Hiding behind a Gucci Bag
Sorry for the radio silence in the last week or so. I’m back in New Zealand for the month, so have had a few distractions. In saying that, I have been writing—Personally I can’t stand it when people include half arsed, filler posts to keep things ticking over while they’re otherwise occupied—I just wanted to make sure I put something out that was fully baked.
I’ve had this post drafted up for a while, it was spurred by a woman I saw on the street about a month ago, clutching a Gucci bag. It started out with just that lone observation and a few points splintering off it, but it lacked an umbrella point to unite all the ideas. I think I’ve finally found that detail, but we will get to that shortly.
That bag could have been fake for all I know, but something about the way this woman was carrying herself told me it wasn’t. In all other respects, she was—let’s be kind here—a bit unkempt. Her clothes looked like they’d come right out of the school dress up cupboard, but that bag?
She’d worked for it. Hours spent dreaming about how it might elevate her. Who knows what sacrifices lay behind it?
She’d polished it with oil, it added an inch of height to her posture and caused her to hold her chin high. Yet at the end of the day, it was still just a bag. An animal skin molded into a certain shape with a zip attached to it.
It’s almost too easy to pick holes in that lady, but she’s not alone
In my original post, I likened this woman and her bag to what most “professional people really are at their core—the “adults” in the room, officials and politicians, etc.
Once you’ve cut through the bullshit, started looking at them under sterile lighting, most of them are no different to that woman with the bag.
You can clutch it as tightly as you like, but that bag doesn’t make you into whatever it is you think it represents.
Those ”career men” once-upon-a-time worked hard to convince themselves that they’ve got it all figured out—and they continue working hard to convince the world of the same. But once you recognize the amount of smoke and mirrors that they’re throwing up, it becomes clear they’re all just scared children behind it all.
And perhaps it’s just me, but there’s something comforting in this.
Most people aren’t as smart as they make themselves out to be—and if they happen to find themselves being above average at a certain thing, they cling to it. Just like that woman from the rough background with her one Gucci bag— just like me any time I win a medal in some sporting event. Though there’s an instinct to believe this makes you into something different than you were before. None of it matters, none of it changes the person underneath.
These people have just found themselves a better disguise. They’ve got a bag AND a nice pair of boots. Every item they add, disguises them a little bit better. But with a little perspective, those things can be stripped away in just the same way. Every layer you take away, the closer you get to the real caste. The caste of humanity.
Without the job titles, the family legacy, the wealth, the suits…all you’ve got is yourself and chaos.
Great, so it’s all meaningless. What’s comforting in that? What’s my unifying point? We’ll get there. But for now…
Existentialism
One answer to meaninglessness is existentialism.
I recently read an article here on Substack by Chuck Palahniuk on the topic of Existentialism. Personally, I feel there are few non-philosophers, more qualified to talk about the subject than Chuck. His novel Fight Club is one of a handful of contemporary existentialist pieces of fiction that has got its hooks into the culture beyond academic circles in recent years. The balance between accessibility and legibility is a hard line to walk.
When I boil it down to its core parts, the novel I’ve written is essentially an existentialist story as well, so perhaps I see these themes popping up in everyday life with a keener eye than most, but we’ll get to that part too.
Though Chuck’s recent troubles with alcoholism seem to have blunted his output momentarily, the potency of this recent article of his is a promising indicator that he may have turned a corner for the better.
It got my cogs turning in any case, thinking about my own relationship to this philosophy.
Existentialism and Me
Existentialism and I have a patchy history. There are so many competing schools of thought within its broad umbrella, and most of them require a good deal of hard, slow thinking to grasp.
Trying to get a solid handle on all of it is intimidating to say the least—and that’s without even lifting the lid on understanding the context that each philosopher was coming from. 1
Over the years I’ve pieced together as many fragments of this broad philosophy that I’m able to grasp and tried to integrate them in a manner that can be applied as I walk through the world. Granted 70% of it is probably going over my head, but here are a few fragments that have stuck with me:
-Jean Paul Satres’ “you prove what you are by the choices you make,” has it’s appeal, but god it’s a burden.
-Elements of Nietzche even weaved its way into my novel. Zarathustra’s paradoxical command, “I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when have denied me will I return to thee.” This carried a logic that lit up my contrarian tendencies. It rang true enough to leak its way into my personal life for a time, but by it’s own nature it offered little roadmap to carry very far.
-Viktor Frankl’s “He who has a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any ‘how,” followed a similarly appealing, yet difficult to apply shape.
Existentialism without the absurd.
I’m happy to say, my novel Echoes from the Trapdoor has progressed to a place where the philosophy of my characters isn’t just a mirror of my own ideas, but they do reflect somewhat of a snap shot of where my thinking had settled at the time of writing.
In the earlier draft of this article, I went deep into the specifics of my main character’s existentialist beliefs, but I will save that for another time. All you need to know, is that EFTTD’s version of Existentialism worked in harmony with the themes of cause and effect, determinism and influence that permeate the plot.
But, because it was a snapshot of my limited perspective at that time, one element that it omitted2 was the conncept of the absurd.
The Chuck Palahniuk article I referenced above, highlights the father of this strain of existentialism—Albert Camus—in a way that has rekindled my interest in the philosophy on a more personal level. Back when I was deeper in-the-weeds with this stuff, Camus failed to resonate with me. Perhaps an age thing? But for whatever reason, Chuck’s article has made his ideas accessible to me in a way that I’ve never been able to grasp before.
How the Gucci Bag fits in
Ok sorry about the tangent there. Let’s get back to the Lady with the Gucci bag.
As I said before, Existentialism is a reaction to this sense of meaninglessness in the world. People trying to find answers outside of structured religion.3
Camus reckons it’s all absurd. There’s no meaning. But rather than attempting to stitch a value system together from scratch, he recommends treating existence as the thing it is. Absurdity. Embracing the chaos of that.
Treat those businessmen for what they are—ridiculous. Likewise, recognize the woman fawning over her bag as the same.
This doesn’t mean you have to hold contempt for them for chasing these pointless ends however, because after all, anything you’re going after is just as absurd.
This is where the comforting part comes in. Though I didn’t see it before, there’s a lighter feel to this take on pointlessness that feels more playful, less heavy. Rather than taking on the burden of attempting to make yourself into some model of humanity, it frees you up to chase anything, comforted by the idea that none of it means anything at all.
Haven’t we all fallen into that pattern of taking things too seriously from time to time? Everything must serve my goals, cut out the fat, optimize.
Ok, maybe that part’s just me.
I’m not saying I’d adopt Camus’ worldview wholesale.4
But it’s a nice perspective to be able to dip into from time to time.
No, it doesn’t do much to change the 7% interest rate I’m paying on my mortgage. No, it doesn’t quell the screaming knowledge that we’ve all been thrust into consciousness without explanation.
But it is something.
Now that I’ve almost certainly shone a light on how limited my grasp of all this stuff is, I’ll end the article right here.
Adopting the life philosophy of a known pedophile isn’t the most appealing prospect.
Consciously ay least—I’m sure there are elements of the absurd that slipped in there unknowingly.
Though it’s not always A-religious.
I doubt I’ve even wrapped my head around it properly.