kids today!

[zzambrosius_02]

One of the ‘minor’ characters in my latest project has me wondering: when you see (or interact with) a ‘party girl’ (boy?), do you automatically assume that she (he) is less than you?
This is what I’ve noticed:
She has a drug of choice, which she enjoys a lot. Sometimes (often?) she overindulges.
She is more emotional than intellectual: feeling, laughing, crying, pouting. It’s all ‘on her sleeve’ and in your face.
She is sexually aggressive: she knows what she likes and by her mid-20s she will take emotional risks in order to get it.
If she has a ‘real job’ (most of her cohort do), it is not her real life. She works for that party: then she can stay up late, use her favorite drug(s), persevere until she obtains the sexual (sensual?), and emotional gratification that she really desires, or until she knows that such gratification is out of her reach for the night. Then she will sleep in, and do it all again.
Is she a lesser person than me? Than you? Why?
As I struggle to understand the world and write about it, looking in the odd corners of history for moments of clarity, I wonder: “Why Bother?” If, as I fear, there really is no hope for the human species, & we really are going to extinct ourselves, then how is my ‘struggle to comprehend’ any more than an indulgence? If it is something I am doing because the process attracts me, how is that different from her desire to party?
AND suppose she actually once said to herself: “This is ridiculous. The system is rigged. We’re killing the planet and ourselves. Nobody is listening to me. I’m gonna get high, and get laid, and sleep in. Screw the rest of it.” Is that analysis less sophisticated than mine? Or yours?
OR is it just more elegant? “Efficient,” says hrothgar1.

Comments

[corvideye.livejournal.com]

Well, it strikes me as a selfish form of hedonism, and also nihilistic. She's given up on the rest of the world... some might call that realistic...but if she's only indulging her own pleasure, then that lacks compassion, the spark of empathy that would drive her to take care for (at the very least) others' pleasure, and better yet, others' suffering. There is a certain animal purity to it, but she has given up so much of what makes us human: the ability to care about what has come before us and what will come after us, the attempt (even futile) to make a difference for the future, the simple fact that we can choose how to behave. So from my point of view, that's limited, and selfish, and therefore I would tend to make a value judgment that her choices are unfortunate. Does that make her a lesser person? Well, I guess that depends a bit on what she does next. If that's all she ever does, I would tend to think she had squandered the potential to be more. Not a lesser potential person, but a lesser realized person.

Since I think one of the things we're put here to do is to reduce suffering, then struggling to comprehend someone else is not a waste or an indulgence, because comprehending the Other is a first step towards compassion for the Other.