New APPS

One of the most frustrating things about getting married in the United States is that for two days you are surrounded by all of these old friends, but then with all the preparations and whatnot you have no time to have decent conversations with any of them.

I used to think this was a significant bug, that if we were going to persist in moving our domiciles across such a huge country, then marriages should last at least a week, enough time to get a couple of meals alone with old friends. But now I'm wondering if not having enough time is a feature.

When you've lived long enough and moved enough times you start to get walloped by affective connections withering away.

It's just weird. You can maintain intensely warm regard for a person you haven't seen in years yet when you get a chance to share space again find yourselves struggling to know what to say next. What happened? Sometimes alcohol and other people being there can help. But sometimes that doesn't even work very well. The distance between what was and what remains is painful.

With the internet you can experience the same drag when meeting someone the first time. I'm always panicked with the first prospect of meeting someone I only know via e-mails and blogging. You can have hours of e-mail chats with person, and feel like you have a real sense of the person from reading their work. But when you finally meet there's always the threat of real life conversations devolving into extended, uncomfortable silences.

I forget what Aristotle said about friendship in the Nichomachean Ethics (maybe that bad people can't really be friends?). But just as a descriptive point, it seems to me that the most important factor for the friendship lasting and becoming deeper is the extent to which you entertain one another. Time spent with bad friends seems longer, while time spent with good friends shrinks.*

Ray Monk's biography of Wittgenstein expresses this well with respect to a number of the philosopher's friends. I forget the name of the non-academic that Wittgenstein exchanged postcards with for years. They would write pretentiously about the picture on the postcard, as if it were high art and as if they had created it. They are very funny satires. Wittgenstein and friend would also make a habit of using the word "blood" over and over again (e.g. "Dear old blood. . . Your's Bloodily). If I remember correctly, when his friend would visit they would just sit on chairs, look into the distance, and try not to laugh as they play acted these characters they'd created.

I don't think we understand very well the factors that give rise to and sustain this kind of shared affective bonding. I don't think it has very much to do with "having things in common." But I don't know what it could be if not that. Also, from my own experience and reading biographies, it seems clear to me that handwritten physical letters worked vastly better at sustaining the affective bond over distance and time than e-mails do today. I don't know why this should be the case though.

[*The contrast between Curb Your Enthusiasm's characters Larry David's friendships with Marty Funkhauser on the one hand, and his friendships with Jeff Greene and Leon Black on the other, illustrate the duality beautifully. In the latter cases, the characters constantly express an almost giddey joy in how their friends express themselves. In the former, Funkhauser often just kinds of talks at Larry, who is bored and discomfitted.]