Text 5709, 99 rader
Skriven 2010-03-07 21:59:06 av Lee Lofaso (3:800/432.0)
Ärende: Exceptions
==================
Hello Everybody,

Sigmund Freud described a certain character type as being
"The Exceptions."  But what did Freud mean by that term?

According to psychoanalyst and clinical professor of psychiatry
Justin A. Frank, The Exception is someone who feels that "normal
laws don't apply to them," and that they are "entitled to live
outside the limitations that apply to ordinary people."

How does this apply in the world of fido?  Let's make a leap.
Just a little leap.  A leap into this insane world we know as
fido.

Would it be going too far to suggest that certain miscreants
whose sad behavior is chronicled within the archives of fido have
done so because they consider themselves privileged Exceptions?
Because they feel free to declare a personal State of Exception
for themselves?

IOW, have these miscreants granted to themselves a license
to do ill?  (Not to themselves, of course, but to others.)

I love to read.  What I love to read most is old books.  Not
so old as to be meaningless, but old in the sense of mighty fine
wine (yes, Jeremiah really was a bullfrog, the best wine-maker
in the whole wide world).  And one such book I have been reading
is a book by T.W. Adorno.  A most classic book, titled "The
Authoritarian Personality".  Oh, what a gifted writer to have
written such a treatise!  I especially enjoyed reading the part
where Adorno and his researchers showed a link between repressed
sexuality and Right-wing politics.  Not that everybody in fido
is a Right-wing nutcake.  Hell, fido had not even been invented
yet.  Here is a short quote -

"If the anti-democratic individual is disposed to see in
the outer world impulses which are suppressed in himself,
and we wish to know what these impulses are, then something
may be learned by noting what attributes he most readily,
but unrealistically, ascribes to the world around him ...
it seemed that the greater a subject's preoccupation with
`evil forces' in the world, as shown by his readiness to
think about and to believe in the existence of such phenomena
as wild erotic excesses, plots and conspiracies, and danger
from natural catastrophes, the stronger would be his own
unconscious urges of both sexuality and destructiveness."

Subjects of Adorno's study who held strong authoritarian
tendencies tended to agree with certain kinds of statements -

"Homosexuality is a particularly rotten form of delinquency
and ought to be severely punished."

"No matter how they act on the surface, men are interested
in women for only one reason."

"The sexual orgies of the old Greeks and Romans are nursery
school stuff compared to the goings-on in this country today,
even in circles where people might least expect it."

"Sex crimes, such as rape and attacks on children, deserve
more than imprisonment, such criminals ought to be publicly
whipped."

Here is a bit of what Adorno wrote about his observations on
his subjects -

"A strong inclination to punish violators of sex mores may be an
expression of a general punitive attitude based on identification
with in group authorities, but it also suggests that the subject's
own sexual desires are suppressed and in danger of getting out of
hand.  A readiness to believe in `sex orgies' may be an indication
of a general tendency to distort reality through projection, but
sexual content would hardly be projected unless the subject had
impulses of this same kind that were unconscious and strongly
active."

There's more -

Adorno and his researchers associated what they called this
"moralistic and punitive attitude toward the supposed sexuality
of others" with a "sexual inhibition and backwardness" found in
so many of their authoritarian-inclined subjects.

What I found most amusing in this book is the correlation found
between authoritarianism and right-wing politics, without any
apparent connection found between authoritarianism and left-wing
politics.

My own view is that all politicians are loons.  On both the right
and the left.  But then, I could be wrong.  And probably am.  :)

--Lee


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