Comments on: Alert. En Vida

By: Jennifer Cascadia Emphatic

Jennifer Cascadia Emphatic — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:09:47 +0000

Very common here. Perhaps more so because I’m read as foreign and the Other.

By: profacero

profacero — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 03:47:05 +0000

Yes, I notice a lot of that too, at least in pockets.

By: Jennifer Cascadia Emphatic

Jennifer Cascadia Emphatic — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 03:37:12 +0000

It seems to me that the way people adress each other here (although not at the University), they are shouting and yelling through layers of psychic deadness. It’s almost as if when they want you to do something different they raise their voice and harshen their tone, and emit something like, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” as if they were addressing a locomotive that had lost its breaks.

I often wonder why, if people here want me to do something differently, they don’t just ask me to. But in my past experiences, they take the approach I’ve just described, and I end thinking them idiotic.

By: profacero

profacero — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 02:41:32 +0000

It does seem to me though that that coldness *is* one of the keys to Anglo middle class culture.

By: Jennifer Cascadia Emphatic

Jennifer Cascadia Emphatic — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:37:49 +0000

To clarify my thought in the first two paragraphs, I tended to relate concretely to my environment (which was a huge part of my meaning) rather than abstractly and inwardly.

By: Jennifer Cascadia Emphatic

Jennifer Cascadia Emphatic — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:34:12 +0000

Not completely. Actually I was far from logocentric, and kept a great distance from that approach, which I see as a feature of not relying heavily upon language in order to think. (Of course, this approach rather limits communication with outsiders, too, although it seems to work effectively enough with those who see the world as you do.) I would say that my psyche was constructed in terms of the Jungian ideal, but not, perhaps, in terms of the Freudian ideal, because my pre-Oedipal self and my ego were on a par with each other, as a kind of interrelationship and duality without hierarchy. (Freud, however, seems to favour the idea of ego domination, which to Jung would be “ego inflation”).

So when I came to Australia, I was shocked at the way people treated each other — it seemed so cold and negative. They barely skimmed the surface in terms of relating to the people underneath. I reacted with recoil against this mode of behaviour, which seemed to embrace thanatos, rather than eros.

It was this, more than the cultural differences, that stymied me.

By: profacero

profacero — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:55:45 +0000

So: one *can* stay at that level that long?

By: Jennifer Cascadia Emphatic

Jennifer Cascadia Emphatic — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:58:41 +0000

Right. I think I stayed much longer at the pre-Oedipal level than you did. At least until I migrated, at the age of 16, I still relied on the general presence of an atmosphere, or the power of gesture, to express what I wanted to say. I think this is because the culture I came from was largely pre-industrial, and conventional modes of communication were not fully systematised yet.

So after 16, I migrated, and it was as if I had to start again to learn how to ’speak’. I also think this difficulty was related to the fact that those who have lived in the industrialised first world for a long time have an ego-centred perspective that I was by no means familiar with. In fact, I had not been exposed to this perspective or approach for the first 16 years of my life.

The other aspect of this is that my parents did not speak to me as an adult, or share their concerns. To them I was a child, with childish concerns, who would magically come into adult awareness at the stage of puberty. So my emotional relationship was not with them but with my peers.

So, in all, I had to teach myself how to understand the Western cultural approach through reading lots of books. It was too late to learn it from my peers in my late teens.

By: profacero

profacero — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:37:37 +0000

Hi Kiita and gracias! Erudite, but fragmented. I think this story is the most real story.

Jennifer – I remember my third birthday party and most of that year. I have isolated memories from earlier, but I can remember that when I was three, I had more early memories than now. The earliest fragment is from before I could walk, being in a playpen with a jungle gym.

But I remember age three better than some subsequent years because it was the year of really acquiring a sophisticated level of English. I could still remember how it felt to be someone who couldn’t formulate so many complex sentences and thoughts.

I considered that language was amusing and interesting, a powerful technology, but that it was losing me my connection to the planets.

By: kiita

kiita — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 03:44:57 +0000

I like this story that you invented for yourself to get through the application process. It is inspiring. You are erudite. And I sincerely hope that you do get what you applied for.