Belly Button Lint

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Tag: community

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    masks: difference and identity

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    1–2 minutes

    In societal contexts, the mask symbolizes identity and ideology without revealing the wearer’s face: it serves as the face.

    This duality highlights a circular logic (tautology) —identity is represented not through distinction but through self-referential constancy (looping repetition) or the image of constancy. By obscuring genuine diversity behind uniformity (signaling ideological alignment), the self is never seen, and the question of whether the mask IS the person persists (i.e., there is no inner core, only the mask).

    Paradoxically, by masking and not revealing the ‘authentic distinct individual’ means alignment with others is easier. Masks perform the predictable.

    However, without distinction or difference, when the tautology is too complete and there is no occasional slip of the unique underlying pathos, the mask that once allied now breeds paranoia. It is too flat, too singular, too predictable; a mirror reflecting without a being; finally being fully what it is.

    Consequently, the mask only truly works when shoddily maintained… or when masking a mask.

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    Disavowal and Fantasy

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    1–2 minutes

    Fantasies transcend mere wishes, crafting realms for emotional fulfillment sans repercussions—a rejection of acknowledged desires, a disavowal to retain approval.

    Prevalent are erotically non-consensual and hero-centric fantasies, navigating the delicate balance between community esteem and clandestine gratification. These scenarios permit indulgence without the burden of consequences, focusing on pleasure while eschewing associated horrors.

    Recognizing the antagonisms your fantasy ignores is to move back into reality, collapsing the escapist pleasure, the forbidden moment. Enacting your fantasy necessitates your disavowal from society as one who exercises specific deviations or perversions.

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    cynicism’s spiral

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    1–2 minutes

    A politics of suspicion leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy: the cognitive bias of looking for corruption corrupts trust, and any outcome is suspect.

    As such, our cynicism is proven correct, despite any possible good that arrives: it is never enough or always about to be overturned. Like a drug, the overuse (abuse) of cynicism leaves us wounded and alone, empty and despairing. We are non-manipulable, but we are also non-participatory, anti-social, and unable to mount a cohesive defense against the ideologues.

    It is baffling to think belief, faith, or trust is a necessity for political rehabilitation.

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    Church’s Role in Sustaining Democracy

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    1–2 minutes

    In America, around half of all volunteer-based groups have a religious affiliation. Additionally, between 35 to 40 percent of the population goes to church regularly. However, over the past 50 years, the percentage of people who vote and volunteer has declined by 10 to 20 percent. This decline has also been observed in the "third places" that were once known for community support and socialization.

    In his book "Bowling Alone," Robert Putnam highlights how dwindling participation in community organizations has eroded our ability to run meetings, manage disagreements, bear responsibility, entertain strangers at home, or participate in sports and games.

    As a result of maintaining organized groups, the church has become a primary training ground for civic engagement and leadership, as well as diplomacy. These are fundamental hallmarks that are required for a successful democracy. Religion plays a crucial role in preventing isolationism and atomized individualism, thus retaining social fabric and support.

    In a fraying democracy, the rise of unified voices, and therefore democratic majority, is likely to arise from religions that maintain, train, and unify.

    [tags  democarcy, religion, voting, third place, socialization, politics,]

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    Progress versus progressivism

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    1–2 minutes

    Who can be against progress? Don’t you want "change" so that everyone is treated well and fairly? Yes, of course.

    However, progress is merely the process of moving towards a goal, not the goal itself.

    The confusion is that progressivism co-opts the term "progress" to mean a singular vision: a neo-liberal techno-rationalist future of egalitarian leveling that will be beneficial for human enlightenment, comfort, and peace.
    Yet, to many citizens palatable progress is a retroactive return to traditional micro-social communities, which carry the negative connotations of religious fundamentalism and Luddites.

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    Community is a stance, not a standard

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    1–2 minutes

    Community is not formed by adherence or conformity to a norm per se, but by aligning yourself with the others emotional state and accommodating decision-making, a utilitarian meshing of mutual recognition, which must happen authentically.


    Community is not a standard, but a stance.

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    More technology to solve technology problems

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    1–2 minutes

    Being a distracted driver by using your cell phone is more dangerous than driving drunk.

    How did we reduce drunk driving? By increasing pre-driving pressure, social ostracization, and outrageous fines. The social component targeted people before they got in the car, crowd-sourcing concern as a form of communal policing.

    However, social pressure cannot alter our phone behavior once we are alone in our car: we feel autonomous and bored inside our sheet metal and glass bubbles hurtling down the highway, though we are amongst others.

    A reversion to heads-up awareness and concern for the safety of others (and yourself) seems unlikely.

    The only solution (it seems) is auto-driving vehicles (expensive) or cell phone blocking (unlikely), which will only put more money in the pockets of the companies that created the problem in the first place.

    From Matthew Crawford

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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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    friendship based on lameness

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    1–2 minutes

    People often find it challenging to befriend someone who is unpredictable. Even if you are generally somewhat weird, there is a limit beyond which you may become off-putting. Overindulging in your creative freedom can sometimes overwhelm those who simply seek casual entertainment.

    Many relationships seem to be based on your ability to moderate your level of creativity to a degree of lameness, which is not true creativity but rather something adjacent to it – adjacent to being interesting.

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    The Fragmented Mirror

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    1–2 minutes

    In the pre-digital era, a universal similarity of content was reflected back to the mass audience (the public): they gazed into the mirror of media and (mostly) saw their values reflected back. (This is the pre-collapse tower of Babel.)

    The digital era fractured the mirror into shards, which captured groups and separated them, provoking fragmented views from which yelling erupts.

    In a mythic, psychoanalytic reading, the fragmentation and subsequent rage is a tantrum of yearning for wholeness. We wish to rejoin the primordial Eden or heavenly parents from which we have been expelled.

    partially from Jonathan Haidt