The Joy Woe Man

The Joy Woe Man is a concept I came across in reading the Epic of Gilgamesh, which dates back to around 2000 BC and is generally considered the first recorded epic in history.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the King of Uruk, Gilgamesh, goes into the wilderness to fight Enkidu, who can be figured as the primitive man or the hunter gatherer. Enkidu refers to Gilgamesh as the “joy-woe man.”

My thinking on the concept of the joy woe man has been informed by readings of world history and ancient history, such as “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” and “Sapiens.” I find that the concept of a joy woe man illustrates the plight of the civilized person trading away presence for the ability to generalize necessary to organize information and thus be successful in civilized society.

It strikes me that the way a person prepares to take on a new endeavor illustrates the tradeoff of the joy woe man. (Or joy woe woman, sorry. They were sexist in ancient Mesopotamia.)

Your urbane individual who has the traits to be successful in a civilized society prepares for a new undertaking by researching what others have done and strategizing how they will approach the task.

This serves them very well when entering into a career field or some other competitive endeavor. By learning from others, they avail themselves of a huge body of knowledge that can help accelerate their performance.

By contrast, now consider what happens when said individual decides to take on a new interest *for enjoyment*. They bring all the same attitudes and strategies.

Even if they’re doing something like hiking, before they ever set foot on a trail they’re likely to research what others have done. Before they ever have their own experience, they’ve loaded it with so many expectations that it becomes impossible to enjoy themselves.

Said person is compelled to pursue firsts, to try to outdo others at a meaningless recreational activity. Their enjoyment of anything is sadly subject to diminishing returns. Their experience at all times is overshadowed by an awareness of what others will think of it. There’s no presence.

This attitude is our cultural norm, so it might be hard to imagine an alternative. Much of the time, my observation has been that those attempting to escape end up performing a superficial deviation. They end up competing to see who can be more ‘mindful.’

There is a sense of enjoyment needing to be generative or ‘engaged’ for it to be validated. One’s recreation needs be ‘on message.’

We are of course at all times comparing our sense of our own story with the narratives that we see in the media and in the lives of those around us.

I personally doubt whether those who spend the main part of their lives and energy engaging in a competitive and comparative experience of the world as part of the effort to get ahead in civilized society can truly drop this at will and find any sort of direct engagement with their experience.

I don’t have a prescriptive takeaway. I can only postulate that those who have more of a sense of inner guidance might likely put in a more shameful performance, as they are less given to comparing and strategizing.

But at the same time, such a person might be able to enjoy the same few hikes indefinitely, unaffected by consciousness of how much better other people are doing them.

My perspective on this, and on society, has been filtered through the lens of an example from “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” in which the author details the fate of the peoples of a Pacific island that was extremely isolated.

The people of this island, being isolated, maintained stone age technology long past the time when mainland cultures moved on to copper and then to iron. Eventually, another Pacific culture came across the island and completely eradicated these people with their superior technology.

Taken from a point of view of a civilized mind, this might seem like a tragic story of a failure to adapt. However, I think about it in a different light. I ask myself, does the fact that these peoples genetic line ended invalidate any happiness that the people of that culture enjoyed?

We have a narrative sense around natural selection in which a species (or meme) that out competes another is triumphal. But we know that ultimately the sun will destroy all life on Earth as it goes through its stellar life cycle. So all outcomes are the same, and any triumph is temporary and not objectively meaningful.

Is the meaning of an experience solely determined by its outcome? By how successful it is?

This is an unanswerable philosophical question. But I find value in posing it.

By the same token, I ask myself whether the things I spend time on and the way I live my life are only valuable if other people value them or approve of them.

As a member of a civilized society, I cannot help but avoid the fate of the Joy Woe man. It seems whether by aptitude or choice that I err a bit toward the side of being less conscious of what others are doing. Thus I have less oversight and I am less successful in society.

It may be that as a tradeoff I am able to have a bit more presence and enjoy an experience without a sense of needing it to be valued by others. But should I become more conscious and tailor my actions to be more successful, then I shall become less able to enjoy my own experience as a tradeoff.