In eras past, humanity defined itself by its quests: life-changing, all-consuming searches for magnificent things that might never be found, but then the search itself is one long epiphany. We used to see it in fairy tales and classic books and films: quests for true love or esoteric knowledge, for freedom or victory. But quests are uncool now in an era when nihilism is the dominant force in the arts and academia. This brutal nothing-matters-anymore message permeates such critically acclaimed modern films as No Country for Old Men and Fight Club ... and the whole ouevre of Chuck Palahniuk, for that matter. And it's in all those TV commercials that feature cars crashing and things exploding.
The new nihilism renders obsolete even the concept of a quest. Hip nihilism mocks grails and those who hunt them. It tells us that rainbows end in mere air. If nothing is magnificent enough anymore to merit quests -- if quests now seem embarrassing and pointless and silly -- then what are we to seek these days but chemical adventures and cheap thrills, again, again, again? Nihilism began really taking hold in the late '70s, fueled by economic recession, post-Vietnam War gloom and ennui. At that time, punk songs -- baleful even in their jubilance -- proclaimed their awareness of this condition: "I belong to the blank generation," Richard Hell and the Voidoids sang in 1977. "We're pretty - pretty vacant," the Sex Pistols sang that same year, "and we don't care."
Bad habits fill holes.
In our days. In our souls.
Some of these holes are eaten away in us by ambient, aggressive nihilism. And some of those holes in our souls come from disconnection: from the very ease and excess that is meant to make life better, not worse. Living in the lap of luxury, surrounded by stuff, we have a startling number of caesuras in our lives. Gaps. Chasms that we don't dare contemplate and instead rush to hide with ... more stuff. Or with substances or repetitive behaviors that keep us distracted from what's missing. This is partly (but only partly) because the new nihilism has taught us not to bother trying, and partly because we have come to rely on machines to do so much for us: to give us pleasure, products, information, entertainment, companionship in a click, performing tasks whose strenuosity used to remind us that we were alive. To the extent that we no longer perform these tasks ourselves, we no longer feel human.
Machines have made our dreams come true while filling us with inchoate emptiness and thus despair. Do some of the many "cutters" around the world today -- people who self-mutilate, slicing their flesh habitually with razor blades and knives -- try to literalize the other holes in their lives, the boredom, the pain, the failed connections, by creating holes in themselves and leaving lasting scars? Based on the comments at cutter forums, cutting appeals to many because of its brutal physicality, which seems the only way they can remind themselves that they are real. "It gives me something to focus on," one writes at a popular UK-based cutters' site. "It makes me feel alive," another writes.
What horrible habits do we get stuck on for fear of turning into robots otherwise?
Last night a young rock-'n'-roll songwriter lamented to me that his generation of music lovers is "chronically depressed" because "we've fallen out of touch with the natural world and with each other on a human level. Even our music," he said with a look of genuine pain, "is completely electronic, completely dependent on machines." He described spending whole afternoons playing video games only to realize, at dinnertime, "that I've spent three sunny hours sitting indoors, creating nothing."
I think he needs a quest. I think maybe we all do.
