The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes it Hard to Be Happy (2010)

by Michael Foley

  Newly liberated money was even sexier than liberated women, so the most significant change was a worship of change itself, which gradually spread into the wider culture as a superstitious belief in the magic of potential. One consequence is that, because change is now believed to be intrinsically good, politicians can mount successful campaigns based entirely on the promise of ‘change’.

  As Schopenhauer pointed out, human nature has always tended to live in anticipation, another id attribute – but entitlement and worship of change have combined to put the contemporary age completely under the spell of potential, the enchantment of imminence. The result is that means become ends in themselves.

  So money, the universal means, becomes the universal end. But the effect has many manifestations. In relationships, for instance, sexual attractiveness tends to become detached from the sex it is supposed to facilitate. Increasingly, attractiveness wants to be admired rather than touched. Certainly it does not expect, God forbid, to have to work. I offer to psychology the theory that the greater the sexual attractiveness the lazier the sexual performance. This hypothesis may turn out to be invalid – but it would certainly be fun to test.

  In the workplace, restaicturing, innovation, flexibility, talent, training and mobility are all revered as good in themselves. This explains the obsession with training programmes (often employees are required to fill training quotas regardless of need) and the rise in status of ‘talented’ professionals such as designers, museum curators, graphic artists and chefs.

  Reverence for potential is a form of greed that believes there is always something better just ahead. But the spell of potential enchants the future at the expense of disenchanting the present. Whatever is actually happening today is already so yesterday, and the only true excitement is the Next Big Thing – the next lover, job, project, holiday, destination or meal. As a consequence, the most attractive solution to problems is flight. If there are difficulties in a relationship or at work, the temptation is to move on. This, in turn, rules out the satisfactions of confronting and surmounting problems and destroys the crucial ability to make use of tribulations, to turn to advantage whatever happens.

  And, of course, for the problem-averse, whatever happens must be agreeable. The only fortune is good fortune – random bad luck is just not acceptable. The philosopher Julian Baggini conducted a survey on the nature of contemporary complaint and discovered that what people most complain about is bad luck, fate, all that is outside their control.48 Few are willing to accept that, as neo-stoics tersely put it, shit happens. Tragedy has to mean something – and something good must come of it. So bereaved relatives appear on television to ensure that such a terrible thing can never happen again: ‘We don’t want anyone else to have to suffer like us.’

  In the leisure world, shopping and travel have become ends in themselves because they are activities of pure potential – all possibility and promise. Shopping combines many forms of potential – the intoxication of adventure, the mystery of the quest, the danger of gambling, the serendipity of creative work, the transcendence of religious faith and the sensuousness of foreplay. No wonder everyone loves it. And the excitement of potential can be prolonged even after the purchase. A few years ago a 17-year-old named Nick Bailey was so enamoured with his newly purchased Nintendo Wii gaming system that he filmed himself taking it out of the packaging and, as one does with such life-changing experiences, posted the film on YouTube. But who would want to watch a teenage geek unpacking his latest gadget? In fact, 71,000 people in the first week alone. Soon there were websites devoted exclusively to the thrill of unpacking and unwrapping.49 And so was born a new vicarious shopping experience, at two removes from the actual merchandise.

  This is an extreme case of the tendency for shopping pleasure to become detached from the reality and utility of the goods. Shopping is no longer so much about the gratification of desire as the thrill of desire itself, which must be constantly renewed. The actual purchases become less and less satisfying. Potential is always infinite but whatever is chosen is always finite. For the addict of potential every climax is an anticlimax. The magical talisman is revealed as mundane and the transcendent shopper returns to the familiar, disappointing self. Frequently the gorgeous clothes are never worn, the amazing gadget never used, the fascinating book never read and the thrilling CD never played.

  My own compulsion is buying books and CDs in the hope of acquiring secret esoteric knowledge and enjoying secret ecstatic transports. But my shelves have CDs that have never been played (although none is still in cellophane because ripping off cellophane is part of the potential, the foreplay), and there are many more CDs that I have played only once. As soon as music issues from speakers a CD loses its magical aura and becomes just another CD. And because books are cheaper but take longer to read I have increasing numbers of unread purchases. A new book retains its lustre of potential for about six weeks and then changes from being a possible bearer of secret lore into a liability, a reproach, a source of embarrassment and shame.

  One solution to the problem of unnecessary purchasing is to justify it as collecting so, not surprisingly, collecting of every kind is on the increase. How much more satisfactory for the ordinary shopper to be reclassified as a collector, with the term’s suggestion of professorial expertise and connoisseur’s discrimination, and for the useless junk to become collectibles, a word suggesting not unjustifiable extravagance but canny investment. And the compulsive purchaser of books and CDs can do even better. Buying these is not shopping but ‘building a library’.

  Travel is also based on expectation. The new place will be different in so many unexpected ways, inspirationally exotic, and a new transfigured self will be born. But the new place, though probably warmer, is still just another place, with sky, buildings, people and trees – and the dreary old fretting self has insisted on coming along for the trip. In The Art of Travel Alain de Botton tells a story about a Caribbean holiday with a girlfriend. Before setting off, they dream of a new harmony inspired by beaches, blue seas, palm trees and magnificent sunsets, but, as soon as they arrive, they end up arguing about the size and appearance of their restaurant desserts. They both get the same dessert but his portion is better presented whereas hers is bigger. She swaps them over and justifies pleasing herself by claiming she is pleasing him. They quarrel and return to the hotel in a resentful sulk, oblivious to the glorious scenery that was supposed to inspire them.50 We have all had experiences like this – and conveniently forgotten them. For the next holiday is already lined up and will surely bring true bliss.

  So compatible are travel and shopping that they increasingly get together. There are shopping opportunities at the airport, on the plane, in the train station, in the hotel lobby and even in the hotel room via the internet, though, of course, these only serve to keep things ticking over until the main experience – entirely new shopping opportunities in the new place.

  The perfect combination of travel and shopping, however, is the luxury cruise. In fact, since the cruise experience also involves constant entertainment and pampering, the cruise ship is the perfect symbol of the contemporary age – an enormous, mobile pleasure palace conveying outsize infants in pastel leisurewear round a series of shopping venues.

  David Foster Wallace’s hilarious and terrifying account of a Caribbean cruise, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, is scrupulous documentary realism, but also a fable for our times – for the cruise displays, in exaggerated form, all the new cultural trends. There is the inability to experience directly and the need to film everything to believe it has happened – all the passengers are heavily laden with sophisticated camera equipment. There is the universal sense of entitlement – everyone believes that they thoroughly deserve this holiday. There is the infantile need for pampering – the cruise ship offers constant servicing by an army of assiduous servants. There is the relentless, even fanatical, cheerfulness of the staff. There is the refusal of thought among the infantile passengers.
Wallace notes: ‘I have heard upscale adult U.S. citizens ask the Guest Relations Desk whether snorkel-ing necessitates getting wet, whether the skeetshooting will be held outside, whether the crew sleeps on board, and what time the Midnight Buffet is.’51 There are the endless shopping opportunities on board and at the ports, and endless distractions and entertainments – pools, gyms, multiple sports facilities (including even a driving range), casinos, piano bars, discos, cinemas and a Celebrity Show Lounge with nightly Celebrity Showtime featuring an impressionist, a juggler of chainsaws, a husband and wife duo singing Broadway show-tune medleys and a hypnotist claiming to have entranced both Queen Elizabeth II and the Dalai Lama.

  Many of these contemporary trends are interrelated. The infantile tendency is surely a reaction to the age of liberation. It is a common mistake to assume that liberation is in itself enough for fulfilment, that everything will be fine if one can just escape the soul-destroying job, oppressive relationship, dreary town. But it turns out that freedom does not lead automatically to fulfilment. Instead, freedom leads to unremitting hard work. The old traditions may have been oppressive but living without them is uncertain, complicated, confusing and stressful. Having to think every decision through from first principles is exhausting. The potential of infinite opportunity becomes the perplexity of infinite choice. And so to the backlash – a deep yearning to act from impulse rather than deliberation, to follow emotion rather than reason, to prefer anything certain, simple, easy and passive. The arduous responsibility of being an adult induces a deep nostalgia for the luxury of basking in unconditional love, eating, drinking, filling a nappy and dozing off to a lullaby.

  The ad is of course only too happy to pander to emotion and impulse, and the entertainment industry to sing Big Baby to sleep. The only good thing about the new infantilism is that the need to protect baby often cancels out the need to indulge. A London hotel, known for innovative services such as dog weddings and a mustard sommelier, came up with an idea worthy of a luxury cruise ship: for a fee, two members of staff would come to a guest’s room and one would recreate the magic of childhood by starting a pillow fight with the guest while the other acted as referee. This new service was enormously popular but, of course, had to be discontinued ‘on health and safety grounds’. However, if the demands for pampering and attention are not met, Big Baby will become very cross indeed. The new infantilism has contributed to the growing sense of self-importance and entitlement, the diminishing sense of self-awareness and obligation and the increasing recourse to resentment and outrage. Big Baby is frequently red in the face.

  And the new infantilism is one reason for the rise of PC – not Political Correctness but Professional Cheeriness. A cheerful expression, drained of subtlety and nuance and infused with exaggerated brightness, is the demeanour an adult presents to a child. Another possible source of PC is the shift from manufacturing to service economies, which has made the user interface increasingly significant. Not only is the customer always right, the service always has to be bright. This obligation spread through the American service industries and then around the world. Even the sublimely disdainful waiters of Paris have had to adapt. No one did contempt like the French – as with their great wines and cheeses, it was based on centuries of tradition – but they too have had to learn to wish their despised clientele a nice day. Jean-Paul Sartre, so proud at how Paris opposed ‘Nazi venom’, would have been horrified to see it succumb to American sugar.

  And a further factor is the modern tendency to become a commodity in a world of commodities, to develop not as a person but as a brand – and in the contemporary marketplace this means being bubbly and smiley.52

  This marketing orientation has been further encouraged by the rise of the team. The new ‘flexible’ organizations often replaced established departments and long-term staff with teams working on specific projects under short-term contracts. So, for the individual, institutional loyalty has become meaningless and the crucial skill is the ability to perform anywhere as a ‘team player’. Collaboration is as important as individual effort, and ability to fit in as important as performance.

  In the 1970s two Americans combined a smiley face with the fateful slogan ‘Have a Nice Day’ and copyrighted a symbol whose worldwide popularity rivalled that of the Cross. In fact, the original smiley face was created by an earlier American adman, Harvey R. Ball. But that was back in innocent 1964, before money became sexier than sex, so Ball never bothered to trademark the symbol and was paid only $45 for his work. An old-school guy despite being an adman, Ball, when asked how he felt about missing out on a stupendous revenue stream, responded with a remark worthy of a Stoic philosopher: ‘Hey, I can only eat one steak at a time.’

  All these developments have combined to produce a shift in values – favouring change over stability, potential over achievement, anticipation over appreciation, collaboration over individuality, opportunism over loyalty, transaction over relationship, infantilism over maturity, passivity over engagement, eloping over coping, entitlement over obligation, outwardness over inwardness and cheerfulness over concern.

  Seduced from the left by the righteousness of entitlement and from the right by the glamour of potential, it is easy to believe that fulfilment is not only a basic right but thoroughly deserved, and that attaining it requires no more thought, effort or patience than an escalator ride to the next level of the shopping centre.

  The problem is that the major developments all seem benign. Isn’t ‘freedom’ the most inspirational of words and the unassailable concept at the heart of modern society? Isn’t a sense of potential the essence of happiness? Aren’t we obliged to change ourselves? And obliged to behave unto others as we would like them to behave unto us? But freedom, which originally meant the freedom to participate in government, has come to mean the freedom to resist intervention by government. A sense of personal potential is indeed necessary to make life worth living – but the need is for a sense of potential within – whereas contemporary potential is entirely external, dependent on activities such as sexual adventure, promotion, shopping and travel. ‘You must change yourself is a fundamental commandment, but it does not imply worship of change for its own sake – change must always be balanced against the need for responsibility and commitment. Cheeriness is desirable – no one prefers surly bad manners – but it is often the appearance of goodwill without the substance and discourages deeper reactions such as irony, scepticism and dissent. It even discourages passionate enthusiasm by making it appear alarmingly excessive. Worst of all, it discredits the smile itself by making it seem insincere and manipulative so that the only sincere expression is the furious grimace of a gargoyle.

  What can be done? There is little prospect of changing the culture. One of capitalism’s greatest strengths has been its ability to co-opt everyone into its project by encouraging them to become property owners, shareholders and entrepreneurs. And to its promise that anyone can be a millionaire has recently been added the promise that anyone can be a celebrity. Its other great strength is the ability to neutralize dissent by absorbing it. So capitalism effortlessly assimilated the working class, as it later swallowed the 1950s beats, the 1960s counterculture, the 1970s punks and, more recently, the culture-jamming movement. The Adbusters company now manufactures a running shoe and of course advertises it in Adbusters. Will you be punished for transgression if you publish a novel on the pleasures of hanging young boys, exhibit a partly decomposed skull supporting a bluebottle colony or pelt a concert audience with pig intestines and then bite the head off a live bat?53 No, instead you will be rewarded with wealth and fame. Capitalism actually seeks counterculture to consume as the roughage in a healthy diet.

  Similarly, television and advertising have learned to defuse opposition by ironic self-mockery. One of the most successful recent TV sitcoms featured a stupid, passive family who do nothing but slump in their living room watching television. But, of course, the families in their living rooms watching on television the fami
ly in its living room watching television did not feel stupid and passive but knowing and superior – they had been let in on the joke. And advertising offers parodies of ads and even mocks the very idea of advertising. This is the trick of the sophisticated conman who ensures complicity by winking at you throughout the con.

  Do thinkers offer any advice on resisting the conditioning pressures of the world? Rarely. Thinkers tend to withdraw in contempt and horror – Buddha’s solution to the world was to abandon it.

  But the Greek and Roman Stoics – Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius – were very much in the world. Aurelius was an emperor, Seneca was a wealthy banker, possibly the only banker to write philosophy, and Epictetus was an ex-slave. And the world they moved in was a late, affluent civilization with many similarities to our own. Their writings are also surprisingly lively, not at all ‘stoic’ in the word’s contemporary meaning of grim resignation to adversity. These three were neither grim (Seneca: ‘It is more civilized to make fun of life than to bewail it’54), nor resigned (Marcus Aurelius: ‘The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing’55) and as much concerned with surviving prosperity as enduring adversity (Seneca: ‘While all excesses are in a way hurtful, the most dangerous is unlimited good fortune’56). The problem, they argued, is not that affluence is bad in itself but that it encourages character defects such as self-importance, contempt, resentment, impatience, restlessness, and, worst of all, desire for yet more wealth. They understood all too well the madness that makes too much never enough. Epictetus compared this to a fever that creates a thirst no amount of water can slake. Seneca cites Alexander the Great’s insatiable need for new lands to conquer: ‘He still desired to pass beyond the Ocean and the Sun.’57 The problem, then as now, is the spell of potential in an affluent society. As Seneca put it: ‘The greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon tomorrow and wastes today.’58 So, as though written expressly for the twenty-first century, the Stoic works abound in reminders of the futility of attention-seeking, shopping, anger, taking offence and travel for its own sake (‘Nothing here is any different from what it would be up in the hills or down by the sea’59).