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Tag: philosophy

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    Reconsidering the binary: going meta

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    1–2 minutes

    Once we recognize a binary at play, we invoke a “meta-move” to consider more open possibilities, a third or fourth option as a creatively broader field.

    The more philosophical option (truly meta) is to consider that there has always been only one thing: one object or entity that is divided in itself. The seeming problem (binary or ternary) is an inherent antagonism necessary for the entity to remain functional. There is no escape into a third or fourth solution, merely higher levels of realization.

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    chicken or egg wisdom

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    1–2 minutes

    Almost every problem has a “chicken or egg” framing we trot out as needed.
    “My depression caused my bad life” can easily be inverted to “My bad life caused my depression,” proving we situationally assign causation.

    While we naturally tend to the binary format (“Politically, is the populace crazy (them), or am I out of touch with reality (me)?”), it obfuscates complexity for a didactic, hyperbolic simplicity akin to some of the most insightful religious teachings (“The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”)

    It sounds like considerable wisdom to invert causation or status, to reveal a new perspective, when it is often simply untrue, and yet it fulfills a desire for the world to be different.

    Instead of this quasi-linear thinking in which we swap positions (chicken/egg is really egg/chicken), we can release the binary and consider a vast complex of several self-reinforcing cycles. These are generative network effects, with conditions co-arising and evolving beyond our seemingly insightful reductive inversions.

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    Beyond art appreciation

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    1–2 minutes

    Postmodern art (or post-postmodern art) requires the study necessary to perceive the connections providing serious, full discourse with the art. The continuity possible through ideas becomes drastically reduced when art moves away from ideology, critique, or examination into appreciation or feeling: experience without intellect.

    This is a symptom of capitalism markets re-creating art in its own image: a reductive, bright, and easily consumable flavor.

    This is not the diverse, relativistic appreciation promised in Postmodernism but an emotive similarity felt by all equally(more akin to universal modernism). More confoundingly, post-postmodernism must return to modernism to address postmodernism’s inability to find a way through the deadlocks and antagonisms that were never solved.

    Suppose an audience (and the artists!) are unaware of enlightenment or modernist values, much less the critiques of Adorno or Benjamin that move us into postmodernism. In that case, we are left with art objects of shallow discourse reliant on emotive and consumable appeal. Comfort and indulgence become our guide, a superficial appreciation untarnished by complex insights.

    idea from Julian de Medeiros

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    Fantasy over Truth

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    1–2 minutes

    Truthful information is expensive; information that merely connects people is cheap. (factual and relevant analysis vs emotion, drama, stories)

    We see a rise in connectivity due to technology, but there is not a commensurate rise in wisdom or truth. In fact, they are drowned out by the easier manipulative, connecting myths and fantasies that draw on emotion.
    (from Yuval Noah Harrari)

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    To be good protect your romantic idealism

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    1–2 minutes

    To be a good person, you must be idealistic (and romantic) despite reality’s indifference and institutional antipathy.

    We struggle to shape our world and its institutions according to our values – justice, loyalty, and consistency. Yet, we encounter their twisted opposites: greed, manipulation, and fickleness.

    Institutions champion sociopathy, and our failure is to consider them communities and strive to reshape them, or shame them, into responsibility.

    Depressingly, "goodness" is a manipulative lever for assholes, and yet to relieve ourselves of idealistic values (to be practical) is to become what we despise.

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    Utopia as morality

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    1–2 minutes

    History now takes on moral valence; to “go backwards” is immoral. Indeed even actively conserving the status quo is immoral; governance is only moral in so far as it affects change, thus moving us ever forwards, towards utopia

    N.S. Lyons

    Progress is moral; caution is backsliding.

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    Authenticity Rewired

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    1–2 minutes

    The notion of individual authenticity was once aligned with the idea of a motivating inner truth. Today, “authenticity” is enmeshed with social media and external signaling: to be who you project to be.

    We are constantly working on “our self” to align with the “data self”: The projected media self is not internally generated but externally manufactured, integrated, and then re-transmitted as an increasingly curated, co-evolved, drift into a commodity version of the “wisdom of crowds.”

    The new authenticity is complete subsumption; to be owned is non-contradictory, and to have no internal truth is never to betray yourself but always to be a victim when the crowd turns.

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    decolonizing is recolonizing

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    1–2 minutes

    When Deleuze and Guattari discuss deterritorialization, Mark Fisher notes that a new form of capital immediately reterritorializes any deterritorialized space.

    Similarly, when a group attempts to reclaim colonial spaces (decolonization) to challenge systemic injustice, they often reproduce the very colonization tactics they oppose: new rules and regulations.

    This creates an inherent hypocrisy: revolutionary tactics are absorbed by the entrenched system, rendering rebellion contradictory, foolish, and futile.

    So what is the rebellion to do with their angst? An antagonism does exist but lacks a logical recourse to a non-contradictory outcome.

    Ultimately, this points to the intended outcome—only by embracing illogic can one disrupt indoctrinated traps.

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    When truth is suspect

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    1–2 minutes

    We claim to want the complete unvarnished truth, yet when something traumatic happens, if someone reports it too clearly and concisely—like a good informational report—they become suspect because of that very clarity. Their truth becomes suspicious because of its fidelity.

    Instead, inconsistency (lack of fidelity) fits perfectly with human nature. Stories become lies when they’re over-embellished, or you can spot the lie by the absurd level of detail—they’re trying too hard to convince, no longer behaving naturally.

    As Lacan said, “truth has the structure of a fiction.”

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    Over-indexing empathy

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    1–2 minutes

    Empathy can be weaponized when it becomes so extreme that individuals sabotage their own interests to uphold what they perceive to be the needs or failings of others. Though morally driven, this self-sacrificial impulse harms the empathizer as they attempt to level the community: to balance for equality.

    The paradox is that at the extreme, we self-sabotage our survival instinct (by over-indexing empathy until it is socially symbolic) AND our ability to engage in conflict for reasonable solutions rationally. We become ideologically simple emotional zealots: saving others at your own cost will not save you; it will martyr you.

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