So, you might have observed, I haven’t been blogging. What seems to have happened–without planning or forethought from me–is that I’ve drifted into a comfortable, rather depressed haze whereby I read a lot of news, think about saying something about it, and then wander away to do literally anything else. “This is my life now,” I have said silently to myself, whenever I just haven’t bothered to reach for the dreaded laptop.
Except that for the last three days my caro sposo—that’s a fancy word for the person who delivers the morning oolong since I don’t have a Jeeves or anything—has glowered at me in a wroth. This morning he finally found it necessary to use words (Happy St. Francis Day yesterday). “Why aren’t you writing? he groused. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Leave me,” I said, “I would be alone. I don’t have anything to say. Everything is too too awful.”
“Exactly,” he said, “why aren’t you writing?”
I mean, I don’t really know. I know everything has always been awful in one way or another, but now so more than ever. Whereas before I could breezily comment on the non-essential happenings of the day, now I feel oppressed by the daily pile of news, by the dozens of Twitter tempests that disturb the morning peace. And on top of that, I gaze out over the stacks of books that I am not actually reading, and I think to myself, “O Bother,” and go on to change over the laundry again.
Have I fallen into the sin of acedia? Or have I just come to the end of the Internet and now it’s time to give up? I don’t know. Except that I have a backlog of six or seven blog drafts that I haven’t even bothered to put up because they are just too dumb for words—not my writing mind you, the news upon which I was attempting to have an opinion. Which lets you know the apocalypse is nigh because my guiding rule has always been “What’s A Little More Garbage For The Internet?” Please don’t really answer that.
There are, probably, at least three Bad Things that have happened just now that are making life stupid. The first bad thing is that Humor has Died, it is No More. I think its death was fully accomplished in the Year of Our Lord Twenty-Twenty-Two, though it had been ailing for quite a long while. The rejection of humor by the Twitterati is such a terrible circumstance that I Can’t Even anymore. If a majority of people can’t let the occasional joke put their emotions back into proportion, can’t let their moral virtue be tempered by their own absurdity, I don’t know how the human family will survive.
Second, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but there’s nothing new and interesting online. It’s the same wretched stuff over and over. Except this—two people bludgeoned to death and fed to crocodiles, but I can’t read about it because it’s paywalled, so that’s too bad.
Third, the cat tore the “e” off my keyboard and it is very irritating to type and I haven’t had a spare moment to go and get the darn thing put back on.
So anyway, in illustration of how everything is so bad and stupid, consider the recent Twitter Outrage over Matt tweeting about how we have raised our children. Why are you so awful, shouted the mob, how dare you beat your children and be abominable people! As if bringing up children in the usual way of all humanity for generations—a kindly way, I will point out, that takes the sinful frailty of both parent and child into account, and is, in fact, the very opposite of what all the haters are accusing–is a good and honorable thing to be angry about.
I don’t want to otherize anyone, but the death of humor spells the death of reason which means the death of society. The person who comes across a tweet thread by someone he already hates is drawn like a moth to the flame, unable to stop and think where he puts his foot and what it says about his mind. He can but go in and—under the guise of care and concern—misrepresent and then vilify the position of his enemy. This is a very human thing to do, of course. It is not a new activity. But it’s so boring. And foolish, because in the activity of shouting, the outraged party essentially adopts the position—I hope unwittingly—of being on the side of children who lie, children who defy God, and children who are absolute bores. But he doesn’t know that. All he can do is blindly grope for the door, bellowing that discipline of any kind is bad. In displaying this “knowledge” he manages to become the unthinking person he is accusing everybody else of being.
To which I say, “Meh.” I don’t want to be outraged over the mob that is so outraged. I’d rather go do literally anything else. But I also don’t like making my husband sad, so I’m gonna try and write some things and not give up.
