"Why do I avoid the present?” because those questions would unearth painful answers, and we can’t be negative, can we?"
I found myself getting sucked into the whole corporate, positive thinking movement one too may times in my life. I wanted to be rich and this seemed like an easy way to get there. I was an actress after all. I could fake it til I made it. But I am not wired that way. I cannot be jolly all the damn time. I also like to sit in a pensive and meloncholic state, especially if it's raining. I don't like to sit in it too long. I treat it as a sauna - get the impurities out. Then go back to enjoyment of everything. You are right. The whole endeavor is soul-sucking. I've seen so many people go through these programs with immense exuberance only to be met with "ghosts" - whether it be an overdue bill, a broken-down car, a dying mother - and then they completely fall apart. They hadn't acquired the millions yet to "fix" those problems. It's like the stupid prosperity gospel. It's so detrimental and completely unrealistic. "Just believe it into existence!" Um, No. And, if one is a Christian, you believe you WILL live forever. And it's this, little life that you've been given while here on earth that makes all the difference. How well did you use what God gave you for your fellow man and to further His kingdom? We need very little help being our own god. We've proven time and time again we are untrustworthy of God's gifts.
Great piece man! The title intrigued me because I wanted to write an essay about him for a while, but never got the pen on the paper. As it usually goes when this happens, someone else wrote the essay for me :)
I'm not 100% aligned to all of your points, but I do think the general concept of trying to outrun death is a super-sized avoidance of lots of emotions, and purely delusional anyway. When I watched the documentary it actually made me more empathetic and I could see he was just another human suffering and trying to outrun himself.
Thanks for writing this. If I write my own (which would be somewhat similar), I'll send it over!
Your antithesis ‘reality won’t be dominated; it demands us to dance’ especially reminded me of James Carse’s antithesis-laden Finite/Infinite Games.
I remember him saying in there something like ‘the finite player struggles against mortality; the infinite player struggles as a mortal.’ There is something beautifully tragic about the ‘struggle against’ finitude leading to finitude.
Seems the only way to wrench out a player like Bryan from the finite trap is a true pity, a ‘struggling with’. Struggling against him would just lead to more finitude.
Wonderful essay—telling point after telling point—and you’re taking on one of today’s most powerful temptations and proposing the antidote: aliveness.
One minor point, the wonderful mid-Atlantic accent has mysteriously disappeared, a victim of the bland, demotic, materialist, equalitarian:authoritarian Zeitgeist which Bryan Johnson so repellently exemplifies.
By way of explanation, I’ll quote a learned friend of mine: “there's something fishy about the squashing of the Hollywood Mid-Atlantic accent around the same broad era, and my gut tells me it's related. It was obviously associated with a link to the old world, empire, tradition, etc., and by dominating Hollywood it was glamorous, something to aspire to, etc. It was quite intentionally pushed out in favour of regional and 'General American' accents; I've heard that that was because Americans wanted their own identity and so forth, but I don't entirely buy it. The Mid-Atlantic WAS part of America's identity (it was no more English than it was East Coast American), and was an aspirational accent of rich, successful, powerful, worldly, cultured people. I think it wasn't 'diverse' and egalitarian enough. All voices matter, etc...Don't aspire to connect to your history...Stay in your regional ghettos and eat the slop we feed you, &c &c...That's my tin-foil hat conspiracy theory, for whatever it's worth!”
"Why do I avoid the present?” because those questions would unearth painful answers, and we can’t be negative, can we?"
I found myself getting sucked into the whole corporate, positive thinking movement one too may times in my life. I wanted to be rich and this seemed like an easy way to get there. I was an actress after all. I could fake it til I made it. But I am not wired that way. I cannot be jolly all the damn time. I also like to sit in a pensive and meloncholic state, especially if it's raining. I don't like to sit in it too long. I treat it as a sauna - get the impurities out. Then go back to enjoyment of everything. You are right. The whole endeavor is soul-sucking. I've seen so many people go through these programs with immense exuberance only to be met with "ghosts" - whether it be an overdue bill, a broken-down car, a dying mother - and then they completely fall apart. They hadn't acquired the millions yet to "fix" those problems. It's like the stupid prosperity gospel. It's so detrimental and completely unrealistic. "Just believe it into existence!" Um, No. And, if one is a Christian, you believe you WILL live forever. And it's this, little life that you've been given while here on earth that makes all the difference. How well did you use what God gave you for your fellow man and to further His kingdom? We need very little help being our own god. We've proven time and time again we are untrustworthy of God's gifts.
This article made me think of a poem I wrote this last year:
I am a creature of habit
I want to face up the day and grab it;
but whenever something
disrupts my routine,
I become just like Alice's rabbit.
My habits mark out my steps.
They help me to know what's next.
But gum up the machine,
then I've met the red queen;
and it seems that I've lost my head.
Are my habits a crutch or a staff?
Are they a ship or a rudderless raft?
I don't know where I end
and where my habits begin,
and I fear there's not much of me left.
Amen brother. Let's rake some leaves.
This is so good! Thank you for subjecting yourself to this fella for the rest of us.
Great piece man! The title intrigued me because I wanted to write an essay about him for a while, but never got the pen on the paper. As it usually goes when this happens, someone else wrote the essay for me :)
I'm not 100% aligned to all of your points, but I do think the general concept of trying to outrun death is a super-sized avoidance of lots of emotions, and purely delusional anyway. When I watched the documentary it actually made me more empathetic and I could see he was just another human suffering and trying to outrun himself.
Thanks for writing this. If I write my own (which would be somewhat similar), I'll send it over!
Your antithesis ‘reality won’t be dominated; it demands us to dance’ especially reminded me of James Carse’s antithesis-laden Finite/Infinite Games.
I remember him saying in there something like ‘the finite player struggles against mortality; the infinite player struggles as a mortal.’ There is something beautifully tragic about the ‘struggle against’ finitude leading to finitude.
Seems the only way to wrench out a player like Bryan from the finite trap is a true pity, a ‘struggling with’. Struggling against him would just lead to more finitude.
Wonderful essay—telling point after telling point—and you’re taking on one of today’s most powerful temptations and proposing the antidote: aliveness.
One minor point, the wonderful mid-Atlantic accent has mysteriously disappeared, a victim of the bland, demotic, materialist, equalitarian:authoritarian Zeitgeist which Bryan Johnson so repellently exemplifies.
By way of explanation, I’ll quote a learned friend of mine: “there's something fishy about the squashing of the Hollywood Mid-Atlantic accent around the same broad era, and my gut tells me it's related. It was obviously associated with a link to the old world, empire, tradition, etc., and by dominating Hollywood it was glamorous, something to aspire to, etc. It was quite intentionally pushed out in favour of regional and 'General American' accents; I've heard that that was because Americans wanted their own identity and so forth, but I don't entirely buy it. The Mid-Atlantic WAS part of America's identity (it was no more English than it was East Coast American), and was an aspirational accent of rich, successful, powerful, worldly, cultured people. I think it wasn't 'diverse' and egalitarian enough. All voices matter, etc...Don't aspire to connect to your history...Stay in your regional ghettos and eat the slop we feed you, &c &c...That's my tin-foil hat conspiracy theory, for whatever it's worth!”
What an incredible read.