Breathe in the air (and enjoy)

“Long you live and high you fly
Smiles you’ll give and tears you’ll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be” (Pink Floyd, “Breathe”, 1973)

Contrary to popular belief (and advertisers everywhere), people don’t need a product, service or lifestyle to enjoy life.

A moment of peace in a park or beside a drainage ditch with a Great Blue Heron can stop a busy brain from blocking beauty.

Without the blinders of identity and self-interest, a person can go from listening to an interior monologue capable of souring any perspective (and ruin your life), to enjoying the smallest things—a ladybug on a leaf, ducks quacking and water vapour (for no reason).

Breathing can be enjoyable. In the midst of a problem, you can enjoy breathing (assuming that it is safe to do so).

If you hold your breath long enough, your body breathes for you. Combine this breathed sensation with a heart beating autonomously and you can appreciate self-driving organic automation. 

But breathing and heart-beating (consciously or not) gets boring. After breathing (even if it is enjoyable), people get distracted and ask like Peggy Lee did, “Is that all there is?”

What’s easily enjoyed is easily ignored. We might want to enjoy more, but therein is our problem: What we enjoy triggers our brain’s “reward” centers and makes pleasure habit-forming (see also: “Hedonism, Selfishness and a Womb with a View”).

A pleasure repeated can “set up potentially harmful routines, such as overeating, smoking, drug or alcohol abuse, gambling and even compulsive use of computers and social media” (Breaking Bad Habits).

Enjoyment (and addictive drugs) prompts the brain to release dopamine—a chemical responsible for transmitting signals between nerve cells.

Dr. Russell Poldrack, a neurobiologist at the University of Texas comments, “If you do something over and over, and dopamine is there when you’re doing it, that strengthens the habit even more. When you’re not doing those things, dopamine creates the craving to do it again” (source). 

(Saturday Cartoons)

Therefore, it isn’t prudent to do whatever thou wilt. One will soon find one’s self on auto-pilot, following a predetermined sequence of operations conditioned by habit prompted by pleasure.

One may soon find one’s self on a Hedonic Treadmill chasing a craving for happiness that becomes evermore unattainable.

source

“The hedonic treadmill, which is also referred to as hedonic adaptation, is a metaphor for your set point of happiness. The idea here is that no matter how good or bad something makes you feel, you will eventually return to your original emotional state” (developgoodhabits).

Cue music: “The Windmills of Your Mind“:

“Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon…

Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream…”

“

Aristippus (435-356 BC) the philosopher saw danger in pleasure and advised, “It is not abstinence from pleasures that is best, but mastery over them without being worsted” (source).

“The vice lies not in entering the bordello but in not coming out” (Aristippus)

The philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC) agreed, but his idea of pleasure was ataraxy, “a state of serene calmness.”

Epicurus advised us not to be ambitious but to live in harmony with nature and strive for tranquility brought by contentment with simple things and the absence of pain.

Existential Comics: Was Epicurus Really a Hedonist?

Our happiness formula is backwards. We think, “If I do something great, work overtime, get straight A’s, achieve some goal, then I’ll become more successful, and then I’ll be happier.”

But a few weeks after a goal is achieved, the trip over, the new treasure made familiar, happiness levels return to normal and a new goal is needed to achieve happiness later.

The trick to evading the trap of cravings and treadmills is to not wait until later to be happy. Save time and be happy first! To do that, it’s quite simple: Go without expectations, forget who you are and shift from thinking, “I must do something,” to, “I must do nothing.” The real trick is to enjoy reality as it is, because it is.

You are free to enjoy, but enjoying the world as it is, as you are, is difficult for people who are weighed down by time and things to be done.

Accepting reality without need, fear, or demand, with a sigh, without resistance, “this is what it is,” you suddenly find yourself relaxing into what there is (see also: “This too shall pass“).

Enjoyment, World Peace… and Something Else—Guaranteed!

Let’s mash it. Let’s smash it. Let’s get creative! The meaning of life is in what you make it. Let’s juxtapose a few things. See what happens. Incongruecies can be funny. To smile, to laugh, per chance to enjoy.

Lester Burnham, played by Kevin Spacey in the movie American Beauty (1999), said, “Remember those posters that said, ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life‘? Well, that’s true of every day but one—the day you die.” In his closing narration, Lester describes meaningful experiences in his life. Despite his death, Lester is happy because there’s “so much beauty” in the world.

Lester watching stars (final scene.)

The phrase ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life‘ comes from 1960’s wisdom. It now appears in The Walking Dead as, “To our newest undead recruits. Good moaning. Today is the first day of the rest of your afterlife.” 

Kinda funny (not really).

The blogger Craig McKee lists 57 zombie and doomsday movies that came out from 2000 to 2015 (source). To McKee these movies tell us that “living in peace, co-operation, and connectedness with others on this planet is an illusion, a luxury we can’t afford when survival is on the line. In the end, it’s eat or be eaten. The message is that we must be suspicious of each other, mistrustful of each other, isolated from each other, and when it comes down to it, we have to struggle against each other to survive.”

McKee refers to “predictive programming.” It’s a theory about the use of entertainment to “introduce planned societal changes.” Regardless of the theory’s validity, a steady diet of mistrust, fear and violence might not be good. As Kurt Vonnegut said, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be” (Mother Night).

Science tells us is that violence is transmitted like a disease (source). Violence begets violence but you can create a world where violence is rare by not being violent. Picture a beautifully interconnected world of trees, birds and flowers, “Tweet, tweet.” Now make a wish and blow out the candle. Wish for world peace, then make it happen.

Don’t look for problems or make complications. Be a wish fulfilled by your actions. Life is a celebration (see also: Enjoy an Interlude). Life is a religious experience. Death isn’t. The only thing we know about death is that it stinks.

When you know that the feeling of consciousness within you is the same as in all you’s including non-human animals, you won’t be bullied or bamboozled into hurting another “you” (like you) and world peace is guaranteed!

People will argue that it’s a crazy idea. Of course, it’s overly simplistic. Enjoying not harming is ridiculous because the world is complicated and people are too self-interested and won’t do it, but therein is the key! Not doing and self-interest are integral! Not doing is easy! World peace is as easy as watching grass grow! Now curl your toes in fun and enjoy it!

Nature happens gloriously as we occupy ourselves in fantasy, mechanized, digital, virtual or otherwise.

“The problem with doing nothing is you never know when you’re finished” –Groucho.

Wide-eyed awareness of one’s mind expanded is the answer. If the past was about groups, mobs, gangs, religions and nations clashing for control, the future belongs to the individual.

It is as the Three Musketeers said, “All for one and one for all on this ecologically interconnected ball we men with big hats and flouncy pants call the world!”

Cue music.

Through enjoyment we make the world better for everyone by not hurting anyone. Life is rare. Our forays into space have said as much.

“I can’t help that. I’ve been chubby all my life” – Frank Cannon, Private Eye.

Like a giddy child, happy in a world of fun, let’s proceed with our Philosophy of Enjoyment investigation. Is there anyone who wouldn’t want to live a happy and enjoyable life—free and healthy, having fun, finding love, doing exciting things, having friends, eating, sleeping, procreating?

Let’s ask: Why are people baffled and baffling? Why is happiness elusive? Why is self-awareness lacking and ignorance in surplus?

“Silence is of the gods; only monkeys chatter… Life is too serious to do farce comedy” – Buster.

To explain why the world is as it is, the political philosopher Slavoj Žižek (1949- )—a fun Slovenian if ever there was one—takes the idea that individuals are always “split” between what we consciously know and can say about stuff, and the unconscious beliefs we hold of “the big Other” (authority figures and the regime we’re under).

Slavoy zigzags between knowledge and belief saying that we don’t know what “the essence” of “their people” is but our beliefs are decisive (source).

Rub-A-Dub-Dub, Slavoj pontificates in a tub: “The one measure of true love is: you can insult the other… If you have reasons to love someone, you don’t love them.”

Knowledge is objective truth. Belief is subjective truth. Knowledge is thought true because it’s independent of circumstances. Belief is an idea held as true to the individual who holds it but not necessarily to everyone (see also: The Enjoyment Argument).

If you know something is true then you must believe it, but just because you believe it does not make it true! We think in terms of self and other (one or the other) but we’re one together—like one cell in the 37 trillion that make up a human, so you are to the world (source).

The existence of another (a not-self) allows us each to recognize our own self, as in: “Yoo-hoo, I see you! I don’t control your body or hear your thoughts. You are separate. You are not me. Therefore, I am me” (Schalk, 2011).

The self/other (one or the other) division is how a modern person understands who she, he, they is by recognizing what s/he/they is not! But what happens when you identify yourself with another or when you behave differently than you typically act causing you to appear as other to yourself?

Reality is not a matter of consensus. As the author Johann von Goethe (1749-1832) said, “Behaviour is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.”

Enjoy good humor and Jonathan’s wisdom.

Sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) said that there is no reality without the colour of our wishes and fear. “Reality is what one does not perceive when one perceives it” (source).

Your mission, should you choose to accept it (hear that music!), is to start a nuclear fusion of enjoyment worldwide (with or without ice cream). You can perceive reality differently by consciousness-raising right here.

Right now.

It’s a gentle click of understanding when you enjoy reality imagined.

Humour, Enjoyment and Low Hanging Fruit

People are consistent when it comes to humour. You meet someone and know pretty quickly where on the humour continuum they stand.

Not that you need a sense of humour. A University of Karachi study found that, “there is no relationship between a sense of humor and mental health” (Tariq & Khan, 2013, p 338).

In today’s world, where banks create money out of nothing and charge interest for it, where a few people are hilariously rich and politicians are in their pockets, where a GDP is more important than our biosphere and spandex is suitable for any body type – if you didn’t laugh, you’d probably cry.

Tears of laughter and sadness look alike, but sad tears make you feel sorry for yourself and happy tears take you out of yourself. Humour can re-frame the world in a light that’s enjoyable (instead of deplorable).

In psychology “framing” refers to how we “react to a particular choice in different ways depending on how it is presented; e.g. as a loss or as a gain” (Wikipedia). How we frame predicts enjoyment potential.

Confucius gave two answers to the same question to two students. Zilu asked, “May one immediately put into practice what one has learned?” The Master said something about one’s father and brothers. When Ran Yǒu asked the same question, the Master said, “Yes, one may” (11.22, Book XI, Analects). Teachings are correct in relation to the student. So is humour.

Confucius said, “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” The same goes for humour.

Each of us is born into a situation. We inherit a genetic blueprint not of our choosing.

If you have mild brain damage and grow up in a bad home, that’s the hand you’re dealt.

People come to the table with different ways of seeing the world and different personalities and capacities to make decisions. You could be rich and miserable, poor and miserable or in a miserable middle.

Misery is not totally monetarily related.

Books like A Fine Balance (2001) and Tortilla Flat (1935) show how people prevail under any circumstance. Despite incredible hardships characters are amused by things that are easy to get and all around (like low hanging fruit).

Wit can be barbed and satire harsh, but humour expresses comfortable feelings without unpleasant effects on others. Humour can help you bear “what is too terrible to be borne” (Tariq & Khan, p. 333).

A wild and crazy guy.

Mel Brooks (a comedian) said, “Life literally abounds in comedy if you just look around” and Steve Martin (a sort of comedian) said, “Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke,” meaning: the degree to which something is funny suggests that almost anything could be funny, it’s just a matter of sensing it (without vomit).

To be funny (and not scary) humour has to be benign. It can be dark but not too dark. It can be offensive but not too offensive.

A teeny weeny minority (in number, not stature) don’t find anything funny. An even teenier (and weenier) minority find everything funny, but the vast majority find at least some things funny.

Video of Granny.

So, what’s funny? Is an old woman wielding a shotgun funny? It depends who she aims at. It’s like musical appreciation. Some people actually enjoy Huey Lewis and the News.

It’s all relative.

When a person says to you, “I’m trying to find myself,” it’s not funny to say, “Where’d you go?”

When someone says, “Who am I?” and you say, “A big goof-ball.” That’s not helping. As Mother used to say, “Another person’s angst is not cause for merriment.”

When someone complains of a lack of meaning in their life, you know that person has indoor plumbing.

When someone asks, “What’s my purpose?” and you say, “To massage my feet. Here, I’ll take off my socks.” That just isn’t funny.

Snoopy (aka Charles Schultz) thinks his life has no meaning, but he is happy. It’s funny because it goes against a preconception. Slavoj Žižek (a philosopher) tells a story of a worker suspected of stealing:

“Every evening, as he leaves the factory, the wheelbarrow he rolls in front of him is carefully inspected. The guards can find nothing. It is always empty. Finally, the penny drops: what the worker is stealing are the wheelbarrows themselves…” (Violence).

Humour is like that – so is amusement and enjoyment. It’s under your nose. Lighten your wheelbarrow.

Why is purpose and meaning associated with happiness? The Dalai Lama (aka Lhamo Thondup) said between giggles, “men should have a purpose.” He also said, “The purpose of our lives is to be happy” (29 Dalai Lama quotes).

Perhaps purpose and result are the same thing.

Meaning is in the thing itself. Just as a flower flowers to flower, you are you to you. Enjoy to enjoy to enjoy. It’s nuclear and self-fulfilling.

Is It Serious?

We here at the Philosophy of Enjoyment have been working extra hard, day and night while listening to non-stop roaring twenties music, to make our enjoyment your priority!

No doubt as your philosophy of enjoyment takes shape, you’ve written down a few reoccurring themes in your official Philosophy of Enjoyment notebook (order yours today!), themes like: the value of nature; the importance of loneliness, weakness and inaction; how to use your will-power to force yourself to enjoy – even during a proctology exam; how to use yourself as an observation post; and, the importance of humour.

It is towards  humour that we cast our enjoyment net today.

Would you say that you’ve got a good sense of humour or are you a hard nut to crack? What makes you laugh? Is it slapstick, satire, the bizaare, or the goofball next door? On a scale from one to ten, how would you rate your ability to be amused? If you scored yourself less than a five on the amusement scale, you’ve got work to do. Watch some comedy. You might begin with Albert Brooks.

Not everyone will find Albert Brooks or any other comedian funny. It’s a matter of opinion. That’s not the point. This is not about what is and isn’t funny. This is about one’s ability to enjoy humour in the grind of day-to-day life. The question isn’t, Is it funny? The question is, Is it serious? or, How serious are you?

Humour is a funny thing. What one person takes as a joke, another will take as an offense. Where one person would laugh at an inflatable dart board, another would be afraid. Humour is an individual experience. It’s like one’s taste in music, fashion or food. It’s purely subjective.

Things look eggy.

We each have likes and dislikes. That’s what makes each of us unique individuals. Metaphorically speaking, we each wear eye glasses that colour our world. Our glasses are the thoughts, beliefs and attitudes we have. What colour are your eye glasses?

The point is not what you find funny or unfunny, the point is what’s your level of seriousness. Can you find amusement in the face of adversity or do you get depressed or angry? If you want to enjoy life, amusement is better.

We all know how humour can be used for good – to lighten a mood, to point out an absurdity – or for bad – to shock and to bully. Mean-spirited humour can stir a mob to brutality with emotions of hatred (not good) and gentle humour can soften an injury, make a bad situation better or create a good feeling (much better), but that’s not really the point.

The point of this isn’t to criticize mean-spirited comedy or to praise gentle comedy. This isn’t about finding fault or taking a side in the good/bad humour divide. The point isn’t to analyze comedy. That’s fatal! Everyone will laugh or not laugh at different things. To each his own, as they say.

The point of this is that it all depends upon your level of seriousness. If you’re too serious, you won’t enjoy anything. You’ll always find something to be disappointed about. Lighten-up! It isn’t that serious! Life isn’t serious. It’s to be enjoyed – no matter what!

If you don’t like not enjoying yourself, the trick is to create new thoughts to slowly replace the deep-seated beliefs that you have about yourself.

A philosopher of enjoyment repeats to himself: life isn’t serious! It could be worse! I laugh in the face of danger! Nothing gets me down! People are funny! It’s all good even when it isn’t. I am a light-hearted person. I take life as it comes. I laugh when I fall on my bum. Anything and everything can be funny. It’s in your attitude.

Don’t get so serious. What do you think? Post a comment. Let’s discus it.