“When one is acting under the rule of dissociated impulses, everybody except the individual himself knows and perceives what is happening. The individual who is stingy and mean in certain relationships will persist in perceiving himself as generous and kind. Similarly the individual who has trouble getting close to people may compensate for this deficiency with a pseudo friendliness and overt joviality (a common cultural trait, characteristic of many Americans, that is recognized all over the world).”
“There also is a fallacy in the assumption that all wants must be satisfied to minimize discontent. Discontent is not a function of the discrepancy between what men want and what they have, but between what they want and what they believe they are capable of attaining. If their means are few or threatened, they are likely to revolt; if they obtain new means they can work to satisfy their wants.
Concessions also can have unintended effects, however. Temporary palliatives are likely to reinforce a return to violence once their narcotic effect wears off. If men fight to preserve what they have, concessions that remove the threat to it are sufficient. If they rebel to satisfy new or intensified expectations, the only efffective concession is to provide them with the means adequate to those expectations…
But political violence is comprehensible, which should make it neither necessary nor inevitable, but capable of resolution”
It’s the same story the crow told me
It’s the only one he know -
like the morning sun you come
and like the wind you go
Ain’t no time to hate,
barely time to wait
Wo-oah, what I want to know,
where does the time go?
“I once watched a highly intelligent Pueblo Indian engaged in intercultural education programs struggle and sweat to put into words a problem he and his people were having to cope with. Whenever a white man is put down in the middle of a pueblo, the Indians must cope with his narcissism as expressed by his almost total preoccupation with how HE is doing (providing he is well motivated) or how HE is being treated (if he is less idealistic).
Regardless of motives, behavior of this sort is threatening and disruptive to Pueblo life, because the Indians are just the opposite. Their concern is not with themselves but with the group and how the group is faring.
The Indians see what we call narcissism in all whites – a trait that goes far beyond and is much more inclusive than self-love and individual differences. Since the Pueblo Indians themselves are not this way, how can they describe what they themselves do not include in their experience?
And what does the well-motivated concerned white man do when he has devoted much of his life to “helping” the Indians only to discover that cultural insight reveals him as a disruptive force in Pueblo life, even though he considers himself an ally?
Why hadn’t any of his Pueblo friends told him this?”
