Blame It On the Memes
The dangers of flippancy as a substitute for joy
Younger generations have embraced counseling and are more focused on “maintaining their mental health” than any previous generations. At the same time, however, they remain more likely to report their mental health as only fair or poor than older adults.
Some may argue that young generations have endured more hardships and, therefore, circumstances are to blame for their comparatively poor mental health. I don’t want to diminish what Gen Z has experienced, but previous generations had their own traumatic experiences.
So what explains the disconnect? At least in part, it’s the memes.1
If you spend much time around teenagers or young adults, you know the tendency to communicate in memes. In some sense, memes are fun, a shorthand way to share a joke with others who have a common understanding.
But almost nothing escapes the meme-ification. Historical and even personal tragedies are often rendered into memes and jokes immediately. There’s never really a question of whether a joke is “too soon.”
So why would this seeming lightheartedness contribute to depression and loneliness? Because flippancy is a poor substitute for joy.
Yes, many Gen Z and Gen Alpha will turn even the worst moments into memes, but that’s not comforting others in pain or confronting their own pain. That’s merely diminishing the seriousness of a tragedy and further isolating them from others. Instead, they (and we) need an abiding joy.2
In C.S. Lewis’ famous sermon, The Weight of Glory, many are familiar with the portion where he states, “There are no ordinary people.”
You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
But fewer are familiar with what Lewis says next.
This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.
The solution, Lewis argues, is to face life with joy, which allows us to both treat others and circumstances with the necessary seriousness and merriment. It’s the attitude at a funeral where people share the Christian hope of resurrection.
There is a deep sense of pain and loss, a recognition that this is not how things should be. Yet, there’s also a lightness. A divine breeze from eternity blows through the gathered family and friends as they smile and laugh at their memories one minute and weep at what was lost the next.
Flippancy, the attitude that turns everything into a meme, isn’t that. It refuses to treat anything as serious. Flippancy does not have a whiff of heaven. Lewis argued it blows from the pits of hell.
In The Screwtape Letters, the senior demon argues that human laughter flows from four possible causes: “Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, and Flippancy.” Screwtape says hell has no use for joy. Fun is dangerous to their cause because it is too closely related to joy. The joke can be used, “but flippancy is the best of all.”
Only a clever human can make a real joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of flippancy builds up around a man the finest armor-plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy: it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it.
Flippancy diminishes and downplays pain. It ignores hurt and insulates a person from all that God could use for their benefit, including other people.
Memes and silly in-jokes are not inherently evil by any stretch of the imagination, but they are a sign of settling for flippancy instead of joy. They discourage us from resting in hope through difficulty and loving others and ourselves while being honest about shortcomings.
By all means, enjoy memes, but don’t allow them to dull your senses to tragedy or treat them as a substitute for true fun. If you aren’t careful, flippancy can steal your joy and have you joke about it. Or to put it in a way some might better understand …
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Discipleship Deficit Exists Among Churchgoers — Lifeway Research
Obviously, this is a simplification of the issues involved, but I believe this is an underdiscussed cause.
It is true that many teenagers and young adults veer into the other extreme and treat everything with a self-seriousness. For them, there can be no laughter or smiling because of all the terrible circumstances in the world. But that’s not the solution either.