Belly Button Lint

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Tag: escape

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    Swimming in Paradigms

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    1–2 minutes

    We understand the world through epic themes that encapsulate us: epistemes, ideologies, and paradigms are the water in which we swim.

    Most of us are only vaguely aware of the contradictions and motivations that mobilize us, but we are the support system that feeds and maintains the framework. The better we grasp its trajectory, the more efficiently we can empower it through enhancing its programatization or destroying it by posing alternatives.

    Counterintuitively, the systems we serve tend to create impersonal claims for their self-perpetuation instead of our service. We gladly serve, abide, and are contentedly entrapped, furthering our servitude, which provides us a sense of directed agency, empowerment, or survival as it simultaneously endangers us.

    Yet, I doubt it can be avoided: to evade capture by these frameworks would require a complete non-engagement, but to move in the world requires framing. Escaping one of Plato’s caves only creates another, and jumping from one of Magritte’s painted canvases lands you in another.

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    Safety? Extending the need for intervention

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    1–2 minutes

    There are numerous examples of cities/districts setting up radar detection and redlight cameras for “citizen safety,” which happened to generate over $100 Million in annual revenue.

    Playing dirty, the city creates more infractions (and generates more revenue) by reducing the “amber time” -the time length of a yellow light- with the side effect of increased injury and accidents. Presented with this new data, devoid of the manipulated context, we have apparently become worse drivers, requiring more state intervention to save us from ourselves.

    In this way, the state uses its system control (under the imperative of public safety) to make us less safe for more profit, then uses the results to encroach further into once autonomous territory.

    (from Matthew Crawford)

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    Fetishistic disavowal

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    1–2 minutes

    According to Freud, the fear of castration (a lack) leads to a multiplication of representative genitalia: scared boys have lots of big toys (phallic stand-ins).

    Mark Fisher says if we apply this logic to modernism, the multitude of object fetishes proves our disavowal of an underlying fear: modernism does not exist. We have lost it and must indulge in manufactured commodities to avoid losing faith entirely.

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    Evil as ease

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    1–2 minutes

    The opposite of good is evil. But, as Hannah Arendt and others point out, generally, it is not malevolence that leads to evil; instead, it grows from passivity and conformity.

    Evil is born of taking the easy path too often, assuming too much, and avoiding painful efforts.

    That is to say, evil is evolutionarily natural: the less you struggle, the more calories you conserve. However, society is not based upon entropy and conservation but effort and consideration staving off casual collapse.

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    Fix projects, not people

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    1–2 minutes

    One way to alleviate rumination is to focus on projects: go fix something.

    One way to screw up a relationship is to fix it.

    Applying “project management techniques” or “goal-based achievement” to relationships distracts us from our mutual humanity. That is, we are still avoiding our deep-seated problems by distracting ourselves, a.k.a. getting things done or being productive, which allows us to feel better for a moment.

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    Removal of the Problematic

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    1–2 minutes

    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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    Freeing speech vs. freedom of speech.

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    1–2 minutes

    The loss of "freedom of speech" is the end of all freedoms.

    Equally dangerous but less acknowledged is "freeing speech," which is a form of liberation from meaning. We lose correspondence and consensus once interpretation is impossible because it relies on subjective feeling.

    The specificity of language tends to dissolve, stretch, or spread, but when attenuated beyond commonality, there is no communication, just noises of pain or appreciation.

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    Freedom comes from restriction

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    1–2 minutes

    Why should you struggle when you can have a mediocre life for free? To have a great life.

    Freedom of possibility comes from growth, not mediocrity. Paradoxically, your options for living expand when you fully engage specific restrictions.

    Not all restrictions (not all submissions) help, but those that allow you to maintain focus and process emotions in a non-destructive manner create resilience and wisdom that will enable you to move freely through the world, unhampered by the anxiety and disorders that plague others.

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    action is distraction

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    1–2 minutes

    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.

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    aversion to yourself

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    1–2 minutes

    Often, we avoid other people, not wanting to encounter them and the proceeding interactions.

    We claim to want to avoid them for a myriad of reasons, but this is in large part because others are a mirror: when you have an aversion to yourself, you avoid those who accurately reflect you.