Belly Button Lint

Feeling Lint-y?

Tag: escape

  • Theme:

    the slope of excess into reversal

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    1–2 minutes

    Problems stem from excess.

    Something that is good in moderation, say the freedom from authority to explore or engage in taboo thoughts and desires, is liberatory.

    However, embodied as an institution, or ethos, liberation is oxymoronic: excessively pursued it undermines (deconstructs) with the goal of removing any stabilizing reality with subjective relativism and irony. This excessive liberation is now akin to chaos, anarchy, or hedonism.

    But now -as the new norm- “freedom” or “liberty” means escaping the fragmented disorder into stability: new liberation from chaos is safety, tradition, and discipline.

    These types of reversals stem from excess and are crazy-making.

  • Theme:

    dissolving control

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    1–2 minutes

    Your desire for freedom, to be unconstrained, becomes a rebellion against the softest controls: the informal control of a society or culture, of parents and churches, of schools and cliques.

    The problem is, upon dissolving the informal controls, a void is left, into which slips something much more sinister: bureaucracy and commodification.

    The managerial state denies you the human aspect through rigid, formal policy, while the corporate machine harnesses your desires, which you worked so hard to free.

    Ultimately, you are now captured in strict obedience, except for your desire to want, which further fuels your capitulation.

    Neither of these systems has the forgiving softness or freedom of the community constraints you worked to escape.

  • Theme:

    self-bondage and choice

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    1–2 minutes

    Hard bondage is coerced and abusive, while soft bondage is when we choose our imprisonment, restricting ourselves, or self-enslaving.

    Often there is an aspect of survival in subjugation (soft bondage): the position will help me emotionally, socially, or economically traverse the world’s hardships.

    It is familiar to imagine a destitute wife reliant on a callus, abusive husband. But we can also consider the Knight or Soldier, who offers allegiance and loyalty. In both positions, they must self-abnegate and tolerate 1,000 cuts against their personhood to maintain their status.

    While the examples are extreme ranges of context, disposition, and agency, we must consider what is voluntary versus compulsory (or obligatory).
    The knight undertakes strife for God and King, gaining personal valor, purpose, and authority: the tribe promotes the sacrifice. The dominated individual’s sacrifice is seen not as a sacrifice but as permitted subjugation or failure of choice, thus not a gain or loss to the tribe.

    In either case, the role of the submission (self-bondage), according to Erich Fromm, is a choice to escape freedom; that is, the freedom from making choices.

  • Theme:

    conflict avoidance is conflict amplification

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    1–2 minutes

    The more you avoid conflict, the more you repress your feelings. You present a false you, while the real you grows resentful and angry; you are secretly hurting.

    Eventually, you will create the argument you need to voice your pain, but it will be a huge mess you will end up apologizing for. Your avoidance somehow became amplification.

    The explosion confirms (to you) that you are the kind of person that messes everything up, so you’ll keep on avoiding conflict, until you explode again.

    Instead, try to verbalize your feelings as they arise, not laying blame on the other person. Over time you will find it’s easier for you to stand your ground without a fight, without drama.

  • Theme:

    Mutual strain: avoiding rupture

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    1–2 minutes

    Being in a relationship involves nerves: getting on them, both good and bad.

    We don’t fall out. Rather, our mutual capacity for tolerance is exhausted.

    The strain of caring, of good, of excellent excess, is a pressure begging release: it can turn positive or negative, but there will be an explosion.

    (Inspired by Alastair Reynolds)

  • Theme:

    Utopia of the body

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    1–2 minutes

    Utopia, definitionally, means “no place.”

    It is a place outside of us, which makes the body unwelcome, since it is indeed a place in which we reside.

    However, Michel Foucault says the body itself is unknowable, making it a place we cannot define, and thus a “no place” similar to the utopia.

    Our attempts to escape ourself into a mysterious better place are refuted, because our literal self (physically) is an unknown place, rich with mystery that denies escape.

  • Theme:

    Artificial intelligence: the return to being human

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    1–2 minutes

    Artificial intelligence, like any tool, reaffirms the difference between utility and humanity.

    The impulse is to flee or join: regress to a nostalgic, barbarian state, or merge into a techno-cybernetic future that will dissolve humanity.

    when we see ourselves as machines (tools), aligning our goals with their production, we forget that we are uniquely human.

    Being displaced by AI drives us to return to ourselves: dismantle our machinic adaptation and reveal what it is to being human.

  • Theme:

    This force crushing me

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    1–2 minutes

    When confronted with daily pressure, some retreat into and gain assurance from the ideological or transcendent, but we must face up to the certainties. Which includes our own absurdity and contrivance to escape reality.

    “Between history and the eternal I have chosen history because I like certainties. Of it, at least, I am certain, and how can I deny this force crushing me?” Albert Camus

  • Theme:

    the immanent improvement impulse

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    1–2 minutes

    We have an internal compulsion that comes from the survival imperative: perpetual striving.


    Even periods of sloth end or become obsessive in as sophisticated, ordered, and avoidant compulsions.

    To order our life is a struggle: a persistent fight that burns our energy. Even when there is no witness, which means it is not only a social construct of achievement but an immanent (innate) means of relating to the world.

  • Theme:

    Narcissism, narcotics and numbness

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    1–2 minutes

    Narcotics and narcissism draw from the same root word referring to numbness.

    To retreat from reality is to close yourself from the inputs of the world, to become a closed system. Narcissism (self love) refuses reality in the same way the addict anesthetizes their senses.