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It is one thing to diagnose a problem and another to solve it. Why do we suppose the same person should do both?
The skills of deconstruction do not necessarily entail the temperament for reconstruction or creative leaps. Yet, we assume that the insight to spot a problem offers a unique insight, allowing for a solution.
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To turn outward -to engage in politics- we must first turn inward to establish our identity.
However, this once introspective process of establishing character based on transcendent ideals can move from the internal and latch onto the external pre-existing, immutable markers like race, ethnicity, and gender as primary characteristics.
This reverses the process: instead of “I am Y, thus I align with X politics,” it becomes “I identify as X, therefore this is my politics.” We’re not truly seeking identity but grasping at given markers: we are not pushing back against the apparent, but refusing to seek as we declare we are found.
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Human nature inclines toward complacency; we adapt to comfort, gradually losing awareness of our fortune. Overindulgence dulls gratitude, making the "slap" of reality necessary for recalibration.
These disruptions—loss, failure, or confrontation—force clarity from contentment or narcissism, breaking cycles of excess and myopia.
Forgiveness is essential in this process, not just for others but for ourselves. We resent the pain of awakening, yet the jolt of pain is often the only path back to wisdom.
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Justification, from the Latin justificare (‘to make just’), denotes a singular act of establishing something as right or fair: a fixed state of affairs.
Sanctification, rooted in sanctificare (‘to make holy’), describes a continual process of ‘setting apart’ or refining: gradual improvement.
Thus, justification fixes status, while sanctification implies an evolving condition.
Naturally used to discuss religious salvation, the terms provide a nuance between one-time justice and ongoing progress. However, both demand a ritual of public demarcation: a singular point from which forward movement can begin.
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“People like me because I make it about them. I asked them about their lives. It’s such an easy trick to get people to like you."
Receiving external validation ("likes") through momentary manipulation is logically ridiculous: thier liking you is as fake (or strategic) as your curiosity, because they only like the act you don. As such any personal validation is equally counterfeit, another lie.
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Almost every problem has a “chicken or egg” framing we trot out as needed.
“My depression caused my bad life” can easily be inverted to “My bad life caused my depression,” proving we situationally assign causation.
While we naturally tend to the binary format (“Politically, is the populace crazy (them), or am I out of touch with reality (me)?”), it obfuscates complexity for a didactic, hyperbolic simplicity akin to some of the most insightful religious teachings (“The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”)
It sounds like considerable wisdom to invert causation or status, to reveal a new perspective, when it is often simply untrue, and yet it fulfills a desire for the world to be different.
Instead of this quasi-linear thinking in which we swap positions (chicken/egg is really egg/chicken), we can release the binary and consider a vast complex of several self-reinforcing cycles. These are generative network effects, with conditions co-arising and evolving beyond our seemingly insightful reductive inversions.
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Curiosity arises from two states: survival and surplus. In survival, it serves utility; in conditions of surplus, it becomes playful exploration.
Yet even playfulness may stem from survival (freedom born of overcoming), while surplus enables deeper insight (less pressing, less provisional, more contemplative).
Is curiosity ever free from survival’s roots, the inherent drive to map and know the world that threatens you? Genuine curiosity may only emerge when survival fades, allowing idle wonder to evolve, yet equally, such contentment may dissolve (or pervert) the investigative impulse.
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Postmodern art (or post-postmodern art) requires the study necessary to perceive the connections providing serious, full discourse with the art. The continuity possible through ideas becomes drastically reduced when art moves away from ideology, critique, or examination into appreciation or feeling: experience without intellect.
This is a symptom of capitalism markets re-creating art in its own image: a reductive, bright, and easily consumable flavor.
This is not the diverse, relativistic appreciation promised in Postmodernism but an emotive similarity felt by all equally(more akin to universal modernism). More confoundingly, post-postmodernism must return to modernism to address postmodernism’s inability to find a way through the deadlocks and antagonisms that were never solved.
Suppose an audience (and the artists!) are unaware of enlightenment or modernist values, much less the critiques of Adorno or Benjamin that move us into postmodernism. In that case, we are left with art objects of shallow discourse reliant on emotive and consumable appeal. Comfort and indulgence become our guide, a superficial appreciation untarnished by complex insights.
idea from Julian de Medeiros
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Implicit is about the unsaid, while tacit is about the unsayable.
To have implicit permission means it is understood but not spelled out, yet it could be theoretically made explicit or disclosed.
Example: “Make yourself at home” means you do not need to ask permission for every action.
To have tacit knowledge is understanding something that can not be described easily.
Example: Riding a bike or an artist’s masterful stroke cannot be fully described. They are acts of embodied knowledge despite any replicability or theoretical grounding.
When considering skills that cannot be easily outsourced or replicated (especially in the age of AI), it is implicit that we recognize tacit skills as more human and of higher value, yet making the implicit explicit is what companies can easily measure. This means many companies are not optimized to recognize the values that will allow future success.
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Truthful information is expensive; information that merely connects people is cheap. (factual and relevant analysis vs emotion, drama, stories)
We see a rise in connectivity due to technology, but there is not a commensurate rise in wisdom or truth. In fact, they are drowned out by the easier manipulative, connecting myths and fantasies that draw on emotion.
(from Yuval Noah Harrari)
