Trust the Catastrophizer
We are members of an aspirational culture. We hope; we dream; we try. And often, we fail. We dream of becoming marine biologists. And we don't. We try to win the girl. And we don't. We endeavour to be well liked. And we aren't. We can respond to repeated and decisive failure by becoming Upbeats, Bergmans, or Nervies, but why do something I've belittled on another page of this website? The only real options are catastrophic ones.
So why catastrophize?
To Enhance
When life leaves you breathlessly disappointed, you could try to lift your spirits and restore your hopes (exhausting and doomed), you could simply straightforwardly brood (tedious for you and for others), OR you could indulge in causal catastrophizing, associative catastrophizing or a combination of the two (causociative? assal?).
Enhancement catastrophizing will allow you to parlay the emotional diminuendo of the moment into a symphony of discontent. It is more rigorous and disciplined than depressive ruminating and more vital and energetic than sterile worrying. Consider, if you will (AND YOU WILL), the octave from one of Edna St. Vincent Millay's famous sonnets:
I will put Chaos into fourteen lines
And keep him there; and let him thence escape
If he be lucky; let him twist, and ape
Flood, fire, and demon - his adroit designs
Will strain to nothing in the strict confines
Of this sweet order, where, in pious rape,
I hold his essence and amorphous shape,
Till he with Order mingles and combines.
Millay's poem, as any buys-essays-off-the-internet undergraduate will tell you, can be read as an expression of the challenges and contradictions of the sonnet form itself. In a sonnet, the poet must work with a set number of lines and a prescribed rhyme scheme. The glories and tumults of self-expression must be imprisoned within the dimensions of the form. The result, as any sells-essays-on-the-internet professor will tell you, is unusual, demanding, and often strikingly beautiful. Chaos and restriction; personal inspiration and poetic convention. These are the contradictions that define both the sonnet and the catastrophism.
The catastrophizer is a poet of imagined cataclysms. He or she forgoes unfettered fretting for the fetters of craft. Worries and projected disasters are linked together like the lines of a sonnet. A gifted catastrophizer can create a catastrophism so profoundly despairing, so complex, that it rivals the most moving and sophisticated sonnet.
To Rationalize
It's not all bad. Or rather, it is. Which is a very good thing.
Because there is another form of catastrophizing, and it produces a very different kind of grim satisfaction.
Rationalization catastrophizing is grounded in causal and associative catastrophizing, but instead of making a subjectively real disappointment worse, or at least more complex and far-ranging (as is the case with enhancement catastrophizing), it brings you the satisfaction of realizing that whatever you might have done, might have chosen, things still would have turned out badly.
So why catastrophize?
To Enhance
When life leaves you breathlessly disappointed, you could try to lift your spirits and restore your hopes (exhausting and doomed), you could simply straightforwardly brood (tedious for you and for others), OR you could indulge in causal catastrophizing, associative catastrophizing or a combination of the two (causociative? assal?).
Enhancement catastrophizing will allow you to parlay the emotional diminuendo of the moment into a symphony of discontent. It is more rigorous and disciplined than depressive ruminating and more vital and energetic than sterile worrying. Consider, if you will (AND YOU WILL), the octave from one of Edna St. Vincent Millay's famous sonnets:
I will put Chaos into fourteen lines
And keep him there; and let him thence escape
If he be lucky; let him twist, and ape
Flood, fire, and demon - his adroit designs
Will strain to nothing in the strict confines
Of this sweet order, where, in pious rape,
I hold his essence and amorphous shape,
Till he with Order mingles and combines.
Millay's poem, as any buys-essays-off-the-internet undergraduate will tell you, can be read as an expression of the challenges and contradictions of the sonnet form itself. In a sonnet, the poet must work with a set number of lines and a prescribed rhyme scheme. The glories and tumults of self-expression must be imprisoned within the dimensions of the form. The result, as any sells-essays-on-the-internet professor will tell you, is unusual, demanding, and often strikingly beautiful. Chaos and restriction; personal inspiration and poetic convention. These are the contradictions that define both the sonnet and the catastrophism.
The catastrophizer is a poet of imagined cataclysms. He or she forgoes unfettered fretting for the fetters of craft. Worries and projected disasters are linked together like the lines of a sonnet. A gifted catastrophizer can create a catastrophism so profoundly despairing, so complex, that it rivals the most moving and sophisticated sonnet.
To Rationalize
It's not all bad. Or rather, it is. Which is a very good thing.
Because there is another form of catastrophizing, and it produces a very different kind of grim satisfaction.
Rationalization catastrophizing is grounded in causal and associative catastrophizing, but instead of making a subjectively real disappointment worse, or at least more complex and far-ranging (as is the case with enhancement catastrophizing), it brings you the satisfaction of realizing that whatever you might have done, might have chosen, things still would have turned out badly.
Didn't become an archaeologist or marine biologist like you wanted to when you were a kid? Well, if you had become an expert in the breeding patterns of mollusks, you would have drowned yourself out of boredom. If you'd dated that girl you'd loved from afar, you'd have discovered that she's shallow and vaguely unhygienic. If you'd ended up being well liked, you'd be discouraged by the fact that most of those people who like you are shallow and markedly unhygienic.
These examples don't really constitute rationalizing catastrophisms. I have chosen not to produce examples of such catastrophisms because discussing poetry has tired me. Let my examples be the tinder for the spark of your discontent. If you need more or different things to build an actual fire, my apologies. I have never built a fire, although I always dreamt of being able to do so when I was in middle school.
These examples don't really constitute rationalizing catastrophisms. I have chosen not to produce examples of such catastrophisms because discussing poetry has tired me. Let my examples be the tinder for the spark of your discontent. If you need more or different things to build an actual fire, my apologies. I have never built a fire, although I always dreamt of being able to do so when I was in middle school.
Study with The Catastrophizer.
Master the art of feeling happy about being sad.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.