Human categorization via social media

(click to enlarge)

I'd like to thank Facebook for making it so easy to fit my life into various pre-defined categories: education, music preferences, favorite athletes, things I "like." It's nice to see political views taken so seriously as an option as well. Facebook is, after all, an extension of ourselves, and that freedom of expression is not to be trifled with, no sir. Especially if you're tired of being nice to people who don't give a shit. Sign me up for that one.

And apparently drunken twats don't know the proper usage of the various forms of "your." Go figure.

Whatchu talkin' about, Mark Twain?

"Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination."
- Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger

Gangsta.

It's surprising how timeless certain ideas can be. As a writer, this immortality is both dis- and encouraging: On the one hand, it seems that all the wisdom has been found, wrought, digested, and regurgitated in "Inspirational Quote-a-Day" calendars. But on the other hand, we have these wonderfully knowledgeable guides to teach us things they learned the hard way. And who are we to balk at that? Especially since we can then take those lessons and build on them, make them relevant to ourselves and modern society. After all, Twain couldn't have anticipated what social media would do to happiness quotients, or how the Internet would render sanity an unnecessary prerequisite to amassing thousands of readers (or Twitter followers, but I contend that no one on Twitter is truly sane). (P.S. Follow me on Twitter!)

But Twain was obviously getting at something with this sanity/happiness thing, and the fact that we pluck this one sentence out of a book and put it on t-shirts and coffee mugs speaks to one of two things: either we're rocking the bookworm fashion, or we are able to read between the lines and apply this lesson to our own lives.

Do me a favor and think some more about the Twain quote.

"Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination."

What was your initial reaction? More than likely you considered it, recalling the adage "ignorance is bliss," and then what? Did you dismiss it? After all, it makes madness sound like not such a bad way to spend a life, but you probably don't consider yourself truly insane. Or do you? How do we define insanity in various contexts? How much does this idea apply to something in your own life? Should we all just give up now?

I read an article today titled "30 Lessons Learned by 30." Despite being six years from the dreaded 30 (I hear it's not that bad!), I found myself immediately applying these one-liner lessons to my own life, evaluating how well I perform them on a daily basis, making mental notes to try harder to prioritize relationships, to be grateful and giving and loving, not to judge others. It's easy to roll your eyes at such well-meaning advice, to resist acknowledging that an entire life's lesson fits so easily into ten words. But understanding that lesson requires some background knowledge, some empathy with the situation. It's hard to argue with maxims like "Honesty is the best policy in relationships. The truth will come out eventually" -- but if you don't have any experience with dishonesty in relationships, then this means nothing to you. It is through life experience that we're able to boil down lessons into easy-to-digest tidbits. It's the reason cliches work and refuse to die: at some point, we realize they're all true.

This is also why grandmothers have so many things embroidered on pillows and hand-painted on adorable signs hanging around their house. Aging brings an understanding of and trust in digestible wisdom. And it's why young people, no matter how smart they are, will always be stupid: we simply don't have the years to back up what we claim to know. Experience trumps every other form of knowledge, always. Take it from a (still relatively stupid) young person who would love nothing more than to write a book that establishes a cliche that winds up on a coffee mug. It's the American dream, I tell ya.

I should mention that the opening quote was said by the main character of the unfinished and posthumously published novel The Mysterious Stranger. That character happens to be the nephew of Satan, and he spends the book ruminating on "the damned human race." It's heady stuff. The character goes on to say:

"No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those. The few that imagine themselves kings or gods are happy, the rest are no happier than the sane. Of course, no man is entirely in his right mind at any time, but I have been referring to the extreme cases. I have taken from this man that trumpery thing which the race regards as a Mind; I have replaced his tin life with a silver-gilt fiction; you see the result - and you criticize! I said I would make him permanently happy, and I have done it. I have made him happy by the only means possible to his race - and you are not satisfied!" He heaved a discouraged sigh, and said, "It seems to me that this race is hard to please."

No kidding, dude.

Twenty-somethings: Choosing a Lifestyle

So many lifestyle choices, so little time.

A quotation from New York Times columnist David Brooks as the commencement speaker for the Brandeis University 2011 graduating class:

"If you are like most college grads, you will spend the next decade of your lives moving from city to city, school to school and from job to job experimenting with different careers and lifestyles," he said. "While you do this, by the way, your parents will slowly go crazy. Everything will be contingent and uncertain."

As Brooks adeptly points out, our generation -- that is, the people born basically in the 80's and now spanning the powerful 21 to 31 demographic -- is behaving differently. Part of it is a necessary reaction to the economy and the job market; we must be willing to move for jobs. We become transient. I, who was raised by transients who wandered a full 3,000 miles from their birthplace, have resolutely made myself a home in Chicago. I extol its wonders -- lovely parks, Midwest attitude, North Ave Whole Foods -- while continually discovering new joys (Lake Shore Drive running path) and setbacks (pee smell that permeates the loop in the summer). It's a big city and I'm young/hyperactive and I like it here.

I know in my heart I probably won't stay in Chicago forever. There's too much of the world to see. I may leave for a few years and then return for good -- I'd like that, actually -- but I belong to the generational mindset that home is where I charge my cell phone. It's that attitude that has allowed my peers and classmates to fling themselves around the world -- Amsterdam, London, the Ukraine, not to mention Atlanta and LA and Portland and so forth. This, our twenties, is the time for adventure and experimentation.

With my location settled for now, and as I hazily hobble toward some sort of career path as a grad student, Brooks would probably agree that I can focus on experimenting with lifestyles. It's like trying on costumes. Do I want to be a jock or a bookworm? Should I spend my lunch hour socializing or exercising? What statement does my hairstyle make? In what clubs and boards and music ensembles will my time investment be worthwhile? Is there a job I'd want where a tribal neck tattoo would be inappropriate; and if so, how about an eagle and the U.S. flag emblazoned across my back? These, I submit, are the important lifestyle decisions of the typical (that is to say, self-absorbed American) twenty-something: It's about how you spend your time and what image you're projecting to the world and how true a snapshot that is of who you really are. It's why we're all so obsessed with Facebook and Twitter; social media is another foundation for building and maintaining a reputation. It's like being in high school again, but with slightly less naïveté and hopefully better hair.

Why not?

This year I have two cousins graduating from high school, five siblings graduating from various elementary-age grades (my twin brothers just finished kindergarten!), and a handful of friends finishing up Bachelor's and Master's degrees. Meanwhile even more of us are still trudging along, sorting through term papers and auditions and manuscripts, the terminal diploma months or years or decades away.

But the toil is the equivalent of the journey, especially if that journey (studying writing) has no set destination ("writing the great American novel" is so twentieth century). So all there is left to do is apologize to our parents, promise them we're happy and well-adjusted and thriving no matter what lifestyle we're attempting this week, and ask them to pretty please mail just one more check. Last one, I promise.

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P.S. Completely unrelated, but you should check out my side-project with my buddy Kevin Rinz titled New Age Whitman. The summer blog/Twitter (@NewAgeWhitman) will culminate in a raucous drinking event in August. I'm really excited for the power trip that is ordering interns to reconstruct the eastern seaboard using empty Bud light cans. Follow along in the fun!