Editor’s Notice: Is something ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Each Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Inform him about your lifelong or in-the-moment issues at dearjames@theatlantic.com.
Don’t need to miss a single column? Enroll to get “Expensive James” in your inbox.
Expensive James,
The world has so many haters. How can we take care of this as a collective?
Expensive Reader,
Are we a collective? I suppose we’re. Doesn’t really feel prefer it proper now—which after all is the purpose of your query.
Hate, for me, is available in two essential varieties.
There’s elemental hate—dead-eyed, regular, implacable hate—which I are inclined to suppose has a demonic origin, as a result of it runs counter to creation. It’s infernally reductive, stripping the life out of every thing: the hater and the hated, equally dehumanized. Fortunately this sort of hate is pretty uncommon. If you meet it, run.
Then there’s spazzy, jazzy, freewheeling, comes-in-ragged-blasts hate—the sort that almost all of us are aware of. Day-to-day hate, petty hate. It shakes our brains, shakes our techniques, is sort of frivolous within the randomness of its objects: this driver, that YouTuber, these individuals in line on the pharmacy. This type of hate is changing into extra prevalent, as a result of it has every thing to do with our present state of psychic atomization and distance from each other. It’s love going backward, badly disrupted connective vitality in search of a house.
What can we do about it? God is aware of. Title it. Acknowledge it when it rises up—and detach. Throw our smartphones away. Unplug our egos. Get off Amazon Prime. Cease listening to big-mouth podcasts. Breathe deeply. Be nicer to our bizarre neighbors. Be nicer to our bizarre selves. How’s that?
Exhaling peaceable platitudes,
James
Expensive James,
I’m exasperated by the overuse of the phrase existential—the stylish time period everybody appears to be utilizing to fill speeches and revealed articles. Additionally: consequential. I’d have anticipated The Atlantic to chorus. Sigh.
Expensive Reader,
Phrases I overuse: cosmic, vibe, flaming (or fiery), wild, harrowing, psychic. The explanation for that is that I dwell in a wild and flaming cosmos, and my psyche is harrowed by its vibes. Equally, existential and consequential are having a second as a result of we dwell in existential, consequential instances. On this—to make use of Auden’s line—what devices now we have agree.
(Additionally: We’ve no good synonyms for existential. Consider me, I’ve regarded.)
Doing photographs of language,
James
By submitting a letter, you’re agreeing to let The Atlantic use it partially or in full, and we might edit it for size and/or readability.