Like Anthropocene, this notion of delight has also evolved alongside our accelerationist age.
It’s been associated with a lot of common philosophical ideals, and has recently re-emerged as bit of a talking point in German philosophy circles, where some question of the nature of its philosophical underpinnings (rather than just serving as a sort of veiled commercialization of the German philosophical tradition) has arisen.
My partial interpretation of this newfound interest in delight is that, lacking knowledge of what the future holds (but understanding that achieving delight is something all humans, in a commercial world, seek), we are thrust into a sort of societal reflection, one bolstered by how the technological pace of our time is shifting our species’ collective self-understanding. For me, this is the same sort of perspectival transfigurement afforded by the Anthropocene — both ideas reach a sort of alignment of meaning, one that affords an entirely new associative model through which to experience the modern condition.
Experiencing the disruption that can be unleashed by way of wild technological accelerationism, I believe that continuing to deliver delight to our Anthropocene entails a fundamental reconfiguration of how we achieve delight most effectively.
Rather than aiming to build things as quickly as possible, absent any practical recourse for the creative disruption it enables, I believe accelerationist delight can only truly be achieved through reverence, a lost idea that basically means “a feeling or attitude of deep respect tinged with awe; veneration.” (But is outlined most effectively by Paul Woodruff in his magnificent Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue.)
There are of course many other virtues that seem important to reintroduce, during this societal time of reflection, but I believe reverence is among the most crucial. For in order to most truly deliver delight through technological means, one must also be aware (and indeed, have a reverence for) the sort of grit, determination, and ingenious splendor that creating and achieving that delight entailed.
To put it all in one long-winded sentence, to me accelerating delight means operating with the spirit of the great acceleration (harnessing the precarious potentiality of it) to promote delight (joy, inspiration, even a sense of bliss) for all participants (especially those underserved by the accelerationist age). This entails equipping oneself with unceasing appreciation for and devotion to achieving delight in the hearts of minds of an audience.
In so doing, there’s a sort of alchemical mechanism at play: Just as accelerationism has become a dominant ideology of our time, so too has delight emerged as a topic that can be applied to everything from consumer packaged goods to interpretations of Western philosophy.
Despite its arguable commercial appeal, it does entail a degree of introspection. Similar to “outrage” or “victim”, delight seems to be something that wide swaths seem to be questing after a deeper understanding of.
In my eyes, this whole mindset is a holistic process that bleeds into all aspects of our lives — but it hits closest to home when it involves having fun. In the professional world, that entails doing what I most enjoy: A broad array of services blanketed under “communications strategies for humans and machines.”