Weekly Plunder: Week 23 - Joyless Urgency

I have written somewhere in the dark recesses of my notes that Marilynne Robinson coined the phrase “joyless urgency.” I think it’s an apt description of modern Westernized culture.

“Joyless urgency” is a difficult trap to free oneself from and I’m not sure if one can ever pry out of its snares completely. This mental prison is deeply engrained from a childhood of perpetually “preparing for what’s next”.

Even our exercise habits exhibit joyless urgency. We rush to the gym, obsess over machine metrics, count our calories, and then hurry to what’s next.

I try to counter this joyless urgency by exercising without metrics most of the time. I don’t use a smartphone app or calorie counter, nor do I go to the gym.

I bring this up because with each passing year, as time accelerates and mortality seems more obvious, it seems more important to find ways to counter “joyless urgency.”

Notes for this week:

• This was the first week I was able to run two days in a row (since a foot injury last August).

• The first week in which I was able to sprint with only minor aches in my bad foot.

• Still completing my physical therapy exercises daily. Three times per week I perform 2x30 minutes of physical therapy.

• I took the bus to Central West End on Saturday and on my return, the first bus that I expected never showed. I ended up having a fun conversation with an Indian college student at SLU while waiting the extra 30 minutes. I always appreciate a random and fun talk with a stranger.

What I’m watching: All of us are Dead. Okay, this show is incredible. What starts as a simple zombie apocalypse narrative quickly becomes something much darker.

What I’m reading: Four Thousand Weeks (finishing it up as I left it half-way completed for the sake of another book). Also revisiting Orwelle’s Animal Farm.

What I’m listening to: “Northwards” by Amorphis. This album is what I would describe as “proggy melo-death metal”. I also listened to the new Korn album but it did nothing for me.

What I’m thinking: There’s an interesting passage in Four Thousand Weeks that I can only quote to do it justice. It has been on my mind all week:

“One way of understanding capitalism, in face, is as a giant machine for instrumentalizing everything it encounters—the earth’s resources, your time and abilities (or “Human Resources”)—in the service of future profit. Seeing things this way helps explain the otherwise mysterious truth that rich people in capitalist economies are often surprisingly miserable. They’re very good at instrumentalizing their time, for the purpose of generating wealth for themselves’ that’s the definition of being successful in a capitalist world. But in focusing so hard on instrumentalizing their time, they end up treating their lives in the present moment as nothing but a vehicle in which to travel toward a future state of happiness. And so their days are sapped of meaning, even as their bank balances increase.”