What is A Good Life? Plato said it requires virtue. Epicurus said the trick is never talking politics. Nietzsche said if you鈥檙e striving for happiness, you鈥檙e losing. To the Star, A Good Life is our new advice column in which our philosophical advisors help you navigate everyday dilemmas about romance, career and how best to spend your fleeting time on earth, guiding you out of the existential muck, toward A Good Life.
About half-way through a five-hour train ride, a man sat behind me and started speaking loudly into his phone. The entire car was quiet 鈥 most people were sleeping. What are our responsibilities as passengers? Shouldn鈥檛 he know better than to do this? How can I get him to shut up? Or do I?
The artist and writer Douglas Coupland had a solution to this common annoyance. He would hold his own phone to his ear and pretend to be the person on the other end of the obnoxious yakker鈥檚 call. Gesticulating, laughing, eye-rolling, he would pantomime exaggerated responses to whatever inanities poured forth. Sadly, this piece of sarcastic performance art is usually lost on its target and a bit irritating in its own right. It might satisfy the prankster in all of us but it doesn鈥檛 solve the basic problem.
Some train routes have quiet cars. These make explicit the social contract that operates in all shared spaces, and they work because like-minded people choose to be there. Elsewhere, alas, we have to rely on the good sense and manners of other people聽鈥 usually a bad bet because, you know, humans. Yammering phone zombies are a scourge on public life聽鈥 the tragedy of the commons in one heedless voice, ruining life for everyone. But their obliviousness is embedded in the offence. If they were engaged with the world around them, they might realize that nobody wants to hear what they have to say.
Enforced overhearing is thus the inverse of eavesdropping: call it ear-bombing. From the endless chatter of teens on transit or in the cinema, to the self-important deal-makers of your train car or waiting room, phone babble presumptively destroys your right to privacy and solitude. It used to be that people talking to the air were considered crazy; now they鈥檙e just an everyday menace to our own sanity. One longs for the comic-book death-ray superpower that would reduce them to ashes with a flash of side-eye.
You can always just suck it up, maybe shove in your ear buds and crank the Radiohead; or you can narc out and call the guard. But why not stand up for public goods everywhere and remind the miscreant that shared spaces belong to all? Unwanted noise is pollution, the aural version of toxic waste. Take courage and intervene! Don鈥檛 just shush or put a finger to your lips. Don鈥檛 get angry. Use your righteous words. Justice and civilization are on your side.
A couple of my friends are swingers. They鈥檝e approached someone I know to become the third wheel in one of their sexual adventures, and have been sending raunchy pics of themselves as an enticement. That person told me before I could tell them this is not something I ever wanted to know. Now, I can鈥檛 look at any of them the same way.
Hmm, so many questions. Like, what made the couple-friends think that your acquaintance would be into the threesome in the first place? Also, were the images sent without any other preamble, as in, 鈥淗ey guy, what鈥檚 up, here鈥檚 a snap of my johnson, talk soon, byeee!鈥? Are these people in the habit of spontaneously sharing said 鈥渞aunchy pics鈥 as 鈥渁n enticement鈥? Does that even work? I understand that you might want to erase the whole episode from your memory, but meanwhile it seems like there鈥檚 more back story to know, including your friend鈥檚 motives in telling you about it all.
It鈥檚 true that what has been seen cannot be unseen, even if only in the mind鈥檚 eye. So time and the press of daily life will make some of your ick factor fade eventually, but we all know that unsought sexual knowledge is hard to bracket. Probably everyone has some unwelcome eye-burners in there somewhere, like an aged relative who didn鈥檛 close the door in time. This may be one of yours.
Really, though, is that such a big deal? Other people鈥檚 intimate lives are always something of a mystery to us, and there is a weird slippage between people as we know them fully clothed, in everyday life, and what they鈥檙e like when the lights are off (or on, as the case may be). In general it鈥檚 probably best not to think about them that way聽鈥 unless your fantasies run in that direction, in which case, sure, but keep those thoughts to yourself.
Which is exactly what your third-wheel acquaintance should have done. This sounds like it was a private invitation to a serious hook-up, made by and for consenting adults. It shouldn鈥檛 be fodder for idle second-hand gossip. If the pictures were unsolicited and unwelcome, that鈥檚 bad but not your business. And this is a matter of taste, since some people still favour the term, but 鈥渟wingers鈥 can sound dated and a bit off in our era of ethical non-monogamy. You do you, by all means, but be mindful what labels you use.
Need existential advice from a philosophical adviser? Send your dilemmas and questions to聽agoodlife@thestar.ca聽and we鈥檒l guide you to your good life.
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