Rick's December Tirade
Is Suffering Unfashionable?
Suffering seems to have become a lost art. Not many people do it
well these days, if they do it at all.
Where, in our relentlessly perky pop culture, can we catch even a
glimpse of eloquent suffering? Our sensibilities are assaulted by a
daily blitz of glib talk-show hosts... slim-hipped supermodels
selling shampoo... blow-dried male mannequins hired as local TV
personalities... smirky sitcom stars who seem to revel in their own
shallowness... food critics who rhapsodize over fussily ornamental
meat entrees... not to mention a devil's cornucopia of psychics,
politicians, professional motivators, pontificating news pundits,
and proud authors of million-selling potboiler biographies.
Not a single sufferer among them.
This is no coincidence. Suffering does not impel people to buy
products. Can you imagine Kafka or Kierkegaard doing a commercial
for Diet Coke? "Drink it if you must. But you're going to die
anyway."
Perkiness, on the other hand, raises our energy level. It makes
us feel more alive and therefore more likely to consume. That's what
the advertisers want, so that's precisely what we get. "Lite"
culture moves merchandise.
When we actually do observe suffering in the media, the wretched
quality of that suffering makes us wince. Witness those bottom-tier
slugs who volunteer their tawdry confessions on daytime talk
shows... or the honest working-class parents of young murder
victims, pressured to pour their inarticulate grief into a TV
reporter's microphone. These images only reinforce the cruel notion
that suffering is for losers -- a downscale state of mind to be
shunned the way yuppies and preppies shun polyester.
It wasn't always so. The cultural icons of the Romantic era
cultivated suffering as a noble and elevated pastime. In "The
Sorrows of Young Werther," the suicidal hero served as the
prototype for generations of elegantly anguished upper-class youths.
The poet Shelley declared, "I fall upon the thorns of life! I
bleed!" And nobody laughed at him. Beethoven was gloriously
miserable. Chopin and Tchaikovsky were delicately miserable. Edgar
Allan Poe was suffering incarnate. Lincoln endured bouts of deep and
morbid melancholia. Nietzsche and King Ludwig of Bavaria both went
famously mad. Suffering only began to lose its lustre in the final
decades of the twentieth century, as pastel-colored video images
began to replace words and classical music in the landscapes of our
minds.
The literary world still overflows with serious sufferers today
-- but nobody knows their names, nobody listens, nobody cares.
Perhaps these literati suffer BECAUSE nobody knows their names.
Perhaps we don't listen because so much of their suffering takes the
form of obstinately incoherent verse -- oblique, obscure, half-mad
ravings that not even their psychoanalysts could begin to fathom. Or
maybe we just find them insufferably boring. Hey, where's the remote
control switch? "Baywatch" is on!
Our culture has changed channels. Angst is out of fashion with
everyone except coffee-house poets, low-budget independent
filmmakers, a handful of scruffy rock bands and their scattered
fans. It's just not mainstream enough.
On a personal level, suffering is viewed as pathological rather
than noble. Blatant sufferers are ostracized by their peers, denied
promotions at work, fed to the gills with Prozac. The world today
belongs to the perpetually glad.
These gladsters should be studied by science -- especially those
who have sailed through experiences that would have crushed anyone
with a few active brain cells. You know the type: "I lost my
family in the war... had my left leg amputated above the knee last
year... my wife ran off with my insurance agent... my doctor says
I'm going blind in both eyes -- and let me tell you, I've never felt
better. Feel like climbing the Matterhorn. Yessiree! I think I will!
What have YOU got to be miserable about? Come on now -- snap
out of it!"
It's no use explaining to them; their synapses are humming with
neurotransmitters that keep them in a state of constant glee. What
the well-intentioned gladsters can't grasp is that normal people DO
suffer, in copious numbers, often behind closed doors and impassive
faces. And as long as our "lite" culture denies the
validity of suffering, those sufferers will feel all the more
abandoned and alone. In short, they'll be suffering from compounded
suffering.
Nothing is so miserable as the feeling that we're alone in our
misery: we suffer; therefore we're abnormal. Granted, a few of us
are born with a warped and abiding genius for suffering. And much
misery is self-induced -- simply a bad habit like smoking, eating
fried pork rinds, or using a cellular phone while driving. But some
of us really do fall upon the thorns of life and bleed. Bleeding,
like death, is a solitary activity.
Well, it is -- and it isn't. Some dark day, when you're feeling
alone in your misery, think about the sum total of suffering
experienced by all the creatures that have graced this planet since
the beginning of time. Think of the harmless herbivores that have
been devoured alive by red-toothed carnivores. Think of all the
horrors endured by all the soldiers in all the wars in history: the
slashing swords and plunging spears, the flights of arrows, the
bullets and cannonballs, the shrapnel, the bombs, the landmines, the
sickening clouds of poison gas. Think of the innocent multitudes
whose lives were ravaged by those wars: the widows and orphans, the
homeless, the terrified victims of sieges, air raids and genocides.
Think of entire cities decimated by plague and cholera. Think of
everyone who has ever been rejected, ridiculed, beaten, flogged,
flayed, crucified, or burned at the stake. Think of all the
lingering deaths by consumption, cancer, or congestive heart
failure. Think of the ruined hopes and shattered spirits. Think of
those who have gone mad, or starved, or died of grief, or worked
themselves until their minds and bodies collapsed. Think of final
exams. Put it all together and you can almost hear the planet
scream.
We all suffer alone, but we suffer alone TOGETHER. Take heart in
that knowledge. Take comfort in the community of suffering. Don't
let "Entertainment Tonight" fool you into believing that
you're defective if your life doesn't consist primarily of movie
premieres and pool parties.
But why do we suffer at all? Important question; glad you asked.
Because good things don't last. Because bad things never seem to go
away. Because the people with the greatest capacity for joy have the
greatest capacity for misery. Because dogs and dreams die young.
Because the wrong people generally reap the rewards. Because we
can't find the answer. Because we don't WANT to find the answer.
Because our lives are being wasted. Because we have migraines or
chronic gum disease. We each have our reasons; they're as individual
as our fingerprints.
Don't embrace suffering as a lifestyle if you can help it. (An
intelligent happiness is the preferable state.) But if you can't
help it, carry your burden like a Romantic; let it ennoble you.
Don't deny your suffering to please others. Shallow people may rule
the world, but they don't rule your soul.
When the gladsters approach you with that most intrusive of
social greetings -- "How are you?" -- give it to them
straight. Don't let them coerce you into an obligatory
"Fine." You have a right to suffer. You've earned it. Tell
them Beethoven suffered, too. Tell them John Tesh doesn't. They'll
get the point.
Here's the complete archive of Rick Bayan's immortal tirades for your reading pleasure:
December 2002 — Hello, I Must Be Going
November 2002 — A Raving Moderate
August 2002 — Is Western Civilization Worth Saving?
July 2002 — To Scam or Be Scammed
June 2002 — I Read the News Today, Oh Boy
May 2002 — Speechophobia
April 2002 — Fanatics on Parade
March 2002 — The Prestige Gap: A Lament
February 2002 — On Becoming a Dullard
January 2002 — Art for Slackers
December 2001 — An Unsolicited Christmas Card
November 2001 — A Tale of Two Tribes
October 2001 — On the Fallen Towers
August 2001 — Why Do We Bother?
June 2001 — Notes from a Doomed Planet
May 2001 — The Museum of Discarded Names
April 2001 — Indecision
March 2001 — A Slight Case of Insanity
February 2001 — Letter to a Conscientious Critic
January 2001 — The Cynic's Inaugural Address
December 2000 — The 50th Tirade
November 2000 — Travel Advisory
October 2000 — Beyond Work
September 2000 — More Work
August 2000 — Work
July 2000 — The Doves' Nest
June 2000 — Great Affectations
May 2000 — Tale of a Virtual Village
April 2000 — The World Is My Obstacle Course
March 2000 — A Living Heck
February 2000 — On the Treachery
of Time
January 2000 — A Letter to the
Future
December 99 — Rare Bird
November 99 — Not Just Another
Obscure Ethnic Group
October 99 — Extinction Reconsidered
September 99 — Good Life, Bad
Life, Better Life
August 99 — Household Relics:
An Elegy
July 99 — A Meditation on Profanity
June 99 — In Praise of Sloth
May 99 — A Bug's Death
April 99 — Obligations!
March 99 — The Courage to Be Ordinary
February 99 — A Grave Story
January 99 — What's Left for
Men?
December 98 — On the Uses of
Friends
November 98 — A Cynic's Thanksgiving
October 98 — Grand Illusions
September 98 — Filth
August 98 — Will the Real God
Please Stand Up?
July 98 — Adventures in Downsizing
June 98 — Lady Longevity
May 98 — Uniquely Human, Uniquely
Clueless
April 98 — The Mathematics of Excess
March 98 — Humbuggery
February 98 — Love and the Single
Cynic
January 98 — By the Sweat of
Your Brow
December 97 — Is Suffering Unfashionable?
November 97 — The Tao of Housekeeping
October 97 — The Sensory Deprivation
Blues
September 97 — Down with Natural
Selection!
August 97 — Noise
July 97 — On Eating Our Fellow Creatures
June 97 — Trouble in Book-Land
May 97 — Interview with an Unemployable
Man
April 97 — The Cynic's Dream
March 97 — Inequalities
February 97 — Flesh and Mortality
January 97 — How to Be a Success
December 96 — Why I Can't Hate
Christmas
November 96 — How I Became a Cynic
