Every deadly sin can become mystical at excessive levels.
Transgressions at the extreme explode the individual: which is why they are a problem for community and society.
Tag: paradox
- Theme: Systems
the slope of excess into reversal
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1–2 minutesProblems stem from excess.
Something that is good in moderation, say the freedom from authority to explore or engage in taboo thoughts and desires, is liberatory.
However, embodied as an institution, or ethos, liberation is oxymoronic: excessively pursued it undermines (deconstructs) with the goal of removing any stabilizing reality with subjective relativism and irony. This excessive liberation is now akin to chaos, anarchy, or hedonism.
But now -as the new norm- “freedom” or “liberty” means escaping the fragmented disorder into stability: new liberation from chaos is safety, tradition, and discipline.
These types of reversals stem from excess and are crazy-making.
- Theme: Growth
Contradicting wants: labor and relaxation.
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1–2 minutesAt one point, wanting to fulfill your potential requires work, but you also want a peaceful and relaxed life, which -if misinterpreted- denies effort.
To satisfy both desires requires “work” and “not-work”: a seemingly impossible contradiction.
However, doing excellent work to meet your potential during half of the day generates fulfillment over the next half.
In a reinterpretation, we do not have to be totalizing; we can be granted relaxation and labor for ambition to fulfill both desires, but perhaps not simultaneously.
- Theme: Politics
Intolerable Contradictions: Egality vs Liberty
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1–2 minutesThere is a contradiction in appealing to equity and egalitarian outcomes in a society that proclaims individuality as a natural right: the liberated person is an imminently vital figure to be protected.
Equality is an improbable ideal, and egalitarianism removes rights from some to disperse amongst others. These concepts level through a promoted “normalization,” which is the opposite of sovereign self-making: it is coercive alignment.
Maintaining a state/society that can move into the future requires a shared set of values (such as equality under the law, the idea that your rights end when they infringe on another, and wealth/position is not a shield.)
Contradictions can be tolerated when the narrative provides a payoff (a noble or economic goal to be achieved) but become intolerable when confusion unravels stability.
- Theme: Politics
liberalism: Flattened Freedoms
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1–2 minutesLiberalism, in the classical sense, promotes individual freedom and civil liberties, that is, the agency of the individual citizen and acceptance of difference.
However, in promoting the idea politically as Libertarianism, it becomes flattened into economic excess and regulative access, behind which selfishness thrives.
In a system or state designed around economics and policy-making, a successful political movement would focus on -and move- these twin levers of money and law. Yet, cynically, moving the policy lever is a means to allow wealth, which exempts those made wealthy from the law, providing an elite uber-freedom and the power to close the policy door behind themselves.
Expounded socially, the reductive, deregulatory imperative of ‘liberalism’ works hard to sell ‘positive freedom,’ which paradoxically destroys the more complex range of human freedoms, such as cravings for harmony, social and communal stability, and fiscal parity. In fact, it preys on these concepts by offering them as immanent results of complete freedom, which can never manifest.
- Theme: Self
Manufacturing our dislikes
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1–2 minutesWe believe we dislike the person because of who they are or their actions: they caused us to dislike them.
However, the opposite is true: we manufactured our dislike.
We do this because it aligns with our goals: we want to have an enemy or be victimized so we can blame them for our inability to succeed, or we don’t want to be challenged by their brand of honesty.
We reverse the causal relationship by finding a point from which to string together our narrative into what appears to be coherently rational.
Yet the unexamined point is why we cannot accept or forgive this person. Why do our likes or dislikes even matter?
This may seem abstract or untrue, but Alfred Adler points out how love often works: the tiny things that made you adore your partner, how they eat or comb their hair, go from cute to deplorably disgusting once you have decided to destroy the relationship.
- Theme: Growth
irony is a valid response
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1–2 minutesGiven 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.
- Theme: Growth
To change: Contradictory action over reaction
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1–2 minutesWe have infinite resources (capability) for change. Every moment provides an instance in which we can react contradictory to our normal reaction.
To react is to remain who you are.
People speak of finding themselves, which is impossible; instead, you construct yourself into the person you want to find.To do so requires a persistent situational awareness and the courage to act instead of comfortably react.
(In tandem: Reactionary people often claim others should love them for who they are. These people have found themselves and stopped trying: it is up to others to accept them on their terms.)
- Theme: Self
Protection paradox
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1–2 minutesHow do you protect transparency, while at the same time protecting privacy?
Open access, transparency, and truth require openness, while defense or security requires obscuration, walls, and locks.
And yet, complete transparency is a protective measure by disallowing hiding. Promoting hiding generates secrets from which darkness can thrive. Yet, we may need to hide from the evil that claims to be the light.
- Theme: Self
Time management
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1–2 minutesHosteter’s law says projects you undertake will always take longer than you think, even when you account for adding time.
And yet another adage is "the time you allot to do any task is how long it will take," if you will work within the time you are given.
For example, if decide to spend one hour, it will take an hour and a half, but if you plan for an hour and a half it will probably take 2 hours. Yet if you allot 2 hours (thinking it will take one) it will take more time. But even if you allot four hours you will stretch the project into the four hours, and probably not be done.
Reality seems to fight back in an exponential fashion, in which we always lose. Planning seems not to coincide with how we see reality.
Yet the conundrum of not planning is never to achieve.