This is an interesting picture quiz. The result was spot-on for me. I’m a plodder who can plow through any hardship and shave down any mountain by hacking at it meticulously and consistently.

How could I have forgotten the most important American crisis novel of all times, Gone Girl?

The Hollywood adaptation carefully erased all traces of the crisis theme, of course.

Yet another article of faith these days is that capitalism favors productive work over reproductive work “putting at risk the reproduction of life itself.”* The last I heard, the planet is definitely not hurting for people. Depopulation of Planet Earth is not what’s happened since the birth and implantation of capitalism. Actually, the world population exploded thanks to the improvements in the quality of life, medical advances, reduction in starvation, and other horrible nasty things brought to us by evil, oppressive and capitalist Enlightenment.

*It was invented by that “happy Medieval infanticiding prostitutes” critic I wrote about recently.

The author I was talking about yesterday predicted back in 2015 that the role of intellectuals and artists in the media will grow because

they are the ones who will be in a more favorable position in the media environment, While experts and politicians undoubtedly have considerable visibility and authority in that media ‘reality,’ their discourse is dull, limited, and excessively specialized.

Only 2 years ago, imagine that.

I am happy for anyone from a disadvantaged group to be hired, promoted, or published over me.

Is there anything but the deepest contempt for “disadvantaged groups” in this statement? How does one live with being such a smug, superior individual? Why do people so lack self-awareness?

There is definitely something psychoanalytic in the absolute disgust that the concept of human agency evokes in so many academics.

I remember a fellow grad student in his late thirties had an actual tantrum and to tally freaked out on me when I mentioned that I was trying to build my CV in preparation for my job search. He was practically wailing “Build your CV! Build your CV! They have stolen your soul!” 

Do you know anybody who keeps complaining about how selfish, uncaring and self-centered other people are? Narcissists love to project their defining qualities on others. Anybody who is not dedicating 100% of their energy, time and attention to the narcissist is loudly denounced by him as a first-rate egotist. 

To distract myself from the aggravation of having read the previously linked source, I go on Facebook and immediately see the following gem:

There are many kinds of privilege besides white privilege: cognitive privilege, for example. We now know that intelligence is not something we have significant control over but is something we are born with. We are living in a society in which success is increasingly linked to one’s intelligence. . . The accident of having been born smart enough to be able to be successful is a great benefit that you did absolutely nothing to earn. Consequently, you have nothing to be proud of for being smart.

I don’t know whether I was “born smart” or not but I do know that my languages didn’t learn themselves, the books didn’t read or write themselves, and everything I have learned has cost me a huge effort and tons of pain. I still get a headache whenever I remember how hard I worked on my Spanish. All of the theoretical sources I operate with so effortlessly today required endless reading, rereading, copying, looking up words in the dictionary, and not understanding a damn thing again and again. All of the times that I sat at conferences or in class, not understanding 80% of what people were saying and feeling like a damn idiot. All of the times when people quoted authors I’d never even heard about.  I’ve had to look up the word “ontological” at least 10 times until I kind of understood what it meant. And right now? I just misspelled it.

So yeah, born smart, privilege, you did nothing to earn, it’s all a total accident. Fuck that shit from here to hell. I need to go look up ontological again because I forgot what it means for the 11th time in a row.

Of course, that minority with the privilege of thinking also needs to have the necessary conditions for its life (and its thinking) reproduced, and in this sense it holds a parasitic position relative to the rest of the tribe, who guarantee that reproduction. But why would the majority accept this unfair situation? Why would they not only support those ‘thinkers,’ but also grant them the monopoly on an activity that is so basic and so important for human beings?

The good news is that we, the unfair parasites, are being weeded out on a massive basis by Republican state legislatures who seem to be very much in tune with the most progressive and socially responsible among us and who are withdrawing the funding of our parasitic thinking activities. So it’s all good.

Rule #2: don’t engage in internal dialogues with the boundary violator. Once you start an internal monologue addressed at them, that’s it, you have allowed them to inhabit your innermost self. It’s a tough habit to break because internal monologues offer an illusion of finally being able to say everything you wanted. But it’s fake relief. All you are doing is taking apart your own boundaries.

The solution here is as simple as switching the internal monologues to a different channel. The moment they start, imagine you are holding a remote and pressing a button that powers on a different program. The channel you will be switching to needs to be something powerful and engrossing enough to distract you from self-justifying monologues. It’s hard as all hell but I promise that within a month of consistently practicing this, it will become second nature.

Rule #3: erase the phrases “but why does she?” and “I just want to understand why he” from your vocabulary. All they do is lock you in an unhealthy relationship with the boundary violator. He does it because that’s what he wants to do, and that’s all you need to know. All these attempts to “just understand” give you a fake feeling of power over the violator because they make you feel like you can solve the problem by the strength of your intellect. But this power is illusory. The real power lies in building up a boundary and protecting it.

You can’t change a boundary violator or convince them not to violate. All you can do is make yourself not useful and not convenient as a victim. And then they’ll go feed on somebody who is still inquiring forlornly “But why does she always?”