Belly Button Lint

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Tag: paradox

  • Theme:

    Wrong in the name of right

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    1–2 minutes

    Doing wrong in the name of right seems obviously wrong. Virtue can shift into justice, and shade into justification.

    But how do you know what is right?

    The right is known because it endures, while means/ends instrumentalization contradicts itself.

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    innocence is to be feared

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    1–2 minutes

    Moral people behave poorly, while many with integrity have no rules.

    The recognition of this is to grasp absurdity and strip away all justifications.

    Here, you are innocent, not naive but not justifying anything, living outside of dictated morality.

    In this sense, the innocent is dangerous.(idea from Albert Camus)

  • Theme:

    Flipping: Conservative v Progressive

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    1–2 minutes

    Perhaps a “conservative” merely wants stability, and the “progressive” merely wants change.

    The complication is when the backward-looking move forward to recreate and the forward-obsessed stall out into regressive stability.

    This flipping of values for achievement combats the motivating soul of the movement, forming a contradictory spirit versus action paradox seemingly impossible to rectify.

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    Freedom as unfreedom

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    1–2 minutes

    To be united in wanting freedom has a paradoxical opposite where each free person wants something different from any other, creating disunity.

    To champion individualism is to back “difference,” yet “individual freedom” often coalesces into herd mentality and similarity.

  • Theme:

    the body can be unreliable

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    1–2 minutes

    Your gut produces instincts, which can steer you true.
    Your body also produces hormonal needs we can steer you into the rocks. Naturally, the bodily contradiction makes being human very messy.

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    Capitalist contradiction: conservative defense

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    1–2 minutes

    Capitalism is a revolutionary and destabilizing force.
    So why do conservatives defend it? It maintains a sameness (of inequality) that has become traditional.

    To maintain and stabilize power, destabilize everything else.

  • Theme:

    open horizon

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    1–2 minutes

    Openness is scary: agoraphobia sets in.

    Options are endless, uncontrolled chaos unravels: dreaming begins.

    Holding control and chaos simultaneously is a gift: a thrilling of danger as joy.

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    Acheivement through negation

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    1–2 minutes

    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.

  • Theme:

    Reaching for extremes

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    1–2 minutes

    It is not one thing that causes somebody to go to extremes.
    To retroactively attempt to assign blame to one event (one facet of culture or media) releases the rest of society from the persistent, low-grade traumatization that unravels people.

    Once it is systemically accepted to permit poisons as "normal," we can blame the victim.

    And we must remember: most poisons offer dark pleasures, increasing the risk of dark actions.

  • Theme:

    I am free, and that is why I am lost

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    1–2 minutes

    To be free, or wholly liberated, is to have no map upon which to rely.
    The desire for stability and security (structure, rules, and consistency) is at odds with the chaos of freedom. The prospect of not knowing is a risk that produces stress, which somebody can channel into either exhilaration or anxiety.

    Most of us want both freedom and security. The challenge is to oscillate between both while respecting each.

    (I am free, and that is why I am lost." quote by Franz Kafka)