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05/08/01 07:18 PM: I was talking to a
I was talking to a friend today. She said that she was sitting around in her room over the weekend and all of a sudden started asking herself, “Why are we here?” What are we doing here? Why do we buy things? Why do we have to get money to be successful? Why do we have to be successful in the first place? Why are we here, conscious, capable of being “successful?” She got quite angry and frustrated when she couldn’t come up with an answer. She said that she got so angry at the materialism of society that she just started throwing things away. She became depressed when she couldn’t find a satisfactory answer. Then she kind of cheered up and forgot about it Monday when she went back to school and was surrounded by people again. Nothing fosters depression better than loneliness. I guess it’s still bothering her but not to such an extreme. Then she started talking about how ignorance truly is bliss, which is an offshoot of the previous topic. If the question of ultimate meaning does not occur to someone, then they cannot be troubled by the answer (or lack thereof). She went on to say that the typical jock/prep is quite content in their little world of sports, fashion, and other trivial pursuits because they are ignorant of most of the other things that are happening around them. One must be careful of generalizations, but I’d have to say that’s true in a lot of cases. But “ignorance is bliss” applies to any situation, really. Then I got the Spring issue of The Wilson Quarterly today. Lo and behold, there was an essay entitled “What Does It All Mean?” that was basically what we had been discussing today, though, admittedly, in much fancier language and several orders of complexity higher. It basically said that we apply meaning to so many things
