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Observing reactions against our materialistic culture, with its perceived absence of values and overemphasis on self-centeredness, prompts a yearning for spirituality and transcendence.
Ironically, the idealist aspirations often underpin myths that fuel conflict, powered by the machines and wealth of the materialists.
It seems that excess must burn itself: too much idealism or materialism provokes its use, which tends towards its own destruction.
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An aspect of natural entropy is denied by our creative impulse: our construction, crafts, and myths expand and grow more complex. Surrounded by complex fabrications denying reality, there is a subversive pleasure in returning to materialistic reality.
To resurface “the real” is oddly considered nihilistic, in part because it denies the abstract ideological prisons that drive so much behavior: the dreams society is built upon are more powerfully dominant than physical matter.
Given the pervasive culture and economic underpinnings, perhaps the only way nihilism can exist is to become a structured corporation that burns its own money.
Unfortunately, such sardonic insight is precisely the state of current reality, hence our reactive desire to burn the complexity down, reintroduce physicality as a return to humanity.
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Reality works upon us: we see or hear something, choose to believe it when it reconfirms a pattern in reality, and upon that belief we re-engage with reality creating a feedback loop.
Media slips into this feedback loop, distorting the uptake and recognition of patterns to produce a deviated counterfactual. This manipulation -and our awareness of it- should have trended into zero-trust long-ago.
And yet, despite this logic, faith in trust persists.
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Achievement is hitting the mark, which requires us to incrementally measure and adjust.
Soon, we are successful: we have reached and superseded the goal.
We have become excellent at increasing the measurement and manipulating the scorecard metric, but have we displaced the goal with a measure?
Strathern’s law states, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
This replacement can become a subversion, such as when NYC police needed to maintain high crime numbers for funding, they implemented a “stop-and-frisk” policy that infringed on citizens’ rights. Instead of “protect and serve” to inflate the measure it required harassment.
This is similar to a simulacra, where the original motivation is lost, yet the real-world effects are amplified and out of control
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By gaining more information, we will see patterns more completely, which will allow us to understand how complicated reality functions. More data is the path to truth.
However, most spiritual traditions teach us we find “truth” when we drop our labels and our opinions, our illusions.
The reliance on intelligence to perceive truth has a paradoxical quality: The more knowledge you add grants you a better understanding, which also adds a layer of bias (an extra opinion or delusion) that blocks you from the truth.
And yet, this additional knowledge allows you to, over time, recognize and subtract misleading positions, guiding you back to truth.
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People look for who they are.
The decision to search implies the self is somehow lost and by seeking it can be recovered.
It is easier (more practical and possible) to quit looking and build who you want to be.
You will know who you are when you deftly handle tasks that were previously daunting: you are a person who creates themself, not someone who picks up found items.
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The melancholic philosopher, such as Baudrillard or Milton, will generate an existential paradise that is somehow inaccessible, reflecting their inability to access happiness. The giddy spirit, Deleuze-Guattari, will announce an alternate coding allowing for merging, newness and escape; lines of flight for the hopeful.
Schopenhauer is a curmudgeon, Kierkegaard a hopeless romantic, and Camus a poetic, passionate cynical humanist. Plato fawns over power, and Socrates undermines authority.
Their way of life was their rebuttal in words.
And let’s not forget, the resonance of their message is amplified by their background: time and place are amplifiers for disposition.
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One reaction to the precarity is to return to the body, eschew ecstasy and escapism, get more sleep, optimize your schedule, and stabilize your relationships. This bodily discipline manifests targeted outcomes, and with goal attainment, it swells self-assurance which imbues a sense of control: mastery over your life.
The problem is, it takes cybernetic and Taylorism principles (that is machine orientation) and applies them to the human, creating a series of autistic self-soothing mechanisms that produce a reduced harder, hollower self.
Another reaction is the vitalist, who returns to nature by reanimating their animal spirit. It’s esoteric emotive entrancement provides an independent, esoteric mastery, highly romantic and ephemeral, but leaves little room for readmission to civilization.
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The melancholic philosopher, such as Baudrillard or Milton, will generate an existential paradise that is somehow inaccessible: a transcendent realm we can no longer reach.
The giddy spirit, such as Deleuze-Guattari, will announce an alternate "coding," allowing for merging, newness, and escape, lines of flight for the hopeful.
Schopenhauer is a curmudgeon, Kierkegaard a hopeless romantic, and Camus a brutally poetic cynic.
Their disposition forms an argument, a rebuttal to the world.
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The true struggle is to do nothing, to remain open without your internal narratives.
Procrastination (doing nothing) is active self-harm, replete with self-centered worrying. To truly do nothing is to lose self-concern. It is closer to a negation of noise or depletion of ego: it is the space in which you can open up before your instinctual response closes you back down.
To subvert our striving or anxiety in order to clearly hear another requires a stance of ready reception: a negative effort, as Simone Weil calls it.
