Priceless Joy

YouTube recently offered me a video of a couple guys installing a giant supercharger on a rusted out 1968 Dodge Charger. It's twelve and a half minutes of happy entertainment, and you can watch it here.

Beyond the vicarious pleasure of somebody doing something utterly impractical and pointless just because it's fun, the vid offers multiple rejections of the modern culture war.

First, the guy.

Stereotypical country drawl, bushy beard, carrying at least a hundred extra pounds of body fat, snap-cap plastic mesh baseball caps, no fashion effort whatsoever. In other words, someone that your (also stereotypical) Best-and-Brightest (BaBs) would instantly judge and dismiss as an ignorant rube, a member of the masses that the self-styled elites of our society would control, regulate, and otherwise shuffle into non-person status. The kind of guy I'd much rather have a beer or three with than any of those BaBs, for sure.

Underlying the trope that the BaBs would have us conclude is an undesirable, or a deplorable, or evidence of some sort of societal failure is, rather clearly, someone who has a substantial knowledge and skill set. And, an obvious career in automobiles, and another obvious career as a YouTuber (3.4M subscribers, which translates to a likely $100K-$200K per year income on top of his day job).

Set those presumptions aside, and you find the core of whatever message we might glean from this. He's having fun. He's doing something for the heck of it, monetization of the video notwithstanding. Better yet, he interacts with others who enjoy the fun.

The O'Reilly's employee who had fun watching him do donuts in the parking lot.

The O'Reilly's manager who said "you can't do that here... unless I'm here to watch.”

The cop who didn't give him a hard time.

And, the self-awareness. He named the car "Tater," after all.

Flash back to the movie Dazed and Confused, which also celebrated American car culture. If you seek social commentary in it, you'll have to work hard. Sure, it's full of stereotypical characters. Sure, Matthew McConaughey's character is a creeper for hitting on high school girls.

Sure, it depicts what we'd call delinquent behavior.

But, all that's just a reflection of the times, and most importantly, there's no sledgehammer message at the end of the flick. Nothing truly bad happens, there are no lasting consequences after a night of dumb fun, and the kids go on with their lives.

Joy without a price.

Happiness without existential guilt.

None of the affirmative anger, incessant grievance-seeking, or deliberate despair we see in the young people born of liberal education and woke culture.

I recently saw a vid that reported the results of a survey as to what traits men look for in women as prospective partners.

The biggest ask? Someone who was happy.

That this is something guys consider scarce is an indictment. That our society is full of young women feeling disaffected and disgruntled, and young men dropping out, both from the workforce and the dating world (see: the Men Going Their Own Way movement - and how angry it has made society's scolds, as the Wikipedia entry reveals), tells a tale of lives unfulfilled by what modern day woke culture teaches and demands of them.

There are myriad quotes out there about happiness being a choice. It is, and for proof look no further than its opposite: misery. Misery is also a choice in a society such as ours. Take a look around, at the people whose baseline is misery, and ponder what it is that causes that misery. Yes, I'm back to speaking about the BaBs, and especially about our young, college-educated, big-city-living, 'important' and self important men and women who dig for offense in every corner, who spend their time worrying about anything and everything, and whose only source of pleasure is putting those like the happy gear head down based on nothing more than a moment's look. When Hillary Clinton said "deplorables," and when Barack Obama said "bitter clingers," this is who they were talking about. They were both incredibly condescending, incredibly wrong, and the epitome of affirmative misery.

History is full of smarter-than-thous telling us that we mustn't be happy without some sort of social conscience or moral payment. In times of yore, it was the religious hard-liners.

Nowadays, it's the Woke. Their message is "don't you dare be happy when there's oppression and injustice all around us." That they are the dominant authors of that oppression and injustice today is, of course, lost on them. Their only happiness is in the hunt for misery, in participating in what someone called the "oppression Olympics," in arguing about who is the most oppressed.

Which brings up another movie about joy without price. I speak of PCU, a movie that might be seen as "Animal House in the Woke Era."

The happy people? Those having fun in the moment.

It makes me wanna stomp. Makes me clap my hands. Makes me wanna dance. Stomp!

The miserable people? The ones competing to claim the title of "most oppressed."

“Pack up your rape culture and take a hike!”

Which crowd would you rather hang out with?

You, dear readers, should be quite familiar with this phrase:

certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- T. Jefferson

Since this is a libertarian blog, I write a lot about liberty, but the right to pursue of happiness is just as valuable to us humans. Sure, you are and should be free to wallow in misery and choose sadness or anger or whatever, but what's the point of doing so? It's certainly not healthier, and it doesn't generate the chemical responses that our brains and bodies crave.

Pursue happiness, seek joy, and reject any notion of a cosmic balancing scale that requires you to earn or pay a price for it. Or to do something to deserve it. Or to feel guilt that you're having fun when others in the world might be struggling. It's not a zero-sum game, there isn't a finite bucket of happiness from which you should draw only sparingly in order to leave some for others. Do your part to help others, if you wish - and you will find happiness in that as well. Life is short, so make the most of it.