Belly Button Lint

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Tag: power

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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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    to see is to cease

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    1–2 minutes

    Thoughts have an amplifying power, reinforcing themself, until we believe.

    However, once you recognize a thought as a transient, often false, assumption it loses its power to define you. (Belief/ideas dissolve upon investigation.)

    The paradox is that we are who we think we are until we recognize the belief (ourself) as thought.

    When we see “we” cease.

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    Speed up the folly

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    1–2 minutes

    One thing Buddhist masters figured out was that you cannot control the mind, thoughts, or emotions. However, people cannot give up trying, so you have to force the issue.

    The first step is to tell somebody not to desire. After trying not to desire (to control desire) the student will say “I no longer desire.”

    The teacher will point out, “you now desire not to desire.”

    The paradox of control is to always end up within a larger process: You think you were having an “experience” but it is all experience. Your refined, increased control only proves your rigidity and what you cannot control.

    The only way to teach this concept is not intellectual: you must speed up the eventual failure, which will -then- allow one to relax and see differently.

    From from [[Alan Watts]]

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    Controlled descent

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    1–2 minutes

    At some point (in life’s journey), our inertia diminishes. At this apogee/apex/peak, we start to slide down, captured by the physics of time.

    How we handle it is a difference between tumbling downhill like a stone or skiing.

    Both will lead you to the same place, yet one is done with skillful control, while the other is painful to observe and takes out anything in proximity.

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    Removal of the Problematic

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    1–2 minutes

    When an argument shows up and is escalated (appealed) to a higher authority, the problematic situation is dutifully regulated out of existence.

    Authority only knows how to be authoritarian, thus, the solution for liberty is restriction.

    For instance, the argument over bathroom use by gender/sex has led to noncommunal spaces, which is to say, an isolated solo experience. Protests lead to a dearth of options, not an abundance of diversity.

    Equally, bestowed authority can brutally slice through the Gordian Knot with an edict, such as King Solomon pronouncing the baby should be cut in half.

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    Rock Star v Dragon

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    1–2 minutes

    The rockstar creates and energizes while the dragon protects its hoard.

    The glamour of creativity is alluring, yet for most, it is a consumptive trap (drawing more from you than returning to you).

    The less glamorous persistent strategy to maintain wealth and status is not to create but to wrest power and eternal resources, such as real estate, away from the aging dragons: don’t waste your time making; start slaying and squatting.

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    control your flow

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    1–2 minutes

    When you “go with the flow,” you abdicate control to access emotions to release stress.

    The problem is we cannot control our moods: they pass through us, and when safeguards are unleashed, some toxic rage or wallowing despair bubbles up, causing self-damaging behavior.

    Yet, we want to be free, lively, and spontaneous, not in a gray, restrictive, robotic life. The paradox is needing control to allow freedom.

    Consider going with the flow, similar to surfing or painting: a masterfully developed skill that does not let go as much as channel attentive excitement into expressive action.

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    Liberalism ouroboros

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    1–2 minutes

    The original liberal progressive future insisted that any traits of circumstance, race, or geography would cease to meaningfully matter: your biology and ethnicity would be interesting or compelling, but essentially “meaningless.”

    Your character and humanity would matter to such a degree that traits you could not control would not control you.

    Yet, seen structurally, and then post-structurally, the environment determines your/our reactions, and “proper character” is proliferated by the powerful, and others’ reaction to you shapes you. Thus your character is made by appearances and normalcy: externally, not internally, despite your vaunted subjective, phenomenal truth.

    The initial argument of liberalism releases abstract logic to counter uncontrollable factors, which was circled back into dependence on uncontrollable factors (the luck of birth traits and location) as primary motivating signifiers; that is, labels rehung after a brief dream of freedom.

    Dumb dependence is easier to signify, so freedom consumes itself and yet still calls itself liberal.

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    self regulate or self pleasure

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    1–2 minutes

    Either the individual can self-regulate (manage/order/pain) or self-allow (entropy/pleasure/excitement), and it needs to be a combination of both to live fully.

    We crave pleasure, which was originally an evolutionary trait to promote survival, but today our survival requires restraint.

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    dissolving control

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    1–2 minutes

    Your desire for freedom, to be unconstrained, becomes a rebellion against the softest controls: the informal control of a society or culture, of parents and churches, of schools and cliques.

    The problem is, upon dissolving the informal controls, a void is left, into which slips something much more sinister: bureaucracy and commodification.

    The managerial state denies you the human aspect through rigid, formal policy, while the corporate machine harnesses your desires, which you worked so hard to free.

    Ultimately, you are now captured in strict obedience, except for your desire to want, which further fuels your capitulation.

    Neither of these systems has the forgiving softness or freedom of the community constraints you worked to escape.