From Jester To King V
By Simon Barget
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-Is it more important to feel ok or to just live?
-Oh dear, here we go.
-Come on hear me out, is the priority in life to be contented and at ease or is it just to live?
-I get the impression you’re about to tell me.
-Well living is just what happens, like going to work, buying food, standing in queues, looking after the kids, going to funerals. And then there’s all the stuff about being happy going on constantly in the background. Is there really a choice? I suppose that’s the question I’m asking. Do we really have a choice in the matter?
-We always have a choice.
-How then? I’m wondering if there’s even room to be thinking about happiness and whether it’s not just, you know, like a chimera?
-Well you’re thinking about it now. I personally think it depends on circumstances.
-Like, do we even have free will even?
-No, we’re all heartless robots.
-Everyone goes on about happiness, every YouTube video that comes up on my feed, the endless novel therapies available nowadays on top of all the different strains of psychotherapy, everything you pick up on the cultural telegraph pole from the age when you’re just starting to feel lost and miserable and starting to sense that things aren’t going to just go your way like you’d been led to believe. Everything is predicated upon this false idea that you can be or not be happy. But no one talks about whether it’s really possible, let alone talking about what happiness actually means. It’s just assumed that it’s the natural state and that we can all be in it.
-It’s circumstantial. Some people don’t have to work for instance. Or some women are at home with kids. They have more time to think about happiness, more time to monitor their own sense of it, they’re bound to be more concerned than someone that’s busy in and out of meetings literally as soon as they walk in to the office on Monday morning until the end of the week. You have no idea what it’s like, you’ve got it easy.
-But that’s not what I’m getting at. That just takes the assumption as read that what we call happiness exists. I’m questioning the existence of it in the first place.
-I’m not going to stop you.
-People keep busy because there’s nothing like that sense of having to be somewhere and to do something, the next thing and the next thing, to allay the fear of the unknown. What else would we do but shit ourselves in fear? The happy-clappy ecstasy-fest, that’s only a momentary counterbalance to all the stress and tension; it can’t go on for longer than a few nights. Or the fact that basically the entire population of this country is in the pub Friday night getting leathered. Look around you now. I remember when I did Camus in University I knew immediately that what he said was right deep down, and it was just something that everyone ignored and that is that people don’t like to be faced with choice, they’d rather have things laid down for them in advance and be deluded that there isn’t one to start with.
-So you know exactly what makes people tick do you. People drink for all sorts of reasons, it’s not all doom and gloom and borderline alcoholism. Have you ever considered that this is just how you see it?
-It’s ironic that we talk about happiness, self-medicate and avoid all the parts of ourselves that might be screaming, ‘Get me out of here, I’m desperately unhappy.’
-I can only speak for myself. I wouldn’t say I’m desperately unhappy, it’s just that there are things I’d prefer not to have to do. Got no choice really. I get on with it, I don’t think endlessly like you do.
-So now you’re saying you don’t have a choice.
-Not what I mean.
-The getting on with it is ironically part of the whole problem. Getting on with it means progress, running around frantic, making newer brighter better things, everyone in thrall to the one person who on the spur of the moment decides that the best use of his time and energy is to produce the newest and best iPhone ever created, and he knows he can do it because everyone’s going to buy it as critical mass is established, and so everyone else is in tow to this one man and his core group in Apple’s priority product development team, which all sets in motion a whole sally of effects: the lawyers, the advertisers, sales people, the management consultants, the commercial property people, the insurers, the bankers and we all agree to some extent that this relentless pursuit of technology is a big part of the so-called unhappiness yet we do nothing to resist it or at least not enough or we don’t ask questions and carry on regardless. Have you ever wondered why that is?
- Not really no.
-Fine then, absolutely fine.
-Because I have to pay the bills? Not everyone leads the charmed life that you do.
- That’s the point I’m making. If everyone thinks like you, it just carries on as it is.
-And what are you doing to change it? Pray tell.
-It’s just a discussion. Chill.
-Hmm.
-Yuck.
-What?
-Why does it always stink in here, like someone’s just been sick?
- Maybe someone has just been sick.
-It’s the floor and the cleaning products. Smells like chlorine to me actually.
-I don’t think the wood chips help. Just gimmicky, annoying.
-They have to justify the prices somehow. Do you want another, what is it?
-Farfallesco.
-Glass of Farfallesco for bruv, back in a tickle.
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Comments
Interesting philosophical dialogue
It can be hard to chuck around ideas like this without becoming ponderous, but you've got a little wit in there and a nice return to the mundane at the end. Good one Simon.
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I enjoyed this. You
I enjoyed this. You introduced these big issues of our times casually and subtly. You hit the nail on the head, very well expressed, and well worth a read! Who decides what we devote our time to? Who controls us?
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Excellent and thought
Excellent and thought provoking, solving the worlds and humanities problems, down in the (themed) pub. Douglas Adams had the answer... can't remember what it was now. Never mind, another pint?
Tipp Hex
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