The concept of the hedonic treadmill, or hedonic adaptation, refers to the phenomenon where individuals tend to revert to a consistent level of contentment, regardless of significant good or bad events or changes in their lives. Philip Brickman and Donald Campbell (1971) coined the term in their essay "Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society." However, it is not empirically validated; for instance, from 1990 to 2019, the total global suicide deaths escalated by 19,897, from an initial count of 738,799 to 758,696 (BMJ, 2024). Furthermore, it is not culturally practiced.
To clarify why contentment is not culturally practiced, it is essential to consider emotive phrases such as, "Everyone expects me to be happy" or "People expect me to be happy all the time," in relation to the prevailing mental health understanding that pain, grief, disappointment, and anxiety are inevitable aspects of human life. These are indeed features of life, and any mental health professional should assist individuals in navigating these experiences productively. However, while there are numerous trauma models related to psychopathology, one must ask: where is the acknowledgment that pleasure, joy, satisfaction, and comfort are also inevitable features of human life?
This analysis suggests that negative emotions consistently and intrusively influence how an individual perceives and interacts with the world. Additionally, factors such as ideology, culture, subcultures, and particularly institutions related to mental health care significantly shape the subjective experience in ways that emotions like pain, grief, disappointment, and anxiety alone cannot. These influences manifest through various expressions of loss, trauma, and suffering, which are inherently human experiences driven by the tendency to navigate through positive-negative frameworks.
This is neither an argument that experiences of loss, trauma, and suffering are not profound or that they do not significantly affect the lifelong perceptual and interpretative processes of individuals—both from semiotic and phenomenological and a top-down and bottom-up psychophysiological perspective. Nor is it to claim that such experiences are unnatural, as even non-human species like chimpanzees experience grief. Rather, it is to assert that the way subject positions are shaped by these cultural and institutional forces does not necessarily equip people to handle reality more effectively. Instead, it often shifts their existential framework, affecting how they experience and interact with the world around them.
People experiencing an existential shift, which scholars like Sara Ahmed refer to as a diaspora and Ann Cvetkovich call a trail of breadcrumbs, may find themselves questioning the very foundations of their reality. This leads to a form of engagement with reality that is more questioning, skeptical, or detached from conventional frameworks. It can be a period of profound introspection but can also be disorienting and challenging, impacting one's ability to effectively navigate everyday life.
This exploration challenges why this pilgrimage needs to occur, or rather, why it unfolds in the manner it often does. For example, Cvetkovich, in her work An Archive of Feelings, a concept and title to which this essay pays homage, wrote (2003):
One reason for my skepticism is that the feminist recommendation to tell my story, whether in therapy or more publicly, did not provide emotional relief or personal transformation. My aesthetic sensibility rebelled against this path; I was afraid my story would resemble a cliched case history from a self-help book. My intellectual training also threw some roadblocks in the way; I was too steeped in Foucault's critique of the repressive thesis to believe that telling the story was going to make a difference—unless the circumstances were very particular. And even if I managed to circumvent these censors, the story itself couldn't be articulated in a single coherent narrative—it was much more complicated than the events of what happened, connected to other histories that were not my own. I've often been moved by listening to others go public with their experiences, but I didn't know how to tell my own story .
In the wake of this impasse, the trail of bread crumbs led me to the category of trauma. Intellectual life has been one of my survival strategies, and I frequently find solace in theoretical concepts and debates that situate my own experience in a larger context. Despite the risks involved in taking on a discourse that has been dominated by medical and pathologizing approaches, I have been drawn to the category of trauma because it opens up space for accounts of pain as psychic, not just physical. As a name for experiences of socially situated political violence, trauma forges overt connections between politics and emotion.
With a strong focus on the impacts and aftermath of traumatic experiences and the emphasis on associated emotions such as pain, despair, and alienation, cultural narratives seem to reinforce these emotions, potentially making it difficult for individuals to move beyond them.
On the other hand, while there are certainly cultural expressions of joy and happiness, these emotions may not receive the same depth of communal and structural support as those associated with trauma. This is especially true in terms of structured models or frameworks for processing emotions. This discrepancy might stem from a societal tendency to view joy or happiness as the normative emotional state, thereby not requiring the same level of support as more challenging emotions.
While common parlance often positions positive emotions as the norm, these emotions are perceived as the normative despite the prevalence of expressions like “Everyone expects me to be happy” or “People expect me to be happy all the time,” often uttered by adolescents who are illuminating emotional experiences that are not positive. These statements are made without significant material support or evidence that broad communal or structural systems genuinely expect happiness. Thus, the perceived expectation or normativeness of positive emotions such as happiness gives this idea a quasi-reality.
In many cultures, there is an implicit expectation of happiness, yet there lacks a structured system to support it. This reveals a significant gap between the expectation of positive emotions and the actual support provided for achieving them.
This suggests that the real expectation or normativeness is negative emotions like sadness, given that there are both unpleasant moments and structure that cultivate it, and then structure that navigates it. While it is important to have structures that support those experiencing negative emotions, the pilgrimage that many of these communal and structural supports encourage can erode or diminish feelings, acting states, and perspectives that existed prior to the exigence. These supports can make certain feelings and perspectives seem naive, childish, immature, simple, bland, unsophisticated, or superficial—and yet, there is no proven efficacy behind the support that denounces them. To be clear, while numerous case studies have presented various trauma-centered therapeutic strategies for disorders like dissociative identity disorder (DID) and reported positive outcomes, a stringent evaluation of these interventions is complicated by a lack of randomized controlled trials and other methodological challenges, which opens the door to multiple alternative explanations for symptom reductions, such as placebo effects and regression to the mean (Lynn et al., 2016).
Given that trauma-centered therapies are not always effective at handling trauma or its associated symptoms, it is important to address the lack of communal or structural focus on joy. This gap highlights a potential area for cultural and social development and poses a challenge to the withering and critique of positive emotions.
The withering of positive emotions is pervasive, manifesting in everything from music to the essence of relationships. Before exploring how joy and other positive emotions can be given communal or structural focus, it is crucial to understand the withering of positive emotions as a principle utilized by existent supports. This is important not only to explain why and how this happens but also to expose the irony of cultural manifestations that label certain feelings, acting states, and perspectives as naive, childish, immature, simple, bland, unsophisticated, and superficial. This occurs especially when a pilgrimage from an exigence is undertaken through lenses, structures, and supports that are enmeshed with centrality in negative emotion.
In the next section, it is crucial to analytically explicate the withering principle, as this will elucidate the mechanisms of emotional normativity, its sources, and its authority. This analysis will highlight the distinction between a third-person question about emotionality—a theoretical inquiry into why humans behave and respond in relation to emotion—and a first-person question that emerges for the individual who must act and respond in relation to emotion. The latter is the only meta-emotional question and the true normative inquiry, despite the former's focus on the social normativity of emotions. This will be discussed again later. The former question aligns with the withering principle and the actual social normativity of emotion (whether positive or negative) and is often a matter of pop psychology or oversimplified research that warrants critique.
The Withering Principle
The withering principle refers to the diminishment or erosion of aspects of the self or perspective, fostered through the structuring of negative emotions—and hypothetically, positive emotions in cultures or alternate universes where they are the social norm. What is particularly striking about this principle is its apparent recklessness when applied to complex situations, which indeed begs the question.
The withering principle is grounded in the third-person question about emotionality—a theoretical query about why humans behave and respond in relation to emotions. To clarify, the mention of "begging the question" in the previous paragraph was literal, not figurative. This principle is frequently employed in therapists' offices, where some professionals insist that their unsubstantiated research or persuasive strategies represent truth.
Begging the question involves a type of circular reasoning where the conclusion is assumed within one of the premises. This means it's an argument where the premise depends on the truth of the conclusion to be valid, effectively "begging" or assuming the very point in question without providing independent evidence. Known in Latin as petitio principii, meaning "assuming the initial point" or "requesting the principle," this fallacy captures the essence of the argument where the conclusion is assumed in its premises, rendering it logically invalid as it fails to provide genuine support for the conclusion outside of the conclusion itself.
Now, let’s examine this principle in practice—specifically in clinical practice. Imagine a person who has experienced trauma and is conflicted about their feelings, so they consult a therapist. Over months of conversation, the therapist repeatedly emphasizes, “Your negative outlook and emotional struggles are a direct result of your traumatic experience. It's understandable for someone who has been through what you have to view the world more negatively.” In this scenario, the therapist, likely unwittingly and with compassion, uses a circular argument by implying that the patient’s trauma is both the cause and the inevitable outcome of their current negative outlook, without considering other factors or the potential for a different emotional trajectory post-trauma.
This isn't to say that therapeutic mirroring, compassion, and understanding aren't necessary and empathetic. However, the issue lies in the words “direct result.” This hypothetical example illustrates how certainty and the projection and countertransference invested in those words can be problematic, serving as one of many examples of the commencement of the withering principle. The withering principle relies on the idea of metaphysical object causation at its onset because a person’s particular complicated exigence involves a journey connected to communal and structural support. This support is often tethered to assumptions, leading a person to embark on a pilgrimage built on assumptions about themselves.
The withering principle poses its greatest danger at the nexus between the end or reduced interaction with the communal or institutional community and the individual's journey forward. When an individual departs from these communal or institutional settings, the activated withering principle may impart a false sense of confidence about the journey ahead. However, if the lessons provided by these communities or institutions are based on assumptions, the individual departs with faulty information and an assumptive understanding of their own self.
Departing from communal and institutional structures with an activated withering principle can lead individuals to introject morally questionable occurrences, potentially queering their identity. This occurs because trauma is often perceived more as a metaphysical object within their history than any other type of causation. This suggests that rather than leaving these spaces feeling that the traumatic event has been adequately addressed, when spaces allow for a pilgrimage in relation to trauma, individuals maintain an enduring relationship with their trauma. This distinction is crucial because while this discussion acknowledges the complicated, long-term impacts of traumatic events, it critiques how the withering principle, when linked with trauma, creates a bloated, engorged metaphysical object that complicates the individual’s exigence further. Thus, the withering principle can manifest as a pathogenic introject (Stark, 2017), challenging the idea that the pathogenesis of a diseased mental object is merely formative. Clearly, it can also be established in the dynamics between a patient and a clinician and have concomitancy to complex moments.
The effects of the withering principle extend beyond the individual when the agent reaches the nexus between the end or reduced interaction with the communal or institutional community, which provides insight into the complicated exigence, and the commencement of their journey outwards. At this point, the agent introduces their pathogenic introject of trauma into broader social reality. In the article "Existential Etiquette," one of our editors recounts dating a woman who discussed taboo sexual experiences, saying, "I’ve had certain experiences that have made me this way." Furthermore, our editors wrote:
Trauma often draws individuals to BDSM, with submissives sometimes "reliving" past abuse in a controlled environment in a so-called cathartic manner. While certain aspects of BDSM may be beneficial for some in processing their emotions or experiences, it is important to remember that BDSM is a form of consensual adult play and not a replacement for professional mental health care. When BDSM becomes more than it actually is—and it isn’t everything—it can transform into a manifestation of bad faith or bad hope.
To clarify further, BDSM in itself is not inherently pathological. However, individuals with pre-existing mental health issues or traumas may sometimes incorporate these issues into their BDSM experiences. This can result in misconceptions of BDSM as a therapeutic tool or a means to tackle mental health concerns, which constitutes a form of bad faith or bad hope. As a reminder, BDSM is not a laissez-faire free-for-all; it is not a venue for healing, a financial institution, a therapy session, or an educational setting.
The article examined the practice of individuals with trauma engaging in BDSM as potentially an act of bad faith or bad hope, concepts relevant to meta-ethics. However, the focus here is on the meta-emotional, which pertains to epistemology and psychology; yet, there is clearly an interdisciplinary relationship between bad faith, bad hope, and the participation of individuals with trauma introjects in BDSM spaces due to the activation of the withering principle.
To clarify, a trauma pathogenic introject is just one specific manifestation of the activation of the withering principle. There are various types of manifestations, different processes of queered existence, and diverse types of introjections that can emerge. For instance, experiences such as breakups, cheating, fraud, and violence can all be conceptualized as trauma under certain frameworks but may not meet the criteria in others. These experiences can lead to emotional uncertainty that prompts individuals to seek answers from communal or institutional resources. The responses and support offered by these resources vary, as do the processes of queering and the resulting pathogenic introjections. Ultimately, the way individuals venture out into social reality varies, occurring in different spaces.
However, there is a commonality among these diverse spaces: the historical and cultural queerness of the spaces themselves, which, like a flame to a moth, attracts the queered subject position of the agent widowed to reality.
To be widowed in this context means to be alienated in some way from others. Typically, a widow is someone who has lost their spouse to death and has not remarried. However, people can be widowed from reality in various ways—trauma, as previously discussed, is a significant factor.
It is interesting to note that on older gravestones, one might find the word "relict" used instead of widow, which literally means "someone left over." It's one thing to be the agent left behind after a loved one has died, but it is quite another to be the “left over” amidst various pains, trapped in the grip of a memory.
The widowed agent, drawn like a moth to a flame by the cultural and historical queerness of spaces due to their queered identity, will seek answers to their psychic calculus in those spaces, much like a moth is drawn to a pale light. However, as has been revealed through the explication of circular argumentation, these answers do not necessarily liberate. While it would be easy to argue fervently that dark alternative subcultures, with their inherent cultural and historical queerness, are not reducible merely to problematic exigencies, it would be dishonest to deny that these subcultures hold a particular allure for the widowed agent on their pilgrimage with a queered identity.
What does the circle pit offer to someone pushing or slamming inside it? This question is not going to be explored here; it is asked merely to make a point. This is a third-person question, but this essay is more concerned with why an individual agent enters a circle pit. We are also interested in a multitude of other questions, such as why an agent says, “I’ve had certain experiences that have led me to be this way.” Additionally, why does an agent harass, slander, or project? It would be too easy to answer, “Catharsis, duh!” However, just as there is irony in Karen Smith in Mean Girls rolling her eyes when asked about her costume while wearing a sultry outfit with mouse ears, there is likewise irony and obfuscation in the simplistic answers people provide for their actions. For those who have not found answers to their complicated exigencies through resources like therapy, straightforward answers may function as reasonable explanations. However, for those who have undergone therapy, the reality—painful as it may be—is that the answers are much more complex because the therapy, to be blunt, is simply not complete.
The editors of The GroundUp acknowledge their imperfections. It's possible that at various times, the editors of this publication have caused hurt, anger, sadness, annoyance, and other disturbances. However, we strive to be accountable for our actions and not use complicated exigencies as justifications. Interestingly, a lot of the pain that people cause, whether because they have been withered or because of the pain experienced by those who are then withered, is symptomatic of a lack of deep, agented engagement with the traumatic event, and instead, a deep immersion in metaphysical trauma. This is pervasive enough in general human life that, outside of spiritual activity and perhaps psychedelic drug use, there is a lack of general presence in metaphysical joy.
There certainly can be introjects associated with positivity; otherwise, cults wouldn’t exist. Indeed, whether the cult involves someone donating their possessions or their ideological devotion, as in the case of neo-Platonists blinded by the imagined sun of Plato's realm (Stevenson, 1944), there is an equal potential for someone to be communally or structurally guided on a pilgrimage based on false assumptions. However, many of these false assumptions are concomitant with the idealization of an agent, an idea, or people. What those withered in their processing of negative experiences have is, at the very least, the knowledge that "What happened to me was not okay, and I need to explore this." Continuing with the example of cults, a cult follower may hear joyful and other positive emotions and truly feel joy, but while the leader may live in opulence, the follower typically exists at a subsistence level and is certainly not pleasured on a material level. This illustrates that a person who has experienced trauma has been negativized in terms of its impact on their identity. However, the cult follower experiencing the words of a cult leader hasn’t been equivalently positivized.
This is where the hedonist emerges and declares, "See, there is nothing comparable to the mad rushing experience of pleasure! It is the cult leader who is positivized, and the follower is living half of positivity, which is no positivity at all." The hedonist is correct in noting that a cult follower experiences only a half of positivity, an indirect positivity; however, it will be argued that it is virtue that makes pleasure possible, not some mad rushing exuberance.
Cult leaders are often endowed by virtues such as confidence, charisma, strength, and cunning—all qualities that consistently define their leadership. Conversely, the qualities of cult followers are typically the opposite. Ineffectuality in life and the realization that one’s early dreams have not materialized draw people to those who appear effective (Stevenson, 1944). While careful analysis can discern that there are additional qualities beside virtues that are dimensions of the cult leader’s persona, such as greed, shallowness, perniciousness, and restrictiveness, these are not conceptualized as qualities that need transformation but are concomitant to a withering to metaphysical joy. Questioning the reality allows for the possibility of separating from the introject of joy, which is perilous for the follower!
Indeed, withering can coexist with the metaphysical conceptualization of joy but not with its material presence. Withering can result from processing real trauma and other negative experiences; however, trauma itself does not inherently wither a person. Though, there are particularly heinous traumatic instances, such as extended abuse, torture, and enslavement, where withering is externally embedded. Just as there can be introjects from childhood, there can be introjects related to abusers (such as kidnappers or slavers). In these cases, it is the responsibility of communal and institutional aid to address and eliminate the longing for and hatred of these introjects (Stark, 2017).
The goal is to ensure that individuals do not emerge from these interventions with an introject of trauma or as isolated agents. For both those withered by negative experiences and those withered by positive ones, present troubles are not alleviated by imagined realms. Throughout history, attitude-molding metaphysical language has been wielded by a few to impose on the many. For someone who has been negativized or someone who has not been positivized, being integrally external to introjects requires fighting against them with neither cynical nor passive neutrality. These passivities are often cognitive and can reflect stunted emotions or a lack of emotional intelligence.
Cynical neutrality can be found in nihilistic ideologies skeptical of the very act of searching for answers. To be clear, the search for answers in and of itself isn’t a problem. The problem is false or shortsighted solutions, not searching for answers. And while it is true that answers may not be external, calculable searching for answers within, is indeed the on-the-spot bravery and fight for a truly non-withered agency.
Indeed, withering rooted in the negative can undermine positive emotional experience like genuine emotional connection. People with skeptical considerations that are not concomitant to current material exigence (exigence that is benign), often find struggles and inauthenticity in social relationships where there may not be any and this conceptualization of reality and likewise self is indeed a queered one.
In this state of perception, a person may overlook the necessity of actively cultivating and valuing positive emotions and genuine connections. This omission can be a missed opportunity to explore how a more balanced emotional approach could enhance the authenticity and fulfillment in social relationships. Skepticism is not inherently wrong, but its perpetuity can be less reflective of intuitive discernment and be more indicative of stunted emotional intelligence in the sense that a person who has experienced more intensely negative emotions and has been withered as a pilgrim to trauma or other negative metaphysics might have a more surface level engagement with positive-emotion due to surface level positive experiences and such a person may not know how to experience the full breadth of experience or contemplate alternative perspectives.
The sombered quality of perpetuated skepticism and ironic conceptions of reality suggest that they are “realistic” perspectives on life's challenges—but they aren’t. This cultural attitude can stifle emotional growth and richness, leading to a skewed emotional landscape that prioritizes certain emotional experiences over others. Cynical neutrality lends itself to the effluvia of, “I’ve had certain experiences that have made me this way” statements. The “made me” of the experience(s) are the widowing dimension of the withering principle. This might be brutal, but to people who say this, do you like defining yourself by what made you? Does it fit with your early dreams? If not, maybe it’s time to retrace your steps.
This isn’t to say that one must be constantly in an active state of combat. Retreat is strength but defining action by the introjects and exigence-causation of circumstances is not a retreat, it’s a betrayal of self, and a withered state of existence.
It’s easy for the withered individual to critique the pilgrimage of an agent external to interjects because their self and conceptions of reality have been queered. Determining how to make oneself is the way in which introjection can be destroyed and reality can be lived.
On the other hand, passive neutrality, the mode of existence of the cult follower, the craver of the positive, those who cherish the metaphysical positive emotion, those who cherish the altruism and benevolence of their leader(s) and look forward to the revolution/second coming/end of days/final solution discerned and aided by the insight and understanding of their farsighted community.
The queering of identity occurs in positive introjects where people can be withered to ideals and minds are reshaped to not see that a pilgrimage to the positive has been embarked on with no obtainment of it assured at the end because existence has been narrowed to the constraint of those positivized by their own virtue.
The rewards that often accompany virtue do not come to those who lack it but to those who embody it. Even the humblest of individuals can find positivity in the beauty of a sunset, a meal, a shower, or a hug. Indeed, this lack of awareness of the simplest things might seem insignificant to the pessimistically neutral individual. However, while these individuals may avoid seeking external solutions, they remain oblivious to what is happening around them.
What is happening is often less than one’s dreams, but if it is positive, and it is happening in a way other than virtueless dependence or foreclosed gloom, while there is not a profound solution to one’s problems in life, there is a profound return to an accountability to one’s own self.
In one of our editor's lives, a specific hug stands out. Despite having experienced thousands of hugs and other forms of intimacy, that particular positive moment remains uniquely his.
As this essay transitions to an archive of joy, it is important to discuss what such an archive might look like for any individual. The editor who experienced that memorable hug has written a version of the Marine Corps “Rifleman's Creed” about it. The poem emphasizes that the hug was a positive moment in its real, present, lived purity, and neither metaphysical rumination nor post-hoc analysis can diminish its positivity:
1. This is a memory of a particular hug. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
2. This hug is the simplest of things. It is not my life.
3. This hug, without me, did not happen. Without the person I hugged, this memory did not happen.
4. This hug is what counts in life, the positive feeling, not the outcome beyond the hug. I know that it is the moment that counts.
5. My hug is part of what makes me human. Thus, I will respect it.
6. As a human, I will respect this memory. My memory of a hug.
7. So be it.
While it may seem like a juxtaposition to articulate a memory of a hug in such an analytical way using the “Rifleman’s Creed,” as though pre-rebrand-big-bow Jo Jo Siwa is getting honored at the White House for surpassing Navy SEAL Chris Kyle’s confirmed kill record, it isn’t. Indeed, the structure and awareness of that creed provides a good example of how to archive joy, in an undistorted, unbiased way. Reality doesn’t always provide joy in the depth we would like. But the archive of joy for every person is truly objective and it is impartial. And there is joy to be assessed and placed in the archive. But of course, as noted previously, joy is not mad rushing. Joy is free of suffering and is simple and nourishing. Joy does not exist in contrivance, alternative, or indignity.
One of our editors will provide an archive of joy as an example.
The Archive of Joy
To pay more homage to Cvetkovitvh, I think it is important to begin my archive of joy with a mention of music. To be clear, I am the same editor who wrote a version of the “Rifleman’s Creed” about the hug, so that is indeed part of my archive; however, I think commencing this focused section on my archive with a mention of music like Cvetkovitch did will help orient the actual archival process as being completely subjective.
Now, Cvetkovitch of course focuses on trauma in her Archive of Feelings, but she argues, and I agree that she is correct, that her book is indeed an archive of feelings, and she contributes to a broad project of exploring affective life. I think an archive of trauma is important; however, my argument is that trauma has become a metaphysical object, has too intense a centrality, and is pathologically introjected into everyday life of many people and therefore its metaphysical qualities eclipse the broad project of exploring affective life.
When Cvetkovitch began her “Introduction” to Archive of Feelings with: “When I first heard Le Tigre perform ‘Keep on Livin'’ at the 2001 Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, it was as though the ·writing of this book had come full circle, since one of its starting points was a performance by Tribe 8 on the same stage in 1994,” she concludes that: “The music helps return the listener to the pleasures of sensory embodiment that trauma destroys,” my concern exists not because she feels this way, but because she writes “the listener.” For example, I appreciate when she writes: “Even without those associations, I would have fallen in love with the song because it captures the way that survival is as simple and as elusive as being able to ‘taste that sweet sweet cake.’" Indeed, she creates an archive of trauma concomitant to an archive of feeling much like I intend on creating an archive of joy concomitant to an archive of feeling. I intend on presenting an archive of joy as an individual agent because in my own way this is a process of searching for answers within. Perhaps, different archives do indeed involve different methodological approaches, and trauma requires at times a turn to the general. I am not certain that the opposite is true. However, it is important for me to undertake the archive of joy as one that is completely subjective for the sake of me expressing my personal search for answers within.
When I first heard La Dispute perform "The Last Lost Continent" during the Spring 2015 Tour, it was as though I had on-the-spot bravery and I fought for a truly non-withered agency. I fought for joy. When they performed their encore song “The Last Lost Continent” off their 2008 album Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair I was so moved and inspired to be happy in the moment that I looked and found someone who wanted to experience joy in the moment. I held a young woman who held on to me the same and as the lead singer Jordan Dreyer sang, “So fill your heart with what's important, and be done with all the rest,” the two of us passionately made out, as if to say, “This moment is important—yes we are filling our hearts with what is important!”
One reason for my deep appreciation for moments of mutually accepted intimacy is it always joyful (other joyful examples during my life include smashing apples with tennis rackets with my elementary and middle school crush and the completely innocent “modeling” pictures she took of me, my first kiss with a high school girlfriend, country dancing with my college girlfriend, and while in a pool in a hotel in Austin, Texas, carrying in my arms my most recent ex-girlfriend who visited me from New York). In fact, it can be communal, as in the case of a game played in some social justice circles used as an ice breaker. This game is known as huggie bear. Essentially, it is a teamwork game, and it can be played with various rules, but this is one popular version:
1. Mark out an area for the game using cones, markers, numbers, or objects.
2. All players must run around in different directions, within that marked area.
3. The leader, will shout “Huggy bear!” and add a number on the end such as “Huggy bear 4.”
4. Players must then get into groups of that number and hug.
5. Any group that does not consist of that number will be out.
6. The last group standing will be crowned winner.
Now, joy is obviously not exhausted by physical intimacy, and there are numerous joyful moments that require archival that are solitary in nature. I remember when I traveled in the early morning on my way to Boston, Massachusetts from New Mexico. I remember seeing the landscape changing in early fall as I traveled through Ohio. I felt joy in the freedom of a pilgrimage born from what I wanted in a relationship. In fact, many people discouraged the pilgrimage, but I wanted deeper joy in my life! And I was willing to travel thousands of miles to obtain it! Now, the actual experience was unfortunately not as joyful as I thought it would be, and in many ways, I have had to combat the creeping of the withering principle in my own mind in the wake of that relationship but I avoided existence in a dulled reality through my presence in joyful moments and learning that negative experiences simply don’t exhaust my emotional reality.
Now, as it can be read, I have noted that joy seems to be something that one almost has to fight for, and I do believe that the withering principle in social reality is almost human entropy and therefore I do believe that joy must be fought for! The next example I will use in my archive of joy consists of fighting for joy and perhaps fighting for the joy of others and it will interestingly return to JoJo Siwa, but this time in an unironic way.
When I used to work at a Brooklyn, New York Barnes & Nobel it was at a time when both JoJo's Guide to the Sweet Life: #PeaceOutHaterz and either Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Getaway or Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Meltdown was front list. Now, I didn’t think that the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series is heinous, but I do feel that in its own way it sort of extends a withered articulation of being for children. Perhaps, it part of an archive of wimpiness!
The protagonist of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Greg, self-identifies as a "wimpy kid." This label suggests that Greg is not particularly strong, brave, or assertive. Throughout the series, he documents his middle school experiences, highlighting his struggles with popularity, friendships, and the challenges of growing up. While these experiences might be relatable to many young readers, this framework can be problematic as it mirrors a "withering principle," like many other communal and structural supports.
Although the book acknowledges that children might not always need to be strong, brave, or assertive, Greg's sustained lack of social efficacy and self-deprecation, coupled with the author's inherent argument that people don't have to fit a stereotypical notion of toughness or bravery, and that it's okay to be oneself, is ultimately a message conveyed in bad faith given that Greg throughout the series according to Child Mind, is not grounded in learning about himself or in personal dignity and exists as both a victim (to “bullies”) and victimizer (to his “friends”).
Essentially, a person whether child or adult doesn’t always have to physically intervene during a fight at a club or at a fast-food restaurant where patrons and workers are being harassed but a person must at the very least not allow others to bully them or to bully other people. Those are truly wimpy actions that shouldn’t be thought of as normal.
Now, JoJo Siwa’s Guide to the Sweet Life digs into themes of keeping strong in the face of adversity, appreciating individualism, the importance of loyalty, and never giving up. The story is intended to inspire young girls to find courage and confidence to go after their dreams (of course, girls following their dreams is great but unfortunately the book was not targeted more broadly because both boys and girls should be encouraged to follow their dreams). This book is the natural enemy of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid because while the latter encourages individualism, the former encourages dignified individualism!
So, when I worked at the Brooklyn Barnes & Nobel I would actively hide and conceal the Diary of Wimpy Kid series and when parents would ask for it, I would recommend JoJo Siwa’s book instead. Now, many of the parents were not interested in my recommendation and I did tell them where the series was if they were committed to it but I did my best to combat withering before we at The GroundUp conceptualized the concept.
While these are just a few examples of joy and the active, fighting for joy and combat against the withering principle, this is part of what makes my archive of joy. Everyone will have different degrees of value for different kinds of joyful experience, but joy is ultimately free of suffering and is simple and nourishing. Joy does not exist in contrivance, alternative, or indignity.
Fighting for Joy
There are a great multitude of people on withered journeys and while this may seem judgmental, truth be told, because of top-down and bottom-up processing, judgment is simply a neurological reality. There has seemingly been so much fighting and avoidance of many of the institutions and people that actually seem to contribute to joy that JoJo Siwa, who we mentioned has rebranded, and JoJo Siwa type people, and JoJo Siwa type experiences are simply not valued. The same can be said of other popstar rebrands, where the star emerges as an edgier, darker, and more provocative version of themselves. And yet, the substance of the lyrics or texts that accompany the shift is seldom deep and so lots of young people are going on their pilgrimages connect with empty messages that may in fact be bad faith as only those intimately close with pop stars knows what they do or don’t believe.
Of course, it very well might be the case that JoJo Siwa doesn’t want to transition into her thirties wearing a big bow on her head and that is fine if that is a decision made for personal reasons but if it is a financial decision, it is a disappointing thing that apparently there is not enough money in having a big bow on one’s head. Perhaps a more adult or mature version of that more joyful presentation might be perceived as less “messy” but there must be less money for musical artists on the lighter side of lyricism (Taylor Swift turned from writing sweet, romantic lyrics for her first three albums to more kitchen sink realism in later work; however, the actual profundity of lyrics is not necessarily concomitant to less inherently positive subject matter).
If there were spaces where positivity were more deeply reflected it wouldn’t be an issue that negative subject matter was in circulation as there would be a balance but even in spaces that were once thought of as hostile to diverse emotional experiences—pop music for example—as opposed to spaces like blues or metal or rock, with an increasing number of acts like Billie Eilish and Olivia Roderigo, who often express darkened takes on lived experience, where are spaces for joy? It seems wild that in just a few short years of development, children go from exuberant joy to a space where the somber songs of Eilish are so attractive. Now, this is neither to suggest that modern artists like Kristyn Harris, who has a positive song of praise for Dale Evans and a song about ponies, satisfy everyone’s emotional needs in their music listening, nor is it to argue that children’s experiences and emotional trajectory is like an uninterrupted happiness like Joy in Inside Out becoming increasingly neurotic as she attempts to maintain young Riley’s life but there does seem something contrived or painfully and almost forcibly withering in that children find profundity in negative emotions more so than positive emotion when really it should be balanced.
In life and development, emotional balance is so critical and like in the aforementioned movie, Joy and Sadness work together towards the end of the story, creating a new core memory that is both happy and sad for Riely, representing Riley's acceptance of her new life in San Francisco, California. But there is so often a lack of spaces that foster complex emotions let alone positive emotions to the point that Eminem’s lyrics in “Sing for the Moment” seem less and less about generational crossroads from perhaps a truly positive emotional normativity during the baby boomer period that makes the lyrics “It's so scary in a house that allows no swearing/To see him walking around with his headphones blarin'/Alone in his own zone, cold and he don't care/He's a problem child, what bothers him all comes out” seem antiquated in that children are often raised in households that allow swearing and headphone blaring and children are raised commonly in the normative of negative emotion.
What this means then is that someone like Billie Eilish is more of a Doris Day then one might think. The idea and concept of acting out and “being oneself” is so cliché and common place that people of all levels of the economy can share pictures of their high school phases associated with negative emotional culture (such as the emo culture) and children are raised in that mix of the parent’s emergent culture.
Why then is there still such pervasive indignity from the camps calling the pre-rebrand JoJo Siwa and perhaps early Taylor Swift living states and perspectives naïve, childish, immature, simple, bland, unsophisticated, and superficial? It seems like in a comparison it would be easy for someone to make that claim but based on the reality, it is inaccurate and even disingenuous.
Culture, any culture that exists outside of balance is inherently immature and naïve to the needs of the self. Necessarily, this can contribute to superficial existence and an unrefined emotional intelligence. Meaning, if people who hurt others say, “I’ve had certain experiences that have made me this way,” it almost seems natural to say in response, “Well, obviously, everyone has had experiences so are you not an agent capable of self-construction despite your experiences?” To me, the former statement seems no more profound than the person who perhaps had a less bumpy ride because the former is basically accepting the idea that it’s okay to hurt other people whether through fraud or harassment or violence because of their experiences.
In the context of this, I wanted to write the archive of joy because I genuinely wish that therapies and other communal or structural supports did not foster the creation of pathogenic introjects of trauma or imply the heaviness of its causation and trajectory. While it's unfortunate that painful experiences happen, they are not the entirety of one’s emotional reality. If someone becomes withered by them and fixated on those moments, then therapy is far from over. It doesn't matter how many years a person has spent in therapy or how many changes have occurred—trauma models and current treatment approaches that allow trauma to become a metaphysical object leading to a distorted perception of reality are ineffective (Lynn et al., 2016).
Both the models that describe trauma as an all-encompassing earthquake and those that question the reliability of memory in forming trauma narratives, though different in their approaches, offer a simplistic "blue pill"—an easy illusion that condenses complex and varied experiences into easily digestible pieces. Likewise, models that attempt to understand the vulnerabilities associated with diagnoses such as DID wrestle with the complex interplay of memory, trauma, and self-construction, but often end up reducing them into oversimplified categories.
While trauma and dissociation are very real, the mind, while complex, is a neurobiological mechanism and while there is neither certainty about there not being a metaphysics in operation nor am I arguing this, the self structures and those for attachment and reward and the unconscious are part of brain systems, they are not a metaphor of kumbaya or a broken kumbaya. While more metaphysically driven therapy may make people feel good, a therapist’s goal is not to make people feel good in a gratifying way because this leads to positivity being taken for granted and so when the therapist is trying to do the work that gets the patient to do the work, and this work includes understanding, containing, presence, and empathy, it can lead to an impasse of unresolvable proportions (Short, 2015).
Another reason that I wrote about the archive of feeling is so that in my own way, I acknowledge that there is joy in my life and that I appreciate even small moments of joy. While I did not note the people who I experienced the joy with—as I do believe that explicitly acknowledging those who one had the joyful moment with can make the moment more complicated than what joy actually is—I do cherish those memories.
Though, joy like the personification of Joy in Inside Out can be neurotic when not balanced, I think it is important to make clear that even when one creates an archive of joy, it is not as though someone is going to overwrite grief or trauma or depression. However, joy is deep, and rich, and the experience of it and the fighting for it should never be withered because while a fixation of joy when it is appropriate to feel negative emotions is neurotic, and can even be withering, replacing a fixation on sadness or on trauma when joy and other emotions are completely appropriate can help eliminate the saying of, “I’ve had certain experiences that have made me this way,” because a person would be more balanced in who they are. This next sentence is going to be harsh, but it is true. Those so-called “defining” moments of negativity that people want to act out with people are not loveable. What this means is that there is critical difference between talking about unmet needs and the impact of negative experiences and then developing plans for growing in emotional intelligence and working on oneself and on balanced relationships for getting needs met in the future and acting out by seducing, inducing, recruiting, colonizing, and deflecting to get shreds of emotional stuff from available people (Short, 2015). This doesn’t mean that such a person is less deserving of love than anybody else (or that they are unlovable) but simply that that those “defining” moments of negativity absolutely suck and any sort of fixation with it and acting out on it is not going to lead to anything positive.
It seems then that it is the case that people are too willing to let go of or sacrifice their personal Bing Bongs, a loss that happened internally to Riley in Inside Out (though again, she had an important moment of both Joy and Sadness, which demonstrates her capability for psychological balance), but it seems like other emotions are sacrificed too, which leads to negative memories becoming almost character defining. Unfortunately, people often define themselves based on adolescent or pre-adolescent experiences with people who for all intents and purposes were educable emotionally retarded. It is a tragedy to foreclose oneself to the breadth of life because of unfortunate experiences with those who lacked depth in their emotional life, which can commence a vicious cycle.
I do believe that a withered existence can also lead to a person becoming educable emotionally retarded if a person reaches a state where they are acting out by seducing, inducing, recruiting, colonizing, and deflecting to get shreds of emotional stuff from available people because the negative experience is so boo and not hurrah that they are unwilling to do the work to live in another way (Short, 2015).
This might equally seem harsh but what else is there to say given that there are so many people who seduce, induce, recruit, colonize, and deflect to get shreds of emotional stuff from available people without working on themselves or on their relationships (Short, 2015)? Cultural and psychological frameworks seem to suggest that this is okay, that this is the ramification of trauma. The Posttraumatic Model (PTM) sees trauma as cataclysm that fractures the self, disrupting the existential continuity and coherence of identity whereas the Sociocognitive Model SCM circumvents these depths, anchoring itself in observable and verifiable social and cognitive processes, and thereby potentially neglecting the existential quagmire that trauma and DID present but ultimately for all of negative experience people are robbed of their own efficacy when they aren’t encouraged to work out their real truth in consciousness and in verbal communication (Short, 2015).
These oversights lead to an imbalance where pain, trauma, and negative emotions are given significant attention and resources but with faulty conclusions, lacking efficacy, while joy and other positive emotions are undervalued and under supported. Of course, to reiterate, this is not to dismiss the importance of addressing negative emotions but that a more balanced approach that recognizes the full spectrum of emotions is needed.
The cultural narrative that emphasizes suffering and endurance over moments of joy and satisfaction may not only diminish individual well-being but also impair the general capacity to foster healthier, more resilient communities. By consistently focusing on trauma and negative emotions, the risk is in reinforcing a cycle of despair that overlooks the potential for resilience and renewal that positive emotions offer.
Therefore, it is important that people develop their own archive of joy. This concept involves actively recognizing and articulating the moments of happiness and contentment in our lives, not as fleeting or trivial, but as essential components of our emotional landscape. Such an archive would not only serve as a counterbalance to the often-overwhelming focus on negative experiences but also promote a more holistic approach to mental health and wellbeing.
By embracing joy as a legitimate and vital aspect of human experience, people can begin to cultivate environments that encourage emotional balance. This shift could lead to more supportive structures that acknowledge joy and contentment as fundamental to human life, just as pain and suffering are considered inevitable. In doing so, society can be fostered in a way to give credence to emotional resilience, not just endurance; a society where everyone’s pursuit of happiness is as recognized and supported as their struggle with adversity.
Ultimately, this balanced approach can lead to more nuanced understanding of the human condition, one that honors the complexity of our emotional realities and supports us in navigating both our joys and our challenges with greater compassion and understanding.
References
BMJ Quality & Safety. (2024). Rise in global number of patient harms from 11 million to 18 million (59%) in 30 years. BMJ Quality & Safety.
Brickman, P., & Campbell, D. T. (1971). Hedonic relativism and planning the good society. In M. H. Apley (Ed.), Adaptation level theory: A symposium (pp. 287–302). Academic Press.
Cvetkovich, A. (2003). An archive of feelings: Trauma, sexuality, and lesbian public cultures. Duke University Press.
Lynn, S. J., Lilienfeld, S. O., Merckelbach, H., Maxwell, R., Baltman, J., & Giesbrecht, T. (2016). Dissociative Disorders. In J. E. Maddux & B. A. Winstead (Eds.), Psychopathology: Foundations for a contemporary understanding (pp. 298-317). Routledge.
Short, B. L. (2015). Ownership of mind: separation in the countertransference. In J. F. Masterson (Ed.), (pp. 80-104). The Personality disorders through the lens of attachment theory neurobiologic development of the self : a clinical integration. Zeig, Tucker & Theisen, Inc.
Stark, M. (2017). The therapeutic use of optimal stress: precipating disruption to trigger recovery. D. Siegal & M. Solomon (Eds.), How People Change: precipitating disruption to trigger recovery. W. W. Norton & Company.
Stevenson, C. L. (1944). Ethics and language. Yale University Press.
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