Joyless Decadence

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” ~ Teddy Roosevelt

The second time I met Esther Perel I told her that she was a tremendous poet. The musicality of her ingenious ditties such as “How can you desire what you already have?” render them immediately iconoclastic and deliciously memorable. Similar is the case for Michèle Mendelssohn and Charlie Tyson’s concept expressed recently in The Guardian defining our current malaise - the simmering low-level dysthymia of our epoch - with a poetic twist worthy of Rilke: Joyless Decadence. They describe our era of people ceaselessly optimizing and going to extremes to appear hip, cool, rich and sexy yet remaining ultimately unsatisfied as one of “Joyless Decadence”.

Twenty years of private practice psychotherapy have taught me what the famous Harvard longitudinal study demonstrated: that the quality of our intimate relationships predicts happiness more reliably than any other variable researchers have measured - more reliably than income, achievement, and the outside appearance of the body we incarnate. Everyday I meet people who on the outside have attained enviable wealth and fame and yet feel dead inside.

The underlying competition in our social games of optimizing and maxxing - trying to take the coolest vacation, wear the coolest baseball hat, drive the coolest car, have the coolest shoes and handbags, and shop at the coolest stores - engender constant comparison. This measuring ourselves against others, against our family and friends even, is the thief of joy. So there is ultra-decadence as reported on our screens every morning and yet there is little joy. Life feels flat even though we’re walking our 10,000 steps and taking all of our supplements, and getting 1,000s of likes on social media.

I’ll give you a hint as to where this is going: ten years ago in “How To Survive Your Childhood Now That You’re An Adult” I wrote “One hug equals one million LIKEs.” In my office where people come to escape the competition of unceasingly performing their exclusive lifestyles of beauty and success at their local cafes and gyms (and videoing it), I hear about daily loneliness. All of this decadence is rather solitary, this “being the best version of myself” and “living my best life” is at best solipsistic. Ironically, even the optimizing of sensual pleasures - us gourmands - has become joyless. The brief ecstasy of Erewhon’s famous $25 strawberry (yes, one strawberry) is more about the competition to acquire one of these trophies than the actual 30 seconds of savoring it.

Mendelssohn and Tyson describe an elite that treats even sexual vitality as a competition, something gamified by Oura rings and Whoop and Apple watches. They cite OB-GYN Doctor Sally Greenwald who poetically branded her followers as the “Billionaire’s Vagina Club” - women tracking their hormones for self-optimization the way men track and optimize their investment portfolios. Is this the latest update to the oldest profession in the world?

Y’see, joy is the real measure of the good life. You can have a large bank account and six-pack abs but neither correlate strongly scientifically with authentic happiness.

I took one of those “Navy Seal workout classes for rich people” in Brentwood last week. (It was a 10am class which informed me that nobody in the room had a 9-5 job.) It was an extremely rigorous exercise routine and by the end of class my mat had the consistency of clam chowder. Like cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead, here’s what I observed: 30 people depositing their Louis Vuitton, Vuori, and Erewhon sacks gently in the back of the room, namedropping recent travel victories, and adding in push-ups during resting periods, obviously trying to rival Matt Damon’s biceps (that are really not his biceps according to the NY Times). “Maybe if I do one more push-up mommy will love me!” was the subconscious chorus yelping in this room packed with excessively well-coiffed adults. This is the joyless decadence of looksmaxxing and biohacking that will eventually land in my office as dysthymia. “I’m doing everything right so why do I feel dead inside?”

How did our culture become so misguided?

Yes, you will indubitably attract a higher status mate with a billion dollars in crypto or a vagina worthy of a billionaire, but will that mate have the emotional capability to make you feel loved? Or will they be too busy reading their sleep and ovulation scores and other bio-metrics to spend quality time looking you lovingly in your eyes or hugging you?

If you’ve taken my classes you know that I believe America is a giant resentment factory and the optimization culture that Mendelssohn and Tyson describe in their articles is its engine. We are raised to believe that being liked is a matter of being impressive, that the body, the income, the gloss and the glitz of our highly curated selves are the instruments of seduction that will make another person love us, so we spend our time performing an optimized persona instead of exposing our messy authentic selves to a cruel judgmental world. A dilemma: to be liked for who you are not or be left alone?

Trust me, only a fool wants it to read, “Was Admired” on their tombstone.

Instead of competitive Navy Seal workouts, we need classes on how to connect authentically with other humans. And I’ll give you a hint: it’s not by comparing elite travel victories, handbags, or business cards à la “American Psycho.”

Rather than teach people to optimize their physiques or pursue the kind of elective enhancement marketed to the wealthy as vitality, we should teach courses in the skills the Harvard study actually validates: having a sense of wonder, curiosity as a daily practice, active listening as a discipline, validating each other’s emotional experiences, creating a balanced lifestyle, and choosing our words carefully. As Bruce Fink says, “Every speech act is a request for love.” Ditto for every social media post.

Yes, I live in a bizarrely beautiful and entertaining corner of planet earth, but if I had to find the most poetic way of describing the general feeling of the extreme California fitness and wellness craze, it would be “Joyless Decadence.” Engaging in outer and outward maxxing while feeling dead inside. Hoping that the latest and greatest trend will finally nourish our souls and give us the one thing we crave: unconditional love. But we’ve been duped. Happiness is an inside job. And competition and comparison are creating a generation of sad-sexy-rich people.