How to Be Happy in 101 Days

I love this poem so much.

How to Be Happy in 101 Days

Tishani Doshi

Adore stone. Learn to manoeuvre

against the heat of things. Should

you see butterflies gambol in the air,

resist the urge to pinch their wings. 

Look for utilitarian values of violence.

Use the knife lustily: to peel the mango's

jealous skin, to wean bark and cut bread

for the unending hunger of stray dogs. 

Renounce your house. Take just one 

object with you. Slip it in your pocket. 

Marvel at how a simple thing can

connect the variegated skeins of time. 

On the 99th day, you must surrender

this object, but until then feel free 

to attach sentiment to it. Find a forest

to disappear in. Look for thirst-quenching

plants. Rub the smooth globes of their roots 

in our palms before biting in to their hearts. 

Lean backwards and listen to the slippery

bastard of your own arrhythmic heart. 

Remind yourself that you feel pain, 

therefore you must be alive. Stain

your fingers with ink. Set out into 

the world and prepare to be horrified. 

Do not close your eyes. Catch a fish. 

Smash its head and watch the life gasp 

out of it. Spit the bones into sand.

Offer your bones to someone. 

Clavicles are the chief seducers

of the human body. When you hear

the snap, allow yourself a shudder. 

Find a tree to hold all the faces

of your dead—their hair, their rings. 

Hang their solemn portraits from branches. 

If you cannot find happiness in death

you will not complete the course. 

Give your child to a stranger. 

If you are childless, offer the person

you love best. Do not ask about possible

ways of mistreatment. Trust it will be terrible.

Climb a mountain. Feel how much larger

the world is when you're alone. 

Try to find words or images

to explain your loss. Give up. Stand on your head. 

Grow dizzy on your own blood. 

Spend the night in the cemetery. 

Keep still and listen to the dead chortle. 

Tattoo your face. Do not bother with the stars. 

They are for romantics (who are not happy

people). Learn to steer through darkness. 

If you're attacked, spread your legs and say,

Brother, why are you doing this to me?

​​​​​​When you approach a crossing in the woods, 

take the one instinct tells you to take. 

When you are knee-deep in mud, turn

around and try the other path in order

to understand how little you know

of yourself. In a few days you'll be ready

for the sublime. Before that, meditate

in a cave. If a tigress finds you, offer her

the meat of your thighs, give her cubs

your breasts. If tigers are already extinct,

wait for some other hairy, hungry creature

to accost you. It will happen. 

It is important for you to lose both

body and mind. Dig a hole in the earth

with your hands. Place your treasured 

object in it and thrill at how little

it means to let it go. On the 101st 

day, search out a mirror. Strip

away your clothes. Inch up to

your reflection. Much of the success

of this course will depend on what you see.

Do we live in an information society?

One of the things that struck me as I read John Feather's introduction to The Information Society was that the difference the Information Age brought was that beforehand, in the Manufacturing Age, technological advances allowed us to do our jobs better; after the "revolution" that Feather describes, technology was the job itself. This is a huge shift in its own right, but still has tethers to the old way: spreadsheets could be (tediously) done by hand in ledgers; even space flight could be 'computed' by a single woman in a NASA office. Since then, the work that we do cannot be replicated outside the virtual technological space in which it takes place: mapping the genome, for instance, is simply not humanly possible.

But for the idea of an information society to be evaluated, I think the emphasis is on society more than information. Our social interactions, not just our vocations, are now built on foundations that assume a level of information availability. This presents as everything from googling answers at a table to feeling deeply connected to virtual friends while barely recognizing neighborhood residents. The socialization of information networks has also created a major ripple in the social fabric, leaving those who are not able to participate in the social stream as nonentities more often than not, without access to the basic framework of adult citizenship. I remember when we thought that the internet would be the great democratizer, and in many ways it still is. But with phones that cost over a thousand dollars, with platforms that eat huge amounts of data, the digital revolution has been leveraged into the land of the Haves v. the Have-nots once again. I'm increasingly experiencing news "articles" that are actually videos, and this change in format -- without the text component of the traditional written article -- means that many people simply cannot access that piece of information.
The idea of social currency is also being impacted, in that the idea of "followers" to a feed or "likes" to a post have real social meaning, at least in the moment, and fame seems to be shorter and shorter. Andy Warhol's "fifteen minutes of fame" might well be only fifteen seconds these days, if that.

I think we absolutely live in an information society, and the fact that outside agents chose to target information social networks as a valuable asset for hacking speaks volumes. Our social interaction with digital information and the media continues to be as meaningful a piece of the infrastructure as the electricity grid or clean water delivery.