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When I fuck up, it is because I am looking for a conflict, which usually means I am looking for validation.
I feel unsettled for a week, maybe two, and then I force something that is usually unfair.
I like to say I don’t know what I am doing (I was an asshole by accident, immaturely acting out). But I can feel the pressure rising for weeks, pressing me down until I pop.
The goal is to either bleed off the pressure more frequently or address the inadequacies that inflate me.
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By being beneficial to one’s community.
You must be of use, not because somebody else feels better or praises you, but because it is beneficial to others. (Being of use is not simply one’s actions or utility but derives from your worth.)
Of course, one must first take responsibility for separating your tasks, and not seeking affirmation or praise from others. Aid must be given voluntarily, otherwise it is self-serving.
From Alfred Adler
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We have infinite resources (capability) for change. Every moment provides an instance in which we can react contradictory to our normal reaction.
To react is to remain who you are.
People speak of finding themselves, which is impossible; instead, you construct yourself into the person you want to find.
To do so requires a persistent situational awareness and the courage to act instead of comfortably react.
(In tandem: Reactionary people often claim others should love them for who they are. These people have found themselves and stopped trying: it is up to others to accept them on their terms.)
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Masculinity has become excessive and performative. To be “masculine” is to be in drag, commanding attention through a ritualized, traditional set of affectations.
This only occurs when there is no place for actual masculinity: there is no longer anything for masculinity to do.
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Modernity collapses distinctions, where we *attempt* to be indifferent to presentation. (Our reaction to a car wreck, fancy toaster, or poster of sneakers becomes equivalent.)
Andy Warhol did this through repetition, occasionally of the banal object but also of stars such as Monroe or Elvis, flattening and spreading their effect through excess.
To expand “affect,” we inflate (blow up) and fetishize difference as sexy: we engorge a minimal distinction into profound appeal, but over time and distance, deflation inevitably leads back into commonplace.
The result of overall flattened expansion is an impersonalized “affect” (or influence) that can be widely distributed when stripped of complex particulars. In an abstracted reductive state, modern images accelerate beyond emotion or psychology into an environmental milieu: a low-grade background hum of banality to which we learn never to react.
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In our society, we don’t “do” things in a classical sense of taking action to “make something.”
We “choose” things in order to become ourselves, we don’t “make” ourselves.
We don’t discern, so much as decide and then have consumer regret. And then choose anew.
{from Matthew Crawford}
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When you are anxious you aren’t profound. You feel the need to act: to speak, to do.
This acidic aggravation generates a compulsive need for action, for exhaustion. It is a bodily response springing from a psychological state.
Our goal is to soothe the mind to soothe the soul, trusting the body will follow.
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When you are anxious, or under anxiety, you don’t feel profound. You just feel like you need to be speaking or doing something.
Aggravation generates action. This is a bodily response springing from a psychological state.
Soothe the mind to soothe the soul, and the body will follow.
The first step, of course, is recognition, and then allow yourself to map out the stress into what you can solve and what you can’t.
