The Paradox of Sadness and Depression In America - David Foster Wallace — Transcript

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1. 0:01there's a particular ethos in U.S
2. 0:05culture especially in entertainment and
3. 0:08marketing culture that very much appeals
4. 0:10to people as individuals that you don't
5. 0:12have to be devoted or subservient to
6. 0:15anything else
7. 0:16there is no larger good than your own
8. 0:19good in your own happiness we all
9. 0:21worship and we all have a religious
10. 0:23impulse
11. 0:24we
12. 0:26um we can choose to an extent what we
13. 0:29worship but the myth that we worship
14. 0:31nothing and give ourselves away to
15. 0:33nothing is simply
16. 0:35simply sets us up to give ourselves away
17. 0:38to something different for instance
18. 0:41pleasure or drugs or the idea of having
19. 0:46a lot of money and being able to buy
20. 0:47nice stuff kids get exposed to very
21. 0:50early that that you are the most
22. 0:53important and what you want is the most
23. 0:55important and that your job in life is
24. 0:58to is to gratify your own desires it
25. 1:01that that's a little crude to say it
26. 1:03that way but in but in but in fact it's
27. 1:05it's something of the ideology here
28. 1:09um and uh it's it's certainly the
29. 1:12ideology that's perpetrated by a
30. 1:15television and advertising an
31. 1:17entertainment
32. 1:18the economy thrives on it this is one
33. 1:21enormous engine and Temple of self
34. 1:24gratification and and self and
35. 1:27self-advancement and in some ways it
36. 1:29works very very well in other ways it
37. 1:32doesn't it doesn't work all that well
38. 1:33it's a very complicated thing
39. 1:36um and and full of paradoxes and ironies
40. 1:39and all kinds of stuff and
41. 1:41um
42. 1:42the idea the the idea that America is
43. 1:45one great big shopping mall and that all
44. 1:48anyone wants to do is you know grasp
45. 1:50their credit card and run out and buy
46. 1:52stuff American economic and cultural
47. 1:54systems that work very well in terms of
48. 1:57in terms of selling people products and
49. 2:00keeping the economy thriving do not work
50. 2:02as well when it comes to educating
51. 2:06children or helping helping us help each
52. 2:09other know how to live really it means
53. 2:11something different from whatever I want
54. 2:13to do I want to take this cup and throw
55. 2:15it right now I have every right I should
56. 2:16you know I mean that we've seen it and
57. 2:19we see it with children that's not
58. 2:20happiness there that feeling of having
59. 2:23to obey every impulse and gratify every
60. 2:26desire nobody talks about it as such
61. 2:28though it talks about freedom of choice
62. 2:30and you have the right to have things
63. 2:33spend this much money and you can have
64. 2:35this stuff again saying it this way it
65. 2:37sounds to me very crude and very simple
66. 2:39but and it works very well as a system
67. 2:42for running an economy and keeping Goods
68. 2:46produced and sold and it works
69. 2:47wonderfully
70. 2:49there the ways in which it doesn't work
71. 2:51are much more difficult to talk about
72. 2:52now I feel embarrassment because I'm
73. 2:54going to sound like some
74. 2:56like my grandfather or something but the
75. 2:58word citizen the idea of being a citizen
76. 3:00would be to to to understand your
77. 3:04country's history and the things about
78. 3:07it that are good and not so good and how
79. 3:09the system works and taking the trouble
80. 3:11to learn about candidates for political
81. 3:14office which means often reading stuff
82. 3:17which isn't it isn't fun sometimes it's
83. 3:19boring
84. 3:20talking about this now I feel ashamed
85. 3:22because my saying all this sounds to me
86. 3:25like an older person saying this like a
87. 3:27person lecturing which in American
88. 3:30culture sets me up to be ridiculed it
89. 3:33would be very easy to make fun of what
90. 3:34I'm saying you know be very very easy to
91. 3:37make fun of what I'm saying and I can
92. 3:38hear in my head a voice making fun of
93. 3:40this stuff as I'm saying it and this is
94. 3:42the kind of
95. 3:44this is the kind of paradox I think of
96. 3:47of what it is
97. 3:48of what it is to be a halfway
98. 3:51intelligent American right now and
99. 3:52probably also a Western European is that
100. 3:55there there are things we know are right
101. 3:57and good and would be better for us to
102. 4:00do but constantly it's like yeah but you
103. 4:03know it's so much funnier and nicer to
104. 4:05go do something else and who cares and
105. 4:08it's all anyway
106. 4:09and one of one of the things it causes
107. 4:11is is
108. 4:12tension and unhappiness in people
109. 4:15it I don't I don't think it's very
110. 4:17complicated and I don't think I've named
111. 4:19the only reason for it the Paradox is
112. 4:21that that sort of tension tension and
113. 4:24and complication and conflict in people
114. 4:26also makes them very easy to Market to
115. 4:28because I can say to you
116. 4:31um feeling uneasy life feels empty well
117. 4:34here's here's you know here's something
118. 4:36you can buy or something you can go do
119. 4:37it makes us
120. 4:40um it makes for the economics term is
121. 4:42inelasticity of demand I demand all the
122. 4:46time no matter what the price of it is
123. 4:48and it it works really well
124. 4:51in an economic way
125. 4:53um
126. 4:54emotionally spiritually in terms of in
127. 4:56terms of citizenship in terms of feeling
128. 4:58like a meaningful part even of this
129. 5:00country forget the world
130. 5:02but it's also a natural extension of of
131. 5:06certain cultural messages we send
132. 5:09ourselves about ourselves that work very
133. 5:12well in some ways and make us very rich
134. 5:13and very powerful it's all
135. 5:16applicator