Unbridled joylessness

Let us go back a few months to this year's Met Gala.

The theme for this year's gala was "Black Dandyism". The co-chairs, besides the ever-present Anna Wintour, were Sir Lewis Hamilton, Colman Domingo, A$asp Rocky, and Pharrell Williams. The gala celebrated Black fashion and culture, and how Black people persevere in a racist society. And, of course, the Met Gala is also a yearly fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, the only part of the Met which must raise its own yearly budget. Far from a "Bonfire of the Vanities," the yearly event is what philanthropy is made for. And the gala raises $4 for every $1 spent. Not a bad return on money.

However, on social media one could be forgiven if one were to think from the general reaction that the attendees were fiddling while Rome burned. That they were out of touch elites who should be put to the sword. That the entire event was worthless, pointless, and everyone involved should be marched off to the guillotine. I could imagine mobs of the proletariat storming the venue and violently ripping the attendees' clothing from their bodies before delivering the coup de grâce. 

Did race have something to do with it? Of course it did. When does it not? But I think there is something deeper at work.

Shortly after the election, there was a user on Bluesky who went on a tirade about people enjoying sports. It was frivolous. It distracted from things of import. The world was burning and how dare you have fun? Such pronouncements have not diminished. In fact, they've grown worse, as things get worse. Life is a vale of misery, and if you derive any enjoyment from it you are of the House of Darkness.

The reaction to the Met Gala—and would the reaction have been the same had the theme not centered the Black experience?—led me to this realization: Unbridled joylessness.

Unbridled joylessness is the dark counterpart to unbridled joy. Someone who lives in unbridled joy does not ignore the world and its state. She doesn't dismiss the suffering which afflicts so much of humanity. But in her joy, in living her best life, she can effect change, because she is not paralyzed in anger and fear. She meets the darkness with light. She meets the sorrow with happiness. She shows that there is a better path the fear and animus. That love is always greater than hate, if you just reach for it and choose it. She comes from a position of hope and agency, where nothing is beyond her powers.

Those who dwell in unbridled joylessness have no hope. The world is black, and so are they. They live in an inky darkness of despair, unable to see any light, unable to see any way out. They are the people in Plato's Cave, seeing only the flickering, faint shadows of what they perceive to be existence, unaware—and unwilling to become aware—of the light and color outside of the cave. 

But it's more than that. They give proof to the adage that "misery loves company". They demand that you be as joyless and miserable as they are. If you demur, then you don't care about the millions suffering, and you kick puppies as well. On the social media platform I used to frequent, there was a woman who averred that she would happily accept human extinction if it meant that the rest of the creatures on earth would be saved. I responded in a manner I thought was both empathetic and sympathetic. I was rewarded by her blocking me because I was "telling her how to feel".

Unbridled joylessness is more than misery loves company. It's a position that you don't root yourself in the darkness, you can't fix the darkness. But that has it the wrong way. When you are stuck in a problem, subsumed in it, you can see no way out. You can see no way out because your view is myopic. You take the problem as the entirety of reality. When, in fact, any problem is just a minor part of the world's greater reality. It is only when you step back and look at things in a holistic manner that you can tackle the issue. Unbridled joylessness demands purity of sorrow. But you can't conquer hatred with hatred, and you can't assuage sorrow with more sorrow. 

The answer to sorrow is joy, not joylessness. Joylessness embeds the sorrow in the soil, letting it take deep root. Joylessness strengthens those roots. But the roots are imaginary. Refuse to give into that joylessness, and they are as loose string. 

Our enemies on all fronts want us to feel despairing and despondent. They want us to feel hopeless. They want us to feel joyless. When we give them that, they win. Refuse them. As I say, seize your joy. It is what will get us through these troubled times.