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The voice screaming about submission
I could never understand those people who are "natural rebels" - whose instant response to being told to do something is to do the opposite. The way I survived my entire life was to do what I was told - in public, at least. I would never want to be bad where anyone else could see - punishment and disapproval was the worst thing that could happen. But I could gratify my desires in private, in hiding, in shame and self-hatred.
In his autobiography, Malcolm X said that the hardest part about becoming a Muslim was going down on his knees in prayer, after a lifetime showing everyone he couldn't be pushed around. That could never have been a problem for me. I would go down on my knees in front of Joe Stalin if I thought I could get personal advantage out of it. I've spent a lifetime learning to be a hypocrite and a people-pleaser, because it meant that "the real me" could continue to exist in an internal closet, unseen and unmolested.
Even into adulthood - and in my political activism - I let myself be pushed around and used by the kind of political operators who use keen, devoted young radicals as fuel for their personal schemes. I have so wanted to be good all my life, to find some arena where I could be the "teacher's pet" (or the priests', or the General Secretary's). This is why people join cults, of course. I've never been in a cult but I have ended up trading my personal integrity to dominant personalities, many a time, in return for a feeling that I was "being good".
In his autobiography, Malcolm X said that the hardest part about becoming a Muslim was going down on his knees in prayer, after a lifetime showing everyone he couldn't be pushed around. That could never have been a problem for me. I would go down on my knees in front of Joe Stalin if I thought I could get personal advantage out of it. I've spent a lifetime learning to be a hypocrite and a people-pleaser, because it meant that "the real me" could continue to exist in an internal closet, unseen and unmolested.
Even into adulthood - and in my political activism - I let myself be pushed around and used by the kind of political operators who use keen, devoted young radicals as fuel for their personal schemes. I have so wanted to be good all my life, to find some arena where I could be the "teacher's pet" (or the priests', or the General Secretary's). This is why people join cults, of course. I've never been in a cult but I have ended up trading my personal integrity to dominant personalities, many a time, in return for a feeling that I was "being good".
The underlying theory behind this behaviour pattern is that I could only get what I wanted by the grace of some Big Parent figure who would reward me with all my secret desires, in return for obedience. I had a horrible childhood of wanting to be good but never managing it. Can you understand that? Wanting to be good but having something "bad" inside me which always sabotaged things.
Well, a lifetime of trying to be good so someone else would tell me that I was allowed to continue to exist hasn't worked. Perhaps I'm just going to have to own my own desires and be myself - even if it does mean that other people will despise and try to destroy me. Perhaps I could even learn to protect myself.