Peace Lovey!
Do we live in a culture of loneliness? This week alone I must have heard at least 3 people, each of them “celebrities,” state in so many words that they were lonely. People that I know even echo these sentiments. Let’s not even venture the number of seniors who visibly scream “socially impaired” watching the last days of their lives pass them by with only the companionship of their inner voice.
How did we get here? Better yet, how do we turn things around? Loneliness has seemingly crept in and silently taken over life as we knew it. It has been the most vicious of societal plagues infecting everyone within feeling’s reach. We all express it. We all perceive it. As of late, we have all welcomed it into our awareness.
Surrounded by one another, yet more lonely than ever we have all become the estranged. Yet, what even is loneliness? In a quote, Paul Tillich said that,
“Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.”
This quote adequately captures the essence of the duality of what we identify as loneliness. It is indeed duality. Depending on perspective you will experience it as pain or glory. Nevertheless, loneliness and solitude are conceptually the same thing.
So why have so many of us chosen to perceive this feeling as loneliness? Is it the dire need for acceptance and belonging that is really at the core? Has conformity become a societal norm whereby we have lost all semblance of self-awareness? Or is it simply that we have collectively lost all desire and appreciation for the beautiful gift of solitude?
Loneliness and solitude, one and the same varying only in degree. Given the perception either can be experienced as the bane of existence. Comprised of an inherent interdependence, one being unable to exist without the other in the same manner as all other life forms in our sphere of awareness.
Yet despite this knowing the lonlies persist. You insist on inclusivity inspiring entire movements. Your life revolves around a craving for recognition to feed the insatiable appetite of ego. Ego, at the epicenter of it all. Ego as much as capitalism, the driving force of a culture of loneliness.
In Des Kaptial, Karl Marx proposed that commodities are governed by use-value. So if your value is quantifiably tied to use the instant that you, the individual, are no longer deemed useful you are in essence doomed to a perpetual existence of poverty clothed in isolation.
The reality of this is ever-present. Mass media distracts, pacifies and distorts reality resulting in a culture that commodifies personhood. This makes you both the laborer and the commodity.
So what’s your worth? Is your valuation being conducted by you or the external opinions of others? Moreover, is your valuation high enough to incite a war. After all, wars have been waged in the interest of dominating a commodity.
Acting as your own enemy you could find yourself at war. A war funded by the exploitation of insatiable consumption. Yet this is a consumption of illusions. You and the masses have been deluded by the lie that social credit is the only thing that can buy you happiness and ward away the lonelies.
That said, a high valuation can afford you the partners, social events, money that makes money, cars, homes, and wardrobes that ultimately allow you to beat the lonelies and finally end the war within yourself.
Though, since wars can be expensive what will your worth be at the war’s conclusion? What then is your valuation in a society that deems you, the laborer, invisible? The interest lie only in the product for which you have unknowingly oversold.
Like the laborer, you and the product are one and the same. You are the product whose value is inextricable from the opinions of others, groupthink as your primary consumer.
So what’s at the end of this tunnel? Self-renewal? R.I.P. external musings.
The culture of loneliness ends and begins with your ability to be self-aware. The cure for the lonlies is found at the hands of solitude, making you your most valuable asset. You get there by way of a reverse valuation.
There must be a devaluation of external opinions and a discovery of Self. As the consumer, make a decision as to what commodities in which you need to divest. Consider what happens when consumers no longer consume.
Essentially your focus will be redirected to the essentials. There, at the epicenter of your existence, is you. Once you value yourself as invaluable the opinions of others, social credit and such no longer delude you. Lonely moments become opportunities for self-reflection, getting to truly know your own mind. It’s an opportunity to enjoy what is an intrinsic part of the human experience.
So why not dead this culture of loneliness and replace it with self-love and fulfillment?
Sunflower Smooches!!!
Blissfully Mindful
