The Age of Absurdity

[sawyl]

The second of the three books I picked up on Monday was Michael Foley's The Age of Absurdity, an investigation of why modern society makes happiness quite so difficult to achieve. Foley is an erudite and passionate guide who admits that he doesn't have all the answers and is far from perfect himself, every so often breaking off from his exposition into an appalled and very funny rants about the horrors of the modern world.

The problems Foley identifies are familiar. That people have become infantalised by their loss of responsibility. That striving to achieve the difficult has been rejected in favour the easy, empty task that provide no sense of fulfilment. He argues that by rejecting reason in favour of instant gratification, we've lost the ability to feel satisfied by our achievements and to feel the transcendent joy of losing ourselves in the flow of a task.

He also make the point that by taking the world serious and taking it at face value, we've lost the ability to delight in its absurdities — something he frequently backs up with one of his grumpy asides, such as this one on the horrors of the corporate away day:

On an away day there is only the free lunch to look forward to, but even this is depressingly familiar — the standard corporate cold buffet, with the same tasteless sandwich quarters and Asian finger food for exotic effect, and the same fresh-fruit platter with pineapple and melon slices and the two strawberries no one ever has the nerve to eat. Yet a manager will sit down at the front workstation and, with a meaningful eye roll, cry fervently, 'It's so good to be out of that place.' For, of course, the real point of the exercise is to give the impression that no one present is bound to the workplace and that, since the cheerful harmony persists in the outside world, it must be authentic.

Foley, M., (2010), The Age of Absurdity, Simon & Schuster, 167

These horrors, Foley argues, can be ameliorated by using the time to think idle thoughts or to use them to give meaning and shape to our lives by forming them into part of a greater narrative, much as Joyce does in Ulysses. Indeed, a great emphasis is placed on the subversive act of reading. As a solitary act in a world where we are encouraged to be constantly sociable, as a process of active mentation in a world where intellectual engagement is considered passe, and as a difficult process — particularly in the case of Joyce — reading is the one of the best ways to reject the worst that modern life can throw at us.

By making a determined effort to reject societal norms, to be subversive, to dare to be a crank, we are more likely to gain satisfaction from life. By applying a mixture of Buddhist, stoic and existential techniques, we can seize control of things by changing our approach to the things we already have, by looking at them in a new light, and by rejecting external demands imposed on us from outside. In what has to be one the most delightful things I've read in a while, Foley cites the Saramago-like rejection of performance related pay by a group of lecturers:

When the offer was first announced, managers smugly sat back awaiting a flood of applications. But teachers understood that teaching could not be accurately evaluated and that introducing rankings would be divisive. So they agreed that no one would apply. I was certain that a greedy few would find the temptation irresistible — but the agreement held and no applications were submitted. Then management, taken aback, invited certain people to apply — but this confirmed the suspicion that the extra money would go favourites. So the favourites declined to apply for fear of being forever identified as management toadies. Finally, management, in desperation, actually paid extra money into the bank accounts of the chosen — but the chosen, rather than keeping quiet as expected, withdrew the money, pooled it and shared it out among all the staff. The scheme was withdrawn, never to return — a victory that gave me new respect for my colleagues, a new pleasure in going to work and indeed a new faith in the human race.

ibid., 175

I really enjoyed The Age of Absurdity, not so much as a philosophical text or a self-help manual, but as guidebook to the craziness of the everyday world and to the writers and thinkers who have helped to document it — I'm definitely adding David Foster Wallace, Nicholson Baker and Joshua Ferris to my list of people to read. The book is both savage and funny. Despite Foley's occasional bouts of frustrated grumpiness, things never fall into grouchy all man territory, because the complaints almost always inspire a better way of looking at the world.