In the literary world, postmodernism was a movement defined by cynicism, absurdism, satire, and irony. At some point, it stopped being a tool with which to diagnose the culture and became the personality of our culture. It crept into our conversations, our art, our politics, and eventually into the way we talk to those we love.

The postmodernists of the ’50s and ’60s – including John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, and John Hawkes – used irony to peel back the perceived virtue of suburban America. Irony did its job in exposing the rotten underbelly of a culture drunk on its own mythology. For a moment in history, it was an act of courage.

But that moment passed. And we kept using irony anyway.

David Foster Wallace saw it clearly. Irony is great at tearing things down. It’s terrible at building anything back up. Once you’ve debunked the illusions, once everyone agrees the pretty picture was fake, you still must figure out what to do next.

Irony can’t help us there. It never could.

We got so good at tearing things down that we forgot building was supposed to come after. Irony became its own destination. Being the person who sees through things became the whole project. And there’s a seductive comfort in that position. I dwelt there for a long time. It’s easy to do. If you never sincerely advocate for anything, you can never be wrong. If you meet every earnest suggestion with a raised eyebrow, you never have to risk looking naïve. Wallace borrowed a phrase for this: “Irony is the song of a bird who has come to love its cage.”

That’s the thing about the cage. It doesn’t feel like a cage. It feels like sophistication.

Here’s what sincere engagement costs you. If you genuinely believe something and say so plainly, you are immediately vulnerable to criticism. Someone can mock that – and they will. We’ve all felt that sting, and so we learn to get ahead of it. We say, “I know this sounds cheesy, but…” before saying the thing we actually mean. We perform detachment from our convictions, as if caring about something is a little embarrassing. We tell on ourselves so that no one else can.

But consider what we lose when we do that. The willingness to look a little goofy and to speak the truth, even when it might be laughed at, is not weakness. Every relationship worth having was built on someone’s willingness to say a true thing and risk being dismissed for it.

The irony trap is particularly cruel because it looks like critical thinking. But there’s a real difference between genuine skepticism, which asks hard questions in pursuit of better answers, and reflexive irony, which asks hard questions as a way of never having to answer anything. One is a path. The other is a dead end that looks like a path.

We’re not going to fix this culturally, for the culture is too comfortable with the smirk. The only move available is a personal one. You must decide, in your own life, to mean what you say. When something matters to you, let it matter without apologizing for it. When someone you love needs something genuine from you, give it to them straight – even if it sounds corny, even if someone could make fun of it.

Go hug your spouse. Not with a wink. Actually do it genuinely.

In a culture so well defended against sincerity, choosing to be genuine is the most countercultural act you can do. Irony will always be there when you need it. But you must know when to put the chisel down. The work of living well isn’t demolition, but construction. And you cannot build anything real while keeping one eyebrow raised.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image credit: Aryan Dixit, CC BY-SA 4.0