Deeply Lonely People
November 21st, 2006
In a television show I was watching recently (I don’t recall which one) one of the characters said,“It’s a strange country, America. Everyone seems so lonely.”
We are a lonely people, and not only because our families are spread across the continent, separated by hundreds or thousands of miles of highways, shopping malls, and cornfields. We are a lonely people because we can’t talk to each other about the things that matter.
We humans form relationships with other through intimacy, and much ot the time that intimacy is borne of important conversation. But the climate in American culture right now is very polarized between left and right, liberal and conservative, religious and secular. We are afraid to talk to our friends and coworkers about the most important things in our lives: our politics, our values, our religion, our faith. We’re afraid to discuss our deepest fears and our great hopes, because we are afraid of causing derision in the workplace or in our bedrooms. The silence grows in order to maintain amicability, but for the benefit of banal camaraderie we sacrifice the exchange of ideas that allow us to grow closer together, to love each other.
Perhaps the greatest lesson that we haven’t learned as a culture is that of compromise. I suspect that the notion of American entitlement runs so deep within us that we can’t see around our “rights” to the person on the other side of the table. Even in our most sacred relationships, the relations that hold families together, we tear ourselves apart for lack of compromise. Husbands and wives destroy the contracts that bind them over “irreconcilable differences” in staggering number every year, every day. And yet I suspect it isn’t so much that the differences are indeed irreconcilable. I suspect the real problem is that we haven’t learned how to sacrifice small desires in order to save what is most precious to us. We are more than our sovereign selves. We are more than our perceived rights and entitlements. We are also each other—lovers, friends, siblings. We need each other in a deeper capacity than we are able to recognize as a culture. Our love affair with postmodernism has taught us to laud the individual above most everything else, but to what end? What have we given up in order to life ourselves, as individuals, above everything else?
We don’t know how to communicate about the things that matter because we fear alienation, and yet our inability to exchange our most sacredly held ideas bars us from any kind of genuine communion with each other. We fill our conversations with talk of family and quotidian activity, phatic exchanges that mean very little. We balk at verbalizing our deepest desires and fears except with those who think like us, dream like us, want like us. But facing inward never changed the world. And without changing the world we cannot be challenged. And in our inability to stretch our capabilities both cerebral and emotional, we fence ourselves off, locked in our own internal prisons.
Is it any wonder we are a deeply lonely people?
One thing that most people forget about through no fault of their own, but is one of the most critical reasons why our American society is so dysfunctional, why there are so many lonely, unhappy and unhealthy people who are searching for any form of happiness is this. Having and unhappy, unhealthy, dissatisfied, confused , greedy, and lonely population is extreeeeemely profitable. That is “extremely” with a capital dollar sign. Whether you are aware or not, we are utterly and purposely manipulated from birth to be unhappy.
Think about it for a moment. Aren’t the best things in life free? One of the reasons we are such a wealthy country is because we are such good capitalist. But capitalism cannot thrive unless the populous is unhappy. This about this. If you were happy, would you need a tenth of what you have now?
We are one of the most unhappy 1st world countries on the planet. We capitalists can’t have our people living with the same sense of family, the same type of morals, a deep sense of community and being generally grateful to be alive… the same as our grandparents did. If we were really happy, the profits would dry up, businesses would move off shore, most people would return to health, be happier, and all the illegal’s would go home for lack of work. Then we wouldn’t be America, we’d be Fiji… happy and content but broke.
A challenge for any human living in the USA. Try to stop all forms of influence and manipulation coming into your brain. I dare you! I also guarantee that you can’t do it no matter how hard you try. Even if you were in a coma, the TV or radio would be programming your subconscious. Another thing that most people don’t realize… All things (TV, news, movies, anything at all) that comes out of Hollywood or mainstream media or politicians is for the sole purpose to sell you something (a thing or an idea) on behalf of the capitalists running the country (the government and the corporations). And it does not matter which party is in government. Marketing for power and profit is what has poisoned our lives. Of course, we are all trained to think we are empowered with knowledge and information and in control of our own destinies. Good luck with that!
Okay, so we disclose ourselves, be ourselves, be open about life and reality, and what happens when we are rejected for that, then what?
I am a very nice person, and wear myself on my sleeve, can’t help it. I am upfront, and I think it comes out rather dorky and in the wrong light than what I meant many times. I think it offends women in a huge way, not sure why, but I don’t have one single close friend (I am a girl/woman).
In leu of that, I have had different boyfriends over the years, but they have all turned out to be unhealthy. Either that or I somehow encourage unhealthy treatment. I seem to get along better with men…or maybe just the wrong men.
So…the first post here…sounded great…but now what?
I am very lonely…single mother…have a child with ADHD…I am a student…trying to run a part time business…overworked…no fun…nobody to talk to…burnt out…and nobody to talk to…and the guy I am with, who I need to get away from, is very critical of me, he acts like I am always doing something wrong…I was just flirting with him tonight and he got mad and acted like I was doing something horrible, told me to find the tv remote…wow…i feel SOOOO rejected…and he says I am overreacting…boy, it would sure be nice to have a freind
So there you go…lonely American with no help in sight…
I have recently realized that I am lonely. I first decided to shelter myself because people have been so judgmental… I have heard it all. I have also had a hard life.. So I have been cursed with a permanent scare. On my face when I am really ok..people think I am mad.I have fought very hard to change me look any my appearance to be expecting to others it has made me stay away from people in fear of not being like or being misunderstood.. IT IS TRULLY HARD!!!! .If I could just be accepted being me and not who someone expects me to be… I think I would be ok…. but I think I am ready to step out and find new things maybe people like me.. Or are willing to except me