Are we living vicariously?

It seems civilization moves ever more rapidly toward voyeurism.  Modern man spends much of his life watching someone else do something or immersing him or herself into a virtual reality that bears little resemblance to real life.

We watch people act in movies, on television or at the theater.  We observe as entertainers sing or play instruments; we view dancers on stage.  We pay handsome sums to be awed by athletes performing their heroics on a dozen different fields of play.  We spend hours and hours entranced by social media and video games.

Before television, the cinema and mass communication; before the computer and the Internet; before organized professional sports; before video games and facebook and twitter and snapchat – there was a communal life: creative social, artistic and athletic activity that demanded local organization and participation.  People came together to sing, dance, play sports, create art, even make skits or plays. 

It seems there was a time when one didn't have to be a Pavarotti to sing in three part harmony with a group of friends.  Everyone was familiar with folk and popular songs and took every opportunity to join in song with their neighbors, whether in church or for celebrations, or whenever people came together. 

In those days every person who was fortunate enough to own an instrument found other musicians and contributed whatever talent they had to any social gathering.  Now, how many people study a musical instrument in their youth only to abandon it, the instrument rusting away sadly in a closet or attic? If one is not good enough to make a profession of it or compete with the virtuosos, then why continue goes the thinking.  But is watching a talented performer even half as fulfilling as participating, even if the standard is much lower?

There was an age when men and women danced for the sheer joy of movement and romance, rather than on the rare occasion of a drunken grinding ritual.  How many men past the age of 22 can one get out on a dance floor today? Where are the folk dances or even the parlor dances of yesteryear?  It is a sad indication of our cultural decay that a wedding is the only event these days that will inspire most people to leave their seats for the dance floor.

There was a time when weekends were an opportunity to go outdoors for walking and exerting oneself physically; to explore and experience nature amid the companionship of friends or family.  All too often now, the weekends are spent in stubborn isolation, anchored in front of a TV watching sports or a movie, or trapped in the addictive grip of video games or social media.

And where has the art and joy of communicating via the written word gone?  Letter writing, once an important component of any educated person’s social life, has now completely vanished.  Well-developed ideas and thoughts are rarely encountered.  In their place are the quick witticisms and the endless superficial patter of facebook and twitter quips.

Part of our addiction to voyeurism can be laid at the feet of the media – the insidious manipulation of Hollywood and Madison Avenue.  How can our trifling efforts to create and enjoy an active world of our own compare with the exotic super-lives that the rich and talented lead, or that movies and magazine conjure up, or a virtual reality offer?  And of course it is partly due to sloth.  It is so easy to watch - to sit and vicariously experience all that life and the world have to offer.  But what kind of ‘experience’ is that?

The true joys of living cannot come to us secondhand.  They must be experienced directly through a deliberate participation in the everydayness of life.  The glamorous lifestyles and the virtual realities that are offered up as wishful fare for spectators are spiritually hollow - a self-deception and a sham existence, where at best our voyeurism is self-indulgence and at worst a kind of living death.

On Happiness and its Relative Nature

It is cliché to say that our happiest times were our student days – unencumbered, full of vigor, health and good friends.  But what does it really mean to be happy, and why does happiness seem so elusive that many of us feel compelled to state wistfully that our best times were in the distant past?

Happiness is a multi-faceted state of mind, with influences from many different aspects of our lives – family, health, occupation, and so on.  In this essay I will only concern myself with the happiness that appears to be associated with our experiences and material well-being.

For many years I have been convinced that happiness is a ‘relative thing’.  Clearly, happiness is in the mind.  Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet ‘There is nothing either bad or good but thinking makes it so’.  The pleasure we find in life depends on the highs and lows we perceive, and these in turn are measured relative to our life’s circumstances.

As our life circumstances change, so do our ‘thresholds’ for pleasure.  A trivial example is food.  In my student days, just going out to any restaurant was a joyous event.  My palate was undeveloped, and my expectations were low.  But I have been fortunate to eat in many fine restaurants since that time and my ‘threshold’ for good food has risen commensurately.  Going to a marginal restaurant brings me no joy these days, and I must be careful not to become so snobbish about food that I lose my ability to enjoy that simple pleasure.

A similar situation occurs in play.  As children, we are enchanted by the simplest objects and ecstatic over the most basic elements of play.  We see children all over the world smiling and shrieking in joy in the most impoverished of circumstances, making good use of an abandoned tire or a few sticks and rags, so long as they are not hungry or sick.  Are they any less happy than the little princes and princesses of our own culture with their endless array of electronic devices and playthings?

As we grow older, our play becomes more sophisticated and complex.  A game of hide and seek will no longer send us into a state of unbridled glee.  Pleasures become hierarchical, more nuanced, and we are manipulated to desire more grandiose titillations.  But is there any reason to believe that a simple walk in a beautiful forest produces less pleasure than a cruise on some tycoon’s yacht?  Only thinking makes it so!

As our circumstances change, so do the thresholds of our pleasure. The wealthier and more experienced one becomes, the higher the thresholds of pleasure. One might even argue that a rich person has a narrower range of thresholds and thus a more challenging task to avoid boredom and depression than a poor man does.  But then there is the problem of envy and its negative effect on happiness!

Envy is one of the seven deadly sins and is a logical adjunct to our egos.  Envy has been with us since the beginning of time.  But the modern age with its ubiquitous information and advertising seems specifically tuned to creating perceived needs based on envy.  We buy things not because we know that they will make us happy, but rather because we want to feel better than, or at least equal to, our neighbor.  Of course we also are seduced by the idea that these things will make us happy, but I believe that is secondary.

The problem of envy would seem to favor the rich man (if I were a rich man . . .), and perhaps it does ever so slightly, but ironically envy is an equal opportunity affliction.  No matter how rich or successful one is, there is always someone richer or more successful or more famous, and again we have the situation of thresholds.

Now I am not saying that being poor is a happy state, nor am I trivializing the tremendous disparities in our world.  True poverty brings a host of burdens – debt, creditors, poor health, lack of opportunity, etc. – that can indeed weigh upon a person and create misery.  But I would argue that some poverty occurs because of a perceived desperate need to acquire material things that do not actually produce their desired effect.  And more importantly, I am arguing that there is no need for anyone to think they have less joy in life than the movie stars and the global business elite, and thus waste their invaluable time in frustration and envy, and the pursuit of phantom pleasures.

We are all creatures of our culture and time.  It may be naïve to think that people can resist the temptation to scratch and claw their way to ever higher thresholds of material and experiential pleasure based on the riches and toys they see around them.  If the scratching and clawing is pleasurable, then by all means have at!  But beware the great equalizing effect of pleasure thresholds, and do not be dismayed if your success is not accompanied by an equivalent measure of happiness!

The Culture Wars - American Sniper

The Culture Wars – American Sniper

I haven’t seen American Sniper, nor have I read the book.  I haven’t yet decided whether I shall do either. But I have read a lot of interesting articles and comments from both the right and the left.  American Sniper seems to have become a symbol of the tremendous chasm in American society.  Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper have tried to de-emphasize the film’s political aspect, protesting that it was only ever meant to be a study of a single man’s experience in war.  But in a nation that seizes upon every cultural event to express its outraged disgust with the other side, American Sniper was tailor made to be the newest front in the culture wars.

From the right’s perspective, Chris Kyle was the type of warrior that made America great; the type that we especially depend on in this time of terrorism and threats from multiple extremist groups.  His loyalty to his country and his comrades, and his willingness to sacrifice his life if necessary, is the noblest expression of the American spirit.  His simple religious faith provided the strength and courage that he needed to see him through the extraordinary challenges he faced.

From the left’s perspective, Christ Kyle was a remorseless killer in a war that never should have been waged; a bigot who speaks disparagingly of a people he only saw through a lens of hatred and propaganda; an egotist who was so full of himself that he invented heroic events to embellish his reputation.

So who was the real Chris Kyle, and what does American Sniper tell us about ourselves and our country?

The uncomfortable truth is that Chris Kyle was probably all of those things – a human being with the myriad contradictions, and good and bad qualities that we all possess.  He was both a hero and a fraud, a noble warrior and a cold-blooded killer.

Any of us could have been Chris Kyle’s friend, and we would probably have loved him.  We would have been in awe of his accomplishments, but possibly also a bit cynical about his motives and some of his outlandish claims.  We would know that if the chips were down, Chris Kyle would be the guy we would want backing us up.  But we would also not want Chris Kyle to be making decisions about foreign policy or helping us understand a complex world and how to deal with it.

Chris Kyle was a warrior, and apparently about as good a warrior as one can be.  We put him in Iraq and gave him a mission that he executed with incredible success and skill.  To revile Chris Kyle is to make the same mistake we made with soldiers returning from Vietnam – to blame the soldier for a war that may have been a huge mistake, but was certainly not his mistake.

But Chris Kyle was only a warrior.  He was not a saint or a prophet or a symbol of what we want Americans to be.  We will always need Chris Kyles, because there will always be wars and terrorists and dangerous threats to our country and ourselves.  And perhaps we will always need to celebrate their accomplishments - even though it is a celebration of death and tragedy - to ensure that we give them the psychological support necessary to deal with the horror of war and to thank them for their sacrifice.

There is anger and the potential for violence in all of us, even the most ardent pacifist. The rage provoked by the smallest slight on our highways is strong evidence that human beings will never live totally at peace with one another.  This anger in our psyche seems to find expression in a fascination for violence, whether in war or crime or horror, and we flock to the theaters or settle ourselves in our TV rooms to indulge our insatiable appetites.

Men are particularly enchanted with the special ops mythos.  The challenge of overcoming incredible physical and mental obstacles is seductive to us, probably reflecting primitive instincts and genetic pre-dispositions.  Most men also ponder the question of how they would fare in combat – whether they would find courage and perform heroically or be gripped by paralyzing fear.  Movies like American Sniper allow us to fantasize with no danger or consequences. 

We cannot in good conscience blame the Clint Eastwoods or the Bradley Coopers of the world for exploiting our love of good violence and our Walter Mitty-like fantasies, even if their specific rendering may offend our political views.  Was it helpful for world peace to have a movie that more or less glorifies the clinical killing of numerous simplistically portrayed Muslims, even if the producers were probing a more subtle issue?  Probably not.  But then we are right back into the culture wars again . . . .