Goon
Frankly I don't know what the big deal is with all of this gooning stuff. What's the hubbub? As if locking oneself away to jack off in despair for long periods of time is anything new. As if despair is anything new. As if compulsive behavior to cope with the horrors of existence is anything new.
The only new thing now seems to be the elaborateness of the whacking-off setups these kids have. The tech involved. So I had dial-up internet and you have a whole bank of monitors? So what? These are mere quantitative differences, but qualitatively the issue is the same: this flight from the world.
Ever since easy-access internet porn was invented - fuck, ever since the internet was ever invented - it's been a means of escape. Or more generously, the internet has offered an alternate mode of living.
You want to jack off all day in your room? Go for it. The Japanese have the hikkikomori phenomenon, and the American gooners seem no different. It's all the same shit. Watching anime all day and never leaving your room or whacking off all day and never leaving your room. Different symptomology, but the disease is the same. But if we keep talking about the symptoms only then we'll never address the root cause.
The larger question lies in the epidemiology of the whole thing. This despair. This malaise. What is the root source? Is it simply the anxiety of living? But this explanation seems inadequate.
To see ourselves surrounded by war and scarcity and impermanence and wanton cruelty and death and destruction and injustice and greed and callousness and wonder where the dread comes from also doesn't seem to dig deep enough.
Morality. Ethics. It's tough not to see the collapse on a global scale. The trend is towards the devaluing of human life. Has been ever since the dawn of capitalism. Has been ever since a Portuguese slave ship pulled up to the coast of Africa.
This thing I'm describing: it's like depression but I would say that even depression is just a symptom of it.
And yet despite all of this doom and gloom I'm optimistic for my son. Call it double consciousness. My generation might be cooked but maybe the youth have a shot. You can't pick the time you're given. Just need to sack up and deal with it.
And still, despite the demonstrable reasons (political, existential, philosophical, material, ethical, spiritual, physical, etc.) that one might feel despair right now, I'm not sure that my shit (my personal shit) is still not fundamentally chemical. Biological. My brain is broken. I've got miserable prick-itis. Yes, the world is scary, but my response to it is oversized. Poor impulse control.
I'm thirty-six. Terrified. Angry. Lost. Adrift. And yet when I look around at the manifold blessings of my life I damn near weep. I am so blessed, so privileged. So who's the real antagonist here? I suppose myself, as per usual. Same story. Same question: How do I get myself off of my back so I can live my life? How do I keep that one part of my consciousness from incessantly battering the hell out of me at every turn.
Or, better yet, how do I sublimate some of this ire into something positive. Zapffe was right. You either find a way to sublimate this inner animus or you set up the multiple monitors and goon yourself into oblivion. And no shade on those folks either. The destination is the same for all of us. It's just a matter of how you want to get through it.