Bo Burnham, Chin Up!
Bo should follow his dad's example and quit being a melancholy moralist.
This morning, I was sing along to 38 special, Daft Punk, and Bo Burnham—yes, I have quite the eclectic Spotify playlist—in the shower. I was listening to “1985” from Burnham’s 2022 album INSIDE (Deluxe) when the following verses struck a chord (pun intended): “My dad was an oblivious white guy (general contractor); my dad was happier than I am.” Burnham admits that the father he pejoratively describes as “oblivious” is “really happy, he’s thrilled to be alive.” Unlike Bo, his father, Scott Burnham, “reads the news and doesn’t let that shit affect him.” In the album’s next song, “Feel Good,” Burnham entreats his audience to “give [him] specific directions; on how [he] can feel good.” Suspecting his listeners won’t take his pleas for help seriously, the song concludes with the verse, “I’m not even close to kidding; write it in an email; I just wanna feel good.”
Clearly, Bo Burnham is upset. He is not thrilled to be alive, like his young father was in 1985. Why is this? I think we can trace the philosophical roots of Burnham’s misery to “Art is Dead” from his 2010 album Words Words Words. In this song, Bo describes himself as a “psychotic,” “demented,” “selfish asshole” who gets paid to “wake up late” and “indulge in [his] habit.” Bo, implicitly operating under the labor theory of value, feels undeserving of money that his fans voluntarily part with because they subjectively value his music—regardless of how much or little work was required of Bo to produce it. Despite his professed guilt, Bo spends money to put his name in lights instead of "[feeding] a family of four for forty fucking fortnights,” which makes him feel even worse about himself: “a self-centered artist, self-obsessed artist.”
Bo’s moral prioritarian altruism necessarily tortures him. If he is ethically bound to direct money away from himself to those who would derive greater utility therefrom, then he is behaving immorally. Bo confuses the supererogatory nature of beneficence with the obligatory quality of justice. Justice, as Adam Smith describes in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, “is, upon most occasions, but a negative virtue, and only hinders us from hurting our neighbour.” Beneficence, on the other hand, is merely “the ornament which embellishes, not the foundation which supports the building [of society],” and can neither be morally demanded nor physically forced. Moreover, Bo should realize that purchasing the neon sign provides jobs for the working class people who produce it, rendering them financially independent, dignified individuals rather than vassals dependent on Bo’s patronage for “forty fucking fortnights.”
Smith’s refutation of the melancholy moralists applies perfectly to Bo Burnham. I present the complete paragraph with pertinent passages bolded for my readers’ viewing pleasure and Bo Burnham’s philosophical benefit:
The first [of the two sets of philosophers] are those melancholy moralists, who are perpetually reproaching us with our happiness, while so many of our brethren are in misery, who regard as impious the natural joy of prosperity, which does not think of the many wretches that are at every instant labouring under all sorts of calamities, in the languor of poverty, in the agony of disease, in the horrors of death, under the insults and oppression of their enemies. Commiseration for those miseries which we never saw, which we never heard of, but which we may be assured are at all times infecting such numbers of our fellow-creatures, ought, they think, to damp the pleasures of the fortunate, and to render a certain melancholy dejection habitual to all men. But first of all, this extreme sympathy with 196 misfortunes, which we know nothing about, seems altogether absurd and unreasonable. Take the whole earth at an average, for one man who suffers pain or misery, you will find twenty in prosperity and joy, or at least in tolerable circumstances. No reason, surely, can be assigned why we should rather weep with the one than rejoice with the twenty. This artificial commiseration, besides, is not only absurd, but seems altogether unattainable; and those who affect this character have commonly nothing but a certain hypocritical sadness, which, without reaching the heart, serves only to render the countenance and convocation impertinently dismal and disagreeable. And last of all, this disposition of mind, though it could be attained, would be perfectly useless, and could serve no other purpose than to render miserable the person who was possessed of it. Whatever interest we take in the fortune of those with whom we have no acquaintance or connexion, and who are placed altogether out of the sphere of our activity, can produce only anxiety to ourselves, without any manner of advantage to them. To what purpose should we trouble ourselves about the world in the moon? All men, even those at the greatest distance, are no doubt entitled to our good wishes, and our good wishes we naturally give them. But if, notwithstanding, they should be unfortunate, to give ourselves any anxiety upon that account, seems to be no part of our duty. That we should be but little interested, therefore, in the fortune of those whom we can neither serve nor hurt, and who are in every respect so very remote from us, seems wisely ordered by nature; and if it were possible to alter in this respect the original constitution of our frame, we could yet gain nothing by the change.1