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I’ve mentioned what I call the “Lauper Principle” here. To wit, girls just wanna have fun. In class, I call it the only law of psychology, the only truism that can be decontextualized, analogous to a law of nature. This post is about its meaning and implications.
Our capacity to imagine a better world and a better us has many benefits, but one of its main drawbacks is that we are constantly discontented with ourselves and the world. The many ways we manage that discontent constitutes the field of psychological psychology (distinguished from the fields of neuropsychology, biological psychology, and so on)—i.e., the study of the spirit. Psyche in Greek, like spirit in Latin, equates the breath with the soul. Ways of managing discontent are codified in the diagnoses, personality types, and case formulations that form the basis of psychotherapy.
According to Nietzsche, the primary way of managing discontent is by feeling guilty about imagining things to be better. We villainize our sex drive, will to power, innate aggression, and capacity for joy, sanctioning only a few outlets for these aspects of our humanity. The result is a society of snitches, hall monitors, and inquisitors—the morality they promote varies from situation to situation according to who happens to be in charge. Still, the methods remain fairly constant: stigmatizing joy, sex, aggression (especially disagreement), power, pressing for conformity, and canceling those who step out of line. When others do it to us, it’s a job for political philosophers, organizational psychologists, and family therapists. When we do it to ourselves, it’s a job for psychotherapists.
And yet, it’s rarely thorough enough to eradicate the desire to play completely. In society, this comes out as rebellion, underground meetups for music and gossip, sex clubs, and competitions. In the individual, it comes out in dreams, fantasies, and autobiographical narratives. All societies, whether as large as a nation or as small as an individual psyche, are governed by a hegemony of self-serving interests whose primary proclamation is that the system works and that silence is a sign that all are content. The marginalized, however, find their voices.
In the song, Lauper emphasizes girls because others want to control them. The supposed and actually (in my opinion) sensible evolutionary basis for this focus on girls is that sperm is cheap, and uterus access is scarce, so much of what passes for politics involves an argument about who controls the uterus. Most people I know think it should be the human whose body it is in, although a very long line of efforts to distribute different kinds of wealth to average people has met an equally long line of resistance from people who currently control that wealth.
Lauper also repeatedly mentions, “when the working day is done.” The lesson here, as is well known, is that if you do a job, you love, you will never work a day in your life. Of course, no occupation is all play; there are always papers to grade, notes to write, forms to fill out, and ovens to clean. But one can try to find the play as much as one can. We can try to find the Dionysian moments in the workaday world and celebrate them. The opposite of overeating to narcotize self-discontent is not dieting but tasting the food.
Unfortunately, if others catch you enjoying your work, you are likely to find yourself subjected to scolds, finger-waggers, and head shakers. So don’t broadcast it except to those who actually want you to have fun.
