So I’ve talked about Words of Whimsy in my newsletter and in a post above, but I haven’t gone into much detail. As you might guess by this post, I really, really want to. So this will be a bit longer and separate from the text messages.
I made a brief reference to nihilism in my newsletter, but I think it’s important to elaborate on. More than a fringe philosophy that life is meaningless and can’t have meaning, there is a component of active destruction to nihilism. Perhaps most famously, it’s associated with the quote from Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, “God is dead. … And we have killed him!” It’s easy to relegate nihilism to an artistic quote like this and render it the domain of academic philosophers and literature students. But it becomes much more subtle and insidious in other contexts.
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Ronald Reagan won the White House in part by stating, “Government is not the solution. Government is the problem.” While on a small scale, there are indeed challenges and problems with institutions, politicians, and programs, subscribing to that notion writ large undermines the social contract that allows government to function at all.
Vladimir Putin has been undermining the post-WWII and post-Cold War world order, particularly European governments and institutions since he came to power. Whether or not you believe Trump colluded with Putin, I don’t think it’s possible to credibly argue that Russian disinformation efforts didn’t contribute significantly to his election in the first place.
Yellow journalism has a long media tradition, revelling in scandal and mudslinging. For most of that media history, trusted institutions and journalists meant that yellow journalism remained on the fringes and in the tabloids. Between the technological revolution of the interwebs, cutting out the financial structure of legacy media institutions, and the active cultivation of sensationalism and conspiracy culture, yellow journalism has ascended. I don’t know for sure that it now constitutes the mainstream, but it is certainly not the fringe it used to be.
Once upon a time, gaslighting was a term associated with domestic abuse. While it does indeed still belong in that domain, too many politicians and public figures have adopted the practice, whether deliberately or just as a matter of course because of the groupthink of the faction they belong to. Without going into details, Donald Trump is perhaps the most infamous for creating and attempting to perpetuate lies of this nature.
Taken all together, we as a society and individually are assaulted (literally with ICE actions around the country), and our beliefs in civil society undermined. For many people I know personally, and perhaps you reading this, past traumas are brought to the fore. I don’t know about you, but I am more than tired of it.
I can’t claim to know the entire answer and how to fix things. If I did, I might be compelled to run for public office myself. But I do have a response I hope will help. To quote Adam Savage from the Mythbusters, “I reject your reality and insert my own!” Words of Whimsy. Flights of fancy. A journey into the absurd through humor and odd observations. Snippets to refresh and step back from constantly being gaslit and having cultures and values meaningful to me actively trashed. I will reclaim and reassert the values of inclusion and diversity. I will celebrate working and laughing together. With Words of Whimsy, I hope to rebuild meaning and joy for myself and my community against any who would attempt to take them apart.
Here endeth this rant.
