I love me, but I am not serious people
Roger Sterling and Roman Roy both arrive at the same realization: they've spent their entire lives as comic relief in other people's stories. These characters, designed to provide wit and levity, eventually confront the hollowness of a life spent never taking anything (including themselves) seriously.
They follow the Dionysian worldview: life's purpose is pleasure. No societal illusions, just tried and tested sources of good times.
Minimize misery, maximize pleasure. Drink, dance, party. Everything else is just ego-driven performance or social conditioning. Fun is biological, dopamine-driven, undeniable. People who preach otherwise are either lying to themselves or desperately seeking validation. They haven't escaped the Matrix yet. Chemical pleasure, at least, is honest and free from society's shame and pretense.
Yet there are remarkably few autobiographies of people who actually lived this way. Their tombstones would read: "Here lies a man who cared only for himself. He drank, he ate, and he fucked; then he died."
The people we remember, the ones we call great, spent their lives doing something for others. Fun, though it is fun, is selfish.
"People never took you seriously because you never took yourself seriously," Cooper tells Roger Sterling. "I love you, but you are not serious people," Logan Roy declares to all his children, Kendall included.
These are sobering reminders of how the world sees people who live "The Good Life": ineffective, without influence, unworthy of respect. It's not jealousy that others feel toward them; it borders on pity. "What a waste of air," they mutter under their breath.
Consider the McGill brothers. Chuck dedicated his entire life to the singular pursuit of legal excellence. Jimmy, by contrast, was a hedonist—among other things.
Do I want to live this way?
Am I "serious people"?
The cost of being taken seriously, is letting go of the joys and privileges of being a jester.
People who build identities around delayed gratification pretend that the highs are meaningless. "They're fleeting," is what they argue. But they're not! You can live your life this way.
Roman Roy and Chuck McGill were revered, but they weren't good company. They died with respect, not with laughter.
There are people who seem to have the best of both worlds—Don Draper in his meditative moment on the hill. But I'm not sure if they're real enough for me to seek being like them.
The dichotomy might be false. Maybe it's a matter of "believing that my happiness is as important as the work I do," as my soulless friend would say.
But time is limited.