The Importance of Not Being Earnest

We are on an edge, one of those transitional moments when the tectonics of the world are beginning to shift, and people must decide which of the many subcontinents they are going to jump aboard. We all feel this. Which of the old ways should be discarded and to which should we hold tight? This is the argument of our time.

“Happiness is nothing.” Thus spoke Ragnar in his final soliloquy to his son Ivar the Boneless in this week’s episode of Vikings. To the Vikings (or at least the ones on television), action is what mattered. What counts is what you do, and how you will be remembered. And hurray for that.

We have been living in an age of earnestness for far too long. It seems so important for everyone to prove what good human beings they are, to their friends, to their relatives, even (God forbid) to their coworkers. But no one really cares how much you care. And you don’t owe them anything. We are helping no one, least of all ourselves, with this deluded need to validate and consecrate what goes on inside the twisted warrens of our own minds.

I blame this earnest malaise on our pop stars. Or maybe I blame the tepid and oh-so predictable nature of our pop stars on our earnest malaise. Either way, what a fucking boring show they put on. As if what the world needs now is one more singer-songwriter strumming their guitar or another cultural ambassador from greater Brooklyn letting us know how deeply they care. Even our corporations, their clarion calling from every coffee cup and car ad, are hell-bent on showing us their hearts are in the right place.  We are being serenaded by a parade of the safe and the sincere.  

Our parents have raised an earnest generation, but one without purpose. It is like our collective fate is a job interview, and when we reach those pearly gates on the other side and God asks us what was our biggest weakness, we are all preparing to be able to tell Him that we just cared too much.     

It is time to discard this cultural fetish for being earnest. Unleash your inner Viking. Go do something worth remembering. Turn your life into a saga, not a self-help seminar. If not for your own sake, then for the kind of world you will be leaving your children.