Cultures of Sadness (first in an intermittent series)

[drwex]

I'm posting this here in part to remind myself to write it more fully later. However, commentary is open and welcome.

Adults repress joy. Children have the freedom to express it, but we try to repress it, in part to protect ourselves from being hurt. We fear the consequences of expressing anger, or sexual feelings. We are afraid that if we let ourselves love freely we'll be opening ourselves up for tremendous hurt. Joy and expressions of love are therefore repressed.

LJ creates/enables/encourages (I'm not sure which, maybe all) a culture of sadness. Observation: when a friend posts about her illness or depression or unhappiness, she receives many encouraging comments. The readers chime in, and participate in the expression, validating the feelings of sadness or depression. Observation: when a friend posts about his happiness, his readers complain and even stop reading his journal. Observation: when a friend posts about her sexual feelings, she is expected to label it "TMI" and put it behind a cut, lest someone be offended.

The social norm is that feelings of sadness or depression are supported; feelings of joy, sexuality, happiness are ignored, trivialized, or even draw negative feedback. I do not think this is unique to LJ; I think there are many Cultures of Sadness in modern life. I just happen to be participating in this one with roughly 120 of my closest friends.

Comments

[harlequinaide.livejournal.com]

My impulse is to agree with you. But, then, it usually is. I've made this observation myself, in the past. But I don't think that the LJ portion of it is as universal as I thought. To check, I went back over my recent posts. The ones with the most comments are all movie reviews and my asinine "New Orleans Deserved It" post. Clearly, people will rise to my inflamitory rhetoric, occasionally. But the posts about being unhappy in LA got fewer comments than those.

I think that LJ encourages processing. For some people, this leads to a spiral into deeper depression. For some, this leads to improvement. That said, I've never had anyone stop reading me because I was happy. I have driven readers away with my relentless whining, at times.

[drwex]

I don't want to expend too much energy on the medium, as opposed to the underlying behavior. However, one might ask why we're involved in so much negative (sadness-oriented) processing. Is intellectualizing about it a way to distance ourselves from the feelings of sadness themselves? And if so, does encouraging/facilitating the processing itself become a form of avoiding dealing?

"Oh, my friend is sad again, let's help him process that out so we don't have to confront his tears, which are painful and embarrassing, as well as our own responsive feelings of helplessness or anger at him for continuing to be sad."