Writes Giles Coren, in "If Barbra Streisand hasn’t had fun, who has?/Sad truth is that parties, festivals and casual sex are passports to misery, and true happiness lies in the mundane" (London Times)(addressing Barbra Streisand's statement, as she promotes her memoir, "I haven’t had much fun in my life").
"… but only last night I read two chapters of Things Fall Apart to my children at bedtime and was asleep by ten. Today I will turn the compost heap.... Tomorrow, I will finish The Bee Sting by Paul Murray in bed with the cat in my lap and then go downstairs to make batter for waffles...."
Are you having fun?
What is fun? Fun is in your heart. The OED says it's "Light-hearted pleasure, enjoyment, or amusement; boisterous joviality or merrymaking; entertainment." That comes from within. If lightheartedness isn't an attribute of yours, don't waste your time and energy pursuing what people call fun. It's not there for you.
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50 comments:
Thesis: fabricated fun is like travel (in the Althouse sense).
But then there's de gustibus, and Big-5 personality differences, and mundane misery.
My fun ain't your fun and your fun ain't his fun and his fun ain't her fun and her fun ain't my fun.
BFD
"cultural superstructure bent on working the population to death in miserable jobs"
Just say you're a Communist, Giles.
true happiness lies in the mundane
That sounds reactionary.
"I haven't had much fun" is a humblebrag.
For a woman who famously refused to alter her nose, she's gone full retard on the plastic surgery lately. I saw a pic and hardly recognized her.
The ultimate irony, the person responsible for the coining of the term 'Streisand Effect', the ultimate supremely-credentialed entitled mega-rich Star-caliber person, is trying to get a pass on the basis of 'poor little me, I'm not having any fun at all, compared to you miserable, shallow, festival-loving common peoples'.
My neck hurts - is it from being whipsawed? Maybe it's all the double-whammy fun.
I used to have fun, but most people couldn't tell.
Balance is a good aim.
It occurred to me from about 17 on that for a lot of folks like me, fun was a state only accessible in a state of inebriation. As Joyce remarked, "Ireland sober is Ireland stiff." But it seemed to apply equally to my German and Norwegian descended buddies. Dances and parties seemed to go better, more likely to end with a sexual encounter and of course later on the festivals and happenings, albeit with different intoxicants.
By 35, of course, I saw the (literal in some cases) dead end that came with carrying that to an extreme. All that craziness/wisdom is obviously at a heightened level for someone who makes a career out of music and film. I recall a theory that humans roughly divide into two types: appolonian and dionysian. For the apollonian, fun is not that...fun.
"These are the things that over the past hundred-odd years have been increasingly invested with importance by a cultural superstructure bent on working the population to death in miserable jobs"
Ted Kaczynski was right. Industrial society and it's consequences have been a disaster for humanity. For everything else, there's vegan leather harnesses. Nothing mundane about those.
I've always felt that "fun" like "happiness" were fleeting, unimportant things, things best left to children. Satisfaction and contentment are proper goals for adults.
Jesus, this guy reads 'Things Fall Apart' to his children?! That's not exactly kiddy lit. I can easily believe that he has had some difficulty having much fun in his life. Bet his kids aren't having all that much fun at beddy-bye story time either.
In 1970 I decided that life was all about having the most fun possible.
From that point on I strove to have the largest of times.
Surfing around the world
Playing Bach on the guitar
Playing the Beatles (et al) on guitar
Sailing
Driving spyder style sports cars
Mountain climbing
Having my historical art in museums
Playing in a rock band
Whitewater rafting
Making love to beautiful women
Being a father
Having an awesome and successful child
Writing for important magazines
Traveling low key
I could go on... Was I the best at all the fun I had? No, not by a long shot. But that wasn't the point. God has given me - so far - 71 years with and outlook for 10+ more. I going to use the last 10 like I used the first 70, having fun with life. Just establish personal parameters and - as the Hawaiians say - "Geeve em'!!!"
And the go for it.
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.---H.L. Mencken.
'For a woman who famously refused to alter her nose...'
Can't stand the woman, but she has a fantastic nose.
Without it she'd look generic.
Besides, it might alter her voice which would be criminal.
She's wrong on every political issue, but sings like an angel...
Articles like this make me wonder when "fun" became a thing in human evolution. I mean, as opposed to simply not getting eaten by a saber-toothed tiger, or not dying of starvation weekly, or (again) avoiding getting killed by invading barbarians. And an even more interesting question is when did fun become seen as not just something worth experiencing occasionally but rather an expectation or even an entitlement of being fully human? As in, what's wrong with me? All these other humans are constantly experiencing fun, so who don't or can't I?
Seems to be a frequent perception in the last few decades. Would be a good sociological study to pin down the era and the likely causes. I'll get the ball rolling by suggesting a name for it, "the California effect", and it happened when and because Daddy took her T-Bird away.
RideSpaceMountain said...
"These are the things that over the past hundred-odd years have been increasingly invested with importance by a cultural superstructure bent on working the population to death in miserable jobs"
Ted Kaczynski was right. Industrial society and it's consequences have been a disaster for humanity.
********************
Yeah. Remember the idyllic Good Old Days, when life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"?
When millions labored in "dark, satanic mills"?
When millions more were---as Marx put it---suffering the "idiocies of rural life"?
I'm getting soggy with nostagia, just thinking about what we've lost.
Every human has a different interpretation of fun. I find enjoyment in most aspects of life, as I suspect others do, as well. If not, what is the point?
If all one experiences is not fun and joyful, how is life bearable?
Fun is childish. Drugs are lots of "fun". All manner of poor life choices are fun. The pursuit of fun is not the path to contentment.
"...superstructure bent on working the population to death in miserable jobs...fooling us into thinking that the rest of the time we are having 'fun.'"
So True. I know it to be So True, because "Superstructure" was doing this to me for decades and I led a life of a lonely Resistance Fighter, always doing just enough not to get fired and pursuing whatever I could besides work. Daydreaming, Web Surfing, Social Media, Long Lunches, Coming Late and Leaving Early, have done it all. The most demanding calculation was to make sure that firing me would be more expensive than letting me stay. Eventually "Superstructure" had enough and fired me. One year later "Superstructure" called and begged me to come back. Apparently it proved to be cheaper to tolerate my antics than find an adequate replacement. So now I work as a Consultant, doing even less and charging even more for my time (lost the benefits package though).
Was I having Fun? May be, sometimes.
She seems to spread misery. Her husband is fun in Life in Pieces.
Barbra's plight makes me think of the work of Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. He describes play as a ritual of sorts that requires an ordered setting limited in time and space, tension, play's capacity to wholly absorb the player's thoughts, make-believe conflict, a conclusion, and a return to the rest of life after play is over.
It seems possible to me that people such as Barbra who achieve great wealth and status will have more difficulty finding the kinds of constraining environments and suitable partners needed to truly play. But it can be done, and the person Barbra can blame if it hasn't been done, is Barbra.
Giles sounds depressed.
Life, It’s better than the alternative. But to the counterpoint, my very smart mother told me before she died that when she died she would just go to sleep forever, and she new what that was like, it was like it was before she was born, and it was very nice and peaceful.
Two things:
1. "Fun" used to mean something like "frivolous," certainly as recently as LM Alcott's time, as that's how she used it. I was surprised that we didn't get more etymology.
2. In our family, we have a picture of my husband and a friend of ours that has become famous among us. It gets passed around on every birthday of the two of them. A group of four couples, ourselves and three sets of friends, went to a concert - Barenaked Ladies? I can never remember. At one point, the husband of one friend took a selfie down our row that showed himself with a big grin, then his wife standing bolt upright with her arms crossed across her chest and no facial expression, then my husband doing exactly the same thing, then me jumping up and down or something, then the next couple after us also having very apparent fun. Of course we all asked them later whether they were enjoying themselves or not, and both said they were having a wonderful time... inside.
There's a lot more to happiness than being happy.
A voice and nose of unsurpassed beauty.
First World Problem.
First World Problem.
I'd boast like Aztec but women aren't supposed to have experiences.
Animals have fun. It ain't reserved for people.
Fun also doesn't have to be hectic or ecstatic in nature. As the dictionary says: Having a picnic can be fun.
Old and slow:
Fun is childish.
Your opinion only. Many millions of adults disagree.
If you're referring to what the word means...
Websters unabridged pg 775 col 3:
1 Something that provided mirth or amusement: A picnic would be fun.
2 Enjoyment or playfulness. She's full of fun.
The other defs don't apply here, but then, these are all that's needed.
Are you saying you don't experience mirth, amusement, enjoyment or playfulness?
I certainly do.
I mean this sincerely, not sarcastically: I have never had any fun listening to her, watching her, or reading about her. Absolutely true.
@effinayright
My snarcasm was too esoteric to land properly, obviously. Apologies. I'll do better next time.
“Now Jack, he is a banker
And Jane, she is just a little bitty clerk
And both of them
Hey you little people out there
Oh, you little people
Don't you hate those Academy Awards, man?
You know they said: here's fucking Barbara Streisand
She says: I want to thank all those little people
There's too many little people
I can't get their names
Fuck her and her little people
I like big people
Fuck short people and tall people, man, I like middle people
People from Wyoming
You've ever meet somebody from Wyoming?
Not me”
—- Lou Reed
Relax, breathe, and have a gay old time.
Some people confuse happiness with joy. Happiness is fleeting, joyfulness is embedded in the heart.
RideSpaceMountain said...
@effinayright
My snarcasm was too esoteric to land properly, obviously. Apologies. I'll do better next time.
*********
No, no!
I was snarcastically "agreeing" with you!
Why wasn't it titled, "The Way I Was."
A missed opportunity there : )
I make my own fun.
effinayright,
How in the world did you manage to miss "vegan leather harnesses"??? LOL
"Today I will turn the compost heap.... Tomorrow, I will finish The Bee Sting by Paul Murray in bed with the cat in my lap and then go downstairs to make batter for waffles...."
Maybe he should save the waffles for the day after tomorrow. You don't want to cram all that into one day.
Those dark satanic mills were for many people, far better than any alternative they had.
And yes the mills were probably more awful than any of us can imagine.
But the alternatives were almost always worse.
And don't get me started on the modern, so-called, sweatshops. I live daily with the proud results of my mother and father in law working 30 years in a GE "sweatshop" they were uneducated jibaros (hillbillies) their children all have college degrees, good careers and good retirements.
The grandchildren are doing even better as principals, engineers, doctors and more.
THAT is what resulted for one "sweatshop" family.
I am sure that many here have similar family histories though perhaps more generationally removed.
John Henry
Everybody's debating which numbered definition they prefer of words that are subjective and overlap.
Look it up - happy refers to joy refers to happy.
John Henry,
"Those dark satanic mills were for many people, far better than any alternative they had."
Indeed. For that matter, the “How you going to keep them down on the farm once they’ve seen Paris?" principle applied even to 1980's-vintage Juba, armpit of the world.
Yes, we are all manipulated by the lies of the media and our "educators". One must party or you are a square. Hmm, that comes from the movies and TV of the '40s and '50s.
I'm reminded of the fellow below described in a story on nature.
It was in the woods and fields that he belonged; and whenever he could, there he went. He might have been another Thoreau if he had had the ability of expression, but he was unlettered. I doubt, too, if in his calm detachment from what most people regard as the important things of life he would have thought it worth while to try to make these hurried, busy men understand the things that filled his heart.
So he lived and died, a shiftless, improvident fellow whose name was synonymous with indolence and worthlessness. Yet I have wondered if he was not worthy to be accounted a success, since his life evidently brought to himself no sense of failure; and he walked amid his fellows with unimpaired self-respect, for all his laziness, "a gentleman unafraid."
—E.E. Miller, ‘The Unchanging Love’, Field-Path and Highway, 1912
No parties or social commitments for this fellow and yet, I can't help but think he had the better life than those with nose to the grindstone missing the nature as it slipped away. The conventional "fun" is organized around spending money and being around people. Those not inclined should resist the programming and have "fun" that causes them pleasure, not social media clout
We are two, almost 3 generations removed from the Great Depression and WWII
My, 40 year old kids no longer can talk to a person with 1st hand experience of he Depression.
When I started working full time I discovered overtime...I mean TIME AND A HALF PAY for working over 40 hours! As a twenty something I would work 80 to 100 hours a week, in season.
I have no idea what constitutes "miserable job" today. The JBS kill plant in town is starting at $25+ per hour, with daily opportunities to pick up half a shift. That's $50K plus benefits. You can find an older house for around $80K, we also have Lenox, Fischer, and the Iowa Veterans Home (the counties largest employer)
Not sure what people expect.
How many singers are actors? How many actors can sing? How many actors are comedians? Movie directors, writers and producers? How many entertainers took on Hollywood and won? How many women have turned their most distinctive facial feature into an asset, the gift that keeps on giving? How many entertainers have turned their ethnic and religious background into an enduring monologue, opening doors and increasing understanding? She acquired the money to pay for it the old-fashioned way. She earned it. Over and over again.
The pursuit of fun for its own sake is a dead end. Hedonism without ulterior purpose is meaningless. The things we consider fun are only so in service of something else; sex is fun because it is how we procreate, eating and drinking is fun because it nourishes us, etc. To pursue "fun" is to divorce the pleasure of an action from the value the fun serves.
My blood brother cooked for Babs, so she ate well.
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