Belly Button Lint

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Tag: vision

  • Theme:

    the unseen blade is hardest to parry

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    1–2 minutes

    The worst trouble -the most danger- comes from the unexpected: attack from the clear blue sky.

    We can only defend against the future we can see; prediction allocates our resources.
    This leaves us vulnerable to ambush from unforecast betrayal, against which only the paranoid can prepare. But even the paranoid must trade risk for the capacity to function.

    A possible solution is to move faster than plotters, quicker than disaster can strike. Make of yourself the blade that cuts through expectation, become the chaos others must prepare against.
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  • Theme:

    turn inward to turn outward

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    1–2 minutes

    To turn outward -to engage in politics- we must first turn inward to establish our identity.

    However, this once introspective process of establishing character based on transcendent ideals can move from the internal and latch onto the external pre-existing, immutable markers like race, ethnicity, and gender as primary characteristics.

    This reverses the process: instead of “I am Y, thus I align with X politics,” it becomes “I identify as X, therefore this is my politics.” We’re not truly seeking identity but grasping at given markers: we are not pushing back against the apparent, but refusing to seek as we declare we are found.

  • Theme:

    Outwitting the System

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    1–2 minutes

    If the system is smarter (and more powerful) than you, there are two options: burn it down or do the unexpected.

    The unexpected is often illogical, but to be truly unpredictable, there must be a unique form of thought outside the systemic intelligence (episteme). Rapid ideological evolution (mutation/gain of function) must be introduced to create this, producing chaos and commensurate insanity.

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  • Theme:

    The trick: make it about them

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    1–2 minutes

    “People like me because I make it about them. I asked them about their lives. It’s such an easy trick to get people to like you."

    Receiving external validation ("likes") through momentary manipulation is logically ridiculous: thier liking you is as fake (or strategic) as your curiosity, because they only like the act you don. As such any personal validation is equally counterfeit, another lie.

  • Theme:

    Parallax: Subject into object

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    1–2 minutes

    What if to be as subjective, individual human requires contradictory views?

    This means you have a parallax problem: to see the other perspective, you must switch your point of view. More troublesome is there is no way to see them both at the same time, meaning they cannot be true simultaneously for a single, logical position.

    And yet, to be human, we do this constantly: hold opposing contradictory positions as subjective truth.

    Even more complex, we want to be a fluctuating, active subject, not a fixed object. Yet, reason, truth, and rationality all tend to convert us towards objectness: static, one view, non-evolving, perhaps non-human.

  • Theme:

    emotional triage

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    1–2 minutes

    External problems often require categorizing their quantity, quality, severity, or magnitude. We can perform triage to organize and prioritize by converting these logical abstractions into relative ranking.

    However, internally (psychologically and emotionally), we are incapable of logically ranking each predicament or distress: an argument with your boss or spouse is equally as influential on our decision being hungry. (see Daniel Kahneman)

    More importantly, we seldom recognize our emotional or psychological state, allowing it to creep into influencing our external evaluations (affecting our effects).

  • Theme:

    The fickle nature of beliefs

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    1–2 minutes

    We pay to consume our beliefs.

    Yet, why do we need more confirmation and novel arguments or insights if we already believe? So we are prepared when the slidey sideways belief shifts its stance. When our belief bucks, we can rebut or run.

    Your beliefs: it’s like watching the weather and preparing yourself for the flash flood from the blue sky; not only is keeping a keen eye on the sky good for your social alignment, but you also catch your own party adrift.

    So, we pay not only for affirmation, but also for a really wonky weather gauge to protect us from our beliefs rogue waves.

  • Theme:

    snapping tolerance

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    1–2 minutes

    When does navigating difference within a community shift to ostracizing for the sake of homogeneity?

    Tribal theory suggests limits to group cohesion (Dunbar’s number, about 100-150). Still, civilization relies on shared narratives that allow us to transcend local (individual) comfort for symbolic cohesion and grand survival strategies. And yet, these stories fracture as a spectrum of deviations that no longer intersect or overlap: justice, suffering, and rewards diverge into antagonistic beliefs.

    While tolerance is a spectrum, it requires a center and only expands so far.
    After that, a mutual process of marginalization occurs: the fringes refuse to come to the center, self-ostracizing in a complex model of maintaining freedom, agency, and authenticity the tolerant center cannot stomach.

  • Theme:

    positional morality

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    1–2 minutes

    Whether or not your position is right or wrong, forcing it on others is objectionable, if not objectively morally wrong (according to Peter Singer).

    This is how positive moral sentiment moves into a tyrannical position of fascist coercion by dictating “the good” as necessary.

    The role of the authoritarian (parent/politician/priest) is to say, “You are acting against your own best interests, and I will not let you damage yourself or this family.”

    Yet, from which stance is this “harm” prevented by the leader: common sense (popular consensus) or expertise (technical mastery)? Nebulous, unconscious ego compensation (blindly subjective desires, such as daddy issues, libidinal pathology, sadomasochism, or transference)? Or is it legal (judicial)? Technical expertise and judicial knowledge are drawn from academic and regulatory bodies, so they seem more impartial, but they can also be emotively distorted to serve subjective, relative ends.

    Never being coercive or authoritarian is not to find yourself in the right: you are still wrong but in a less visible way. Denying holding a position for fear of coercion smuggles in a more slippery sin: avoiding responsibility is also not of “the good” or “the right.”

  • Theme:

    warning: limit outdoor activity

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    1–2 minutes

    This public service announcement flashing on the highway may be helpful, but for whom?

    Many people rely on outdoor jobs. Hardcore hobbyists, such as joggers, will keep their training regimen. State mandates may force schoolchildren to remain inside, while white-collar employees are already trapped indoors.

    To announce “limit outdoor activity” as a public health notice is perversely insulting and myopically idiotic. It suggests we have been provided with a way of life that includes options: a liberated self-directed agency (autonomy) that the vast majority of people do not possess.

    Most of us are already in cycles of stress management, joggers with exercise, and the rest of us with chemical addictions, now multiplied by the further exasperated teachers and frustrated parents harassed by pent-up students.

    Obviously, seeing the government’s well-wishing and valid information as a provocation is a sign of my own cynical cognitive distortion. I could take up jogging.