By Aaron Weiss ........................................ (Mon Jul 31 08:52 1995)
I never want to see it again.
p.s.
My preferred nadir is a state which is most aptly called "passively suicidal." Whether or not this is a cowardly form of normal people's suicide or something qualitatively different, I'm not sure. In part, it depends on whether there is a difference between loneliness and aloneness. Other than that one is a more commonly used word than the other -- but do people use them interchangeably? Or do people recognize the distinction, and choose their term intentionally? Cynicism would say that people use the one that everyone else uses without regard to any distinctions whatsoever. Fortunately, I vote cynically.
"Lonely" has a temporal connotation to it. There is an implied phase, but one that did not necessarily exist prior to its onset, and won't necessarily exist after. A close analogy would be the word "hunger," which possesses similar phase-like characteristics. One is not continuously hungry, but rather from time to time. Interestingly, hunger seems to be a drive premised upon aversive motivation -- stop the bad feelings by feeding the desire. In that case, loneliness is quite a lot like hunger. After all, what do people do when they are lonely? Perhaps they seek out a friend, or telephone a friend, or make believe a friend. Assuming any of these conditions are met, the loneliness should be abated.
In the state of being "alone," there is not necessarily an aversive motivation. The word itself does not carry the implicit negative directive that "lonely" does. One could be watching television "alone," and be quite content doing so. One could be watching television alone and be quite discontent doing so. Literally, then, being alone simply means being entirely by oneself. Unfortunately, this problem gets far more confusing. The error I've made so far is in defining "alone" in a purely physical, binary way. But the mere lack or presence of other bodies does not necessarily alleviate the perceived condition of being alone. In fact, it doesn't even necessarily solve the condition of loneliness. By this logic, being alone and/or lonely has nothing to do with the presence of other people. Which is most unfortunate, because it makes the problem of improving either condition much more difficult.
Perhaps some more introspection will help flesh out this problem. For instance, I never feel passively suicidal when lonely, but may very well when feeling alone. One can also be alone and lonely, in which case aloneness takes precedence. It is either comforting or disturbing to know that the laws of computational order apply to human connectedness. But I've seen too many people inside parentheses to believe otherwise. I suppose there are several motivations behind active suicide, aloneness being one of them. The cowardly reason why I prefer passive suicide is largely because my self-preservation instincts, also known as "fear," are too intact. They have always been so, and I don't predict that would ever change. But a qualitative difference between the active and passive suicidal mindsets is that the actively suicidal is searching for a cessation. They may not "want to die," as such, but they want some condition to end, and death is the only answer. In this light, active suicide is an aversively-motivated drive much like hunger. Of course, you only get to sate the desire once in this case, which eliminates some of the fun, as opposed to hunger. The mind of the passively suicidal -- that's me -- rather believes that the state of aloneness is so deep and wide that death would be of no impact to the system. The fact is that this is incorrect, the idea that there would be no impact. I think of a box in a room, atop which rests some books and a pen and a towel. If the box where to vanish from the room, the room on the whole would be no better or worse off. The system would not "care." There would some impact -- the books and the pen and the towel would fall to the ground. But that's the extent of it. So it is with passive suicide. My mail would pile up, and someone would have to take the time to bury me somewhere. Beyond that, the system would not care.
Is any of this true? Rationally, no. But it is a mindset, one which is brought about by the mindset of recognizing aloneness. The next question is whether aloneness is brought on by loneliness. An important query, because if so, then perhaps there is a solution out there yet. If not, then all hail passive suicide, I suppose.
Many people seem to go about solving loneliness by placing people next to them. This works out well, because the people next to them were also looking to fix their own loneliness the same way. Thus you end up with a group of people standing next to one another in some sort of demented mutualistic loneliness-healing state. One often sees them walking down the sidewalk. One often sees them going into movie theaters or restaurants in groups of fifteen. Why would someone want to see a movie with 14 other people? This must be the answer, because connectedness surely is not. Seriously, though, the same can be said for a group of three or four. On the other hand, there can be connectedness in a group of three, and possibly four. The inverse proportionality is important to me. Because my failure is not only to lack a sense of non-loneliness when placing people next to me. Not only doesn't it help, but it hurts. It is annoying. I do not like people placed next to me whose sole purpose is to exist there entirely separate from myself. Their mere existence does not cure anything, that illusion is far too thin.
The irony of all this being that I find non-connected people around me to be an aversive state, one which can only be sated by removing them, or myself. Oh great irony, since post-removal one is left with one thing: aloneness. But I have made some progress here. The state of loneliness and subsequent aloneness can only be resolved by connectedness. On the surface, that seems a reasonable solution, if only "connectedness" wasn't a word that required its own essay.
Frankly, I have no idea what connects people. I don't know how much of a connection between people is real or made-up. I've noticed an odd pattern in life, where certain women would go on and on about their "boyfriend" (juvenile word, but it fits juvenile people), listing all sorts of great qualities. Then, when I invariably meet "him," I am struck by his almost complete lack of articulateness and amazing resemblance to a tree swinger. I suppose this is attractive to many people, which is fine, they can mate with anything they like. But I stray, as my point isn't about mating, as such, so much as it is about connectedness. The point being that I fail to see the connection between these people, so I have to assume much of it is made-up. There are certainly many good motivators towards finding connectedness, and thus patching up any holes in reality wherever they may be to facilitate it. On the other hand, it is entirely possible that there is a true connection between these people, but that they are simply incapable of articulating it. This would not come as a great shock to me.
Which does bring up the slightly tangential question, which I will explore here because I can do whatever I like, of why anyone "likes" anything. I find it curious that in all my years, I don't believe I have ever once heard someone give a satisfactory answer to a query about why they like something. To me, "satisfactory," in this case means an answer that inductively proves the liked object to be so. An answer that _necessarily_ leads to only that particular thing which is liked. As I said, this is never done. Take someone's favorite food, let's say it's ice cream.
"Why do you like ice cream?" "It's good" "Explain. What is good about it?" "It tastes sweet." "So does a candy apple. What else is specific to ice cream?" "It's soft" "Cake is sweet and soft."
The fact is they will never succeed. There is no set of qualities that can be given which isolates only ice cream as the liked object. If you push a layperson on this question, they may very well fall back on the retort, "I don't know, I just like it!" They may very well then punch you very hard, but that is immaterial here, although it hurts in real life. But their simple objection is an important insight: at some level, a liking or preference for something becomes non-rational. There is some place in the brain where a neuron is just plugged right into the "I like it" ganglion, and that is that. Logic is irrelevent. Presumably there was something, sometime which caused this neural connection to happen, and there may have been logic involved there. Equally likely, there may have been nothing but primary process conditioning. So I can't rightfully blame people for failing to satisfactorily articulate why they like something, although I can press charges for that punch in the face.
Having argued all this, it seems I'll have to concede that there is a genuine connection between the people who don't appear to have any plausible reason for it. Of course, the real downside to this is that means these people have succeeded in finding genuine connections. This is not promising. Perhaps the less finely gradiated one's mind is, the easier it is to connect to someone else. Less brain fissures, more surface area, more contact area. I guess there's a bit of arrogance-prompted-by-envy in that, but so be it.
Just as easily as I am motivated to write this essay, brain chemicals can wash the other way entirely. Just as easily as I slip into passively-suicidal mode, it can just go away, leaving me lying on the bed staring at the ceiling thinking, "What the hell am I doing here? Get up! Get some food or something! Geez..." I was going to conclude something about the role of connectedness between people and aloneness, but it doesn't really matter what I conclude. I may connect with someone at some point, or I may very well not. It certainly doesn't matter that much to the rest of the system, and even oneself grows used to the dull ache. Who knows, X number of years from now I could look back at this and cringe at its immaturity. Or sigh at its predictive value. Or maybe I won't ever look back at it at all.