Why so serious?

Too much sanity may be madness, and the maddest of all; to see life as it is, and not as it should be.
- Miguel de Cervantes, DON QUIXOTE



So, back to the Joker. If there was ever a better character archetype for national change, then the Joker was probably modelled after him; there is no escaping his insanity, because it is the insanity that sets out to put things back in order. When man locks himself into mundane ritual via economic obligations, the forever oscillating bipartisan system, and his soak in the murky chaos of "American culture," then he must be confronted by chaos to shake his foundational consciousness and allow for a reconfiguring of his orientation within the nation.

"Why so serious?"

In the concentrated areas of mass production and mass consumption, this is the question to be asked. Why are you allowing yourself to sacrifice your time for something that makes you commatose? Why do you not recognize a greater working of national systematics to see how your very life has become fodder? Why don't you "Read a book, read a book, read a mutha fuckin' book?"

Because the future is to be feared. Technology, in its exponential growth speeds, must be kept up with by human awareness, and this might be seen as a losing battle when we can see battles being fought everyday between man and cell phone, man and iPhone, man and Blue Tooth. These items have become tools for future construction, a way to solidify what is going to happen in the upcoming moments of life. Idility equals death, and so breaking that idility means prolonging their own meaning.

I am waiting for a bus. I don't know what to do with my hands. Oh my god, I quit smoking, too. I REALLY don't know what to do with my hands. I know; I will figure out what I am going to eat tonight. Good. Take out phone. Hands now activated. Mind at ease. Future meal mapped. Mission accomplished.

For what?! This is what the Joker laughs at. The Joker reminds people like this that their existence has become numb because of their own inactive participation, or laziness, in shaping their futures. They are so inactive that they leave it ALL up to a central government to do it for them. What happens when one epoch ends and another begins? What happens when the government asks its PEOPLE to shape ITS future? The Joker finds this hilarious, kicks the government in the balls and starts an organic farm. He pulls himself out of the systematic madness.

Socialism? Maybe, but maybe not. In a recent LA Times culture blog, the image of Obama as Joker surfaced as a Socialist gesture. While mega-fat companies have made a mockery of capitalism and drowned America in debt, Socialism in its extremity does cap a limit on individual human potential. Within a Socialistic framework, the Joker ceases to exist, if he ever even existed at all. In the objectivist sense, Socialism is,

the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good (Ayn Rand, FOR THE NEW INTELLECTUAL).

The Joker, again, asks the same question to Socialism: "Why so serious?"

Bottom line: recognize an opportunity to reach your human potential, and take it. Educate yourself and others so that the model of modern human existence within the nation might be understood and worked WITH, but worked with in such a way that does not allow it to become, like technology, more active than you in shaping your future. Your future is yours to laugh with.