Reading Facebook posts tonight and I'm struck, again, by the wave of posters with captions. Who started this shit and can we make it stop? Probably not.
Well, okay. Here's what I'm noticing. At least from my Facebook friends, most of the posts are bitter, mean, sarcastic, devoid of joy and boring. Most of them suggest that our current political situation sucks. Now, to be fair, the one's that say that opposite are equally annoying.
Now, what annoys me - the cause for this post - isn't that I agree or disagree with any of them in particular. It's the utter lack of joy in so many of the posts. They seem to want to paint the world as one big pain in the ass - one evil place to live where only politicians get their way.
Okay - so they're kind of right. The rich do win. Politicians are bought and constantly lie. All this is true, but yet I'm left with a sorrow that goes beyond the political situation. Are people not experiencing joy anymore? I mean even when we were in huge - literally - World Wars - there was joy in the literature. I mean read the existentialists carefully. Kafka is hilarious - Camus is always affirmative. Beckett - well, okay - I don't know, but fuck it I love the guy.
But when I look at these posts tonight - I don't care about the political side - what I'm sad about is an utter lack of joy. The world IS. We need Nietzsche in these times. Whatever it is - say YES. Hate politicians - fine - hate the president - fine - but please find some moment for joy and pleasure. The world gives. The world is illuminated. The world is also a totally fucked-up place - but let's not forget the former because of the latter. (And this is not some statement about "balance." I mean something far simpler.)
Allow me to shift this slightly. When communicating publicly, as Facebook has afforded us to do in the most effortless ways, people may be more inclined to speak out against those things which enrage, complicate or otherwise darken the way we would like the world to be. That is not to say that joy doesn't occur for most people on a daily basis, mostly that we are more eager to communicate a change for the things that throw us off balance. That being said, I think we should all be more conscience of communicating our joy publicly. Perhaps, that is a comment on joy itself- it tends to be displayed personally, rather than publicly.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking of something similar, of late-- indeed, for some time now. I have, true to form, come at it in my typical impetuous fashion, but I think I 've gradually come to realise that when all seems dark with the world-- especially when that darkness is a shade one wears over his eyes, sewn into the flesh of his forehead for all his life--one may certainly learn to just take pleasure in darkness. Rather than trying to look for light when it's futile, one learns to, say, appreciate pleasant textures instead.
ReplyDeleteI was about to reply with what I read at the end of your second sentence - which, if I may say, was a rather joyous construction. I see no reason joy must equate with happiness. I actually don't see the two terms as synonymous. For example, I love signs - especially church billboards - and on the sign, still of a year-long defunct Ham's it reads "Friday Night Walrus." And I can drive past that sign everyday and imagine the hipster band I'll never form - called, of course, Friday Night Walrus. Or the Church near my house says "Hell is for Non-Believers." Man I gut-laughed at that. It was a beautiful moment. I wasn't pissed at them for being mean - I did, admittedly have a whole class on that sign asking "Who is the audience for this post?" but it was all done was joy, not with hatred. It's a weird line I really need to think about - the difference between joy and happiness. Because I was certainly not happy the church posted what they did. Hmmm.
DeleteAnd my sentence construction needs work. Sorry man.
DeleteNo problem, and I appreciate the compliments. But, I mean, my God (who?), I've been talking almost nonstop to a woman who speaks almost exclusively Portuguese for the past week: your sentence structures are hewn from pure, crystalline bismuth (the mineral with perfect cleavage!) in comparison. She's been reading my work lately and comparing me to the Marquis de Sade ( to the point where she's calling me 'Marquês'-- it's cute as shit), so I went back and read some of his stuff. I'll tell you what: the man got a bum rap, and Goth girls from Brazil are no intellectual slouches. The Marquis was my kind of guy. Still don't think I'd let him put his penis in me, but, nobody always gets everything they want.
ReplyDeleteI might go so far as to say that at times like these, reveling in darkness might be of critical importance-- but I'm with you, man-- there's got to becalmed REVELING involved.
'becalmed' = 'be some'
Delete"Bismuth (the mineral with perfect cleavage!)" That's what I mean - what a beautiful moment. Now a rock - that I had to study in Geology - has a new ethos, a new relationship to not only rocks, but now concepts. That's what I'm begging for. I am often pissed - I often think things suck - but I want to express even those thoughts with joy. Now - and you know this - this has nothing to do with "staying positive," which is a non-joyous neutered concept.
DeleteI came back to look for new posts, and I saw you had responded. I wish I could determine a way to be alerted of responses by email...
ReplyDeleteAnyway ...
I think much of the reason we see so little joy in our friends' Facebook statuses is that many of them are just recycling other people's posts. There's no joy, but there's no anger, either-- it's just depressing. There is NO FEELING AT ALL.
Many of my friends' posts on my news feed are just witless image macros-- they see them on one of THEIR friends' pages, and they say, 'Oh, this looks like something I would like people to think I think', and then they post it. It reveals a mind so static and mired and numbed that it cannot produce its own material. I would gladly take blind, dumb rage over that; that would at least indicate that there's a person in there, but this.. it is pathetic. and wretched and inspires actual CRUELTY in me. At one point it would've made me sad; now I just want to kick them savagely and see if they would respond to THAT.
Ah, well. I am exhausted and my level of discourse has obviously fallen off; thinking about this, though, has led me to consider making some cuts to my already-very-small 'friends' list.
To be honest, there are a lot of people on there who are DEFINITELY getting a lot more from me than I am from them. I suppose if I'm the only source of real excitement in their lives I could just make them vanish from my News Feed without un-friending them... they could still get their fix but I can be unburdened of their drivel...
Oh shit, Dave. I done found your blog. This could be bad for you. (This is Brad.)
ReplyDeleteThe lack of joy in modern living is something I struggle with often. If I had attained mindfulness in India, I would present joyousness at every moment. Because I am a lucky son of a bitch. I pretty much won the lottery the moment I was born middle class American. So did most of your Facebook friends, I'd wager. But sometimes I forget how lucky I am and how amazingly awesome the world is. Then I spew some negativity or regurgitate some insipid memes. If it weren't so ironic, I'd say that outrage pisses me off the most. But like you said above, we should take joy in everything, even if it's vitriol.
It's our adaptability that screws us. Throw us in any novel situation and after a time we'll find a way to make it mundane. We are creatures design to structure and interpret raw experiences in ways that make them consumable and easy to reason about. It's my fundamental belief that our cognitive process is designed to shave off the joy in the basic act of living. It takes a lot of practice to work around that.
So, what's my point? I guess that living joyously is a job like any other. You have to put in your 10,000 hours. When I'm busy I forget to work at it. I don't think it's a coincidence you pointed to the existentialists. I find I am most open to the joy of life when I recognize its fundamental absurdity. The guys you mentioned were onto that. They worked at digging under that layer of convention. It's not surprising to me that an undercurrent of joy slipped through.
Lastly, as far as Beckett, I quote:
ESTRAGON:
What about hanging ourselves?
VLADIMIR:
Hmm. It'd give us an erection.
What could be more joyous? He was the best of them.