We have the urge to fix things, to make them better.
The question is: do we understand things before the impulse to alter them to our desire?
Do we fix things not broken, simply because it’s easier than understanding and accepting?
Tag: perception
- Theme: Systems
the gremlin in the machine
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1–2 minutesWhen you are working on a complex machine, or maybe even a simple device like a bicycle, its ability to thwart you repeatedly, despite your persistent efforts, feels like you are struggling against the stubborn will of another person.
Machines seem to possess a will: a determined antagonistic force that requires arcane psychological voodoo to overcome.
To get your way and coax the cantankerous machine to abide by your control (temporarily) requires an affinity that finds life in the inanimate: a gremlin or golem soul invested in the stuttering steel to whom relational attunement cedes benefit.
- Theme: Self
Cynical view of wealthy altruism
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1–2 minutesThe fortunate can ignore the unfortunate. Through myriad small (and large) benefits, it becomes impossible to relate, engage, or comprehend the distant poor except in the abstract.
The fortunate, or privileged, have localized, particular concerns that are distant from survival but not without emotional and social pain.
Today’s initiative is to demand their sight morally; that is, the gaze of the privileged must see the less fortunate and empathize (and feel guilt).
Yet, this symptomatically multiplies the positions and disparities instead of diminishing them.
Noticing the unfortunate (or victimized) begets feigned social signaling, adding a layer of selfish deceit and social utility to the sight so desperately sought-after. The gaze that was supposed to recognize a plight and generate focused action for the poor is activated into multiple effects, which act more substantively for the altruist.
Their gaze on the poor benefits the wealthy more.
This pantomime merely cloisters the wealthiest’s actual self further away: by demanding their attention, we are left somehow more blind as they recede behind enacted propaganda, leaving us seeing only an after-image of kindness with no substance.
- Theme: Self
recognizing kindness
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1–2 minutesRecognizing kindness would mean understanding why the person behaves the way they are.
For instance, if I pause to let somebody else walk before me, I am aware of a broader situation and avoid potential conflict. But the unperceptive person, they never sees it, or it just strikes them as odd.
Is there kindness around you that you cannot perceive because you are too self-absorbed?
- Theme: Self
Collapsing distinction into flat affect
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1–2 minutesModernity collapses distinctions, where we *attempt* to be indifferent to presentation. (Our reaction to a car wreck, fancy toaster, or poster of sneakers becomes equivalent.)
Andy Warhol did this through repetition, occasionally of the banal object but also of stars such as Monroe or Elvis, flattening and spreading their effect through excess.
To expand “affect,” we inflate (blow up) and fetishize difference as sexy: we engorge a minimal distinction into profound appeal, but over time and distance, deflation inevitably leads back into commonplace.
The result of overall flattened expansion is an impersonalized “affect” (or influence) that can be widely distributed when stripped of complex particulars. In an abstracted reductive state, modern images accelerate beyond emotion or psychology into an environmental milieu: a low-grade background hum of banality to which we learn never to react.
- Theme: Self
Gift appearance
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1–2 minutesThe minute I get nervous, a gift arrives.This is not woo-woo, but simply a reality I have observed repeatedly. It is not a re-framing of the world but an inexplicable generosity from those who love me.
- Theme: Self
the performative reaction
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1–2 minutesThe response to an event is often predetermined. (You will applaud or agree with the leader.)
The content becomes secondary to the context of being seen appropriately collaborating in the spectacle.When appearance trumps consideration, we live a political/performative existence, not one of truth.
- Theme: Self
Negative effort
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1–2 minutesChoosing the passive role, remaining open to life’s flows, or the active position, imprinting your will upon situations, are not the only ways to engage with the world.
Simone Weil offers a middle road of “negative effort”: Rather than action or passivity, it is a stance of engaged receptivity devoid of your internal noise.
This is an attentive focus to the present without slipping into becoming a zombified observer.
- Theme: Self
First and last impressions
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1–2 minutesFirst sight overwhelms.
In between, we hardly look afresh.
Last sight refreshes the familiar into something clear, enriched with a depth of experience that births it as novel once again. - Theme: Growth
Don’t look directly at Medusa
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1–2 minutesThere are parts of our life upon which we cannot gaze. To do so would destroy our life.
In such cases, you can feel the malevolence but only glimpse the grotesque through the mirror.The most common solution? Don’t look in the mirror.