Loneliness - An Introduction
Lonel...
Loneliness - An Introduction
Loneliness is the product and parent of many problems.
Counteract loneliness and eradicate a portion of addictions, abuses, wastes and illnesses.
Depression is all the rage but loneliness its prime mover.
All the talk about depression but no talk about its source: loneliness.
Not only are we isolated from each other but our truest and most ethical selves.
Excessive aloneness begs excessive consumption.
Being alone has limits. That limit is loneliness, introduced first by school - albeit intended by school.
School pulls children from parents then separates siblings into levels.
Sitting in a desk is isolating, conversing against rules.
That children congregate at recess demonstrates need for togetherness.
Dividing children into cubicles is not only unhealthy and regressive but poor preparation for the workplace or world peace.
What's in the child's mind remains there. It is not shared with classmates or the state.
Alone in his cubicle the child ingests content dictated by the state without opportunity to talk about - much less question - it.
Student life is lonely.
Studying is lonely.
Reading and writing and math require no interaction.
Homework further dominates minds and time, further blocks needs for company and conversation, further disrupts mental, emotional, physical and spiritual development.
Adolescence + high school = depression.
High School causes mental illness.
High School not only fails to comfort the hyper-sensitive, self-conscious, hyper-critical, insecure or poorly adjusted but exacerbates these adolescent idiosyncrasies.
High School is the unnatural stage upon which adolescence tortures aspiring adults.
Alas the cause of excessive malaise, anger, inferiority, resentment and confusion is the forced fusion of adolescence and high school.
If a teenager knew that life didn't have to "suck", that there was an alternative to student life he would escape it.
By law, aspiring adults are controlled by teachers. If not academically proficient or socially gifted one develops a negative self-concept. Alas, worthlessness in a room of perceived winners is a lonely feeling.
To be humiliated with low scores and reprimands is to feel alone.
High School artificially extends childhood, interferes with maturation and stimulates protracted adolescence.
The belief that "children grow up too fast" is false.
First World children don't grow up.
Growing up means self-sufficiency, being real versus synthetic, being active versus passive.
Before the invention of high school, children grew up at a normal rate engaging in the world through work essential for survival.
Children felt important to the family while learning young that life was work.
Through employment teenagers felt connected to co-workers and family.
Through schoolwork teenagers are disconnected from peers and family while denied responsibility.
High School/Loneliness = aspiring adults trapped in a holding pattern.
Treated like a child the aspiring adult disconnects from who he is, his identity replaced by what's allowed or required by the environment.
School experience is not only cruel, it's oppressive and God-playing.
School is and plays God with the fragile psyches of aspiring adults.
In short School is God which means students are not.
The God State doesn't empower but exerts power. No God State would empower youth to challenge the God State.
To survive, the God State must convince people of their needs for instruction, direction and correction.
"Sit down. Keep quiet. Follow."
It's not hyperbole to assert that the God State prefers a docile populace without the self-love and strength to ignore or challenge the God State.
The less worthy one feels the greater the need for the God State.
Adolescents feel so meaningless, unproductive, disconnected and directionless they rely upon the God State for affirmation, reward, criticism, identity, information, guidance, progress, survival, success, evolution and - worst of all - direction.
The God State derives power from followers who need direction.
Historically, the direction-needy don't tend to threaten governments, banks, corporations, employers, churches, education or other dominant entities.
A teenager's involuntary hatred of school demonstrates its inhumanity.
It's not just the content of school that frustrates and dissatisfies. It's school's format:
1. To sit in rows and columns (versus circles)
2. To not converse (versus listening, connecting, being heard and seeking to understand)
School does not encourage kindness nor benefit community. Instead, school fosters competition which results in loneliness.
Loneliness is never a result of kindness.
A lonely child is a sign of an unloving culture.
An unloving culture births bullies, for a phenomenon can only exist in a nurturing environment.
Bullying is nurtured.
The School Bully wouldn't exist outside school. That's why he's called the School Bully.
But it takes a bully to create one. Indeed school is a bully.
How to defend against school? Be a bully.
Bullying processes negative emotions caused by school experience.
The School Bully demands attention and power while experiencing pleasure from causing pain - not much different from government officials.
One bully begets the other.
With all the pleasure a bully gets from causing pain there's nothing lonelier, his only fix more attention - by bullying.
The key word in "school shooter" - overlooked by everyone - is "school."
A school shooting is a response to intolerable suffering and shortage of support.
While loneliness ultimately pulls the trigger, adults point to external influences as if home life causes a kid to kill at school.
A kid doesn't kill people he loves.
A child walks to school alone. Stands at the bus stop alone. Enters class alone. Sits alone in a room full of strangers he's not allowed to talk to, walks home alone, sits in his room alone and thinks alone.
"I can't wait
till I get home
to pass the time
in my room alone."
- Adam's Song, Blink 182
School is neither fulfilling nor enjoyable.
School brings not peace nor togetherness but anxiety.
We pretend that school doesn't cause feelings.
We think kids shouldn't have feelings about school.
School provokes feelings toward authority, systems, self and others.
The unloved child is doomed to feel desolate and rejected - and alone, an identity formed by daily trauma that remains a lifetime.
The God State is largely responsible for the identity of failing students and their subsequent decisions about careers, partners and behaviors. How could a school not take responsibility?
If school were not responsible what would be the point of school? The point of school is to be responsible, to impact life. The more impact school has the more successful and important school feels.
Alas the God State feels unsuccessful and unimportant if it doesn't impact as many as possible, as much as possible.
Parents do not recognize their child's loneliness nor understand its source.
Adults socialized by school to believe in it cannot see its nature. Not only do adults believe in school they pay for it.
Brainwashed to believe that school is good for children, challenging education is sacrilegious.
Teacher-bashing this piece is not; school surveillance this is.
Few see the obvious, that school is culpable for teen anger, substance abuse, violence, bullying, self-harm, depression, suicide, gangs, cults and school shootings.
Astoundingly (!) school believes itself savior by delivering programs to address all of the above.
Astoundingly (!) the guilty are blind to the part they play, then condescendingly preach solutions - to D.A.R.E kids to avoid drugs and violence.
It's mind-boggling how stupid school is.
No teenager chooses depression.
No teenager chooses loneliness.
No teenager chooses much, including identity.
This is psychological warfare.
Over six hours per day, five days per week, ten months per year for thirteen critical developmental years the healthy become unhealthy.
While pieces of school are beneficial many are detrimental.
Astonishingly no studies were ever conducted to prove school's necessity or benefits.
Dangerously (!) no studies assess school's impact on child development, identity or emotions, or explore the correlations between school experience and loneliness, school experience and choices, school experience and identity. . .
Every community/government program is justified by studies, but not school.
School neutralizes the young through daily confinement.
School is Standardized Spiritual Suicide, every desk an electric chair with the State at the switch.
Trace your loneliness back, all the way back to your first day of school when the rule of the state drew you from your parents and released you thirteen years later with an identity shaped by unnatural living.
Parents pressure children into education and conformity, both barriers to self-love and love.
"We just want you to have something," they think. "Something is better than nothing."
Wrong. Something is not better than nothing.
We already have something: each other.
We have the capacity to love but school disrupts that potential.
How parents should express love to children:
1. Resist adopting out to the state
2. Facilitate self-love and sustainability
3. Encourage critical thinking
4. Help process the incompatibility between Natural Self and the World
Aspiring Adults should not relinquish the self to the God State because bowing to government is not the basis of democracy.
Aspiring Adults should love themselves in spite of pressures from school, church, the state, media, peers and the world.
Aspiring Adults who stay true to themselves form sound relationships and - together - resist pressures from dominant systems.
The self-loving ergo self-directed are inherent enemies of the state. A healthy, happy populace challenges the state.
Leaders cannot control one who is or feels equal to them.
Leaders cannot control a connected mass of ethical enemies.
The goal of the God State is not a connected mass of equals. The "'God State" implies inequality.
God State depends upon inequality (between leaders and followers) and disconnection (among followers). Hence connection is never taught.
Aspiring Adults are expected to learn relationship-building on their own.
Key to inner and world peace is healthy relationships comprised of constructive conversation.
Loneliness is the point you need to talk to someone.
Conversing means stimulating, understanding, supporting, laughing and idea sharing - in short, filling needs.
Quite simply:
Loneliness is cured by love gotten through relationships built on conversation. Besides eating, drinking and breathing the skill we need most is conversation. Not communication. Conversation.
A great number don't know how to converse.
If the state preferred a connected populace, conversation would be part of the curriculum and format of education.
Conversation is the connector.
Without conversation, without everything.
Quality conversation invites attention and love.
The more love in our lives the happier. The less love, the lonelier, the more depressed.
Admitting depression is more acceptable than loneliness because the latter implies unlovability.
Depression is considered a disease fixed by mood-enhancers while loneliness is not.
Depression is blamed on chemistry or trauma. Loneliness is not. Loneliness is blamed on the self we abandoned to fit in.
Loneliness induces self-talk that further harms the mind.
Loneliness never rewards itself.
So many elements of culture contribute to loneliness it's a wonder more don't admit it.
In the old days:
1. Communities were tighter. Today, neighbors are anonymous
2. TV, internet and phones didn't exist. Every minute watching television we're not in the real world. We're connecting to false personas. An hour of TV or internet is one less hour of giving or getting love or attention.
Plus: people didn't commute, school's role was diminished, a parent stayed home and multiple generations lived together.
Today, connection with neighbors is down while fence building is up.
What's not wrong with this picture?
Modern living has made loneliness less avoidable.
It is difficult to accept loneliness because it isn't natural.
With all the barriers to happiness we don't need loneliness too.
Happiness comes from love and joy or the ability to cope without them. Which is difficult when lonely.
Indeed, loneliness is prevented by being with people with the capacity to love.
As there are no classes about how to be a friend or partner there are no classes about how to love.
Instead, we're taught to perform in school, be employable, be attractive, follow trends, be religious, achieve money, acquire status, obey laws, conform and be successful.
Dominant systems guilt humans into feeling unworthy - as a means of control.
Education God:
Without control can't run a class. When a student misbehaves or scores poorly the teacher employs guilt to cease behaviors.
Church God:
Without control can't run a congregation. One must need to be saved, forgiven or accepted. To keep people coming the preacher facilitates just enough guilt and just enough relief.
Employer God:
Without control can't run a business. Supervisors guilt staffers if they show up late, don't produce quality or don't work hard enough.
State God:
Without control can't run the people. The inferior can never feel superior. People must feel unworthy to govern themselves. Government fines, imprisons and threatens the non-complicit.
We are guilted into caring more about self-image than ourselves - or others.
Guilt shouldn't come from others when we ignore their manipulation. Guilt should come from within when we abandon ourselves.
We guilt each other then sell solutions to feel better:
If you just get more education. . .
If you just come to church. . .
If you just own/do all the trendy things. . .
Loneliness escalates when - after following the leader or crowd - we feel even lonelier. Not only did we sell out to feel less lonely we became more lonely as a result - and now feel stupid for having bought into impossible solutions created by the same ones who made us feel worthless.
Then we feel guilty for believing in everything but ourselves.
Anybody concerned about your loneliness would tell you to stop striving to be anything but your truest and most ethical self. But what state, church, influencer, workplace or corporation wants that?
Anybody truly concerned about your loneliness would sell you nothing but the concept of self-love and acceptance.
One's self-love and acceptance is another's grief. Self-love makes one stronger - than another.
People say, "Love yourself first then others will." This is false. One must be loved to love oneself.
When loved by parents we love ourselves.
No child choses to feel unloved.
Instead of loving the weak, the strong guilt them.
We're socialized to use, influence and win.
Through the ages we've been taught to believe more in deities than ourselves.
Implored to admire spiritual heroes we're hardly taught to emulate them.
Certainly Jesus is about love and tolerance but also about questioning. Jesus rejected oppressive traditions and ideologies, and spoke truth to power - actions children are discouraged from doing.
Jesus did not respect hypocrites and for that he suffered and died at their hands.
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John reveal Jesus' intolerance for corruption but that's not how Christianity presents Jesus.
Because Jesus loved himself - and people - he did not feel guilt for breaking oppressive rules set by the elite.
Christianity's misrepresentation of Jesus has devastated centuries of minds while failing to inspire revolution.
Who is to blame for a person feeling guilty in the eyes of God? Certainly not the person.
When we self-analyze through the scope of an angry God we loathe ourselves to the point of abandonment.
Failing to be neither perfect nor oneself we descend into greater loneliness.
Self-haters resort to being alone to avoid the failure of being unlikable.
To avoid feeling ignored the lonely reject; paranoid that nobody can be trusted they stop reaching out, preferring to remain lonely.
Sometimes the lonely try too hard then feel frustrated when not accepted. Then blame themselves for trying to impress the contemptible.
Loneliness is a vicious cycle.
I am alone. I want to be with people but cannot be my truest and most ethical self. When I can't be myself they judge me. When they judge me I resent them. Even more for judging the person I'm being versus the person I am. I resent them more for not trying to help, in fact for taking advantage.
In pain I cause pain. I reject and insult. I push people away then blame them for not understanding. I justify my distance yet condemn myself for not being the person God created; and for pushing people away; for choosing loneliness.
The extremes:
1. Light loneliness of self-loving people who find it hard to connect
2. Heavy inescapable loneliness of the unworthy who cannot connect
There will never be a day that humans don't need attention.
Attention online is not as strong as in the room.
No amount of distraction cures loneliness as loneliness is always waiting to happen.
Nobody cares if you feel lonely. If so, you wouldn't feel lonely. People would help you feel less lonely.
"Life is about survival," some say, "and if loneliness must be to survive then so be it."
But to what lengths and at what cost? One can rationalize that loneliness is the price of lifestyle. But what good is lifestyle if it's both product and perpetuator of loneliness?
We work long hours to afford luxuries needed to escape the loneliness that comes from working long hours.
Loneliness is part of the reason we delay retirement.
"What else would I do?" we say.
The lonely feel unloved, unheard and unknown.
We do not live to be unloved, unheard and unknown.
We live to love and be loved, grow and stimulate growth, and be known.
We have names, personalities, gifts and time. So we are here to be loved, heard, felt and known.
Without love and attention we are less happy.
The less happy, the less loving - for an unloved person cannot love.
No love gets no love.
And no love to share invites loneliness and induces pain - or at least fails to assuage pain.
Pain creates pain.
Victims lose love.
Loss of love is love lost.
The less loving, the less loved, the lonelier - the further from peace.
We strive to impress and attract - in essence, to not be lonely.
Either we attract others to who we aren't or we don't attract others to who we are. Either way we end up lonely.
The superficial attract the superficial. The real attract judgement.
As a result people get their identity at work as directed. It's easier to be directed. It's safer. A name tag, uniform, duties and standard operating procedures comprise a defined role we adopt with ease.
Socialized by school to rely on external sources for identity so many derive theirs through their title and possessions - drifting further from authenticity.
Authenticity can pull a person either way. To loneliness or love.
The authentic is the minority.
The more authentic, the less like the masses.
The less like masses, the less accepted and included.
The lonelier.
Conformists live to be accepted by people who don't really love them.
We take fake over loneliness.
In fact, we'll take anything over loneliness.
Eventually relationships among the non-authentic disintegrate and lead to the loneliness they'd been avoiding by being superficial.
Which is how marriages end.
Couples lose love of and from their spouse.
What precedes divorce is the loss of love toward one's greatest source and object of love.
Loving is sacred.
Being loved is sacred.
To lose the sacred is to be lonely.
Fears of loneliness and neglect solved with one act: marriage. Marriage can be the cure but not for long or all.
We must love ourselves in the presence of love.
More important than attraction to others is being ourselves in their presence - a lifetime.
That's love. But hard to find or keep. Because humans are not always attractive - especially when superficial.
It's difficult to love ourselves at our worst; to find someone else to do so near impossible.
Ironically, to prevent loneliness: we abandon ourselves to appear attractive.
To prevent loneliness we cover up our truest selves - which divides us against ourselves. We are spirits divided by mind.
Alas the true self - our actual self, essence, personality, character - is oppressed.
Which can't help but trigger depression.
The less sources of joy and love, the sadder.
The lonelier, the more prone to depression, to believing that life is neither worth living nor loving.
Loneliness and depression are neither punishments from God nor bad karma - but involuntary reactions to the state of our world.
Loneliness may result from being a certain way but it's never punishment.
Hunger is natural. Struggle is natural. Loneliness isn't.
Speech needs speech.
Love needs love.
Attention needs attention.
Joy needs joy.
Challenges, traumas, problems and faults need support, from others.
It's a travesty that anyone should be lonely for any amount of time much less millions much of the time.
The very complaint about loneliness implies the wish for it to disappear.
Had the Great Spirit intended us to be lonely - i.e. if loneliness was our primary aspiration - we wouldn't need love or help.
Not as serious as hunger, loneliness packs its share of pain causing suicide and overdose.
Knowing people starve we feel even worse about petty loneliness.
In the emotional hunger of loneliness we wonder if relief will ever come or if we should finally accept or end it.
It is unethical to suppress ourselves.
While we strive for approval our true self resents its unethical rejection.
Naturally there are times we must adjust for the situation but this isn't self-suppression. Self-suppression comes when we run counter to our intuition and inclinations toward decency.
Loneliness occurs when we hate not who we are - but who we've become and why.
When we say, do or believe what others want we stray from our truest self.
The most publicly accepted person could feel lonely by how they got there and who they have to be to stay there.
What would your Creator want of you?
To abandon or embrace yourself?
All human history: the minority control the majority - at gunpoint.
Since the beginning: ten leaders control ten thousand.
Heroes, radicals, revolutionaries, visionaries = one in a million.
One kid in thirty challenges the teacher.
1 mayor, 1 million people.
1 head of state, 350 million people.
1 owner, 1000 workers.
1 celebrity, 10,000 admirers.
1 influencer, 100,000 followers.
The less worthy we feel, the more desperate we are to belong, ethics be damned.
That's it.
Loneliness appears identifiable and reparable but it's neither. It's deeply embedded into civilization.
The United Kingdom has a Minister of Loneliness now.
The State that causes the epidemic creates a department to provide the vaccine.
This is tragic.
And why I created PeopleSharing: to keep the problem and solution in the hands of humans.
www.pplsharing.com isn't a cure-all and does little to remove the prime movers yet a modest attempt to provide alternatives to loneliness.
School, church, government, media and corporations won't change and don't care - in fact depend upon loneliness for their survival.
Alas, like many problems, this can only be solved by the people.
