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Category: Growth

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    Beyond Binary Flips: duty and pleasure

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    1–2 minutes

    Considering the “binary flip,” where oppositional stances converge into their antithesis, we must remember this is not always the case.

    The flip (reversal) theory says that persistent engagement with an ‘enemy’ can lead to adopting their traits. However, Zizek offers the example of the voyeur, who steals the secrets of others, and so remains secretive, yet they will never be the original party with the same motivations. Similarly, a prohibitive father or an analyst remains separate from their subjects’ desires: the “father” must not become a sex object.

    Zizek reminds us that the transformation into what we oppose is not inevitable. The crux lies in differentiating “duty’s pleasure” from “pleasure’s duty,” highlighting a pivotal divergence where doing your duty may cause pleasure, but to take pleasure from your duty is to pervert it, extracting reward as pathological motivation.

    from Slavoj Zizek

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    Harmonizing Presence and Purpose

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    1–2 minutes

    Acute awareness in the present allows appreciation, while achievement requires purpose-driven action.

    These are not wholly incompatible, yet the search for meaning employs a mental state (intellectual focus) fundamentally at odds with the enjoyment of inherent beauty (open relaxation).

    The interplay can create harmony, where deliberate purpose propels us into meaningful action, during which existential angst recedes, leaving us free to feel deeply.

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    manufactured meaning

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    1–2 minutes

    The quest for meaning or purpose is misguided.

    Meaning is intertwined with intellect and rationality spawning from the mind’s attempt to comprehend. (What is the meaning of this?) In truth, what we seek is experiential.

    Joseph Campbell’s advice, “Follow your bliss,” suggests that genuine meaning emerges from attentive interaction, not through logical construction.

    This exemplifies the error of mistaking an outcome for an attainable objective, of intellectually fabricating a resonant motivation arising from engaging with the world. Such artificial self-development leads to dueling schizophrenic difficulties, paradoxically producing the necessity for therapeutic intervention and realignment.

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    The breaks: optimizing for good luck vs bad

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    1–2 minutes

    Engagement intensifies both fortunes and misfortunes.

    Mathematically, if a 2% chance exists for positive outcomes and 3% for negative ones, increased activity amplifies both lucky breaks and things going awry. Simultaneously, an escalation of activity (to produce good luck) heightens stress and the likelihood of errors.

    There must be a ‘golden zone’ – a balance where one optimizes positive occurrences while containing adverse breakage.

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    Constructive / Destructive Paradox

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    1–2 minutes

    For all of our cleverness and rationality, our ability to build tools, create marvels, and harness the energy of Atoms, we also fall prey to cults and wish death upon ourselves to serve in-group demands.

    Despite all of our capabilities and rationality, we can be convinced to suicide ourselves.

    Our creative, constructive aspect is more than equaled by our delusional, destructive self. This begs the corollary question of these traits: are they inherently interdependent?

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    Shielding yourself with social intent

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    1–2 minutes

    A clever and increasingly common rhetorical device is to claim intent, despite reality.

    For instance, a specific person argues against health studies on obesity, claiming they are to shame people. If prejudice can be assigned, medical studies and their real-world repercussions (death) are invalid. If you get in trouble at work for stealing, it is the deviously ill-intentioned underling who is to blame, not your actions.

    The fascinating part about assigning blame, or labeling ill-intent, is it allows one to reassert protagonist status; it dodges responsibility for actions. After all, disciplined behavior is an obnoxious remnant of "tradition" that should be discarded.

    Yet, more troublesome is when actions cease to count and intent overshadows outcomes, we begin to notice intent shifts to victimization and societal injustice, expanding the shield of intent into nobility.

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    Replacing Lost Things

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    1–2 minutes

    Humans have loss aversion, where instead of considering wins and losses as equivalent, a loss feels more devastating than a corresponding gain.
    It is not strictly rational. However, if you extend your body to apply to your psychology, losing a limb can be the end of you, while not getting an extra meal (gain) will merely be a little bit painful.

    Daniel Kahneman has pointed this out: typically, our mammalian survival behaviors underlie our materialism and economic decisions.

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    Considering Violence

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    1–2 minutes

    Violence, often dismissed as puerile, is a fundamental aspect of human nature.

    The urge to violence plays out as high-risk competitive learning, both social and physical, as a means of domination or a swift corrective for injustice. Beyond establishing pecking order or encouraging cleverness-over-might, humans also have a horror fascination for destruction. When this grizzly aspect is folded back into the culture we establish voyeurism, acclaim, and romance centered around risk; a strategy providing the dare-devil access to both manly comradeship and sexual partners.

    The attempt to shame or train violent impulses out of humanity has a complex risk/reward problem: we can (and do) set up regulated channels (violence outlets) and we can sublate (transference) violence into economic and academic ambition. But to mediate or pathologize can lead to repression, and to invoke authoritarian intervention as the only corrective is to rely excessively on de-humanizing bureacracy.

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    Res ipsa loquitur

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    1–2 minutes

    “The thing speaks for itself”

    This is the legal principle that “the occurrence of an accident implies negligence.” An incident/accident proves someone was inattentive (or uncaring) earlier.

    In a bureaucratic way, the professional-managerial class works to spread responsibility, which obscures blame from decision-makers and promotes negligence without consequence.

    So, while the thing or event (the error) speaks loudly, accountability is smothered (in volume and quantity) by corporate and legal speak.

    This dodge is itself an example of res ipsa loquitur: continued negligence is permissible, not accidental, which is the negligence of responsibility.

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    abandoned by your narcissism

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    1–2 minutes

    Narcissism is an internal protection, a selfishness that paradoxically closes others out while demanding from them.

    To encounter one who somehow dismantles the walls to provoke genuine concern becomes the narcissist’s scariest moment: to care is an infinitely more difficult a journey.

    From Walter Kern

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