‘Daddy’s
got a fascist pamphlet to write’
‘Why are we here?’ That is the eternal question that has been breaking both
professional and amateur minds for centuries. Some while leaning on a hoe in
the evening sun out in the fields, others while scratching their learned
whiskers, staring with burning eyelids onto their Biedermeier writing cabinets,
muttering the words slowly and emphatically to facilitate the object’s
penetration. And perhaps a third in jest, with a fake French waiter’s accent: ‘why are we ‘ere?’ However, since we are here no matter what, and have found few
tools over the centuries to ‘crack the case’ as it were (God is rumoured to
have gone to Tahiti for a drinking & fishing trip with his buddies), and
since I consider the matter a rhetorical question, I try to spend as little
time as possible on it. My philosophy is: we are here, and there we are.But why are we here on Facebook? That’s a question I find harder to shake off. In fact, it is haunting me several times a day. One could say that it’s a choice we make. And, to further get to the core and lift the dilemma from the general into the personal, I ask myself: why am I on Facebook? There’s so much about Facebook I detest and saddens me to the point of complete despair (my fleeing the scene on three occasions proves my anguish) so why do I come back each time, to have my teeth kicked in and be thrown out of the brothel ass-backwards again? The answer is quite simple and can be stated in Paul Simon words: lookin’ for fun & feelin’ groovy. Facebook is very attractive for me as well, for many things and on many levels. If only I could solve the issue of the choking rage and spitting disgust…
I am absolutely convinced that there has to be a way to have fun without the annoyance and the consequent imploding & self-blaming. There just has to be. I should stop poking sticks in a dead horse and just learn to have fun with the other maggots that crawl around on it… So let me in this article – which I hope few people will read and only those with a lenient mind – examine myself vis-á-vis Facebook and find a peaceful understanding regarding Life on Facebook as we know it. Perhaps my conclusions and tools can even be extrapolated to the real world where similar problems circumlocute.
Let us begin our descent into the digital underworld. Where does my disharmony start? It usually does not start off with contempt but with humour; being amused by behaviour I find childish and, or foolish. I am amused and like to poke fun at it. Subsequently, like a floe, a chunk of ice, breaking away from the ice-field, so do I feel my own world view drifting away from large portions of the population. And because I am not blessed with a strong sense of self-worth, I don’t see my way as superior and others’ as inferior, in an aggressive, martial way. Different people’s views almost never make me mad with them; my faith in my own is too strong for that. However, the firmness of my convictions does make others’ ‘errors’ seem quite absurd… and being outnumbered so heavily does the rest.
Then, a counter movement rises up in me, more like a jester than a protester. When I feel a situation to be wrong and hear no one speak up, just accepting the downpour with moronic songs of praise… then then there are three things one can do. 1. Get out & Stay out… abandon ship! 2. Rely on reason and tell the people fair & square how you feel, preferably wrapped in jokes. 3. Rely on other people’s reason & insight and try to be an example, a subtle beacon. I’ve tried all three and nothing works. Getting out solves nothing and abandoning ship is forbidden by Thomas More; my reasoning seldom found a listening ear and a willing mind, my humour was undetected; and my examples have mostly been looked at with hateful eyes (apart from the obvious exceptions).
When we limit ourselves to the crusade against Facebook we can see: Facebook has stayed the same and will always stay the same. So let’s not be a stubborn mule and let’s approach this hornet’s nest from the other side. I now see that I have been looking at the problem from the wrong way all along. There’s a fourth way: changing myself! The problem with Facebook was I, not ‘the others’. I knew it, but I didn’t believe myself.
I tried to make fun of myself and others with friendly irony, cuddly sarcasm even. A friend of me told me yesterday she didn’t like my Profile Picture of the cartoon of me in suit & top hat. I told her: neither do I. I had meant it. It wasn’t nice… it wasn’t friendly. The picture was a joke, mostly directed at myself, but also with the message: look people, stop taking yourselves so seriously. Stop all this silly vanity, thinking you look good in a slick suit or a tarty wedding dress. My condemnation was wrong. My message was moralistic. There are no morals; there’s only reality. Morality is a sucker for babies. Things will never change. Progress is the carrot dangling in front of the horses pulling the chart. The next generation will wed in a gaudy suit & meringue, believe in posterity, in status, will be showing off and… will have their Great War all over again. It’s logical, it’s natural.
I must, for my own sake, come to terms with it. Accept. Stop caring. Facebook is half a world, a world of smiles, forced or otherwise. A world without shadows. There are ‘likes’, no ‘dislikes’, ‘friends’, no ‘enemies’… heaven, no hell. There’s applause or otherwise… silence. Facebook is the sound of one hand clapping. It’s a wold of self-promotion. We want to show our friends how pretty, successful (biologically, financially and social status-wise) we are, how funny, creative, animal-friendly, morally sublime, sophisticated and well-loved… All things nice with sugar and spice. To build a castle for our egos and roll over in our gilded vanity. And that is good… yes, that is good, I now see it. I was wrong, a Utopian Idealist and a Crazy Ascetic expecting a better truth of reality. It was as if I was asking from chickens to bark or whales to tap-dance. I wanted a ballet of monster trucks. And it ain’t gonna happen, brothers & sisters! It will not happen, Martijn. I was a pseudo Mormon chief. And a hypocrite! Oh yes, a hypocrite. The biggest! King Hypocrite the First. What was I thinking? Rejecting vanity is the vainest thing in the world. An impossible goal that can only lead to a conflict of interest. (And unhappiness! Do I expect to like myself when I can’t make the mental genuflection of trying to make other people like me?)
My problem was expecting something ‘better’… according to how I would like the world to be. Silly me. I can smile over my foolish old self now. I must stop being a hypocrite, stop dreaming and wake up to reality: the world is a market and we are all travelling salesmen of ourselves. We are scheming, manufacturing, spinning, stealing and promoting the product that is our Success. No truth, no whole package, just success. And while we’re at it, we let the spills, the victims and the environmental waste drip away unnoticed behind our backs. But look at our shiny products! Three for a dollar... I must learn to be my own window dresser and get away with murder. Smiles are like moustaches: even the real ones are fake. But that is good: fake is good. And lies are beautiful. Let’s keep our eyes on the price.
There are people who don’t know how to behave, to step in line, to master the art of conformity. A friend of mine for instance. He lives in a small village in the north. Once upon a time, our former Monarch, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands et cetera, visited the township. Everybody had painted their fences, installed a colourful display of flags, cut their lawns, washed their necks and cars and stood waving like mad along the route. All except my friend, who’s front yard was littered with beer cans and bicycle wrecks. A picture of his house appeared in the newspaper the following day, captioning: “Not everybody had made such effort to appropriately welcome our beloved Queen.” And that is perfectly okay… as long as you can take it and are not plagued by a conscience, that pushy little swine that gives you bad sleep and a bald spot if you’re a really serious listener to it. So when you have the maverick gene but a conscience too… you better conform to general stupidity and adopt the biggest smile you can afford!
Another thing I have learned is that another presumption of me was wrong, namely that it is purely a selfish act to share one’s happiness, success and conquests. There is no Law of Conservation of Happiness (when one man’s happiness would come out of the pocket of the next)… there may actually be something as getting happy from someone else’s happiness. I still think that a good grumpy funny story will make more people happy than a dull, sugar-coated drippy story, but that’s not the point. Sharing (and by doing so enlarging) happiness may actually exist!
We must optimise said market and get as many likes as we can tolerate, and then up our threshold. And when the old me would rather have owed up to a bank robbery I didn’t commit than telling about one of my virtues, the new me should not be afraid to claim the rescue of a stray dog from a well, or the personal acquaintanceship of a Hollywood celebrity. That’s the game! And that is how it should be played. I must cheer at each person’s longing for applause and learn to like applause myself. To dance & sing and learn how to bow with glee and grace! I must learn to embrace Eros and Madness. Amen, basta, the final word, the end, last round, schluß. I can’t change the rules, I must play along. I must say: ‘my friends, this is a jolly nice game we’re playing… who’s dealing?’
Poo poo pi doo!
