Belly Button Lint

Feeling Lint-y?

Tag: strength-and-weakness

  • Theme:

    Provocation reveals us

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    1–2 minutes

    We push to test if our standing has changed: can we change our fate, prod our stars into an alternate alignment?

    If we push hard enough, will we become something more? Will we escape our own insecurity?

    More complicated: Do we revel in our pain to see ourselves clearly?

    By pushing and receiving pushback or encountering limits that revoke our desires, do we demarcate ourselves through pain or rejection, that is, find the shape of ourselves by encountering our limits painfully? And in retreat, when reassessing, do we lick our wounds engaged in self-pity, finding within the pity a vital core that will try again?

    inspired by Albert Camus

  • Theme:

    The apocalypse is revelation

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    1–2 minutes

    Apocalypse is, from the Greek, an uncovering or revelation. We use the word today to mean a world-ending catastrophe.

    The hidden meaning is when reality is disclosed to us (revealed), it destroys our assumptions: the truth was always there, but upon being forced to witness it, it shatters us.

    (via Zizek)

  • Theme:

    Tech progress as fragility by design

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    1–2 minutes

    A car that uses computers and plastics to achieve more miles per gallon but only lasts ten years, and can only be repaired by highly specialized technicians, has a higher overall cost than its purported savings.

    There are still VW Beetles running nearly 100 years after production. The cost of making an object one time (rather than ten objects), which can be repaired by a neighbor with a bit of savvy, has proven more cost-effective, human-empowering, and environmentally beneficial than all of our refined tweaking and regulations.

    Our habit of promoting "advancement" or "progress" robs the populace of agency. We have created a society where we outsource problems and purchase for shallow novelty: by design, these traits create fragility through dependence.

  • Theme:

    Balancing for Weakness

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    1–2 minutes

    We are often defined by our weakness. However we put ourselves in frameworks that balance.

    Those with criminal instincts are attracted to the police academy, while obnoxious people attempt to become sales people, and those who do not understand themselves, and their family members, work to become a psychologist.

    Our deficiencies become the drivers to normalize ourselves.

  • Theme:

    too long a parasite

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    1–2 minutes

    Any system of dependencies limits independence by encouraging a replication of behaviors: the reliance of the parasite establishes it’s behavior pattern.
    Be wary of your fixed pattern: when the host (or institution) fails so do you.

    To reverse the point be wary of subduing the wild into the domestic: making it (or them) parasitically reliant drains resources from you.

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    "too long a parasite and one cannot exist without a host." ~ Frank Herbert)

  • Theme:

    returning to comfort

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    1–2 minutes

    The wish to return is strong.The nostalgic return to comfort is a place from which you may heal, but equally, it has the potential to poison. In turning from risk, one can avoid the hardships of growth and embrace stagnation.
    This regressive stability is only life in the most rudimentary sense.

  • Theme:

    Abundance of Life

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    1–2 minutes

    Bataille discusses the excessiveness of the general (solar) economy in nature, yet we often apply a scarcity mindset: "I only have so much love to give."

    Instead of rationing out your life as a precious commodity, slowly squeezing yourself dry, realize life is infinite and wasteful.
    Paradoxically, you have more energy through excessive spending.

  • Theme:

    Tolerance and Fragility

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    1–2 minutes

    Tolerance is said to build resilience. If so, do like-minded bubbles create fragility?

    Tolerance is allowing without indeed agreeing or being in alignment. This is a practice of maintaining oneself as aloof or separate from reality, a protected kernel of you.

    Fragility is expecting reality to align with your beliefs and mesh yourself with the world: there is no defensive layer of protection.

  • Theme:

    Strong pawns

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    1–2 minutes

    There are pawns who appear to be strong opinionated and competitive advocates for their side.

    Some people are malleable to authority and power, aligning with their best interests, which is the party line.

    For unique insights we should look to those who have broken with their team in favor of truth seeking over sustaining loyalty. If they risk betrayal their findings must be worth considering.

  • Theme:

    If tolerance = resilience then group-think = fragility

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    1–2 minutes

    Tolerance is said to build resilience.
    Then like-minded bubbles produce fragility.
    Are you remaining comfortable and weakening yourself, or are you challenging your assumptions?