Idea Tapas #1
A brief update and a selection of recent thoughts. CW: disability, covid, politics, Lacan
Hi folks, how is it going? Things have been not going great over here, but I'm safe and I've got support, and day to day I feel okay. So it could be a lot worse, and for many it is — if that's you then allow me to offer my condolences.
I've been mulling some larger bits of writing, but I'm currently unable, for whatever reason, to turn them into posts, but I have been able to microblog, and I've written some stuff on bsky that might be worth sharing elsewhere. So, for your enjoyment, here's a tasty assortment of thoughts I've been having.
Ceci n'est pas une guillotine
I'm using pathologising language here for brevity and in reference to Lacan etc, but please understand I don't mean it in a pejorative way
I think we struggle with the fact that hysteria is a perfectly sane response to the modern world, and that unfortunately, un-managed hysteria renders us unable to do what needs doing, and so we must all adopt insane positions to get by.
My point is, one has no choice but to adopt some kind of posture to the world - whether it's one of fundamentalism, cynicism, of hysterical neuroses or psychotic foreclosure - there's no neutral stance, and our normative ideas about sanity are exposed as nonsense in this modern world.
For instance, we all have a stance on wearing masks to prevent airborne pathogen spread. The world has collectively decided that the sane, normal thing is to no longer mask except in extremis. There are reports these days of less masking in hospital wards than there was pre-2020. This demonstrates a clear divide between what I consider a rational response and what counts as a "sane" response, rendering many of us permanently outside the norm, legible as "crazy".
But there isn't a "sane" or objective place to stand here, something that us "Covid isn't over" types struggle with, I think. And to get by, we have to somehow find a way to act as if the world makes sense and is normal, at least enough to earn money, to keep our friends and family. We all must find a way to cope.
One thing that I see as a risk for the radicalised: that we begin to perversely enjoy our symptoms. Being "correct" is not in and of itself valuable, being the most doomer, or the most radical, fantasising about actions one never plans to enact, all of this is just another way to get by.
Going on endlessly about "late-stage capitalism", "guillotine the landlords", "compost the rich", "RESIST" - these are things we mostly say in order to tell ourselves that we cynically see through the farce, and yet it becomes a mechanism of inaction. Most people who say this stuff, you show them a working guillotine, they'll freak out. Hell, you even talk about vigorous resistance and many will get upset.
I don't mean this as a scolding, or to offer an alternative. Because if we don't we lose our jobs, our social network, our health, ultimately our lives. We are all cynics so that we can all perform our interpellated roles.
Individualistic disability advice
I will always be suspicious of any resource for people with disabilities that doesn’t at least offer a cursory acknowledgment of the hostility and ableism of the modern world. If everything is framed as essentially the individual’s problem to solve then how can we trust the rest of their advice?
I was recently working through an adult ADHD and anxiety CBT workbook that had a few ideas but framed everything as “fix the problems with you”, and didn’t much acknowledge the glaring absence of social support implicit in its focus.
Neurodivergence as exceptional disability
Speaking of ADHD and disability, I have a feeling that the rise of neurodivergence as a model can perform the function of rendering distinct the acceptable kind of disabled person vs the unacceptable. That is, if we create a category of people with "different brains" — and use it as a metonym for Autism and ADHD, implicitly excluding the epileptic, those with learning disabilities, those with schizophrenia etc — we can politically advocate for accessibility and acceptance without offering solidarity to those with mobility issues, congenital issues, Long Covid.
Just as Aotearoa NZ's Labour government created a special class of jobless person in 2020 who was considered worthy of double the support because they had lost their income due to Covid, the ND model separates one group of disabled from another. It's not without use, but this is a danger that it presents.
Obsidian as a Zettelkasten
For several months I’ve been using the Obsidian app as a Zettelkasten. Obsidian is a text editor optimised for collections of markdown files with optional paid file syncing. A Zettelkasten is superficially like a wiki, in that it’s a set of hyperlinked notes (originally index cards in a box), but where a wiki is often noun-based and either unstructured or hierarchical, a Zettelkasten is a set of chains of thought that are organicly indexed.
Starting from a topic, you add cards to a growing - mostly immutable - index tree, like building a mind palace. An idea you had from reading one book might be extended by your musings or by something else you read.
The key metaphors for me are:
- A garden that grows slowly, mindfully tended.
- A second mind that enables conversation with myself over time
It's not a dumping ground. What is excluded is as important as what’s included. Thoughts and ideas are first class, supported by reference material.
For someone like me, with an eclectic and nerdy set of interests that change frequently but have underlying patterns, and with my ADHD forgetfulness, slowly ingesting a subset of what I think about feels like a good balance. I can develop ideas over time without dictating their shape. I can have a conversation with myself.
It can be quite intimidating getting started as you have to decide what your tools and structure will look like, but there are decent discussions online as well as books to help. I think the specifics matter less than the mindset of accepting imperfection and balancing how much to add.
What's the point? Well, if I'm stuck obsessively learning and thinking about things, I might as well make it easy to develop my ideas. I am hoping, long-term, that it will help with various writing projects, but we'll see about that.
Brief summary of the Bear Trap
Several years ago I came up with the concept of the Bear Trap, a kind of mistake that I think often applies to well-meaning public economic policy.
Some economic problems can be simplified to two points of pressure, one limiting income and the other draining wealth. These forces might be fixed, or they might be dynamic, and controlled by private actors.
Public policy is public, that is, any move the state makes is telegraphed, in advance, to class interests who can anticipate and respond to it. When Labour gave student allowances a $50 bump, landlords of student homes raised rents to match. Introducing rent controls will not lead to any improvement for renters if there's not an increased income to fill their pockets.
Both arms in a bear trap can be perversely reactive, but it's much more likely to be the rentier side, because lowering pay is usually illegal. The ultimate point of the metaphor is that a surplus, the gap between income and outgoings, can only be increased by controlling both arms at once.
See you soon
Okay, that's probably enough reading for now. I've got a follow-up post that I'll schedule for next week. I hope something here was tasty, and I hope you and yours are doing well. If I've not replied to something you've sent me, please accept my apologies, my anxiety and avoidance is at absolute peak at the moment. It's not you, it's me.