Belly Button Lint

Feeling Lint-y?

Tag: learning

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    Parallax: Subject into object

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    1–2 minutes

    What if to be as subjective, individual human requires contradictory views?

    This means you have a parallax problem: to see the other perspective, you must switch your point of view. More troublesome is there is no way to see them both at the same time, meaning they cannot be true simultaneously for a single, logical position.

    And yet, to be human, we do this constantly: hold opposing contradictory positions as subjective truth.

    Even more complex, we want to be a fluctuating, active subject, not a fixed object. Yet, reason, truth, and rationality all tend to convert us towards objectness: static, one view, non-evolving, perhaps non-human.

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    emotional triage

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    1–2 minutes

    External problems often require categorizing their quantity, quality, severity, or magnitude. We can perform triage to organize and prioritize by converting these logical abstractions into relative ranking.

    However, internally (psychologically and emotionally), we are incapable of logically ranking each predicament or distress: an argument with your boss or spouse is equally as influential on our decision being hungry. (see Daniel Kahneman)

    More importantly, we seldom recognize our emotional or psychological state, allowing it to creep into influencing our external evaluations (affecting our effects).

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    The fickle nature of beliefs

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    1–2 minutes

    We pay to consume our beliefs.

    Yet, why do we need more confirmation and novel arguments or insights if we already believe? So we are prepared when the slidey sideways belief shifts its stance. When our belief bucks, we can rebut or run.

    Your beliefs: it’s like watching the weather and preparing yourself for the flash flood from the blue sky; not only is keeping a keen eye on the sky good for your social alignment, but you also catch your own party adrift.

    So, we pay not only for affirmation, but also for a really wonky weather gauge to protect us from our beliefs rogue waves.

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    Paradox of Desire: universal uniqueness

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    1–2 minutes

    Naturally, people desire and struggle to pursue those desires. Manufacturing desire (programming and targeting specific desires, objects, and ideas) is a means to unite people: we all want the same thing. And yet, it is divisive as solidarity shifts to bitter competition and mimetic jealousy.

    Curiously, today, we all want uniqueness. It is our universal desire, which is paradoxical, to say the least.

    Not only are selective channels (archetype scripts) prepared in advance for your journey, but to actually be unique removes (excludes) you from the universal desire, the communal pursuit.

    That is, the goal (unique individuality) must not be achieved if one is to remain a relatable participant in society.

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    Meritocratic implications on Heaven (utopia)

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    1–2 minutes

    The Protestant & Calvinist notion of working your way to heaven (earning your salvation) positions works over grace. This limits God. No longer omnipotent, His hands are bound by law, by ledgers and weights.

    Consider the meritocratic future: you get what you earn; talent + work grants reward.

    However, systemic privilege pervades society. To get closer to an equal start and better judge true merit, we can eliminate inheritance, good parents and teachers, and the benefits of a supportive, cultivated community. (For a true meritocracy, we can either flatten all to the lowest common denominator or provide grace and love equally to all, the latter seemingly impossible.)

    Born into a meritocracy blessed with privilege is Heaven, a Utopia on earth: grace landed upon you, and sure, you worked, so you feel deserving. Still, humility is required when recognizing the benefits pre-bestowed.


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    positional morality

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    1–2 minutes

    Whether or not your position is right or wrong, forcing it on others is objectionable, if not objectively morally wrong (according to Peter Singer).

    This is how positive moral sentiment moves into a tyrannical position of fascist coercion by dictating “the good” as necessary.

    The role of the authoritarian (parent/politician/priest) is to say, “You are acting against your own best interests, and I will not let you damage yourself or this family.”

    Yet, from which stance is this “harm” prevented by the leader: common sense (popular consensus) or expertise (technical mastery)? Nebulous, unconscious ego compensation (blindly subjective desires, such as daddy issues, libidinal pathology, sadomasochism, or transference)? Or is it legal (judicial)? Technical expertise and judicial knowledge are drawn from academic and regulatory bodies, so they seem more impartial, but they can also be emotively distorted to serve subjective, relative ends.

    Never being coercive or authoritarian is not to find yourself in the right: you are still wrong but in a less visible way. Denying holding a position for fear of coercion smuggles in a more slippery sin: avoiding responsibility is also not of “the good” or “the right.”

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    relationship precrime: booby traps

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    1–2 minutes

    Many couples enact precrime condemnation.

    First, they create (make up) a sin that is an affront to their character, but keep it secret. Next, they goad the unwitting partner into crossing the invisible barrier: breach of character, breach of loyalty, breach of trust, a crime against one is a crime against us both, and you were guilty before you erred.

    Now, drama may unfold, which is revelatory: Will the partner submit or fight against artificial guilt? Consider that any argument is a form of communication, a bid for attention with heightened intensity and sharper edges. To engage is (win or lose) to affirm and secure the relationship; to disengage is to deny validity.

    To repeatedly trip emotional, relational IEDs is a sacrificial ritual to produce resentment through manufactured fault. We force a complicit role in undermining the self for the sake of the relationship, a codependent spiral.

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    warning: limit outdoor activity

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    1–2 minutes

    This public service announcement flashing on the highway may be helpful, but for whom?

    Many people rely on outdoor jobs. Hardcore hobbyists, such as joggers, will keep their training regimen. State mandates may force schoolchildren to remain inside, while white-collar employees are already trapped indoors.

    To announce “limit outdoor activity” as a public health notice is perversely insulting and myopically idiotic. It suggests we have been provided with a way of life that includes options: a liberated self-directed agency (autonomy) that the vast majority of people do not possess.

    Most of us are already in cycles of stress management, joggers with exercise, and the rest of us with chemical addictions, now multiplied by the further exasperated teachers and frustrated parents harassed by pent-up students.

    Obviously, seeing the government’s well-wishing and valid information as a provocation is a sign of my own cynical cognitive distortion. I could take up jogging.

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    Reiterating your power, publicly

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    1–2 minutes

    You must reiterate who you are to self-narrate what you will and will not tolerate.

    These behavioral mantras, pronounced in public, exhibit:
    1) our malleability to talk ourselves into being what we are naturally not
    2) a fear of losing our “place” (which we have confused with ourselves).

    Consider this: By intermittently (occasionally, randomly) repeating your frailty or anger, you manipulate others into not only paying attention but obsequiously submitting to your voice. This is attentional power. You are using their kindness/compassion/empathy to shore up your faltering sense of self.

    You may consider your pronouncements as “standing your ground,” as a moment of strength when it is truthfully the opposite: a social ploy of “acting out.”

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    Won’t get fooled again

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    1–2 minutes

    To not be fooled is not to live.

    Every time we interact, we risk. Every risk presupposes a modicum of trust and faith.

    Some people are wounded too badly to engage anymore, while others immediately jump back into the fray. Some, after more circumspection lick their wounds and learn, returning more cautious, more calculated.

    More interesting are those who are fooled, made fools of, and yet return more wise and wild: wiley.

    Permission to be fooled again granted, but be cautious what will return.