rand/friendship

i feel as if i grew up on ayn rand. not literally, obviously, - the hardy boys, encyclopedia brown, nancy drew were the original guilty pleasures - but, rather, in late high school and early college when my development began to occur outside of familial and community systems.

i think it was in rand's 'the fountainhead' where i encountered the phrase, "there is no joy in the possession of a mindless body." she was referring to the mating experience and how bonding with an individual that wasn't aware of your idiosyncratic awesomeness adds nothing to the development and maintenance of a strong and secure ego.

i'll go one step further and say that there's no joy in the possession of anything mindless - whether it be motivated by habit, routine, obligation, duty or whatever. sure, there's comfort, predictability, and even a measure of security, but the unbridled joy of confronting an experience with full participatory awareness of all sentient parties? i think not.

my boss was asking me after work the other day about my conception of friendship and the role of obligation in maintaining these relationships. she's a christian and regular church-goer, so i'm sure you could surmise her belief system in a focus group-tested (ah, i guess they're called congregations) scripture or two. so, in response to her query, i told her that my friendships tend to be very utilitarian.

before i get judged harshly by the one or two people out there that peruse this blog on occasion, let me define the term. a google click or two provides these two definitions:

1. the belief that the value of a thing or an action is determined by its utility.

2. the ethical theory proposed by jeremy bentham and james mill that all action should be directed toward achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

my conception of friendship encompasses both of these definitions - the value of a friendship is determined by its utility, which is measured by the amount of happiness participants in the friendship achieve.

loyalty or obligation do not factor much into my friendships. few things irk me more than making those friendship 'maintenance' phone calls or get-togethers. we do those 'so, what have you been up to?' and 'how's the job/kids/renovations/what-the-fuck-ever' conversations. invariably, i care nothing for their job/kids renovations/what-the-fuck-ever. these most banal of topics had nothing to do with the origination of our friendship, so why maintain the pretense? if the friendship still retains that dynamic quality upon which it was initiated, then i'll do my damnedest to keep it going. but in the absence of that spark of shared curiosity...

a good friendship, a good anything i guess, is kinda like miles davis and his crew riffing and jamming off a shared theme. the experience is participatory, improvisational, and results in a unique outcome. the experience/interaction cannot be mindless. mindless friendships offer no growth, just baseless security in the fact that you're on somebodies list of friends. or that they're on yours.

what good is a name on a list? will these mindless friendships offer support in your moment of emotional crisis? do they result in those belly-originating giggles and guffaws that make you laugh until it hurts? produce insights that further your personal or intellectual development?

if not, then for what?

yeah, so possession of a mindless body or engagement in anything with a lack of awareness seems like a colossal waste of time.

and perhaps i've wasted enough of yours...

"...it dies so quickly, it grows so slowly. it's called love."
- new order, thieves like us