Belly Button Lint

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Tag: society

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    Rejecting Progress

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    1–2 minutes

    We are objectively better off than ever, yet anger and nationalism swell to occupy every space. It seems we (humans) crave struggle—a noble cause, a crusade, or a holy war.

    As Steven Pinker might argue, “Would we trade modern comforts and medicine for medieval suffering, just to feel purpose?” Would we rather have irrational beliefs that allow our child to die, or a religion allowing us to be disemboweled in a holy war or inquisition, rather than suffer some ennui or alienation?

    The answer is yes. We have progressed this far because of our insatiable, inherent striving, including war and science.

    As a species, we perpetually pocket progress and develop new anxieties, but to say “only this narrow progress is permissable” or “be satisfied” is to misconstrue human nature and how we have come this far.

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    The Apocalypse That Never Ends

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    1–2 minutes

    The world has ended—again. Every headline screams apocalypse, yet the truth is ongoing, and its direness is a matter of relative perspective.

    Yes, the past is lost, but this is not the end; it is change. History flows, and while crises are real, exaggerated doom is disingenuous and harmful to the real.

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    Clay analogy: pressure creates extremism

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    1–2 minutes

    Think of a society as a ball of soft clay: When you press down firmly from above with your thumb the clay doesn’t simply compress. Instead, it squeezes outward in all directions.

    The center, where most people initially resided, becomes thinner and flatter, while the edges bulge.

    Societal pressure, corporate policy, cultural oppression or political polarization apply: excessive pressure from above doesn’t just suppress people – it actively pushes them toward the extremes, hollowing out the moderate middle where compromise and dialogue once flourished.

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    Utopia as morality

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    1–2 minutes

    History now takes on moral valence; to “go backwards” is immoral. Indeed even actively conserving the status quo is immoral; governance is only moral in so far as it affects change, thus moving us ever forwards, towards utopia

    N.S. Lyons

    Progress is moral; caution is backsliding.

  • Theme:

    Entitlement

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    1–2 minutes

    When life doesn’t turn out the way you want, that is normal.

    To rage about it is entitlement: to expect “personal consideration” or “proper context” in a system (society) that is both selfish and uncaring sounds like insanity. It is like arguing with a psychopath.

    (Note: This stoic stance does not mean we should accept unfairness, but we should expect it and remain humbly surprised when we are treated as valuable humans. This stance privileges reality over ideals.)

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    Nesting as identification

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    1–2 minutes

    Nesting (organizing one’s environment) reaffirms and solidifies identity through external organization. To frame your environment is to reframe yourself according to the objects and choices you have access to. In this way, you solidify your identity for yourself (and others) as a person who has and does certain things, providing a stabilizing environment by reflecting yourself to you.

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    Naivety or the Calculus of Kindness

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    1–2 minutes

    Naivety is not kindness (in fact, it is often cruel), yet kindness is linked to a lack of understanding as if moral action precludes effectual action. Meanwhile, rationality is portrayed as sharp and hard, cutting away the soft for the "greater good."

    However, if rationality leads to kindness, the seemingly foolish move becomes the smart one.

    Still, if we wish kindness to be smart, we will find ways to justify it despite the harsh realities we face daily.

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    Paradox: normalized over-individuation

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    1–2 minutes

    We are embedded in a planetary society connected for information, resources, and cooperative survival, yet we are simultaneously reminded to realize our personal potential (self-actualize) as a form of agency to stand out within this wired hive.

    While being surveilled by the state and corporations, we are told to be private and autonomous, to be rebels. Personal actualization, we are told, comes from over-individuating, that is, leaning so hard into yourself that you are separated from consensus normalization. However, our very systems to communicate and sense our agency (our rebel status) in the world are technologically adapted against individuation in favor of communal alignment.

    All that to say, anyone who feels crazy under these antagonistic imperatives is sane is normal.

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    To be less-than-human

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    1–2 minutes

    Fascinatingly, having no extremes (rebellions) seems less-than-human.

    Being so ideally normalized that you exist without struggle or pathos is an automata parody of humanity, for there is no inner struggle, merely external alignment, a pastiche of the human condition, and yet precisely what many struggle towards. Bland contentment.

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    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.