Q: “What is the difference between tragedy and comedy?” A: Officially there are various differences and contemporarily one might say something like: “Though both seek to move you enormously, Tragedy tries to make you cry and Comedy tries to make you laugh and in this sense one could view them as opposites”. However as far as I’m concerned they’re actually exactly the same thing and it’s just a matter of perspective as to whether you find something funny or tragic. Like a really fat person falling down the stairs for instance. Many people would laugh if they saw a video of that, fat people falling down is basic physical comedy really, however if it was you, if it was a friend or relative of yours, you would find it tragic how badly that person would likely be hurt, that they are in such straits etc.
I have said before that in order for there to be laughter there must be a loser, and so do I believe tragedy and comedy are intertwined. Well nonetheless, in entertainment there’s a certain effort at distinction. However since everyone seeks to triumph they also like to laugh, I’m not certain that it isn’t an instinctual defense mechanism, I wrote about my experience warding off a doppelganger with laughter once, and so people make much more of an effort at creating comedy in their lives than tragedy. By far. Though as I said perhaps it’s a matter of perspective as to which one they are really sowing.
And with that introduction we come to contemplation of my own life. I am not sure how I can go from sloughing through life taking hours to make a decent cake or questionable pie (I tried to make a single lemon cream pie and somehow ended out making two…) and playing japanese video games all day to something the likes of which would “actually be doing something”. Ah in other words I don’t know how to go, at my age, from simply living somehow to making a living. Fulfillment perhaps. Maybe if I could still move all my limbs properly or had any particular
ability it would be another story. But as it stands I am somewhat stuck.
I think it’s somewhat more an issue of uncertainty than fear. Perhaps I never took the time out to set my morals, to create goals. Life has always been so easy to just live, and whenever something was difficult that I didn’t care about I simply gave it up. The suffrage of others and some sort of low level genius or cunning being what has carried me to this point.
Have you ever thought that in difficult times those with nothing to offer would be weeded out? That the weak would be crushed under the strong? Or simply abandoned to their own devices by those who inevitably tired of carrying them? This is logical, this is what we’ve been lead to believe by mostly fascist people of any sort of position. However if that was really the case then why am I still alive? The truth is that… people are consumed by guilt. That’s the conclusion that I came to. I won’t deny exploiting that for my own benefit on multiple occasions.
The story of original sin, why there is such a term in the christian religion, how such a rule came to be in the catholic church, is appreciably ridiculous. But I think that the reason people even came to think about such a thing in the first place was because of this overriding compunction that people feel so often, especially in relation to others. I myself have never met a truly “heartless” person who showed no compunction whatsoever. I’ve met some that didn’t care about stealing, or hurting, or even killing. But I’ve never met a person who, even if they were willing to do anything, didn’t feel bad about some thing. I think in behaviorism they explain this as resultant from observed morals (distinct from “taught” in that one might be taught one thing but observe many others), as being a nurtured trait. But I am not so sure that just as people breath, just as their hearts beat, just as they laugh, just as their eyes hydrate themselves, that they do not “just feel guilty”. Perhaps guilt is merely the surface of something deeper or hidden, some fragment of understanding that is not grasped, I do not know. But that people are consumed by guilt is something I’m certain of.
And so it is that I who have lived in peace and strife without changing, who survived to see the end of not only a century but also a millennium , am contemplating on the verge of a new decade whether to remain a mere pariah who is sometimes entertaining to some, or to attempt to be something else. And if so what that something else should be. For me the possibilities are probably even more limited than the length of my life. But, well, such is life no?
