It was Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend and an old friend shared this quote yesterday:
Really? Is she grateful for AIDS? Hitler? Cancer?
Then I pointed out to her that there was no way the words of that quote could be construed so as to make them mean what she thought they meant. There is not a hint of gratitude in that lame joke. She said she knew that but she didn't care, it was the way it made her feel. I went on to say that Woody Allen's larger point is that life is morally meaningless. And he isn't fooling around about this. He made two movies that went so far as to say that even murder has no moral significance beyond the initial shock it causes.
She'd stopped paying attention long before I finished. She didn't care, she had her quote that made her feel thankful for the good and the bad. And I thought of Corrie ten Boom in the concentration camp being thankful for the lice that infested the place because it meant the guards inspected the place less often allowing the prisoners to read the Bible they had hidden more often. Not because I can even begin to imagine what that is like but because Corrie ten Boom at least used words and sentences that actually meant something to express her gratitude.
I've often mocked the religion of SIMU (Shit I Made Up) but this isn't even that. It's a religion with no content at all not even stuff that was made up. I suspect my friend read or heard somewhere that it's good for you to be grateful and so she has pulled a random quote that she likes and associated it with gratitude "for both the good and the bad".
It's a sort of wimpy nihilism and I've written about this before.
I suspect that virtually all of these people think of themselves as liberals. Not because liberalism is nihilistic or deeply flawed but because it's what the cool kids believe and therefore is the place where people with no real beliefs of their own are most likely to land. Ask them to explain what liberalism is, however, and they won't have a clue what to say beyond arguing that it is what people with common sense and decency believe.
Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering—and it's all over much too soon.Which is pretty bland and not very funny, which is, come to think of it, a pretty good description of Woody Allen himself these days. What really threw me was that she immediately went on to say that she likes the quote because it reminds her that she should be thankful for "both the good and the bad".
Woody Allen
Really? Is she grateful for AIDS? Hitler? Cancer?
Then I pointed out to her that there was no way the words of that quote could be construed so as to make them mean what she thought they meant. There is not a hint of gratitude in that lame joke. She said she knew that but she didn't care, it was the way it made her feel. I went on to say that Woody Allen's larger point is that life is morally meaningless. And he isn't fooling around about this. He made two movies that went so far as to say that even murder has no moral significance beyond the initial shock it causes.
She'd stopped paying attention long before I finished. She didn't care, she had her quote that made her feel thankful for the good and the bad. And I thought of Corrie ten Boom in the concentration camp being thankful for the lice that infested the place because it meant the guards inspected the place less often allowing the prisoners to read the Bible they had hidden more often. Not because I can even begin to imagine what that is like but because Corrie ten Boom at least used words and sentences that actually meant something to express her gratitude.
I've often mocked the religion of SIMU (Shit I Made Up) but this isn't even that. It's a religion with no content at all not even stuff that was made up. I suspect my friend read or heard somewhere that it's good for you to be grateful and so she has pulled a random quote that she likes and associated it with gratitude "for both the good and the bad".
It's a sort of wimpy nihilism and I've written about this before.
In real life, though, being a martyr for nihilism is a grim and depressing choice so we find ways to make the second choice look morally admirable. You sit in the audience and watch the nihilistic movie and then you go to a party where you and a bunch of your friends collectively pretend to be edgy and transgressive and a whole lot of other words that mean a little less every time you think about them. The nagging doubt that you are just being dilettantes is always there but you are still alive and you can even have quite a bit of fun.But what about the politics of such people? According to Pew, they make up one fifth of Americans. They probably make up more than that, truth be told, as there are lots of people who go to church regularly or semi-regularly whose beliefs are about as fuzzy.
I suspect that virtually all of these people think of themselves as liberals. Not because liberalism is nihilistic or deeply flawed but because it's what the cool kids believe and therefore is the place where people with no real beliefs of their own are most likely to land. Ask them to explain what liberalism is, however, and they won't have a clue what to say beyond arguing that it is what people with common sense and decency believe.
Although I agree with what you say about nihilism (and Woody Allen), if I'd been present I'd have taken sides with your friend on the specific quote (though not to the point of being grateful for the bad, if that is really what she meant).
ReplyDeleteThe joke says, 'Life really isn't all that bad, so lighten up a bit. You really love it and you know you do, you silly Malvolio, you.' I don't know where she gets being thankful for the bad from, but the joke certainly turns one away from the absurd obsession of bad and reminds one that we all love life and hope it never ends. This is not nihilism.