Ain’t Nobody Like To Be Alone
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Dorothea Lange Play street for children. Sixth Street and Avenue C, NYC June 1936 George Monbiot has written a bunch of whoppers in the recent past, h
[See the full post at: Ain’t Nobody Like To Be Alone]Hmm…
Most of my most memorable (joyful) moments have been in solitude. My rotten social skills not withstanding, I find forced social situations pure torture.
Retirement for me has been freedom from the social, except by my own choosing or my wife’s necessity.
Ever the contrarian, I didn’t find much of interest in Monbiot’s pov, excepting a critique of a declining western world’s social structures.
Unfortunately it also is resulting in the wanton destruction of the planetary environment.
We act a self loathing species with a healthy dose of arrogance.We used to sleep in groups.
Loneliness cure? Have kids.We need thorium reactors to pay for rare earth mining.
Failure is guaranteed, but you have to play to win.The whole point has been missed. How can anyone be lonely at all with a general population density of the “lonely” areas, such as Great Britain?
It’s because when you go out the door, you don’t find people who “correlate” with you, think what you think, believe what you believe, who are your kin and kind, and pull in the same direction you do. And why? Because, as per T.V., they are all carefully trained not to be their natural selves, to be relaxed and have natural responses to natural events, to be “human”. So when everyone around you is inhuman, no longer your emotional species, how could one be anything but lonely?
But this is simply an act of very effective social engineering. Or advertising, if you prefer. Otherwise, wouldn’t you and your mates just go down to the bowling green for a game, or play trumps at the dining table, or volunteer at the local charity? You have that power, and it’s your club–you can do whatever you like to identify yourself and collect with the like-minded, which Britain, to say nothing of the world, must be chock-full of.
So…what are we really saying here? We’re too feckless, inept, frightened, and incapable to go out our front doors and down the street to do something we find even slightly interesting?
And let’s say that is so: how long do you think society itself can persist under such conditions? It’s a self-curing problem. Either they reform or the Mongol hordes come in and fix it for you.
Rugged individualism is a gendered, privileged conceptual framework, long and often challenged by women and by men who lack access to the privileged positions, both of whose views are discounted by privileged male thought leaders for the same reason.
Just an observation that Monbiot’s “discovery” of the awful social implications is hardly groundbreaking; I left a doctoral philosophy program 20 years ago after a variety of experiences of this privileged male blindness and deafness to experiences and voices that undermined the clarity of their Hobbesian worldview. Congratulations to Monbiot for finally seeing and hearing – better late than never?
…about cooperation as a counterpoint to competitive models of living systems, summed up concisely by Thomas Hobbes’ oddly dissociative description of life in the “state of nature” as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Since way before social contracts, new human babies have been arriving in the world through the living bodies of our parents. Those parents have always been embedded in larger families, neighborhoods, tribes, communities and cultures. Our ancestors would never have survived and reproduced without tending and strengthening social bonds. Even hermits who seek contemplative isolation are born and raised in communities and must actively leave them behind…
Ilargi – great post. If you like to think, connect things, you want a fair bit of solitude. Maybe what’s important is that we “connect” with something, something that makes us tick. Most of the greatest discoveries were born out of solitude.
But I think Monbiot has a very important point, one I mentioned here a few weeks ago: for example, when you are competing with your brother-in-law, you are not connecting with him. And this is what I’ve seen over and over again. There is little depth to conversation and virtually no connection. Each person is sizing the other up: who makes more money, who has a better job, bigger house. I’m sure we’d all be amazed at the connection we could make, the compassion we could feel for another person if competition wasn’t always involved. And sadly, it is almost always involved.
But you are right: both mom and dad off at work, no one at home for the kids. Come home tired; no connections made. Tomorrow, same thing. Buying things to fill a void, like that new pair of shoes is going to somehow put you on the map, or that new house or car is really going to give you status.
It is sad to think that so many elderly are lonely, and sadder again that our youngest are too. But TPTB surely do not want connection because having people connected, several generations living together, does not increase their sales of toasters, microwaves, TV’s or condos. And they don’t mind divorce either – more units to be bought and filled by individual owners.
Everyone has been so indoctrinated by their families/schools/religions/media/their environment to act and behave in a certain way: to obey and don’t ask questions of authority, yet to compete against one another. How can we be our natural selves when we’re at the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy, where there is no sense of belonging? We remain at the bottom, still trying to connect to something that was most likely never there.
We are taught from an early age to get out and make our mark on society, that somehow just because we move out, get a degree, job, raise a family, compete and accumulate wealth we will magically be happy. Which is virtually impossible, considering it never came from within, not from what we wanted.
Think of the possessions you have held onto over the years, the ones you should have thrown out, and then consider that most likely they were kept because they are reminders of a rare connection made.
Rugged individualism and competition will eventually come to an end. Then maybe we can get back to needing each other again.
“I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stunned by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, “Hi.” They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word.” Augusten Burroughs
Professor – you are right, but I think pride stops a lot of people from admitting their loneliness. To them (and I’d probably do the same if that were the case for me), it is admitting that they are not enough, they are not full. How do you tell your children that you are lonely; I think they don’t want to burden them. And how do the young tell their parents the same? Obviously they would feel like a failure.
But whatever it is that’s bothering you, it’s best to just say it and then do something about it. It is the secrets we keep that get us into trouble.
Maybe we get what we give? If while we were raising our kids they saw us working our buns off, not paying much attention to them, we shouldn’t be surprised when they turn around and do the same thing back. It’s all they know, it’s what they learned. This world is going far too fast and it’s natural that something had to give. What gave was our relationships.
galacticsurfer – I liked what you said on the “Wealth Inequality is Not a Problem, It’s a Symptom” post. I too believe the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and all the rest of it was put in place to keep us in line. TPTB bend and manipulate, with a willing judiciary, these institutions at will.
Same thing with NATO, WHO, IMF, United Nations, etc. Some liberals might have said we needed these things, but TPTB would never allow anyone but themselves to control them. Most people are so deluded it isn’t even funny.
As rapier said, they control the script and we act out the play, yet we don’t even know it. They must be laughing their asses off.
But I do have one thing, which is maybe naive and stupid – hope. Hope for a better future.
@ Ilargi
I wonder why so many people choose to confuse self-chosen isolation with loneliness.
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Good and valid question. Alone, but not lonely.
Being lonely has nothing to do with isolation; it’s an internal disconnection from the ability to feel or maybe “need” to be “included”. The (what is now a cliche’) one who feels lonely surrounded by people.
We sell our real freedom so cheaply simply because we cannot recognize it for what it is, and its true value has never been taught or learned.
And yes, the ability for self-chosen isolation is gold…We’re all resonating on this post, so it must be good.
I have had so much humanity happening this year; lots of illness and death and hospital time with loved ones, some now dead.
Directly engaging the dying with honesty, compassion and presence is tiring.
It’s a treatment for loneliness, though.
I feel larger for it, but somewhat blurred and unfocused, too.
Howzit for you?
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