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The Meta-Positioning Habit of Mind - by L. M. Sacasas

The Meta-Positioning Habit of Mind - by L. M. Sacasas

Section titled “The Meta-Positioning Habit of Mind - by L. M. Sacasas”

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  • In the meta-positioning frame of mind, thinking and judgment are displaced by a complex, ever-shifting, and often fraught triangulation based on who holds certain views and how one might be perceived for advocating or failing to advocate for certain views. In one sense, this is not a terribly complex or particularly novel dynamic. Our pursuit of understanding is often an uneasy admixture of the desire to know and the desire to be known as one who knows by those we admire. Unfortunately, social media probably tips the scale in favor of the desire for approval given its rapid fire feedback mechanisms.
  • Earlier this month, Kevin Baker commented on this same tendency in a recent thread that opened with the following observation, “A lot of irritating, mostly vapid people and ideas were able to build huge followings in 2010s because the people criticizing them were even worse.” Baker goes on to call this “the decade of being anti-anti-” and explains that he felt like he spent “the better part of the decade being enrolled into political and discursive projects that I had serious reservations about because I disagreed [with] their critics more and because I found their behavior reprehensible.” In his view, this is a symptom of the unchecked expansion of the culture wars. Baker again: “This isn’t censorship. There weren’t really censors. It’s more a structural consequence of what happens when an issue gets metabolized by the culture war. There are only two sides and you just have to pick the least bad one.”
  • Consequently, learning to distinguish between a genuine crisis and a faux crisis will certainly be an essential skill. I would add that it is also critical to distinguish among the array of genuine crisis circumstances that we encounter. Clearly, some will bear directly and unambiguously upon us—a health crisis, say, or a weather emergency. Others will bear on us less directly or acutely, and others still will not bear on us at all. Furthermore, there are those we will be able to address meaningfully through our actions and those we cannot. We should, therefore, learn to apportion our attention and our labors wisely and judiciously.
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