calvin and hobbes

You Must Change Your Life

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Anna Lembke:

Over the course of my career as a psychiatrist, I have seen more and more patients who suffer from depression and anxiety, including otherwise healthy young people with loving families, elite education and relative wealth. Their problem isn’t trauma, social dislocation or poverty. It’s too much dopamine, a chemical produced in the brain that functions as a neurotransmitter, associated with feelings of pleasure and reward.

When we do something we enjoy—like playing videogames, for my patient—the brain releases a little bit of dopamine and we feel good. But one of the most important discoveries in the field of neuroscience in the past 75 years is that pleasure and pain are processed in the same parts of the brain and that the brain tries hard to keep them in balance. Whenever it tips in one direction it will try hard to restore the balance, which neuroscientists call homeostasis, by tipping in the other.

The comedian Steven Wright had a joke that went:

A cop stopped me for speeding. He said, “Why were you going so fast?” I said, “See this thing my foot is on? It’s called an accelerator. When you push down on it, it sends more gas to the engine. The whole car just takes right off.”

Another joke from Calvin & Hobbes:

All of which is to say: all this trendy neurobabble about dopamine is just a stupidly earnest version of Wright and Hobbes’s insistence on misunderstanding the meaning of the question “Why?” As even Lembke’s article admits, the solution for someone “addicted” to dopamine squirts is for them to choose to stop exposing themselves to temptation. How is this an improvement on centuries of moral and ethical thought? “I stayed up all night playing video games because they’re really fun.” “I stayed up all night playing video games because my brain kept soaking itself in dopamine.” What’s the explanatory difference? One doesn’t have to know anything about brain chemistry to be able to recognize when one’s life is out of balance and take steps to set it right. In fact, our insistence on keeping the search going for the “ultimate” reason behind our behavior is just a subtle form of procrastination to keep us from changing said behavior. For that, you need practical philosophy and honesty, but I suppose there’s not much grant money in that.

Obiter Scripta, no. 78

By in bonsai minimalism, calvin and hobbes, nietzsche, obiter scripta, santutthi, socmed No Comments

Learning solitude. O you poor devils in the great cities of world politics, you gifted young men tormented by ambition who consider it your duty to pass some comment on everything that happens — and there is always something happening! Who when they raise the dust in this way think they are the chariot of history! Who, because they are always on the alert, always on the lookout for the moment when they can put their word in, lose all genuine productivity! However much they may desire to do great work, the profound speechlessness of pregnancy never comes to them! The event of the day drives them before it like chaff, while they think they are driving the event, poor devils! If one wants to represent a hero on the stage one must not think of making one of the chorus, indeed one must not even know how to make one of the chorus.

— Nietzsche, Daybreak

I think the high priests of commerce, culture, media and athletics have converged for their annual extravaganza as I write this, but I couldn’t tell you anything about it. Likewise, I think there’s some drama happening up in our nation’s capital which I haven’t paid any attention to. Also, I hear the new bubonic plague is coming to kill us all soon? Oh, and are we still fighting World War Three? Or was that finished last month? Well, anyway, in important news, I spent my day organizing my work space and enjoying this brief burst of springlike weather while looking forward to reading before bed. As Calvin said, the days are just packed.

Looking for the Crest of a New Wave

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Lara Unnerstall:

If you’re 33 or older, you will never listen to new music again—at least, that’s more or less what a new online study says. The study, which is based mainly on data from U.S. Spotify users, concludes that age 33 is when, on average, people stop discovering new music and begin the official march to the grave.

Yes, Lara, are you there? Can you hear me? Yes, OK, great. I’m reporting to you live from somewhere beyond age 33, and I can assure you that there is indeed musical life out here. It’s sparsely populated, perhaps, but not dead. That’s right, all hope is not lost. Granted, a lot of what you’ve heard back there in the studio is true — careers, kids and bills do tend to eat up the energy and money that was formerly devoted to seeking out new music on a whim. Trying to keep up with popular music makes a lot of people feel silly for being out of step with their peers. And, let’s face it, it can be difficult for older listeners to relate to the lyrical fixations of youth culture. So much melodrama, anger and mindless rebellion!

But though time may rob you of some of your affinities, there is no law of entropy preventing you from cultivating new pleasures. Getting older means very few things will surprise you with sheer novelty, but there is still plenty of quality to be found. Take the time, make the effort. Music, to me, has an unparalleled ability to make the same old world feel completely new. It’s what keeps my thoughts from becoming stagnant. This is one instance where I agree with all that stuff about age only being a number — if your mind is still active, and you can still find pure joy in the interplay of melodies and rhythms, you’re not really old.

Leave the Spotlight, Dodge the Searchlights

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Isabel Colegate:

The celebrity hermit, a modern phenomenon, seems to escape the tolerance, let alone respect, accorded to other species of solitary, being regarded instead with indignation and outrage. The reasoning behind this must be the thought that no one would be a writer or an actor or a musician — or indeed prominent in any way — unless their chief object was to be famous, and that therefore they should lay themselves down gladly as a sacrifice on the altar of human curiosity.

Despite this observation, the index of the book shows no references to Bill Watterson, which strikes me as odd. What better example could you ask for?

In the film Dear Mr. Watterson, his mother commented on the creepiness of some fans who not only go out of their way to find out where he lives, but make it known to him that they’ve done so, like it’s a game of hide and seek. It’s like, “You have created something that provides an enduring sense of fascination for me. Now you’re obligated to stay within reach in case I ever want to indulge my curiosity further.” Even I, who respect a desire for privacy to a greater degree than most, have to admit that I would eagerly read more about Watterson the everyday guy if that information were available. Yet, I’m fully aware that doing so would almost certainly add nothing to my appreciation for Calvin and Hobbes. What drives this insatiable fascination, this urge to use someone up until they have nothing left to show or give? Why do we find it so difficult to simply allow mysteries to exist?

He’s One of the Old Gods

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Christopher Caldwell:

The late political scientist James Q. Wilson described “Calvin and Hobbes” as “our only popular explication of the moral philosophy of Aristotle.” Wilson meant that the social order is founded on self-control and delayed gratification—and that Calvin is hopeless at these things. Calvin thinks that “life should be more like TV” and that he is “destined for greatness” whether he does his homework or not. His favorite sport is “Calvinball,” in which he is entitled to make up the rules as he goes along.

Day-in, day-out, Calvin keeps running into evidence that the world isn’t built to his (and our) specifications. All humor is, in one way or another, about our resistance to that evidence.

Aristotelian philosophy? Pfft. What this shows is that Calvin is the modern-day embodiment of a trickster deity. Selfish, amoral, and prone to delusions of grandeur, his wild adventures nevertheless tend to produce beneficial results for others, however inadvertently (in our case, at least, we are greatly entertained). He belongs to the realm of mythology, predating philosophy.

Dirty Institutions

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Brad Warner:

So back to my friend and his pitch. After I said some of this he said something like, “Well if you don’t know what you want…” This struck me as both very weird and yet totally expected. The fact is I do know what I want. It’s just that in a world where wealth and fame is the highest object of desire, the idea of someone not wanting that sounds the same as not knowing what you want. If you knew what you wanted you would understand that what you want is wealth and fame.

I really feel like all that stuff about embracing poverty and avoiding greed that the Buddhists talk about isn’t just something that’s supposed to make a person all pure and holy. It’s actually advice on how to live a better life. The more you demand from society in terms of wealth, the more society demands from you. If you don’t deliver, you suffer.

“Wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.” Thoreau said that. He could have been talking about Bill Watterson, who told his former art professor why he had no interest in merchandising Calvin and Hobbes: “Enough is enough, and I have enough.” I find that to be a very useful mantra. Seriously — it’s like a glass-half-full perspective switch. It’s very easy to spend all your time thinking about all the things you lack. It’s not really any less true to focus on all the ways in which you have more than you even need, and doing so sometimes even improves your mood.

You’re In the Grip of the Controller

By in art, bonsai minimalism, calvin and hobbes, foolosophy, santutthi, work, writing, Ω No Comments

I watched the documentary Dear Mr. Watterson the other day, in which Stephan Pastis said something interesting:

This leads to my theory of what it is that Watterson might be doing, and I suspect that some of it is about control. Comic strips are all about control. It’s the one art form where you have full control. It’s not collaborative like a film. It’s not collaborative even like a book, where your editor changes things. I really don’t even have an editor. It’s just me. It’s not collaborative like a tv show. It’s not collaborative like a record album. It’s you — it’s just you.

When you wander into licensing, it becomes a collaboration. Somebody at your syndicate has to approve it. Somebody at your syndicate gives suggestions. Somebody at your syndicate says,”You know, that’s nice, but it’d be better if he smiled on the package, right? Smiling sells more.” Then it gets in the hand of the designer. The designer has their own ideas how the character should look. The designer knows what material sells. The designer knows what materials are safe. Then there’s the designer’s boss, who may have different ideas, ’cause they gave it to the salesman, and it didn’t sell well.

So I’ve just introduced seven people into my life that weren’t in my life before. I don’t particularly like any of them. They’re not my kind of people. They’re commercial people, and they make your stomach hurt when you’re with them. So I’ve introduced an element into my life of a whole bunch of people I don’t like. I’ve got to overcome them all, even if it’s so much as just saying, “I don’t think we should do this,” and they say yes, I still have to do that to seven people. And that’s all a loss of control, a loss of control that I never had before, right?

And imagine if he started licensing. The first lunchbox would have sold nine billion, right? The minute that happens, everybody is gonna be on him for all the more, like this, that, and the other — all represents a loss of control. Then they all sit in your head. Rather than go, as he probably did, and walk through the forest that day, he took six phone calls that he didn’t want to take. They interrupted his day. They’re floating around in his head. That’s all bad. You know what I’m saying?

And that’s control. That’s not about artistic purity. No, no. That’s about control.

This is my attitude toward blogging, toward ambition. I don’t pretend to be doing anything artistically, let alone culturally, significant here, but this is still an important space for me, where I can write for the pure enjoyment it gives me. A few people have suggested that I could or should make a living by doing some sort of writing, but my response is always the same — making this into a paying job would destroy everything that makes it enjoyable. It would be death by a thousand cuts. Keeping it “pure” isn’t about snobbery and status, it’s about having something in your life that isn’t subject to mercenary considerations.

Fortunately, I’ll never be offered a spot writing at Buzzfeed or the like, where I would have to make those sorts of compromises, so I have to admit it’s easy for me to say that. I am truly in awe of the fact that Watterson was looking at potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in merchandising and still held to his principles. Would I absolutely refuse to write clickbaity headlines about trivia and gossip if doing so meant I never had to work a real job again? I’d like to think so, but…

Sooner or Later It All Comes Down to Fate

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Lary Wallace:

The Stoics themselves believed in gods, but ultimately those resistant to religious belief can take their Stoicism the way they take their Buddhism, even if they can’t buy into such concepts as karma or reincarnation. What the whole thing comes down to, distilled to its briefest essence, is making the choice that choice is really all we have, and that all else is not worth considering. ‘Who […] is the invincible human being?’ Epictetus once asked, before answering the question himself: ‘One who can be disconcerted by nothing that lies outside the sphere of choice.’

A couple weeks ago, while reading a book on the history of aphorisms, I came across one from Seneca: “There is nothing the wise man does reluctantly. He escapes necessity because he wills what necessity is going to force on him.”

Sounds slightly disingenuous when put that way. But it also sounds like someone whose famously critical words for the Stoics Wallace mentions in the essay, namely, Nietzsche and his concept of amor fati. It occurs to me that if one wanted to be a little bit mischievous and sarcastic, one could sum it up like:

Shorter Nietzsche and the Stoics: I meant to do that!

 

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