PetalswiththeWind 09/12

“Believing is half of being! Whatever you believe, is what you will be…”
Robert Getchell
Point of No Return

Hegemony, emotional terrorism? Disturbing, constantly interrupting my thinking with feelings. My emotional heart strings, plucking and plucking, as if I am a violin…
My FEARS, anxieties, hopes, dreams, wishes, happiness, love, hate, anger, resentment, bitterness, hopelessness, purposes, purposefulness, fulfillment, lacking, voids, weaknesses, strengths, motivations, drive, spirit, subconscious, soul, broken, disregarded, bruised, hurts, disappointments, regrets, things that you can’t take back, circumstances that can’t be changed, situations that loses or gains…
All my feeling, my emotions, my thinking, my thoughts are all in a disarray…
Be still.
Hegemony, emotional terrorism, distance yourself, see and observe, take it in, if emotions get caught up, they will always win! Philosopher Miguel Ruiz, refers to hegemony as “Society, hooks your attention” (Ruiz 2), big fish in a big pond catch the “small” fish, put all the small fish together to make up the masses. What bait is put on the end of the hook? Do we take it? Or do we analyze and study it, brilliantly discovering all the truths, and really seeing, perceiving, the intent behind it? Do we react instantly? Emotionally? If we react emotionally, then that hook sinks directly into the middle of our hearts, that is the only way to catch a human! I am not a linear perceiver, I’m not sure if I’m circular, square, rectangular, round, who knows? Just because I do not accept the things that are attempted to be shown to me as the ultimate truth, does not make me crazy, odd, weird, paranoid, avant-garde, any of those instant judgmental labels can not define me in totality (Lyotard 43). Linear perception offers instant judgment, it presents one quick picture for your emotions to react to. To have an instant knee jerking reaction, it is triggered, emotions are caught up in the machine of hegemony. If you instantly put a one directional label on me, are you partaking in hegemony, enabling a patriarchal interlocking system of oppression, reigning over society by emotional manipulation?

If you do not take the time to empathize with what I am saying to you; are you not willing to take a look at where I’m coming from; not willing to even take a peak into my binoculars? How interested in me are you really, caught up with only superficialities; or do you want to take the time to look and see what is underneath? No one is asking you to become me, but you are my neighbor. I have to live next to you and you have to live next to me! I respect you and you respect me, otherwise nobody will be respecting anyone. In order, for me to look underneath the label, is for me to assess all possible meanings, all possible truths that there may be. If I identify a truth that has potential to harm me, incapacitate, or alter me in any negative way. What am I suppose to do? Accept it. Do I fight back and cause harm onto you also, that is just making the situation worse. I can not react emotionally, then I am caught up in that game of emotional monopoly, meaning I will perpetuate all the same hurts and mistakes. I distance myself, I say words, that are going to put me in a deeper realm, a deeper consciousness, my subconsciousness. I’m going to program myself, in my innate nature of being human. I’m going to recognize that the person in front of me, trying to exploit me, is also human, and I will not one dimensionally fault him. I allowed Habermas to get a hold of my emotions so much last week, that it took me 3 days to read his article; every time I was able to perceive another perspective other than what he directly said in linear language (Thanks, Dr. Rog, Dr.Henton, Saussure, Macherey, Jameson, Classmates, etc.), I got angry, and I went off on these emotionally triggered tangents. After attending class on Tuesday, and hearing what Dr. Rog had to say, I “let things simmer” (Henton). I used my brain, instead of my emotions to process things first (Brecht); I can be aware of these emotions at an intellectual level, instead of allowing myself to fully bite into “the hook” and getting an innate affect off of something so surface, so superficial.

Schizophrenia, Manic Depressive (Bi-Polar Disorder), Attention Deficit Disorder, Depression, Anxiety Disorders… Are these the “presenting” symptoms of a sick society? Mentally sick? Physically? Do artists (word should inclusively extend to writers) owe it to society, to be “assigned the task of healing it? (Lyotard 40)

I think so, and apparently at one moment Lyotard agreed, “postmodernism consists in an abrogation of hegemony” (Quoted from Portoghesi, 47).

Yes, but honestly, I realize that these are just opinions, suggestions, ideas, for a better way of living… a better reality, a deeper realm of it.