Loneliness
November 10th, 2007 by I.C.
So many are lonely today. It is a disease that is rampant, that is never talked about. In a country of 300 million people it made seem odd that loneliness even exists — surely a lonely soul can find a friend out of all those millions?
But loneliness has nothing to do with the number of people who surround you. It has to do with your connections to those people. Loneliness relates to quality, not to quantity. And quality, in turn, is a function of perception. You are lonely because you perceive that you have no one to speak to or that no one will understand you, or that you have no genuine connection with anybody. So the crisis of loneliness is, at root, a crisis of perception.
Americans are in the habit of constantly changing their circle of friends. You go to high school with one group, college, with another; you marry someone and make other friends. People come and go in cycles and speeds that would make people in other cultures quite dizzy. In fact, in America the greatest source of constancy comes not from our friends but from the mass media: things like movies, television, and music. These are the things that remain constant in the American life, even as friends, relatives, lovers all come and go.
As a result, the experience of reality and of actual communication with other people is perceived through the lens of a mass media filter. Your greatest source of information about the way the world works comes from a lifestyle of Trix cereal and 90210: and you will inevitably compare your own reality with what you have been trained to believe is normal. A steady diet of mass media, over a lifetime, will make you see the world in a way that is foreign to the actual experience of living. Your perception has been brought to you by the Fox Network or by Warner Brothers. And reality will never mesh with that.
The kicker is that in America, everyone watches or listens to different things. This is the supposed benefit of consumerism. You can stimulate your senses in whatever way you want. Cartoons, comics, romance novels, blogs, flamenco music, Saturday Night Live, pornographic films: you name it, you can have it. Because people are unique, every person likes a unique combination of media, which means that everyone’s perception of the world is in some way different. Nothing is common anymore between people, because nobody is really on the same page. There is no longer a consensus of social values, culture, and appropriate behavior, because everyone is watching a different show.
Of course, loneliness is not unique to America. Loneliness is a common to all humans. But it is nowhere as entrenched, as rampant, or as acidic as in the American experience. If you want to know why people commit suicide, abuse drugs, join a cult or shoot up a high school, you don’t have to look much further for your answer.
If Americans were honest with ourselves about their loneliness, they could take steps to lessen its ache. They could turn off their TVs and radios and speak with their neighbors, or have a beer with a friend. They could join book clubs and discuss literature, or take up a sport, or adopt a pet. But here we come to the paradox of loneliness: while you can certainly take these steps, your perception of a close and healthy relationship with someone else also depends on the perception of another person. In a society where everyone is lonely, the one soul who frees herself may find it difficult to find other free souls. If you’re the only one not watching TV, you are still alone.
What, then is to be done? The answer relates to self-reliance. If this is the culture we occupy, a mind-wiped desert of conformity, where how you look is more important that the substance of your character — indeed, where there is no such thing as character — then you must accept that as true and convert your loneliness to solitude. Solitude, like loneliness, is a sense of being alone, but the solitary soul replaces the need associated with loneliness with a strength of perseverance and self-examination. “If I am to be alone,” he says, “I’d best get comfortable.” The solitary soul looks inside and asks what he wants his life to look like, and then changes his patterns, beliefs, and thoughts so that the outside of his life will reflect his inner desires. Being alone is no longer a curse, but becomes an opportunity to make one’s life phenomenally better.
In time, the connections you seek will come to you. Just as water must flow downward over a cliff, when you arrange your life a certain way — when you intend to construct healthy relationships that will give you the interpersonal bonds you deserve — your life experiences will conform to the work done inside your mind.
If you lived in a small community where you had strong relationships with others for your entire life, this would be a natural skill. But bereft of that fertile soil of an enduring community, you lose touch with the fact that your happiness comes from within, and not from the attention given to you by another lonely soul. The slave who seeks another master remains a slave, and has yet to understand that freedom is something entirely different that what he has known his entire life.
The greatest truth yet to be fully realized is that a genuinely democratic way of life would eradicate loneliness once and for all. This is why the quest for happiness and the quest for liberty are inextricably linked, two twins born of humanity’s natural desire for love, connection, and purpose. In such an environment, our perceptions of each other would change from fellow consumer in a wealthy society to a fellow compatriot in a free society. There would be no problem at all in making rich interpersonal connections in such a country.
In the meantime, we must all inevitably confront the devils of our managed consumerist world by ourselves, alone, and every now and then, lonely.
