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

"I'd rather be happy than right"

[sunstealer.livejournal.com]

Thinking "out loud" here. In many crowds/social groups a person's expressions of happiness and sadness are taken as barometers of a person's naivety vs. their wisdom, as in "No one can be really happy if they pay attention to politics/environment/education etc. and if they're happy they're either deluded or ignorant" I think happiness has become linked with naivety in many instances, with an inability to cope with things as they are. Sadness would conversely indicate that you have accurately apprehended the true nature of things and are therefore wise. While there is some truth to that, Coleridge's famous quote comes to mind-

"He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn."

I subscribed to that view for a long time, that happiness equaled an annoying and childish naivety to be avoided and that expressions of sadness were more apt and grown up. That is, until I got tired of being sad and miserable all the damn time, it didn't seem to accomplish anything that I thought it might. I didn't feel wiser, cooler or anything like that.

I'm not sure LJ directly enables sadness and I think that expressions of support for the sad party are fully in order most of the time. LJ does encourage a culture of melodrama most certainly and sadness makes super melodrama. LJ is, in my opinion, a fairly adolescent communication tool and is therefore prone to many of the pitfalls and lazy behaviors that have been mentioned above already. I myself tend to limit most posting to matter of fact announcements, updates and so forth.
Though...there's nothing written to say that a public forum composed of people who are ostensibly your friends HAS to be adolescent is there...hmm.

Thinking out loud as I said. Sorry if I wandered too far off topic. I may revise, revisit or recant at any minute :)
Must go off and muse in a corner now...

Re: "I'd rather be happy than right"

[drwex]

This is a good point, and one I hadn't considered. My off-the-cuff response is that the "no one can be happy" response may be true but it confuses the personal and political/social levels of happiness. In particular, I can be thorougly sad and disgusted by our present administration and yet do the dance of absolute glee at my childrens' cuteness.

I _think_ both of these are adult responses.