77 lines
3.6 KiB
Markdown
77 lines
3.6 KiB
Markdown
---
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created_at: '2016-08-16T14:28:31.000Z'
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title: 'The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes It Hard to Be Happy (2010)'
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url: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/21/the-age-of-absurdity-foley
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author: rublev
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points: 176
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story_text:
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 179
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1471357711
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_rublev
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- story_12297668
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objectID: '12297668'
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year: 2010
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---
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Michael Foley won't give a hoot for what I or anyone else thinks about
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his book. It will have been reward enough to have toiled over its bright
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wisdoms, its pleasing metaphors, its range of reference (from Gilgamesh
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to The Wizard of Oz), its laugh-out-loud funny bits. As he sees it,
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happiness – or at least the avoidance of misery, envy, resentment and
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humiliation – is to put one's shoulder to the boulder, Sisyphus-style,
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and get what fun you can out of the push.
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There is some pushing to be done here. Foley is not one for the "fatuous
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breeziness" of bullet-pointed self-help manuals or the nostrums of the
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new science of wellbeing ("watch less TV, smile more at strangers") – or
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indeed any other sort of easy way out. Here are Christ and Buddha, Marx
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and Freud, Spinoza and Nietzsche, Joyce and Proust, mixing it with brain
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experts Pinker and Rose. It's not so much a trawl of great minds as
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proof that they think alike when it comes to human frailty – notably the
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way our base desires hoodwink our higher-reasoning selves and drive us
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mad with one unmet expectation after the other.
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Modern life, Foley argues, has made things worse, deepening our cravings
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and at the same time heightening our delusions of importance as
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individuals. Not only are we rabid in our unsustainable demands for
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gourmet living, eternal youth, fame and a hundred varieties of sex, but
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we have been encouraged – by a post-1970s "rights" culture that has
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created a zero-tolerance sensitivity to any perceived inequality, slight
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or grievance – into believing that to want something is to deserve it.
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As Foley puts it: "Is it possible that a starving African farmer has
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less sense of injustice than a middle-aged western male who has never
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been fellated?"
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It's not even as if we want what we have once we've got it. Foley calls
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this "the glamour of potential", a relentless churning of desire by
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which the things we have are devalued by the things we want next. The
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only way out of the churn is "detachment", an idea as compelling to the
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Greek and Roman stoics as to Sartre and Camus: if you can't change the
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world, don't let it change you. The problem is that detachment –
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solitude, quietly taking responsibility for your own actions – is
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inimical to modern life, which is characterised by "communities", the
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herd instinct, team-building (Foley's take on corporate cheerfulness is
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worth the £10.99 on its own) and "the new religion of commotionism". The
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difficulty of change is aggravated in a society in which difficulty
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itself is avoided. Hence the study of science dwindles in universities
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("Why submit to mathematical rigour when you can do a degree in surfing
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and beach management?") and sales of oranges plummet because people will
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no longer take the trouble to peel them.
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Detachment and difficulty – key stages in notions of quest and ritual
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and understanding – are disappearing. Foley points out that whereas in
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primitive cultures an adolescent would be separated from the tribe and
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taken to the desert for a spot of bodily mutilation, spiritual
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enlightenment and transformation, today's hero "remains at home with his
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parents and ventures out into danger by playing EverQuest online in the
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basement".
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Absurdly readable.
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