Impostures
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Every man and every woman is a star. There is no individual underlying cause of "feeling like a fraud," that would be individual to each star that has the issue. But as a general rule, it appeared given that AoD described a book that said that Gender Role Expectations, had root in the problem. I was saying that I don't think it is limited to male gender alone. You wrote "While one can assume that the vast majority of the unenlightened fall into standard societal roles and thus would follow similar cultural programming (your "accurate representation of their Ego and mental emotional states of being"), that isn't the same as proving that there is a y-chromosome cause for that programming." That's the same as saying (without having to show how big your intellectual dictionary is) "that isn't the same as proving that it is a maleness only problem."
So we don't disagree. I knew that the minute I read it. When I later read that it was aimed at me, I became very confused as why so. With such a sharp sword as you do seem to possess, my good sir (using that word in the common vernacular, not in the deserved title sense), why is that something you want to challenge? You are still claiming it doesn't say what it says? Do you still insist on evoking my name and saying "I challenge you, sir!" when you've said nothing that contradicts me? Is it because I don't make obvious with flapping my dictum in public that I have an intelligence quotient of 168? Is this why my existence creates a disturbance in your force and you find it necessary to point a finger at me whilst you speak so Victorianly?
Nay good sir! I say we are not at odds with each other! I say sooth, instead, and pardon my tongue for being too simple atimes. But we do not disagree.
And alas to answer the question of "pro or anti-gender role expectation" what I meant was that my original statement was a statement that would be used to support not involving gender role expectation in a child's life if that can be possible. To encourage the "softer" or "weaker" and typically discouraged emotions in a boy, to accept, allow, maybe even encourage in the girls that they don't have to be required to feel "the way little girls ought to feel."
Currently you speak with forked tongue, my strange friend. First you tell me I misread you were clearly above I have shown you this is not true. We both agree, from what I see, that the issue discribed in this alleged book (which itself, the book, specifically was not intended to be the topic unless I misread AoD) should not be allowed to lead one to believe that it was only a maleness issue. It is irrelevant if the book actually states that that author believes it is a maleness issue, it is irrelevant if it provided scientific evidence and peer reviewed data that it was witness to a male issue, I was asked my opinion about the conclusion the reader drew based on a single premise of the book as far as how that conclusion can be viewed in a Thelemic light (of Scientific Illuminism if you prefer) and possibly applied. I even suspected that AoD was asking for as much input from men as possible to "illuminate" her knowledge of "men-think." I was not asked if the reader drew the correct conclusion that the book intended the reader to draw, I was asked how I felt about the correctness of holding that conclusion and what useful ways it could be brought to fruition in child rearing concerns.
After telling me that I misread you, you say "Just that I find the belief that those gender roles are fundamental rather than the effect of societal programming highly suspect. " So, to use the language of Los, what does this word salad mean? If their effect is suspect (ie. one questions their value) how are they "fundamental" (ie necessary)? Or does fundamental (bedrockish) mean something else to you?
I didn't answer the philosophical aspect of her question about our "global culture" because what I said in my post disclaimed the original premise that it was biological. Also, I don't have to answer all of her questions, I answered what I felt my ability and relevance would serve and nothing more. I am not here to pull out my Wang (computer) to try to prove how much more informed I am about computer history because that has no relevance. Also, my personal philosophy on whether a trait is good or bad is irrelevant because "~
SCIENTIFICFICFICISM" has taught me that that answer could only be a relative one good for some, not good for all. I did approach her first part, contrary to your claim "you chose to engage with the second half of this" & "I chose to engage with the first half."ILLUMININISMISMBut you win, perhaps, because I've decided that size and length do matter. And I tire of this verbosity and will concede defeat to your superior wordiness.
Meanwhile, the facts above speak volumes on their own.
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@Takamba said
"When I later read that it was aimed at me, I became very confused as why so."
Please show me where this happened. To my knowledge, I never aimed anything at you. I aimed at the thesis of the book ("the thesis that it seems to be suggesting appears to be a bit reductive to say the least.") and used your argument as ammunition ("As Legis and Avshalom ** have suggested...").
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I have insecurities, and pretty much every person I've ever talked about insecurities says they have them. Do you not have any insecurities, kasper?
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@Gnosomai Emauton said
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@Takamba said
"When I later read that it was aimed at me, I became very confused as why so."Please show me where this happened. To my knowledge, I never aimed anything at you. I aimed at the thesis of the book ("the thesis that it seems to be suggesting appears to be a bit reductive to say the least.") and used your argument as ammunition ("As Legis and Avshalom ** have suggested...")."
@Gnosomai Emauton said
"I was actually reacting to Takamba's mention of gender expectations, not yours.."
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@Takamba said
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@Gnosomai Emauton said
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@Takamba said
"When I later read that it was aimed at me, I became very confused as why so."Please show me where this happened. To my knowledge, I never aimed anything at you. I aimed at the thesis of the book ("the thesis that it seems to be suggesting appears to be a bit reductive to say the least.") and used your argument as ammunition ("As Legis and Avshalom ** have suggested...")."
@Gnosomai Emauton said
"I was actually reacting to Takamba's mention of gender expectations, not yours.."
"And again, I ask, where did you read that something was aimed at you? The post that you quote above is my correction of my original post in which I wrote:
@Gnosomai Emauton said
"AoD would you mind posting the title of the book you're referencing? As Legis and Avshalom have suggested, the thesis that it seems to be suggesting appears to be a bit reductive to say the least. I'd be curious as to how the author came to hir thesis and whether or not it has statistical/experimental data to back it up. I suspect it's just a gendered generalization based on a specific (western) societal outlook."
I mistakenly wrote Avshalom's name instead of yours. If we substitute in your name for Avshalom's, we get:
@Gnosomai Emauton said
"AoD would you mind posting the title of the book you're referencing? As Legis and Takamba have suggested, the thesis that it seems to be suggesting appears to be a bit reductive to say the least. I'd be curious as to how the author came to hir thesis and whether or not it has statistical/experimental data to back it up. I suspect it's just a gendered generalization based on a specific (western) societal outlook. "
I did not anywhere aim anything at you. I was not reacting against you. I was not calling you out for a bad argument. I was replacing my incorrect attribution of Avshalom with the correct attribution to your post. I clarified which of your posts I meant by shorthanding it's main thesis ("The main truth is not just about men, though - even women (some women) can fall into gender expectations of behavior" (emphasis mine)) in order to distinguish it from your later reply to kasper81 regarding nature and universe wanting males to be independent.
For clarity sake, the fully developed idea of what I was saying in that paragraph, using an overflowing bowl of word salad, would be:
AoD would you mind posting the title of the book you're referencing? As Legis suggested, "it sounds as if the book you're reading presents a gender-biased understanding of what Jung termed the "persona," or social mask... I would say it's true, but it's not just true of men. Of course, it depends on the presentation. If the book is talking specifically about a masculine kind of persona that most men create, it may have some things of value to say. But any idea that the development of a persona is specific to men alone is absurd." Furthermore, Takemba mentioned that "The main truth is not just about men, though - even women (some women) can fall into gender expectations of behavior." I would tend to agree with both of these suggestions that the thesis of the book appears to be a bit reductive but I am less willing to trust my own opinions on the matter and would prefer to build up my argument from empirical data. I'd be curious to see how the author came to hir thesis and whether or not it has statistical/experimental data to back it up. I suspect it's just a gendered generalization based on a specific (western) societal outlook.
Please tell me that clears things up.
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@kasper81 said
"This book seems to be saying that men in general are insecure. They're not"
That's on par with saying that cats in general aren't black.
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@Gnosomai Emauton said
"Please tell me that clears things up."
I think it clears things up. I read the post as "I was actually reacting to Takamba's mention of gender expectations", not that you corrected the sentence that mentions the names of the people who lead you to believe that the book has a reductionist point of view. In other words, I took that post at its word.
Let's look at your entire statement so you can see where I got your intent wrong:
"I was actually reacting to Takamba's mention of gender expectations, not yours"
This is in reference to your entire post, a post where you argue that gender role expectation is not limited to either gender and also I believe you mentioned it is not entirely universal among cultures. You and I will agree on that truth.
"but, even so, they weren't referencing the book's arguments."
At this point you believe that the "they" in your statement is "people" but you never in this post mention people, nor were "they" the main subject of the post being referenced. The "they" in this sentence in your mind represents "Legis and Avshalom," but Legis and Avshalom haven't been referenced in this post, so the unqualified pronoun "they" appears to the reader to be "Takamba's mention of gender expectations." That is "Takamba's mention of gender expectations...weren't even referencing the book's arguments" is the grammatical way I read your statement.
Try reading it without knowing that Legis and Avshalom where anywhere implied beforehand (because at this point, any mention of them as a reference (not as subjects) had long past):
"I was actually reacting to Takamba's mention of gender expectations, not yours but, even so, they weren't referencing the book's arguments."
Then you say:
"In light of that, I'd like to retract my earlier references to other posters and just allow this to stand on my own reading of the OP. I'm about to check out the Amazon link."
Now you reference the "other posters" (without specifics, thus Takamamba is again singled out for some reason). Are you seeing how this may have been misread because you carelessly waved a gun around a room?
As far as I'm concerned, I now see how the misunderstanding arose and I don't expect to hear about it again more than one more time.
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@Takamba said
"As far as I'm concerned, I now see how the misunderstanding arose and I don't expect to hear about it again more than one more time."
Close enough for government work.
I will never again post from my phone in order to ensure that I have the full copyedit web-interface at my disposal so as to avoid, as much as possible, any potential mis-reads of what I write.
In return, might I ask you to not jump to the worst possible conclusion about the anonymous guy on the other end of the line? If it seriously all boils down to this little bit of nothing in a clumsily worded correction, "Wow. Please read what I wrote and don't ever reply to me again" seems like a major over-reaction. My syntax in that one sentence was clumsy, granted. But the main thrust of that post was:
- I screwed up in citing Avshalom when I actually meant Takamba.
- On closer examination Takamba's argument doesn't directly reference the book's arguments either **.
- Consequently, I would like to retract all of my references to prior posters' comments [Legis and Takamba and Avshalom are the only possible antecedents] so as not to inadvertently mis-use their conclusions in the development of my own argument based on "my own reading of the OP" [this mainly motivated by my awareness that I had just screwed up in mis-citing one person and my unwillingness to inadvertently do it again].
We're all human. We all make mistakes. Ask for clarification if something seems at odds with common sense because, generally, the answer will be simple and banal.
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A life-cycle:
- Do your best.
- Fuck up.
- Fix it.
Everybody does number 2.
You usually only want to hang with people who do 1 and 2.
The best people do 1, 2, and 3.
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@Angel of Death said
"I was a reading book the other day about men and relationships and an idea was brought out that I had not ever truly given much thought to, but one that is knocking about in my head so much now that I wanted to see if I could get a bit of a discussion going on. My reason for this is two fold, I live in a world with men so I should try to understand them, and I am the mother of a 12.5 year old who will someday be a man and I wish to empower his as best I can.
The idea in the book was that men have a part of themselves, an aspect of how they relate I suppose, that in some way makes them feel like a fraud, an imposter, like they are not all they show themselves to be but are feeling/thinking themselves much less. This part that drives this aspect appears to be a construct of the ego, And that men have a deep fear of being found out, exposed, humiliated and disrespected because of this aspect.
Please understand I am not male bashing at all, and do not mean to point fingers or be confrontational, I am trying to get feedback on this because I do believe for most of the men in the world, this would seem to be an accurate representation of their Ego and mental emotional states of being.
I would say though that from my understanding of the tenets of Thelema, of will, love and star that this aspect of being an imposture is effectively transmuted when a man embraces his authentic self, achieves KnC, and brings that energy/perspective out into the world through his actions and relationships.
In looking around at my personal representations of the male population I see men who I know are impostures, liars, untrue, dis eased, and I see men whom I highly suspect are but have no solid basis for my suspicions. I also see though men who are almost what I would say, brutal in there integrity to not deceive and be true no matter how uncomfortable it is for others.
Because I work closely with young boys I am interested in finding ways to keep them authentic, to bring out (keep out?) this clean clear honest way of relating to the world. To show them that they do t need to put on a fascade, to be an imposture. The root of imposture, is impost which means a tax or duty. If what this book says is true and that men have a biological impulse to feel like an imposture in their core (which I would then speculate has a source in the regenerative, reproduction biological urges). Is there anything to be done about it? Is it some program running in the background that serves a higher purpose and should not be tampered with? Is this aspect of man, this aspect of his self image something that has brought our global cultures to this point where most men are not capable of living authentic lives.
For me, when I am doing something new I am unsure of myself and force a confidence to help me through the moment. But those moments are brief and fleeting, this book spoke like most men live in a state of unsurity, or at the least have a heavily fortified aspect of their personality (ego?) that is like a helpless infant needing mother.
Again, I think that the core teachings of Thelema, love, star and will liberate us from these issues of ego and gift us with an awakened state of embracing life to it's fullest."
I think what helped me most as a kid and same for my friends was practicing martial arts and "extreme" sports(skateboarding, bmx...). Those two kind of sports encompass many things and are a great alchemical tools. Also they often are considered very attractive by male kids so with proper guidance one can find a sport which he likes and by the time he enters teenage, if he's still involved in it it will help him greatly deal with the ordeals to have such a tool. What's great is they are very "teenage proof" as they are considered "alternative"(or crazy) by society, so at the same time it gives older role models for the kid and when teenage is reached it feels "cool", not a thing that "belongs" to "old bastards".
Music too is good but the lack of body work makes it less a "protection" from physical tentations. Whereas a good skateboarder or judo fighter will most often take care of his body(globaly) as it is used in his art. So i'd say first a sport then music if it is a will.
Sometimes just mentioning such sport or showing a video/picture/story at the right moment can make a kid "click" and say "hey wanna try this !"
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Thanks for the great suggestion about sports. I actually have tried to get all the boys involved in not only team games, which foster cooperation, but individual disciples like running, and martial arts.
I'm glad I brought this issue up, all the responses were very enlightening. Even just observing the discussion and it's sub text, very helpful. Thanks.
