Repetition: Humanity’s Downward Spiral.
By: Will R Howard
Tags: Failure, Nostalgic, Repetition, Failure To Success, Nostalgia

On a Sunday such as this, five days from Christmas day, it is inevitable that we shall begin to muse over the year to come: what it will bring us, what will be different, what will change in our lives. Obviously this last three hundred and fifty-four days or so have not been everyone’s cup of tea, yet as humans we are driven by this hope of change.

In amongst many other things, the end of the Earth’s cyclical orbit around our star is one of many repeating sequences and patterns that beset our lives with the driving motivation that maybe, just maybe, next time will be better.

Cycles and patterns are in everything we do. They are in our so-called ‘routines’, in the structure and creation of art, the way buildings are made, the way legal claims are settled, the academic year, religious festivals, birthdays, weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs. Everything. Every repeating event throughout the year repeats itself every time that every event throughout the year repeats itself that every event throughout the year etc. (you get the point).

Even now as I write this article, I have used this same format of listing in a paragraph as I did so yesterday, and probably will continue to do so, in almost everything I write.

So why do we repeat ourselves so much? I mean, we don’t become bored out of our mind every Christmas, even though (thanks to tradition) it’s pretty much performed in the same format each year. In my opinion, it is purely because of two key factors: failure, and nostalgia…

1. Failure:

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of visiting a divorced-twice, taco-bell-eating, Apple-Pay-utilising, African-tribal-music-listening life coach’s dwelling, you are probably awfully familiar with the plethora of quote marks, overly saturated landscape photos, and a change in font almost every word. Yes, the politically correct cultural phenomenon of the “inspirational quote”. For the innocent reader protected from such social miscarriages, some examples:



(As a request from the writer, please read each out-loud with an overly irreverent, sarcastic tone)



— The unforgettable: “It’s not the number of breaths we take, but the number of moments that take our breath away”

— The short but sweet: “Live, laugh, love”

— And of course, who could forget the smoothin’ & groovin’ poetry of: “You have to look through the rain to see the rainbow”



Now, I would’ve liked to accompany each with a GIF expressing my inferno of rage at each of these demonic sequences of words, but that would only render them victorious, in their quest to produce such a discomfort, such woe, such a cringe. Instead, it is my duty I suppose to just “keep calm and carry on”, because ‘guys’ you know just, like don’t sweat the vibe and stuff dawg. I’m just really not digging like,’ this negative, like, energy maaann “when life gives you lemons, you make some lemonad-



“Oh no. they’ve got me. I’ve become trapped in an endless cycle of italics and quote marks, drifting like debris through space. I am nothing, but a soulless, hollow shell, spreading mindless dopamine to every human I encounter. I have FAILED”



And what do we do when failure strikes? We “try and try again”. We simply repeat ourselves.



In asking myself why, I concluded that it was purely just another steppingstone in our infinite trail that we think will end with an open door to total, true, eternal happiness. But…No…It’s not. In my opinion, you’ve got an average of 79 years to try new shit, learn new shit, and try as best you can to not be a steaming pile of shit to everyone around you. We shouldn’t be repeating ourselves. If you fail at something, you learn from your failure. If at some point you come across the same situation again by chance, then you’ve got the opportunity to face it with a fresh set of eyes. Our main objective in life shouldn’t be to perfect our ‘morning routine’ or, get the best phone, or the best house or car. We shouldn’t just be gold-plating memories we already have. As the saying goes: “One life, live it.” (saw that on the back of some old guy’s van). Make new memories, have new experiences. Don’t just embellish old ones on Twitter or Instagram, then cry yourself to sleep because you know that all you’re doing is lying to yourself and others around you. You decide to leave town and move to Sweden, because everyone’s so nice there and just fits in (it’s like their personalities themselves are ergonomic). However, you arrive there, only to find some pig-tailed goblin with a face that’s always shrivelled up in anger like she’s been in the bath for the last four months, and that Swedish meatballs aren’t actually Swedish. Your life is a lie, your whole opinion of Sweden corrupted by the media. Now you’re there, you can’t escape, there’s no one who can help you…*



* Failure is just an obstacle. Shove it the fuck out of your way and move on. Don’t dwell on it. Don’t base your whole life upon your failures, but still learn from them.

2. Nostalgia:

Twenty Twenty. Two thousand and Twenty. Dos mil Viente. Whatever you call it. I’m sure you’ve been witness to at least four and a half of these things throughout this past year…



— The Netflix Series, Stranger Things

— Merciless boom in ‘Friends’ Re-runs

— FLARES (the jeans, not the shit you light)

— Weird vapour gram filters (making up for a low photography budget)

— “Lo-Fi” (or low-fidelity) hip-hop (especially that video on YouTube with the anime girl studying or whatever)

— College students strutting their stuff in Notorious B.I.G shirts four sizes too big for them, without knowing who he actually is.

— YOUTUBE REWIND!!!

— Fresh Prince of Belair (to be fair, it is a great show)

— Cassette tapes (for some reason)

— INSTAX!!

— Spherical Glasses



etc., etc., etc. The list goes on…



Every trend in that list above, all of it, is related to, or stems from, nostalgia. Some readers may be yearning at my very feet: “Will, what’s nostalgia, old bean?! We must know!!!”. Well, “Eureka!” ‘Dictionary.com’ exists.



According to their electric-blue, linked-in-ad-filled webpage, ‘nostalgia’ is used as an adjective to mean: “a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.” This links exactly to what I said above in the ‘Failure section’ of this article: we embellish and warp memories and eras- some that we haven’t even lived in, with ‘rosy-coloured spectacles’ (probably spherical ones) and basically, we live in the past. Constantly.



That’s all Dos Mil Viente has been. A weak, watered down call back to the seventies, eighties, nineties, noughties etc. with no cultural advancements of our own. Nothing:

— Literature: Endless detective novels…

— TV: ‘Friends’

— Film: Disney bought Star Wars. Yeh.

— Music: Vapourwave (Speaks for itself)

— Clothing: FLARES…AGAIN.

In conclusion, nostalgia has prevented us, from creating new experiences, and growing culturally as we have in accepting each other, especially this year. If we continue, we won’t change the way others think, and we won’t change the way the act in their daily lives, for the better. Failure and the way people interact with it, has prevented us from ever growing even an inch, as human beings. We must stop besetting our situation as humans, with embellishments- lies. We can only change people through what the public hear on their radios, watch on their TVs, see in art galleries. We can make popular culture the thing that saves our species, rather than the thing that destroys it. Because in the end, it is popular culture, and only this, that can prevent the glorious gathering of humanity, from being wiped out.

If we continue to repeat ourselves, to carry on our mundane, destructive cycle of living, we will be no more.

I thank you, dear reader, for your time.