Uncomfy

Term philosophy paper, written October 8th, 2024.

Disclaimer: I might not agree with my past self anymore.

When I was young, I was almost an anarchist of comfort. Asceticism had a rosy glow around it. After long days of standing in lines at the DMV with my mother, and hearing stories of my brothers getting punched by cops, I would dream of entering a convent and attempting to remove all temptation towards comfort from my life. I saw my local neighbors growing fat and lazy off of government milk – buying cases of frozen chicken nuggets from the Dollar General using WIC. I saw people vegetating in their armchairs, with their eyes glued to whatever football game or ad was showing – talking to you with their mouth only, never moving their eyes or mind. My grandmother’s house was never silent, it was filled with the perpetual noise of unnaturally happy women selling polyurethane clothes. I’d see my friends going to the doctor for every little scraped knee, and then I’d go babysit 7-year-olds who had a full mouth of braces and stank like adolescents because of the hormones in the milk they drank. (Milk treated with chemicals until it was no longer milk, so that our immune systems will have to fight one less bacterium.) I was a bratty pint-sized Stoic who needed to absolutely humiliated and told to go make friends…but for what it’s worth, while I was wallowing in my comfortable self-pity, I decided that the reason for all these terrible things was that we expect too much as a culture. We take things for granted, and cannot fathom a world where our every desire is not given to us.

The American race is decaying. We’re becoming puddles of fat, molding into nothing but stinky brie cheese. The middle class is too comfortable. “But what is comfort?” you ask, “These things you’re talking about don’t sound like a definition of comfort. Standing in lines? Corrupt cops? Television-addiction? Stinky children? These just sound like problems, not comfort.” But they’re a few results of too much comfort. I’m using comfort as a synonym for wealth, luxury, ease, or leisure.

Comfort, or leisure, is something that hangs around for a hundred or so years after one generation works like crazy in order to innovate new technologies and create a more comfortable life for their children. We in America are benefiting from the herculean endeavors of our great-great-grandparents to provide better lives for their children. Because we’ve been born into this state, and haven’t ever lived outside of it, we’re terrified of losing our comfort. Not only have we become too affluent, and too comfortable, but we have become terrified. Terrified of saying the wrong things, hurting people’s feelings, and losing our precious facade of comfort.

One reason for this fear might be our government (and their meddling in our lives to the point of total subconscious control of weaker minds). But that can’t really be said out loud. It’s uncomfy. But I’ll say it! The government is in fact evil and overreaching, and it needs to be either abolished or reformed - or whatever you do these days. To remove the current government would be to remove a massive blockade from our advancement as an industrious (and uncomfortable!) society. But how? It’s incredibly uncomfortable to stand up for something that’s true, but is unaccepted by the people in power. Can you even reform a country without a bloody revolution? Can you stand up for truth without being assaulted, or having your home and livelihood taken away?

I don’t have an answer for how we should change one of the biggest factors in our country’s mental idleness and stagnation. But I do know that it has to happen, and I have a feeling that it will happen violently once it does. I hope with all my heart that people will come to the realization of their mental imprisonment, and begin saying the uncomfortable things, and doing uncomfortable things in order to break out of this plushy den of pillows and vipers–but I hope even more that it’s done by Christians in a godly, peaceful way, and not by seething atheists who’ll burn down buildings just because they’re there. Sometimes buildings do need to be burned down. There is a place for righteous anger. There is right and wrong in regards to certain things, and no in-between. But the majority of the time, a calm heart and steady mind will move mountains with the provision of God.

But when America tips and breaks, we need to be ready. I know this breaking, this revolution will happen. I’ve talked to farmers, businessmen, moms, and teachers about this. They all have a deep sense of wrongness in the land. They feel oppressed by their government, isolated from like-minded people, and they feel an overwhelming sense of apathy from everyone around them. So why haven’t they revolted and rioted in the streets? Why haven’t they done something about the problem? They haven’t lost their comfort yet. We’re stuck in our little ruts of tradition, and we’ll need a catastrophic event to shake us out of our flip-flops and into our boots.

You’re probably thinking, “But everyone says that America is a workaholic nation!? We work more than any other country that I know of––just look at those lazy Italians over there, sipping cappuccinos and closing their businesses for five months out of the year.” But you know what? I think that you’re right. We are workaholics, after a way. But what are we workaholics for? Do we go to the office in order to fulfill our nature as a productive, dominion-taking, culture-shaping image of God? Or do we go to the office in order to be able to buy a cozy little couch that we’ll sit on with whirly psychedelic eyes, staring at the brand-spanking-new television from 5pm until bedtime?

Ecclesiastes 5:18 says, “Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot.” It’s not so much the physical aspect of comfort that’s so terrible. It’s not the well-earned results of hard labor that is tearing our country down. Rather, it’s the mental and emotional comfort that we’ve become addicted to and have come to expect. We have reached the point where we just assume that we’ll have food on the table, and will run away from any confrontations so that we’ll be assured of not losing our so-called “comfort.”

Perhaps our American culture is the deepest distillation of Epicureanism taken to its extremes? (I really wish I knew what Epicureanism was.) We dislike troubles, confrontations, and strife so much that we’re willing to put aside absolute truth values in order to preserve some sense of our comfort. Except that we’re not doing this purposefully. No, that would take too much mental work. Instead, it’s a sub-conscious action. Maybe Sextus Empiricus, if he were alive today, would call our cultural state “mental tranquility.” Except that we’re not truly tranquil in this day and age––instead we live in a comfort-induced coma. A coma so deep that even the threat of our comfort being taken away does not wake us up. Instead, we dig deeper into our cushions and turn the noise machine up louder. It’s only the actual yanking off of the comforter and the blast of freezing air that will clear the fog out of our drug-muddled brains and wake us up!

I don’t know, I think there’s hope for the world. God will accomplish reform in America, no matter what. But it will come by a loss of comfort, and we’ll have to prepare ourselves for that. By preparing for the breaking point, we show that we do not hope hopelessly.

Now, I’m not a total anarchist of comfort. There’s something absolutely lovely and heaven-tasting about a steaming cup of coffee, and a warm blanket while watching a chilly sunrise. I love a good Pillsbury cinnamon roll, all gooey and diabetic. But there’s a difference between deserved comfort and expected comfort. Comfort that comes after a long day of work is so much sweeter than a never-ending, languid comfort that comes at little to no cost.

As Gerard Hopkins writes in his poem, Carrion Comfort:

Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee:

Not untwist –– slack they may be –– these last strands of man

In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;

Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

…

Why? That my chaff may fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.

Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod.

Work hard, rest well. True comfort is found in the Lord, not in the material results of the labor of others. Speak up, tell the uncomfy truth. Call out sin, and show you truly love someone. Act! Don’t be like me. We were made for work and we were made for rest, do both for the right reason and both actions will prosper.