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Your new state of anxiety is sold to you as freedom.
When your stable job collapses and you take on a precarious freelance career, you are now “free” as your own boss. Without universal care, you can now decide to spend that money on vacation to reduce your stress.
Your freedom to reinvent yourself in order to stay ahead of the market shifts and reductions is not the liberty you sought, but a pernicious fake freedom thrust upon you.
from Slavoj Zizek
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It’s often the case that there is no universally accepted best solution, so we must create our own path. What’s more interesting is the hidden motivations we produce and nurture that go against common sense, but that we dare not reveal.
Of course, we usually follow the norm when it comes to things like physics or social constructs, but when it comes to personal matters such as family, business, or sex, we often encounter conflicting desires.
However, when we find someone who shares our fantastical desires, it makes us feel alive, which is beyond common sense.
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If you have godlike demands, your feelings of inferiority are ironically the result of them.
This means that if you didn’t feel entitled to anything, you wouldn’t feel as if you were somehow lesser than you are.
The paradox: expectations create your feelings, and your ambition creates lack.
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What if all tension comes from demanding your way? That means we are anxious because we want, so we strive to make it happen.
From objects to status to emotional manipulation, we must stretch ourselves out to accommodate our desires, risking a sudden snapping return and stung ego.
It seems our entire economy is predicated upon people stretching and remaining taught with potential energy until they eventually lose elasticity.
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How we communicate can determine how we think.
Alan Watts shares that, grammatically, we have a noun perform a verb or interact with an action; we must have a “knower,” who is “knowing,” or a person (noun) having emotions (verb-y feelings).
More accurately, as Buddhists or Deleuze might say, “you” is a process: the noun is a verb happening.
You don’t have feelings, but feelings are happening. They show up unbidden and uncontrolled amid an entity called “you.” At best, the “knower” is partially aware, but is acted upon and is an action becoming, tenuously holding onto the continuity of noun-ness.
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There is a gentleness in being around people you love who love you. When profoundly content, self-regulation can soften.
This can mean we treat those we love worse: we relax our guard, and our inner asshole makes an appearance. This is all the more reason to work through your issues so you can relax when you relax.
Equally, when surrounded by loved ones without the need for competitive rivalry, we can drop politeness, sycophancy, or bitterness. Without mediating or acting out, we might slip into our best self.
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When an argument shows up and is escalated (appealed) to a higher authority, the problematic situation is dutifully regulated out of existence.
Authority only knows how to be authoritarian, thus, the solution for liberty is restriction.
For instance, the argument over bathroom use by gender/sex has led to noncommunal spaces, which is to say, an isolated solo experience. Protests lead to a dearth of options, not an abundance of diversity.
Equally, bestowed authority can brutally slice through the Gordian Knot with an edict, such as King Solomon pronouncing the baby should be cut in half.
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Consider the times you got precisely what you wanted or your fears were made manifest.
We know this may happen, but you cannot remember even a small fraction of them. Currently, your brain is occupied with your newest worries (catastrophizing) and hopes (fantasy).
Upon consideration, our hopes for the future are merely a way to displace our fears: hope is an antidote to the uncontrollable present.
from Sam Harris
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We swing into action to purge our negative feelings, making things worse.
We claim it comes from “love” or “justice” when it comes from the impossibility of sitting with something painful until you figure out who you are and what’s really going on.
