HISTORY OF IDEAS - Loneliness

when we think about what's difficult in the modern world we're liable to think about meal times how seldom they now take place communally how rare it is for whole families to gather how much technology can intrude in paintings of communal meals from the olden days we can appreciate how all ages used to come together around one table and how welcoming the atmosphere seems to have been even the family horse might have been invited to join in the modern condition appears so bleak by comparison rather than a family around the hearth the emblematic images of a single person with a tray on their knees in front of the television it was the swanson corporation originally a poultry producer in omaha nebraska that launched the frozen tv dinner in 1954 the same year coloured television was introduced in the u.s it is a short distance in time but a long way in spirit from norman rockwell's laughter-filled family thanksgiving celebration to swanson's industrially produced turkey meal for one the modern world is surely a lonelier place than the one that preceded it the question is why it isn't ultimately technology that has made us lonely it's an identifiable set of ideas we've rendered ourselves lonely first and foremost because of certain stories we've started to tell about what loneliness means most eras before our own knew that solitude did not per se have to be a sign of wretchedness in the 4th century the greatest saint of early christianity saint anthony was said to have spent more than 40 years by himself in egypt's western desert not saying a word eating only bread and salt and communing with god so impressed with some with anthony's life they came to join him in the desert and became collectively known as the desert fathers their philosophy of solitary piety would go on to have a decisive influence on the founding of monasteries at the height of monasticism in the middle ages a million people across europe and north africa chose to forego the bustle of family in order to dwell in some of the most rugged and remote terrain in the world in silent contemplation of god however in the wake of the reformation and the destruction of the monasteries solitary piety began to lose its prestige and receded as a practical option those who had previously lived alone at the tops of mountains were now encouraged to serve god by remaining in the community finding a spouse and starting a family to this newly social religious impetus was added the influence of romanticism a movement of ideas that with different ends in view similarly encourage people to give up on commitments to their own company for the romantics happiness lay in identifying one exceptional soulmate to whom what could surrender one's independence and with whom one might fuse mind and body the romantic movement turned solitude from a respectable choice to evidence of pathology when the beatles released eleanor rigby in 1966 the song that more than any other defined what loneliness meant for the modern age it was at once clear why elena was a pitiful figure the famous face that she kept in a jar by the door had been intended for an enchanting partner that like all single people she must surely have longed to find only with romantic love could there be a decent life so ran the philosophy of the song of all the beatles works and in fact of pretty much every pop song ever written failed to fall completely in love and romanticism warned one would soon enough be picking up rice in the church where a wedding had been or rivalling for strangeness the very odd father mackenzie around whom there seemed to be so little of the glamour that had once attended the desert fathers the modern world not only made it mandatory to have a partner it's also made it feel essential to have a vibrant gang of friends and to enjoy seeing them regularly at parties an empty diary has become an emblem of deformity but there is not the slightest admission that it might all things considered be a bit of a curious thing to stand in a crowded room full of status panicked often socially anxious people every one of them terrified of honesty or failure in 1921 carl jung in his book psychological types introduced the terms extroverted and introverted to divide humanity the former referred to a sort of person who could best realize their potential in the company of others the latter were those who needed to move away from crowds in order to regain their integrity everyone possesses both mechanisms wrote jung but it was evident where the spirit of the modern age has resided it has been the achievement of a few often ignored artists of the modern period to make a case for introversion to try to coat solitude in glamour in a painting by the german artist caspar david friedrich we're invited to trust that the lonely figure in the landscape is privy to insights that might be lost in the crowd down in the lowlands the man is needed to travel up to the mountains in order to put the bluster and envy of humans in perspective we should dare to follow him in his trajectory separated by many decades gwen john's young woman doesn't seem to belong to an official religion but if there was one dedicated to the appreciation of solitude then she would be one of its saintly and legendary figures her expression kind gentle melancholy is an advertisement for all that the modern world has neglected in its promotion of active cheery lives isolation isn't a particular curse it's just where good people tend to end up we should dare to believe that we are in solitude not because we are mentally ill but because we are noble of spirit we don't hate company it's just that we would prefer to stay home rather than accept the counterfeit tokens of community that are too often on offer the way to make people feel less alone isn't to pull them out of their musings in the forest or in the diner in the library or the desert and force them to go bowling it's to reassure them that being alone is no sign of failure to lessen modernity's crisis of loneliness we need for solitude to be rehabilitated and for singlehood to regain its dignity there is nothing catastrophic about eating dinner many dinners on our own those swanson tv dinners might have been capable of improvement but it is ultimately far better to be eating a basic meal in peace than to be in a ballroom surrounded by full smiles and oppressive judgments when we do so we aren't in fact on our own at all we are as the modern world fails to remind us dining with some of the finest most elevated spirits who have ever lived we are though ostensibly by ourselves in the very best company one of the trickiest tasks we ever have to face is that of working out who we really are this book is designed to help us create a psychological portrait of ourselves with the use of some unusual oblique entertaining and playful prompts click the link on screen now to find out more

Channel: The School of Life

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Keywords: the school of life, schooloflife, education, relationships, alain de botton, philosophy, talk, self, improvement, big questions, love, wellness, mindfullness, psychology, how, to, hack, history of loneliness, why are we all so lonely, feeling lonely, why am i lonely, dealing with loneliness, isolated, alone, how to make friends, 为什么我们都这么孤独？, ¿Por qué todos estamos tan solos?, हम सब इतने अकेले क्यों हैं?, loneliness motivation, loneliness epidemic

Id: kqwPR0da0FI

Length: 8min 1sec (481 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2020