Re: The Shiny Gym
Re: Comment left on previous post entitled “The Shiny Gym”.
Oh Neotha.
First off.. I work 10 days a month. Which is already too much. Why the rest of the industrialized world hasn’t figured that out yet is beyond me.
My problem is not with gyms, or with people looking to make positive changes in their lives for the “right” reasons, those being fitness, health, self-confidence, ect. I go to the gym all the time for these kinds of reasons- I like to be in good shape so I can do the things I like to outside.
Shiny is not about simply going to the gym or the stupid cardio machines with TV screens or juice bars or any of that other trivial madness.. Shiny is about living in a fantasy world outside reality. I believe that what makes a person truly shiny is their high degree of general oblivion to the true nature of the world. Shiny is a symptom of this oblivion typified most obviously by the upper-class. These are the people who really believe, maybe even just subconsciously, that appearances matter because that is all they are capable of seeing. We can find these symptoms present in the lower-class too…. Perhaps more so, but as is generally obvious, poverty is not pretty at first glance. There are those in poverty who see deeper than economics, who possess enough clarity to understand the dissociation between money and happiness, and these are not in the category we are concerned with today. Conversely, there are those with money who also realize that money is not the source of happiness, that the two are not related.
Shiny people are those who seek, but do not find happiness. Who are confused by their money and cannot understand why their happiness is not proportional. These are people that will never be happy because they continuously look for happiness extrinsically, who never make the self-actualized leap of understanding that happiness comes from within. Shiny people are those who tack on facades of manufactured joy in an attempt to reflect some of it inward.
And why not? Advertising and the media have been telling us this is true since we were born. Why should anyone make the colossal leap of faith that all the shiny people on TV are not perfectly happy thanks to their money? In fact, almost all of advertising is premised on the pretense happiness CAN be bought. What else could possibly be worth selling? If it was widely realized on a deep, visceral level that happiness was produced solely in the human heart and that it could not, in fact, be influenced in any meaningful way by anything bought or sold our economy would collapse completely. Certainly products of subsistence would still be bought and sold. People would still eat and find food and shelter. But all the crap that has no meaning would never move from the shelves.
But, thankfully for the wheels of commerce, this is not widely known. It is encouraged to seek happiness in anything available for sale. There are no commercials to straighten up, stop spending so much money, live within your means, lower your stress and learn to love life for living. But there are commercials for anti-depressant medications for when the bubble breaks and happiness is not delivered by retail. Even then, a lack of happiness is not a persons responsibility, is not expected to be a discipline of the mind, a conditioned response to being alive.
No. Happiness is a by-product of neural chemistry. Eureka! A brilliant supposition because it is marketable! One cannot sell something that everyone is capable of producing or obtaining themselves.
Pharmaceutical companies are making billions annually because we as a people are convinced that happiness comes from outside and is supposed to shine down on us from the universe; we should all be living lives with lots of cool toys and fancy cars and clothes and should all have the bodies of bronzed roman gods and pretty faces and everyone should love us and everything in the world should align in our favor. And when this doesn’t happen and we wonder why, why, why is life so unfair and mean and why everything isn’t sunny and rosy like the ads told us it was going to be. Even then there is seldom any lightbulb that goes on to suggest that the reason we aren’t happy is because everything we bought was lying to us, and that if we’re not happy without the money we will never be happy with the money. No. This type of radical thinking is discouraged.
And that is my problem with the Shiny people, and what I meant about the Shiny gym. I see lots of un-shiny people where I work out and I have no idea if they “get” it. I see lots of shiny-looking people there too and in truth I do not know individually if they do either. However, for the purposes of demonstration those whom I have coined “Shiny” are the easiest to use for illustration. This is an elitist point of view. I make no apologies for that. I am very lucky to live the mode of life that I do and am provided with a relatively unique perspective from which to cast my judgements.
I do not think that you are Shiny for simply going to a gym, working out, for buying smoothies and drinking them by the pool, for living downtown, for liking the thriving immersion in your community. I especially dislike your use of gender as an excuse, or the assumption that I would think the presence of a “male friend” would ease the situation (as you said “..my neighborhood is not the safest place to be, alone at night as a female. … and finally, why can’t I work out with a male friend?”). C’mon, Neotha…. It’s 2008. You’d have me believe that this could be solved if you just stayed in the kitchen.
This is about the pursuit of happiness. Which is ridiculous. We have no need to pursue happiness. It is within us.
