Why are we told and taught and trained to hate the Yin?

Taught to hate the Yin within by repression and judgment.
To hate the Yin around us by seeing it as lesser, while exploiting it.

For a common example, a young boy who is light-skinned (white) is told (implicitly, perhaps explicitly… dominator culture is hypocritical and likes to disguise its toxic nature) to hate the ‘lesser’ female, and to avoid being anything similar to that.
To be a ‘girl, fag, sissy, wimp’ (or other terrible slurs) is considered the lowest level, even possibly evil or to be possessed.

We are even taught to hate childhood, in a way. Because being a baby is being immature and stupid.
We are taught to hate ‘minorities’ because they are supposedly (at least partially) ‘primitive and animal’.

Hate is fear, and fear is judging all in order to put oneself on the elite pinnacle of humanity.
But this judgment is against parts of ourselves, no matter who we are, and this causes self-hatred.

Trying to be strong can be good, but labeling half of creation as lesser or evil cannot help but lead to suffering and tragedy.
In our ‘badass culture’, we try to become a monster, in order to avoid being a victim.

The nature of opposites, ranging from good and evil, masculine and feminine, dark side and light may be useful. It does come, however, with central issues of duality. Opposites or continuum may be an underlying structure. It is hard to know if this refers to 'out there' reality or human understanding.

Hmm… I think I know what you are saying. But if you can expand on that a little, then I can be sure. Thanks for your reply! :smile:

There is the entire philosophy of duality and its lesser forms, metaphysically and psychologically. From a philosophy point of view the most important area for expansion may involve the dichotomy of psychology and metaphysics? It can be asked about these labelled categories and inherent conflict of opposites which may be conflict underlying this dichotomy and naming of opposites. And, with opposites, it may give rise to a question of binary opposition or a continuum?

Ok thanks, that helps me understand. :up:

Yin and Yang could probably be called a metaphysical concept, one that originated in Asia of course.
I’d call it more of a continuum, because each Yin and Yang contain the seed of the other within it.
Perhaps the West in general better understands binary logic of yes/no and good/evil.

Even the beloved Star Wars and its ‘balance of the Force’ is not accurate regarding the ‘dark side’ lol.
It’s just a movie series, but it kind of perpetuates the misunderstanding, I think.
Yin is definitely not ‘evil’ or power-hungry as shown there.

I guess this is on the level of mass psychology, or the underlying philosophy of a civilization.
Perhaps this involves the psychology of propaganda in a way because it seems like it would take a great intentional effort to convince everyone that they should act, identify, and think in a rather narrow and particular way.

Or so I tend to think in my cynical moments, but I may be imagining things.

To go with Yin and Yang check out Nietzsche's belief in the attraction of opposites and why a balance between the two are vastly important:

From the first Aphorism of Birth of Tragedy

"We shall have gained much for the science of æsthetics, when once we have perceived not only by logical inference, but by the immediate certainty of intuition, that the continuous development of art is bound up with the duplexity of the Apollonian and the Dionysian: in like manner as procreation is dependent on the duality of the sexes, involving perpetual conflicts with only periodically intervening reconciliations. These names we borrow from the Greeks, who disclose to the intelligent observer the profound mysteries of their view of art, not indeed in concepts, but in the impressively clear figures of their world of deities. It is in connection with Apollo and Dionysus, the two art-deities of the Greeks, that we learn that there existed in the Grecian world a wide antithesis, in origin and aims, between the art of the shaper, the Apollonian, and the non-plastic art of music, that of Dionysus: both these so heterogeneous tendencies run parallel to each other, for the most part openly at variance, and continually inciting each other to new and more powerful births, to perpetuate in them the strife of this antithesis, which is but seemingly bridged over by their mutual term "Art"; till at last, by a metaphysical miracle of the Hellenic will, they appear paired with each other, and through this pairing eventually generate the equally Dionysian and Apollonian art-work of Attic tragedy.

In order to bring these two tendencies within closer range, let us conceive them first of all as the separate art-worlds; between which physiological phenomena a contrast may be observed analogous to that existing between the Apollonian and the Dionysian."

Interesting! Apollonian and Dionysian are a classic pair.

Towards which one would you say that our culture is leaning towards or imbalanced toward?
I’d have to ponder it more, but I’d say that up until the mid 1960s our culture was overly Apollonian.

Then after a culture clash, the Dionysian was co-opted, and its archetypal power subverted to serve the status quo-money machine.

I didn't say it first, Nietzsche bases much of his philosophy off of this fact -- his Opening to Beyond Good and Evil is ... Legendary:

"Suppose truth is a woman, what then? Wouldn't we have good reason to suspect that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, had a poor understanding of women, that the dreadful seriousness and the awkward pushiness with which they so far have habitually approached truth were clumsy and inappropriate ways to win over a woman? It's clear that truth did not allow herself to be won over. And every form of dogmatism nowadays is standing there dismayed and disheartened - if it's still standing at all! For there are mockers who assert that they've collapsed, that all dogmatisms are lying on the floor, even worse, that they're at death's door. Speaking seriously, there are good reasons to hope that every dogmatism in philosophy - no matter how solemnly, conclusively, and decisively it has conducted itself - may have been merely a noble and rudimentary childish game, and the time is perhaps very close at hand, when people will again and again understand just how little has sufficed to provide the foundation stones for such lofty and unconditional philosophical constructions of the sort dogmatists have erected up to now - any popular superstition from unimaginably long ago (like the superstition of the soul, which today, in the form of the superstition about the subject and the ego, has still not stopped stirring up mischief), perhaps some game with words, a seduction by some grammatical construction, or a daring generalization from very narrow, very personal, very human, all-too-human facts.

The philosophies of the dogmatists were, one hopes, only a promise which lasted for thousands of years, as the astrologers were in even earlier times. In their service, people perhaps expended more work, gold, and astute thinking than for any true scientific knowledge up to that point. We owe to them and their "super-terrestrial" claims the grand style of architecture in Asia and Egypt. It seems that in order for all great things to register their eternal demands on the human heart, they first have to wander over the earth as monstrously and frighteningly distorted faces. Dogmatic philosophy has been such a grimace, for example, the Vedanta doctrine in Asia and Platonism in Europe. We should not be ungrateful for it, even though we must also certainly concede that the worst, most protracted, and most dangerous of all errors up to now has been the error of a dogmatist, namely, Plato's invention of the purely spiritual and of the good as such.

But now that has been overcome, and, as Europe breathes a sigh of relief after this nightmare and at least can enjoy a more healthy sleep, those of us whose task it is to stay awake are the inheritors of all the forces which the fight against this error has fostered. To speak of the spirit and the good in this way, as Plato did, was, of course, a matter of standing truth on its head and even of denying the fundamental condition of all life, perspective . Indeed, one could, as a doctor, ask, "How did such a disease get to Plato, the most beautiful plant of antiquity? Did the evil Socrates really corrupt him? Could Socrates have been a corruptor of youth, after all? Did he deserve his hemlock?"

But the fight against Plato, or, to put the matter in a way more intelligible to "the people," the fight against the thousands of years of pressure from the Christian church - for Christianity is Platonism for "the people"- created in Europe a splendid tension in the spirit, something unlike anything existing before on earth before. With such a tensely arched bow, from now on we can shoot for the most distant targets. Naturally, European man experiences this tension as a state of emergency. Already there have been two attempts in the grand style to ease the tension in the bow - the first time with Jesuitism, the second time with the democratic Enlightenment, through which, with the help of the freedom of the press and reading newspapers, a state might, in fact, be attained in which the spirit itself is not so easily experienced as "need"! (Germans invented gunpowder - all honour to them!- but they made up for that when they invented the printing press). But those of us who are neither Jesuits, nor Democrats, nor even German enough, we good Europeans and free, very free spirits - we still have the need, the entire spiritual need and the total tension of its bow! And perhaps we also have the arrow, the work to do, and - who knows?- the target..."

Through Plato (whom Socrates corrupted) the west began worshiping only the Apollonian style of thought. Which is all about Order Logic Reason, or as Socrates called them "The Forms" no room for the aspects that make one human, shun those at all cost!

Which is pretty much why Camus went full tilt Dionysian to try and bring some balance back into the world, because Sisyphus is happy due to the etymology of "Eu Prattein," (activity = happiness [wisdom of the ancient Greek])

Taught to hate the Yin within by repression and judgment.To hate the Yin around us by seeing it as lesser, while exploiting it.

For a common example, a young boy who is light-skinned (white) is told (implicitly, perhaps explicitly… dominator culture is hypocritical and likes to disguise its toxic nature) to hate the ‘lesser’ female, and to avoid being anything similar to that — 0 thru 9

Derrida’s deconstruction is an attempt to unravel the logic of dialectical opposition:

What_interested me then, that I am attempting to pursue along other lines now, was, at the same time as a "general economy," a kind of general strategy of deconstruction. The latter is to avoid both simply neutralizing the binary oppositions of metaphysics and simply residing within the closed field of these oppositions, thereby confirming it. Therefore we must proceed using a double gesture, according to a unity that is both systematic and in and of itself divided, a double writing, that is, a writing that is in and of itself multiple, what I called, in "La double seance," a double science. On the one hand, we must traverse a phase of overturning. To do justice to this necessity is to recognize that in a classical philosophical opposition we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a vis-a-vis, but rather with a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other (axiologically, logically, etc.), or has the upper hand. To deconstruct the opposition, first of all, is to overturn the hierarchy at a given moment.

That being said-and on the other hand-to remain in this phase is still to operate on the terrain of and from within the deconstructed system. By means of this double, and precisely stratified, dislodged and dislodging, writing, we must also mark the interval between inversion, which brings low what was high, and the irruptive emergence of a new "concept," a concept that can no longer be, and never could be, included in the previous regime… Neither/nor, that is, simultaneously either or…

Opening to Beyond Good and Evil is ... Legendary:

"Suppose truth is a woman, what then? Wouldn't we have good reason to suspect that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, had a poor understanding of women, that the dreadful seriousness and the awkward pushiness with which they so far have habitually approached truth were clumsy and inappropriate ways to win over a woman? It's clear that truth did not allow herself to be won over. And every form of dogmatism nowadays is standing there dismayed and disheartened - if it's still standing at all! — Vaskane

Thanks for your post. :up:

Regarding our possible cultural underestimation of the dark quiet feminine Yin, I’d say this quote describes our love of (addiction to?) certainty and fact.
Fact as something solid and almost immutable.
Assemble a group of related ‘facts’ and you have truth! (A least a truth.)

Even on a purely physical level, seeking absolute truth can go astray as shown by the mysterious Quantum theory.
With regards to a moving target like the human mind and culture, the results can range from deceptive to disastrous.

But… perhaps if one has a very practical attitude toward beliefs and other assemblages of ‘facts’ (do they work? do they help?) and has a non-attachment to them, then there are less potential problems.
At least, it seems so to me.

‘Dogma’ wasn’t always the criticism is is now; Nietzsche the iconoclast helped his readers see the pitfalls of unexamined belief, whether religious, philosophical, or otherwise.
Although my impression of Nietzsche is that he sometimes fell under the sway of the ‘overly Yang’, with his Will To Power, for example.
But please correct me if that’s an incomplete or incorrect view of his influential work. :smile:

Thanks for your reply. :smile:
I think I understand most of Derrida’s quote, and see a relationship to my quote.

But if you could expand on that a little (dumb it down a shade? :blush: ), it might sink into my mind even better.

Thanks for your reply. :smile:
I think I understand most of Derrida’s quote, and see a relationship to my quote.

But if you could expand on that a little (dumb it down a shade? :blush: ), it might sink into my mind even better. — 0 thru 9

So Derrida is saying that binary oppositions (male/female, white/black, hetero/homosexual) inevitably privilege one term over the other. Deconstruction overturns the hierarchy but doesn’t stop there. It then shows how each term of the binary depends on and overlaps with the other, so that they no longer can be said to simply oppose each other but to belong to each other.

So Derrida is saying that binary oppositions (male/female, white/black, hetero/homosexual) inevitably privilege one term over the other. Deconstruction overturns the hierarchy but doesn’t stop there. It then shows how each term of the binary depends on and overlaps with the other, so that they no longer can be said to simply oppose each other but to belong to each other. — Joshs

Ahh! I see. Excellent, thanks. :up:
By the way, where (what book) was that Derrida quote from?

Not only out love and addiction to the idea of truth, but how poorly and pathetically Philosophers have handled this idea of "truth," as Dogma -- while completely ignoring the truth that Perspective is the fundamental condition of all life. Which is Nietzsche's whole point.

Part One
On the Prejudices of Philosophers

1: The will to truth, which is still going to tempt us to many a daring exploit, that celebrated truthfulness of which all philosophers up to now have spoken with respect, what questions this will to truth has already set down before us! What strange, serious, dubious questions! There is already a long history of that - and yet it seems that this history has scarcely begun. Is it any wonder that at some point we become mistrustful, lose patience and, in our impatience, turn ourselves around, that we learn from this sphinx to ask questions for ourselves? Who is really asking us questions here? What is it in us that really wants "the truth"? In fact, we paused for a long time before the question about the origin of this will - until we finally remained completely and utterly immobile in front of an even more fundamental question. We asked about the value of this will. Suppose we want truth. Why should we not prefer untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the value of truth stepped up before us - or were we the ones who stepped up before the problem? Who among us here is Oedipus? Who is the Sphinx?1 It seems to be a tryst between questions and question marks. And could one believe that we are finally the ones to whom it seems as if the problem has never been posed up to now, as if we were the first ones to see it, to fix our eyes on it, and to dare confront it? For there is a risk involved in this - perhaps there is no greater risk.

The first 23 aphorisms of Beyond Good and Evil are all about the clumsy illogical prejudice philosophers have over this notion of "truth."

The End of Twilight Of Idols (one of his terminal works) -- As he mentions in Birth of Tragedy too (his very first work)

And with this I once more come into touch with the spot from which I once set out—-the “Birth of Tragedy” was my first transvaluation of all values: with this I again take my stand upon the soil from out of which my will and my capacity spring—I, the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus,—I, the prophet of eternal recurrence. — Nietzsche

Nietzsche championed the feminine -- contrary to the popular belief that he was a Misogynist. Which I can disprove also if needed. People just don't read Nietzsche enough to understand when he differentiates between mans ideal of "women" which he merely refers to as woman, which often causes a fallacy of equivocation in the reader to think he's talking about a woman, and not mans ideal of women. There are three places where he clarifies subtly, which I can go over in more detail if you'd like. It will be a long write up. That details most of his aphorisms on Women/Woman and Woman.

Nietzsche believes that since man has an ideal of woman, any woman leaving those confines necessarily loses power over men, in some fashion, but Nietzsche still felt, and was only one of four professors at the University of Basel that actually voted to allow women to attend the university due to his belief that everyone has the right to self determine. And that a woman shouldn't have to determine under mans Ideal, but she should be aware that she loses power over men by literally stepping out of the IDEAL (an ideal determined by an almost stupid masculinity as Nietzsche would detail it).

Ahh! I see. Excellent, thanks. :up:
By the way, where (what book) was that Derrida quote from? — 0 thru 9

It was from ‘Positions’, where Derrida responds to interviewers’ questions, the easiest way to read him.

Nietzsche championed the feminine -- contrary to the popular belief that he was a Misogynist. Which I can disprove also if needed. People just don't read Nietzsche enough to understand when he differentiates between mans ideal of "women" which he merely refers to as woman, which often causes a fallacy of equivocation in the reader to think he's talking about a woman, and not mans ideal of women. There are three places where he clarifies subtly, which I can go over in more detail if you'd like. It will be a long write up. That details most of his aphorisms on Women/Woman and Woman. — Vaskane

Thanks for your in-depth reply. Much appreciated! :up:

I would take it a step further (so to speak) than Nietzsche, if I may add to his thoughts.
I’d say that men’s ideals of women are part of a cultural blueprint for identity and activity that constrains and controls men as much as it does women, though women undeniably are abused.

The clever part is convincing men that they can be ‘in charge’ and ‘manly’ by playing this crooked game.
In a crooked game, everyone loses… even the cheaters.
By following civilizational norms that ‘Man is Man, Woman is Woman, and never the twain shall meet’ each is cut off from half of their potential.

One example of this is the way men are programmed to be unaware, dismissive, or repressive of their feelings.
This makes them better tools for the army, industry, or other roles that require a machine or semi-robot, until actual robots or computers can replace them.

We have to ask ourselves ‘what are the rules of identity?’
Who made and enforces them? And who benefits from this situation?
It may be impossible to determine where and when this game started since it’s been going on for millennia.
Odds are that it is not the ordinary average human, their families and communities that are priority.

It was from ‘Positions’, where Derrida responds to interviewers’ questions, the easiest way to read him. — Joshs

Thanks very much! :up:
Oh wait… you mean that quote was already dumbed down? :sweat:

It's been suggested that the games of "Men" IE religion, war, business, career etc etc, were created in order for a boy to mature into a man and fulfill a service to his society that was needed. Where as women, were complete by birth, with an intrinsically internal mechanism that signifies when a girl transfigures into a woman: Menstruation but the precise origins as you say ... who knows ... they're prehistory.

Thanks very much! :up:
Oh wait… you mean that quote was already dumbed down? :sweat: — 0 thru 9

Believe it or not.

It's been suggested that the games of "Men" IE religion, war, business, career etc etc, were created in order for a boy to mature into a man and fulfill a service to his society that was needed. — Vaskane

Now ‘soldiers’ can kill by launching rockets while sitting behind computers. Very brave and manly.

Maybe because of the damage to civilians and infrastructure, nations will soon fight wars in a televised battle of soldiers in an arena.
100 soldiers vs 100 of the enemy. Winner take all. Sponsored by Kill-Flex Rifles and by Pepsi.

But even so, terrorists would still do it the same way as now.

Is not to bother reading his work. :D

Jabberwocky is better

What we seem to forget about "terrorists," is that many cases they represent the underrepresented, they are Davids fighting Goliaths. How else does one fight back against a massive host that can crush you into dust in the matter of moments should all that small resistance gather in one place?

Americans fighting the British were terrorists.
The Irish fighting the British were Terrorists, The Boers fighting the British were terrorists. The Indians who fought against the British were terrorists. War in any form is terrorism. Calling a people terrorists tells us more about ones own projected prejudices.

Im currently reading "Jewish Self Hate," by lessing, and it's become a bit comical how little it suffices to show that Lessing can't get over his own prejudices such as him stating "In order to change humans into dogs, all that is needed is to shout at them long enough, 'You dog!'" Lessing states this as a starting point for self hate -- and yet fails to realize that's precisely what Judaism popularized in morality, but replace "dog" with "Sinner/unclean/damned/the cursed."

What we seem to forget about "terrorists," is that many cases they represent the underrepresented, they are Davids fighting Goliaths. How else does one fight back against a massive host that can crush you into dust in the matter of moments should all that small resistance gather in one place? — Vaskane

If one wants to illuminate the room, light a candle.
If one wants to illuminate and warm a bitterly cold wasteland world, light your soul on fire.

(Prosaic meaning lol: self-defense is a sad fact of life, but violence is at best a temporary solution.
It is a drug with many nasty side effects, even when it is considered ‘righteous’.

What would result from many people truly knowing their own mind and power?)

Well according to Dacher Keltner and the Power Paradox, (as well as Nietzsche and even Zionist Scholars), Powerlessness causes projection of hate and resentment due to a person not wanting to vent their frustrations upon themselves.

Thanks. :up:

There are terrorists all around, at least potential ones, clouded with rage, pain, and confusion.
To them (or should I say ‘to us’ because almost all of us are on the edge) everything is toxic or tainted.

They and we are walking bombs, ready to detonate from the brewing chemicals inside.
A lucky few can find an alchemy to neutralize the corrosive acids before they dissolve us alive.
Our ancestors have eaten bitter grapes and our teeth are set on edge, biting anything they can.