Laugh, and the World laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
(Oldboy *sigh*)
I don't understand that. "Weep, and you weep alone"; why? That's not even true, there are always collective outpourings of grief, look at Michael Jackson, Princess Di, Pope John Paul II. I simply don't see how you can say that. Perhaps it implies that the World doesn't have time for the sad, melancholics. Or the depressed. Or just those whiney people everyone knows who complain about everyone and everything. We all know one of them, right? The people who exhude discontent and are generally unpleasant to be around. Is that what we're talking about?
Even so, just look at the European existentialists; Sartre, Nietszche, Dostoyevski and Kafka. Sartre had a life long affair with Simone De Beauvoir, Dostoyevski is read by millions (Crime and Punishment, anyone?) and people are always quoting Nietszche and Kafka ("After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands" - Nietszche). You could hardly argue that
they were alone or marginalised or ostracized. But what did they ever write which wasn't "The World is crap, there is no God (how very great gasby), Faith is redundant, when you die you die and your life has no purpose, angst angst angst". Ok, I think I'm going off track, my point is that really, you don't weep alone.
I don't even like what that implies; unless you're saccharine sweet, indefatigably happy and looking on the bright side, what, the World doesn't want you? What's wrong with well placed pessimism Don't you find optimism slightly pointless? Fuck look on the bright side of life; what are you... Jiminy Cricket? Look on the bright side; look where that got Pinnochio. Didn't he get swallowed by a whale? Look at all the people dying of Aids or Cancer, what's the fucking point in looking for the bright side, when the bright side doesn't exist?
Pessimism ftw. I prefer pragmatism to dellusion, maybe that makes me a negative person to be around but hey, at least I'm honest, right? Anyway, the World revels in negativity.
Bad news sells papers. Srsly, lets look at a few of todays headline:
The Daily Star: Jordan's Lesbian Lust.
The Sun: Broken Britain
The Daily Mail: Fugitive British couple who led 'champaign lifestyle' may have starved to death of stolen yacht.
The Times: Swine Flu cases double
The NotW: Some gash about Michael Jackson
The Guardian: Class A drug use on the rise among young people (waittt...why is that bad?)
The Independant: More Swine flu.
Boo. Bad news sells. Sad news sells. Death, swine flu, drugs, MJ, some random couple. Weep and you weep alone; no. Weep and the whole World secretly revels in your sorrow and solipsism, profers a lugubrious hand, writes an obituary, cries with you (in earnestness or not), and secretly enjoys your misery.
Because lets be honest, everyone likes a miserable person.
It makes you feel better about your own life. No matter how bad life could be, I could be her. I could be fat. I could have cancer. I could be homeless. I could be abused. I could be an African Aids orphan, in which case several of these would apply. It's like the infinite passing on; no matter what, it could be worse. I could be you. I could be her:
Worse still:
The PHOTO is the "Pulitzer prize" winning photo in 1994 during the Sudan famine. The picture depicts a famine stricken child crawling towards an United Nations food camp, located a kilometer away.
>The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat it. This picture shocked the whole World. No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer Kevin Carter, who left the place as soon as the photograph was taken.
> Three months later he committed suicide.
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