Cassandra Speaks, book notes and quotes
May. 6th, 2022 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moonagestardust (1) "And this one, from the Mishnah, a sacred Jewish compendium of laws: To the woman God gave nine curses: the burden of the blood of menstruation and the blood of virginity; the burden of childbirth; the burden of bringing up the children; her head is covered as one in mourning; she pierces her ear like a permanent slave; she is not to be believed as a witness."
(2) "It is important to know these stories and to ask questions like: Who told them? Why? And how have they maintained their authority all these years later? It's important to understand that the stories were not created to help women respect their bodies, intelligence, and legitimacy. They were not told to help women to tap into their strength, or to use their voice to influence priorities at home and at work and in the world. Quite the opposite. They were told and are still told to bury the truth of our equality, values, and voice."
(3) "So many of the stories impart the same themes: men are the morally pure and noble ones; women are the ones who succumb to evil and tempt the men. // The old stories paint a wildly improbable description of what it means to be a woman: erotically seductive yet emotionally fickle, in need of protection yet dangerous, all at the same time. Who could trust such a creature?"//
Projection. Sounds more like men.
(4) "Or, if you relate to the story as I do, you would say something else. You would say that Eve looks awake - curious about everything, at home in her body, and in vibrant communion with nature. She also looks fed up with Adam's attitude of lazy, firstborn entitlement. She hands the apple to Adam because she knows that they cannot stay in the garden of innocence forever, that she and Adam will need to grow up, to take care of themselves, to take responsibility. She accepts direction from the snake, who in biblical times was a symbol of wisdom - the one who sheds the skin of ignorance and is born again."
(5) "In the classic book The Power of Myth, the venerated scholar Joseph Campbell and the journalist Bill Moyers have an extended conversation about origin stories from many traditions. In one chapter, Moyers asks Campbell: 'Does the idea of woman as sinner appear in other mythologies?' Cambell answers: 'No, I don't know of it elsewhere. The closest thing to it would perhaps be Pandora with Pandora's box, but that's not sin, that's just trouble. The idea in the biblical tradition of the Fall is that nature as we know it is corrupt, and the female as the epitome of sex is a corrupter. Why was the knowledge of good and evil forbidden to Adam and Eve? Without that knowledge, we'd all be a bunch of babies still in Eden, without any participation in life. Woman brings life into the world. Eve is the mother of this temporal world. Formerly you had a dreamtime paradise there in the Garden of Eden - no time, no birth, no death - no life.'"
(6) "That we are lost, but we can be found. That we suffer, but we can grow wise. That if we take personal responsibility, we might grasp the 'knowledge of good and evil' and chart a noble path home. But taking responsibility so as to grow wise is often not our first response to suffering. A more common, knee-jerk reaction is to look for someone else to blame...blame your partner for the problems in the marriage, blame your boss for the problems at work, blame a group of people - from a different race, religion, nationality - for the problems in the world. Blame the snake!"
(7) "The gods and goddesses on Mount Olympus each contributed to Pandora's creation by giving her gifts. Zeus gave her a 'foolish and idle nature,' writes Hesiod. From the goddess Aphrodite, Pandora received her seductive beauty - a 'beautiful evil...not to be withstood by men.' The god Hermes gave her 'a shameful mind and deceitful nature' as well as a tendency to speak 'lies and crafty words.' And last but not least, the goddess Hera gave Pandora the most dangerous gift of all, a 'woman's curiosity.'"
(8) "The Jungian writer Polly Young-Eisendrath writes, 'Exactly like Eve in the Garden of Eden, this Greek first woman is both the first female mortal and the instigator of mortality in the human race. To be mortal means to die, and both Eve and Pandora bring death into the world. This is a curious reversal of the fact that women bring life into the world, but it says something about the meaning of 'woman' within a religion dominated by male gods."
(9) "The essence of those teachings, many of which found their way into the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, can be distilled down to this:
1) Men are better than women, even the wicked men.
2) A woman's sense of shame is deserved. Shame for what? Our out-of-control emotions and our wanton sexuality that has the power to tempt a man and destroy his virtue.
3) A woman should be silent with a 'bound up mouth.'
4) Men dominate women to protect women from other men.
5) Alliances between womenare dangerous.
(10) "I share here but a few of the more salient quotations from some of Western religions' foundational thinkers and texts. If it seems as if I cherry-picked only the most incendiary and misogynistic excerpts, I invite you to read deeper into these books and authors. I am only scratching the surface here. I'll start with this prayer, from the ancient siddur, recited by Orthodox Jewish men each morning: 'Blessed are you, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has not made me a woman.'"
(11) "But even as the ancient Greeks and Hebrew patriarchs and the Christian saints warned about women's primal wickedness, they also extolled the sacred wisdom at the core of femininity."
(12) "Well, of course women were furious! You try being a woman in ancient Persia or Greece. Or later on in Victorian Europe and America, when male doctors tried to cure female hysteria using an 'electro-mechanicial medical instrument' (aka vibrator) to induce 'hysterical paroxysm' (aka orgasm). If that didn't work, doctors would apply high-pressure douches, all to rid the woman - and here I'm combining words from several medical texts from the early 1800s - of her 'hysterical emotions, frustrated weeping, excessive (or lack of) sexual desire, excessive vaginal lubrication, general irritability, inability to conceive a child or fulfill proper mothering duties, and a tendency to cause trouble.' In some cases, a woman demonstrating any of these symptoms might be forced to enter an insane asylum or to undergo surgical hysterectomy."
(13) "I wanted to reply that Hamlet seemed like the frail one to me - afraid to say what he meant, to take a stand, to do something until it was too late. At least Ophelia did something, even if that something was to take her own life. Later, when the class read Anna Karenina, I wanted to ask Mr. King why suicide seemed to be the only action available to women who found themselves in a difficult situation. The men in Tolstoy's tales went on exciting journeys or tested themselves in the public arena when the going got tough, while the women either stayed at home or killed themselves. But I was too intimidated by Mr. King and the intellectual kids in the 'smart' class to voice my concerns. I figured I just wasn't sophisticated enough to appreciate real literature. Eventually, I became choosier about what I read and what rang true about who I was, what I cared about, and how I might live my life. It took me a long time to gain trust in my own choices, to decide that, no, Hemingway did not move me; was stories were horrendous; and it did matter that Lolita was about child abuse."
(14) Horrible sentence: "How about monuments to the pioneers in mental health who are helping people heal internal wounds before they inflict external wounds on others?" // People with mental illnesses are solely seen as a danger to others, here.
(15) "But I was happy to learn that an organization called Monumental Women launched a campaign in 2014 to construct Central Park's first monument representing real women. Because of their persistence, the New York City Public Design Commission finally approved a statue honoring Susan B. Anthony, Elizabth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth. The monument will be the first in Central Park's 166-year history to depict real-life women and will celebrate the largest nonviolent revolution in our nation's history - the movement for women's right to vote. Won't it be great for little girls and boys to walk through the park and see those images and ask their parents, 'Who are those ladies? What did they do? How did they do it?' Tell me to what you pay attention, and I will tell you who you are."
(16) "Whoever fights monsters, should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. - Friedrich Nietzsche"
(17) "There are many excellent books about shadow work. I recommend those by the Jungian psychologists Robert Johnson and Marion Woodman and by the poet Robert Bly. I especially like the way author Scott Jeffrey summarizes the work here, taken from his online guide, 'A Definitive Guide to Jungian Shadow Work': It's always standing right behind us, just out of view. In any direct light, we cast a shadow. The shadow is a psychological term for everything we can't see in ourselves. Most of us go to great lengths to protect our self-image from anything unflattering or unfamiliar. All we deny in ourselves - whatever we perceive as inferior, evil, or unacceptable - becomes part of the shadow. The personal shadow is the disowned self. So what happens to all the parts of ourselves we sweep out of view? Whatever qualities we deny in ourselves, we see in others. In psychology, this is called projection. We project onto others anything we bury within us. These paychological projections distort reality, creating a thick boundary between how we view ourselves and how we behave in reality. The shadow isn't a popular topic. Who enjoys owning their flaws, weaknesses, selfishness, nastiness, hate, and so on? Exploring our shadow side, however, gives us tremendous opportunitiesfor growth and development." // SZ seems to involve other people projecting onto me quite a bit. Why is this the case?
(18) "No one gets criticized for undersharing. No one says that word. I don't even know if there is such a word. There should be. Underaharing, underpraising, under-talking things out are at the core of some of humankind's deepest problems. [...] I recoil not only at the word oversharing but also at words like gossip, nag, busybody, tattletale. So many of those words have been used to denigrate the tone of a woman's voice or the content of our converations - to judge talking as an inferior function and to uphold the primacy of the 'strong and silent' type."
(19) "Beneath the refusal of men to apologize, or to ask for directions, or admit to not having a solution, I contend there lurks the fear of being humiliated - by other men, and by women. I believe that much of men's aggression and violence are ways of covering that shame."
(20) "'Mr. Peterson, I have heard you say that we must adhere to the traditions as put forth in the old myths and stories, but people made up those stories, and people can change them. The basic belief of feminism is not that women are right and that men are wrong. It is merely that women are people and therefore their voices matter, their values matter, and their stories matter. It's time for women to tell their versions of what it means to be fully human; it is time for men to respect those insights; and it is time for all of us to integrate them into a new story of power.'
I'm still waiting for Dr. Peterson's response." // I note that he is a coward in the margins.
(21) "In 1883, during a speech in Washington, DC, the prominent writer and orator Robert Ingersoll said something that others have attributed through the years to Abraham Lincoln, but actually Ingersoll said it about Lincoln. 'Nothing discloses real character like the use of power,' he said. 'Most people can bear adversity. But if you want to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test. It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he never abused it, except on the side of mercy.' [...] What counts is the intention to do power mercifully, conciously, differently. What counts is the awareness and the willingness to self-correct."
(22) "Don't make assumptions about people in power. Michelle Obama: 'I have probably been at every powerful table that you can think of, I have worked at nonprofits, I have been at foundations, I have worked in corporations, served on corporate boards, I have been at G-summits, I have sat in at the U.N.: They are not that smart.'"
(23) "Interrupt the impostor's voice. When youbhear another woman downplaying her good work, second-guessing her contribution, putting herself down, saying 'impostory' things, disagree with her assessment. Hold a different mirror up to her. Help her see how hard she is being on herself, how inaccurately she judges herself. And hold that same mirror up to yourself."
(24) "See yourself accurately, but don't overestimate yourself."
(25) "Question the status quo. Go online and check out suggested high school and college reading lists. Peruse the ubiquitous best-films-of-the-year (or best-books, music, art, ect.) lists. Ask yourself if these are the works you would include on your lists, your Academy Award winners, your Nobel prize for literature. Wonder about (or look into) the people suggesting the works, choosing the winners, making the lists."
(26) "15 Memoirs That Helped Me Become More Comfortable In My Own Skin
1) First They Killed My Father - Louis Ung
2) Paula - Isabel Allende
3) The Liars' Club - Mary Karr
4) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
5) The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls
6) The Color of Water - James McBride
7) Tender at the Bone - Ruth Reichl
8) The Seven Storey Mountain - Thomas Merton
9) Night - Elie Wiesel
10) Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor Frankl
11) The Woman Warrior - Maxine Hong Kingston
12) Hunger - Roxane Gay
13) Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt
14) Dust Tracks on a Road - Zora Neale Hurston
15) Memories, Dreams, Reflections - Carl Jung"
(27) "Later, I learned that the exact wording of the oath is established by a presidential executive order but that the Customs and Immigration Service could change the text at any time, provided that the new wording includes some stipulations put forth in the current oath. Now, that would be a great Flip the Script project to float by the American public, or by any nation's populace. What values and visions would you like the citizens of your country to swear to? What should we add to existing oaths? How should we tell the story of what it means to be an upstanding member of society?"
(2) "It is important to know these stories and to ask questions like: Who told them? Why? And how have they maintained their authority all these years later? It's important to understand that the stories were not created to help women respect their bodies, intelligence, and legitimacy. They were not told to help women to tap into their strength, or to use their voice to influence priorities at home and at work and in the world. Quite the opposite. They were told and are still told to bury the truth of our equality, values, and voice."
(3) "So many of the stories impart the same themes: men are the morally pure and noble ones; women are the ones who succumb to evil and tempt the men. // The old stories paint a wildly improbable description of what it means to be a woman: erotically seductive yet emotionally fickle, in need of protection yet dangerous, all at the same time. Who could trust such a creature?"//
Projection. Sounds more like men.
(4) "Or, if you relate to the story as I do, you would say something else. You would say that Eve looks awake - curious about everything, at home in her body, and in vibrant communion with nature. She also looks fed up with Adam's attitude of lazy, firstborn entitlement. She hands the apple to Adam because she knows that they cannot stay in the garden of innocence forever, that she and Adam will need to grow up, to take care of themselves, to take responsibility. She accepts direction from the snake, who in biblical times was a symbol of wisdom - the one who sheds the skin of ignorance and is born again."
(5) "In the classic book The Power of Myth, the venerated scholar Joseph Campbell and the journalist Bill Moyers have an extended conversation about origin stories from many traditions. In one chapter, Moyers asks Campbell: 'Does the idea of woman as sinner appear in other mythologies?' Cambell answers: 'No, I don't know of it elsewhere. The closest thing to it would perhaps be Pandora with Pandora's box, but that's not sin, that's just trouble. The idea in the biblical tradition of the Fall is that nature as we know it is corrupt, and the female as the epitome of sex is a corrupter. Why was the knowledge of good and evil forbidden to Adam and Eve? Without that knowledge, we'd all be a bunch of babies still in Eden, without any participation in life. Woman brings life into the world. Eve is the mother of this temporal world. Formerly you had a dreamtime paradise there in the Garden of Eden - no time, no birth, no death - no life.'"
(6) "That we are lost, but we can be found. That we suffer, but we can grow wise. That if we take personal responsibility, we might grasp the 'knowledge of good and evil' and chart a noble path home. But taking responsibility so as to grow wise is often not our first response to suffering. A more common, knee-jerk reaction is to look for someone else to blame...blame your partner for the problems in the marriage, blame your boss for the problems at work, blame a group of people - from a different race, religion, nationality - for the problems in the world. Blame the snake!"
(7) "The gods and goddesses on Mount Olympus each contributed to Pandora's creation by giving her gifts. Zeus gave her a 'foolish and idle nature,' writes Hesiod. From the goddess Aphrodite, Pandora received her seductive beauty - a 'beautiful evil...not to be withstood by men.' The god Hermes gave her 'a shameful mind and deceitful nature' as well as a tendency to speak 'lies and crafty words.' And last but not least, the goddess Hera gave Pandora the most dangerous gift of all, a 'woman's curiosity.'"
(8) "The Jungian writer Polly Young-Eisendrath writes, 'Exactly like Eve in the Garden of Eden, this Greek first woman is both the first female mortal and the instigator of mortality in the human race. To be mortal means to die, and both Eve and Pandora bring death into the world. This is a curious reversal of the fact that women bring life into the world, but it says something about the meaning of 'woman' within a religion dominated by male gods."
(9) "The essence of those teachings, many of which found their way into the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, can be distilled down to this:
1) Men are better than women, even the wicked men.
2) A woman's sense of shame is deserved. Shame for what? Our out-of-control emotions and our wanton sexuality that has the power to tempt a man and destroy his virtue.
3) A woman should be silent with a 'bound up mouth.'
4) Men dominate women to protect women from other men.
5) Alliances between womenare dangerous.
(10) "I share here but a few of the more salient quotations from some of Western religions' foundational thinkers and texts. If it seems as if I cherry-picked only the most incendiary and misogynistic excerpts, I invite you to read deeper into these books and authors. I am only scratching the surface here. I'll start with this prayer, from the ancient siddur, recited by Orthodox Jewish men each morning: 'Blessed are you, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has not made me a woman.'"
(11) "But even as the ancient Greeks and Hebrew patriarchs and the Christian saints warned about women's primal wickedness, they also extolled the sacred wisdom at the core of femininity."
(12) "Well, of course women were furious! You try being a woman in ancient Persia or Greece. Or later on in Victorian Europe and America, when male doctors tried to cure female hysteria using an 'electro-mechanicial medical instrument' (aka vibrator) to induce 'hysterical paroxysm' (aka orgasm). If that didn't work, doctors would apply high-pressure douches, all to rid the woman - and here I'm combining words from several medical texts from the early 1800s - of her 'hysterical emotions, frustrated weeping, excessive (or lack of) sexual desire, excessive vaginal lubrication, general irritability, inability to conceive a child or fulfill proper mothering duties, and a tendency to cause trouble.' In some cases, a woman demonstrating any of these symptoms might be forced to enter an insane asylum or to undergo surgical hysterectomy."
(13) "I wanted to reply that Hamlet seemed like the frail one to me - afraid to say what he meant, to take a stand, to do something until it was too late. At least Ophelia did something, even if that something was to take her own life. Later, when the class read Anna Karenina, I wanted to ask Mr. King why suicide seemed to be the only action available to women who found themselves in a difficult situation. The men in Tolstoy's tales went on exciting journeys or tested themselves in the public arena when the going got tough, while the women either stayed at home or killed themselves. But I was too intimidated by Mr. King and the intellectual kids in the 'smart' class to voice my concerns. I figured I just wasn't sophisticated enough to appreciate real literature. Eventually, I became choosier about what I read and what rang true about who I was, what I cared about, and how I might live my life. It took me a long time to gain trust in my own choices, to decide that, no, Hemingway did not move me; was stories were horrendous; and it did matter that Lolita was about child abuse."
(14) Horrible sentence: "How about monuments to the pioneers in mental health who are helping people heal internal wounds before they inflict external wounds on others?" // People with mental illnesses are solely seen as a danger to others, here.
(15) "But I was happy to learn that an organization called Monumental Women launched a campaign in 2014 to construct Central Park's first monument representing real women. Because of their persistence, the New York City Public Design Commission finally approved a statue honoring Susan B. Anthony, Elizabth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth. The monument will be the first in Central Park's 166-year history to depict real-life women and will celebrate the largest nonviolent revolution in our nation's history - the movement for women's right to vote. Won't it be great for little girls and boys to walk through the park and see those images and ask their parents, 'Who are those ladies? What did they do? How did they do it?' Tell me to what you pay attention, and I will tell you who you are."
(16) "Whoever fights monsters, should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. - Friedrich Nietzsche"
(17) "There are many excellent books about shadow work. I recommend those by the Jungian psychologists Robert Johnson and Marion Woodman and by the poet Robert Bly. I especially like the way author Scott Jeffrey summarizes the work here, taken from his online guide, 'A Definitive Guide to Jungian Shadow Work': It's always standing right behind us, just out of view. In any direct light, we cast a shadow. The shadow is a psychological term for everything we can't see in ourselves. Most of us go to great lengths to protect our self-image from anything unflattering or unfamiliar. All we deny in ourselves - whatever we perceive as inferior, evil, or unacceptable - becomes part of the shadow. The personal shadow is the disowned self. So what happens to all the parts of ourselves we sweep out of view? Whatever qualities we deny in ourselves, we see in others. In psychology, this is called projection. We project onto others anything we bury within us. These paychological projections distort reality, creating a thick boundary between how we view ourselves and how we behave in reality. The shadow isn't a popular topic. Who enjoys owning their flaws, weaknesses, selfishness, nastiness, hate, and so on? Exploring our shadow side, however, gives us tremendous opportunitiesfor growth and development." // SZ seems to involve other people projecting onto me quite a bit. Why is this the case?
(18) "No one gets criticized for undersharing. No one says that word. I don't even know if there is such a word. There should be. Underaharing, underpraising, under-talking things out are at the core of some of humankind's deepest problems. [...] I recoil not only at the word oversharing but also at words like gossip, nag, busybody, tattletale. So many of those words have been used to denigrate the tone of a woman's voice or the content of our converations - to judge talking as an inferior function and to uphold the primacy of the 'strong and silent' type."
(19) "Beneath the refusal of men to apologize, or to ask for directions, or admit to not having a solution, I contend there lurks the fear of being humiliated - by other men, and by women. I believe that much of men's aggression and violence are ways of covering that shame."
(20) "'Mr. Peterson, I have heard you say that we must adhere to the traditions as put forth in the old myths and stories, but people made up those stories, and people can change them. The basic belief of feminism is not that women are right and that men are wrong. It is merely that women are people and therefore their voices matter, their values matter, and their stories matter. It's time for women to tell their versions of what it means to be fully human; it is time for men to respect those insights; and it is time for all of us to integrate them into a new story of power.'
I'm still waiting for Dr. Peterson's response." // I note that he is a coward in the margins.
(21) "In 1883, during a speech in Washington, DC, the prominent writer and orator Robert Ingersoll said something that others have attributed through the years to Abraham Lincoln, but actually Ingersoll said it about Lincoln. 'Nothing discloses real character like the use of power,' he said. 'Most people can bear adversity. But if you want to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test. It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he never abused it, except on the side of mercy.' [...] What counts is the intention to do power mercifully, conciously, differently. What counts is the awareness and the willingness to self-correct."
(22) "Don't make assumptions about people in power. Michelle Obama: 'I have probably been at every powerful table that you can think of, I have worked at nonprofits, I have been at foundations, I have worked in corporations, served on corporate boards, I have been at G-summits, I have sat in at the U.N.: They are not that smart.'"
(23) "Interrupt the impostor's voice. When youbhear another woman downplaying her good work, second-guessing her contribution, putting herself down, saying 'impostory' things, disagree with her assessment. Hold a different mirror up to her. Help her see how hard she is being on herself, how inaccurately she judges herself. And hold that same mirror up to yourself."
(24) "See yourself accurately, but don't overestimate yourself."
(25) "Question the status quo. Go online and check out suggested high school and college reading lists. Peruse the ubiquitous best-films-of-the-year (or best-books, music, art, ect.) lists. Ask yourself if these are the works you would include on your lists, your Academy Award winners, your Nobel prize for literature. Wonder about (or look into) the people suggesting the works, choosing the winners, making the lists."
(26) "15 Memoirs That Helped Me Become More Comfortable In My Own Skin
1) First They Killed My Father - Louis Ung
2) Paula - Isabel Allende
3) The Liars' Club - Mary Karr
4) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
5) The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls
6) The Color of Water - James McBride
7) Tender at the Bone - Ruth Reichl
8) The Seven Storey Mountain - Thomas Merton
9) Night - Elie Wiesel
10) Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor Frankl
11) The Woman Warrior - Maxine Hong Kingston
12) Hunger - Roxane Gay
13) Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt
14) Dust Tracks on a Road - Zora Neale Hurston
15) Memories, Dreams, Reflections - Carl Jung"
(27) "Later, I learned that the exact wording of the oath is established by a presidential executive order but that the Customs and Immigration Service could change the text at any time, provided that the new wording includes some stipulations put forth in the current oath. Now, that would be a great Flip the Script project to float by the American public, or by any nation's populace. What values and visions would you like the citizens of your country to swear to? What should we add to existing oaths? How should we tell the story of what it means to be an upstanding member of society?"
