| 2003 and not really taken as I thought I could be
Since 2000, I've argued that our govt was fooling itself into thinking it's liberal by supplying more boxes for people to fit into, rather than also helping those who want to rip more boxes apart. But I can live with Aunty Helen's way, I s'pose ; I found out that by simply acknowledging boxes, sometimes these can be transcended rather than entrenched - I initially refused to think so. It's a bit of a hit-and-miss set up as things are though, with the boxes being readily accepted. This incidental and inconsequential stuff is a bit harsh, abrupt and whiney. I hope I'm not as bolshey anymore as I sometimes sound here. I find it all quite childish, but also remember how some things in my life came to the fore under a real juxtaposed pressure. I was in a real state of reacting to all sorts of things around me and messily asserting what had otherwise long been relegated to the mere background. It was suprising to learn how many people never knew that this stuff below was just pedestrian old hat from my teenaged years. I've grown on, but people taking me at face value don't even seem to click at anything I've been processing in various forms since childhood without any of this very very basic self-absorbed ranting to allude to what I suppose I started with. They seem to need to hear it! I send my apologies to the rest! (please click the X button or the double arrow tab usually found in a far corner of a Geocities advertisement to close such an insert within any page whenever necessary) |
THIS PAGE ITSELF IS OF CLAIMS RUSHED AND UNQUALIFIED TO MY SATISFACTION, AND WHICH WOULD JUST BE DISTRACTIVE IF PLACED IN THE FURTHER LINKS OF MINE ALSO GIVEN HERE. Links : - Skip to a simpler approach as to why "independence" began to leave me cold Read Krishnamurti & awareness of conditioning - going against something is still reacting to it All these webpages would be repetitive for the likes of many I've led here, because they expected nothing but a pretty "normal" person in me all along. Please forgive me for anxiously reiterating that this material may be alienating to those who already know me, and so I really hope they only read me in small doses when and if they feel like it. These webpages are really here now for the uninitiated who sometimes really need to see what I can fling at 'em. It is easy to go overboard elaborating on details coz I'm used to having to in order for some people to register to how I can participate in life in ways that I would appreciate, and want to pursue my interests where I can. I think everyone would eventually sound as I sometimes do in giving as much away. Up until now, I've really shafted my own privacy, and after getting my own head around these past messes which affected me in ways where I had to depend on people realizing things were not as they seemed, that's it. No one will ever have as much access to my future personal life, and I'll be back to writing about ascertaining the significant confidence limits used in a multivariate description of a mammalian pest assemblage ... or something (a further formal degree may not be likely, but I'll be in that general field in ways that I can).
|
More whims and background beyond a taste for acoustic and electric guitars - I'm not one into public celebrations, ritual, formalities and ceremony - it just all feels so fake and makes my skin crawl. Others in my family are the ones who study human cultures, including ceremony and tradition. On other occasions, they'd be the ones who would just escape with me out the back to get a swim, a drink, find a second hand bookshop or to get on with some real work instead of staying at functions. I guess that was never a great way for me to learn any community spirit. I just don't understand the need to force it as artificially as it seems to me in a way that ridiculously perverts anything else others might want a "community" to be. Why there are such things as weddings and funerals nowadays has at times been pretty much beyond me (unless the company made it feel just like any other relaxed family thing - I have to say that coz I've loved seeing everyone regardless of the drippy or sad reason). One goes for other people, and I'm quite happy on that level. I wish different intentions were respected rather than overridden into some glorified imposition of one meaning upon all others. Prizegivings and cappings were beyond me too until very recently since there are kids all over my family now and they seem to lap the stuff up. I find that just as weird and as tacky as ballroom dancing and idiots actually enjoying musical theatre (and some people do like that sort of stuff, for fuck's sake - even a close friend of mine does, but I forgive her!). I love a decent opera instead. With respect to ceremony, I still sometimes revert to a very intellectualizing approach, "Well, I guess some need symbolism like I need Piha - guess it would mean a lot to someone's Nana". Everything we ever do is cultural, it would be absurd to deny that. As a student of animal behaviour, I go along with culture as being learning and other more subtle means of non-genetic "information" transfer between individuals. We can be aware of how it affects us in everything we do as far as we are able. Indeed, I believe we should be. But why the hell do we have to be such conscious slaves to whatever gets demarcated quite mindlessly as "culture" ... ? It happens anyway! This is probably why I love the everyday so much. I like to think that I am nurturing culture as it has been integrated within me, and people around me, as individuals, but -sheez- I don't know how ostentatious that really sounds... ?? Labels cannot describe ways in which such integration takes shape and can be inapproprate depending on how much these are used to circumscribe what there is to elucidate. In other senses, labels describing a culture can remain valid and require a disciplined approach to appreciate most fully. Getting back to what I began discussing, there is now a much fainter part of me still screaming out that for this day and age, I just don't get why people should need ceremony and contrived formality anymore. But I've always gotten by. I went too far one way when hacked-off at easy targets, although as I age, my family has helped me to accept that my questioning is just how I am and how I really thought this place would end up with it alright for those busy loving life in their own way and exploring how to respect each other as individuals to not bother with showy surface rigmarole. I believe my approach has a bit more guts to it than being just a carryover from teenaged angst, and does not preclude me from contributing and helping others. I've been taught that there is a lot to grasp about perspective in Maori and Pacific art from afar without even knowing and I do love that - Robyn Kahukiwa (on canvas) and Lyonel Grant do some breathtaking work, as did the older master carvers. Growing up in museum basements playing with my matchbox cars on the floor with people whose work I ended up using in exams has always shown me what scholarship (and good science management) really is - it can be a life of humility, just being serious when one has to be, and ensuring that colleagues and students feel comfortable in finding their own way, rather than "leading". So, yeah, I get qualms when I'm asked to dress something up to be something else ; meanings still emerge for us all.
So please excuse me while I have a good gripe off on a tangent unlike the more even tone on most of the other pages … INCIDENTALLY OCCURRING GRIPE TANGENT ONE From the perspective I am most comfortable with, legal unions / marriages seem to still be needed in a society with individuals too dumb to automatically consult legal advice whenever a major financial transaction, the needs of children, or wishes for future medical intervention, warrant safeguarding or review. However, none of us are brought up in exactly the same way, and with the same priorities. I understand that what society makes vulnerable, it needs to protect. Laws are pragmatic and I wish these weren't looked at as providing more explanatory power for how things are than that. What is important once technicalities are able to be set aside is what is in our hearts - and taking care of this in ourselves and in each other. Sometimes this indeed means making arguably the most extremely solemn promises to each other - promises that adults can arrive at in a way that makes these very much their own, and which we endeavour to keep as far as we are able. If others need to put a name on this, well, I suppose I could be further assimilated into society for a lot worse … INCIDENTALLY OCCURRING GRIPE TANGENT TWO It was once just hard to grieve at funerals with every Tom, Dick and Harry garbling nonsensical platitudes in your face, but now I have an acceptance that such behaviour relates to the essence of what humanity is for others ; All I used to really think about is the senseless use of native timber and unnecessary use of formaldehyde when looking at some coffins. However, I now appreciate more about grief, and having loved ones around me. I can hardly think nor eat on the day I'm saying goodbye to those I love. I once used to claim that I could be incinerated immediately in cardboard if I'm of no immediate medical use nor worth being pickled for research once I cark it. I still can't wait to get home to Lower Hutt at times to be with and to comfort family when we need each other the most. I've had a rethink on how tough I was once trying to be whilst stating other things. INCIDENTALLY OCCURRING GRIPE TANGENT THREE It's frustrating that I learnt quite naturally about money & mortgages around the dining table in watching and helping Mum & Dad with financial & legal stuff, also with our solicitors and all that, as a child. I had to opt out of life for reasons quite different, but was left high & dry by the recklessness of people who now say that I couldn't cope coz people like me were never given any expectations and skills as if I would never have any freedom???! They're still being held up as great models people point out to me. But I see now how my capabilities that I assumed any idiot would have known I had if they listened, were slowly undermined until I was a wreck and it could be suggested to anyone that I was therefore useless. I hate the way I always keep alluding to how pretty normal and mundane I think my basic upbringing was and how my life can still be (now I know I was extremely lucky growing up, and unfortunately it seems I'm used to having to demonstrate it now in order to ensure I've engendered trust in being given opportunities) - that habit should wane, I hope. Otherwise, who knows if I am just an attention- seeking git … ? I honestly can't tell. REWARDS IN LIFE ITSELF I also suppose I still get hurt in that a lot of what I believe in and wanted to demonstrate can work well, and is what I loftily thought New Zealand was all about, for that matter, is how kids need to be raised to have minds of their own. I guess I have always really wanted to show how it works, but now have nothing to back up my claims. I can't believe how one particular old fart who has tried to set himself and his wife up in our national media as parenting gurus, has sucked so many in with his banality - if I was a kid, I would have wanted to thump him one for expecting kids (& parents) to be so dumb and unthinkingly compliant - I'd mumble "up your reliance on reward-based systems, mate, and just stick to taking your own grandkids to Disneyland". When encouraging kids to suss out a lot for themselves and to develop a keen contextually-appreciative empathy in relating to others is being criticized for not working or as though it ain't taking place, I think a lot can be attributable to just shoddy and surface understanding of what is required. Living and learning are rewards in themselves. Trivially speaking myself, even the commercially-compromised rock band, Aerosmith, could be said to have gotten closer to the mark when vocalist Steve Tyler belted out the old adage, "Life's a journey, not a destination..." ... One has just got to be bloody absurd really if you teach about focusing on haphazardly-defined endpoints to the exclusion of appreciating the richness of the supporting processes. When joy comes along spontaneously, processes and events are all blended in together anyhow, but in trying times especially, life can seem so gutless going through the motion from one contrived activity to another just for the sake of recognized participation, rather than participation that incidentally comes about in the course of living. Links : - Poetry ; care of emotions without dogmatic belief systems ; "motivation" Krishnamurti & awareness of conditioning - going against something is still reacting to it. |
