Belly Button Lint

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Tag: confidence

  • Theme:

    Aesthetic belief

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    1–2 minutes

    Consider that aesthetics is a distancing from enjoyment to analyze or judge.
    True belief has no distance, while aesthetic belief is a complex game played for enjoyment.
    The difficulty is when your aestheticized emotions are confused (or bleed into) your identity as true belief: at this point, everything is the game.
    Even anger and fear, which appear natural, are enacted a satisfy a role: they produce an effect that affects others, providing the aesthete with pleasure in their manipulations. Once beliefs become aesthetic and sincerity is deserted for the joy of the game, there is a deeper problem: When escalating artificiality is the reward, it may be pleasurable to invoke horror and watch the world burn.

    (ideas from Charles Blattberg)

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    the false appearance of life-affirming activities

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    1–2 minutes

    What if the model (image) for life-affirming acts is life-negating?
    The vacation pictures on social media, the concerts, and the active lifestyle: when you need an escape from living, they orient you away from the reality of life into the unsustainable emotional image of fulfillment. The "image of life" is a peak placebo that, though fun, can capture and invert priorities even when you are aware of the seduction.

  • Theme:

    Eat your pain

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    1–2 minutes

    You can be a little self-pitying booger all morning, angry and weepy and manic, and finally, realize you don’t need that behavior.
    It isn’t beneath you; it is just that you know how this plays out, and it is exhausting and hurtful.
    Eat that pain, choke that rumination, and know you are God-damn amazing. How did you ever forget that truth? Eat that darkness and burn bright.

  • Theme:

    Certainty is boring

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    1–2 minutes

    We all primarily want certainty until we have it. Then, bored out of your mind, you start disrupting your stability.
    Uncertainty, mystery, and danger are the spice of life.
    Much like a child learning to explore, we constantly gravitate back home for safety, build up our courage, and go adventuring again.

  • Theme:

    Belief for Relief

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    1–2 minutes

    To believe is to be sure, righteous, and secure in your thoughts: you know exactly how (who) to be in the world.
    Without belief, you are lost and insecure. Having forsaken illusions, you are ultimately free and thus horribly alone. For relief, we jump back into belief.

  • Theme:

    Don’t Confuse Truth with Belief

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    1–2 minutes

    Belief is when we stop being curious and observant. We stop thinking because we “have it figured out” or have an instinctual “gut reaction.”

    A truth seeker is aware of this bodily reaction and the quick righteous response. They pause and question their response and re-open themself to the world.

  • Theme:

    Politics: from Material Conditions to Ideology

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    1–2 minutes

    Once upon a time, politics was about material conditions: more food or fuel. We have transcended survival into arguing over ideology. This is a success.

    Yet, ideology is firmly bound to identity.

    When you lose an ideological battle, your material conditions remain relatively stable, yet a vital blow has been struck at how you relate to the world. This makes our politics more dangerous by being less grounded.

  • Theme:

    Trapped by passion

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    1–2 minutes

    You follow your passion into the art world, where your curiosity and ambition drive you to learn and grow. Soon every problem’s solution is more thoughtful art.
    Like religion or capitalism, every crisis is an opportunity to have more faith: enact more rituals, dig deeper, try harder.
    Your passion has trapped you. You have traded love for myopic fanaticism.

  • Theme:

    Following your passion off the plank

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    1–2 minutes

    Some people can’t help but tell you what you want to hear, feeding your worldview.

    It is not until you have confidently walked out onto the plank that you turn to find they have retreated to their safety.

    You wanted the world to be a certain way, and in your passion (with your supposed allies), you forgot how the world works.

  • Theme:

    The bravado subterfuge

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    1–2 minutes

    Rule of thumb: Confidence is not to be confused with competence.
    Rule of thumb: the faster they tell you how good they are, the worse they really are.
    Rule of thumb: the amount of verbal justification is proportional to the forthcoming errors and time repairing the errors.