City Lights in the Age of the Kafkaesque
Downtown at night.— I do not want what they are drinking. I do not want to hear what they are saying. I am repulsed by the thought of what they are thinking. My mind blacks out at the general noise, the mindlessly giddy laughter, the time-killing and cocksure banter, the publicly displayed “intimacies,” and the roiling sea of unmemorable faces in the artificial light, which are barely even faces in any proper sense, but rather more like the random and indistinguishable discards from a painting class for beginners.
Living in prime time.— At night, we may all become more ourselves — more inwardly truthful, more open to the unconventional, more willing to entertain thoughts and questions that we forbid ourselves under the sunlight of social norms, more prone to experiencing both unsettling lightning flashes and the exhilirating discomfort of being alone with the impenetrable darkness — and yet most of us choose to become less ourselves at night.
Letting it all hang out.– No symptom of the general decay of the English language during (and due to) the era of universal compulsory schooling — democratized stupidity — is more representative than the gradual jettisoning of linguistic propriety and simplicity in favor of normalizing (legitimizing) the ubiquity of youth slang and “lingo.” And no single case of this de-maturation of communication, which inevitably entrenches immaturity of thought, is more representative of the trend than the normalization of the North American idiom “hang out with” as a catch-all substitute for such concrete and informative terms as “meet,” “spend time with,” or “[name of specific activity] with.” This modern phrase, which in its current meaning became established, not surprisingly, in the 1960s, has all but usurped every proper expression for social engagement in ordinary communication throughout North America, and therefore indirectly throughout the vast world of non-native English speakers. I can attest to this latter fact from firsthand experience, as I teach English at a Korean university, where, in addition to the local population, my classes frequently include foreign students from other Asian countries, as well as from Europe, and among all these students “hang out” is by far the preferred option for describing any sort of social activity — often the only option with which they are instantly familiar. This is no benign change in the vernacular, but rather an indication of a trend that we may somewhat euphemistically brand the democratization of popular experience. To hang out — most directly rooted in the early twentieth century coinage “hangout,” meaning a place where gangs or ne’erdowells gather — means to spend idle, wasteful time, especially with others; to act freely and without deference to formal proprieties or respectful restraints; to express what modern progressive psychology terms one’s “authentic self,” which conventional life forces us to tuck in like a dress shirt, but which in the company of one’s friendly acquaintances may be allowed to hang out like a T-shirt. To “hang out with friends,” as the term is commonly used, carries implications of amusing oneself with puttering, playful behavior, typically in a group, and essentially with immediate gratification or “relaxation” as the primary purpose of the gathering. In other words, it is impossible to imagine true friends, as Aristotle defines friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics — men of great character who love one another as second selves and whose defining activity is thoughtful conversation about the noblest things — “hanging out together.” It is impossible to conceive of Socrates in his last hours before the hemlock “hanging out” in his prison cell with Phaedo, Apollodorus, Crito. We would have to regard as parody a modernized Julius Caesar, were Caesar’s dying words rendered as, “Even you, Brutus, after all those times we hung out together.” Changes in common language register changes in common thought. We have lost genuine friendship, sincere companionship, the sense of purposeful and serious social existence. In their place we have raised the slavish, unindividuating vacuity of groups of (usually same age) acquaintances, all more or less the same in sensibility and experience, filling the voids of their lives with hours of idle play, idle drink, idle gossip, and idle idling — and no longer able even to imagine any better escape from the dry, demeaning daytime world of school, jobs, money, and straining to stay ahead of the goblins of technological obsolescence.
