"The common challenges of earning a living, maintaining a relationship and ageing are becoming battlegrounds of existential angst and self-loathing in a culture that demands conspicuous consumption, high-octane partnerships and perpetual youth."
Title: The Age of Absurdity
Author: Michael Foley
Pages: 240
Published by: Simon & Schuster Ltd (2010)
Why are we so unhappy?
And is the pursuit of happiness even valid?
These are the interesting questions posed by Michael Foley, in this sometimes witty, other times intellectually bereft, piece of writing.
His central argument appears to be that society’s expectations clash with reality, making us unhappy, riffing on Albert Camus’ idea of the absurd — in essence, the divorce between existential expectation and reality.
Foley’s view appears to be that the modern generation, part of the ‘age of entitlement’ — as he opines frequently — are destined to be disappointed due to their own inflated egos and greed.
The problem here is that such claims evaporate upon contact with air, once the usual soundbites and indulgence in prejudice are scrutinised.
The Age of Absurdity
Old Man Shouts at Clouds
The Age of Absurdity includes some utterly bizarre segues, many of which have aged poorly since its publication in 2010.
This includes a strange take on neurological and addiction-based conditions. Foley argues, or at least implies, a frivolity on the part of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) — the United States’ authority on mental health.
Anybody who has read The Body Keeps the Score, written by Bessel van der Kolk, MD — who has actually worked in the US healthcare system — would know that historically, it has been difficult to get conditions listed in the DSM.
“The opening line of the grant rejection read: “It has never been shown that PTSD is relevant to the mission of the Veterans Administration.”
Since then, of course, the mission of the VA has become organized around the diagnosis of PTSD and brain injury, and considerable resources are dedicated to applying “evidence-based treatments” to traumatized war veterans.
But at the time things were different and, unwilling to keep working in an organization whose view of reality was so at odds with my own, I handed in my resignation”
In the Age of Absurdity, it’s clear that Michael Foley is undeterred by his absence of knowledge or experience when making such assured pronouncements. He then turns his attention to depersonalisation, widely considered an adverse response mechanism for anxiety and stress, but apparently not for Foley.
In fact, The Age of Absurdity considers depersonalisation to be a good thing, claiming that ‘achieving personal detachment was considered to be a key factor in mental health, by every thinker from Buddha to Sartre.’ Neither, of course, renowned for their expertise as mental health clinicians.
It is this that perhaps explains Foley’s crass and ignoramus reading of Buzz Aldrin’s descent into alcoholism and depression following the moon landing mission, with Foley claiming depression to be ‘often the fate of the modern personality — greedy, attention-hungry, and resentful, always convinced of deserving more, always haunted by possibility of missing something better somewhere else, always smarting at a lack of recognition, and always dissatisfied.’
Away from this, Americans (apparently) do stupid things and people who play videogames and watch TV are wasting their time. The reader is then regaled with a ridiculous tale of the author’s fury at being unable to find a café that wasn’t playing music at 11am, whilst trying to discuss a thesis with a friend in Spain.
Truly have the horrors of the modern world been inflicted upon this poor soul.
It’s all very ‘old man shouts at clouds,’ and cheapens some of the more thoughtful and reflective moments in The Age of Absurdity. And that’s a real shame.
Critiques of structural social issues
The stronger parts of the book are the critiques of structural social issues.
Capitalism, including its associated rampant consumerism, is a key target for Foley’s scorn. For example, the need for more, but without any certainty of the ‘whys’ behind the desire to accumulate ‘stuff’.
“If every time could be the last, it's as good as the first.”
Particularly poignant are the sections on the absurdities of love and ageing, which produce some of the book’s most impressive observations on the fragility and tenuousness of our existence.
Both darkly amusing and touching in equal measure, these are the few areas where it appears that Foley is writing with some authority.
Is The Age of Absurdity worth reading?
Witty but inescapably bitter, The Age of Absurdity is a hard one to recommend.
The first couple of chapters are excellent, and the later chapters are soberingly thoughtful, but for a book that extols the virtues of happiness in the introduction, it struggles to shake the pall of cynical bitterness and resentment towards newness and modernity.
What’s more, Foley is indisputably intelligent and perceptive. So it’s all the more frustrating when this intelligence evaporates to make room for denouncing ‘rap music’, ‘Americans’, and of course the classic modern complaint — how anybody can now ‘choose their gender’.
Thoughtful at times, The Age of Absurdity is at its best when Foley leaves his strange, ignorant gripes at the door. Unfortunately, this is a rare occurrence, making for a turgid book laced with prejudice, and lacking the intellectual clout it thinks it has.