A Brief Defense of Hedonism

I am a hedonist, and proud of it.

I do nothing except search after new experiences, facts, situations and puzzles in the hope that I will derive some enjoyment from having found them. My mind is ever-hungry, and the rest of my life is structured around feeding it. Everything else is less important, the body a not-always-so-distant second. The world exists, and I yearn to know it with an intense and bottomless hunger.

I'm no good at owning and caring for material goods. I don't keep my room in order or my clothing clean. I have a lot of trouble paying attention to things that don't interest me. But when I'm on my game, when my mind is sharp and my talons are out, when I can taste what I'm looking for in my brain, that's when I know I'm alive.

There is so much that I don't understand, so much that I have not seen, and I want to know it all. And there isn't time to do anything else but seek it out. If pleasure is the motivating factor in my continually deepening understanding of the world, then so be it.

I try to be the best person I can, because I find it hinders my ability to enjoy myself when I do not.

I don't understand people who don't set out, as best they can each day, to enjoy the world. Sure, it's a terrible place full of terrible people who want to do terrible things to one another. Sure, it can be pain and suffering and despair. Sure, we're a set of evolved neuroses competing for processor time and nutrients in a fleshy sack laced with poisons and a million different kinds of tiny battling monsters.

But it still beats nothing.

The rain on your face when you look up at the storm beats nirvana hollow any day of the week, as far as I'm concerned. Heaven, as the Talking Heads say, is a place where nothing ever happens. This world may not be the best of all possibilities, but it's the one we have, and it is fascinating, fragile, beautiful and terrible in equal parts.

In the face of such an existence, hedonism is the only logical way to proceed. Enjoy the world you live in, take hold of it, and make it an even more unbearably beautiful place.

I can't think of a better alternative.

Obama! Spring Break! Whoo!

I really like Obama. Honestly and deeply like him. I like hearing him speak. I like his story, his policies, his platitudes. I like him in a way that is counter to my cynicism, that is objectively, very foolish. And I am not naive, I know that he is an American politician, which is to be a huckster and a liar and a snake-oil salesman. But in Obama, I am okay with the deceptions and compromises. I can live with them, because he is at the very least self-aware. He knows who's going to vote for him and he knows what they want to hear and how to say it, how to perform and present himself to them as the vehicle for their frustrated optimism and vestigial idealism. Unequivocally, the "youth vote" (as it were) is his major strength, the true devotees and zealous converts. The Baby Boomers and the Union Workers and the Frustrated Republicans are being swayed, seduced and shown the light, but slowly and with the passionate guidance of these college students. Anyone over the age of 17 and under the age of 30 is chomping at the bit to vote for the Obamanator. We're ready to go. Get us to a booth, and we know what to do.

Unfortunately, the most common criticism is also the fairest observation: Obama really doesn't have much to say. Not yet, anyway. He has some outlines. Some ideas. A clear and (to me) fairly comforting voting record. But Hilary's had her marching plan ready since the impeachment days. That is irrelevant, and I feel that he (or at least, his incredibly clever staff) understands that. That the youth vote would not be won with a PowerPoint presentation and a pragmatic attitude. For better or worse, this (perhaps more than any) is to be a race won by image.

This is fairly abhorrent, and I apologise for my fellow 20-somethings. But hear us out: We've got a lot on our minds. We've grown in dark times, many of us only just remember the milk and honey days of Clinton's presidency, and the rest suffer the pain of fallout. And yes, compared to these latter days of the Shrub, I do think Clinton's time in office has a comparative sylvan quality. That's neither here nor there, though. We've seen tragedy and bloodshed at an astonishing rate, defended by bloodless and cowardly people. We've seen photographic evidence of government-sanctioned torture. We're in a post-Nixon America. We were born suspicious and we were born cynical. We never had ideals to compromise. Remember, the last election. How many of you out there loved making the distinction: "I am voting against Bush, not for Kerry". C'mon, let's see those hands. I confess.

But Obama. He stands up so tall and speaks to clearly. He's so...well, he's so fucking presidential. I can understand why America misses Camelot still. It's not an accident that several members of JFK's family, including his daughter, have passed the torch to the present candidate. Obama is the president in an action film. He is a pretty picture, and please forgive us for being shallow. But that's all we need from our candidate. We're sick of reality, and Obama has promised we'll never see it. We've seen too much embarrassing human-ness in our leaders: aggressive idiocy of Bush2 and the sleaze of Clinton. Obama promises with each step of his campaign that he'll keep his skeletons, his perversions and his spelling mistakes out of the evening news. He'll never cry or freak out at a primary. No blue dresses. Don't worry kids, Obama's here and he's got it taken care of.

That's just what we wanted to hear.

See, I can update about real things.

I recently purchased two pieces of vinyl and the reaction from my friends was “did you really buy vinyl?”, with a certain amount of disdain, as if I had just sunk myself into the pit of elitist, masturbatory self-congratulation of being a evangelizing vinyl owner. They’re right, though. There is a choking pretense and elitism that follows the format, for better or for worse.

But. The real question is contained in the question that comes to us at easiest to hand, which is “why did you buy vinyl, when you don’t even have a record player?"

The answer comes down, ultimately, to a discussion of format. Because of my work elsewhere, I am able to receive promotional copies of CDs, or the files that comprise them. Therefore, I have the files, and I have the portability the current formats are useful for. In other words, I can put the songs on my iPod and on my computer and I don’t need the CD again.

I don’t need a CD player, since I have an iPod, and so the CD, once the files that comprise it have been ripped to my computer, sits on my shelves and computer desk and only gets use when I want to flick through the CD jacket sleeve or look for lyrics.

This is to say that once I have ripped the files onto my computer, I have no use for the format I have purchased, aside from the art and packaging that goes with them. And this is where the vinyl comes in. There are two reasons, so I have heard, why one would buy vinyl. First, for the sound quality, (which ends up atrophying) and the art.

Since I don’t own a turntable, I can’t defend the sound quality argument. Art and packaging on the other hand, I can defend without issue. I have seen the packaging for the CD version of this release (Minus the Bear’s Planet Of Ice), and when I leafed through it, it was clear that while it looked awesome, it was missing a certain je ne sais quoi. Also, when I heard that a good friend of mine who was putting out the vinyl release had worked really hard on the jacket (that being the album artwork), I knew which format my purchase of the album was going to be in.

I view the double disc vinyl releases like this the same way my parents view coffee table books. They are meant to be looked at, and meant to be full color, glossy and exquisite. In this case, I paid for sumptuousness in a format, when I already have the music, so my question of which format to purchase is between $14 for a CD who’se art I don’t like or $10.50 for a double disc vinyl that one of my friends worked on who’se art I do.

That’s not much of a decision. But if you're going to call me an self-absorbed, arrogant prick, which is probably true, you're going to have to find some other way to do it instead of the fact that I'm now buying vinyl on the side.