Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Man’s Search for Nothing
Kyle Smith is one of my favorite writers on National Review. He has a brilliant article up today about a brilliantly stupid movie: Boogie Nights – a movie about a fictional ’70s porn star named Dirk Diggler who is unremarkable in every way except for an unusually large body part. Kyle posits that this Paul Anderson film is a profound commentary on American culture. I pray that he is wrong. But he makes some good points:
Anderson’s is a fairly dark take on humanity, but I can’t deny it’s a compelling one. All around us are people who bob along on life’s current, doing whatever work is necessary, having as much fun as they can afford at any given moment, heedless of whatever consequences might await, unconcerned with where it’s all heading. It’s not even necessary to turn to an industry steeped in hedonism to find examples of people who lack any purpose or structure. They’re all around us. The movie’s jukebox soundtrack underlines the point: This is a culture of singles, meaning both hit songs from the radio and atomized individuals. The titles of the songs provide ironic counterpoint to the action: “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” goes one, by Elvin Bishop, but though everyone in this movie is fooling around, no one ever falls in love.
…Life in the porn business in the Seventies — and maybe far beyond that realm — is like so many hit singles on the soundtrack. It all happens in three-minute bursts of pleasure. One song ends, and the next begins. People bob along from one hedonic act to the next, never even questioning the sustainability of their life choices, much less grasping that their lives are morally and spiritually empty. Rarely, if ever, has any filmmaker depicted the void with so much sparkle and wit.
As they say, please read the whole thing. It’s outstanding.
I suspect that when Aristotle wrote that true happiness was impossible without having some meaningful purpose in life, he was thinking of people he knew who lived like Dirk Diggler. Nietzsche and Frankl took similar views. A life without purpose is empty and hopeless. So you fill the emptiness with fake friends and you dull the hopelessness with drugs.
In the ’70s, it was crazy parties and cocaine. Now, it’s Instagram and Prozac. Whatever. There are a lot of Americans who seem to drift through life with no discernable purpose, and thus no chance of ever truly being happy.
In fact, they have no chance of ever even understanding what happiness actually is. But their relentless efforts to equate pleasure with happiness inevitably results only in emptiness. As it always does. They fall into a pit of emptiness, they get stuck, and they can’t get out.
Or, more precisely, they don’t get out, because they don’t even realize that they’re stuck.
So people lose their will to work. Their only belief system is narcissism, which makes them incapable of love, which makes them either worthless or dangerous to others. Their only interest is in instant gratification. Their drive for long-term achievement is weakened, and they fall on hard times. So our government gives them money. Out of compassion, of course. But that compassion exacerbates the original problem, of a lack of purpose. So they lose more of their drive, so their situation gets worse, so we give them more money. And around and around we go.
Those who vote for such government compassion feel better about themselves – like Dirk Diggler, their narcissism blinds them to the consequences of their actions. Unfortunately, the recipients of this generosity are stuck in a pit of emptiness. But that’s ok because they don’t even know that they’re stuck. They don’t appreciate the generosity, but they resent efforts to reduce it, because they don’t understand that you can’t fill an empty hole with more money, or more instant gratification. It’s still empty.
Why is it that a country that is so financially rich is so spiritually poor? Is it even possible to be rich in both realms?
History would argue that such riches are rare indeed. I don’t understand why, and that saddens me.
Dirk doesn’t understand either, but he doesn’t care. Which means he’s either a fool or a genius.
I’d rather not think about which one is correct…
Published in General
Yeah, I was going to say that, too. It’s been happening ever since humans started making tools and started specializing.
The quoted tweet says that central banks make it happen faster, and I wouldn’t argue with that.
Ultimately that seems to lead to problems, because it just doesn’t make sense to require that everyone have a job, if there’s nothing for them to DO because technology/automation does all the production with much less human labor than was required in the past. And a lot of the people don’t even have the capability – intellect or whatever – to manage the technology/automation. Do they get assigned to digging ditches with hand shovels, rather than doing it much quicker and better with machines, just because they’re required to DO SOMETHING?
That is all I’m saying. If the Federal Reserve doesn’t run with deflation it is going to be a lot worse than it has to be. There is more to it than that, but that is the big part. This is why you are getting so much populism and socialism.
It’s cruel and unnecessary. It creates inequality.
Uh uh, you’re not getting away with that! Everyone Knows that inequality is created by White Supremacism! And stuff.
That’s the ultimate question. The Austrians would say that if we would just let the monetary system be in it’s naturally deflationary state, people would need to work less. There would be other things libertarian that you would do, but that’s the main part.
Again, this is why Socialism and populism are such a big issue and we are having so many social problems. The Democrat party doesn’t really need to understand this and the libertarians/conservatives are never going to gain unless they do.
You are getting it. Well done.
The other aspect of it is, these fake low interest rates allow labor to be replaced with capital way faster. It’s not just the invention of technology. It could be invented but it should be far more expensive to do that.
Also, low interest rates give companies like Amazon access to the bond market in this allows them to swallow competitors and suppress small business.
Even with Austrian Economics, how do people get by with NO INCOME? Because there’s NO JOB for them, because they AREN’T NEEDED?
If you don’t speed it up with bad policy the situation resolves itself. There is economic activity that becomes marginally more valuable.
Nice use of capitalization by the way.
True, human life is cruel and unnecessary. But here we are.
Be against bad government policy.
They’ve forgotten how to search for that one thing.