Why this alliance between unhappy women and unstable men who think that pretending to be a woman will somehow make them happy? Since the former are unhappy being women, what makes the latter think they'll be any happier? Are there trannies who imitate happy, stable, religious, and conservative women? Maybe, but I don't know of any.
It reminds me of people who are unhappy under a free market system, and imagine they'd be happy under socialism. Never mind the untold misery created by socialism. This time it will be different!
This goes to the whole attraction of "activism," and the sort of person attracted to it. In general, people who lose themselves in activist movements do precisely that: they hate themselves but are able to "lose" and "transcend" this self-loathing by identification with the transcendent ideals of the group. This always requires projection into an out-group, so all the self-hatred is now experienced as emanating from the outside-in.
I read an amusing example of this process this morning, via the NY Times. In it, the author ponders the question of why conservatives are so darned "anti-democracy." Being that this is the NY Times, there is a total absence of self-awareness, nor any examination of the premise, which is regarded as axiomatic. It is very much like a delusional person who begins with the principle that martians are in control of the government, and undertakes a sober investigation to understand how and why.
He cites five reasons why those of us who don't accept his delusions are delusional. For example,
many conservatives -- especially white conservatives -- feel more threatened than in past decades. They worry they are part of a fading minority.
Naturally, no examples are given, reminiscent of the medieval peasant who has never met a Jew but only knows they have horns. The author is quick to point out that the concerns about "diversity" actually have a basis in fact, being that the country is indeed becoming
more racially diverse and [is] destined to become even more so. It [conservative anti-democratic mania] also happened as the country was questioning traditional ideas of gender and sexuality and becoming more secular, with religious observance declining.
Obviously racial diversity is just a red herring, since it is Democrats who are freaking out precisely because Latinos are abandoning them by the millions and thereby making the GOP more "diverse." Where are all the conservatives who aren't laughing themselves silly over this tectonic political realignment, as Democrats become the homogeneous party of affluent, credentialed white Karins of both sexes?
It also turns out that the great majority of Americans are not on board with the groomer agenda, which obviously makes us "pro-democracy." But even if the majority of Americans thought it was a good idea for the state to be involved in the forced sexualization (not to mention sterilization and genital mutilation) of children, it's more than a bit tendentious to call this "anti-democracy" instead of just pro-child.
Another reason we hate democracy
is modern media. On the internet, falsehoods can spread more quickly and be repeated more frequently than, say, the Birchers’ claim that Dwight Eisenhower was a secret communist.
For example, did you hear the one about Russia hacking the 2016 election and Trump being an agent of Putin? Or Trump calling Nazis "fine people?" How about the crazy story about Hunter's laptop being real? Or the J6 scuffle being an "insurrection"? The internet is just a buzzing hive of crazy conspiracy theories!
Without all the Pulitzer Prizes.
Let's get back to this question of "witches." The modern mentality is simply to reject both their existence and the very possibility of their existence. But this doesn't make them go away, it only makes them go unnoticed.
Back when people did believe in witches, what were they seeing? Was it just a hallucination? That's unlikely, since hallucinations are rare even in individuals, let alone whole cultures. Genuine delusions are also rare.
On the other hand, projection is not only common but ubiquitous, so the perception of witches was likely some combination of real unattractive and/or threatening traits in the so-called witches, mingled with a fair amount of projection from the people preoccupied with these genuinely unattractive scapegoats.
But there is some kind of enduring psychic reality underneath the projection, hence the persistence and universality of witches:
The archetype of the "witch" is burnt deep into the European psyche, recurring again and again in folklore, fairytale, and fantasy. The old hag who lives alone in a spooky cottage on the edge of the village with a black cat: she is wicked, uses magic spells to achieve her diabolical ends, and she is to be avoided at all costs (Dutton).
Why do such images haunt the collective psyche? What is their source?
Let's pull a dusty volume from the shelf called The Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend, and see if it offers any guidance on the subject.
Says here that "belief in witches exists in all lands, from earliest times to the present day" -- which means that the belief is truly timeless and universal, apparently part of our inborn, archetypal psychic structure with which we interpret experience. These may be thought of as pre-conceptions, or empty categories, that await fulfillment by experience.
It seems that although the category is universal, it accumulates a lot of particular meaning depending upon this or that culture -- similar to how marriage is universal but acquires particular forms in different cultures.
Interestingly, witches are associated with the "most horrid crimes when they either kill children or offer them to devils in most accursed wise," and also "impede and prevent [the] power of procreation." It seems that witches were the first "pro-choice" activists.
They are indeed spiteful mutants, in that they
practice witchcraft for purposes of revenge, or out of envy or jealousy, or to impose their will or wishes on someone else.
The deeper point, I think, is that, just as there exists a complex "biosphere" that is the larger context for life itself, there is also a "psychosphere" that serves as the larger context for thought, or for Mind Itself.
We all participate in this nonlocal web, nor can we help doing so, and it always features some sort of structure for the management of unwanted and unacknowledged psychic material -- in other words, for the projection of things like envy, jealousy, greed, violence, whatever. It serves as a kind of psychic purification system, without which the individual would be forced to live in his own private psychic septic tank.
One of my favorite Democrats is Keith Olbermann, since his use of conservatives to manage his own psychic demons is so transparent. Let's check in on his twitter feed and see how he's been doing lately. For him, witches and devils are everywhere:
Newspapers -- stop calling [conservatives] "pro-life." Until they're anti-gun and pro-health care, they're just Theocrats imposing their bullshit religion on others.
Dear Congresswoman "Right to White Life," If there's anything worse than a Nazi, it's being a dumb Nazi. Don't be a dumb Nazi.
Maria Bartiromo used to be a business reporter but now sells fascism for a living and sounds like she's 125 years old and drunk, talking about somebody ELSE showing signs of decline. [That would be the perfectly healthy Biden, whom anyone can see is as sharp as Olbermann himself.]
This creature Kari Lake is inciting political violence and needs to be prevented from continuing to do so.
Texas is a failed state. Its GOP are THE Worst Persons In The World.
Again, what would he do -- how could he live with himself -- if not for the psychic safety valve of projection?
What strikes the former psychologist in me is the "over the top" characterization of witches in the past, and Olbermann's equally over the top characterization of conservatives in the present.
Psychic continuity amidst historical change. But we're out of time, so to be continued...
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