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Tag: play

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    Authenticity’s Cost: play vs. work

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    1–2 minutes

    Authenticity—raw, subjective emotional expression—is often celebrated as genuine, yet it overtly serves narcissistic impulses.

    Choosing politeness, decorum, and restraint demands effort and can feel “inauthentic,” but these habits curb destructive self-focus (i.e., self-righteousness, egoism, entitlement). Politeness requires you to attend to others’ emotions and roles, breaking the inwardly selfish disposition.

    Society thrives not on atomized individuals demanding attention from others, but on objective (and tacit) social rules that buffer egos and enable true playfulness.

    Society is a team sport; narcissists are ball-hogs.

    Constant narcissistic performance turns every interaction into exhausting work, stealing joy from others, and producing a new norm of protective isolation for all social encounters.

    All work, no play, makes everyone a dull boy.

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    wit vs humor

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    1–2 minutes

    To be witty is to be sharp, clever, and quick. It appeals to intellect and smacks of insight.
    Humor applies to the gut. The laughter can be ridiculous and non-intellectual, dumb and debased, or heart-wrenching and endearing.
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    aesthetic mode: the needed lie

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    1–2 minutes

    To pursue the ideal, you must formulate a middle ground (a substance or medium) from which to lie in order to create the future.

    This can be called the "aesthetic mode," which takes reality and then projects forward an image (fantasy) of how it could be reshaped to serve human ends.

    Interestingly, the first past appears as a lie but can eventually become functional as an addendum to reality.

    (from Shulamith Firestone)

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    The smart choice is to be a bit foolish

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    1–2 minutes

    Rational decision-making advocates eliminating threats to prevent conflict, yet this approach makes everyone a potential enemy.

    Meanwhile, game theory suggests ‘tit-for-tat’ for fostering self-interest-based cooperation, but this lacks genuine trust and loyalty. Leaders in such systems tend to become alienated and monstrous, knowing they will inevitably need to impose discipline.

    Instead of a strict cost-benefit analysis, embracing mercy and kindness could offer a transformative paradigm shift: you no longer have to worry about the smart move (engaging the intellect and ego) when the smart move is to be foolish.

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    Technological efficiency paradox

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    1–2 minutes

    Technology creates leisure by streamlining tasks, yet capitalism often repurposes this newfound time as an opportunity for more work, thereby increasing productivity and profit.

    This cycle perpetuates an unsustainable drive for efficiency, usually at the cost of genuine leisure. Robots, of course, don’t need leisure, so as we rush forward we either become robots or are displaced by them.

    The system logic’s embedded paradoxes imply its collapse, and yet we keep innovating our own survival.

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    Blame Game

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    1–2 minutes

    “Victims blame the person. Perpetrators blame the situation.”

    Problems can be solved, but recognizing the blame game means people are arguing for ego rather than solutions.

    quote from Rob Henderson

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    You don’t read power: play, delete, repeat

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    1–2 minutes

    What if power is not written in stone but like media recorded, played, erased, re-recorded, rewritten repeatedly, and rehashed as nostalgic storylines?

    Power, rather than written on high, appears amidst a kind of dumb, interactive exchange, where power occasionally dons the mask of symbolic order as needed: the “stability of power” makes a strong entrance when needed, but typically, higher truth is absent, letting the axiomatic rewrite us.

    This underscores Fisher’s comments: With power, you only need to see it; you won’t read it. Capitalism is “profoundly illiterate:” “you play it, it plays you.”

    Power is not uni-directional, but a mutual persuasion (you watch it, it writes you, you record over it). It does not need an ideological strategy to win you over but functions like a contagion upon contact, where you invite in repeatedly, aligning yourself to its process, over and over.

    (idea from Mark Fisher)

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    Games: Society Against Human Nature

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    1–2 minutes

    When we participate in games and sports, we become aware of our individual strengths and weaknesses. This helps us understand how to win and lose, which in turn aids in self-awareness and helps us determine our place in relationships with others. We learn how to function in a community of diverse talents and hardships.

    By playing against different teams over time, we engage in iterative learning, which provides us with a broader dataset for pattern recognition. This allows us to develop a broad foundation of strategies and choices that can help us maximize or exploit differences: cooperation or competition.

    Left to their own devices children devise their own games, standards, and strategies. A society that avoids games that allow winning or losing (to be converted and stigmatized as “winners” or “losers”) robs decision-making skills and future wisdom from their members.

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    life as chess

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    1–2 minutes

    Given a well-constructed set of rules, only a few solutions exist, yet moves must be made to progress.

    Each action/step/move can be made with anger or poise. Either way, it must be made.

    You do not have to play the game gracefully, but you must keep in mind the outcome you wish. Playing with rage can achieve your outcome, but in the iterative game of life, it alienates potential allies who see the move, not the game.

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    Seriously foolishly good

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    1–2 minutes

    The shock of witnessing high craft with an element of absurdity is extraordinarily endearing and pleasurable.

    We crave the seriousness of mastery (slavish hours of discipline and excellence) to be thoroughly commingled with blustery foolishness. It recognizes the best of being human.