So young and so clever...

Katarina Pietrzak.

Nina Björk.

From the foreword to a book “So young? And so clever!” by Katarina Pietrzak I got as Christmas present:

“I often feel trapped in myself. Often I have to fight what I have always considered my true nature. My way of being. The right way of being. I want too much. With time I have come to understand what prize I have had to pay for to want, how little in life that is free of costs. How I have always had to pay with consequences.

We live in a new time, a new economy and a new millennium. In all that is new it feels as something ancient has disappeared. The bottom in which you feel that feelings are landing. Where you can go to feel that you get a reference to what’s right and wrong and maybe [where you also] can steel a moment of relaxation. This depth has no place/space inside us anymore; we are even breathing shallower in a/this more and more bustling era. Can you recognize this?

We have bad conscience, but we don’t know to whom. We are lacking something, but don’t know what. We are irritated, but have forgotten why. And most of all we are maybe afraid of becoming altogether forgotten or exchanged.

Or we feel shame. The shame of being unable of managing. The shame of admitting that you let go of things you have held hard and steadfastly to. The feeling of losing the foothold and losing the highly valued and on depth needed control. Not knowing who you are without doing what you have always done. To fail. To judge yourself and in despair ask yourself why all other could, why all other but me? Why did I fall of all people? /…/

We live in an era and a part of the world where the achievements seems to have become a religion. You are what you do. Many people work not just because they have to, but because the work in itself gives satisfaction and self-esteem. The identity is constituted by an employment or the lack of one.

‘What are you working with then?’ is often the first question we get from new social acquaintances. Our identity is immediately established in new peoples’ eyes by what we are doing.

More and more people are working in the possibilities project which gives freedom and space to design your life and your work exactly as you want and have dreamt of. You have all possibilities in your hands, and it’s up to you making something from them. It’s you yourself who sees so you become something. Or somebody.

To become is important. Doing is important. Just being is so forgotten that it has become the most difficult of everything. And above all, so shameful. For who will be lazy?

The idea to this book was born in such a shame and cracked self-confidence. Along this work I have come to see exactly the same feelings in many of those who have been asked to contribute to this book. I could never imagine that this could be so difficult and so associated with fear, the feeling of failure, and exactly shame, to tell anybody about the achievements role in their lives. About how much one allows, or has allowed, this to govern ones life. What it has meant for ones life. What the consequences became. /…/

Many of those asked to contribute to this book said no. The fears were too many. To acknowledge, hand this out, destroy the chances in the future, become marked as ‘out burnt’, an unsuccessful poor wretch, become exposed to pity, be alone with ones thoughts, become misunderstood…

I have chosen to ask women only, maybe because I am a woman myself and because the mechanisms around how we achieve is interesting to me. It seems to be a certain sort of responsibility taking for the entirety and a need managing everything in women’s lives. But many men probably recognize themselves nevertheless. /…/

Breaking a leg is easy to explain and show, look my leg is broken, I have ache, the pain makes me tired, I have to rest I think. Even if the environment never has had this experience of a broken leg, they can imagine how it must feel [to a certain extent at least, my addition].

How it feels to break ones soul is entirely impossible to understand, for the one that has never experienced this [I am not sure it is for all…]. How much you even want [some don’t want to either??].

The way of living and working we have today, which we honour and value, doesn’t have to lead to a broken or even sprained soul. There are many examples of people feeling well and who has managed to find the balance in life [How many actually? And those who don’t thrive, why don’t they?].

But never before has so many people exposed themselves to risks of this kind. It’s not the first time in history, but something has happened, some sort of boundary has been passed and there is an explanation to all tiredness and to all tears. We have forced the ambitions, the achievements, results and speed, we have created a life/existence where it doesn’t seem to be space for saying ‘I can’t do this, it isn’t worth it, I don’t want to.’ /…/

Is it about a sort of deficit, in the soul, where cleverness and confirmation needs to become pumped into us to make us feel well, as insulin to a diabetic? /…/

I have always – eagerly encouraged by the environment – seen myself as clever. Not only oriented towards results but clever in the meaning dutiful, conscientious, loyal, emphatic, always willing, who cares about other people, who listens and is there. You can rely on me. I think one shall be there. I like helping people. Rather much. Or more correctly, always. And I achieve a lot, I do good things, I’m glad if I can support other people, and I have a strong drive/force. And I value this most of all my traits.

But it also gives me raison d’être, a better self-esteem, yes, simply a kick, to be honest.”

Her social life was totally sent off into a corner, a social life didn’t exist at last…

This morning I also read a review, “Where is the equality in the liberalism?”, over the new book “Free Souls” by Nina Björk based on a dissertation. The review you can read here too.

The reviewer writes that the freedom can show, or present, widely differing fundamental features in the societies where it’s allowed to be seen.

It’s in first hand honored where it’s lacking or newly found or where it’s fragile. Schopenhauer seemed to have said that man can never appreciate freedom until she has lost it.

Some sorts of freedom watch the ones whom want to be free to compete the other person to death with loving care. This sort of freedom is the economic liberalism the reviewer thinks.

Björk is criticizing the liberal outlook on man. And wants to discuss the “dream about the human being without limits.” If all liberalism is maintaining that nobody can or should become thrown into irons, why isn’t this fulfilled by liberals? (wouldn't all people be free in those societies, in all respects - but are they?). And she wonders: where is the equality?

English philosophers like John Locke and John Stuart Mills set out their ideal societies in systematic discussions.

The liberalism has existed in many forms. When Björk says that the liberal, modern subject is typically manly in its independence, seclusion and autonomy ought to cover most of the liberal directions.

Locke thought that active, energetic human beings were entitled to private property of considerable sizes and dimensions (and those who weren't active and energetic, of whatever reason, what abut them?). John Stuart Mills emphasized more than hundred years later the individuality and competition as considerable elements in the liberal teachings.

Björk refers to the Swedish author Victoria Benedictsson whose wants and being able to didn’t get together. She committed suicide.

The reviewer writes that questions about freedom also are questions about free will and free choices. Not least existentialists want to maintain that we constantly find ourselves in situations of choices, where we are forced to take responsibility for our lives by making decisions.

Determinists on the contrary use to maintain that people always are bound to conditions so they in fact never have any really free choices.

Yes, what yokes are we carrying? What burdens do we have on our shoulders? Are we still carrying and why?

The Wall of Silence…

Cherry Bird at my work place, picture taken with my cell phone camera.

Apropos punishments… What we regard as punishment? And what we maybe deny being a punishment? Thinking further on ”See No Evil -- A political psychologist explains the roles denial, emotion and childhood punishment play in politics,” the pschologist Michael Milburn interviewed by Brian Braiker in Newsweek, May 13, 2004. Earlier posting on this here (in Swedish) and here.

Miller writes in her book ”Breaking Down the Wall of Silence” (“Riv tigandets mur”) that she experienced the Wall of Silence already in her childhood. Her mother used to meet her with silence whole long days on end for to demonstrate her absolute power over the small girl and force her to obedience, "for her own good" of "love for her small child." She needed this power to mask he own insecurity to herself and to others, but also to withdraw from the relation with her child, a child whom she had never wanted (though maybe denied both to herself and to the environment, not actually knowing what love is probably, because she hadn't experienced true, genuine, real love herself from HER caretakers when she grew up. No excuse though).

And the mother didn’t have to defend her sadism surrounding the small girl with silence, as if she didn’t exist.

The mother saw her attitude as a fair and well deserved punishment for offences the small girl had committed, as her duty giving her a lesson.

This was awful (we can probably not imagine how it feels) for the child. The small girl Miller was couldn’t feel this really then probably, but these feelings (or most parts of them) became suppressed. And so she in turn became insensitive to HOW awful this actually feels, not only to grown ups but not least to a powerless and helpless child. See Berit Ås on the Master Suppression Techniques, where "making invisible" is the first she mentions.

But what was even more painful, Miller writes, was the child’s hopeless efforts to get to know the reason(s) for this punishment. In this omission, negligence a message laid she writes: If you not even know for what you have deserved this punishment you have no conscience. Search (look for), ransack yourself and do your utmost till your conscience says what sort of guilt you have brought down upon you. Not until then you can TRY to exculpate or excuse yourself and dependent on the mood of the one in power you can, if you are lucky, MAYBE be forgiven.

Miller thinks she was exposed to a totalitarian regime and that she was despised (looked down upon) and sadistically treated.

She had to believe that the fault lay in her that her mother didn’t’ speak to her but surrounded her by silence day after day, it must have been her meanness (see Bosch on the Primary defence) that made her mother behave like that (not that the mother was mean!!). That her mother didn’t answer her questions, didn’t care when she wanted an explanation, avoided her looks, so the chikld understood what she had done and change her destiny, being included again in the community, so she could understand her mother (and her strange and very mean behaviour in fact, a fact she should have needed help seeing, a behaviour she should have needed help questioning and seeing as wrong).

As the actual truth was so brutal and unbelievable she had to deny it. For this she had to pay a VERY high price: namely her full awareness was limited and she has been obsessed by guilt feelings since then (for her inherent badness, for which she has to pay her whole life, the rest of it?). Probably reinforced by other people she has had around her to whom she has been drawn?

She escaped this truth by searching the fault in herself, blaming herself (see later how we blame the victims here and there, and meet them with contempt - for weakness!! And for having drawn things upon themselves), and getting blind for her mother’s mendacity (förljugenhet) and thirst for power.

Later she tried to weigh this loss and truth up by philosophical speculations about “the unbelievable truth.”

From the chapter “Ut ur förvirringens fängelse” (“Out of the prison of confusion”) at pages 23-26 in “Breaking Down the Wall of Silence”.

PS. I will probably update this later. A lot at work this time of the year… But I need to reflect upon things too, even if I don’t really have the time.

Concert this evening with our piano-pupils, with rehearsal before it. Now 12 pupils first!!

A lot to organize here; informing all and everyone, practicing with students, I can’t name it all.

And it is over 35 ears since I read English. I didn’t read it the whole gymnasium. I regret it! But I wonder if I was prepared then either…

A church-concert Thursday May 29 in the evening with a group I am co-responsible for and I am accompanying many of them. In June we are going to have a teacher’s concert too, where I am involved. With only a handful of my colleagues.