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Give up on changing yourself: that’s impossible. Instead, get incrementally better at spotting your own patterns and tightening the solution loop. (stimulus, internal response, external reaction.)
Over time it looks like you change, but you have just developed better coping strategies, faster reaction times, and reduced the errors of fumbling about in the wrong direction.
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A friend brought up “the lack of accountability” in politics.
In response, I brought up “the path to forgiveness,” suggesting we can hold people responsible, but allow resocialization. Otherwise, there is no reason for the “tyrant or abuser” to submit to rehabilitation and reintegration.
They responded that they would “never forgive Trump.”
In this situation, the impulse for accountability operates as a virtuous term, while smuggling in revenge-justice.
What I fear is a system with no possibility of recuperation; only punishment and a lifetime of alienation. In such a system we create and enforce opposition: once one mistake is made, the only logical thing to do is go further afield and amplify your martyrdom, because you can never return.
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Your unseen qualities are not valued. Therefore they tend to be underdeveloped.
To awaken and nurture the multiple aspects of yourself you must create (or find) the conditions that grow your underdeveloped attributes. This is necessarily uncomfortable; embrace it.
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The wish to return is strong.The nostalgic return to comfort is a place from which you may heal, but equally, it has the potential to poison. In turning from risk, one can avoid the hardships of growth and embrace stagnation.
This regressive stability is only life in the most rudimentary sense.
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To achieve your potential, we assume that you add actions, but more often the hardship is in destroying the limits preventing you from attaining your peak self.
These can be external resistance or internal demons you overcome. Once sloth, gluttony, or procrastination are removed, the achievement is foregone.
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To change the character of the world you must envision it and let it guide you.
To manifest the change you must forego the comfort of the idealistic fantasy and undertake to meet the demands of the growth your previous self desired.
from Bataille
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The authority is in the theatrics of the architecture.
At the bank, hospital, DMV, receptionist, or supermarket, we are channeled and herded by flimsy partitions, confronted at the moment of interaction by a translucent plexi shield.
When attempting communication, notice we bow our mouths toward the small money passage. In this posture of obeisance, we petition, propelling our very breath as an envoy of intent.
Despite the pervasive systemic manipulations, we need our humanity to pass through and compel the empathy that reintegrates the divided into solidarity.
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The development of ideas is the history of the world. Arguing is the sharpening stone, scraping ideas across ideas and discarding irritating protruding shards to the floor of history.
The benefit is a hardened, razor-sharp idea, perfect for poking someone or severing them a twain. Perfect for domination.
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Concepts change their meaning over time, both vertically and horizontally.
A vertical expansion extends the term’s definitional understanding: trauma used to refer to a physical wound incurred during a battle, but now can mean psychological heightened states.
A horizontal expansion extends the context: Once bullying was exclusively top-down abuse (status or physical dominance), yet now it has shifted to be used in a bottom-up context where an employee can bully a boss.
As the concept opens (creeps into society and expands) previous instances can be named, and thus we can attend to them. Yet, the promiscuity of the term allows for abuse as well.
"the art of manliness" podcast – the dangers of concept creep
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You can dump yourself into the world, holding nothing back. Even after giving away everything, you will still be here.
Or, you can hold onto your "self" using the strain and pressure to shape a fortified self. And, yet, if that collapses you will still be here.
