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Tag: perspective

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    The art of caring less

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    1–2 minutes

    Therapy is primarily learning to care less. Over-caring leads to anxious rumination, where we spiral into desperation.

    One approach is to shift the direction of care: from inward to outward—caring for others instead of fixating on ourselves.

    Another is to reframe our perspective, diminishing the importance of the issue until we care less. For example, remind yourself that “it’s just a job” or question why we need a relationship with harmful people.

    Ryder Richards
    ryderrichards.com
    letusthinkaboutit.com
    (c) 806.790.5508

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    Breaking to care-taking

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    1–2 minutes

    In youth, the vital energy of music, friends, and getting drunk/high can feel world-breaking.
    As we age, an inversion from breaking to organizational mending occurs: we appreciate the mundanity of gardening, cleaning windows, sobriety, and silence. Obviously, our perspectives shift from railing against the quagmire of compromise to embittered grumbling about near-sighted hormonal youths. Giving in to either can be charming, but it is so cliche as to be boring.

    Instead, is there a through-thread? Our larger perspectives shape our passions. Can we keep them alive and active, not drowning them in rage or exhaustion?

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    Freedom paradox: subjective/objective

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    1–2 minutes

    Unsurprisingly, our freedom does not arise from the physical world: the objective realm limits us and is arguably antagonistic to our freedom. However, we phenomenally experience the world with subjective perception (limited, personal interpretation).

    Oddly, freedom resides inside the subjective realm as a fantasy construct, yet it transcends the individual as an abstract notion. It is both in you and beyond you.

    This inside/outside dynamic allows an abstract notion to be mapped onto the objective world through a subjective lens. As such, we can perceive our freedom and agency in action, even if our reading is delusional. To counterbalance our bias, we can share the expansion or constriction of our liberty with others.

    Consider that your level of freedom is based on shifting alignment, reframing your subjective stance: deciding contentment punctures the idealistic conceit of victimization or frustrated agency. Yet, it simultaneously allows others dominance if your actions do not deny authority over you.

    The contradiction of having and fighting for freedom is not only self-imposed but externally mediated, reverting the “subjective framework” back into a substantial, shared reality. And yet, it remains nonobjective, non-noumenal, completely accessible, and ultimately denied.

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    my truth vs the truth

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    1–2 minutes


    The truth and my truth should be the same, or at least passingly similar.

    Only in a world where subjectivity is the height of power can objectivity be flipped into insignificance.

    Oddly, objective truth (despite its denigration and claimed obsolescence) is still a primary source for building an irrational causal chain to uphold subjective hubris.

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    Age: tedium as a survival mechanism

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    1–2 minutes

    A breakup stings sharply when young, yet we lack the decades of ingrained patterns that shape older adults.

    For youth, each trauma is magnified because it is an intense encounter in a limited set of experiences. Without a broader perspective to gauge importance or offer insight, a singular event can derail someone.

    But, let’s not confuse a lot of experience with a breadth of experience: many older people have numerous similar experiences that form a rut, a singular perspective. When encountering adversity or trauma, it is not a broad perspective that offers wisdom and reprieve, but instead a the ingrained, embodied repetition of decades offers habitual bodily monotony that appears as resilience.

    This is something youth do not have: the tedium of repetition as a survival mechanism.

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    Universal truth depends on Myopia

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    1–2 minutes

    Universal truth (a 100% applicable or capital “T” truth) can only come from a partial, subjective position, a myopic stance.

    An all-encompassing answer can only come from (and be applied to) a limited, singular perspective. Once new perspectives are added, exceptions undermine truth’s universality.

    To comprehend universal truth, one must recognize that it cannot be fully grasped unless one can simultaneously embody all conceivable perspectives.

    “True universality and partiality do not exclude each other, but universal Truth is accessible only from a partial engaged subjective position” Slavoj Zizek

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    Incentives frame your outcome: surveillance data

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    1–2 minutes

    The questions we pose are driven by specific incentives: complex queries empower problem-solvers, commerce-driven inquiries explore market potential, but to foster awareness, we ponder the absence of problems.

    Surveillance capitalism, with its unsettling lexicon—harvesting, exhaust, extraction, akin to industrial strip mining—suggests that behaviors extracted are merely responses to the intrusive questions posed. Thus, the behaviors, and consequently the data, are manufactured at the moment of inquiry, not passively mined. This process is not a zero-sum game.

    The core issue with surveillance capitalism lies in its data collection focus, which is narrowly aimed at consumer profiling and sales rather than gathering data that could contribute to more meaningful or transformative outcomes: global ecology or meaningful biopolitics.

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    mapping: data vs subject

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    1–2 minutes

    Retraining as remapping: We have been trained to consider charts, graphs, and geography when determining how we fit into social, political, or even viral epidemiological narratives.

    This statistical awareness is often a reductive summary standing in for the whole or the specific. Yet, we should consider whether the map/model is the ground against which we are the figure (ground>figure as data>individual) or the inverse, where we are the ground and the data is the figure (figure>ground as individual>data). If the data is the figure, we can fight to edit it and overcome it.

    We are trained to read a model (map/chart) a certain way—to see where we fit against the legend or true north—but if we self-compose (create ourselves) based on a low-resolution model, we can see that our society is trained to reinforce statistical normativity, so consider ourselves in relation to the position of external determinants.

    Whether the individual is subservient to the data (ground>figure) the normalization of relating to a model confronts the notion of “individuality”, from which we swing back to challenging the data (figure>ground) as a zero-point from which to model social autonomy, which of course remodels the model.

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    Playing over Ideology to achieve Authenticity

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    1–2 minutes

    As an authentic individual, there’s a lot of pressure to have a clear ideology or well-thought-out position for every action or participation you engage in.

    However, this pressure is oddly mediated by like-minded associates who pre-generate stipulations of what is or isn’t proper to give attention or action to. And so, we reason backward into limited positions,

    Instead, we should learn to play and discover our degrees of positionality without feeling completely "bought in."

    We are beautifully human, figuring things out by trying, not by adhering.
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    Computation as position mapping

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    1–2 minutes

    Consider all computations as mapping.

    The first computer was developed for astronomy, the Antikythera Mechanism. The 2,000 year old device mapped coordinates to find our position amongst the planets.

    Our capacity to cognate is primarily spatial orientation manipulation, and memory derives from mapping. Instead of thinking of computer indexing as static tables, we can see all computations as relative positioning.

    Fascinatingly, over time, we inverted the early use of an external positional matrix into a fluctuating internal, personal mapping. (Psychoanalysis + Neurology + Technology) While we will likely never pinpoint the “self” we have become adept at predictive behavior: mapping a person over time.