Doctor D, who was very tired after a hard day, lit up a spliff, blew some smoke rings and said, ‘Shit, Roman, people expect so much from me. They have this idea that I’m something that I’m not. They presume, because of what they’ve heard, that I’m somehow beyond knowing.’
Dr.D then kicked off his shoes, which in case you are interested, are the identical shoes that the Pope wears – red Pradas. He then nodded off.

To be continued.

But since when were Masters always ‘benign’ or non-authoritarian? Don’t they often challenge their people and do their best to penetrate their often too thick skins? Look at the sort of mills Osho used to put many of his people through, for example! What about blows with ‘Zen sticks’?

Osho and others have stated that the very existence of a community of a Master and the people drawn to him implies a sort of ‘dictatorship’, certainly not a ‘democracy’ anyway. A sort of ‘dictatorship of consciousness’, one might say.

One also can defer to a person who isn’t authoritarian. Socrates was a lover of wisdom and stressed the importance of dialogue. One learnt from him, as shown in Plato’s early texts. It is also interesting how young Nazis were habituated to see women ( Klaus Theweleit ‘Male Fantasies’ – a large two volume brilliant study). A positive example of habituation is learning to play the sitar. It isn’t easy at first, but with practice and under the guidance of a ‘master’, it becomes creative and joyful. So we can have mentors, gurus, teachers who are not necessarily authoritarian. Some like Socrates are egalitarian in the true sense, others maybe liberal or conservative.

Intersting how Marx and Freud researched Aristotle. Marx wrote a doctorate on him and wanted to extend Aristotle’s notion of equal citizenship to all humans. Freud was interested in how civilization could protect humans from destructive instincts ( ‘Civilization and its Discontents’). He was prophetic when it came to Hitler and may have walked past him, in the streets of Vienna, before he got to England and his sisters were gassed.

Freud stressed that one could be a mentor without being authoritarian. One could hardly say that Freud was authoritarian when compared to Hitler. Fromm, Freud’s disciple, wrote about authoritarian patriarchal culture and stressed that mentors don’t have to be this way. Gurus may be parental substitutes but they needn’t be. By the way, even politicians have to defer to the motorcycle cop who becomes a parental figure when you are caught speeding.

So mentors like Socrates and other teachers may force you to think. They may nourish you. By delimiting the role of all gurus one also may be revealing one’s own limitations and missing out on the opportunity to flourish, as Aristotle would say.

And the moving ever shall stay!

Trouble is, that sort of dad would tend to create a mama who would have to be overly strict to counter his libertarian ways. She’d be a tyrant.
He would support her, but you would always secretly feel he didnt give a toss.
You`d have ended up loving him for his wackiness, even tho` he drove your mum crazy, sitting around chewing the fat and doing substances at all hours with his cronies and constantly changing his opinions about everything.

They`d have to split up before you were old enough to take it all in.
You`d spend the rest of your life trying to figure out what happened!