On change

On emotional shifts

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Last year, one of my friends turned anti-vaxxer. There was an aggressive Facebook comment, a confused exchange on Messenger, a meeting in person after lockdown, and a few back and forth emails. Then silence.

He was not a very close friend, but we’d known each other for a while, and supported each other on various projects. This lost relationship affected me. So, a few weeks ago, I got curious and cyber-stalked him.

His Twitter feed got me locked in fascinated horror. I had expected links and videos vindicating Ivermectin and the dangers of the vaccine. The rest was a surprise: memes mocking trans-rights or vegan food, articles framing climate change as a hoax, and a snippet from a One nation senator, captioned ‘absolute legend’. 

I sensed a spiralling anger in myself, as I doom-scrolled through that feed. We used to build community together, joined efforts to make the world more hospitable. Now we were on opposite sides. I felt an urge to debate in my head, engage, change his mind.

I doubted it would achieve much. I let it cool down. Luckily, I had a martial arts class to go to. On the way back, anger washed off by sparring, I pondered. Apart from an occasional caption, nothing on that feed was my friend’s actual writing. It was all re-tweets and shares.

I started seeing the grotesque humour in the situation. Here he was, a proud advocate of independent thinking, serving as an echo chamber only. As if a grumpy conspiracy-bot had taken over his handle. 

With this came greater empathy. Savvy communicators, no doubt, crafted the content he shared. They got inside his brain, and reproduced there. I thought of the zombies in Dawn of the dead, repeating the routines of their past lives, locked inside a shopping mall. Like them, my friend was stuck in a loop of self-reinforcing belief. His brain was mush, and he wanted mine.  

‘He’s gone’, I thought, ‘let’s run.’ It was no longer about truth or justice. It was about staying alive, and safe. Certainly, any sense of blame had passed, and I was able to let go. I looked at his feed again, just now. I was amused, and a little bit sad. I think this is how mourning progresses.

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The tragic character says ‘I would rather suffer and die than compromise my identity’. That’s Antigone, that’s Elektra, that’s Oedipus. By contrast, the comic character says: ‘I’ve got so many faces, I’m sure we can find an angle that will satisfy everyone.’

I see this approach as a celebration of human intelligence, in the service of peace. Things go wrong, the character shape-shifts, and projects an illusion to prevent catastrophe.

Contrast the romance of West Side Story with that in The Barber of Seville. The first unfolds like a doomsday machine, external forces pressing identities towards enormous pain, mutually assured destruction. In the latter, the lovers use tricks and costumes to bypass the desires of the old man who stands in their way. Desire trumps ego: they would much rather get what they want than remain who they are.

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It’s my first time seeing Kabuki. I’m in Tokyo for just a few days. It seemed like a thing I should do. Plus, the friend hosting me suggested it. It felt rude to say no.

We’re sitting inside the dark theatre. I have no clear idea what’s happening. I know nothing about the art form. I notice, however, that once in a while, the actor takes a pose and freezes. The audience claps and shouts a name. Then the actor starts moving again.

Here’s what I noted then: it’s not a series of well-executed steps, not a melody, not a compelling monologue, that will yield admiration from the audience. It’s not movement, but stillness. And I thought, what if this was the result of a different stance towards the world? One where life is not perceived as a pile of rocks we must push up the slope until we die, but a constant whirlwind beyond our control – and noble effort is just about holding the flow for a moment. Then we detach, and let things return to their natural chaos.

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The Catholic tradition presents a set of seven deadly sins, and seven virtues. Because the numbers match and I like symmetry, I’ve often reflected on the best way to match them.

For a long time, I used to think in terms of frontal opposites: deploy temperance as an austere shield against lust or gluttony, in a frontal battle for the soul. It didn’t work, and I would blame myself, or fall into moral despair. 

More recently, I developed a different approach, where each sin is the perverted form of a virtue. Resistance, then, becomes a lateral strategy. It’s not temperance raised up to keep out desire from the body. Rather, it’s temperance as the deflector of sloth. It’s finding joy and meaning in simply being there, rather than frenetically running around in pursuit of desire.

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The change maker paradigm sets young people, with a burning desire for justice, against the rigid structures of the world. It teaches rebellion as the art of pushing walls till they crumble. When I think about change, I prefer chemistry to mechanics. Bring the right molecules in contact, and let them react.

Making yourself happy

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I was at an event a few days ago. There was chilled Pinot Grigio, wooden walls, and the sound of a vacuum cleaner in the background. It was a bunch of thought leader types looking for ways to build a hopeful community. Well, that was the brief. The main speaker repeatedly mentioned how that event was all about ‘people connecting’. Meanwhile, he used his mastery – and what a master he was – to hog attention and energy. But hey, who’s free from such contradictions?

About two thirds of the way through, another speaker – a finance consultant – said the following. That he worked with the people who did well, if not best, in the current system. And that as much as he could see, those people were mostly not happy. Then the conversation moved on, and the thought passed.

It stayed with me – and has been resonating since, as one of the saddest things I’ve heard. I wrote a short Linkedin post about it – which resonated with people. So here I am, expanding on those reflections.

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Aristotle proposes that happiness – eudaimonia – is the purpose of the good life. It is also the sign of a life well lived. Happiness here is not simply the experience of pleasure. It is an emergent property, arising from satisfaction taken in the exercise of an activity. But not only that, it is also the result of long term accretion, as one goes through life, and develops friendships, knowledge and healthy habits. So never listen to the life advice of a grumpy old man. Their misery signals a life poorly lived.

Sure, happiness is partly dependent on luck, placing material goods and people of compatible temperament in our way – or simply giving us a favorable starting point. It is, in equal part at least, dependent on our choices, our commitment to cultivate the cardinal virtues of prudence, courage, justice and temperance or moderation. Happiness is thus something that we develop consistently, over time. Irrespective of where we start, we can become happier.

More, in the views of Aristotle and other proponents of virtue ethics, happiness is something we must cultivate. As a teenager, I became obsessed with Andre Gide. In his journal he writes: ‘It is a duty to make ourselves happy’. I have adopted that sentence as a motto, and an encouragement to cultivate virtue. Not that I have never fallen prey to depressive or anxious spells, but that – as a fundamental beacon for my own life, I should look at what would yield consistent, long-term happiness.

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How did we come to build a system where the people who ‘succeed’ are not happy? I mean – I see the contradictions of our post-colonial, partiarchal, neoliberal capitalist societies – but how does the model perpetuate itself? Why are leaders, and other ‘successful people’, not putting a stop to it all, saying ‘this makes me miserable’? For those who were less privileged to start with – or failed to build the right habits – well, their lack of happiness would make sense. But surely, a good system is one where success comes with profound fulfilment.

My default first step towards the answer is not exactly joyful. One of my favourite pieces of political philosophy is a text by Montesquieu, from The Spirit of the Laws, where he describes the distinct passions that underly different political regimes. A true republic, says Montesquieu, relies on a collective desire for virtue. Aristocracy relies on honour. Tyranny rests on fear. Corollary, you know what regime a country lives under by observing what passion dominates among its people.

This doesn’t bode well for us. In spite of much hand-wringing about democracy (and its purported threat from China, Russia, Iran and other rogue states), the dominant passion I observe around me seems to be fear, much more than a passionate love of virtue. Whether it’s corporate types avoiding responsibility, or millennials retreating from the world to nurture their generalised anxiety. Workplaces at least – no matter how many Chief Happiness Officers they might appoint – do not seem to nurture the consistent practice of healthy habits (or virtue), leading their employees to experience deep lasting happiness. Gin cocktails and ping pong tables notwithstanding.

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In late 2020, I joined hands with a peer – facilitator extraordinaire Helen Palmer – to organise a little digital experiment. We brought together a bunch of friends to design and test mourning rituals. The proposal was to experiment with DIY models to process the negative emotions accumulated through the pandemic. The hopes and aspirations that would not manifest, the futures desired and never come to life, the senses of self shattered under the pressure of forced isolation.

It’s been a long obsession of mine, that the present times call on us to process enormous amounts of grief. It’s not just COVID – it’s climate change, environmental collapse, the death of species, and the overall experience of living in the end times. As many other middle class Europeans, I grew up in a joyful utopia of globalised consumerism. It was the end of the Cold War, infinite growth, human progress, and diminished suffering. Many of my childhood dreams played out against the background of an expanding world. And though new dreams have come, new real possibilities of real happiness – many ghosts remain.

I don’t think it’s just me. I sense it around me. That collectively, we need to process the enormous grief of a society that hit its environmental limits. Grief not only for what has been properly lost – the Pyrenean Ibex, the Western Black Rhino, the Baiji, all gone the way of the Dodo – but also for lost futures, for the loss of imagined opportunities, predicated on infinite resources and energy. I have not been trained to deal with that much grief, nor has anyone I know. Nor do I see much effort to process this grief. In fact, much of the current blockages, resistance to climate action and system change, I ascribe to this emotional weakness. The people who did well in the current system – older upper and middle class white men, for most of them – are hardly capable of processing grief at all that I can see. The prospect of dealing with the loss of future worlds continuing their legacy far outstretches their capacity. So they remain firmly stuck in denial. And meanwhile the world collapses.

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It was half a year ago, at an event run by Regen Melbourne, exploring a regenerative future for the city. The closing circle invited participants to reflect on their vision for the future of Melbourne. ‘I imagine a city full of glitter, and lots of sex,’ I said. It was an obvious provocation, but one anchored in the intuition that we cannot build a better world based on sad passions alone. I am a Catholic at heart, and experience it as an exuberant religion. The first miracle was turning water into wine – and good wine at that. We need a sense of abundant gratuitous joy, if we are to channel enough energy to go forward – and rebound after accepting the weight of grief. For this, we need to nurture our capacity to experience greater pleasure, with less material input. And this is also the cornerstone of moderation, basis of all virtues, and hence of happiness.