The Age of Absurdity
The good news is that the great thinkers from history have proposed the same strategies for happiness. The bad news is that these turn out to be the very things most discouraged by contemporary culture. Michael Foley has written an investigation into how the desirable states of wellbeing and satisfaction are constantly undermined by modern life.
It began several years ago when an old friend and I, reviewing over a glass of wine our confused and confusing lives, wondered if there was any consensus among thinkers of different kinds on how to live. Do philosophers, religious teachers and literary writers share any views on human nature and how to make the most of it – and if so what are these views? So far as we knew, no one had attempted this kind of triangulation exercise, no doubt because it would take several lifetimes to research properly these three areas, each with a vast literature stretching back thousands of years. Then, just to simplify matters, we realised that a contemporary consensus search would have to include psychology and neuroscience – it would now have to be a pentangulation. Total insanity, we laughed, and had another glass of wine.
Besides, the thought of writing a what’s-it-all-about book filled me with multiple horrors. The experts, the professional philosophers, religious scholars, psychologists and neuroscientists, would scornfully expose my lack of knowledge and training. My cynical Irish friends would ridicule me as a pretentious wanker. My literary friends would shun me for becoming contaminated by ideas – describe, don’t explain is the central axiom of twentieth-century literature. And everyone would agree that it was insane to venture into ideas as well writing novels and poetry. To be any good in any one of these areas requires a lifetime of dedication. Worst of all, if the book ever got published it might be classified as Self-Help. A happy clappy smiley face? God forbid.
But I’d always been a surreptitious reader of what’s-it-all-about stuff – and now I surreptitiously dug out some of my old black Penguin Classics, shocked and saddened to discover that they were as faded and spotted as their owner. But the ideas they contained were still thrillingly vital – and there were indeed many surprising correspondences. More surprising still, a little research in psychology and neuroscience turned up the same ideas. It seemed that thinkers of all kinds, from all cultures and periods, did indeed say much the same things, often in much the same language.
The next inspiration came from an unlikely source – a contemporary IT student in a baseball cap. I was introducing the first seminar of a new semester, reprising the content of the introductory lecture with an enthusiasm and vibrancy that could have inflated a bouncy castle just by looking at it. When I had finished I turned upon the blank faces the full effulgence needed by the contemporary teacher: ‘Any questions?’
A hand went up in the back row. This was especially gratifying because the cool dudes slumped along the back never ask questions.
‘Yes?’
A vexed look came over his features. ‘Is this all it is?’
What did he expect? This was the module he had chosen and we were following the programme announced and using the material distributed. I was still pondering a response when I realised that he was no longer aware of me but looking out of the window with a troubled expression. His question was directed not so much at me as at the world and life in general. Is this all it is?
Later still I realised that this question summarised perfectly a common contemporary attitude – a toxic mix of demand, dissatisfaction, resentment and blame. And this attitude is the opposite of everything recommended by the thinkers. So the common strategies they propose have never been more difficult to implement – and a contemporary what’s-it-all-about book would have to address this aspect of the problem, the cultural conditioning of the age.
But there was still something missing. A book should be infused with a personal vision. Finally it came to me that absurdity should be a running theme. The twentieth century discovered that the human condition is essentially absurd – and regarded this discovery as bleak. But the twenty-first century, now accustomed to the notion, can learn to relish absurdity. One of the advantages of this approach is that it encourages a comic vision of life. This is not the bright public smiley face but a private dark laughter at the insanities of the contemporary world.
So the particular brand of snake oil I’m peddling could be defined as Absurd Positivism (or Positive Absurdism). Maybe I should start an Ab Pos Cult with, as a maxim for T-shirts, coffee mugs and fridge magnets: Life is absurd – but divinely absurd.
I certainly don’t believe that there is any way back to simplicity, innocence and faith.
Welcome to The Age of Absurdity.
