Belly Button Lint

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Tag: order

  • Theme:

    Discarding Meaning and Systems: Living

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    1–2 minutes

    We seek understanding and purpose, motivators that lend meaning to our work and life. Yet, could this desire be misplaced, a faulty attribution, leading us further from life?

    As a driven individual, each life change—be it adopting a new scheduling tool, relocating, or job switching—ushers in a phase of engaged positivity (a kind of stressful happiness), until the novelty fades into routine, diminishing your passion, which leads you to seek more novelty.

    Consider that true aliveness may not stem from new meanings or intentions, but from relinquishing old ones. In this brief interlude, free from old systemic constraints, we engage with the world as it truly is, before new routines and purposes obscure our view of life.


  • Theme:

    the urge to restore

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    1–2 minutes

    Recognize the overwhelming compulsion to get back to the way things were.

    This is not only “loss aversion” in a behavioral economic sense but a desire for orderliness: as a vase shatters, we are already cleaning it up.

    We not only restore order but brush the sin away from sight.

  • Theme:

    The paradox of Equality and Difference

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    1–2 minutes

    The Woke and DEI movements theoretically advocate for ‘equality through promoting difference.’ This seems paradoxical: in a system where each element is unique, these differences produce equivalence (if every part is unique/different, they are all equally valuable).

    However, this equivalence collapses under a uniform metric or standard, like productive efficiency or race.

    The consideration between equality and difference is a ‘coincidence of opposites,’ a paradox that indicates interdependence and mutual reliability. This means there is no inherent polarity or antagonism, so endorsing one over the other or both simultaneously produces contradictory relevance or dissonance.

    Intriguingly, as a system strives toward its ideal, it inadvertently intensifies its opposite: simultaneously attempting equality and diversity guarantees the opposite of difference and uniformity.

    This ongoing struggle fuels polarization but to no apparent end: the dichotomies are inherent. Thus, their total absence cannot be manifested, and by claiming alternate poles simultaneously, we merely flip contradictions as the goal is approached.

  • Theme:

    The hero and the dark side

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    1–2 minutes

    To be a hero is to encounter a system and learn through trials. The journey changes your consciousness.

    Joseph Campbell reminds us that the brain is a secondary organ. Leaning too heavily on one’s intellect is to separate oneself from nature and one’s humanity, effectively enslaving oneself. This is the “dark side,” which is powerful but stunts and warps us: it keeps us emotionally larval.

    The hero’s task is more difficult: they must recognize the system and maintain their humanity amidst pressures to be locked into a routine that the consciousness and body decry. Gradually, finding itself captured, the body will rebel against the will of the mind, forcing a schizophrenic split.

    The hero is the one who can maintain their humanity while guiding us through the system. The maverick (rebel) is one who rejects the system but has perhaps not found a way to sublate and reconcile the system with remaining human.

  • Theme:

    The Modern Medieval

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    1–2 minutes

    The Enlightenment championed the democratization of knowledge, emancipating society from the information monopoly of the clergy. This heralded a new era of freedom.

    Yet, in our contemporary, information-saturated world, often basic knowledge (like a specific component’s dimensions or materiality) remains elusive. We’ve supplanted clerical gatekeepers (the human compendium) with intricate systems of knowledge (the digital table), bureaucratic formalities and complexities, and capitalist-driven reductive efficiency.

    These layers obscure direct access to information, ironically mirroring the medieval period’s hierarchical information control. Our ‘hypermodern’ society re-enacts the constrained knowledge dissemination of the medieval.

    {from Matthew Crawford}

  • Theme:

    Poverty of information

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    1–2 minutes

    We live in the information era, but we are also mediated by architecture and platforms that filter, moderate and act as a go-between.

    With automated systems in our cars, regulated health, and safety mandated at every instant we are buffered from experiencing direct reality.

    We experience a gluttony of inputs, but a poverty of genuine feedback from reality.

  • Theme:

    freedom produces managers

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    1–2 minutes

    When individuals are granted greater moral/personal freedom, it often leads to social anarchy due to the resulting diversity. This causes people to cry out for more managerial control.

    As established social norms decompose liberty ascends. Our first line of defense, consideration for others and self-regulation, holds no sway because there are no longer social sanctions. To re-establish consideration we turn neighbors into managers wielding policy to regulate what was once informal negotiations.

  • Theme:

    double standards

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    1–2 minutes

    To bear two standards (banners or flags of loyalty) is to serve multiple masters: the favorite person and fidelity to the law.

    Given the inevitable conflict (humans crossing every threshold), the law will be breached and loyalty tested.

    Consistency to the principle (law) fails the specific (person). Once breached, return to trust seldom outweighs resentment.

  • Theme:

    Stubborn vs stable

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    1–2 minutes

    Having a spine, taking action, and not being pushed around are lauded as stable until someone stumbles into the wall of your will and breaks their agenda. Then you are stubborn.

    Some stubbornness is contrarian: “I will do it my own way.”
    Some stubbornness is rebellious: “I do not submit to your authority.”
    They can be active or passive-aggressive, but both stem from a default antagonistic reaction.

    An excellent way to be stubborn is in your stabilizing process:

    • Be slow and considerate.
    • Listen carefully to others.
    • Tally the possible outcomes.
    • Probe your motivations before acting.

    When you do act, it is solid, not a whim or momentary manipulation.

    The conundrum with this process is that once you have reached a decision, you have (typically) done more work than the person wanting you to budge or expend yourself. This leaves you frustrated, prone to sunk-cost fallacy, and often in possession of a richer grasp of the situation than your interlocutor, which leaves you better equipped to act on their behalf. Still, you do that too often, and you are unstable.

  • Theme:

    reacting to unfairness

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    1–2 minutes

    Unfairness causes backlash in proportion: resentment at imbalance causes a reactive lockdown or retaliation to rebalance the dynamic.

    Our reaction is to change who we are: to protect ourselves, we become someone else.

    However, the rage you feel towards others is your own. (You produce and maintain it; you can also drop it.)

    A genuine achievement is not getting even, but despite being wounded, remaining kind: remaining you.