Belly Button Lint

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Tag: politics

  • Theme:

    Neither left nor right, salvation from the subaltern

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    1–2 minutes

    Any framework attempting a steady state (flatline or normalization) will encounter alternate, differential lines of flight.

    Since most systems limit divergence, we end up with a binary of excess or reserve, that is progressive explosion attempting escape, or a neutralizing deadening attempting static fixity. The first is a line of flight, the second is hunkering down.

    The termination of the norm (dissolution via distance) is energetic, compulsive and revolutionary, while the stability resembles retreat, antipathy or non-action.

    Fascinatingly, both political parties are active (positive cybernetic) lines of flight: Both promise "progress" drawing from a topic vision, both work to unmake the current reality, and both use a polarized, modified social fabric to embolden and normalize their fringe stances and capture the center.

    However, the counterforce that achieves the flatline (negatory group) is not even the ambivalent center but the completely non-engaged: those who have already escaped through non-participation. Those subalterns who do not register in our accounting and from whom perhaps the only sustainable (nonbinary) model of progress may stem.

    They may offer novel solutions, uncaptured and unpredictable, nullifying our destructive escape attempts from our current anxieties.

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    cynicism’s spiral

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    1–2 minutes

    A politics of suspicion leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy: the cognitive bias of looking for corruption corrupts trust, and any outcome is suspect.

    As such, our cynicism is proven correct, despite any possible good that arrives: it is never enough or always about to be overturned. Like a drug, the overuse (abuse) of cynicism leaves us wounded and alone, empty and despairing. We are non-manipulable, but we are also non-participatory, anti-social, and unable to mount a cohesive defense against the ideologues.

    It is baffling to think belief, faith, or trust is a necessity for political rehabilitation.

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    GAN politics

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    1–2 minutes

    Online political spaces function like a GAN (General Adversarial Network), producing conflicting ideas to smash out new political theories.

    This super rapid accelerationist growth implies multitudes of points, rapidly moving into a space where everyone has their own accelerationism: not merely followers but deconstructive creators of networked broad agression.

    (partially from Benjamin Bratton)

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    Overreach backlash: the internal spread of sovereignty

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    1–2 minutes

    The once governed will not be governed anymore: they can now take the authority of the state upon (and into) themselves.

    This is an unintended reversal after state overreach: as grand-scale economic and judicial governance moved into “biopolitics,” the state breached the realm of the subjective individual.

    This prompted a reclamation of personal sovereignty and a citizen’s extension of the new precedent, not authority without but within. We grasped the line of power pushed into us, and before it could retract, we pulled the rest of state authority into us as well: if they can govern our body, we can govern ourselves.

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    Church’s Role in Sustaining Democracy

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    1–2 minutes

    In America, around half of all volunteer-based groups have a religious affiliation. Additionally, between 35 to 40 percent of the population goes to church regularly. However, over the past 50 years, the percentage of people who vote and volunteer has declined by 10 to 20 percent. This decline has also been observed in the "third places" that were once known for community support and socialization.

    In his book "Bowling Alone," Robert Putnam highlights how dwindling participation in community organizations has eroded our ability to run meetings, manage disagreements, bear responsibility, entertain strangers at home, or participate in sports and games.

    As a result of maintaining organized groups, the church has become a primary training ground for civic engagement and leadership, as well as diplomacy. These are fundamental hallmarks that are required for a successful democracy. Religion plays a crucial role in preventing isolationism and atomized individualism, thus retaining social fabric and support.

    In a fraying democracy, the rise of unified voices, and therefore democratic majority, is likely to arise from religions that maintain, train, and unify.

    [tags  democarcy, religion, voting, third place, socialization, politics,]

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    Politics Eating Your Productive Time

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    1–2 minutes

    In the office,, social time is more productive than producing.

    Consider that as you build loyalty and practice likeability, you will not only get into less trouble for being non-productive as you “form” ad-hoc committees for “feedback”, but the most likely way to elevate your career is moving into management, not being more efficient, timely, or productive. Look at your current management.

    Equally sardonically, if you want to achieve anything in life, quit paying attention to politics outside the office, as they occupy your free time and can get you into trouble at work.

    On a deeper level, political engagement accelerates into crisises that replicate and consume humans. Not to advocate for disenfranchisement, but prioritize something that can benefit you longterm, a produtive life, instead of allowing the politics of the moment as a placebo for living.

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    Escaping Bureaucracy via Subversive Excellence

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    1–2 minutes

    Occupations characterized by an intense, almost theatrical level of rigidity—think high-stress chefs, firefighters, specific musicians, trauma nurses, comedians, and daredevil professionals like roughnecks and underwater welders—give rise to a subversive realm that rejects the world of bureaucracy. Within their sphere, they construct an unapologetic hierarchy founded on their unique set of values, deliberately rejecting vacant niceties in favor of excess, darkness, and subversion.

    This subculture they create can be simultaneously harsh and light-hearted, degenerate yet communal. By dynamically responding to the demands of their challenging roles, they manage to elevate themselves beyond bureaucratic tedium and political correctness.

    This dynamic suggests that any occupation that relies on soul-draining bureaucratic oversight to manage its employees, policing emotions and behavior through policy, lacks the kind of passionate dedication and precision that fuels human flourishing.

    Occupations like these, which foster counter-cultural subcultures, cultivate communities bound together, relying on one another while nurturing trust (in an oddly perverse way). In contrast, heavily managed, mediated managerial roles tend to fragment employees, leaving them to bond primarily through shared frustration with the irrationality of upper-level decision-making.

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    shapeshifting beliefs (religion and conspiracy)

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    1–2 minutes

    The early Christians were experts at playing into other groups’ oral traditions and prophecies. They recruited by shapeshifting, assimilating, and aggregating. It’s like grafting new branches onto your tree. The issue is that they had to write in code because the Romans did not want the church to grow too powerful.
    Compared to today, this long conspiracy and aggregation of alternate cur conspiracies, while at the same time hiding from and despising the power of the state, has interesting effects.
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    Early Christians adeptly merged their beliefs with existing oral traditions, recruiting followers through a shapeshifting assimilation. This approach resembled grafting new branches onto an established tree.

    Writing in coded language was crucial as they grew, as overt expansion threatened Roman authority. This blend of espionage, aggregation, and subterfuge under state scrutiny parallels the modern interactions between populist beliefs and established powers.

    From this point of view, it is understandable that a religion distrustful of state authority is primed for conspiracy theories and will morph to adopt survival tactics, even if they are counter to their core tenants.

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    Nihilism: All wood is potentially firewood

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    1–2 minutes

    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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    Irrationality as Reasonable (zero-trust)

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    1–2 minutes

    The quest for safety drives people. There are those who, in pursuing security under the government’s umbrella, flaunt laws and traditions yet claim to deserve state privileges nonetheless. Others maintain severe traditions that reject the state’s authority and claim sovereign privilege.

    This oddly hypocritical juxtaposition in our ideological stance pairs with self-preservation strategies. When a Kafkaesque scenario of distrust in leaders, prevailing narratives, and corporate entities leaves us in a “zero-trust” society, there is seemingly little benefit and much potential harm in extending trust to any institution. As a result, we drop back into fractious local networks of individuals to seek communion, safety, and trust.

    Counterintuitively, trust is not necessary when something is reasonable: no trust is extended when we all agree. And so, to invoke trust, we must evoke irrationality: social tests that go to unreasonable extremes bind loyalty, creating in-group and out-group affiliation.

    While rationality should lead to trust, it is more of a survival imperative to adopt irrationality, making it more reasonable when system trust is lost.