4.03 am, acerbic

I hope this isn't construed as an attack, but it probably will be by people too timid to formulate a response. So what's there to lose?

I am always provoked to philosophising whenever I go clubbing (which is maybe why I do it). It is one of the most pointless and empty activities available to my generation, which in a world thatincludes WoW and Facebook, is saying a lot. It's a meaningless parade of skin and glitter and the stench of a hundred frustrated guys crowding the dance floor trying to get some action.

Yet I go back. Some days for the music (because I dearly love hip-hop) and some days just to engage in the games that are played. There is an energy at work that's bigger than the crowd. It's the aura of consensual (and sensual) futility, at once frustrated with the pointlessness of the world at large and society's fulfilment-seeking subtext. It says - if the world of work and study is empty and the world of relationships is doomed to caricatured gestures signifying meaning but devoid of weight - then let us play. We embrace futility, but it must be fun. I think this is the rallying cry of my generation. It is nihilistic but not solipsistic - it rejects meaning but embraces the masses, the popular, the social animal. It accepts that the give and take of relationships is little more than a game played for one's own profit, but denies that two players may not both gain in the struggle.

I think modern religion places too high a premium on fulfilment. It places too high a premium on peace, which is another word for wretched contentment. Why not live empty? I need no cosmic justification for my own pleasure, and in every moment wasted I revel in the struggle.

adam