The Western cult of happiness

“The Western cult of happiness is indeed a strange adventure, something like a collective intoxication. In the guise of emancipation, it transforms a high ideal into its opposite. Condemned to joy, we must be happy or lose all standing in society. It is not a question of knowing whether we are more or less happy than our ancestors; our conception of the thing itself has changed, and we are probably the first society in history to make people unhappy for not being happy.”

Source

The Sadness of Phil Collins

Exasperated, Croesus demands that Solon explain to him why he has not deigned to put him, great king, owner of unimaginable riches, even on the same level as these ordinary folk.

Solon replies that human life is so unpredictable, we are so at the mercy of fate, that until we are safely dead, no one can say whether we are happy or fortunate as we do not know what calamities might befall us from one day to the next. No one can truly be called happy until they are dead.

— Herodotus The Histories (1.29-.33) and (1.85-.89) trans Aubrey de Selincourt

According to Rolling Stone, Phil Collins was the second biggest pop star of the 1980s (after Michael Jackson).

Many of his hits — most powerfully “In the Air Tonight” — defined the decade. The man sold 150 million records. His songs endure.

You’d think that’s a pretty good life legacy — a decent roll of the dice, as it were.

But twenty years later, a bitter and melancholy Phil Collins has asked that people start calling him “Phillip.” He hates what the old Phil has become.

Via Rolling Stone:

The Eighties ended and the Nineties began in a whole different mood, with Nirvana and other punk-influenced bands establishing grunge as the dominant musical force. In many ways, grunge’s threadbare, garage-rock sound was a direct reaction to the overblown, synth-heavy bombast of the previous decade — and no one typified those excesses more than Collins. In the summer of 1994, reports began circulating that Collins had informed his (second) wife that he wanted a divorce — via fax. He denied it vehemently, and the fax itself was never produced, but no matter: Suddenly it was open season on the guy. Oasis’ Noel Gallagher started hammering on him any time he could, to uproarious effect. Among his choicest bon mots: “You don’t have to be great to be successful. Look at Phil Collins” and “People hate fucking cunts like Phil Collins, and if they don’t, they fucking should.” And so it’s gone, especially on the internet, where I Hate Phil Collins sites have flourished. He gets criticized for everything. For his hair, for his height, for his shirts (tucks them in), for being a “shameless, smirking show hog.”

“I don’t understand it,” he says, looking pained. “I’ve become a target for no apparent reason. I only make the records once; it’s the radio that plays them all the time. I mean, the Antichrist? But it’s too late. The die is cast as to what I am.”

Now we see the downside of being a pop superstar. Had Collins’ songs not been popular enough to get regular rotation on soft rock radio stations to this day, he never would have become a target for point-scoring assholes like Noel Gallagher. The proliferation of “I Hate Phil Collins” sentiment is a hipster-grunge reaction to Collins’ extreme outlier of commercial success — and in its own way, further validation of the outsized impact he has had.

And yet, for the man himself to say “The die is cast as to who I am” is just sad — a form of tragicomedy. Fate does not decide who a person is, much less the snarking of random trolls on the internet. Except in this case, Collins the man has chosen to let his detractors define him… and thus made it so.

Collins is wealthy but not healthy. The hearing in his left ear is gone. A vertebrae injury in his neck has oddly affected his ability to grip things: He is unable to hold drumsticks, or even write his own name with a pen.

Moderate physical ailments are hardly an impediment to a happy life. What haunts Collins, cruelly, is his inability to let go of a caricature that others have crudely drawn:

He pauses, and then he goes on. “I have had suicidal thoughts. I wouldn’t blow my head off. I’d overdose or do something that didn’t hurt. But I wouldn’t do that to the children. A comedian who committed suicide in the Sixties left a note saying, “Too many things went wrong too often.” I often think about that.”

His manner when he says these things is straightforward. He betrays no emotion. The second-biggest pop star of the Eighties (after Michael Jackson) just sits there, seeming like he maybe wished he could blink it all away.

“Everything has added up to a load that I’m getting tired of carrying,” he continues. “It’s gotten so complicated. It’s the three failed marriages, and having kids that grew up without me, and it’s the personal criticism, of being Mr. Nice Guy, or of divorcing my wife by fax, all that stuff, the journalism, some of which I find insulting. I wouldn’t say that I have suicidal tendencies over my career or bad press. They’re just another chink in the wall. It’s cumulative. You can say, ‘Grow up, man, everybody gets criticism.’ I know that. And I’ve philosophically adjusted to it. But does that make it any more pleasurable? No.” And that’s the trouble with wishing you were somebody else. As much as you may want it, you know it’ll never happen, at least not in this lifetime.

Wishing you were someone else? You are fucking Phil Collins, man! Those were (and are) some GREAT fucking songs!

And here we cycle back around to “Solon’s Wisdom,” as referenced in the opening quote.

The gist of Solon’s wisdom — as referenced by Croesus as a prisoner on a pyre — is that you don’t know how life will turn out, and thus until it is over, you cannot speak with finality of another man’s happiness or another man’s full life.

Modern culture treats pop stars like royalty, and assumes a glorious inner life to match the outer one.  Yet we know how Michael Jackson turned out, and now we see the self-imposed burden Collins must bear.

Do we really want to envy these people? Do we really want to envy anyone?

Fame, money, accolades, recognition from one’s peers… these things have their place, but in and of themselves they guarantee nothing. Sometimes (often times?) they are more pain than pleasure — more trouble than they are worth.

The point here, though, is not to have sympathy for poor Phil Collins. In many ways the man is trapped in a prison of his own making. Nor is the point to take comfort in one’s lack of fame. Saying “wow, I’m glad I’m not famous” is just smug self-rationalization — another version of “my situation is better than so and so’s.”

Instead, the point (at least for yours truly) is to recognize that the conventional wisdom as to what makes us happy — and as to WHO is happy — is all too often laughably, utterly wrong.

So is it better to be a pop star or a postal clerk? Not so easy to answer now eh?

Whose life is filled with laughter and love and great sex and fulfilling moments and personal epiphanies from end to end — the famously successful person envied (and hated) by so many, or the quietly content individual who outwardly displays no grandiose signs? Maybe it’s one, maybe the other. Maybe neither, maybe both. From the outside, can you really know?

And if conventional trappings aren’t the answer… if all the popular delusions are merely airbrushed lies… if incredibly wonderful, fulfilling and experience-enriched lives are open to anyone (including pop stars), wholly independent of who or what they achieve in the jaded eyes of the world… then what excuse does that leave for you, for me, for all of us?

A Different Path

“We’re taking a different path,” he said.

“The original path wasn’t bad, but it isn’t the best one. Instead of going through the logic mountains, here” –- his finger jabbed a point on the map -– “we are going to cut away and swing through the experimental mountains, here.”

Another jab tracing a distinctly different route.

“The ultimate destination is the same,” he said. “In due time -– over the course of many years, maybe even a decade or two –- we’ll reach the Point of Understanding, where all is made clear.”

“But the previous route emphasized a build-up of framework elements piece by piece along the way… a sort of filling-in of knowledge gaps for fellow travelers alongside.”

“This new path is going to be wilder, stranger. It will not be about methodically filling in gaps, or necessarily ‘filling in’ anything at all. Holes will be left unplugged… bridges left unbuilt… rivers left uncrossed. They are not the main focus now.”

He stopped to mull the new route. After a few moments pause, added: “To those unfamiliar with them, the experimental mountains can be a strange, indeed a bizarre place. A bit Alice in Wonderland (minus the caterpillars and Cheshire cats).”

“They can also be frightening. Open sunny vistas, yes. But then too unsettling nooks and crannies… glimpses of insanity… dark places.”

“The reason for the shift is simple: This is a selfish journey, not a selfless one.”

“There is an element of selflessness in the final destination –- the Point of Understanding which all of us (or at least a handful of us) will one day reach, together. A day of victory for all who stick the whole way.”

“And there is a sort of accidental selflessness in acting as a guide in the first place, leading the expedition as it were.”

“But, ultimately, whatever good comes of selflessness emanates from foremost consideration for self and self alone –- at least on this particular trip. In that light, it is the experimental mountains that will best nourish and fulfill us at this particular nexus of place and space and time.”

“There will come a later time when building bridges and crossing rivers again holds appeal.”

“But here and now, and perhaps for the next few years – How long? Hard to say – the wild and rough and perplexing edges are home away from home.”

Here’s a way of approaching the universe…

From the derpy but occasionally brilliant folks over at Reddit:

Here’s a way of approaching the universe: You are a tiny speck of insignificant biological material in an immense universe that probably defies your brain’s ability of understanding. Yet you are remarkable, in innumerable ways. Every second of every day you are a walking ecosystem of life, housing trillions of microbes that continuously interact with you to keep both you and them alive. Your body is constantly building and rebuilding itself, encoding information on simple strains of molecules at the speed of jet engines, in each and every nucleus-possessing cell in your body. You are a walking, talking, living, breathing orchestra of life, a beautiful display of the potential inherent in our particular universe.

You are the remarkable product of an unbroken, let me say that again, UNBROKEN line of descendants stretching all the way back to the very first interactions of seemingly pointless inanimate molecules. You share a common ancestry with every living thing ever, including the estimated 106 billion humans who have ever lived. You are tied to the trees and the birds and the small phytoplankton that gently ride the crests and dips of the oceans of this world. You are part of the vibrant tapestry of what we refer to as life, a piece of art that stretches back billions upon billions of years. Everything this universe has thrown at you and your ancestors has been roundly defeated – from harsh radiation, to extraterrestrial objects, to volcanic eruptions and more. You are a symbol of utter perseverance, of the sheer will to continue onwards. You are a cry in the dark, the voice of one who will not be quiet.

So now you’ve realized that there is no inherent meaning to existence. So what? This doesn’t mean life has suddenly lost meaning – it means there was no meaning in the first place. So you haven’t actually lost anything. Instead, you have gained a wonderful opportunity. Give existence the meaning it is seeking. MAKE a purpose for yourself. Maybe it should be your kids, or maybe it should be giving from the bounty you have (because let us face reality – if you have an internet connection and personal computer, you are in the top 10%, maybe even the top 1%, of humanity). Maybe you should learn a new skill, explore a new facet of creation that you never realized was open to you.

So why do you teach a toddler how to behave? Because maybe that toddler will be the one to find other life, other existence in our so far lonely universe. Or maybe they will be the father, the mother, the close friend, the lover, the supporter of the one who does. Or maybe they will be the person to speak out at just the right moment, the one to stand up and stand out, who will provide the inspiration, or the moment of connection for the person who does. Or maybe that toddler will be the one to protect the life around us from an otherwise inevitable end, from the sucking void of empty existence that we struggle against every second of our being.

Are you just a breeder? Just biology? What an insult to biology! Just?!? I forgive you, because you know not what you say 😀 You are the product of a few basic particles, a few basic forces, yet you are impossibly complex, impossibly intricate. The sheer unlikeliness of your very existence is staggering, and yet here you are. The title of “breeder” is just a single facet of what you are. You can be a teacher, a leader, a thinker, a cook, a scientist, an artist, a musician, a protector, an enlightener, a champion, a peacemaker, a lover, a friend, a companion, a confidant… the list is as vast as the seemingly infinite complexities of neuron interactions in the collection of molecular structures known as cells in your brain.

And let us not end our poetic license there, for if all that is true, than this is also: There is something after death. The part of you that continues to exist in all life around you will never cease to be, not as long as things from this planet continue to live. You will continue on, interminably, from the beginning of life to its end potentially countless aeons from now, if ever. Maybe through some fluke you will be the Eve for humanity in the future, the one woman every human will trace their ancestry back to. Maybe not. But who can tell what the future holds. Rather than collapse under the imagined weight of nothingness, I posit that you should grasp hold of your life, and take it to heights heretofore unseen.

Richard Dawkins on Death (and Life)

Given that Metaprocess is a multi-decade project by design, there will inevitably be cycles of high and low activity.

Low cycle periods do not come about for lack of project-specific content — there is an epic backlog of that — but simply because joyous life intervenes.

Food for thought from Richard Dawkins:

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.

Most people are never going to die because they’re never going to be born.

The potential people who could have been here in my place, but who will, in fact, never see the light of day, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara.

Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton.

We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people.

In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state, from which the vast majority have never stirred.

Evey Reborn

Lao Tzu: If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.

~

Truth as Satire, Courtesy of The Onion

Sartre or Camus would surely have laughed at this (or at least cracked a smile).

p.s. There is, of course, a more enlightened option when it comes to contemplating one’s demise…

Scientists Successfully Teach Gorilla It Will Die Someday

Degrees of Freedom

The cartoon below (via XKCD) is humorous on the surface, but harbors some rather profound implications underneath.

It reminds Jack of a favorite F.N. quote:

Woe to the thinker who is not the gardener but only the soil of the plants that grow in him.

Self-Created Meaning: A Musical Analogy

Some time back Jack posted on The Twin Sphere Paradox and Self-Created Meaning. Here is a quick excerpt:

There is no such thing as independent or transcendent meaning… whenever one ponders the “meaning” of something, it is always in relation to some vantage point of consciousness. “Meaning” is tethered to consciousness, and thus becomes a non sequitur when severed from some originating form of “self” — be it the personal self, the self of some other human being, a collective societal self, or what have you.

And so, given that meaning is 1) tethered to consciousness, and 2) grounded in personal vantage point, it is logical to recognize that all meaning is self-created. There is no other mechanism than consciousness (which in turn implies the existence of a self) to generate it!

The whole post is worth reading if you find the topic intriguing.

Self-created meaning, or SCM, is a critical metaprocess concept because it resolves the seeming conflict between nihilism and purpose. To observe the universe with open eyes is to potentially fall into despair (“alas, no higher meaning exists”). On the other hand, to force-feed one’s self the belief that higher meaning does exist — in spite of clear evidence to the contrary — is to deliberately distort one’s instinctive perceptual faculties (assuming one has been honest in the full attempt to “see reality as it is”).

This willful dreaming has an effect not unlike building a house on a slightly off-kilter foundation. Errors of foundational belief lead to egregious distortion and contortion further on down the line.

What to do then? “No meaning” seems to warrant despair… yet the defiant embrace of purpose apparently comes at great cost (the cost of self-delusion).

There is good news. The freeing message of SCM — as further communicated in The Door at The End of the Universe — is that we are free to create our own meaning… and that self-created meaning is just as “real” as any other more official or widely recognized form of value assigment, because there is no higher arbiter to nullify or transcend it.

Three teachers sit by the side of the road.

The first teacher cries, over and over again, “All is meaningless — you MUST accept this!”

The second teacher cries, just as loudly, “All has a deeper hidden purpose — you MUST accept this!”

The townspeople, curious as to which teacher is right, inquire of the quiet third man, hoping he will break the tie.

But, instead of picking a winner, the quiet teacher merely smiles and responds: “These two are as noisome twin brothers — what they say is the same. There is no universal truth… how could there be, when even the sun and moon will one day go out.

All this came back to Jack’s mind via quick recent comment on another blog called Who is the Absurd Man. There was a scuffle some time back (between Jack and one of the blog’s creators) as to whether self-created meaning was a valid concept, or whether honesty required the vehement denial that any type of meaning could exist (nihilism with an evangelistic twist).

Anyhow, on a recent return visit, Jack couldn’t help but notice (and respond to) some further confusion as to what “meaning” has to mean.

In the spirit of resolving a false dichotomy, the following analogy resulted (as taken from comments on this thread):

[Quoting previous commenter] You are running into the stone cold wall of contradictions that I highlighted in past responses to posts by Rick and Inigo on this blog. If one takes as fact that there is no meaning then all that is left is nihilism.

[Jack’s response] Ah, but meaning DOES exist, even for the absurd man. It just happens to be self-created. And thus wholly portable, malleable, customizable, and perfectly matched in duration to the being who created it.

For those who (still) object to the idea of self-created meaning, think of a song. Where does a song come from? Here is one potential path: A musician first hears the song in his mind. Then he plays it on his guitar… tweaks it a little… and voila, a song is born. Would we say the song is not “real” just because it was born in the musician’s mind? No. Of course it is real. He can play it on his guitar, put it on itunes, or what have you. The seat of consciousness is as respectable a birthplace as any other.

Perhaps many others hear and enjoy this song. Or perhaps it is kept private. Perhaps when the musician dies, hopefully after a long and happy life, his little song dies with him…

Self-created meaning is like that. The things I place value on in life – what I believe, what I hold dear – are like the songs I sing to myself. It doesn’t really matter who likes my songs (unless I choose for it to matter). And the universe certainly doesn’t care. My songs are temporal, ephemeral, transient… and yet they are very real, and of great importance to me, as I play them out on the existential guitar of my brief and shining existence.

Where people get tripped up, I think, is in assuming that “meaning” has to be permanent… or eternal… or transcendent. People think meaning has to be timeless… that the universe has to have a say… that some broadly applicable consensus is required.

Not true at all. Meaning doesn’t have to be any of those things. It can be whimsical, ephemeral, personal, and created or extinguished at whim – just like a song.

The Fun Race

Why does it have to be “the rat race?” Why can’t it be the fun race instead?

Idea being: What if, instead of seeking to impress the most people, accumulate the biggest pile, or score the most guilt-driven brownie points etcetera, one’s life goal was to simply have as much fun as possible (over the full spread of a life well lived)?

When you think about it, a lot of people’s supposedly sober and respectable goals are downright idiotic trivial. Beyond a certain threshold of comfort, does making lots of money really have any more merit than, say, trying to accumulate the greatest number of Facebook friends? (And don’t even get Jack started on how pathetic it is for people to live out their entire lives in thrall to the judgments and opinions of others they don’t even like!)

Admittedly, to make life a pursuit of pleasure (i.e. “fun”) could be considered a selfish thing. And in that respect, Jack is glad that many think differently. He observes with gratitude that plenty of  others are willing — eager, even — to prostrate themselves at great personal cost before the feet of their fellow men. In pure economic terms,  light-hearted selfishness is all too rare a commodity. Pious sacrifice is in no short supply.

Does living to have fun mean wasting one’s life then? Not necessarily. And even if it did, what of it? In matters of ultimate meaning, Jack is inspired by the great Diogenes of Sinope:

When asked how he wished to be buried, [Diogenes] left instructions to be thrown outside the city wall so wild animals could feast on his body. When asked if he minded this, he said, “Not at all, as long as you provide me with a stick to chase the creatures away!” When asked how he could use the stick since he would lack awareness, he replied “If I lack awareness, then why should I care what happens to me when I am dead?”

One might object that living for fun means destroying one’s body with drugs, drink and the like. But if such temptations do not strike you as fun, then why indulge in them? Some people’s idea of fun might be solving complex mathematical equations, translating philosophical texts from the original Greek, or tracking the mating habits of Himalayan blue sheep.The point is to find and embrace what floats your own boat, not someone else’s boat.

But to pursue fun as a sole objective is not rational, still others might object. Well why the hell not? In fact, what could be more rational in the face of ultimate futility? Consider this cheery bit from Bertrand Russell:

“…All the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins…”

Oh, how deeply depressing — for the poor silly sod who shoulders the heavy burden of purpose that is. It is all rather amusing to Jack.

And speaking of “rationality” as juxtaposed with “fun” — can a sufficiently motivated individual not apply rational means to even the happy task of having a damn good time?

A maximally lived life is one that embraces a diverse mix of pursuits (i.e. not all steak, not all chocolate cake). Figuring out the right mix requires discipline, concentration, creativity and forethought.

We are used to casting aspersions on those who make fun their life goal because such individuals are typically loosely disciplined at best and bad at life management on the whole. But the chips need not fall this way. The sufficiently enlightened individual can recognize that sacrifice and planning are required over the course of a well balanced life — even in pursuit of fun.

From the vantage point of respectable society, Jack intuits a knee-jerk aversion to this idea. Why might this be? To hazard a guess, because society wants something from you. Society wants your allegiance… your obeisance… your submissive acceptance of the established ways. The great herds of sheep do not like the contrarian-minded fellow who dares wander off on his own. They squint in suspicion and suspect him a wolf. Self-righteousness and unhappiness, insecurity and suspicion — these things go hand in hand.

You mean to say I can chuck all that societally imposed bullshit and just… live life the way I want to?

Well, Jack would argue, it depends on what you genuinely believe. If you firmly believe the answer is no, then you are correct — the answer is no. Self-imposed limitation equals self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s practically axiomatic.

But if you believe the answer is yes — that yes, you can be free — then once again the truth becomes what you make it. No one and nothing beyond or outside ourselves has the power to dictate who and what we live for… unless we hand that power over, by accident or on purpose.