It’s my birthday. I gave myself the gift of spending a full day writing this given it’s one of my grievances that I lack the energy to write. The title is neither very original nor is it very uplifting. That is not because I feel specifically down or am out of ideas. Not at all. It is because I do not feel specifically down that I can associate the birthday blues with something we all feel more and more of the time: we have everything to be happy and - precisely because of this - we feel unhappy. There are many assumptions lurking in the previous sentence. The main one is that we all know the feeling of the birthday blues. This is not a problematic assumption as, insofar one has the ability to feel, one surely must have felt the birthday blues. The mounting pressure towards a day that has to be the day and hence keeps you awake such that this day will be a day that follows a sleepless night (like this night ;). Another assumption is that we have everything to be happy. We have roofs over our heads and all kinds of foodstuffs and digital devices full of entertainment. And a last assumption is that all of this makes us unhappy because we feel the never ending mounting pressure to be happy and - as sure as waking night announces drowsy day - this unkind pressure spoils our fun. It’s my birthday and this is my gift to myself: a diagnosis of our times as a chronic case of the birthday blues. So this post, after all, is not about me. It is about us.
Let me get something out of the way straight away: it is not a matter of going back to an innocent past in which we didn’t have technology, entertainment and the trappings of modern civilization. Mine is not a story of marveling at how those not as privileged as us seem to be happier than we are in enjoying the simple things in life. Such a story is not just racist, it’s plain wrong. It lets us complain about the diseases of civilization without needing to face up to how diseased our civilization really is. As if not having roofs or sufficient foodstuffs or access to digital devices can make anyone happier. As if our privilege is a burden. As if we should not attune for the crimes of colonialism, of patriarchy and so on just because we (as individuals) did not consciously commit those crimes. But I get carried away, sorry-not sorry, it’s my birthday and I will ride whatever hobby horse I damned well fancy riding. Still, let me jump back from this symptom of how our civilization is diseased - the impossibility for us to take responsibility - to the cause of this disease - the irresponsibility that is endemic to this civilization.
The cause of it was already mentioned above in the context of the birthday blues. It is the mounting pressure that the next day needs to be the day. Our civilization is one in which we live in the constant expectation to do better and in which that doing better is an expectation which we have of our individual selves. Every day has the pressure of a birthday where we are singled out as the center of attention, and where we expect to get perfect gifts. I hear you thinking: not me! I am above that. I have thought this too, yet here I am drowsy from a sleepless night, looking at this screen with prickly eyes. It is not something we can be above given it is something that is embedded deep inside us. Even thinking we are detached and ‘above it all’ is nothing else than our bodies that have internalized this sense of it being about us and it needing to be perfect. Don’t get me riding on my hobby horse of denouncing the Stoics amongst you as Epicurists that have adapted their taste to enjoy their privilege soberly such that they are even farther above taking responsibility given they safely occupy the moral high ground.
I am quite certain that there was a time when birthdays were not celebrated, because there simply was no calendar on which to mark them. I am also quite certain that now one cannot not be affected by one’s birthday. The arrow of time is irreversible and the practice (the habit) of celebrating birthdays is so entrenched that not celebrating them is as much - well, much more - of a confirmation of that practice then just going with the flow and accepting your gifts with a blush as I will do when my kids are over next Saturday. So much for curing this diseased civilization by distancing one’s individual self from it. It is precisely this marking of distance that is the problem, the disease, of this civilization. It’s precisely this distancing oneself that makes this civilization what it is: voraciously ever busy with growth - personal growth or economic growth, potato-potahto. Now, you can retort that without growth we would not have as many roofs, as many foodstuffs and as many digital technologies and you would be right. The disease is not growth per se, but it is competitive growth: the idea that growth is predicated on us doing better than others (like your birthdays are predicated on you being celebrated more than others; if you never felt this I refer you back to the moral high ground with which I ended the previous paragraph).
Can we have our civilization - our roofs, foodstuffs and digital technologies - without this idea of competitive - and therefore necessarily voraciously extractive - growth? I am somewhat certain you did not think this post was going to go here when you first read the title. But to me this question is the same as the question whether we can have our birthday without the birthday blues. And the answer, realistically, is: no! The cat is out of the bag, the arrow of time only goes in one direction, so on so forth. Putting the cat back in the bag is exacerbating the cat’s misery for our own benefit. Messing with the arrow of time just leads to the type of ‘great again’ that exacerbates the injustice of previous - colonial, patriarchal, … - extractive growth. What we can do though is to be conscious of why we have the birthday blues. Why it’s unsettling to single out a day to single out one individual. Why autistics are right in feeling that mounting pressure as evidence of a truly guilty pleasure. And that’s the only solution: taking pleasure in it is only possible if we realize it is a guilty pleasure. One that we indulge in, like I indulge in writing this post, but also one that comes with responsibilities to others; like how I will blushingly accept the gifts of my children realizing that what is celebrated isn’t so much about me as it is about us.
Feeling dizzy? Lost on how now to answer the question with which the previous para started? That makes two of us. This is my gift to myself so I am as eager to learn what is inside when unwrapping it as you are. I think it comes to this: we can - and we even should - enjoy our roofs, foodstuffs and digital technologies. We should not shed what we have, we should just change that part of our civilization that prevents us from being able to celebrate it with this whole wide world. This then is just my plea for degrowth, not in its caricature of reversing the arrow of time, but in what it really stands for: the slowing down of our Western individualist expectations so more and more people can have security of roofs, foodstuffs and digital technologies. Redistribute privilege, not because others are out to take things from us, but just because it carries the burden of guilt and stands in the way of not only them being materially happy but also us being immaterially happy. And now I see the gift: it is a plea for taxing Western wealth, even for taxing male wealth, and for taxing old people’s wealth, so as to be able to celebrate all of it together. Read my lips (reads the T-shirt I have apparently given myself): more new taxes! Taxes we blushingly accept as they show us we can celebrate together.
I know it will be difficult to wear that T-shirt as the people who look like me - straight balding white men - will look at me reproachingly for the spoil sport I am. Here they are already having to deal with feminist killjoys, and now they also have to deal with a fifth column telling them that they cannot even simply innocently enjoy their birthday despite having worked so hard at improving themselves and consequently their people. Because, indeed, my first assumption is not entirely unproblematic as there are those who’re numbed into not feeling the birthday blues, wearing their sense of entitlement as a medal of meritocracy for the burden of having built this civilization with its roofs, foodstuffs and digital technologies. I feel their lack of feeling and their spite at those who begrudge them their privilege born - they think - from carrying the burden of the enlightenment of the world. It will also be difficult to wear that T-shirt as the young - who already realize that the great acceleration leaves them exposed to a big implosion - will think straight white balding men like me still believe it is up to them to save the world. Luckily there is a small note at the bottom of my gift. It says: “It’s your birthday so you just had to blushingly open this gift to celebrate being gifted alongside others. You gave this tune-up everything you had. Go to sleep now.”