The Naked Jumper – Pt. 2

“The War on Happiness”

The Tidal waves of Jumper disaster…

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Proactive undermining and fake praise is the “Jumper” currency and standard of communication. You can spot the “Jumper” by their negativity; they are beset by the rampant social disease of comparison. Everything they express is comparative, whether indirect, implied or explicit. Nothing said is simple or stand-alone and everything marks you on a scale of comparison; against someone, something or some social standard or value. Nothing has value unless set against something or someone else.

Lost is the idea of simple appreciation for the thing itself because we enjoy it. Appreciation and enjoyment is only possible through comparison and what is being enjoyed is the comparison, not the thing itself for itself. We even rename a “comparison” and call it a “reason”; a reason to like or dislike, adore or abhor because it’s “better than”, “worse than” or “same as”.  We’ve made it nigh on impossible to be happy with ourselves; there’s always some comparison or scale of measurement out there that we won’t score well on, and we’ll be sure to find it. We will constantly and automatically measure ourselves to find ourselves wanting. Bizarrely, it is the comparison we have learnt to enjoy and the thing itself is only important because it triggers a comparison. Our enjoyment of life becomes intricately entwined and nondetachable from scoring ourselves on various scales of measurement. Comparison has become the source of all “happiness”.

To compound matters we are trained from an early age to be cautious and to save up for a “rainy day”. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being “sensible” until “sensible” becomes an extreme unto itself; we become blinkered about being “sensible”. The pre-empting and prediction of our rainy days becomes our obsession; our focus becomes skewed and our attention centred on what pains us. We think about all the bad things potentially coming our way; we plan for them and we expect them. We spend an inordinate  amount of time toiling away in preparation and careful planning for these unfortunate events, that may or may not materialise. However, we spend little or no time expecting or preparing for “good”, pleasant or happy things happening to us. We generally only feel “good” because we think we’ve avoided something bad and we habitually mistake “relief” for feeling good. We think we are in the pursuit of happiness, when, in fact, we are seeking out sources of anxiety and things to feel bad about. We have adjusted our “happiness” gauge to register “feelgood” only when we perceive a bad event coming our way. Our “feelgood” is symbiotically attached to our anticipation and avoidance of suffering which has nothing to do with being happy.

People are so busy with the external comparisons and the oncoming tidal waves of disaster that everyone is secretly in constant terror and desperately trying to avoid themselves i.e. they can’t live up to all those externally generated standards and simultaneously cope with constant, oncoming catastrophe. Instead of starting with a reasonable idea of “self” we start with an externally generated, often extreme, idea of what we should be and go from there instead, no matter how ridiculous or impossible that may be. Our comparisons are no longer reasonable, related or anchored to ourselves, instead our “self” becomes highly dependent on the vagaries of external influences. The Jumper way of life is founded on the adoption of unquestioned, external social values; what we fail to realise is that these external goal posts constantly and arbitrarily move, making this pursuit futile. Unfortunately, people try so hard to be something else they give up on being themselves. It’s no wonder that happiness seems mysterious, illusive and hard to achieve.

What is the most disturbing aspect of all this? The various social values? Surprisingly the answer is no. What’s disturbing is our hell bent commitment to our war on happiness. If we were to actually keep our comparisons to ourselves they would be rendered harmless to others and that may also make our neighbour happy too. Practising what we preach may even make us happy and just minding our own business would do wonders. Unfortunately, we do the opposite, social baiting is commonplace, done out in the open with no shame or conscience. Our depravity lies in proactively inflicting our values on others, coercing/forcing adoption of these values and the pretence that we have done nothing. The most unpalatable atrocity and result of our hypocrisy is that we are not only proactive in this activity but we take great pride in it. The social degradation of our fellow human being, emotionally and psychologically, happens all the time. We thirst for it. It’s a very simple fact that we find it more than acceptable to treat each other abysmally because it is so hypocritically “important” to us that our fellow human being must be just like us; think, believe, exist and be identical to us, even when we know that is an impossibility.  Social baiting is done for one reason only, so we can get “high” on a comparison, making ourselves feel better at someone else’s expense. We busily degrade, hurt, ridicule, humiliate and patronise others under many guises; helpfulness, caring, concern, duty, obligation, righteousness, morality, beliefs  -  it’s an endless list. The result is the same, plain and simple intolerance.

Snatching back happiness from the jaws of oncoming disaster and the terror of comparison allows happiness to take on wonderous myriad forms. The trick is giving ourselves the freedom to be happy…  it’s just different strokes for different folks, including yourself.

dmojo
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©Dmojo, 2008-2009.