Thanks so much Amie! I read your piece earlier this month about not wanting a job and loved it and related hard. I thought about it for days after. Thanks for your work <3
Another who wrote about the way the powers-that-be instil guilt and fear was Gilles Deleuze. In a lecture on Spinoza he observes that 'inspiring sad passions is necessary for the exercise of power' and in the Dialogues he spells it out: 'We live in a world in which the established powers have a stake in transmitting sad affects to us...They need our sadness to make us slaves. The tyrant, the priest, the captors of souls need to persuade us that life is hard and a burden, to repress us, to make us anxious, to administer and organize our intimate little fears'. Thanks for calling this out... Although there may be plenty of occasions that genuinely evoke the 'sad affects', as you say some of the time we're being angled into these feelings by vested interests.
I also feel guilty all the time which I blame on my mother and the way she treated me as I was growing up. Maybe she instilled it into me to the point where I cannot truly relax either, unless I knock myself out at night, and even then, am I really relaxed? I'm tense all the time. I have constant knots under my shoulder blades because that is where (like a lot of women) I carry my stress. I study the Bible, I'm currently doing dry January and may carry it through February, but while I feel better about all this, I'm still not over feeling guilty about “something” at all times.
I'm really sorry to hear that, Kim. If your mother frequently made you feel guilty, it sounds like that could definitely be the cause of your current feelings. It's really impressive that you're taking action by doing things like Dry January that are helping you. I know how you feel (a little) because I struggle with feelings of tension in the body too. It's a banal thing to say, but yoga and exercise helps me as well as chatting my problems through with friends. I'm glad you're here on my Substack and I hope you continue to feel better, bit by bit <3
This was wonderful.
Thanks so much Amie! I read your piece earlier this month about not wanting a job and loved it and related hard. I thought about it for days after. Thanks for your work <3
Another who wrote about the way the powers-that-be instil guilt and fear was Gilles Deleuze. In a lecture on Spinoza he observes that 'inspiring sad passions is necessary for the exercise of power' and in the Dialogues he spells it out: 'We live in a world in which the established powers have a stake in transmitting sad affects to us...They need our sadness to make us slaves. The tyrant, the priest, the captors of souls need to persuade us that life is hard and a burden, to repress us, to make us anxious, to administer and organize our intimate little fears'. Thanks for calling this out... Although there may be plenty of occasions that genuinely evoke the 'sad affects', as you say some of the time we're being angled into these feelings by vested interests.
I also feel guilty all the time which I blame on my mother and the way she treated me as I was growing up. Maybe she instilled it into me to the point where I cannot truly relax either, unless I knock myself out at night, and even then, am I really relaxed? I'm tense all the time. I have constant knots under my shoulder blades because that is where (like a lot of women) I carry my stress. I study the Bible, I'm currently doing dry January and may carry it through February, but while I feel better about all this, I'm still not over feeling guilty about “something” at all times.
I'm really sorry to hear that, Kim. If your mother frequently made you feel guilty, it sounds like that could definitely be the cause of your current feelings. It's really impressive that you're taking action by doing things like Dry January that are helping you. I know how you feel (a little) because I struggle with feelings of tension in the body too. It's a banal thing to say, but yoga and exercise helps me as well as chatting my problems through with friends. I'm glad you're here on my Substack and I hope you continue to feel better, bit by bit <3