Belly Button Lint

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Tag: vision

  • Theme:

    Lies lead to exclusion

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    1–2 minutes

    "The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real." Nietzsche

    Definitions form the foundation of lies, giving rise to deceit.
    A definition provides a consensual meaning, while a lie deliberately distorts language to deceive for personal advantage, that is, to defraud for personal gain.

    It’s not the "act of lying" that wounds; society and people can endure deception. Yet the "act of harm" that results (a breakdown of trust and disruption of social capital) leads communities to ostracize liars.

    Intriguingly, professional liars dominate today’s landscape, forcing a tactical "loes-lose choice," where the allure of potential benefits allows a Faustian bargain; a begrudging, corrosive, temporary tolerance.

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    validation: self-scapegoating

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    1–2 minutes

    The nature of postmodernism is to decohere big things into fragmented things, or at least destabilize them enough to provide room for skeptical reconsideration.
    The outcome is atomized selves that have difficulty finding coherence. To stabilize this fragile self, people reach out to others to care about them, finding support through a validating network.

    Unfortunately, the ‘concern of others’ is a resource drawn from equally fragmented fellows. As you need care, they need care, and attention is an economic resource pulling concern to novel avenues, making your care network precarious.

    To re-engage your base your pleas must become more shrill or desperate, more excessive, prompting self-victimization as a means to gather attention, which feels like care.

    This descent inverts into ascent: self-scapegoating for living martyr status.

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  • Theme:

    Linguistic subjectivity

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    1–2 minutes

    Amidst the blurring of individuality, autonomy, sovereignty, subjectivity, agency, and identity, we look both inward to reflect outward, conflating feelings with selfhood, assuming our emotions define us outwardly: what you feel is more accurate than reality; it makes reality.

    For instance, the definition of words matters less than how you feel about them: you can declare agency as identity or sovereignty as a measure of subjectivity.

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    law over social pressure

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    1–2 minutes

    The two primary ways of societal control are law and social pressure.

    Social pressure functions as moral norms, restricting behavior by conformity or compliance for inclusion.

    Generally, norms are better for governance than laws, which must be parsed and ponderously enforced in cold, bureaucratic processes. However, public outcry can overcome sober traditions or common sense wisdom, shifting into hysterical punishment through exclusion and reputational attacks as mob mentality infects once sane citizens.

    This is when the law’s ponderous methodology performs its role: to slow down the fickle mob, doling out justice at a glacial pace.

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  • Theme:

    feigning agency as free will

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    1–2 minutes

    Subjectivity is about internal preferences and our personal perception of the world, while objectivity acknowledges external, unchangeable facts accepted by consensus.

    However, consider that "to object" is to block or challenge (obstruct), while "to subject" is to submit and limit yourself.

    Žižek argues that in this reversal of language use, we encounter the parallax, where the subject, typically the active agent, is acted upon by the previously passive object.

    Seen from this point of view, our subjective agency and sovereignty is a delusional game. We gracefully feign agency by embracing submission as an expression of free will: amor fati.

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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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    recreating aura in the age of replication

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    1–2 minutes

    Jean Baudrillard argues that replication and cloning represent the final stage of modeling the human body. From here on we begin to model “the model.”

    This is where we lose access to Walter Benjamin’s concept of the unique “aura” that gives something a nominal spirit and a sense of authenticity in the here and now.

    Once we reach this stage, similar to the mass-produced items discussed by Benjamin, the only way back to “authenticity” is through the creation of a manufactured historical nostalgia: we must artificially recreate aura.

    ~ From Mark Fisher

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    Expanding The Real

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    1–2 minutes

    What if every time we refer to “reality,” it creates a perspective shift? (We must determine our frame for perception to engage in contemplation.)

    This means we can no longer fully comprehend what is in front of us and are limited to appearances, which are further determined by our perspectival position. This means actual reality is ungraspable, shifting “reality” into a symbolic stand-in, i.e., The Real.

    The issue becomes not what you are looking at but the position(s) from which you consider.

    This implies that, retroactively, things previously dismissed offer new insights as you gain perspectives over time, implying that The Real draws closer to its namesake as we expand.

    This means we gain understanding not from closure or singularity but from excessive multiplicity of positionality.

    (This is possibly very incorrect.)

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    Egalitarian leveling

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    1–2 minutes

    The central tenant of egalitarianism is leveling. Specific traits are compensated for, artificially creating a more flattened state, whether positive, negative, or unique. In the process of creating egalitarian equality, naturally occurring differences are neutralized or homogenized.

    The neurotic soul, the mad genius, is normalized (neutered): the excessive traits that torment and produce are considered abnormal and must be subject to enhanced conformity.

    However, there is a more philosophical consideration that extreme difference produces equality without forced normalization: if each component/individual is utterly unique, there can be no hierarchy because there is no means for comparison. Ultimate difference produces ultimate equality, with no extraneous pressure needed for artificial leveling.

    However, the underlying problem is that leveling can only happen according to specific standards (an optimal goal), ensuring unfairness in attempting ultimate fairness.

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    Desire is a memory of happiness

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    1–2 minutes

    “desire is a memory of happiness, fear is a memory of pain” Buddhist proverb

    Yet, according to Lacan, we often desire what we have never had: it is the object of our desire that causes us pain by our inability to possess it completely.

    The separation from our supposed happiness is our pain, and our fear is the loss of this painful striving: without pursuit we lose purpose, our greatest fear is losing ourselves.