Enraged by Irritations: Human Nature Or Aristocratic Problem?

I don't know if you've read The Leopard -- the 1958 book by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa that tells a story of social change and the decline of the nobility in 19th-century Sicily through the narrative of the Salina family and its patriarch Don Fabrizio.

I love The Leopard. I love the sensuality of the narrative and of Don Fabrizio himself. I love the way Don Fabrizio admires and supports his nephew Tancredi, even though Tancredi represents the decline of the Salina's social class. I love the way that Don Fabrizio's real interest, and true comfort, lies in astronomy and mathematics.

At one point in the story, Father Pirrone - a priest who lives with the Salina family -- is asked to reflect on what the aristocrats think about then coming shifts in social equality. And he tries to answer, he gets caught up in a long and rambling response because he doesn't know how to explain how the nobility see the world and how different it is.

In trying to express the incomprehensibility what the nobility care about and what they don't, he says "I've seen Don Fabrizio get quite testy, wise and serious though he is, because of a badly ironed collar to his shirt; and I know for certain that the Prince of Làscari didn't sleep for a whole night from rage because he was wrongly placed at one of the Viceroy's dinners."

Encountering that passage always gives me a shock of recognition in an uncomfortable way. Because I, too, am frequently thrown by small irritations. I went through a phase where if I was chopping vegetables and a small piece of something would fall on the floor, I would flip out, feel the world was against me. The problem of price stickers leaving sticky residue on elegant objects sends me into a tailspin. Sometimes I get dressed to go out, and realize my shoes won't work with the weather, and realize my outfit won't work with different shoes, and I get a complete feeling of despair come over me. Yesterday morning, my clothes hangers got tangled up and I was like OK, that's it, we're done.

I don't think I'm alone. I've seen friends in a rage because of coffee spilled on a shirt, or a glass dropped on the floor.

I used to buy into the orthodoxy of "underlying mood": that this kind of thing happens because there is an undercurrent of stress and anxiety so intense that the seeming OKness of the surface is a superficial layer, a paint job over roiling chaos. Sometimes that's true. You can always describe it that way if you want to. But often it doesn't feel that way to me. To me, it feels more like a plunge into the essential pointlessness and harrassingness of human existence, a plunge caused by the irritation itself, not requiring unusual life stress as a background condition.

At first, I was inclined to draw the conclusion that Father Pirrone's association of this experience with aristocracy was questionable. I'm not an aristocrat, and neither are my friends. But then I started wondering if maybe just being middle-class and white in North America was a kind of experience of aristocracy -- I mean, that the relevant background needs and social comforts are met at such a high general high level that our idea of what is a "problem" would be more similar to that of the Salina family than to the non-aristocrats of 19th century Sicily.

But then -- "on the third hand," as my mother liked to say -- I got to thinking, maybe Father Pirrone is wrong about it after all -- because what does Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa know about it? He was the last Prince of Lampedusa and owner of a hereditary agricultural estate. He has no special insights into whether being enraged by irritations is a special aristocrat thing or more a general human thing.

I used to have a lot less money than I do now, and for a time I was in difficult circumstances. I've been trying to remember whether I was just enraged by small irritations then as I am now. But I can't quite sort it out. In my mind's eye of that time, I'm just smoking a lot of cigarettes. I do remember that when I worked as a waitress, one of my tasks was to break cold feta cheese into crumbled feta cheese with my hands, and I hated the feeling so badly, I swore I'd never do that by choice. To this day, I use a knife to chop feta into little cubes.

So: enraged by irritations: human nature or aristocratic problem? I'm really not sure. Or -- maybe it's just me?

Philosophical Melancholia

Albrecht Dürer, Melancholia I, via Wikimedia Commons

Though I am, overall, a much happier person than I was when I was young, as an adult I've experienced a a lot of what I like to think of as melancholia. By melancholia I mean some mix of sadness, low life force, discouragement, and a feeling of "Oh, whatever, what's the point."

I suppose my melancholia bears some relationship the modern problem we think of as depression, but I don't think they are the same thing. I don't have any of the typical symptoms always mentioned in connection with depression. I have an excellent appetite; I sleep well and exercise a lot; I get things done and with most things I'm not even really a procrastinator. If I go through an internet depression quiz/checklist, it might say that if you check six out eight boxes checked that's a warning sign -- but I'll have only checked one box: the one that says "I feel sad, like life has no point."

To me, nothing captures this feeling better than Albrecht Dürer's 1514 engraving, "Melencolia I," at the top of this post.

Because my rise in melancholic feelings seems to correlate with the time I've spent studying philosophy, I've often wondered if there is something about philosophical thinking -- or about a certain kind of thinking, more broadly -- that encourages melancholia.

And I think in my own case, anyway, the answer is yes. In fact, I think there are direct causal connections between my thinking philosophically and my feeling melancholic. I'm sure the mechanisms are complex, but here are a few thoughts.

One difficulty, for me at least, seems to be the effect of constantly forcing myself to take a perspective from which I am at best just one person among others and at worst a speck in the universe. I don't mean the kind of destabilization you get looking at the stars or something -- it's not, I think, the mere fact of being unspecial relative to everything else, it's more the shift in perspective of caring, of thinking about what matters or what is important.

For example, like most people, I'd expect, I have the experience that from within my life, the little things that make up my little world assume huge significance and importance to me. Relationships, intellectual projects, of course -- but even things like how should I wear my hair, whether to see a movie, whether to cook or go out to eat, whether I should try harder to learn French -- absorb my mind, fill it up, tie me to life.

But even one minute of a certain kind of reflection shows my concerns to be of virtually no importance whatsoever in the grand scheme of things.

Sometimes, they seem worse than insignificant: there are horrible things going on in the world, injustice and suffering, and you're seriously thinking about hairstyles, movies, and treats?

Other times, they seem like mere moves in a massive social scheme that has little to do with me or what I might "choose" or not choose to do. Probably you've all had this experience: you take one step back from concepts like "hairstyle," "movie" and even "food" -- and you find yourself in a dizzying array of considerations about sexism and beauty norms and Hollywood and glamorization and animal rights and environmentalism and so on and so forth etc. etc. etc.

These are all fine and important thoughts to have. My problem is that in doing philosophy, I form the habits of mind that make that dizzying array not so much a place I visit occasionally to understand the world, but more like my inner mental home. And as an inner mental home, it's horrible. At least for me, it's a profoundly alienating and cold place to spend a lot of time -- like trying to live on the Moon and breathe oxygen through a straw.

Then, too, there's a sense in which philosophical reflection itself often seems to take the form of "what is the point." How ought we to live? Why do this or that? Well -- doesn't this often come to down, "Ultimately, what is the point?"

In some contexts I think this is an OK question to ask. But the problem is that it's a question that, if you're not careful, will spread like kudzu through your days and nights, leaving you staring blankly at the ceiling, trapped in a singularity of philosophical interrogation, until, if you're lucky, you're rescued by friends, or hunger, or some everyday obligation like doing the laundry that just can't be put off any longer.

None of this is to say philosophical thinking isn't necessary, important, and good, because I absolutely think it is. It's just that too much of it might make a person sad, as I think it does me.


If you, too, have the symptoms of philosophical melancholia -- which can, of course, strike anyone at any time -- my advice is: though it might seem tempting, do not try to think yourself out of it.

Just put down the thoughts and walk away.

Self-Actualization: Fake It Til You ... Keep Faking It

Thomas P. Barnett, "In the Heart of the Ozarks" (MU Museum of Art and Archaeology), via Wikimedia Commons

Last Friday afternoon I found myself in a frustrating situation. I was determined to exercise, but for various reasons found my only real option was going for a run outside. I was at my friend's house in Buffalo, and "outside" in Buffalo last Friday was like 25 degrees F and snowing. I didn't want to do it.

It was late afternoon, and I was tired and hungry. I was in a grouchy mood, feeling all put upon that I was faced with this whole "running" dilemma and mad that it was so cold even though it was officially spring.

BTW -- while we're on that subject -- what is it with cold spring weather? For reasons I can never understand, there's something about 25 degrees on March 27th that feels so much colder than 15 or even 10 degrees on January 15th. Is this just a matter of expectations? I don't know -- but I do know that I've run happily in much colder temperatures, but this 25 degrees, it was killing me.

So I did what I often do in such situations, which is that I made myself a deal. I told myself, "Look, all you have to do is get on your exercise clothes. Then you can do what you want. Get on the clothes, and if you don't want to run, you don't have to run. But get the clothes on."

Because I was at my friend's house, I didn't have access to my one special-super-cold-running-outfit, so getting on the clothes meant piling on some long underwear, some weird and ugly exercise pants, a running shirt, an old turtleneck, a nylon jacket thing, a hat, and fleece gloves that prevented me from using my iPhone (gasp!).

Just as I'd expected, once I was dressed in all those clothes, I started to feel hot and itchy and fidgety. More importantly, it started to seem ridiculous to take them all off without actually going outside. I stood there in the front hallway, contemplating my options, and eventually I took off my gloves and got the playlist set up and put the gloves back on forced myself out the door.

You know what's coming next, because exercise narratives are always formulaic tales of loss and redemption. About five minutes in I was striding along, enjoying the pretty white snow, jumping around icy patches, a smile on my face.

Halfway through I had one of those particular Buffalo-type experiences that makes people love the city so much, where I noticed a framed photo nailed to a huge tree on the side of the road, with writing explaining that the photo was from 1890 and that it depicted the very tree it was nailed to, when the tree was itty bitty.

The person who wrote on the photo had taken pains to point out which house in the photo was the house right near the tree, and had also drawn in arrows with captions pointing out the "horse-drawn carriage" and "horse droppings" in the road, so everyone would know it really was 1890. I stood there in the cold, warmed by my run, and looked at the the photo and then at tree and then back at the house and then back at the photo again and I was like, "This is so amazingly cool."

The reason I'm telling you all this story, though, is because of the part with the clothes and the getting out the door. I think when you see someone out running in the cold, smiling, pausing to take in a cool picture, it's so easy to think, "Oh, that's that kind of person, totally self-motivated, massive willpower, yada yada yada."

But it's not true. Sure there are people like that. But a lot of people are just muddling through, and happened to find a cagey and clever way to get themselves to do something. Like putting on their clothes and going from there. 

As I ran, I got thinking about how changing my clothes had altered my perspective on "going outside" versus "staying in," and I was reminded of this post from a couple of weeks ago, where I talked about rational choice theory. You may remember from that post the lobster story, about the person who wants to eat lobster if they haven't seen it alive but doesn't want to eat it if they have. I was writing in the post about how you can't know from the outside whether the person was being "irrational" in allowing irrelevant factors to come into play, or whether they were rational because their preferences genuinely changed.

I think the version of the story where the person just has changeable preferences is often the one most true to life, and I ran I thought to myself that this was a pretty similar situation -- not wanting to go outside when you're wearing your indoor clothes and wanting to go outside when you're in your outdoor clothes.

It's a kind of changeability that I think is really at the heart of the human condition. It's nice to think of yourself as a stable set of preferences, pursuing this or that project, by making yourself do the things that move that project along. But often it's not really like that, and the way you see things is seriously altered by the tiniest changes in your surroundings or your mood.

The trick, if you can manage it, is to harness those forces for good. It's often impossible. But once in a while, something like the clothing trick comes to mind -- and voilà! You may not be the rational possessor of stable preferences with long term goals you're marching toward-- but you sure look like one from the outside.

Patricia Takes The Bus

Why, yes, I do! I do take the bus! Thanks for asking!

I take the bus a lot. I take a commuter bus back and forth to work. I take city buses around town wherever I am. I take the occasional long bus trip. At home in Toronto, I also take the subway -- but this post isn't about that, it's about the bus. Because for some reason the bus-in-itself, as distinct from trains, subways, "light rail," or what-have-you, seems to occupy a particular role in the social imaginary of North America -- a role probably best characterized as "No - no way am I taking the fucking bus."

But this isn't a post about how you should take the bus because it's eco-friendly and surprisingly pleasant and it will change the way you view the world and make you a better person -- though I actually believe all those things are all true. This post is just some things that happened to me and what I thought about them about while I was on the bus.

The main action place on a recent cross border bus trip. I often travel back and forth between Toronto and Buffalo. Here my commitment to the bus comes with an asterisk, because normally I do not cross the border on the bus: I take the bus to/from "near the border" and get a ride the rest of the way.

Presumably, the reason is obvious: crossing the border on the bus sucks. When you cross the border on the bus, everyone has to get off the bus, gather together all their luggage -- what they had with them on the bus and what they had stowed underneath -- get in line, speak with a border agent one by one, stand around 'til the bus gets inspected, put all their luggage back under the bus, get back on, then wait, and wait, and wait, while the last few problems get sorted out.

If you happen to be crossing from Canada into the US, you have to wait, in traffic, behind the cars that get backed up, before you can pull into the special bus lane -- this is just a completely pointless waste of time, designed, like so many things at the US border, to make you feel like a powerless bug who'll do anything to avoid getting stepped on.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago for various reasons I took the bus the whole way, crossing into Canada. I boarded at the Buffalo terminal, and as we approached the border five minutes later I had the usual range of grouchy misanthropic thoughts. Did people have to bring so much stuff with them? Why can't they follow the SIMPLE instructions to stay put 'til the driver comes to get us? Why don't people understand how to answer the fucking questions?

Pop quiz people: when a border guard says "So where are you headed?" or "How long are you staying?" in what circumstances is it appropriate to say "I'm not really sure, we're going to see how it goes?" Answer: NEVER. How the hell have you reached adulthood without learning that this is never, ever, the right answer -- least of all when it is actually THE TRUTH? Honestly, get it together.

I fumed as I waited and waited and listened to people stumble over unexpected questions like "What are you bringing back with you?" Gee, who'd have thought that issue might come up? Couldn't have seen that one coming, eh?

Eventually I was through the line, and since it was cold, we all smushed ourselves into the tiny post-question area instead of venturing outside. I started to get a better look at my fellow passengers. Some were quietly tending children, who were clearly worn out by having been on the bus since New York, many hours earlier. Many were speaking languages other than English. I overheard some people finishing up in line, and some were presenting visas -- meaning they were traveling from countries that the US and Canada make it difficult to enter from. One person seemed to be processing an actual entry document -- as in, entering Canada, to live, for the first time.

Huddled together with these people under the florescent lighting, my whole point of view suddenly shifted. I saw everyone through different eyes. These people seemed so admirable: taking their children for long bus rides, traveling to new places where they might not speak the language well, waiting patiently through our little ordeal to get back on the bus.

I exchanged a glance with a young woman and we craned our necks to see if we could tell whether the bus had been checked. It hadn't. We each registered identical mixed expressions of "this is taking forever" and "oh, well, it'll be over eventually." Finally someone said, "there it is," and we all ambled out together, sorted ourselves into the right organization for loading luggage and getting back on. Everyone got into the exact same seat they had had before -- no jostling for better position, no grumbling about the fact that the bus was packed. I watched some people help some other people put some heavy carry-ons up above the seats, and we were off.

And then I had my second shift in view. Not only was I OK with all these people, I actually was one of them. We were in it together, off to Toronto. If the bus was super-late we'd all be starving; if it broke down we'd all be in the same mess. None of those things happened. It was early evening; there wasn't much traffic; we zoomed into the city.

As I mulled over my emotional ups and downs, I remembered that this sort of experience happens to me on the bus all the time. Bus-taking is a deeply embodied experience of just being a person among other people.

Often when I take the bus to or from campus, I'm on the bus with a handful of other people like me, and a sea of students. On campus, I'm a prof: I have my own book-lined office, and when I speak in class, people are supposed to listen. It's a thing a person gets used to -- being in a position of special respect. But out there in line for the bus, I'm not special at all. I'm just 10th in a line of 30 - or, if it's Friday, 45th in a line of 70, all of us chilly and checking our phones for the time and trying to be patient.

It's a powerful reminder. You: just another person.

I've sometimes reflected on the fact that airplanes, even though they bundle people together and make them go through miseries, never induce the kind of fellow feeling that the bus does. I'm sure it has to do with complex things like class and the way air travel is branded and perceived and the way the miseries seem so stupid and avoidable and self-inflicted. But that's a post for another day.

Next time you want to avoid the "Hobbesian logic of a [traffic] jam," as Elizabeth Kolbert so eloquently put it, just do what I do. Take the bus. 

Bertie Wooster, Unsung Hero Of Our Modern Times

It's a matter of some embarrassment to me that in my past I was not a fan of P. G. Wodehouse.  But it's true.  You might go so far as to say I was an anti-fan.   I found the books silly, misogynist, even a little mean-spirited. 

But I was wrong.  As I've discussed before, once I heard Jonathan Cecil read the books with his quiet but omnipresent ironic detachment I was able to see the light.  I've never looked back.

In the Wodehouse canon, my special love is for Bertie Wooster. 

Now it is going to be my assertion in this post that Bertie, poor lamb, has gotten a bad rap and is massively under-appreciated as a kind of hero of our times. 

Even if you've never read the books you've probably heard many negative character descriptions.   Bertie is a "foppish" aristocrat who can't manage the simplest tasks without assistance (usually from the famous Jeeves, his genius valet), a silly young man who refuses to settle down or take anything seriously (which enrages his aunt Agatha), and a layabout who favors smoking, drinking and gambling.

But look beyond the surface, and Bertie exemplifies, with no effort at all, certain ideals many of us strive to attain.

1.  Bertie is happy with the simplest of pleasures.

Give Bertie Wooster a cocktail on the lawn, a nicely fried egg, a friend with whom to hash over old times, and Bertie is a contented man.  Bertie does not need the latest technology and gadgets; he does not need to feel he is achieving things and being better than other people and getting noticed; he is not bored sitting around doing nothing.  Bertie is made happy by what he has, and is not endlessly seeking novelty.

He is off the hedonic treadmill. 

2.  Bertie truly lives in the moment.

People think mindfulness and they think meditation and eastern philosophy and effortful practice aimed at the reduction of worry and the appreciation for what is happening right now.  But Bertie has mindfulness naturally and effortlessly. 

Bertie having his morning tea is a man thinking about tea.  He actually has to be reminded to worry about things.

3.  Bertie doesn't have annoying masculinity issues.

Although it is true that true that he can be harsh in his feeling toward women, whom he often suspects of being out to control him and force him to do thing he does not want to do, Bertie is not competitive or athletic and he does not mind being made a fool of. 

He is a bit ruffled when Jeeves refers to him as "mentally negligible," but only for a moment (see #2, above).  In virtually every story he agrees to do something unpleasant (be thought insane, go briefly to jail, etc.) in order to spare his friends some hardship.  Being thought to be a nice guy pleases Bertie, and he doesn't worry about being seen as a chump. 

Even setting aside the interesting interpretation in which Bertie and Jeeves are actually lovers, it is easy to imagine Bertie as gay.  And when Bertie asks, in a moment of crisis, "What do ties matter, Jeeves, at at time like this?"  Jeeves replies, "There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter."  Bertie takes the point.

4.  Bertie is always full of the life force.

I don't know how he does it, but Bertie is always seeing the comic side, making a joke, trying to lighten the mood.  Bertie doesn't have serious problems like being unable to pay the grocery bill, but like a lot of people, he has a lot of other, small problems. 

Sometimes people expect things of him he does not want to do.  Sometimes his friends are in a jam.  Sometimes his friends are -- justly or not -- angry with him.  Bertie, you'll notice, is never angry with them.  And he is never in a bad mood.  Extraordinary.   

Faced with the pompous, bossy, annoying people of life, Bertie typically tries to make light conversation.  When that fails he is philosophical.  No matter what the difficulties, at the end of the day a cocktail and a cigar and some chit chat restores Bertie's good cheer and faith in humanity. 

Given my fondness and even admiration, it amused me to learn on Wikipedia that

"Bertie's foppish foolishness was not popular with everyone. Papers released by the Public Record Office have disclosed that when Wodehouse was recommended for a Companion of Honour in 1967, Sir Patrick Dean, British ambassador in Washington, argued that it 'would also give currency to a Bertie Wooster image of the British character, which we are doing our best to eradicate'."

Silly Sir Patrick Dean.

So, next time life gets you down, just ask yourself, What Would Bertie Do? 

Mental Health And Violence Prevention: The Creepiness Factor

There's been a lot of talk these days about improving or paying attention to mental health.  Some of that talk has been happening in the context of preventing violence.  Some of that talk seems to suggest that if perpetrators of violence had had their mental health issues treated properly, the violence could have been prevented.

Some of these things are in the "yes, obviously" category.  Yes, obviously, people should have access to treatment for mental health.  Obviously mental health issues are just as real and serious as other health issues.  Obviously mental health and unhappiness should not be stigmatized.


But I think the way the talk goes in the violence prevention debate goes way beyond the "yes, obviously" category, and goes well into the "creepy" category. 

First of all, if you're talking about relying primarily on mental health treatment to prevent violence, you're talking about going way beyond improved "access" to mental health resources.  You're going to need screenings; you're going to need to be getting in people's faces with tests they do not want; you're going to need surveillance and punishments and all kinds of crazy Panopticon shit.

Sometimes you hear people say that those in certain roles, like teachers, should be attentive to finding people with mental health issues and should taking action.  Have these people been in a classroom?

I mean, first of all, we must be talking about something more than just saying "hey, how are things, if you want to talk, come by my office hours," because what about the people who don't feel like talking because they already have a plan, and the plan is violent?  No, what we're talking about must be a form of "turning someone in," as in alerting some official person, "hey, that person has a problem and needs help, whether they want it or not."

That's bad enough in itself.  In our modern world where your every move is tracked, are you really going to risk being wrong about something like that and screwing up some poor young person's life?

But what's even worse is when you consider what the "signs" are supposed to be.  What are those signs, exactly?  Seeming stressed out, or lonely, or sad?  Being anti-social?  Acting weird?

I got news for you:  all young people are stressed out, lonely, sad, anti-social, and weird some of the time.  Yes, some young people are more stressed out, lonely, sad, anti-social, and weird than others.  And you know what?  That is not a crime.  Last I heard, part of living in a free society is the right to be sad and weird and anti-social.  And to do it without a bunch of people getting in your face about it and demanding you must be "mentally ill" and that you have to get help.

When it's proposed that mental health screening would allow for a world in which a lot of people are armed but few people get shot, I'm always amazed at what the implications are for the idea of being "mentally healthy."  I mean, that seems to me a high bar.  Do these people think it's a sign of illness that in certain situations, under particular stresses, people snap and make bad decisions, decisions they'll regret?  Geez, people -- that's not a sign of being ill; it's a sign of being human.

You put it all together, you get something like this:  anyone who even seems like they might ever, momentarily, not behave in a completely rational way, should be picked out by some responsible figure like a teacher and forced to undergo treatment until their peculiarities are completed beaten out of them.

How creepy is that?  And we haven't even touched on the various difficulties of what our mental health establishment thinks is "healthy," or its poor track record at pathologizing completely normal kinds of behavior, like homosexuality.

Sorry.  Super creepy.

The Moods Of 2012: We Need A Time Out

2012.  It's been a tough year for life in North America don't you think? 

On top of everything else -- the wars, banks, climate change, violence, etc. etc. -- we have been in some unattractive moods.  If we were a toddler, I'd be calling for a time-out.

Mood 1:  Somebody, somewhere, might be getting away with something.  

Some of this suspicious anger is a collective surge of ordinary free-rider-phobia:  the fear that someone is breaking the rules, lying, misrepresenting, etc.  

But now a person can't even have a reasonable job or a day off without some lunatic getting all up in their face about it.  It's like "OMG teachers get some vacation time and a bit of job security!  Better reign them in!" 

Nice.

Mood 2:  I need some stuff.

I know this has been percolating a long time and isn't really new, but still.  You spend a few days on the streets of the American suburbs, as I have over the holidays, and pretty soon you're asking yourself:  do we really need all these gigantic cars, enormous supermarkets, eighteen varieties of Coke?  I've generally been a fan of consumer culture.  But this is like eating a giant bag of candy all in one sitting.  Gross.  

Mood 3:  Just look at that freak/moron/asshole.

I don't have a TV, and thank god, because I think the parade of shows inviting us to mock other people would have a bad effect on me.  Why is it bullying when one kid does it to another, but fun reality TV when 2.2 million viewers and TLC do it some kid? 

Here's to snapping out of it in 2013!

My Life Force Theory Of Human Nature

L. A. Lakers fans, after a big win.

Where we are going with this post:  an explanation of why people riot when their team wins.

Where we are starting with this post:  a consideration of some unified theories of human behavior. 

In the middle:  an explication of that under-recognized and unappreciated force of human existence:  The Life Force.  

When it comes to theories of human behavior, it always drives me crazy when people say that what humans really want out of life should be understood as just "pleasure" or "happiness."

You hear the first most often when people are talking about motivation, the idea being that humans are primarily motivated by the seeking of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. 

You hear the second when people are trying to give big psychology theories about the nature of desire and its role in our lives.  There's a whole new mini-cottage industry now of books about happiness and how to achieve it.

But I'm just not buying either of these.  Can't you want things knowing they'll bring you displeasure and unhappiness?  Think about the last time you broke up with someone, or were broken up with, romantically.  In the immediate aftermath, couldn't you have a burning, itchy, crazy desire to call that person, even while knowing that calling them will make you not just miserable but also wildly unhappy?

And I've talked about this before, but can't you sensibly want children even if you are convinced by the studies that show taking care of them is boring and displeasurable and parents are less happy overall than non-parents?  If you're thinking about having kids, are pleasure and happiness really the only things you're considering?  It seems bizarre to me to think that they would.

Anyway, there is one basic desire, one burning human drive, that these theories always seem to me to leave out.  That is:  the need to feel alive.  I call it The Life Force.

The way the Life Force manifests itself in our modern western culture, when your Life Force is high, you're engaged.  You're full of appetites.  You want to do stuff:  make lentil soup, improve your golf game, learn German.  You have a burning desire not only to be alive, but to imprint yourself on the world, to make things happen. 

When your Life Force is low, you don't see the point of living.  You don't care much what happens.  You have no need, or you're afraid, to exert your force, to exert your identity, on the world around you.

If you're at all in thrall to the harmony myth of human nature, you might think that The Life Force is good and its absence is bad.  But I don't think that can be right.  Because much as The Life Force can be the amazing power of creativity, it can also be the insane passion of rage, or the rabid desire for destruction.

If you're angry at someone and you sink into sadness and depression that is Low Life Force.  But if you lash out in a rage, and shout, and throw dishes, that is actually High Life Force:  you're imprinting yourself on the world, being you, and making things happen.  It's just that those things are bad.  

High Life Force might be good for you, but it might be bad for the rest of the world.  Because the desire to make things happen, it doesn't really distinguish between the good and the bad.  It just wants.

The Life Force involves wanting things, and it is often disturbing to me the way wanting things feels good.  Because as we all know, wanting things can be as frustrating as hell.  But then when you're faced with the opposite -- with NOT wanting things -- you're like Oh, wait, sorry, can you bring back the wanting please?

The desire to eat more food than is good for you:  frustrating.  Insufficient desire to eat enough food than is good for you:  heartbreaking.  Did you ever read stories by cancer patients who've lost their appetite and need marijuana just to be able to eat at all?  It makes insufficient desire seem like the saddest thing in the world.  Same thing for sex.  If you think wanting is bad, think about not wanting for about five minutes.  You'll change your mind.

In my theory of The Life Force, the desire, the need, to have The Force, and thus feel that want and desire, is basic and doesn't come from something else.  The problem arises when you have it, and now you have this need to make things happen.  It's a need that can sometimes be met in a constructive way, but not always.

Everyone's familiar with the pattern when it comes to sex.  When you want sex, you feel alive, even if you also feel frustrated.  And then if you get to have sex, you're making things happen, and that feels fantastic.  After, your Life Force is dissipated, especially if you've had an orgasm.  Orgasms:  very pleasurable, but they do not add to your life force.  After, you have to wait a little for the secret vial in your heart to replenish itself. 

The way The Life Force functions in a consumer culture like ours is particularly interesting, because in that culture, shopping mimics the Life Force pattern of sex without the attendant difficulties.  You set out:  you're wanting, you feel alive.  You buy:  you're making things happen, and it feels good.  After, instead of the dissipation from orgasm, you have clothes/shoes/toys/food to bring home and enjoy.  The Life Force just settles itself down very nicely.  When you think about it that way, it's not surprising that the average credit card debt in the US is almost 16,000 dollars. 

But getting back to the rioting.  I don't watch sports, but it is not hard for me to picture the Life Force pattern of important sporting events.  Was there ever more of a context for wanting and for feeling alive?  But since you're watching, there's not much outlet for making things happen.

If your team loses, your Life Force dissipates and you feel like crap and you have to wait for time to pass for your Life Force to come back.  But if your team wins, your Life Force goes through the roof:  BAM!.  What are you going to do with all that?  You've suddenly got to make things happen. 

And if you're with eight million other people in exactly the same mood, and you're out on the street, does it surprise you that those things include destroying things and setting cars on fire?  Well, it doesn't surprise me. 

The pleasure and happiness theories don't do so well explaining the winning rioters.  Destroying cars isn't on most people's bucket list, and no one expects it to bring peace and contentment. 

But the Life Force theory of human nature makes the whole thing very obvious and clear.

Listening To Pinot Grigio

Dionysus mosaic, via Wikimedia Commons.

About a million years ago when I was simultaneously a bored bookstore employee, a disaffected mathematics graduate student, and a watcher of television, I happened to read Peter Kramer's book Listening To Prozac.  In all kinds of ways it was a weird choice.  I hadn't yet studied any philosophy; I never did study psychology; I usually find non-fiction books tedious. 

But there was something about the idea of the book that fascinated me.  That idea is that anti-depressants like Prozac don't just alleviate serious depression in people who have it; they also affect the personalities of people who have mild depression or even none.  Shy people become more extroverted, nervous people become more confident.  One patient reported feeling "unencumbered, more vitally alive, less pessimistic."

Perhaps most interestingly, Kramer reported that the patients who experienced this felt not like they had new selves or identities, but rather that they were more the self they were before.  They were able to cast off something that was getting in the way of them being themselves, in order not to change, but to be fully themselves.

It's to Kramer's credit that there's no drama aspect to all this.  There's no "OMFG drugs change people's selves it's time to give it all up for raw foods, Tai Chi, and no electricity."  Even though Kramer admits to being somewhat disconcerted, he doesn't offer any simple answers.

I got to thinking about the book recently, because I was thinking about drinking.  I'm a person who -- let's say I'm a person who enjoys a glass of wine.  For me, the transformation induced by drinking is almost always X -> X+.

That is, drinking I go from being Me to being Me+, a better version of me.  I'm not only a bit more cheerful.  I'm eager instead of discouraged; I'm confident instead of daunted; I'm interested instead of bored.  I think more interesting things; I like people.  Pretty much everything is improved.

It's funny, because often when you hear people who like to drink a little too much talk about drinking there's this standard narrative which is like Oh, It's Great Until It's Not and Since You Can't Stop you inevitable Pass That Point and end up Crying Into Your Beer.

Not me -- I mean, I don't really have the Crying Into Your Beer phase of drinking.  Because -- have I mentioned?  for me drinking is X -> X+.  I don't drink beer, but whatever I'm drinking, I'm laughing into it, not crying into it.

This does give rise to a practical problem:  one doesn't want to drink too much.  But for me that really is a practical problem:  alcohol has a lot of calories, and it's not good for you in large amounts.  If the gods of consumer culture could just get cracking on solving those problems, I'd be good to go (see production suggestion #2 in my previous post on designer drugs).

So of course you can see why I started thinking about Listening to Pinot Grigio.  It's like, I'm me, only better.  "Unencumbered, more vitally alive, less pessimistic" -- that's it, exactly.  

In  the "most helpful" book review of Listening to Prozac on Amazon, a psychotherapist points out two interesting things about how the book seems today.  One is that Kramer didn't foresee that the side effects of Prozac would stand in the way of it becoming The People's Drug.  Some of those side effects are sexual, and the reviewer wryly notes that "the real stampede, ironically, has been toward Viagra" -- though why it seems ironic that people want more and better sex is obscure to me.  What could be more predictable than that?

The other is that "when push comes to shove, the past decade indicates that, bottom line, Americans continue to entertain a pharmaceutical Calvinism, a suspicion of medicine, and more recently, of the companies that make them."  That is, we retain a sense that there's something wrong with taking pills to feel good.

I think that is true, and it's also true that people have weirdly puritanical attitudes about alcohol.  They often talk as if there's some moral problem with drinking for fun:  Oh No, You Might Not Be Able to Drive, Won't Someone Think of The Children? 

As far as I'm concerned, the problem with recreational and non-recreational drugs are the same: it's not that there's something bad with mood-alteration, it's just that we're not very good at it yet.  In fact, when I'm Listening to Pinot Grigio, I'm often struck by how little we've improved on the basic experience of wine drinking.

Sure, alcohol has its side effects, and taken immoderately it's not good for you.  But sadly that's true of everything, still.

And now, let me end this post with a quotation from the Wikipedia entry on Dionysus, god of wine:

He is also the Liberator (Eleutherios), whose wine, music and ecstatic dance frees his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subverts the oppressive restraints of the powerful.

Freedom from self-conscious fear and care! That is it.

Moods: WTF?

Beavis and Butthead.  It makes no sense to illustrate this post with these guys, but I'm doing it anyway, because seeing them is like a breath of fresh air.

I don't know if you remember Beavis and Butthead or loved it as I did.  To me that show was like Western Civilization stopping in the middle of its long, long downfall to do a quick magic trick, drop some acid, and crack a few jokes before going back on its way.  Who will ever forget Beavis dreaming of being on "True Stories of the Highway Patrol"?

In case you're too young to remember, Beavis and Butthead were idiot teen boys who were obsessed with MTV and videos.  See, back in the day, MTV used to mostly show videos of popular songs.

Of course, at the time, this prompted massive hand-wringing about the downfall of Western Civilization:  OMG how will the kids ever be able to concentrate if they get used to watching three minute videos!!  Little did everybody know that within the next twenty years three-minutes for a concentration span would seem like an eternity.  Watch a whole video? Without online comments, snarky one-liners, and multitasking?  Who has time for that?

Anyway, in one classic episode, Beavis loses interest in videos.  I can't remember if he's bored, or angry, or what happens exactly, but he's like "Ugh videos who fucking cares I'm bored this is stupid" and I think it's that episode that he and Butthead decide to smoke some nutmeg, and you can imagine how that goes.

Then some stuff happens.  And a few minutes later, they're back on the sofa.  And a video comes on.  And Beavis is like "Hey! A video! Check it out, Butthead, a video! Cool!!"

I think about this episode all the time because that happens to me a lot.  One day I'm doing something and I'm like blah blah this is stupid and boring blah blah blah and the next day I'm doing the same exact thing and I'm like "Hey! Cool! Check it out Butthead!"

What's changed is my mood.  And if you think about it, moods change everything.  Sometimes I'll put on a certain set of clothes and I'm like Waaah this looks stupid I hate everything and the next day I put on the exact same set of clothes and I'm like Hey, this is looking OK I guess everything's going to be all right after all what's for breakfast?

The fact that moods alter experience so dramatically is already a little WTF in itself.  But the real WTF aspect of moods comes when you think about what, if anything, you ought to do about your moods.

On the one hand, you think:  as much as possible, you should just do the things that put you in a good mood and avoid the things that put you in a bad mood.  What could be more obvious?

On the other hand, though, you think:  wait, isn't that what that whole SOMA thing was from Brave New World? Wasn't that partly just a drug that would put you in a good mood?

This schizo attitude toward moods manifests itself in our profound ambivalence about mood altering substances of all kinds.  It's like, Well, if you're depressed, you should take something.  But to take those drugs when you're not depressed would be somehow wrong.  And that's true even though you're supposed to try improve your mood by exercising and eating right.

It's convenient to try to explain the inconsistency by pointing out that the drugs have negative side-effects and the exercise has positive ones.  But that cannot be the whole story, because if it were, we'd be trying to develop mood-improving drugs for everyone, and not just for depressed people.  But that's not what we're doing. 

It's tempting to try to explain the inconsistency by appealing to something like the desire for reality, for truth, for accurate information about the world.  Maybe you think, Well, to respond to something as if it's pleasurable and fun when it's really not pleasurable and fun is to be deeply misguided.  It's like living in the matrix.

But "really not pleasurable":  what does that mean?

You might say something like "It means how you, or how people in general, would respond to something when they're in a calm and cool state, a kind of neutral mood, not too up, and not too down.

But I am seriously not buying that this makes any sense.  Because there is no such thing as a neutral mood.  You're always in a mood, whether you like it or not.  A "mid-range" mood is just the mood that happens to be in the middle:  if you were on SOMA all the time you're mid-range mood would be through the roof.  A calm mood isn't a neutral mood; hell, in some ways it's the dullest mood there is. 

So I don't think these work.  I think the inconsistency is based on a deep but false mythology we have of ourselves as having true selves which it would be bad to alter unless you had to because you were, you know, depressed or something.

But everyone knows this isn't true really.  If it were, when we see people who start exercise programs or cheer up through yoga or "anger management" we'd be like "Hey Dude Don't Go Changing! That's you there."  Which is, of course, ridiculous.

I am basically on the side of do the things that put you in a good mood, but I confess to a certain amount of residual puzzlement.  Because there's something creepy about always being in a good mood.  Plus, I can't say that "being in a good mood all the time" is a quality I necessarily find attractive in people.

So I don't really know what the story is.

"Have A Sense Of Perspective": Bad And Unnecessary Advice

This post is about yet another of those well-meaning but ultimately pointless and even pernicious pieces of modern wisdom.  This one goes:  "It's really important to have a sense of perspective."

This is generally intended as a reminder to be less caught up in your particular life dramas, less emotional about your particular circumstances, and less focused on the people around you.  It's the kind of thing you say to someone who is all upset because of annoying people at Starbucks to remind them that Hey, There Are People Starving in Africa, So Maybe You Should Just Chill.

I assume it is uncontroversial to point out the obvious:  that everyone has a perspective.  The teenager caught up in some Facebook drama clearly has a perspective on things:  they have a perspective that focuses on their friends as very important and ignores a lot of other stuff.  That's a perspective.  The modern wisdom isn't really about having a perspective, it's about having a certain kind of perspective:  the kind that represents "the long view" or "the point of view of the universe."

So:  what is so great about the long view?  Why should we take the point of view of the universe?  I guess the answer is supposed to be that the long view is a moral view, because it is "impartial" and doesn't introduce "arbitrary" distinctions between people.  If you care about X you should care about Y and Z and everyone else in the same way, and this means not being caught up in your own particular way of seeing things.

But as I see it -- and as philosophers like Bernard Williams have said before -- this just doesn't seem right.  The whole starting point of morality is that some things matter and some things don't, and some things matter more than others.  For most people there are lots of things that matter:  abstract things like truth and justice and generosity, but also particular things like family members and friends, projects like learning to play the piano, fun, art, literature .. the list goes on and on.

If the point of view of the universe means thinking about what matters in a way that has nothing to do with all these different and highly partial values, then how does it get off the ground?  How can you think about what matters and why without using, as a starting point, your own partial and particular beliefs about what matters and why? 

In response we might try something like the following:  we know what well-being is for each person, so from the point of view of the universe, we should do what brings about the most well-being overall, without distinguishing one person's well-being from another.  This would be "impartial."

Let me just say this:  this principle leads to a set of beliefs that is in some ways disturbing. The person who insists on killing one group of people -- or even one person -- in the name of the future well-being of another group of people is frequently thought of as a moral monster, not a moral visionary.  Those who can't love anyone specially because they love everyone equally are not those we admire and are not those we teach our children to emulate.

So:  it is not at all obvious -- I don't even think it's true, but passons -- that the long view, or the point of view of the universe is somehow better than the particular and partial view.

The real problem with most of us, I think, isn't that we have a perspective that is too narrow, but rather that we have multiple perspectives that take hold of us depending on our mood.  Here I think the philosopher Thomas Nagel basically nailed it when he said that because we can take on different perspectives on our lives, we value various and conflicting things.  Like, we value the collective good of everyone, and we value our particular projects and loved ones.  And the difficulty is trying to bring these various values together -- to incorporate them into some way of life. 

Because can be extremely distressing, for real, to find yourself feeling at one moment OMG there are people starving in Africa and feeling at the next moment that the biggest crisis of life is not being able to find a pair of comfortable summer sandals. 

But the answer to that problem is not to "have a sense of perspective."  If you have this feeling, you already have a sense of perspective.  The answer to that problem is to become a try to make a life that reflects the things you care about, by making plans to do things and then doing them and not always being carried away by the mania of the moment in your mind. 

But that's not having a sense of perspective.  That's trying to bring together a bunch of different, conflicting values -- some of which reflect the point of view of the universe, some of which reflect the point of view of a teacher, mother, employer, whatever, and some of which just reflect the point of view of you, alone.

Of course, some of us just don't care enough about other people, but these people don't need to be taught to have a sense of perspective.  They need to be taught to care about other people. 

So next time you're tempted to think or say "have a sense of perspective" to someone, try to back off.  It's an annoying thing to say anyway.

Why Don't We Have Better Designer Drugs?

Just one of the millions of cool pictures of pills you find when you google images of pills.  I got the image here but I don't know where they got it from or what it means.

Do we, or do we not, live in the most advanced consumer culture ever?  We do.

Has there ever been a world so focused on, and so successful at, meeting the immediate desires of its citizens?  There has not.

So why, exactly, am I still relying on caffeine and white wine as my go-to recreational drugs?

It's weird.  In most domains we have far transcended the idea that for something to be worth buying it has to solve some problem.  No one thinks shoes are just for keeping your feet from the ground; no one thinks cake is pointless because it's empty calories; no one thinks that "having a high quality TV" means you can't buy a higher quality, HD TV.  We make and buy stuff that we expect to enhance our well-being, not just treat our difficulties.

But in the drug domain, we don't use this approach at all.  Instead, you got two kinds of drugs:  those to treat medical conditions, and those that are illegal.  OK, we have three kinds of drugs:  treatment, illegal and "alcohol and caffeine."

What is surprising is that the taboo against recreational drugs persists even in the face of a tidal wave of free-market, desire-satisfaction, if-it's-something-you-are-willing-to-pay-for-someone-will-make-it  commodity approach to virtually everything else.  I mean, you're telling me it's less weird to pay someone to carry your baby than it is to pay someone to develop some feel-good drugs?

I think the prohibition is really a lingering effect of some kind of puritanical you-shouldn't-be-having-too-much-fun kind of thinking.  But there are two kinds of arguments that get trotted out for why people shouldn't take relatively harmless drugs.  The first is that they're bad for you:  they're addictive, they have side-effects, they'll hurt you in the long run.  The second is that being fucked up is, like, somehow "letting other people down" and "not being there for them."

I hope it's obvious that the first kind of argument isn't an argument against recreational drug use, it's an argument for better recreational drugs.  It's true that a lot of drugs -- recreational and therapeutic -- can be addictive and harmful, but clearly this means we need more research and better recreational drugs, ones that aren't bad for you.  It's funny.  I mean, in this past week's New Yorker there's a story about saving the banana from some huge blight by genetic engineering, like putting the genes of some animals and other plants into bananas so that they don't respond to the virus by killing themselves.  And I'm thinking, You mean, we can put worm genes into bananas but we can't come up with an anti-depressant that doesn't cause a page of fine print conditions like decreased libido?  Very strange.

The second kind of argument -- that you're letting people down -- is more complicated.  Sometimes it's a sensible thing to say, like if someone is zonked out on some narcotic all day, then it's probably true that they're not really cutting it as a parent or sibling or friend or even pet owner.  Even a dog can't live with someone who is out of it all the time.  But here, of course, we're just back at point one, because if there were subtler recreational drugs we could feel good without being all zonked out.

Other times it's a less sensible thing to say, like when people make the claim that there's something wrong with having four glasses of wine on the weekend because gee, if something happened you wouldn't be able to drive someone somewhere, like, to the hospital.  I'm sorry but that is a really weak argument.  For one thing, it actually is possible to live where you don't have to drive.  And secondly, Hello, You're supposed to call 911 in an emergency, not try to drive.  The idea that we have to be in driving condition all the time is like driving-mania taken to an absurd extreme.  Forget drug addition; that is like driving addiction.

Anyway, I was thinking about our need for better recreational drugs just the other day, when I woke feeling really tired, and also kind of sad.  And on thinking it over, I realized that the reason I felt kind of sad was that I was so tired.  I'm a person who really likes being involved in projects and doing stuff, and when I don't have the energy to get all involved in things, I start to muse on the pointlessness of life, and then I get depressed. 

I think on this given day, I just had a bit of a cold.  But it was a powerful reminder of how much a mood or feeling depends on physical elements of the body.  I mean, you may be feeling sad, but maybe you're just physically worn down.

And if that's true, then wouldn't a harmless pick me up drug be a wonderful thing?  You could have a whole day of being happy instead of unhappy.

Most of the recreational drugs consumer culture needs are familiar, because people have wanted them for a long time:

1.  We need a kind of caffeine-like drug that has a higher quality high and doesn't make you feel bad when it wears off.

2.  We need a drug that mimics the effect of alcohol but doesn't have any calories or bad health effects.  Preferably one that doesn't make you feel bad or hungover when it wears off.

3.  We need a kind of Adderall-for-everyone drug.  A drug that makes you concentrate better, but doesn't have bad effects and doesn't make you feel bad when it wears off.

4.  We need a good aphrodisiac.  Don't we?  Am I wrong?  Preferably one that doesn't make you feel bad when it wears off.

5.  How about something like nicotine?  Almost perfect as is, except for the bad health effects.  Oh, and the addictiveness.  And make sure it doesn't make you feel bad when it wears off.

The common theme, of course, is that we need the upsides of drugs without the downsides.  Shouldn't that be possible?  I mean, we can put a man on the moon, yada yada yada, surely I can have my cake and eat it too?

Can't I?

Reflection, Rumination, Depression, Melancholy, and the Pointlessness of Human Life

This is Albrecht Dürer's Melencolia I from the 16th century.  I like it so much I have a large framed print of it above my desk at home.  I don't know how well you can see the details (there's a better version here); the woman is surrounded with all the items of learning and science -- she's got a compass, that weird polyhedron, a scale, and so on -- but she is resting her head on her chin in a mode of utter discouragement, disengagement, and sadness.

I like it because even though it was made so long ago I feel I can identify with its sentiments immediately.  In fact, I know about this engraving I because I had a tendency, while doing my intellectual work, to occasionally put my own head on my chin with such an expression.  One day my friend said, "You look just like Melancolia!"  I did.  And I do.

I've always found that certain kinds of intellectual reflection lead me to sad and melancholy feelings.  Why is this?  Maybe it's that if you're thinking about why people are the way they are and why life is the way it is, you're dangerously close to that weird vertigo you can get where life seems meaningless and pointless.  Or maybe it's because intellectual reflection requires you to quiet the strong emotions that tend to connect you most obviously to caring about things and being all engaged in them.

Yesterday, The New York Times ran an article in the magazine exploring the idea that depression might be useful -- that it might have been selected for in evolution for reasons.  I read it with the usual mix of open-mindedness and skepticism 'til I got to this passage, which I must say caught me up a little short because it seemed so apt.

 "It doesn’t matter if we’re working on a mathematical equation or working through a broken heart: the anatomy of focus is inseparable from the anatomy of melancholy."

The broader idea, though, I found less intuitive.  This broader idea is supposed to be that rumination is the activity common to both, and that ruminating is useful.  Ruminating, reflecting, turning something over endlessly in your mind -- these are activities that 1) are good when you're trying to figure out what to do 2) are costly and boring and not things we're apt to just take up and 3) are encouraged by a depressed state of mind, in which eating sleeping sex and work lose their ordinary appeal.

This broader idea struck me as implausible, on grounds mentioned by some critics cited in the article.  If you're really depressed, you do actually do things that are disastrous from an evolutionary point of view.  You fail to take care of your children, or you fail to eat, or whatever.

The other thing I found puzzling is that the article treated depression as if often a person who is depressed is so because they have some unresolved thing they have to sort out.  Like there's an example of a guy who is unhappy in his work but can't decide whether to leave his job. Eventually he decides to leave, and then his depression goes away.

I don't think I've ever been really depressed, so I don't know, but I can tell you that almost none of my sad thoughts arise because I have some unresolved thing I have to figure out.  My sad thoughts have to do with things like the fact that I am going to die, and the fact that the people I love are going to die too, and that even during this brief life there is so much pain and suffering for so many people.  And that life, when you look at it too analytically, can just seem really pointless.

This morning I was having some sad thoughts.  But then the weather cleared, and the sun came out, and everything had that peculiar very early Spring time look you see in the Northeast, where slight differences in the angle of the sun make the season's lights all so different.  The snow everywhere was melting with that drip drippy sound of warm weather.  People were out. Suddenly, I was awash in happy feelings.

So I think it's complicated, this melancholy thing.

You're Always In A Mood, Whether You Like It Or Not

I've been moody lately.

Me at 4:30 heading to the gym: Boo-hoo, life is pointless, I'm just a speck in the universe : (

Me at 7:30 having a cocktail: dum-dee-dum, I love my new cute shoes, cuteoverload is so awesome, and I wonder what's on the radio?

People like to talk about moods as if you can be "in a mood" or not be in one but that actually makes no sense. It's like talking about whether there is weather. There's always weather.

Just like you're always in a mood. Sure, some moods are more extreme than others and when you say you're moody you really just mean that your moods are shifting a lot or unpleasantly extreme. It doesn't mean you're in a mood as opposed to not being in one.

This wouldn't matter except that the whole concept of the no-mood mood infects how we think about "normal life."

For instance. People will tell you that if you're going to make an important decision in your life, you should wait until you're in a quiet, reflective state of mind, rather than in any particular mood.

But if you think about a quiet reflective state of mind as a mood, you wonder, what's so great about a quiet reflective mood over any other kind of mood? After all, sometimes you have to get all fired up in anger, or all passionately miserable, or all jublilantly excited, to really commit to something. What makes those decisions any more arbitrary than any other decisions?

When you're all wound up, the quiet reflective mood seems so boring and dull. Who would want that to be the representative of their true self?

The most you could say in answer to this, I think, is that for some people the quiet mood is more like an average of moods than any particular mood. But for a lot of people that just isn't true: they're so seldom quiet and reflective that this doesn't really reflect their mood average at all.

Also, you sometimes hear people trying to say that what a person really cares about, really values, is what they care about and value when they're in a quiet reflective state of mind—when they're not in any particular mood, they would say.

It has a kind of comforting plausible sound. But if you think of a quiet state of mind as a dull mood rather than no mood at all, then it doesn't make any sense. What's so great about a dull mood?

If you think about the hormonal basis of moods, it's even more puzzling. Famously, women are thought to change "moods" with their menstual cycles. But if you look at the hormone changes of women throughout a month, it's not like there's three weeks of one thing and then a week of another and then "back to normal." It's more like choas: there are several different chemicals, and they go up and down in all kinds of ways.

So when someone says "what you really care about is what you care about when you're not in a mood," I always think, "Is that the ovulating no-mood? The pre-menstrual no-mood? The post-menstrual no-mood"?

Or as a woman can I never be expected to be in no-mood until childbearing years are over? You see how peculiar it is.

Anyway, it reminds me of how adults always think of teenagers as being in some wacky non-normal frame of mind, and themselves as normal. But if you remember being a teenager, probably you thought you were normal and that adults were always half-sleepwalking.

Maybe we are. Who's to say? Just don't think you're going to make a more "accuarate" assessment of the situation just because you're "not in a mood." You're always in a mood. Whether you like it or not.