… joyless and de-fea-ted, oh come ye, oh co-ome ye to Luu-thuu-li house. Oh co-ome and behold him, with glorious spout sur-mouun-ted…
Jokes and a new song for the shower aside (with lots of soap after a night of serious bed-jostling to make sure), what’s so bad about the ANC getting “in” again, note the double entendre?
Mike Trapido, for all his blasting away at the policies and leaders of the ANC as if he were a sanitary engineer with an exceptionally stinky blockage to remove, has reminded us again he will nevertheless be voting for the ANC. His contradictory writing behaviour aside, I think he’s profoundly correct. Why?
As I have blogged before, we are in the process of evolving a global consciousness that will transcend groups, that is, various religions and ideologies. Some thinkers in this field include Thom Hartmann, Eckhart Tolle, Ken Wilbur and Father Thomas Keating. We are moving from sociocentric (too strongly identified with one’s own group, seeing it as the ultimate bearer of truth) to becoming worldcentric (identifying with the world’s urgent needs, putting the world first, not our group). As I’ve said before, we had better evolve and damn soon if we are to survive as a race.
This evolution is contingent on and mirrored by our development from early infancy, sometimes in depth psychology known as fulcrums.
In fulcrum one (very early infancy), the self is in fusion with the world and cannot identify itself as being apart from the world. In fulcrum two, often known as “birth of the emotional self”, the infant cannot separate what it is feeling from what the world is feeling. She is still learning that when she bites her finger that hurts, but when she bites a pillow that does not hurt.
By the time we get to fulcrum four, the self has evolved into being part of a group, be it a church and/or a political party. The group is the centre of the self’s universe and the only correct way there is (which is why Galileo had a hard time of it with the Catholic Church). If you are a member of this group and its ideology or myth, then people in the same group are your brothers, your sisters, your comrades. If not, you, oh dear, are going to burn in hell. You are an infidel, unsaved, unclean. This self in fulcrum four has still not moved to the next stage of evolution, which is what we are going now (hopefully), worldcentric. Now either the self moves on, or it regresses.
Like children’s psychological development, we will not evolve effectively if there are unresolved issues at previous stages of our growth. A fair amount of regression therapy needs to be done. We need to resolve any repressed or denied traumas or resented events in earlier stages of our evolution, our “evolutionary childhood”.
Let’s take the example of Mike Trapido. (By the way I have a background in psychology and twenty years experience developing children and adults so I am not just sucking this out of my thumb.) When I examine his choice to go ANC in the light of evolutionary psychology it is with the understanding that virtually everyone has baggage, unresolved stuff. Mike loves to lampoon and castigate various leaders of the ANC yet he will vote for the same party. He says he will “slaughter” them in his “I’m voting ANC” blog if they are out of line, and he has many times, but he still votes for them. Why?
This is my theory, not just about Traps, but about the many who will vote ANC despite the brutally hard facts suggesting otherwise.
It is well known in depth psychology that you play out the traumas and habits inflicted on you by close family members. If your brother had sex with you or fondled you repeatedly, you will seek out abusive relationships with others later on in life partly because that is the only way of relating you can identify with, the only way of being in the world that you know. You are “stuck” or too strongly identified with those events, and cannot evolve until you have resolved them. SA citizens have been enormously abused by the ANC but because it is the only way of politicking they know, many will vote ANC. They are in denial of their own trauma, or perhaps to put it better, South Africa’s trauma.
Take Traps’s denial. He mentions that he will “slaughter” the ANC and “give them the biggest kick up the backside if they come short”. Oh yeah? Really? Now I am not castigating Traps’ character. He most certainly castigated the likes of Julius Malema’s as he worked through the gentleman’s atrocious school report card in a blog last year .
Nor am I saying that it is so, but Traps’s belief that he can “punish” the ANC or that his criticism matters to them, comes across as an early child unresolved event before the age of two. Prior to that age, as I said, it is commonly accepted that infants cannot separate what they are feeling from what the world is feeling. If I hurt everything in the world hurts. The child is completely identified with the world and cannot separate what it is feeling from what the world is feeling. My obvious point is: does Traps actually think he can kick the ANC up the backside in such a way that it will hurt them, or they will notice the criticism, that they will care one whit? That he can “slaughter” them, metaphorically speaking? (If he doesn’t think so, why does he tell us so?) This thinking is a complete delusion, grandiose, and suggests deep denial. On that note, denial is accompanied by a rationalisation of the maladjusted behaviour that is not logical. Nothing in his blog where he says he will vote ANC gives me, or many readers as I saw in the commentary, any clarification for his voting decision. (In fact, as other commentators suggested in different words, it came across as attention seeking.) This punishment myth, in some forms of depth and evolutionary psychology, and in terms of childhood development, is known as being stuck between fulcrum two and fulcrum three, “the child begins to understand it cannot itself magically order the world around”, as Ken Wilbur put it. Daddy won’t just go away and leave me with my toys. It is time for bed, period.
And well, if Traps intends to kick the ANC up the backside, he is going to look like a pirouetting ballerina with a frozen leg permanently raised in the middle of an arabesque, foot aimed at the theatre ceiling. Maybe he should put his leg in a plaster cast to keep the leg eternally up. Perhaps a rugby image would do Traps more justice, a latter day Joel Stransky with leg and rugby boot high in the air, immobilised in that position. Because there’s a helluva lot of kicking to do, duh.
Grant Walliser put it perfectly in his latest, brilliant blog. Let me quote him rather than fumble for the words: “The ANC has had 14 years in power. Under their governance South Africa has slowly crumbled from an international success story and an African leader brimming with promise to a largely mismanaged and morally corrupt nation state”.
Grant is speaking of regression here. But hey, regression, as I have said, is what we therapeutically need to resolve issues at earlier stages of our development so we can evolve.
So let’s vote ANC and do some regression therapy. Let’s own up to all our traumas, how our family and other groups mistreated us. Metonymically speaking, we need to look at us being stuck on the memory of our father holding up the meat cleaver to chop up the lamb roast. We need to get honest with our misinterpretation of that event with our therapist or priest. In other words, we need to own up and realise we were the lamb roast. Then, through therapy, maybe hypnotherapy, we need to help Daddy put that big scary knife back into the kitchen drawer and give him a big hug. Because until we find closure and let go we cannot evolve.
So, yeah, let’s vote ANC and regress to our teenage years again so we can shirk responsibility and plunge into our rampant, unmanageable, confusing hormones at those beer and joint parties we like to think our parents did not know about. Let’s confront and resolve our self-esteem issues (ohmigod I would rather die or be a paraplegic in a wheelchair than have pimples or a small weenie) and neuroses that we were developing at that age, commonly known in many spiritual and psychological circles as the “false self”, which inhibits authentic growth.
Let’s vote ANC and go back even further in childhood, to a stage sometimes known as a “mythological worldview” where everything is centered on me and my needs. Why aren’t all the Christmas presents under the tree mine and only mine? They should be, shouldn’t they? (Think SA communist party and Cosatu members always flying business class, think arms deal corruption, think … no don’t think, remember we are regressing.)
Vote ANC so we can regress even further to when we were a few months old, which the Romantics and some therapists say we were in Paradise. As the Romantic poet Wordsworth penned, “There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, / The earth, and every common sight, / To me did seem / Apparelled in celestial light, / The glory and the freshness of a dream”. This early time of infancy was regarded as a holy state of bliss, we were pampered to, indulged (think Carl Niehaus, think Schabir Shaik … no remember, we’re regressing, don’t think).
Keep voting ANC and we go back into the womb and life was a glorious nine months in a kind of Radox steam bath, pity we don’t get served scotch on the rocks…
And then…
Agh toe! come on! With apologies to Woody Allen, is this just a male thing or who doesn’t want to end (or begin so we can truly evolve) as a marvelous, bed-bouncing climax??
Let’s finish by going back to my re-working of a famous hymn at the beginning of this blog:
Oh come let us abhor him
Oh come let us abhor him… (repeat to fadeout)
Also wanted to say that this is a good piece, Rod, although I’d be uncomfortable with your analysis if I were Traps…that bit I just can’t really emphatically praise, although it has its attention-seeking use also. I think he put his opinion out there to be debated, even knowing it contained no real logic, but this personalised analysis might be carrying that debate a bit far.
Frankly, I just found his blog completely irrational. He made his emotional decision but then foolishly tries to justify it through some fake thought process after the fact.
I even understand how he finds himself in that position politically. I have previously voted ANC but now won’t vote DA either, and that’s to do with Tony Leon and his idea that attracting the dregs of the old NP support was more important than the real issues that needed to be addressed. Helen Zille knows this is a factor too, clearly, otherwise why the rebranding exercise if the old was working? (And given the massive increase in support over the last couple of elections, you could call that a success, no?).
However, unlike Traps, I’m not a stupid lab rat that thinks we should carry on trying to get the unreachable cheese in spite of the potent electric shocks; I’d rather settle in this instance for other assorted bits of seed instead even though they’re not as tasty. But see, the seeds don’t come with all the associated crap that means no one really gets any cheese (except for a couple of lab rats the lab assistant finds amusing). So I’m a slightly leftist and numerically irrelevant kind of party person.
Kit I’m not uncomfortable with Rod’s analysis. If people think my views are wrong that is their right.
@Rod
I find that the brutally hard facts, in general, only apply to the ANC and never the DA. I have said in a few blogs already that as much as the ANC maybe wanting, examining the RECORD of the DA reveals that they aren’t exactly smelling of roses either. Ask the people of Gugulethu, Nyanga and Khayelitsha.
There is no denying that the DA has done very well for the previously advantaged areas of Cape Town; I know because I live there.
I do have the unique advantage of visiting the previously DISadvanteged area of Cape Town. Shocking is not even the word.
As I have said before, for Black people in Cape Town, 1994 is a very bad rumour. There is probably no other city where previously disdvantaged people have faired as badly as in Cape Town.
Speak truth to power, brother, speak truth to power.
Voting for the ANC is a Freudian Slip?
Weird idea.
Using your contorted logic, isn’t Mike Trapido’s vote for the ANC in fact a vote to evolve to a global consciousness that is transcending groups, religions and ideologies. Isn’t this a good thing in contrast to your vote for the DA which simply propagates white privilege and greed? Why is the DA still totally dominated by whites after 14 years?
If you really understand what you read in Eckhart Tolle et al, you will be on your knees begging Mike Trapido for his forgiveness after castigating him for his vote. Show some respect for other peoples opinions – this is what democracy is all about! Speak plainly about the issues rather than attacking individuals with your confused rants.
rod
you sound more like a da loyalist, whose views are only expressed (vividly) by ranting about ANC…and (says absolutely) nothing about his forever 12% lil party…
so typical!!!
btw, traps writes mainly about ANC because he tells us that [ANC] is his party of choice (God bless him)..”he’ll vote for it”, perhaps you should do the same & spew gunk about your own party (da) of support.
then we’ll all say, “vote da so we can regress even further to when we were a few months old, which the Romantics and some therapists say we were in Paradise.”
Dave Harris (part one) – “Using your contorted logic, isn’t Mike Trapido’s vote for the ANC in fact a vote to evolve to a global consciousness that is transcending groups, religions and ideologies.” What on earth are you talking about? The last time I suggested to a reader go do a literacy course I got myself into hot water and thoroughly enjoyed the soak, rubber duck and all. You mean you don’t get the humour, which by the time of the bed-quaking climax at the end, deconstructs my argument? You don’t get my style of writing, a bit like Ndumiso Ngcobo: don’t take me too seriously while at the same time I do try to give food for thought. You don’t seem to understand debate (Trapido) which is all about presentation by on person, then rebuttal of that person’s presentation by another.
From which source are you quoting me from when you say I am going to vote DA?
Can you tell evolutionary psychology from a duckbilled platypus?
Dave Harris (part two) I have thoroughly read and re-read and will continue to read Eckhart Tolle. I don’t see anywhere in his text that I am supposed to fall to my knees and beg Traps’ forgiveness. I’d rather sit in a pub with him over a beer and have a good laugh.
But on a serious note, a person’s vote, especially if they are educated, and any choice they make has a lot to do with their psychological journey. The blog is a lot more than “confused rants” and “personal attacks” But I am not going to debate that with you while your finger roams from duckbilled platypus to evolutionary psychology, trying to point out which is which.
Rod, this sounds all too much of self-adulation instead of balanced or even clever political analysis. A background in undergrad psychology doesn’t make you competent to speak as though you were a professional in the field. You’re simply throwing toys about the cot with your muddled borrowings from pop theory and eastern mysticism. Yes, the ANC has never been a perfect government. However, its take the overblown imaginings of a political donkey to refer to its years of rule simpy as an abuse of South African citizens. Even the most jaded of critics have not failed to see that the ANC government has been one which involved a mix of failings and achievements – most of the achievements involved, unfortunately, keeping people of your ilk still somewhat in the driving seat.
@Dave: “Show some respect for other peoples opinions – this is what democracy is all about! Speak plainly about the issues rather than attacking individuals with your confused rants.”
Glad to read that this response is “plainly about the issue” and not “attacking” an individual.
People generally deploy psychobabble to cover up their failure to engage with reality, which is what is happening here. Politics is a real thing; psychology is all about internal fantasies. TRapido’s observations are contradictory, but there is no reason to attribute psychological problems to them; the fact that the ANC is simultaneously the only party worth voting for and a repugnant gang of crooks is not a fantasy but a reality.
The fantasy lies in people who, like Walliser, are nostalgic for the dear dead days of racial oppression and apartheid, which will never return. What people like Trapido are afraid of is that the future may be equally problematic.
Very interesting and very much an explanation of why a lot of the country will vote ANC. The way I see it COPE are for the moral ex-ANCs, the ones that have an interest in country and its future. The DA is for business people and thinkers (dreamers? we won’t be joining the 1st world soon). The latter two aren’t like sheep that blindly follow because they don’t know any better. I cannot see this country grow under Zuma & co, but unfortunately blind loyalty opposes a thinking choice, thus it our very likely future.
Seems to me that Rod has Traps issues rather than anything of substance to offer.
I have to be honest as a white South African I’m often surprised to see how trapped we are in our past.
I think MFB is right the ANC is the only party worth voting for but it’s overloaded with con artists and thieves. That is not a difficult concept to understand.
What whites can’t stand is that despite the failings of the ANC the only way that we are going to get the blacks where they need to be are with the policies of transformation.
Traps is adamant about that so whites get annoyed with him. The fact that he hammers those crooks in the ANC despite that should be applauded not a source of confusion.
@Bonginkosi – of course the facts only apply to the ANC – THEY ARE THE ONES IN POWER. How can you hold any other party responsible for the state of South Africa??
@MFB – “The fantasy lies in people who, like Walliser, are nostalgic for the dear dead days of racial oppression and apartheid, which will never return.”
Nowhere did Walliser state this – his argument was for progress and bringing down levels of corruption, crime and mismanagement.
@Craig
Probably for the 10 of the 15 years since 1994, the DA has controlled th elocal government in the Western Cape. That is the basis of my checking of their track record.
If you guys want to have a proper political argument, let’s do that. Do not develop amnesia and myopia especially when it comes to the DA. They run the City of Cape Town. I am judging them by that record.
@Rod
In your response to “Why I will vote DA” on March 6th, 2009 at 12:30 am you state:
“Great stuff Grant. Just a pity this is only a blog on Thought Leadership and not a short-version pamphlet distributed to every home in three or four SA languages.Viva DA.”
Is it not reasonable to deduce that you are a DA supporter? Or perhaps I just don’t get the real gist of your humor again?
Even your insults are confusing to me – that kinda shows you how dumb I am and how smart you are.
As Confucius would have said: Hell hath no fury like a pseudo-intellectual corrected!
@Bonginkosi – you know as well as I do that local governance has its limits. The areas that the DA has been able to influence directly are by and large success stories – turn-arounds from what the ANC left them.
I am sure a comparison across other localities will be very telling.
The ANC’s national policies should be covering upliftment of the previously disadvantaged and they are accountable.
The ANC is most certainly NOT “the only party worth voting for” any more than jumping off a 20 storey building when you lose your job is a solution to unemployment.
There are FAR better and more worthy parties on whom to bestow your vote than the feckless ANC.
@ Rod,
The trouble is that the course of said evolution/devolution is decided by you, common sense is common to you & likeminded etc-so that anyone who votes ANC is either irrational or stupid because; ‘how can they not see what is obvious to you’…
Its the height of arrogance Rod, however much its couched in jest-it also unmasks your visceral disdain for black rule.
i can’t vote in this election, but i wouldn’t vote for either the da or the anc, given the way parliament is chosen.
[if there were a specific da or anc candidate who i liked *personally* to be my mp, then i probably could.]
now, i know that my city works for me. i like the fact that it does. last week they were unblocking the drains in preparation for the rainy season. i asked the [black] crew if they are doing that in their own parts of town, and they said some of it has been done, but they do a lot more of it on weekends on our own time so that the gutters won’t be as full when their scheduled cleanup time arrives. that is, the locations with drainage systems will effectively be done *twice* before the rainy season arrives.
remember this when you read in the news about flooding in cape town this winter. it’ll almost definitely be in places where there is no proper drainage — and largely populated by people who left the eastern cape due to lack of service delivery. what party is in charge of the provincial government and most of the local councils in the eastern cape? please refresh my memory.
i think the da has lately done a decent job in cape town *despite* having a provincial government that’s actively hostile to it. the reason? voters are more informed here and use their votes based on results.
“Hi. Great article. If you’d like to read more about the ANC’s view of the elections and public participation in the democratic process, read the blog post by Cyril Ramaphosa here – http://budurl.com/Cyrilblog1 “
@Craig
How do the national or provincial government repair potholes? How do they repair drainage in the township? What about the access to government services such as removal of rubbish and fixing of leaky pipes?
What about providing a clean water pipe in the first place?
Brother man, you seriously don’t know what you are talking about. I have experienced countless times that people with power don’t know how to use it, be they ANC or DA or whatever other party. The DA has been largely reponsible for delivering services in the areas of the Western Cape that they control.
So far, NOTHING. That’s accountability for you!
If you live in Cape Town, then speak to anyone from Khayelitsha or Langa or Bonteheuwel for that matter. See how much love they have for any politician!! Especially Helen Zille!!
I don’t agree with this statement:
We are moving from sociocentric (too strongly identified with one’s own group, seeing it as the ultimate bearer of truth) to becoming worldcentric (identifying with the world’s urgent needs, putting the world first, not our group).
This is the white race’s way of thinking. Sounds like you got stuck on fulcrum four where “The group is the centre of the self’s universe and the only correct way there is.”
Thom Hartmann, Eckhart Tolle, Ken Wilbur and Father Thomas Keating are whites. Many whites believe that faith in their race results in a threat to the global community as if the needs of the white race are in conflict with the needs of the global community. You have stated a fear, “As I’ve said before, we had better evolve and damn soon if we are to survive as a race.” The fear you write about is actually your lack of faith in the white race, not the global community’s needs.
Sorry, after having made the previous comments I realize that I actually agree with your statement.
“We are moving from sociocentric …. to becoming worldcentric ….. “
I was just riled up because what you say sounds so good, yet you are contradicting yourself. You should not be so worried about the white race then you will begin to see the global picture. It appears as if your lack of faith has driven you to push the white race’s agenda beyond your own intentions.
Another case of eloquence disguised and thought of as wisdom…if most of us spent more time engaging with the masses about why they vote for the ANC instead of formulating opinions for them, we would be evolving much better. Just becuase they are not educated does not mean that they are uninformed or engaged, it is just probably not your kind of engagement or evaluation