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The Lonely Blog

Manifesto of Loneliness

11/30/2013

4 Comments

 

By Ben Mijuskovic

And God stepped out on space,

And he looked around and said,

“I’m lonely--

I’ll make me a world.”

 

Then God walked around,

And God looked around,

On all that he had made,

He looked at his sun,

And he looked at his moon,

And he looked at His little stars;

He looked at His world

With all its living things,

And God said, “I’m lonely still.”

 

And God thought and thought,

Till he thought, “I’ll make me a man.”

 

This great God,

Like a mammy bending over her baby,

Kneeled down in the dust,

Toiling over a lump of clay,

Till he shaped it in his own image:

Then into it He blew the breath of life,

And man became a living soul.

The Creation, A Negro Spiritual (J.W. Johnston)

Man emerges in the realm of Being in God’s image as the being which is essentially lonely. The essence of Man is loneliness. Ever since the Old Testament; the Greek myths of Prometheus, Sisyphus, and Deucalion and Pyrhha; the dialogues of Plato; the treatises of Aristotle; the novels of the eighteenth-century; and on to the Existentialist writings of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Sartre, Man has expressed his intrinsic and universal situation of unfathomable loneliness. “We are lonely from the cradle to the grave and perhaps beyond,” declares Joseph Conrad. We find the mirror of our loneliness everywhere, in the arts, in the social sciences, and in philosophy.

Where we were to inquire what is the most serious, the most intense, the most dangerous medical condition facing human beings, we would probably generate some disagreement surrounding a number of viable candidates: heart failures; cancer; diabetes; etc. But if we were to ask what is the most intense and terrifying mental condition facing each of us, alone, we would, I believe, invariably all reply that it is loneliness.

I have argued in books, articles, and lectures that the soul and mind of Man is permeated by loneliness; the greatest estrangement is to be separated from God (Kierkegaard); the greatest alienation is to be separated from our fellows (Marx); and the greatest anguish is to be separated from the mutual intimacy of the other self.

Why this is so has been a special concern of mine for four decades. Our natural narcissism from the beginning craves and depends on the physical nourishment and the emotional nurturance provided by our first caretaker and we subsequently seek the latter in a lifelong struggle to find it, retrieve it, and secure it.

The cure for loneliness has two prongs: Insight and human connection. The first is strongly intellectual. For example, it stresses that like death, loneliness is universal and inevitable. We fight against it with varying degrees of success just as we battle with disease and illness with different outcomes. The second efforts for success lie in forging mutual bonds of trust and developing a strong sense of empathy with the other self.

The opposite, the conquest of loneliness is intimacy. The Web of Loneliness offers the two most powerful strategies available in our intellectual and emotional arsenals for transcending and vanquishing loneliness: Insight and Social Support.

4 Comments
BobM
2/25/2014 10:07:55 am

I read your book "Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology and Literature" and I found it to be a great book. Thank you for writing it. The "Philosophy" part was a little beyond me but the rest of the book was wonderful - it touched me deeply.

Reply
Ben Mijuskovic link
11/6/2015 07:50:23 am

My new book, Feeling Lonesome: The Philosophy and Psychology of Loneliness (Praeger, 2015) just came out in July, I just gave a talk at Brunel University, "Loneliness: In Harm's Way," that might interest you. Thanks for the kind words. Ben

Reply
Ben Mijuskovic link
3/25/2014 08:04:57 am

Thank you, Bob. Your words are deeply appreciated. I agree the book is often too technical but some of its saving features are the wonderful quotes from great writers that make me feel that I am not alone in my loneliness.

Reply
Ben Lazare mijuskovic link
5/29/2018 07:12:46 pm

I wish to reply to the concern we all share that many acts of violence, including deadly ones, e. g. suicidal bombers, school shootings, drivers running down pedestrians, and so on appear to be senseless, without clear motives. The original article on loneliness as a topic in its own right was written by Gregory Zilboorg, a psychoanalyst, and titled simply "Loneliness," published in the Atlantic Monthly in February, 1938. Zilboorg makes an intrinsic connection between narcissism<>loneliness<>and hostility. When people feel alienated, estranged, abandoned, jealous, they soon lash out at others and even themselves. Not infrequently when loneliness is unduly prolonged and/or intensified, as Zilboorg argues, it leads to murder and/or suicide. Often the assailants are described as loners. The current behavioral psychologists, psychoanalysts, and neuroscientists are committed to a determinist paradigm of consciousness: cause and effect model. On this principle, psychological motives make sense. But below and irretrievable to the Freudian unconscious lies a subconscious that is spontaneous and its unrestricted acts defy prediction (Kant). These spontaneous acts are unpredictable. They play out in intellectual creations, in scientific theories, in artistic expressions, in ethical principles and so on. But when they become enmeshed in deep feelings of loneliness, they lash out at others, themselves, or both. Because they are spontaneous they are both unpredictable and "motiveless" in the usual sense of the word: "motive." That's why even intimates are puzzled and unprepared to see it coming. Ben Mijuskovic, Feeling Lonesome: The Philosophy and Psychology of Loneliness.

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