Loners"The future is always difficult to quantify,
but tomorrow comes with at least one
guarantee: it will be lonely. The number
of single-person households across the
globe is growing at an alarming rate.
Struggling with feelings of loneliness
and isolation, more and more people
are turning to online dating and social
networking sites to try and muster up
some companionship. Meanwhile,
divorce rates are at an all-time high."
I found this today when a friend suggested I visit the pages
of an adbusters magazine she nurtured possession of. It
reminds me that I spent Thanksgiving alone; it reminds me
that I didn't mind in the slightest drop and furthermore only
felt dis-eased when the solitude was betrayed by the return
of company; it reminds me that it might be unusual to like
being alone.
But of course it isn't, we all need space and we are more than
capable of living long spells of time without anyone else...Man
is mildly gregarious, we are not ants or bees who must live in
colonies stacked in honeycombs or packed underground in
labyrinthine networks. The difference between solitude and
loneliness is comfort. It all depends on your perspective and
how much solitude you can regard before submerging into the
definite grips of loneliness. Of course if you're used to being
around people and thats the system that revolves you, under
which your social obligations deem privileges and its so much
of a pleasure that to be withdrawn from such a revolution
would pose a pain, then loneliness stalk-fully follows solitude
far more expediently than it would the common hermit, anti-
social misanthrope. I am neither but placed some position
faithful to a compromise of each, where I am more often than
not at ease with time spent to myself but eventually the unease
will arrive and take a very plain seat where all my thoughts can
see and recognize, sinking in the realization that: I am alone
and it no longer feels good.
Upon rereading the passage over I began to wonder how much
this lonely future is a result of a socially pressured past. Career,
marriage, children, so much emphasis placed on these ideals
that many participants jumped in without dipping their feet.
Many didn't think an alternative to swimming would get them
anywhere until the pool became crowded. Or they thought, too
much effort and time trying to locate such an alternative seemed
overbearing and unnecessary when a ready-made solution had
already been studied and in practice. We believed we'd be happy
with success and love, the love of success and the success of
love, this might be very well structured in veritable foundation;
but a career, a marriage, and children are not guaranteed means
to that desired end. Maybe this lonely future will be a transitional
stage where we find we don't necessarily need the career-
spouse-offspring formula that failed us in the past but nothing
happens over night. And its hard to break habits even harder to
break conditioning, so the side effect of rejecting what we've been
conditioned to desire results in self-projected malefactions and
resentment, in this case, loneliness.
We've been packed together (in cities) over the last hundred
years. Industry changed the physical face of this world at a rate
that provides more wrinkles than age can account for. We are
constantly advancing technologically, whether the technology
advances the users is unclear but that that technology itself is
evolving can be seen by simply following iPod models, what's the
latest, 240 GB or something. My point is, that we've come a long
way since the steamboat and railroad. And like everything in a
capitalist society, there is a price to pay.
Its 2008-Winter. Bronx-New York. Saturday night and there are
too many cops in the street, the subways are running on
inconvenient schedules, and the streets surveilled by cameras
kiss your every action. The economy is supposedly in peril
and we should all buy garbage we don't need to save the market
but we have not the funds since the economy is supposedly in
peril and irresponsible splendors was the sure ticket that
qualified us to our current state. Rent is up, nothing's
affordable, everyone is crammed into the walls of the city
and gentrification is a cancer concentrating lower income
(classes) households even closer and thrice as electric,
hostile, and restless. There is a stress about the air,
furnished and blooming in the cold evening, desperately,
we yelp to be home, quiet and away from anything that
reminds us of the outside. There's an absence of space and
privacy that delivers a haven out of the miserable living
room we occupy and live, by whatever compensation of meaning
we wish to define. Outside gives us tension and claustrophobia.
The tension and claustrophobia gives us an anxiety worth noting
and hiding far away from it all can appeal highly as remedy.
Its beginning to take its toll, there's only so much abuse a
body can take, the same applies to a society. Hence Reality TV:
so you don't have to experience reality for yourself, along
with series after series of awful entertainment that trains
ADD through frequent commercial interruptions and fast paced
edited sequences. Perfectly accompanied by a preference to be
close to our friends but from a distance we talk more on
cellphones, that is until we discovered text messages. In our
homes we remain, from where we are provided the world so long
as we pay for it through internet bill, phone bill, con-ed bill,
hence email, aim, myspace, facebook, youtube, surf the channel,
second life, match.com, webcam porn, blogspot, etc. What happens
when you turn all these distractions off and you notice how
quiet and absolute you are when in the presence of nothing
other than self? What happens when you initially, at this point,
discover you have nothing to offer yourself because you're not
used to being alone. Some are greeted by comfort sooner than
others.
I too see a lonely future. I don't see loneliness becoming
solitude in metropolitan networks over-peopled and I see even
more distractions evolved from the ever eminent need to keep us
away from the discomfort of ourselves. Spread throughout steel
honeycombs buzzing and stinging one another, we want to be away
from one another but we can't bear it because what we'd actually
would like is just a little space but the alternative is such
an extreme that you're left in a kitchen alone eating dinner
you made for yourself, trying to finish the meal before 9 when
the season premier of Heroes airs.
