Foreword

Foreword Brent Dean Robbins (bio) At first glance, the juxtaposition of joy and information may appear an odd pairing. Joy is an affective state which, when habitual, can become a personality trait or enduring disposition (Robbins 2021). The business of information may, rather, conjure images of sober, detached analysis of data. Joy tends to be associated with experiences of free play and an affective open expanse upon a seemingly infinite field of possibility. The processing of information, on the other hand, may seem to imply a contrary inclination to get serious and constrain one's possibilities through interpretations of the world harnessed by careful attention to systematic organization and structures of linguistic categories of understanding. Information may elicit an attitude of work, labor, and concentrated effort, whereas joyful states evoke experiences of time freed up for leisure and spontaneous excursions. What then can joy tell us about information or, for that matter, information about joy? As an emotional state, joy has been described as a warm feeling emerging from the center of one's being, emanating up and out, and corresponding with an expansive perception of one's field of vision and modes of action (Robbins 2006). When people describe states of joy, they gesture with arms raised toward the sky, evoking an opening onto a world that affirms them and invites them into its exploration with a sense of awe and gratitude. When participants were asked to draw an abstract expression of joy using colored markers, they tended to produce gestures of bursting up and out from the bottom upward and in warm and verdant colors they associated with vitality, growth, and powerfully directed energy. Participants described joy as containing an altered perception of time, in terms of a profound sense of operating within a pregnant and fecund presence in the moment that paradoxically felt infinite in scope, while focused neither on the past nor on the future. The enjoyment of place and people was felt as an intimacy and comfort that affirmed them in their being and gave [End Page 452] them a sense of security and at-homeness. The moment of joy was felt to be not an instrumental step toward the achievement of a particular aim, but instead as its own intrinsic reward. Such moments were cherished as rare and life-affirming. In narrative descriptions of a joyful life (or disposition), moments of joy marked profound moments of personal transformation—a transition from a life of struggle, suffering or deprivation to one of achievement, connection, hope, gratitude, awe, and ultimately meaning realized in an orientation toward a transcendent good that gave them meaning and purpose (Robbins 2021). A joyful sense of life announced itself not in spite of but through a brokenness and poverty of spirit, by grounding them with humility, centering them in their resolve, and finding the interpersonal support to feel backed up in their urge toward meaning, the realization of which gave cause to a state of joy that remained, from that point forward, the ground of their future life, an ongoing font of encouragement, hope, and affirmation. By being broken, they were planted in the humus of a struggle for purpose and found their center, and from there, they were uplifted and broke open onto an expansive horizon newly understood and felt as ripe with possibility. Life presented itself, from that point, as a sacred mystery to be reverenced, and oriented, ultimately, toward the nurturing of a beloved community in union with others in a spirit of adventure and discovery and through the mutual cultivation of personal virtue and the good life. Upon meditation on joyful states and dispositions, joy's intrinsic connection to information comes more clearly into focus. Information, after all, is a synonym for intelligibility and meaning, and joy, at its core, is a search for and discovery of meaning, if not explicitly then at least at a deep, existential, and ontological level of understanding (Robbins 2012). The joyful life is at once an orientation to life in all its mysterious depth and mystifying grandeur, and it provides us with an energetic, motivating drive that pulls us along toward meanings waiting to be unveiled to its open-eyed curiosity...