From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Nov 06 2002 - 19:59:07 MST
Further notes: After writing my previous post on this
issue, I realized that the real problem had another
interesting memetic component that I had not given
sufficient attention.
There is a profound psychological divide between those
people who base their self-esteem on what they ARE
versus what they are CAPABLE of - or perhaps what they
HAVE versus what they have EARNED. Take your typical
skin-head, neo-NAZI. He or she buys into a whole
package deal that says that BECAUSE you were born an
Aryan, that already makes you special, instead of
being a stone-stupid looser. When a black person then
does something outstanding IN SPITE OF a host of
impediments and obstacles, the skinhead naturally
feels threatened.
You really can't be on both sides of this comfortably.
Either you take pride in being: white, black, Indian,
a man, a woman, an aristocrat, born into a Boston 400
dynasty, making it into Mensa (and able to attend
meetings when your van/living-quarters is running)
etc. ... OR, you take pride in what you have
accomplished due to your own hard won virtues and
capabilities - as in --- "I DID IT MYYYYY WAY!"
Is that clear? If you're a bonafide Boston Blue Blood
with a long line of Hahvahd grads among your ancestors
and an estate paid for with money looted from the
public via political pull and inside information (And,
believe me, there are such people.), then you will
look down your nose at the Noveau Riche who merely
invented a cure for cancer or a new computer design.
Those poor rich kids. How could they reject the
money, the cars, the fame, the women, the drugs... It
destroys most of them. They never get close to the
point of being able to say they could have earned it
on their own.
And, if you're a woman who has been told by her
mother, her friends, the media that the MOST precious
thing about her is that she is a WOMAN!!!! - i.e.,
that she can do the very same thing that a flatworm is
capable of - have sex and babies, then you are going
to be naturally opposed to any doctrine or appearance
that makes individual achievment important.
It isn't penis envy. There are plenty of men who have
a similar thing about being a male, for sure.
However, men are taught from birth that it's their
role in life to DO things, to save the world, fight
the great battles, that they personally and
individually are what matter. So the gender pride
thing usually stays compartmentalized with men.
So, it's cultural. And it's not MEN who are holding
women back. It's the utter refusal to give up this
claim to worth based on something that you didn't earn
and had no choice about. And, since this is a
neurotic, unreal value structure to begin with, there
is no real point of satisfaction. You can't satisfy
contradictory or unreal goals. So, not able to change
your values, you seek symbolic satisfactions - or, you
try to prove that the opposing real values are in fact
a worthless sham.
So, if an industrial genius is willing to beg for your
attendance and get down on his knees to beg you to
marry him, based on his buying into this same mythos,
then productivity, rationality, all those corny
"virtues" don't hold a candle to what's between your
legs, right?
And if you buy into that whole sad mythology, then you
sure as hell aren't going to be pleased with the idea
that it can be done without you, that some scientist -
probably some stupid MAN! or one of those cold science
women who were probably too ugly to get a man - might
be able to build something better than you could do in
his or her lab. And you might just have to find
something useful to do and make it on your merits.
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