One of the topics I have posted on several times is what I have called "control" - which, in the context I use it, refers to people attempting to force others to do things the controller wants, for the controller's comfort or reward.
This can be done in a whole range of ways, including psychic means (which I have talked about), social conditioning (I find the change of attitudes towards "cheer leading", which used to be seen as "obviously" a manly thing and is now seen as "obviously" a feminine thing, to be both hilarious and a good illustration of the effects of this*), and so forth.
One of the ways this control is exerted is through social pressures. Those social pressures come about through a range of means - gossip is one (stopping gossip, including not tolerating others doing that, is a "Personal Change Assignment" in an off-shoot from the Grove of Gyhldeptis called the Rangers of Gyhldeptis - both of which I work with), another is the expectations around houses (I won't call them homes) in the suburbs: lawns will be mowed, lawn grass is expected with vegetation all neatly contained in pots or high-maintenance garden beds, and colourful weeds are to be frowned upon. Now there are some valid issues here - long dry grass is a fire hazard, and piles of rubbish can create problems with vermin, but a lot of it is people getting annoyed at something looking different ... maybe there is even an element of "I spent my lifetime doing all that weeding and sweeping, so they darn well should too" (which suggests being upset because someone else has shown that there was a choice, another option, rather than just following like sheep).
Having a richer, more verdant garden (provided it is done in a water wise and environmentally responsible way!) has a few benefits:
I mentioned having a garden in a way that is environmentally responsible. Mowing the lawn, taking the clippings away, and then buying lots of artificial fertilisers to keep the grass alive is NOT environmentally responsible!
Consider this. One of the ways to find out what a healthy plant needs is to analyse what is in a healthy specimen. That means, if your grass is healthy, the clippings will actually have what is exactly needed. Don't cart your lawn clippings away! Mulch them back onto the lawn! That, after all, is pretty much how nature operates - have a look at some information on Permaculture for more.
One of that things that people are skirting round with respect to managing climate change is that we WILL have to change the way we live, and this WILL cause some pain. One of the ways that some people will feel that pain is in changing the types of gardens they have - they will have to get used to a different look, one that they probably consider "messy".
This is an issue of contention between me and one of my neighbours at the moment: she doesn't like the flowers that are shed by one of our trees. (We're renting, by the way, so we inherited the choice of plants from others; they're not brilliant.) This woman has been extremely aggressive about this issue, which hasn't gone down well when the owner has had the garden excessively cut back - to an extent that removed our shade and privacy, resulting in the house being considerably hotter, which has exacerbated some health issues - seriously, in my opinion.
And it is basically all about control ... in this case, her wanting to control me, to force me into living the way she wants me to, the way she feels comfortable with.
Actually, that whole (still ongoing) episode is a good illustration of why I don't want to live in the suburbs. Menzies once made a comment to the effect that the control over people's lifestyles, and enforcement of conformity, effected in loungerooms was far more severe than anything he could do in government.
(This was obviously pre 9/11 - and for an excellent commentary on the responses to 9/11, if you can, read Bruce Sneier's article "Beyond Security Theater", originally published in "New Internationalist", ed. no. 427, Nov. 2009, pp. 10-13. For partial copies see:
http://www.motherjones.com/
http://jamesfallows.
http://www.economist.com/
I don't want to be living in other people's pockets. I don't particularly want to be forced into interacting with strangers who may well be different types of people to me. I want to have a sense of psychic space around me, and be able to relax and focus on interacting with those I chose to be friends.
(Incidentally, life was easier for me in the rougher suburb I came from, Frankston North, than here in the inner northern Melbourne suburbs - at least back in Frankston North people would generally leave me alone. Also, odly enough, it was easier to get contents insurance in Frankston North.)
I know this goes against what many spiritual people favour (by which I am referring to the "lets bring back the village", or "lets have street parties and get to know our neighbours"), but I prefer to choose freedom over sociability. I am not so desperate for human interaction that I need to interact with my neighbours; I do wish to have some freedom to live my life the way I choose to do so, including my choice of garden. In fact, if there was a pagan version of the monasteries of various religious paths, I could see myself fairly happily living there - provided it was one of those versions where the inhabitants are in relationships, and my partner genuinely and of her own free will wished to do the same (which I suspect may not be the case :) ).
I know there are elements of forced interaction to deal with karmic issues: the keys ones of those, however, are usually experienced through families. And on the topic of families, here is an edited extract from an email I recently sent a friend regarding families:
So, in terms of something positive from this rant (which it is - my apologies, and normal service will hopefully resume now), perhaps consider how you may be expecting others to conform to pervasive norms, or how you may have been conforming to pervasive norms without realising that was what you were doing. If you consider tit and then decide to conform, that is quite OK: it is the unaware agreement that is a problem.
* There may be some universal constants underlying all this - have a look at "The Green Cardigan Wearer and the Professor: a Story of Hope"for a somewhat sad illustration of this - the story suggests that people have a strong tendency to want to be prejudiced against something or someone, so as we deal successively with sexism, racism, slavery, homophobia, transphobia, etc, etc, etc, there always seems to be just one more thing to deal with ...
Love, light, hugs and blessingsThis can be done in a whole range of ways, including psychic means (which I have talked about), social conditioning (I find the change of attitudes towards "cheer leading", which used to be seen as "obviously" a manly thing and is now seen as "obviously" a feminine thing, to be both hilarious and a good illustration of the effects of this*), and so forth.
One of the ways this control is exerted is through social pressures. Those social pressures come about through a range of means - gossip is one (stopping gossip, including not tolerating others doing that, is a "Personal Change Assignment" in an off-shoot from the Grove of Gyhldeptis called the Rangers of Gyhldeptis - both of which I work with), another is the expectations around houses (I won't call them homes) in the suburbs: lawns will be mowed, lawn grass is expected with vegetation all neatly contained in pots or high-maintenance garden beds, and colourful weeds are to be frowned upon. Now there are some valid issues here - long dry grass is a fire hazard, and piles of rubbish can create problems with vermin, but a lot of it is people getting annoyed at something looking different ... maybe there is even an element of "I spent my lifetime doing all that weeding and sweeping, so they darn well should too" (which suggests being upset because someone else has shown that there was a choice, another option, rather than just following like sheep).
Having a richer, more verdant garden (provided it is done in a water wise and environmentally responsible way!) has a few benefits:
- it attracts and sustains birds
- it attracts and sustains faeries
- it creates a bit of a carbon sink, where we can start reclaiming some of the carbon we have been putting back into the atmosphere.
I mentioned having a garden in a way that is environmentally responsible. Mowing the lawn, taking the clippings away, and then buying lots of artificial fertilisers to keep the grass alive is NOT environmentally responsible!
Consider this. One of the ways to find out what a healthy plant needs is to analyse what is in a healthy specimen. That means, if your grass is healthy, the clippings will actually have what is exactly needed. Don't cart your lawn clippings away! Mulch them back onto the lawn! That, after all, is pretty much how nature operates - have a look at some information on Permaculture for more.
One of that things that people are skirting round with respect to managing climate change is that we WILL have to change the way we live, and this WILL cause some pain. One of the ways that some people will feel that pain is in changing the types of gardens they have - they will have to get used to a different look, one that they probably consider "messy".
This is an issue of contention between me and one of my neighbours at the moment: she doesn't like the flowers that are shed by one of our trees. (We're renting, by the way, so we inherited the choice of plants from others; they're not brilliant.) This woman has been extremely aggressive about this issue, which hasn't gone down well when the owner has had the garden excessively cut back - to an extent that removed our shade and privacy, resulting in the house being considerably hotter, which has exacerbated some health issues - seriously, in my opinion.
And it is basically all about control ... in this case, her wanting to control me, to force me into living the way she wants me to, the way she feels comfortable with.
Actually, that whole (still ongoing) episode is a good illustration of why I don't want to live in the suburbs. Menzies once made a comment to the effect that the control over people's lifestyles, and enforcement of conformity, effected in loungerooms was far more severe than anything he could do in government.
(This was obviously pre 9/11 - and for an excellent commentary on the responses to 9/11, if you can, read Bruce Sneier's article "Beyond Security Theater", originally published in "New Internationalist", ed. no. 427, Nov. 2009, pp. 10-13. For partial copies see:
http://www.motherjones.com/
http://jamesfallows.
http://www.economist.com/
I don't want to be living in other people's pockets. I don't particularly want to be forced into interacting with strangers who may well be different types of people to me. I want to have a sense of psychic space around me, and be able to relax and focus on interacting with those I chose to be friends.
(Incidentally, life was easier for me in the rougher suburb I came from, Frankston North, than here in the inner northern Melbourne suburbs - at least back in Frankston North people would generally leave me alone. Also, odly enough, it was easier to get contents insurance in Frankston North.)
I know this goes against what many spiritual people favour (by which I am referring to the "lets bring back the village", or "lets have street parties and get to know our neighbours"), but I prefer to choose freedom over sociability. I am not so desperate for human interaction that I need to interact with my neighbours; I do wish to have some freedom to live my life the way I choose to do so, including my choice of garden. In fact, if there was a pagan version of the monasteries of various religious paths, I could see myself fairly happily living there - provided it was one of those versions where the inhabitants are in relationships, and my partner genuinely and of her own free will wished to do the same (which I suspect may not be the case :) ).
I know there are elements of forced interaction to deal with karmic issues: the keys ones of those, however, are usually experienced through families. And on the topic of families, here is an edited extract from an email I recently sent a friend regarding families:
I have found my "family of choice" (my friends) to be a far better indicator of what is or isn't good for me than some of my other families. I also have an interesting range of choices of family: I have an adoptive family, who probably fit the definition most people use of "family", and my birth family. I laugh when people comment on the family resemblance between my father and I, but we get on quite well. That relationship improved - also with my mother - when I moved 2,00km south. Maybe doing that was a way of marking myself as an independent adult.
That didn't apply so much to my adoptive sister: she and I didn't get on very well (some strong karmic influences there - my fault, obviously) and still don't always. My birth sister, on the other hand, and I get on quite well.
There is one birth family uncle I will never formally meet. That birth family uncle, however, I think I met at the sailing club in the country Queensland town I spent my teenage years in, but he had such an unpleasant aura that I wouldn't even admit to being adopted. On the other hand, one of my adoptive family uncles, a gentle man who wouldn't tease too far and had been one of the choco's in PNG during the Second World War, I adored.
Being family, in my opinion, doesn't mean one will or even should get on, and doesn't give one any sort of "right" to impose on others. In fact, I think if rellies do try to impose on one, they are actually harming their own spiritual development, and I will generally stand up to them and remind myself that this if for their benefit as much as mine. So, in terms of something positive from this rant (which it is - my apologies, and normal service will hopefully resume now), perhaps consider how you may be expecting others to conform to pervasive norms, or how you may have been conforming to pervasive norms without realising that was what you were doing. If you consider tit and then decide to conform, that is quite OK: it is the unaware agreement that is a problem.
* There may be some universal constants underlying all this - have a look at "The Green Cardigan Wearer and the Professor: a Story of Hope"for a somewhat sad illustration of this - the story suggests that people have a strong tendency to want to be prejudiced against something or someone, so as we deal successively with sexism, racism, slavery, homophobia, transphobia, etc, etc, etc, there always seems to be just one more thing to deal with ...
Gnwmythr
This post's photo is yet to be posted
Tags: attitudes, bullying, control, daily life, family, interactions, interpersonal interactions, judging others, lifestyles, personal characteristics, personal responsibility, respect, society,
First published: Wednesday 18th November, 2009
Last edited: Wednesday 18th November, 2009
