat détente, he, rapidly speeding away from me and disappearing into the horizon, and my daily life returning to normal, one of the parts of the split identity, the non-feeling split, begins to dominate. It becomes a lot like the time I advised a dear Australian friend that if she wanted her American boyfriend to show more interest, she had to pretend she wasn’t interested. To which she replied, “But by acting less interested, won’t I just actually lose interest?” To which I enthusiastically exclaimed, “Well, yes! That’s the beauty and the whole point of it!“At least for the emotionally stunted! You do it initially, ostensibly, on the surface, hoping to be seen, acknowledged and missed (knowing this will not be the yield), but the real underlying and long-term aim is to lose interest yourself so that any outcome is a manageable outcome. Or it will be an outcome that does not hurt, at least not the part of the personality that pursued this savage, self-sacrificing strategy.

The analytical part that remembers and looks at all the words that have been said, all the clues and hints dropped (even if there weren’t really clues or hints – all words once spoken are now being processed and interpreted that way in this part of the brain) ascribes a unilateral verdict to the situation and moves on accordingly. Move on. It feels logical, familiar and comfortable because it pre-empts most possible pain. Move on. It soothes the mind with the casual way it gives birth to an indifference that grows day by day, so that I no longer even look to the water to see the speedboat buzzing, making its rounds, or perhaps no longer even walk to the shore at all. Move on.

Eventually feigning disinterest leads to the promised land of real disinterest and – bonus points – boredom. Moved on. At least the logical half of the self can buy into that, offering itself sterile congratulations for not getting its hands dirty while nevertheless doing the dirty work of crushing the feelings of the other half. It does not matter that it was early days; it does not matter that I knew what I was getting into and that this was always where it could lead or end.

The heart – the crushed part – has no response to this logic. It does not even speak this language, but the heart is not driving, so it has no say.

Ella Mi Fu Rapita! (She abandoned me) – Gavin Ewart
“Die Liebe dauert oder dauert nicht.” –Brecht

Her boredom took her away. So simple.
She just became bored with me. No other rival
experienced the entrancing smile with the dimple
or put down his drink in joy at her arrival
or loved her in taxis that stream like ants
through London, fingers under her pants

caressing her holy of holies. Oh, no,
it wasn’t someone younger, bigger or better.
She went because she had the urge to go,
Without a phone call, telegram or letter.
From our last meeting she just walked out –
a few pretexts perhaps. What were they about?

Nothing too serious. A red bow in her hair,
as she lay naked on the bed, knees-raising,
stays in my mind. I know I had my share.
Love is all programmed, it’s all phasing,
There’s a beginning, a middle and an end.
A lover’s life is not that of a friend,

who by and large is able to take it or leave it.
For love there’s a critical path – it goes on.
It can’t go backwards or sideways, believe it,
That’s all; a dream, a tremendous con,
And when it’s over, you’re out on your own.
Most life, they say, has to be lived alone.

And what can the lover do, when the time’s come,
when THE END goes up on the screen? Yelling,
rush into the street, lamenting her lovely bum?
Get friendly with men in bars, telling
how sweet she was, praising her statistics,
or admiring his own sexual ballistics?

No, that’s no good. Love lasts – or doesn’t last.
And all the pink intimacies and warm kisses
go into Proust’s remembrance of time past.
Lovers must never crumple up like cissies
Or break down and cry about their wrongs
If girls are sugar, God holds the sugar tongs.

It may even feel somewhat comforting to let go of the idea of being in love (“it’s so hard to love when love was your great disappointment“) because I think we all know that when you are in love, no one wants to hear about it. They want your misery. Misery loves company.

Photo (c) Paul Costanich – not quite a speedboat, but it will suffice. (It’s a “ski jet” according to S. Haha)

*From Soulcraft – Bill Plotkin:

“Each of us has a Loyal Soldier sub-personality, a courageous, creative and stubborn entity formed when we needed somewhat drastic measures to survive the realities (sometimes dysfunctional) of childhood. This sub-personality’s primary task was to minimize the occurrence of further injury, whether emotional or physical. The Loyal Soldier’s approach to this task was – and continues to be – to make us small or invisible, to suppress much of our natural exuberance, emotions, desires and wildness so we might be sufficiently acceptable to our parents (and/or other guardians, siblings, teachers and authority figures). The Loyal Soldier learns to restrain another sub-personality we might call the Wild Child, our original, sensual, magical, untamed self that has an essential relationship to the soul and is not interested in limiting itself in any way.

Common Loyal Soldier survival strategies include harsh self-criticism (to make us – the ego – feel unworthy and thus ineligible for Wild Child actions that might bring further punishment, abandonment, or criticism); placing our personal agenda last (so as to not displease or arouse anger or envy); other codependent behaviors (e.g. caretaking, rescuing, enabling) to stave off abandonment; pleasing but immature and inauthentic personas; partial or complete social withdrawal (to minimize hurtful contacts); adopting an unpleasant or downtrodden appearance (to protect us from criticism); restricting our range of feeling by encouraging us to always be in charge, busy, angry, ruthless, withdrawn, and/or numb; and suppressing our intelligence, talent, enthusiasm, sensuality, and wildness by locking up these qualities in an inaccessible corner of our psyches. … The Loyal Soldier’s adamant and accurate understanding is this: it is better to be suppressed or inauthentic or small than socially isolated or emotionally crushed – or dead.”

“The Loyal Soldier did, in fact, keep us safe (enough) in childhood. The problem is that the Loyal Soldier’s strategies become bedrock to our survival and are defended to the death – even after the war is over.”

Your own dictator

Standard

“How could I tell you anything? You are not even talking to me.”

On to the second of the two “New Age” books I agreed to read:

“Remember that self-doubt is as self-centered as self-inflation. Your obligation is to reach as deeply as you can and offer your unique and authentic gifts as bravely and beautifully as you’re able.”

Self-doubt and struggling with a lack of sense of self are two different things – but interrelated.

I don’t feel paralyzed by strong self-doubt, and I certainly don’t feel like I lack a sense of self. But I do have those moments of doubt that stop me – maybe not the doubts that tell me I can’t do something. More that I doubt whether I have the strength to persevere through difficult things. I feel this keenly with practical things – do I have the fortitude to push through the difficulties and complexities of learning and understanding all the things I would have to learn and understand to take on X career or Y project? I never feel this doubt or self-questioning otherwise. But then, what of this obligation to reach as far, as wide, as deep as possible into your own capabilities?

Is it really an obligation? To whom? Yourself? The world? I wrote yesterday about projected expectations, and other people assuming things about you. I had a conversation with my father recently (it doesn’t happen often; he is the king of assuming things about others), and he told me something about his sudden bouts with anxiety and the nervous and constant buzz he has in his stomach; he asked if I had ever felt that way. Oh, only every day of my childhood. He was incredulous when I said this, “But why on earth would you be nervous or anxious? You were so smart.” As if being smart erases the kind of self-doubt, nervousness, shyness that shadows you every minute of your life – all it does is help you craft an identity, authentic or not, that you can use when you are out, forced to interact in the world. Does the innate ability or intelligence you possess eventually outweigh or overtake all the doubt or nervousness – or the complete misunderstanding or blindness that those, supposedly closest to you, have applied to you?

Are we obligated by having a natural gift or talent to pursue it? Sure, it seems a waste not to, but are we shirking a duty or responsibility by ignoring our “unique and authentic gifts”, or merely letting ourselves down?

Ultimately, as Julie Carr writes, “You have to be your own dictator
and the law is, hate yourself if you have to, but don’t stop doing the thing you said you were going to do”.

FORECLOSING ON THAT PERIL
–Julie Carr
I’ll keep explaining—because maybe you still don’t get it
Those children in California (substitute any state), dead from gunfire—
Let me begin again in a little roof garden with my friend
A perverse reader, he listens to my stories as if they were TV
I mean he mocks me lovingly on the roof and at the library book sale
My friend is not a banker but a prison activist
He used to be a philosopher, but like many philosophers, he’s taken a turn
that should be easy to understand
The trajectory from philosopher to activist is like the curve of a single brushstroke across a large canvas
Artists in the fifties paid attention to that
I hate flat language like this, but I’m pretty flat
sometimes. You have to be your own dictator
and the law is, hate yourself if you have to, but don’t stop doing the thing you said you were going to do
As I tell my daughters often
Emotion is a site of unraveling (JB)
I admit, gripping my T-shirt
I wish I were writing in prose an unfolding intensity that shocks history professors and prison activists equally
Later, in the grass, we’ll practice gymnastics and that way contribute our sweat
to Our Ephemeral City

And, reflecting on the doubt, and the not-entirely-accurate identities we inhabit in figuring out who we are, I realize we are like animals who shed their skin. You change identities no matter who you are, and the former you still informs, as memory and experience, but does not define, as the previous New Age tome I read wisely posited:

“To relinquish your former identity is to sacrifice the story you had been living, the one that defined you, empowered you socially – and limited you. This sacrifice captures the essence of leaving home.”

The writer also cited one of my favorite poems from Derek Walcott (here’s a piece); it half-applies:

“The time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the other’s welcome,

And say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.”

Photo (c) of Mt Rainier by the late, great Paul Costanich.