how to hate the world

In the idle time I have travelling between Mississauga and Toronto on the GO and TTC, I decided to educate myself with some of the literary classics that I have not yet read. This week is The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Yeah, so it's a book i should have read in highschool english, but our mandatory reading was Margret Atwood and F.Scott Fitzgerald.

Anyway,It's only Tuesday, and I'm half way through it. I am quite fond of Holden Caulfield. He's this alienated boy who I find unnaturally wise beyond his years. He is able to see through most people and hates the "phony" happiness that they plaster across their faces...accepting life at status quo, yet in order to fit in, he finds himself slapping on the same socially acceptable happy-face that he hates so much. Being that happy person on the outside is so far from who he is on the inside that he shoots the shit fakes personalities as he encounters different people. He laughs at how stupid people are. People depress him because they are just empty bodies who don't think about anything worthwhile. They can't think of anything else but immediate gratification.

This is just how it is when I hangout with party friends. Dunno how people can do it every weekend. So many phony faces that make me sick. "Hieeee hieeee!! muah muah..." Maybe they're afraid that if they acutally spend time alone or in a quiet conversation they'll find out that they're boring and empty....better go back and hide in the party. YEt, I find myself sporadically frequenting these places...and surrounding myself with this phony empty atmosphere that Jean Baudrillard calls ecstasy. Ecstasy, according to Baudriallard is how modern day gratification is found in sourrounding oneself with as much "flash" as they can. People are always competing and trying to outdo eachother with more "flash." When in fact there's acutally no substance behind extacy, only a false high that ends in a feeling of emptiness...but pretty soon, you don't even feel the emptiness anymore, because you just become a zombie...you were tricked into thinking that you were really "living life to the fullest."

Anyway... good book. Holden is honest and a realist, but he's also sad, because he's trapped within his own cynicism.