A Rhetorical Argument against YOLO

Yolo is defined by the Urban Dictionary as an abbreviation for "you only live once." This also means the “dumbass's excuse for something stupid that they did.” It has been misinterpreted as live life to the fullest. It is also identified as “one of the most annoying abbreviations ever”....Yet people, students, and celebrities alike continue to use it. Why? Philosophically yolo means that because you only live once, any mistake or unintended negative outcome is blown off as inconsequential. Disguised behind the idea that we are living a conscious life complete with mistakes, we are not critically thinking about our actions, behaviors, or thoughts. While this has not only been embraced by many people, it poses one of the major philosophical dilemmas of our generation. We don’t feel the need to take responsibility for our actions and we are flippant towards the consequences.  

It is very common for politicians or celebrities to deny and deflect blame. It is very rare for individuals in the public eye to genuinely apologize; instead it just comes off as a PR task. Consider the likes of Justin Bieber, Michael Richards, or Kanye West (CNN). You mess up, you publically apologize and contain the damage. If your ego doesn’t get in the way or it is possible. Sure we all make mistakes and it is a great thing to know that you can develop as a human being over the course of your life. However, yolo poses a whole new philosophical apathy that is troubling to the intellectual engagement of the human race. In other words, Ive messed up and I don’t care. 



It therefore may be the most self-destructive attitude that we can take during the present day. 




There are people who look at the state of the world and decide that there are so many problems and the world is so messed up then why bother? With so many examples of yolo and celebrity apathy that why do I care? Parallel to the apathy and self-disengagement of yolo is the attitude that the world is going to hell so what does it matter if I screw up or screw off? This does nothing to solve the problem, but is defeatist and counterproductive. And according to some psychologists may actually be a sign of mental illness and non-resilience. 




Because of that reality, we must embrace an attitude opposite of yolo.  The Urban Dictionary identifies yodo, or "you only die once," as a way to pick on people who foolishly follow the values of yolo. However, this does nothing, but further perpetrate the problem of disengagement. Undermining someone else’s empowerment or even struggle doesn’t solve the problem. This is also a fundamental element of bullying, the belittling of someone else especially if that person is in a perceived or actual inferior position. 




We need an attitude of engagement, of personal responsibility, of corporate responsibility, of community-wide empathy in such a way that helps to not only give us a sense of belonging, but heals the personal and social wounds we have suffered, to not only connect people who are isolated or marginalized, but to enhance our individual and social lives. Personal responsibility can not be interpreted as a self-centered survivalist reaction. While we must look out for ourselves, there is much social criticism of various individual experiences, celebrity or peer, as ego-driven, contrived, overblown, mundane, or meaningless. Why aren’t we more empathetic towards our fellow citizen’s experiences and challenges? Why are we so judgmental and critical? Why is bullying such a social pastime in our schools? While engaging in personal responsibility will ensure our self-advocacy and self-development, it isn't the only thing that counters yolo. As a society we need to learn and practice empathy; we need to practice positive relationship building; we need to remember that our actions can have consequences; we need to remember that examples of helping our fellow human can have a lasting influence not only on the person we help, but our own sense of self-worth.  




Barack Obama has proclaimed Sept 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance in honor of the first responders of 9/11. He has also encouraged people to volunteer on January 19 a National Service Day celebrating MLK. While days like this do much for our communities, we need to embrace this much more as a community ethic. To help each other is to help oneself. When we connect with a fellow human being and give them a helping hand in a moment of need, then we engage in a fulfilling experience and an improvement of our own character. There are many studies that show the effects of service work; however, why isn’t it more of an American value, practice, or pastime? Is it possible to embrace values parallel to the American dream that champion helping our fellow human or neighbor, any of them in any way that we can? This should be the norm, not the exception. 




Furthermore, if we actively are reflective towards our actions, whatever they may be, then we are more likely to advocate for our own improvement and involvement in many areas of the social process. The Brookings Institute has identified personal responsibility as a key factor in the health and vibrancy of our lives. 




Another challenge to the idea of yolo is the philosophical grounds that we truly don’t know if we only live once and therefore it is self-damning to not care about our performance or improvement over time. What if we do live multiple lives? What if reincarnation is a real concept? While religion has championed an afterlife for centuries, science still has not proved or disproved the existence of an afterlife or reincarnation. There are psychologists that are calling for more study into client revelations of significant and real evidence of past life experiences. See Brian Weiss’s Many Lives, Many Masters or Michael Newton’s The Journey of Souls or Ian Stevenson’s 20 Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. While trying to avoid a faith based argument, there does still need to be more evidence and more study. However, if this is the case, then would we only prolong our development by embracing apathy or yolo? What is our role in reincarnation? Why would it be being so flippant that we shouldn't be aware of the consequences of our actions. It would also harkens to the tragedy of the commons. An individual's self-centered behavior essentially will undermine the benefit of public use of specific resources. If we had a continuous eternal role to steward the earth, each other and ourselves, then we also must recognize the responsibility to learn how to be not just better, but our best. An old carpenter’s motto that resonates here is that we all do better when we all do better. In order to best organize our own lives and development it requires engagement and personal responsibility, not apathy and selfishness. 

Here’s to rejecting yolo and seeking to do better for our collective vibrance and improvement.

Married Expression...Does anything really change after the wedding day?

I recently got married. It was a wonderful and magical celebration of love and community. While we will cherish the memory forever, there is something else that I have begun to notice and appreciate. Many people have asked us “hey, has anything changed?” At first I don’t think anything really did. However, I am beginning to think that it has and is changing. Our partnership does not, contrary to the conquering youthful skeptic romantics such as Kierkegaard’s Johannes Climacus in The Seducer’s Diary, end with our vows. It deepens and continues each and every day much more like Kierkegaard’s Judge who responds to Climacus arguing the aesthetic and ethical benefits of marriage. Yet it grows even further in other ways. Granted I must add the disclaimer that we are but a mere few months into our married life, yet our awareness and intentions in this regard are essential. We committed even before our wedding day to a team effort that we continue to practice and challenge, with which we work and play every day through every mood and circumstance.

Yet I did not fully realize how much community is an important part of our expression of partnership. The thing that highlighted this for me was being with family and friends over the holidays. The way that we interacted with each other and others was an intimate mixing of love, cultured, community, partnered, and individual expressions. I experience love individually as I experience it directly and personally. For example, we tend to be fairly tactile and so many times unconsciously I will touch my wife’s leg, arm, or the small of her back. I experience the feeling of connection directly and personally in reaching out and touching her. However, it became clearer to me that we all exist in unique entities; we are each different worlds of love, molecules of phenomenology in vastly diverse expressions of relationship or even its absence. During our wedding I thanked our wedding guests with a similar sentiment that draws us all together. “Each and every one of you is an essential part of what inspires us. You are all unique, dynamic and moving love poems in your own right. We are all on our own journey; learning love, exploring partnership, managing compassion, connection and development. Whatever that might look like.  The day to day simple joys, the ups and downs, the obstacles, the disappointments, the tripping and falling to the point of utter failure…and finally the glorious accomplishments, milestones and achievements further communicate to us that love is an important element of quality in our lives. Whatever your path of love our collective stories enrichen not only our lives, but our growth. As we are inspired by, learn from and love you, we humbly hope that we have stoked the fire in you and consequently in the ones you touch, personally and professionally. Your struggle through love’s challenges encourages us to weather the storms of life as we hope ours encourages you; your compassion and joy energizes us as we hope our energy brightens you,  your process inspires us to never give up as we hope we inspire you to persevere.  Your story becomes our story.”  

During the holidays I saw this idea play out in the reflections of single people hanging out with friends, yearning for a deep connection with someone else, and whatever that meant for them personally; I heard this in the reflections of fellow couples sharing their recent move, their travel, their work, their stories, their interactions with parents, family, friends, each other, etc.; I felt this in the frustration of coupled and individual discussions about…a whole host of issues that we experience from day to day and over the holidays. Yet I think we are starting to come into our own as a married couple, because we are beginning to exist as a resonant example of love, of partnership, of marriage, and what it is in all its complexities. I don’t claim to have the perfect relationship, but we have a strong relationship that uniquely expresses itself as we interact with other people. Through that interaction we inspire and we are inspired in turn. I found many of our own conversations during the holidays reflected on the people we were with and how their story affected us. Some more than others, but still recognized. One particular example is the discussion about kids. Seeing friends with kids and seeing them interact inspired quite a few discussions about when to have kids, what our common values are around raising kids, the infinite difficulties in parenthood, and even childhood memories. Kid energy, good and cranky alike, is just infectious at times and especially around the holidays.

I was drawn to reflect further on how culture or society influences this conversation as well, in an interaction discussing the viral video of an experimental and guided interaction between young boys and an unfamiliar girl. The boys were introduced to the girl, asked a series of questions including what they admired about her and then asked to slap the girl. Not one of the boys slapped the girl. Granted the video could have been edited as warranted and has some further ethical controversies, but it brought up an interesting issue. Society tells us many things, often that it is ok to be violent, essentially to slap the girl. Yet none of the boys did so for a host of reasons including “you shouldn’t hit a girl,” because “I’m a man,” because “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”  Society influences us here in a myriad of ways: as ethical guidelines, as media messages, as real world examples, as traditional customs, as proverbs, as social roles, as a constant and loud cacophony of feedback. Do we experience love for us and for our partners (follow your heart?) or for others and for society (what society tells us is right?)? What is our real expression of love or partnership? If you love someone just for the sake of loving someone, it will never hold a candle to the experience of truly loving someone who loves you back through all kinds of challenges. Love is a process. It is a conscious choice. Those boys certainly could have slapped the girl, but didn’t. There were many messages we heard about what a wedding should be; we shirked many of them and put together a unique expression of who we are. Despite what society tells us, we choose to go through the process of loving, of relating to another human being, of seducing as Kierkegaard’s Climacus, of nurturing within a marriage as Kierkegaard’s Judge, or of expressing it in our own personal way. Yet we do so within a very dynamic social environment. For better or worse.

Much like cancer researchers who have clearly shown the genetic etiology of cancer and who are beginning to explore how cancer develops within environmental factors, and in diverse environments, the environment is an essential element within which we exist.  Like one’s health, love can be fit as a fiddle or suddenly turn toxic.  It is very important how I think about it, yet the social environment through which I interact on a regular basis is also important. I came to realize then that not only does it matter how I think/feel to me, but it matters how the culture thinks/feels to the community in which I live.  In such a way we continue to develop as a married couple. Through our constant interaction with a dynamic community that expresses love in infinite ways, we share the experience of ourselves, of love, of partnership, of community, of life and we grow. In that sharing no matter where we are, no matter what our perspective, in being true to ourselves and our intentions, we affect those with whom we have shared our experience and vice versa. Therefore in response to Tom Stoppard’s definition of love from The Real Thing, I would counter that the public knowledge of the couple hood, not of the combined individual, but through the individual expression of self within the couple, the real self within a real relationship, in the face of public audience in its raw truth and scrutiny, is where love is and inspires. This sharing, as I ended our appreciation at the wedding, “little by little collectively brightens the world.” Take care, love and be loved.

Celebrating my Autumn stoke.

My dog bounces down the trail on a mission to sniff out, hear for, and chase innocent chipmunks and squirrels. She pops her head out from behind a tree pausing a moment from her fruitless chase to see where I am and she bounds like a giddy deer through the bushes back to the trail. The aspens are bursting yellow here and there, around the river bend, past the railroad, and through the valley swashed between coniferous green and exposed alpine rocky cliff. The breeze tickles the trees and a leaf, a needle, here and there, begin their final dance to the forest floor. Along the trail a Saturday’s worth of hikers and trail runners and get-out-and-explorers chat and point and greet each other and the day. There is something in me, in us, in the air, in the hills that is stoked to be out and about. Even while fields and orchards burst their autumnal harvest and the metaphors of summer’s bounty become cliché, it is a wholly different thing to experience it. To be out in the woods, the fields, and the mountain tops observing and feeling a sunny autumn day is a unique and glorious moment of time. I have a little more bounce in my step since I’ve played a fair amount (never enough, but still fair) over the summer. Yes, I’ve built my stamina up to hike this trail easily, to flow. Csikszentmihalyi in his book, Flow, discusses this phenomenon as a practice of seeking personal happiness, of optimal experience. I flow and I am happy. I exercise and I am happy. I exercise regularly and I am regularly happy. Even while the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion forward numerous benefits of regular exercise (See general guidelines here.) that should be acknowledged, there is something else that is at play during such an amazing autumn day. I think it has to do with a collective stoke to be experiencing everything that we observe and everyone that we are with. The French tell stories about La Joie de Vivre (the Joy of Living) were active ecstasy is found in absolutely everything…even the mundane, such as eating. Tell me you don’t enjoy your weekend morning cup of coffee or sitting in the warm sun. I do...anything and I am happy. There is an idea at play here which I think is significant. It is important to reflect on the importance of appreciating the simple experience of life and all that it is for a moment, for a series of moments, from time to time. What gets you stoked? What senses tingle during moments of flow, fun, appreciation and connection? How do you access this feeling on a regular basis? How do you share it? There is an attitude between lovers, among friends, within various communities where people share stories of their days, their adventures, their exploration, their observations, their triumphs and even their struggles in a way that celebrates their lives. Our daily lives become our stories; our stories become our journeys. Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind calls on the autumnal western wind in all its power, force, and catalytic inspiration to renew and empower him even in times of challenge and difficulty towards greatness. “Make me thy lyre,…Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit!” We experience nature and culture and each other and essentially life with greater intensity if we are more appreciative, more aware, more stoked. True stoke, the well of happiness, does not end with us; it runs, bounds like my dog, exponentially through us and between us and throughout the living world. "By waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe." Tom Robbins. The challenge is practicing our stoke on a regular basis. At this moment at this time in any way that you choose, I hope that you are stoked….on everything, shared with everyone, and regularly.  Be well. Be stoked.

Welcome to my new blog. With props to a former student, I am starting this to explore the world much the same way I do in class. Through a compelling consideration of real world examples, I analyze them based on what they say about our lives. It is a dynamic world, so I hope you join me for the ride. Enjoy your journey and thank you for reading. Ripple on.