{"id":11067,"date":"2025-07-04T17:09:55","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T21:09:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/a-defense-of-joy-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2025-07-04T17:09:55","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T21:09:55","slug":"a-defense-of-joy-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/a-defense-of-joy-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"A Defense of Joy \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
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One of the most important things to have learned in life<\/a> is that choosing joy in a world rife with reasons for despair is a countercultural act of courage and resistance, choosing it not despite the abounding sorrow we barely survive but because of it, because joy \u2014 like music, like love \u2014 is one of those entirely unnecessary miracles of consciousness that give meaning to survival with its bright allegiance to the most alive part of us. \u201cWe\u2019ve all had too much sorrow \u2014 now is the time for joy,\u201d Nick Cave sings in one of my favorite songs<\/a>, and yet in a world trembling with fear and cynicism (which is the most cowardly species of fear<\/a>), joy \u2014 the choice of it, the right to it \u2014 is in need of constant defense, none mightier or more delightful than the one Mario Benedetti<\/a> (September 14, 1920\u2013May 17, 2009) mounts in his poem \u201cDefensa da la alegr\u00eda\u201d (\u201cA Defense of Joy\u201d), read here by the polymathic Chilean primatologist Isabel Behncke (who introduced me to this benediction of a poem) followed by my English translation and reading to the sound of Bach\u2019s Cello Suite No. 4 in E-flat Major<\/em>.<\/p>\n