Belly Button Lint

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Category: Culture

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    Failing Toward Extremity

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    1–2 minutes

    From Westward Ho, we get a model of radical, even ethical, perseverance: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” In a perverse sense, this becomes the noble revolutionary spirit: failure is valorized over productivity; the iterative attempts are the path, eclipsing the goal.

    Persistence despite failure embodies the scientific method of collecting failures as data points of knowledge and a worthy action, but socially introduces a zero-point principle of always starting anew. Begin again from nothing.

    In this sense, it is contradictory to modern ideas of success and efficiency, making repeated failure itself a revolutionary concept.

    Yet, commitment without results breeds disillusionment and resentment. The lack of success leads to mobilization and recruitment being driven by masochism or resentment, an enactment of failure and loss as liturgy of pain, burning out as we “fail again,” commiserating in our lack, until we “fail better” into nihilistic extremism.

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    utopia: no psychoanalysis

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    1–2 minutes

    Todd McGowan argues that psychoanalysis opposes utopia (the good or perfect place), as an ideal society would eliminate the central antagonism between individual and society, rendering therapy unnecessary as we would be untroubled.

    Yet, many attempt to “therapize” society into a utopia. By normalizing discontent (shifting perspective to become comfortable with your distance from a good place), we foster empathy and wisdom, seeking a communal collective that labors to tolerate dysfunction.

    However, the structural, historical inversion of “the good place” reasserts itself: materialist corruption perpetuates alienation (Marx), ensuring psychoanalysis remains essential for populace pacification.

    In short, therapy cannot create utopia—only structural transformation can eliminate the need for therapy.

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    Reconsidering the binary: going meta

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    1–2 minutes

    Once we recognize a binary at play, we invoke a “meta-move” to consider more open possibilities, a third or fourth option as a creatively broader field.

    The more philosophical option (truly meta) is to consider that there has always been only one thing: one object or entity that is divided in itself. The seeming problem (binary or ternary) is an inherent antagonism necessary for the entity to remain functional. There is no escape into a third or fourth solution, merely higher levels of realization.

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    Beyond art appreciation

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    1–2 minutes

    Postmodern art (or post-postmodern art) requires the study necessary to perceive the connections providing serious, full discourse with the art. The continuity possible through ideas becomes drastically reduced when art moves away from ideology, critique, or examination into appreciation or feeling: experience without intellect.

    This is a symptom of capitalism markets re-creating art in its own image: a reductive, bright, and easily consumable flavor.

    This is not the diverse, relativistic appreciation promised in Postmodernism but an emotive similarity felt by all equally(more akin to universal modernism). More confoundingly, post-postmodernism must return to modernism to address postmodernism’s inability to find a way through the deadlocks and antagonisms that were never solved.

    Suppose an audience (and the artists!) are unaware of enlightenment or modernist values, much less the critiques of Adorno or Benjamin that move us into postmodernism. In that case, we are left with art objects of shallow discourse reliant on emotive and consumable appeal. Comfort and indulgence become our guide, a superficial appreciation untarnished by complex insights.

    idea from Julian de Medeiros

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    Utopia as morality

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    1–2 minutes

    History now takes on moral valence; to “go backwards” is immoral. Indeed even actively conserving the status quo is immoral; governance is only moral in so far as it affects change, thus moving us ever forwards, towards utopia

    N.S. Lyons

    Progress is moral; caution is backsliding.

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    Resistance and Flow

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    1–2 minutes

    The choice to stand firm (stoic) or to go with the flow (abdicate) reflects personal, but also cultural disposition.

    In religion, the monotheistic faiths (Islam, Christianity) offer a singular truth, which seems stabilizing or foundational and is individually heroic, versus the more open and communal focus of Eastern religions (Buddhism, Taoism) that eschew disruption for flow.

    Consider the social ramifications: Placing a boulder in a stream increases the intensity of the current on either side, counterintuitively not stopping the movement but further entrenching it and ensuring its survival.

    Also, on a psychological level, being an agent of flow (aligning with the “wisdom of crowds”) is a rationalization to be non-decisive, meaning that one must constantly be polling and responsive, enslaving the self to non-authentic responsiveness.

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    Distancing sanctimony

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    1–2 minutes

    Freddie deBoer discusses the moral sanctimony of claiming to be on the side of the poor, disenfranchised, and mentally ill by asking for money for them.

    Consider money and social status as a feel-good distancing mechanism: write the check or post online rather than physically, personally engage with (or take responsibility for) those suffering.

    The reality is difficult but not complex: ill people do not make rational, normative decisions, but declaring their lifestyle as a choice or unique expression of their autonomy is another clever avoidance of responsibility/reality wrapped in the rhetoric of individualist freedom.

    By requesting funds without participatory understanding layered with evermore attenuated disclaimers about autonomy and agency, we are left to surround problems with resources: we encircle difficulties with money and abstract empathy, like walling off an invader or parasite, yelling our care over the barrier we created.

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    Confusing morality and law

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    1–2 minutes

    The blurred boundary between spirituality, religion, and morals has been appended to the more secular concepts of ethics and law.

    Though distinct terms, we blend and link values, swapping and confounding terms until we have woven a shaky, contradictory moral framework: to be ethical (legal) is to be moral (personal), which is to follow a transcendent higher-good (religious/spiritual).

    Moreover, being legally traitorous is also morally sound given the law’s unethical nature (unjust, unequal convictions at differing rates for different people).

    Heck, to be moral requires rebellion, which is spiritual; ask Satan or the early Christians.

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    Ironies of Virtue Shifts

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    1–2 minutes

    Certain traits, such as pride and defiance, are seen as toxic, yet they established our nation.

    So… toxic, yet useful.

    In Christian morality, these virtues were always wrong, yet ignoring their role in establishing a nation that can be both religiously free and, paradoxically, demonize defiance and coerce submission from the prideful is a lesson in the drift of power into irony.

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    When politics become religion

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    1–2 minutes

    The increasingly eerie echoes between traditional religion (captured by the political right) and the atheist left (grievance/recognition politics) show how humans coalesce around meaning and values.

    The disturbing part is that beyond having fundamental doctrine, rites, and hypocritically righteous exclusion on both sides, the premise of many religions is a forthcoming utopia. There will be a day of retributive judgment, which will open the gates of heaven for the chosen to enter the sacred land.

    For both traditional regressive religion and the anti-capitalist indentitarian left, the utopia of a new world requires a singular communal body without strife or division, requiring a great culling of nonbelievers.

    Despite the claims at open forgiveness and empathy, it ultimately requires a violent end to pass into peace and harmony.