Each person is a creature that is limited and separated from the surrounding world. At the same time, we have a natural need for self-transcendence - to overcome the narrow framework and boundaries of our I, to be in a living connection with other beings and the world as a whole. Where this connection is broken, where it is experienced as insufficient, and this is almost inevitably so, a feeling of loneliness arises, and it has many forms and guises depending on the type of connection in which the lack is felt.
Moral loneliness
Due to the fact that a person has a complex structure, and our cultural tradition is replete with errors and delusions, we rarely understand the true reasons for our happiness and unhappiness and constantly replace one another. This happens especially often with loneliness, since all its forms represent alienation from some important part of the outside world and can be easily confused. A person feels his own isolation, but does not necessarily realize what exactly he is alienated from. He, therefore, picks up a fundamentally wrong antidote.
Feelings of loneliness and emptiness in life are not as often rooted in a lack of oneness with other beings as it might seem. In order to feel the greatest meaningfulness, happiness and involvement in the structure of being, a person first of all needs a connection with meanings and values, with goals and a general vision of his life. When he is separated from his higher capabilities by his own ignorance, laziness and fear, he is inevitably consumed by longing and a sense of isolation. One gets the impression that he lacks some deeper contact with others, true friendship or great love, mental and spiritual fusion. This impression is illusory, or at least considerably exaggerated. He lacks something more important, namely, a connection with who he could be. He lacks not another person, but himself - this is the real reason for the loneliness tormenting him. Overcoming deep self-isolation requires taking responsibility sufficient for our abilities to realize what we consider most valuable, setting and actively pursuing objectives commensurate with our potential and inclinations.
Trying to fill the void that reigns in the place where goals, meanings and values should be with people, we almost certainly fail. If we do manage to pull off this fraudulent trick, it does so at the cost of self-sacrifice. Erich Fromm in his book "Escape from Freedom" called such a person's isolation from the higher possibilities of his life and creative activity moral loneliness, which term is borrowed here. Admittedly, it sounds unusual, but its use is fully justified - like other forms of loneliness, moral loneliness is a painfully felt lack of connection with other being, with something outside of us, with something important and essential - perhaps the most essential.
Ontological loneliness
Promotional video:
Already at the stage of the emergence of philosophy, both in the West and in the East, schools of thought were formed, starting from the observation that any experience we receive ultimately unfolds inside our mind. Any hypothesis about the connection of this experience with some kind of "external" world, therefore, remains only a hypothesis hanging in the air without any hope of justification. Whatever perception we experience, whatever and whoever we meet on our way, it is always just another object and, moreover, a product of our consciousness. Buddhism in India, sophism and skepticism in Ancient Greece, and then, with some reservations, Kant and Nietzsche drew attention to the fact that the idea of contact with something that would not be our mind is just another object within this mind, and from this there can be no way out of the circle. We are alone - in our most fundamental way of being,and even if there is something other than the field of experience unfolded in our mind, it reaches us only as passed through this prism, and therefore it is still in a significant part “us”.
One of two things is true: either nothing but consciousness exists, or everything perceived is refracted and radically transformed by it. Even in the latter case, it is possible to speak of a connection with the objective world, if it really exists, only indirectly and guessingly. Whatever position and interpretation we adhere to, the fact of being imprisoned within our own consciousness, its unique experiences and experiences, seems obvious. Aldous Huxley, in his iconic essay "The Doors of Perception", formulated this with particular power and beauty: “We live together, we do things and react to each other, but always and in all circumstances we are on our own. Martyrs walk into the arena hand in hand; crucify them one by one. Embracing, the lovers desperately try to fuse their isolated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature,every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Feelings, feelings, insights, whims - they are all individual and cannot be conveyed in any way, except through symbols and second hands. We may collect information about experiences, but never the experience itself. From family to nation, every group of people is a society of island universes."
Meditations on ontological loneliness have led Buddhists and existential philosophers to realize its positive content. If happiness and unhappiness, success and failure, in general, everything that we encounter is wholly or partially a product of mental activity, then our power over our own lives is much greater than we are used to thinking. Therefore, we should not write off responsibility for it and not dissolve in the objects of the external world, obeying them, but gain control, to which we have a natural right. This deep loneliness is a condition for the fullness of our power over ourselves, it is the freedom we experience, by accepting which we take the most important step on the way to the authenticity and fullness of being. Since we are alone, it is unnatural and criminal to hide from our freedom and the use of the ability to judge in another, in authority,in ideology, in religion, in the crowd. This is most succinctly expressed in the words of Sartre: "Man is doomed to be free." He is doomed to overcome the torment and discomfort of choice and responsibility for determining the course of his own life - for consciously being unique, which he really is, and not a puppet and a projection of the forces of the surrounding reality. Our ontological loneliness is identical with our freedom and our individuality, and its voluntary integration releases the highest possibilities of ours, and not someone else's and thoughtlessly copied life. We exist only because we are alone, and we are alone precisely because we exist - just as we ourselves, and not someone else. He is doomed to overcome the torment and discomfort of choice and responsibility for determining the course of his own life - for consciously being unique, which he really is, and not a puppet and a projection of the forces of the surrounding reality. Our ontological loneliness is identical with our freedom and our individuality, and its voluntary integration releases the highest possibilities of ours, and not someone else's and thoughtlessly copied life. We exist only because we are alone, and we are alone precisely because we exist - just as we ourselves, and not someone else. He is doomed to overcome the torment and discomfort of choice and responsibility for determining the course of his own life - for consciously being unique, which he really is, and not a puppet and a projection of the forces of the surrounding reality. Our ontological loneliness is identical with our freedom and our individuality, and its voluntary integration releases the highest possibilities of ours, and not someone else's and thoughtlessly copied life. We exist only because we are alone, and we are alone precisely because we exist - just as we ourselves, and not someone else. Our ontological loneliness is identical with our freedom and our individuality, and its voluntary integration releases the highest possibilities of ours, and not someone else's and thoughtlessly copied life. We exist only because we are alone, and we are alone precisely because we exist - just as we ourselves, and not someone else. Our ontological loneliness is identical with our freedom and our individuality, and its voluntary integration releases the highest possibilities of ours, and not someone else's and thoughtlessly copied life. We exist only because we are alone, and we are alone precisely because we exist - just as we ourselves, and not someone else.
The fallacy of too much distance from what we fear, even from what destroys us, can be supported by a historical example. You will have to follow it quite far into the past, to the time of the fall of the empires of the Aztecs and Incas at the beginning of the 16th century - one of the most impetuous, final and grandiosely incomprehensible tragedies in the history of mankind. A small handful of Spaniards of several hundred people in just a couple of years completely conquered highly developed civilizations with a total population of over 40 million, without incurring practically any losses. Many factors contributed to this, but the most devastating blow to the indigenous peoples of America was not at all the treachery of the Europeans or a chain of historical accidents, but the diseases they brought, to which the aborigines had no immunity. In the period from 1519 to 1568, the population of Mexico (the Aztec Empire) decreased from over 30 million to 1.5 - 3 million people due to the ongoing epidemics of various diseases, primarily smallpox. In total, up to 90% of the population of the New World died from infections during the 16th century. A common cold, which took place in a Spaniard for a week with a fever and a runny nose, could destroy an entire settlement to the last person - the body of these people had never encountered anything like it and did not know how to deal with it.could destroy an entire settlement to the last person - the body of these people had never encountered anything like it and did not know how to deal with it.could destroy an entire settlement to the last person - the body of these people had never encountered anything like it and did not know how to deal with it.
The mammalian immune system and the collapse of America's indigenous empires provide an important ethical lesson. We suffer the greatest damage in those cases when the destructive force that has befallen us is completely alien to us, when we do not have it inside ourselves, do not know from the inside and are too distant. Dosed acceptance and integration of this element in a transformed, domesticated form is what most surely creates the conditions for a successful struggle. The above can be fully applied to loneliness - it then only empties and weakens us when we run away from it, instead of organically perceived and used.
Loneliness is not some kind of dysfunction and illness, it is the fundamental reality of our being and the condition of individuality as opposed to being dissolved in the world around us. It cannot and should not be overcome, but it is possible to tame, master and put into service. Struggling with what constitutes our nature, trying to keep it at a distance, we only uselessly exhaust ourselves and lose the opportunities given to them. This is not only ineffective, but also simply undesirable, because certain doses of solitude and the ability to limit your connection with others are vital. Loneliness has a colossal constructive content, which was emphasized by thinkers and creative people from the dawn of time, since we undergo all the most important transformations alone with ourselves.
The integration of loneliness does not mean a refusal to establish connections with people and the world, but it implies an understanding of the need not just for personal development and any significant movement forward, but in general for being yourself some kind of isolation from others, the ability to distance yourself and retire. Finally, it implies the realization that some bridges cannot be built completely and others are not able to save us from our sins against ourselves, from emptiness and suffering generated by other reasons.
Social loneliness
Humans, like other social mammals, experience a natural attraction to the company of their kind, developed by millions of years of evolution. Having friendly or neutral others around us increases our chances of survival, and we have a special system for forming this attachment - the hormone oxytocin. When a living creature is in a group, the level of oxytocin that gives positive emotions is quite high, and it increases even more if we are among loved ones or friends (studies, by the way, show that not only humans, but also other great primates have real friendships communication). In contrast, alienation or distance from a group triggers a drop in oxytocin and a moderate surge in the hormone of stress and suffering, cortisol. It costs a herd animal - let's saya wild horse - to fight off the herd or just walk away from it for a while, it starts to get very nervous - for the indicated neurophysiological reasons.
Regardless of what we think about other people and society as a whole, whether we have any pragmatic reasons for coexistence with them, human nature is set up to push us towards being in a group, and it happens not easy. Isolation from a group, or even more so, expulsion from it, causes what neurophysiologists of recent decades have called social pain. It is associated with negative changes in intragroup status and is localized in the same region of the brain as physical pain (posterior insular lobe of the brain). Imagine that the three of you are playing a game, throwing the ball between you, and suddenly two people start to ignore you and play together. The electrical charge of negative emotions that you receive will be of the same nature as when pricked with a sharp object and will even be processed by the same part of the brain.
Emotional-spiritual loneliness
As it is clear from the above, a person is a purely biologically herd being, and sometimes we lack the simple physical presence of others, inclusion in the group, whatever it may be. At the same time, it constantly happens that the more people around us, the more we feel that main and most painful form of loneliness - the lack of communication by the type of mutual understanding and empathy. The countless multitude of others enveloping us is then in itself a constant reminder of the absence of an essential relationship, of the abyss that runs between us, which seems fatal and irresistible.
Another reason is that the attitude towards people is subject to the same basic principles of evaluation as the attitude towards any object. Scarcity and scarcity exalt and unfairly exalt the value of an object. Excess - and especially excessiveness - significantly reduces it, as well as the desire to enter into any serious and meaningful interaction with him. That is why the epidemic of alienation and devaluation of the individual affects the megacities the most and is gaining momentum under the influence of social networks. The thicker and stifler the crowd, the lower the price of one contact. People are becoming more and more interchangeable, motivation and the likelihood of some kind of deep connection are falling - all this feeds the feeling of loneliness. In the spirit of these observations, the Roman general Scipio Africanus expressed himself more than two millennia ago:"I am never less lonely than when I am alone."
The antidote to emotional and spiritual alienation is threefold. First of all, you need to explore the reasons for your own craving for mutual understanding and closeness. Isn't this a fraudulent way to evade honest overcoming of moral loneliness - from defining your meanings and tasks and taking responsibility? Is this not an attempt to hide from your own freedom, from the discomfort of personal and creative growth that require solitude? If this is so, then our need for something else is to a large extent pathological and fictitious, and it is only necessary to correct the said imbalance, as its strength will wane. Further, it is required to accept the initial distance between oneself and others as a fact, and not necessarily an annoying fact. The reduction of this distance can only be partial, and whenever this happens, it is a rare gift,for which it would be proper to feel gratitude, and not take it as a norm of human life, which it is not. Finally, it is important to realize that creating a genuine and deep connection requires choosing the right people with whom you can, and often a conscious effort. Communication is the most underestimated of the arts - people are accustomed to the fact that it should develop in its own way and does not need any kind of competence and prior intention. This opinion is erroneous, and if we want to establish genuine contact with another, we must skillfully and carefully touch upon the essential, really important for each of the participants, at least occasionally reaching depths, and not just sliding along the surface.that creating a genuine and deep connection requires choosing the right people with whom it is possible, and often a conscious effort. Communication is the most underestimated of the arts - people are accustomed to the fact that it should develop in its own way and does not need any kind of competence and prior intention. This opinion is erroneous, and if we want to establish genuine contact with another, we must skillfully and carefully touch upon the essential, really important for each of the participants, at least occasionally reaching depths, and not just sliding along the surface.that creating a genuine and deep connection requires choosing the right people with whom it is possible, and often a conscious effort. Communication is the most underestimated of the arts - people are accustomed to the fact that it should develop in its own way and does not need any kind of competence and prior intention. This opinion is erroneous, and if we want to establish genuine contact with another, we must skillfully and carefully touch upon the essential, really important for each of the participants, at least occasionally reaching depths, and not just sliding along the surface. This opinion is erroneous, and if we want to establish genuine contact with another, we must skillfully and carefully touch upon the essential, really important for each of the participants, at least occasionally reaching depths, and not just sliding along the surface. This opinion is erroneous, and if we want to establish genuine contact with another, we must skillfully and carefully touch upon the essential, really important for each of the participants, at least occasionally reaching depths, and not just sliding along the surface.
All the forms of loneliness described here are a person's unsatisfied need for interconnection with something outside of him. Indeed, loneliness is painful, but pain is not always a negative phenomenon, does not always signal that something is going wrong. It accompanies all qualitative leaps in personal growth, and if we are afraid to accept and integrate it, we thereby deprive ourselves of the abundance of gifts obtained through it and only increase its acuteness.
We are alone in this world - and this means that we exist, and are not dissolved in a faceless homogeneous mass. We are alone, which means that we are free and sovereign. We are alone - and this means that our experience is unique, for it is inimitable and indescribable. The more excessive our union with others, the less we exist as individuals, the less our freedom and strength, the more tautological and paler our reality. Isn't this price too high for a small and not at all guaranteed increase in emotional comfort?
© Oleg Tsendrovsky
