Resistance is futile...

     

We have all experienced times when it seemed like the world was out to get us. We can't find our keys even though we know we put them on top of the dresser. The phone is ringing but has seemingly hidden itself in some nearby, but frustratingly inaccessible, pocket dimension. We are running late for work, and the stop light that we know stays red for far longer than needed, turns that hated shade of crimson and mocks us form it's high perch as it doesn't change, even though you are clearly the only car for miles around. Just recently, I discovered that some one came up with a word to describe this feeling. The feeling that, no matter what we do, the inanimate objects of the world are waging a hidden holy war against us, and our sanity, is called Resistentialism.

     Resistentialism is the term created by humorist Paul Jennings in 1948 by mixing the Latin word res (thing), the French word resister (to resist), and existentialism (a kind of philosophy). Although Jennings coined the term as part of his humorous retort against the philosophy of existentialism, the idea has been around for much longer. Charles Harrington Elster in his 2003 article gives several earlier examples of famous writers who, while not having the name for the phenomenon, clearly experienced the effects of of objects under the influence of Resistentialism:

     Resistentialism also has a long history in our literature. In his ''Ode (Inscribed to W. H. Channing)'' (1846), Ralph Waldo Emerson saw the resistentialist writing on the wall and proclaimed that ''Things are in the saddle,/And ride mankind.'' In his autobiography, published posthumously in 1924, Mark Twain relates an anecdote about a recalcitrant burglar alarm in his ornate mansion in Hartford. It ''led a gay and careless life, and had no principles,'' he says. ''We
quickly found out that it was fooling us and that it was buzzing its bloodcurdling alarm merely for its own amusement."...  

And in J.M. Barrie's ''Peter Pan'' (1911), Mr. Darling is fit to be tied over his ''little brute'' of a tie: ''This tie, it will not tie. . . . Oh yes, 20 times have I made it up round the bed-post, but round my neck, no! Oh dear no! begs to be excused!''

      The modern world is filled with all kinds of wonderful things, designed to make almost every aspect of our lives easier. And often, it is those very things that stress us out to high heaven when they inevitably go awry. It is in times such as those we can take a small bit of comfort in knowing that it's not just us as we repeat to ourselves the motto of Resistentialism,  Les choses sont contre nous" -- "Things are against us".




1. http://obsoleteword.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_archive.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistentialism
3. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/21/magazine/21ONLANGUAGE.html
4. http://shirtoid.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/resistance-is-futile.jpg