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Dear Cory:
Is there any point to being a futilitarian?
Krodork
Dear Krodork:
Not only is your unusual name evocative, it is also a palindrome. Cory loves palindromes; his favorite is "Doc, note. I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness; I diet on cod." Longer palindromes, fiendishly difficult to compose, teeter on the edge of sense: "T. Eliot, top bard, notes putrid tang emanating, is sad. I'd assign it a name: gnat dirt upset on drab pot toilet" or "Miry rim! So many daffodils," Delia wailed, "slid off a dynamo's miry rim!" A charming side effect of that teetering is the creation of notions never before contemplated, such as how a dynamo might have a miry rim, let alone that it could be chosen as the slippery perch for a host of golden daffodils -- or how being husky, as they used to say in the Sears catalogue, could be empathically and accurately described as suffering from a fatness. But Cory meanders yet again. Are you an alien visiting our formerly fair planet? Krodork sounds like the kind of name given to a choice infant destined to travel in a capsule from a distant galaxy to a Kansas cornfield. If this is your history, and you by chance have any special powers other than the ability to ask circular questions, kindly fill out the howhardcanitbe.com employment application form and consider becoming one of Cory's bodyguards (see howhardcanitbe.com's home page). His body needs a lot of guarding, given how often he sheds his clothes in sketchy venues.
The word futilitarianism was coined in the 1820s to mock the philosophical ideas of utilitarianism, which is concerned with the value of pleasure, its creation, and what pleasurable pursuits should be considered worthy (higher and lower: art and culture vs. the pleasures of the flesh).
Your semi-smart-alec question caused much debate at HHCIB's al fresco nude team-building weekend . The pithiest insight came from our Vice-President of Student Affairs – let us set aside for now how he earned that title -- who remarked that while he sees life and nearly all of human activity as meaningless, he tries to find one or two things each day to keep him interested in living. This seemed dark to staffers who have been indoctrinated with optimistic ideas designed to upsell life, for example, the resolute glass-half-fullers and those who have bizarre beliefs such as: everything happens for a reason; that human beings are noble and special; that Jesus will lift Timmy out of the well; or that technology will ultimately solve all our problems. The VP of SA, sensing resistance to his presentation of the power of negative thinking, softened his approach by saying, "Sure, it's a bleak, hopeless universe, but just for today, let's make it the best damned bleak hopeless universe we can." As the weekend devolved and the hot rocks cooled, his way of life seemed wiser and wiser.
The complications of so-called civilization bring futility with them. In pre-agricultural times (Cory recommends the revelatory and amiable book Sex At Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Ryan and Jetha, ISBN 978-0-06-170780-3), companionship, food, sex, leisure and nature were readily available. Now we must endure tiresome, otiose ordeals to get those things. An illustration: let's say sex is desired. This will likely require a modicum of romancing, which requires money, which requires a job whose purpose is to employ futile abstractions and dishonesty to grab a chunk of our rapacious, destructive economy. And then we might have to talk our way past the religious sex phobia of the person we want to jazz. What came naturally now comes, if it comes at all, after negotiating a maze of meaninglessness.
Cory invites you consider that while much is futile, joy and meaning have not yet been completely destroyed. Increasing the happiness of our tribe, enjoying and sharing sex, food and a naked frolic in the scented woods (our mission at HHCIB) are plenty. This philosophy -- avoiding the futile and enjoying the utile -- appears obliquely in the palindromes "So remain a mere man. I am Eros," and "Won't lovers revolt now?"
Thank you for stimulating us.
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