Belly Button Lint

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Tag: learning

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    Media: insight & art vs. sugar & sex

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    1–2 minutes

    As media and outlets multiply, there is a natural competition for attention—more bids for eyes on more content in more formats.
    Art, beauty, or insight will not win, but rather the more addictive traits, such as sugar, fat, sex, death, and revenge will.

    This is human (biological) nature. Bids for betterment are culturally instilled, and socially (propagandistically?) corrupted. As society devolves towards animalistic urges media frames as “living my best life” there is no applause or policing of delayed gratification… unless you surround yourself with an perversely twisted group: those who enjoy the torment of betterment and control their attention.

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    Our monsters bring us onboard

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    1–2 minutes

    “The monsters we create welcome us aboard.”

    Mark Downham

    Our fantasies we provoke to frighten not only become transformatively terrible, but they take us further into terror. They perform the inverse of scaring us away: they teach us to become comfortable with the monstrous, if not to be monstrous ourselves.

    The revelation is our familiarity makes our intimates, the creator lavishing attentions thrills in the creative distress.

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    The Quasimodo silhouette of art: utility, commodity, and economics

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    1–2 minutes

    One similarity between the techno-libertarian manifest destiny of futurism and the populist backlash of Trump or Brexit is a bluntness about the bottom line of “utility.”

    Art and its complex, tangled, and soft messaging -its layered density, subtlety, and non-productive pursuits- is a threat. The effort to unpack or ascertain its message is inverse to its bottom-line value: the more baffling, the less quickly capitalized or commodified.

    Good art looks to reject easy commodification, or quick absorption, containing its incompatible antinomies within itself. Its greatness can only be realized over broad swaths of time.

    The knee-jerk reaction points to the high sales value of good art: good art has been successfully commodified, and the price inflated through investment portfolios. However, that is the art of economics glomming onto something alien to it’s nature.

    Art commodified is a malformed conflation: a disfigurement warping art into a shape recognized as the discourse of dollars. It is not that the art does not still carry its message, but cloaked and hunchbacked with economic weight, it has been Quasimodo-ed and requires a genuine heart to see past its ugly silhouette.

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    thinking is undermining

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    1–2 minutes

    Albert Camus says beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.

    This is specifically in reference to tragedy’s ability to provoke suicide. However – and this is arguable – once you consider any position long enough you will see an alternate version of it, which will undermine your primary position.

    To think is to decrease your blind faith by abolishing an innocent or naïve acceptance.

    One must consider as well the zealot and mad-man, who think excessively and have an irrational faith beyond reason and must wonder if this is actually "thinking" or if true thinking is multiple perspectives dismantling monistic thought.

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    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)

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    Education vs Behavior

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    1–2 minutes

    Education is no longer about knowledge acquisition: knowledge is ubiquitous and readily accessible.

    Those who succeed acquire skills in “way finding,” which is the direction you will go and the discipline (behavior) that will allow you to get there. 

    Education is now about equipping people with the tools for “how to succeed” (process) rather than information transmission (download).

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    Buffering symbolic speed

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    1–2 minutes

    Symbols (and ideology) are tools that help us grasp and manipulate reality, like a pair of pliers or a flywheel. When the tools (symbols) are widely adopted, we find a new means of heightened speed and control.

    Once literacy became commonplace, we could communicate more rapidly, allowing influence and manipulation by broadcasting easily repeatable messages faster.

    The converse of symbolic ubiquity and indoctrination would be “incremental learning” or “particular skills acquisition,” such as becoming a stonemason, rather than rapid, frictionless downloads, the process of incremental tutelage and physicality can buffer or bottleneck the transfer rate, providing ample time for redirective response.

    The symbolic’s rapid and straightforward dispersal -with virtually no investment to gain the knowledge- is appealing, allowing them to reside in every portion of our life. Yet, we do not have good defenses (immunological reactions) against such speed and its potential harm.

    (This is echoed in the physicality of a human’s strength versus the flywheel’s released kinetic energy or the hand against the exponential clamping force of the pliers.)

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    effervescence

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    1–2 minutes

    Effervescence is surplus enjoyment.

    A drink might taste fine flat. Prior to the technological age it would be a glorious treat.

    Today there is a shelf life on the bubbly giddiness that comes prior to opening and once opened, which quickly diminishes; it dissipates, leaving us with the flat thing itself.

    The thing itself is still great, but our fixation on the almost unsustainable additive of enjoyment, which dissipates as soon as we encounter our desire is also the recognition we must take into every interaction: everything fizzles out in time, leaving you with its raw state, which may still be amazing, but once we have enjoyed it with bubbles it is difficult to accept its normal state.

    The difficulty is that we produce the added effervescence through our anticipation.

    (In part from Slavoj Žižek)

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    irony is a valid response

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    1–2 minutes

    Given the insanity of the world, the contradictions assail us daily (such as the definitional inability to achieve a purpose that is transcendent) the only response is to laugh, or to find it humorous.

    While laughing off serious inquiry can develop into dark apathy, recognition of ridiculous situations can help you move through them into something greater: if failure is inherent (immanent) so is rebirth, allowing you to choose optimistic action over static, determinist recognition.

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    I am (not)

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    1–2 minutes

    First, you are not your emotions: your emotions change daily (if not hourly), displaced by others, though some are more persistent.

    Next, repetitive actions are programmed behaviors: they are mechanically habitual, and you are compelled to enact them over long periods of time, though they can be changed (moderated) with effort.

    Most of the ways you think of yourself, your "self image," are emotional or peak moments, but these are not who you are. You are not passionate or angry; you are primarily the mundane actions you never consider.