The Greatest Lie Mankind Was Told
One of the greatest lies men and women have bought into globally is that life is a primarily serious affair. That the actions we partake, the road of our lives, the person we become, must all adhere to some strict standard of conduct that we have dutifully imagined to be correct and proper. We must talk in a certain way, walk in a certain way, sometimes we are even tricked into believing that we must think in a certain way! The way you present yourself before others is important, certain people deserve certain special types of treatment, a myriad of undocumented but miraculously agreed upon rules of serious conduct exist, all tying together the thought that this life we live is, above all, a very serious affair.
I could challenge this notion by bringing light to the fact that the Earth is spinning very, very fast through a supposedly uncaring universe, ready to be collided with some hunk of space rock at any time, ending everything at once. I could even point out the startlingly high probability that you could die at any moment by making a split second decision from which you didn’t have the proper information to make a choice, but this would all be skirting the real reason life why is not serious at all, and that is that simply; seriousness does not exist.
We have already discussed how many of the things we take for granted do not exist at all, and I would like to expand that conversation towards our seemingly inherent understanding of life as a serious thing.
As children we are taught to be serious, our parents, or some other authoritative figure, teach us how to moderate the moods of the people around us by acting in a strange sort of way. Showing humility towards those who are seemingly above us, and showing false visages of politeness to those who are not. We are taught the sublime importance of being viewed as a certain type of caricature, a strong man, a loyal women. A joker, a mischievous fiend, a superstar even; the list continues ad infinitum, hindered only by the limits of culture and social boundaries we decide for ourselves, based on whatever unspoken prejudices we may accrue over our short childhood and adolescence. All of this, when taken together, causes us to feel that our life, our conduct, our day to day behaviour both in view of others and outside is, above all, very serious.
The Trap of Narrow Mindedness and What You Can Do About It
Our devout admission to seriousness causes us an unusual source of refresh, and that is the solemn feeling of watching those who sit outside of our mental boundaries. To watch a charlatan, a foreigner, or a child interact with the world as such to not regard any of our strict admissions, is a strangely relieving practice. Indeed, upon further inspection, it would seem as though the existence of such figures is the lens we need to realise how full of shit our usual manner of thinking is.
Some men don’t want to be burly, or work 9-5 job, or have sex with a certain kind of woman, and this causes them to suffer as they mellow in the thought that only a certain kind of man succeeds. There are also some men feel the same way in regards to lifestyle taste, and yet this worried concern doesn’t play upon their mind at all. The difference lies not only in a widened perspective and a deeper belief in what is possible, but also in an embracing of what life really is: absurd.
Meaning requires thought, and so without a thought meaning ceases alongside it. As much as we decide to search for answers, they only exist in relation to our questions. We may tell ourselves that bodies require food to carry on because of such a reason, but the apparent reality is that that is the way the system works. We can run deeper into the system as much as we like, but we can’t ever really say why, because all attempts to explain must necessarily reference the same system, which could have potentially worked out in any other way. In effect, whilst we are able to deepen our knowledge and use that to make better decisions, our attempts to reach the “root” of knowledge, so to speak, eventually become self-referential, ultimately belaying any kind of deeper explanation.
Indeed this means that life before thought lacks meaning, as meaning comes only from thinking about meaning. It doesn’t exist outside of this dependence. And so in the same way, our serious attitudes are built upon unfounded rules that we have created for ourselves.
This is why rule breakers, or those who go against the grain often end up going down in history. They have successfully discovered that the rules are based upon nonsense. One could say that they have successfully come to terms with an even deeper revelation, that life in of itself is nonsense.
What it Really Means to Be Silly
The English word silly is often confused in meaning with the word stupid, but in actual fact, whilst a silly attitude denotes some degree of idiocy, the nuance is greater in degree to the word absurd than it is stupid. In fact, in order to properly understand the nuance of the word silly, it is important to properly understand what it means to be absurd.
Absurdity is twofold a deceptively simple reality, yet also an overbearingly complex truth. For something to be absurd means that it is devoid of meaning. A man who ends a discussion by picking up the nearest chunk of salmon and slapping his partner square in the face with is a pretty absurd fellow when judged by conventional standards. However, upon broadening ones horizons to the stretches of our imagination, we may also discover that life in of itself is quite the absurd featurette.
Humans are creatures which create. In lieu of naturally evolved defensive features, we were given the minds to create what we do not have. We steal fur from animals and forge it into our own shapes for warmth, we take the energy generated by the waves and the air and transmute it to power our own utensils. In the same way, the complex understanding of the world that we take for granted every day, is nothing but the ebb and flow of our overactive imaginations.
In our attempt to organize the meticulously detailed world we see around us each day, our minds move things together into categories for ease of processing information, we think of a man as such and such a creature, a woman as such another, sex as one thing and love as another. We see the meaning of food in that it quenches our hunger, and the meaning in coffee as it gives us energy when we are lacking or naught.
However, this idea of “meaning” is entirely dependent on the ecosystem we just happen to be a part of. For a creature that does not need to eat to survive, bread contains the same inherent meaning as a bunch of pebbles on the side of the road. In fact, it can be said that any kind of “meaning” or importance is entirely dependent on the creature finding meaning in it. In other words, “meaning” as a concept, does not strictly exist by itself, rather “meaning” is just a marker for the relationship between one thinking agent and the rest of the world. What this means essentially is that nothing has meaning inherently, all that exist in the spectrum of “meaning” are the stories you tell yourself about the world.
To realise this is to realise what it means when one says the world is absurd. It is to realise that there is nothing that is really very important, even though it may seem so on the surface; with a broad enough perspective, everything in life, including ones understanding of key concepts about the world, is trivial.
The Difference Between Laughter and Anxiety
What does one do when faced with the bleak absurdity of the world? When one realises that in the event of their death, the event of their loved ones death, in the event that they fail, that they are thrown out on the streets, that they are starved, famished and in pain, that life will continue to go on, complete with its lively and everlasting beat?
It can be scary to approach the reality that nothing really matters, that your desire to be great, to be respected, your desire for happiness, holds as much weight as dirt on the back of your shoe.
Humans are long-term creatures, their inspired creativity and long lifespans translate into needing meaning to survive. To know that their actions fit into some bigger picture, that the path they walk is correct for the future. To be hit with such devastation, and to give into the reality that every path is equal, that the homeless man has made just as correct a choice as the entrepreneur; can be an utterly destructive and motivation-destroying thought. And yet this viewpoint betrays the very beauty of the absurd. The realisation that because nothing really matters, anything is possible.
To begin with, happiness is never dependent on external factors. It comes from within, just the same as anxiety, anger, sadness and apathy. In fact, all emotions are simply messengers, trying to break to you some vital piece of information, (and yet you continue to ignore). Indeed, whilst it is easy to point your finger and say that your internal problems are caused by this, and that, the truth is: Your problems are all caused by you.
Life can be an exceedingly difficult affair. It is easy to crumple into despair under the vast weight of responsibility that it takes to live a fulfilling life. You need knowledge, resources, skills, and these all takes time, skills, knowledge and more resources to acquire. Even to know that you are using your resources and time correctly can be a monumental hurdle in of itself. Under this intense pressure, one must stop to consider, where is the release from all this agony?
A Primer on Emotional Transmutation
Under the current socially construed paradigm, one that exists perhaps throughout the entirety of the civilized world. Life is an exceedingly serious matter. The pressure we feel every day to perform, to pull our own weight, keep up with competition, and to get and be the things we want to be, can be soul-destroying at the very least. This is where a re-evaluation of our place in life becomes important.
Knowing now that life is not at all a serious affair, brings to us a certain freedom that we previously were not aware of. Yes, meaning exists in life so far as we give it, but to know that this meaning is not inherently there gives us to freedom to choose.
Anxiety, on a physical level, is a build up of muscular tension, urging for some release. It is a method your body uses to will you to action, crazy, unpredictable and powerful action which is directed at solving whatever problem is causing the anxiety to begin with. Laughter, on the other hand, is the release of muscular tension, the great full-body orgasm which humans understand on a instinctive level to be gratifying, and healthy.
To take a look left and right, to see the intense seriousness humans view their lives with. To see the effort they put into trivial competition. To compete on colour of tie, sexual partners, diet, muscle thickness; to take the day which is born unique every dawn, and waste it on trivial pursuit of some washed up goal, of which the desire stems from wanting to be viewed as strong and respectable in the eyes of others. To see the this unabashed display of importance, with the knowledge that the world is fundamentally unimportant. To begin to see yourself through this lens, and to realise that your anxiety of being viewed a certain way, of becoming a certain person, of making the right people happy, is utterly and completely without any sort of reasonable basis… The only reasonable reaction to this kind of realisation, is to laugh.
Laugh and dispel the tension which has stored up from years of beating yourself up, of feeling like you need to push to survive, of forcing yourself down some road that you know deep down you do not belong on. The thoughts and feelings we reckon we are supposed to engage in are nothing more than a few lies we tell to better make things fit into our limited space of understanding. Be broader, be better. Fuck on the lawn to the soundtrack of your favourite video game series. Take a day off to have a massage, even if it feels a little out of character, there is no character. Do the things you want to do, not the things you were told to do, even if they seem a little silly.
The work we do, the jobs we take, the serious affairs in the lives we live. They are serious only in so far as they provide us the resources to better survive, but at which point does that move from being a healthy understanding of the ecosystem in which you inhabit, to your belief that the world owes you some sort of congratulations for your meaningless achievement?
After all, meaning in your eyes does not equal meaning anywhere else.
