Those of Us Who Reject Loneliness
It turns out that we Americans are really lonely. One would think that a natural conclusion to aging with its concomitant loss of capacity and the dying off of those whom we knew would be some semblance of loneliness, but it seems improbably true that the young are experiencing loneliness like never before.
Feeling lonely and isolated has become the default condition in America, and lonely people become like the drowning man clutching at anything wildly to prevent being swallowed up by water. Like a wounded bird, he lashes out in indignant rage and despair for one more gulp of air, one more moment of life, not going gently but with the strength of the last gasp reserved for those ridiculous moments of adrenaline-fueled individuals who lift cars to save a life or the crazed fury of someone on PCP.
I suspect that Donald Trump is crushingly lonely. In looking at the man’s life, he has spent his days bamboozling others, rising to power through a P.T. Barnum view of suckers and marks. Without genuine intent upon becoming president, he was elected to a position he didn’t really want and was (and is) woefully unqualified. Beset by a fourth estate that made billions on his rise and then makes billions on his fall, of course loyalty is his metric. Of course he attacks the fickle press. Married to a stranger, a wake of botched affairs and tax fraud that follow him no matter how powerful he becomes, vapid and stupid children (except Ivanka who gets by because she’s pretty but not because she’s brilliant), the knowledge that he will be known in history as the worst president of this country has to be a daily horror.
This seems to be an effect on us for a variety of reasons and angles. The slow decline of religion, once the center of social life. The rapidly changing technology surrounding courtship effectively eliminating the slower attempt to get to know one another and replacing it with a finger swipe. The increase in bureaucracy in pursuit of simple life alienates us from one another whether it is to procure a driver’s license or see a physician without bankrupting oneself.
Whatever the causes, the effects of this bizarre loneliness in the midst of more humans populating the planet than ever in history (and in contrast to how many the planet can sustain) are dire.
I think back upon the opening sequence of Mike Judge’s Idiocracy. An educated white couple keep putting off having children because they have things to accomplish before they make that commitment intercut with an uneducated white couple who have babies with abandon. Judge’s point is that the more kids coming out of idiots balanced by the lack of children from the learned class equals idiocracy. From a slightly shifted perspective, one of those couples seems unbearably lonely and the other doesn’t have time for all of that.
I lived with a woman off and on for four years who wanted to have kids because “I need someone to take care of me when I’m old.” At the time, I thought that was among the worst reasons to reproduce but, in light of our national individualism resulting in a country filled with lonely people, may be her motivation wasn’t complete lunacy.
We are a culture of individuals. The customer is always right. Our feelings of oppression are tantamount. Lived experience replaces evidence and objective information. We couldn’t possibly have taken this pandemic seriously because our connections with one another are so frayed and torn, the myopia of seeing ourselves as important and special prevents us from seeing anything else. Like a nation of people drowning, we grasp at the closest belief system (White Supremacy, Black Separatism, Ecological Doom, The Cult of Identity) and frantically use ideology to replace the illusion of individual significance we thought we had.
We are lonely because to acknowledge that the rest of humanity is the Ark with which we avoid the Flood is to admit that we each are expendable. We are lonely because to recognize that every one of us is replaceable is to confirm that our feelings and our lives are simply not as important as we deluded ourselves into believing. This is the true meaning behind the pejorative snowflake handle. Not that we are delicate and notable but that we are highly individual flakes in a bank of similarly highly individual flakes amounting to nothing but crystallized water subject to the temperature to survive.
Thus the clawing at relevance and fame and influence. The drowning reach for recognition and power. The furious cries of “See ME! Look at ME!” and the outrage when everyone else is too busy yelling the same to acknowledge your need.
The price of individualism and self-importance is inevitably loneliness.
Some of us are loners by nature or nurture. We are alone frequently but are not lonely. We are apart yet not isolated. It seems that those of us of that proclivity are better suited to the pandemic than the rest. We grew up without the illusion of stability or security. We are the latchkey kids, the children of divorce and fending for ourselves. We learned to be just a bit more self-reliant than self-involved. Few indoctrinated us into believing we were important or notable and those of us who become notorious and known are less impressed by it than others.
Granted, we still yell “Look at ME!” yet refrain from getting all butt hurt when no one notices. We carve out our places and read our science fiction novels and watch our movies (from VHS to DVD to cable to streaming). We were the kids who hung out at Blockbuster Video on a Saturday night, who sat in parking lots smoking found squares, who roamed the byways of malls making random but harmless mayhem. We saw the farce for what it was and still find it funny.
Instead of clawing for purchase to avoid the sea, we simply dog paddle our way to something solid and hang on for a bit until we get a second (or third or fourth) wind so we can paddle our way to the next floating piece of wood. We know there is no truly solid ground and are fine with that knowledge. We, like most, fell prey to the siren song of being youthful and embraced the trappings of the young in order to avoid facing our decaying bodies but some of us get past that. I’ve said before that I’ve been waiting to be in my fifties since I was a teenager and it was (and is) true.
This rejection of loneliness is not nihilism. It is the acceptance of less. Less social interaction with a higher quality to that which we ultimately give and take. Less need for dopamine spikes and commendation and more gratitude for autonomy. We understand the social contracts required and still skirt the rules.
We are John McClane, Martin Riggs, and Ferris Bueller. We are Veronica Sawyer, Princess Leia, and Sarah Conner. We are Ash, Axel Foley, and Beetlejuice. Dante and Randall, Cher and Josh, Wayne and Garth. We are Ellen Ripley. We are Mark Renton.
And we, for the most part and at most times, are not lonely.
