An Interesting Letter - A Theosophical Article

The following is extracted from an email I sent to an ex-primary teacher, who I know through my voluntary work.

The interesting point demonstrated here is that teachers simply couldn't function in a classroom environment without adopting a totally artificial attitude of superiority, regardless of their innate abilities. In fact, it is essential for discipline and instruction that teachers not fall into a position of inferiority.

This email followed from an example of her overly smug attitude, in which she kept calling me MICHEL, as a conceit, ie by using the German form of my name. This would seem trivial but, in groups, she is respectful and polite to everyone except me.

I believe this type of antisocial behaviour is partly a classic case of transference, where being the youngest adult she knows, I am like her surrogate school children.

In addition I am, for all practical intents and purposes, educated more by my own efforts rather then by compulsory instruction, (due to a combination of disabilities and a considerable amount of ignorance) however, I have a better degree so she may feel threatened by that too.

I love her dearly and it hurts me to see her struggle, but she seems to continually get amusement at my expense by belittling me at every social gathering.

Nobody likes to be mentally assaulted, and this is getting on my nerves. There’s too much hate and strife in the world already, I’ve had my share & don't need anymore!

Ironically, while she is attempting to assert her own personality into a position of superiority, she is only drawing attention to the sad fact that she is nursing an inferiority complex.

Dear PEARL,

...Secondly, I am not French or Italian. Here we change MICHÈLE, pronounced: mee-SHEL, into the English version, likewise we also change the German form MICHEL into MICHAEL.

You can't try to make a conceit out of someone's name; It's not funny or clever enough to qualify as wit, and I think its just a bit rude.

I don't call you PEARL, this is the Greek form of MARGARET, which is the long form of ***, I could, and this would show that I have enough mental power and the perception to make that connection, but I don't (the above notwithstanding).

PS Note that I don't need to draw on the french accents above the E in ink to create the grave

With kind regards,

Michael Hart

Note: The lady in question makes primitive use of her computer, the postscript above refers to the fact that she ignores various time saving advantages (and the point) of word processing, including the ability to use French accents.

I offered to help but she was under the illusion that she doesn't have the time to waste doing it another way.

This situation is so bad that when writing, she types random paragraphs of text in word-pad to be printed out of sequence, only to physically cut and paste these together into a coherent document.

Initially I believed she was encountering difficulties due to her inexperience with the relatively new capabilities of modern application software, because she was using the computer like colours, brushes and a canvas.

Fine, if you have the time to waste; are uncertain of the technology and you don't intent to keep any of the text files, but she saved these unorganised and unstructured text fragments! So now I'm starting to think she was just being resentful.