The Unhappiest One

We’ll begin with a thematic examination of a word in the context of its semantic drift. The word is Decimation.

Decimation was originally a punishment inflicted on Roman military cohorts in antiquity for capital offenses such as cowardice or mutiny. When a cohort is to be decimated, it is split into groups of ten. One member of each group is randomly selected, and the other nine members beat him to death with their bare hands. So, decimation in ancient times corresponds to a material loss of 10%. But, of course, decimation is primarily a moral punishment for the other nine soldiers.

In modern times, decimation is understood to be an overall sense of destruction or ruin. If, in modernity, you claim decimation, your listener is much more likely to imagine a 90% loss than a 10% loss. How can we explain this apparent inversion of meaning? Is this particular semantic shift a symptom of something larger? Keep this in the back of your mind as we delve into Kierkegaard.

Kierkegaard tells of a grave in England with an inscription The Unhappiest One. Someone opened the grave, but found no corpse. We are left to imagine what all of this means, and who could ever truly be called the unhappiest one. He asks his unhappiest readers to assemble for a bit of a competition, and he immediately kicks out everyone who imagines the greatest misfortune to be death, as they cannot possibly be more unhappy than those who remain.

Let us make ourselves worthy to sit as judges, competitors, that we do not lose perspective, are not put off by the individuals themselves, for the eloquence of sorrow is infinitely inventive. We would divide the unhappy into definite groups and let one speak for each; for this we will not deny, that no particular individual is the unhappiest; it is a class.

If we were to define a primary characteristic of the unhappy person, it would be an absence from the self. This absence from the self is an elusive idea, so I will pause to say it many different ways. The difference between absence and presence in this context is similar to the difference between circulating through and inhabiting; or between being informed and understanding. One who is absent from the self experiences a fragmentary reality, this person is always somewhere else, breadth without depth, execution without engagement, a tourist in one’s own life, imprisoned by one’s own sense of control and responsibility.

One can be absent from oneself by living in the future or in the past. We call these the hoping and the remembering individuals, but it is not just a momentary presence in the hopes or the memories that makes them so unhappy. This is because, vitally, it is still possible to be present to yourself in your hopes and your memories. Those who cannot achieve this kind of presence, we admit as genuinely unhappy individuals.

So, the genuinely unhappy one is absent from himself in his hopes or in his memories. What observable form does this take in everyday life?

We can imagine a person for whom childhood passed without acquiring significance, someone who didn’t get to have a “real childhood” as we say. Now imagine this person, in adulthood, becomes a teacher of children, and discovers all the beauty and innocence of a “real childhood”. When this individual now looks back at his own childhood, he becomes our example of the unhappy rememberer. He is unable to be present to himself in his memories of youth, he wants in retrospect to discover the significance of what has passed.

We can imagine a person who lived without experiencing unadulterated joy or pleasure, for his entire life. Now he’s on his deathbed, and he catches his first ever true glimpse of joy, right before his health takes a turn for the better and he survives. He is revived, but not to live over again, his life has passed him by. Here is our example of the unhappy hoper, he cannot be present to himself in his hopes for the future he knows he will not inhabit.

It is when we start to imagine combinations of these two forms that we start to locate some stronger candidates for our empty grave.

On the one hand, he constantly hopes for something he should be remembering, his hope is constantly disappointed, but on its being disappointed he discovers the reason is not that the goal has been moved further on but that he has gone past it, that it has already been experienced, or is supposed to have been, and has thus passed over into memory.

On the other hand, he constantly remembers something he should be hoping for; for in thought the future is something he has already taken up, he has experienced it in thought, and that which he has experienced is something he remembers instead of hopes for.

It is in this way that the unhappy life knows no rest, though it has no substance. The future has already been experienced, though the past has not yet arrived.

Now we have a theoretical outline of our unhappiest of men, now we can proceed and attempt to make him flesh and bone. But we soon realize the futility of our errand; for to make him flesh and bone and send him to the bottom of the Mariana Trench of despair is to set an upper (if lower if you like) bound to his suffering, and thus give him the hope inherent in the notion that things cannot get any worse. Along with the title of unhappiest, we unintentionally give him a future he can imagine himself to be present in, and the title is taken away at the same moment it is granted.

So, it is left to you, dear reader. Why is that grave in England still empty? Why does decimation bring more unhappiness than annihilation?