Why are we isolated?
What a world of
paradoxes we inhabit! Even an obvious truth is not so obvious, when you
consider that its opposite is also true. Take for instance the anonymity of cities.
Never have we been surrounded by so many people and yet felt so alone. Without
knowing the business of strangers whistling past us every second, it becomes
impossible to know that person as anything more than a fleeting instance in
your experience. Perhaps by retreating into some vague idea of shared humanity
you can imagine the humanity into people, but what is this if not a
great generalization, spreading ones own interpretation across the complex set
of motives and desires and fears that make up our so complex species! No, we
are alone. The opportunity to be anonymous allows us near-absolute freedom to
morph into any shape we dare, leaving no shared point of reference between
oneself and the person sitting opposite on the tube. The notion of a shared set
of values is skewered in a thousand different places by the thousand thrusts of
new influences. Droplets of culture are everywhere to be picked and chosen at
will and then combined into an unfitting patchwork of confusion.
To repeat: The absurdity of it! To be
never more surrounded by so many people and yet to never more feel so isolated,
detached to the point where detachment itself is normal, if not necessary, to
the process of existing in this world.
When the
individual is in a state of isolation it becomes a case of me and them.
One is besieged on all sides by the bulk masses 'living their comfortable
ignorance' and becomes a romantic hero of the individual ego. However, the
perversity of this situation is obvious; everyone is besieged by everyone else,
and everyone's uniqueness is defined against everyone else's 'sameness', and
everyone has discovered something that everyone else has not, and everyone else
is obviously being led like a mule to the carrot, hence their inability to
experience the truth as I do.
Is the individual, however, better
capable of grasping the truth than the massive? Inside ones own mind an inner
voice can be trained to say 'Am I enlightened? Am I deluding myself?' with
every profound discovery, and every outside influence can be run through a
filter of doubt. Yet this leaves us with what philosophers would call a
'skeptic' in its most ancient sense of the word - someone doubting the very
possibility of attaining knowledge at all. With this doubt we know how to avoid
'falsehood' and the seductive world of appearances, but we have no positive
answers to the challenge of truth.
The problem with individual truth is
twofold: First that the individual is built on the efforts of a long and
painful history, which has allowed them to stand atop the mountain of knowledge
and development that made them possible. Secondly, if truth is up to an
individual it can be moulded into any shape they wish to mould it into. Without
some clever spark telling us why the sky appears blue, we can create any
explanation we wish to explain it, without the possibility of letting anyone
else get into our own little private world. Truth is confirmed by its
expression into the public realm.
Yet just because
an individual can delude themselves let us not glorify the answers given to us
by the 'lumber of the land'. It is precisely the stupid danger of crowds and
hive minds that encourage the individual to become a bastion of truth, removed
from the 'vulgar stream of humanity'. Retreating into the shell of ones
individuality is to escape the seduction of belonging to the herd - but this is
not a desirable place to end ones journey (or is it?).
This contrast between individual and
group can be supported by the following claim. A group is not merely a collection
of individuals, but rather lots of individuals plus another collective entity,
an authority over those individuals. Although having said this, the individual
is still never entirely removable from everything around them (if something
could escape the influence of reality it would never again be able to reconnect
with it). The line between outside and inside is thus like a blend of colour;
where one begins and another ends is indistinguishable. Yet for the sake of
clarity I call individual that frail part of us which decides, or spurs into
action, which is conscious, aware, alive.
What appears
evident is this: There has always been some force playing upon us, draining us
of our fullness and then offering it back to us in a neat parcel.
Religion is the obvious, if not outdated, example of this procedure: You are
damned by our sacred texts, but do not wallow, for you can also be redeemed by
those same texts! The modern version of this: You are worthless without
acquiring such and such material item, but do not wallow, for you can also be
redeemed by acquiring it! No wonder the individuals feel so isolated from one
another (and yet guilty for feeling so), when the entirety of their fullness
depends on the following confusing paradox: You must be an individual,
separate from everyone else, but the way you become this unique individual is
by doing what we say!
In such an environment, such a squat
and perverse state of confusion is inevitable and unavoidable. The truly
powerful individuals are those who design the trends for the rest to follow;
they will glorify individual will and truth as far as themselves, then kick
away the ladder and look down upon the sleeping mass as little more than necks
from which to draw blood. Alternatively they will reach a golden hand down to a
few of the lesser orders in an attempt to raise them up to an aristocratic
plane!
What isolates
us? A human-made emptiness that is filled by acquisition (and if our endless
desire is not artificially created, it is at least greatly encouraged); a
shallow need for instant uniqueness and individuality obtained without
intelligent effort. We are made special by something that is, after all, not
special at all – but mundane, and hideous-on-the-inside, and mechanical, and
controlled, and force-fed, and everywhere, and false.
Yet do not be so
keen to prime your proud cannons of criticism against our bulk herd! This chase
for material nothingness is so far removed from greed that any moral criticism
of the people within it is to drastically miss the point; one treats the
patient of an illness, rather than scolding them – and we are all ill.
The paradox I
shall finish with is thus: Individuality must be discovered by the individual.
However, to so much as mention this is to fail in ones task, for to tell
someone not to let others tell them what to think is to tell others what they
should not think. And so I finish this writing with a shrug of indifference,
and hope you disregard the entire thing.
By Selim
'Selim' Talat
The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 32
