Belly Button Lint

Feeling Lint-y?

Tag: psychology

  • Theme:

    not suffering as cheating

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    1–2 minutes

    I have migraines. When the telltale signs creep into awareness (a general “tightness” and manic craving for sugar and alcohol) I stubbornly fight against taking my medication.

    My body should fix itself, without help. “Just do your job, body.”

    Psychologically, this reveals my idiotic penchant for suffering through something alone, stoically neglecting to consider alternatives.

    Perhaps this “desire for pain” is a comfort zone: to stoically suffer is a familiar cost. Obviously, this coping mechanism has become a dysfunction, inducing the migraines that perpetuate the cycle.

    Allowing myself to “not suffer” feels like cheating, and yet, the only way out is to “cheat” by relying on others and medication.

  • Theme:

    The loneliness of cool

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    1–2 minutes

    To be cool is to have a scarce trait, and as others emulate it (normalize it), you must chase a new scarcity to maintain your cool factor.

    Cool is not happy because it is exclusive. Its pursuit is alienating.

    To have it is to be seen and to be admired, but it does not participate in a broad, thick network of friends. It can be very lonely and fragile.

    (inspired by Mary Harrington)

  • Theme:

    What vs. Why

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    1–2 minutes

    You may think you know who you are and you have a relationship with yourself, but we only know our “intellectualized self.” This is, in essence, a causal, scientific, and even deductive version of the self, which is reductive.

    We examine who we are by asking “Why?” which leads to a specific, limited response: a fixed label of your motivation, often located in shame, guilt, or victimhood.
    (example: Why am I feeling this way?)

    Alternatively, if we ask “what?” we can label emotions and generate new multiple responses, which can be healing.
    (example: What am I feeling?)

    This is odd: Asking “why” limits and implies singularity, while “what” labels and remains productively open.

    The counterargument is that only labeling (asking what) dodges taking the onerous responsibility of fixing a flaw: it remains at the naming and acceptance stage rather than engaging the process of taking responsibility.

  • Theme:

    Pride in lethargy

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    1–2 minutes

    In today’s world, we are surrounded by the attention economy and the optimization movement that demands our attention every waking moment.

    However, there is a growing trend towards “disciplined disengagement,” which involves actively disengaging from these demands to maintain our mental health.

    This is not laziness or lethargy though it appears so, but a conscious effort to find a healthy balance between productivity and non-productivity. Yet this trend and prioritizing our mental well-being over the societal pressure to be constantly productive is itself another optimization to normalization and hyper-production: balance now for intense anxiety later.

  • Theme:

    The Irrational Actor (Peltzman Effect)

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    1–2 minutes

    To be a "rational actor," you must have awareness of the risks.

    Most people move through the world on unconscious bias, making calculations beneath a rational threshold.

    The Peltzman Effect shows the safer we make things, such as demanding seatbelts and airbags, the riskier our behavior becomes. We have a "risk budget" we subconsciously calculate and increase our risky behavior to the corresponding risk to life and limb.

    In short, we are irrational actors who actively thwart the technology and policies aimed at saving us: safety-proofing doesn’t save us; we fight against it.

  • Theme:

    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.

  • Theme:

    Repeat daily snags

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    1–2 minutes

    I don’t change my behavior; I keep wondering why the world isn’t working the way my perfect routine is mapped out.

    I keep hitting the same snags and think I am having a bad day.

    But I’m not thinking: I am not attending to reality, and it is confronting me in more and more painful ways.

  • Theme:

    The future as a trap

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    1–2 minutes

    When you look to the future, you hope and worry; you begin to plan, project, forecast, and fidget; you cease to be present and enliven potential concerns that determine your actual behavior.

    When considering the future, you try to fight for a “future you” who doesn’t exist, but might.

    Paradoxically, in clinging to fictitious dreams and concerns (attempting to manifest one and dodge the other), you are not your best in the present moment, which assures a distracted outcome. That is, you only achieve being absent now.

    If you are your best self now, right now, and right now and now, your future self will be the compilation of all those present, best versions of you.

    Please consider the future during a set aside time and decide who you want to be, but realize that version will only emerge from your behavior in the present.

  • Theme:

    feelings follow behavior

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    1–2 minutes

    If you act depressed and tell yourself you’re depressed, you can manifest depression. To be happy and content, do the reverse: engage in the activities of satisfied and happy people.

    It is not easy, but it is simple.

    Oddly, we never want to acknowledge the simplicity of reality, instead demanding that we are somehow special and the world should bend around or acquiesce to our “being” rather than doing the consistent work of “becoming.”

  • Theme:

    Stubborn vs stable

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    1–2 minutes

    Having a spine, taking action, and not being pushed around are lauded as stable until someone stumbles into the wall of your will and breaks their agenda. Then you are stubborn.

    Some stubbornness is contrarian: “I will do it my own way.”
    Some stubbornness is rebellious: “I do not submit to your authority.”
    They can be active or passive-aggressive, but both stem from a default antagonistic reaction.

    An excellent way to be stubborn is in your stabilizing process:

    • Be slow and considerate.
    • Listen carefully to others.
    • Tally the possible outcomes.
    • Probe your motivations before acting.

    When you do act, it is solid, not a whim or momentary manipulation.

    The conundrum with this process is that once you have reached a decision, you have (typically) done more work than the person wanting you to budge or expend yourself. This leaves you frustrated, prone to sunk-cost fallacy, and often in possession of a richer grasp of the situation than your interlocutor, which leaves you better equipped to act on their behalf. Still, you do that too often, and you are unstable.