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Tag: values

  • Theme:

    standards and gauges

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    1–2 minutes

    Once a system has been established, there are "tolerances" that shape the energies and forms that exist within it.
    These normative parameters influence how we move through the world: slowly transforming and deforming under increments of utility and efficiency.
    Said another way, our pathologies are incrementally ratcheted into expressions that can be grasped, that is certain "images" or "normative outcomes" that operate with the most efficiency inside the system.

    These easy-to-grasp conceptual abstractions are recognizable forms -archetypes or stereotypes as well as inches and ounces- which reduce friction by universality: to get the results you desire quickly make it easy for people to grasp your "increment."

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    my principles are not the company’s

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    1–2 minutes

    We tend to map our reality, values, and principles onto our situations. We project onto others what we wish, which often blinds us to the fact that a person, business, or politician has operating principles of their own. We actively deceive ourselves into living in the world we wish: this can be beautiful and dangerous.

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    How you fight is as important as why

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    1–2 minutes

    It is not enough to know why you fight: you must fight the right way.
    The ends can not justify the means unless they are in accordance with the spirit of your values.

    You cannot fight to save lives by taking lives, you cannot fight to save friends by sacrificing friends, you cannot fight for love using hate.
    This seems obvious, but it is far from simple or easy to practice.

  • Theme:

    Prefering the maze of bureaucracy

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    1–2 minutes

    Do we have an innate fear of losing bureaucracy? We all claim to hate it, yet we are familiar with its convolutions.

    Within the maze’s twisted containment, we become familiar with navigating the petty and having our excessive efforts casually thwarted. Yet, we don’t escape and we cease looking for the exit.

    We prefer the dull corners rather than risk the jagged peaks.
    We prefer the buttressing security of a system, choosing the intimate pain of common convolutions over the chaotic brute force of reality.

  • Theme:

    Feedback from Systemic Distortion

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    1–2 minutes

    The problem with relying on feedback is that it interprets the event and modifies it into an "abstract" (simplified) form.
    Feedback systems are "negative governors" that moderate "positive energy" to attain an equilibrium, but when feedback is distorted, your corrections are distorted.

    The key to destabilizing a system is not a direct attack but warping and weakening the means to sustain it.

    Warping mediating abstractions (such as values or morals) also works on humans. Our social norms are crowdsourced, distort the norms and the values destabilize society.

  • Theme:

    Values guiding freedom

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    1–2 minutes

    Positive freedom (unrestricted fulfillment) sounds great until the economy, state, book club, or marriage fail.

    Policies, politeness, and social norms regulate chaos, provide stability, and act as guide rails as we achieve goals together.
    When the guide rails are weakened or dismantled, we witness a disintegration of the community as communication breaks down and uncertainty prevails.
    We’re thinking about where we’re going and which guide rails are necessary to maintain.

  • Theme:

    The lure for buying is learning

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    1–2 minutes

    Once you have learned all the options, you make a value judgment.
    Your research is new knowledge, and you have to put knowledge to use.

    Clever marketing wraps the consumer in minor choice differentiations. Each small decision is a small reflection of you (your taste and values): you shape your identity by choice, and your agency is completed through action.

    The consumerist trap is to entangle your shaping of self with commodity selection.

  • Theme:

    Marx was old fashioned

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    1–2 minutes

    Karl Marx was a revolutionary in his time and is still such today. However, he was regressive (conservative) morally.
    His values, the values of communism, held to an early tribal or even Catholic disposition: cost should not disrupt/corrupt the importance of humanity or the value of souls.

  • Theme:

    Access robs the sacred

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    1–2 minutes

    In art, ideas, or porn the access and commonality do not make it less amazing: access makes normatively banal, which shifts the sacred into the passe. This is obviously a deception: it merely shows that we value rarity, novelty and exclusivity to an extent that these traits conflate value with sacredness.

  • Theme:

    Rationally planning your irrationality

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    1–2 minutes

    Being rational is excellent. We intake and adapt to evidence to reach a goal.
    Yet, "instrumental rationality" allows us to logically make a plan (following the process of rationality), but it does not mean our goal is rational.

    Example: Terrorists/bombers use rationality to achieve an irrational goal.

    (Jurgen Habermas)