9 September

Not all feelings have names, some of them are too complex to be easily named or even described. But I think they’re the best guide to life, feelings take an entire situation and wrap it up into a package. (The Germans are masters at designing words to capture complex feelings - schadenfreude a famous example, but there are even better ones.) Two feelings I’m always a bit suspicious of, and they may not have names, are the ‘profound’ feeling and the ‘unity’ feeling. The first you see in memes sometimes, or cards, sayings for example that are supposedly profound but are usually just twee. Like profundity is a serious thing, a particular way of feeling and acting. The second, the unity feeling, is as it says a strong feeling of togetherness, like the feelings those for and against offshore detention tend to have, or causes in general, like drought relief or $1 milk. Of course there are profound things (and a better gauge for profundity I think is a feeling of surprise and simplicity) and also unifying things. But I don’t trust these particular feelings in people or groups because as in so many other things, the feeling is often a substitute for the actual thing. People substitute feeling profound or feeling unified, for actually being profound or being unified.