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Can passivity exist without eventual repression or injustice? totalitarianism or fascism?
This becomes tangled in being either for or against struggle, for or against violence, which are mystical, fantastical positions of abstract language.
To be pacifist or militant does not engage in the real world and, therefore, does not truly exist.
from Blase Bonpane
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Anchoring is a cognitive bias where initial information shapes subsequent judgments.
As a selling tactic, pre-telling exploits this bias. For instance, labeling a product "delicious" anchors consumers’ evaluative expectations, influencing them to perceive it as tasty. Similarly, using words like "power" to describe a product anchors it in the consumer’s mind as highly effective, regardless of its true capabilities.
This manipulative use of language sets a baseline expectation, influencing us before intellectual consideration.
Interestingly, ideology does the same thing: pre-blinding us, pre-disposing us.
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Linguistic creep (or semantic drift) is exemplified by the use of terms like "art," which, once rigidly defined by culture and its relative merit, argued, today, "anything can be art" as beauty is in "the eye of the beholder."
This horizontal expansion renders the term ‘art’ nearly meaningless, and alternate categories must be delineated to allow critical judgment.
A similar expansion occurs with "violence/trauma" or "racism": if all things are racist (systemic racism) or any action can be deemed triggering, we must now invent new terms to respecify the attenuated definition, such as "anti-racist" or "pro-peace."
Words function symbolically. Once the categorical definition is expanded, it de-defines the word, rendering it useless as it ceases to point to anything. (The sign points to the signified (idea) forgetting about the signifier (object).)
Just as we can no longer recognize "art," as it is everything, the danger is to be unable to name actual racism or violence: the broadening spectrum dilutes the impact. Originally, to open a term spotlights unconsidered applications, which can be helpful, but once popularized as a tactic we must reinvent the language.
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Monitoring and micromanaging goes both ways: the manager’s lack of trust may not be a pathological control issue as much as a means of communication.
If they are insecure, over-communication can be the answer to building trust. Once established, they may cease to interfere and allow growth, perhaps by shifting their focus to a new battleground.
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In moments of idleness, we invent ways of being, transforming language into our reality—like a wizard casting spells.
Yet, the infrastructure supporting and stabilizing these dreams isn’t merely a backdrop for self-discovery and immediate desires, as noted by Benjamin Bratton.
Our era blurs sincerity and parody; assuming our rhetoric can reshape reality risks undermining the very structures that sustain us. Believing in the power of rhetoric over tangible reality will lead to the neglect and degradation (the condemnation) of the critical supports that uphold our luxuriously indulgent lives.
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As soon as you start arguing a binary approach is developed from which to consider and oppose. This is often a linguistic move: seeking the antonym establishes distance and distinction.
Another way of knowing, outside of concepts of language and conceptual understanding, is realizing something in totality. This is a version of wisdom beyond blunt dualities, yet can appear unintelligent: they do not have articulated language or positions, yet they are avoiding the symbolic logic traps that tangle us.
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Expanding the concept of violence to include behavioral manipulation through subconscious cues reveals architecture as inherently violent.
Structures like classrooms, churches, and prisons dictate roles and delineate dissent visibly demanding the subsequent consequences. This perspective transforms static buildings into entities with a form of will, channeling behaviors while punishing deviation.
Such architectural violence, akin to ideological indoctrination, forces conformity for survival, elevating seemingly mundane designs to coercive tools.
This redefinition extends architecture’s banality into the realm of atrocity, from which more grievous metaphors can be argued, such as rape via forced ideological insemination to produce (and replicate) passive and subservient normalization.
Thus, we encounter the violence of redefinition of language: converting the walls into deviant oppressors.
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Online political spaces function like a GAN (General Adversarial Network), producing conflicting ideas to smash out new political theories.
This super rapid accelerationist growth implies multitudes of points, rapidly moving into a space where everyone has their own accelerationism: not merely followers but deconstructive creators of networked broad agression.
(partially from Benjamin Bratton)
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Happiness is an emotive well-being, perhaps chatty but primarily a glowing emanation content in quietude. Depression stifles language, muting the desire to express.
Rage, on the other hand, manifests as an expulsion of incisive expletives targeting idiocy and injustice. Extreme anger becomes intellectual and cerebral, arming itself with honed arguments and tactical acumen as unknown linguistic prowess shapes words into weapons.
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Realizing yourself through the machine is to remain underdeveloped: to become yourself as an executor of technology is not of the heart, leading to subversion or perversion.
Using the prosthesis of the machine grants power as you subvert nature. The trade is to become a perpetual functionary of the machine, enslaved to its dictates until its desires are yours.
The tool as facilitator and benefactor is a provider and, as such, can be worshiped and fetishized. Still, as reliance moves into deification, similar to religion, we forget the role of metaphor: we make the “thing” that seems to do the work universally applicable and appropriate for every situation, forgetting it is merely a tool or extension.
