I once thought that I was alone in my difficulties, they are not many but they often debilitate me. Then I watched what is maybe the best TV show ever made IMHO, Afterlife, that show with Ricky Gervais. I have some issue it’s true, I’m not so good socially and I am a slave to my inner fears. What I have realized from watching Afterlife, I also realized this previously also when I wrote about my pal D*** who has his own troubles, is that everyone is cracking mentally, I mean literally everyone (everyone I know anyway). Life seems to be kicking ass at the moment and I wish to know why?
Is it societal, are we overburdened and under-thanked for everything that we do? Is it social media and the false perspective of everyone else’s happiness while we deal with issues that they seem not to have? Is it finances, upbringing, sociological, is it psychological (of course it is, but I mean influenced), is it historical, is it of the first world etc. In this piece I’m going to speculate….
I can’t think of anything worse than being somebody to absolutely nobody, the world gets smaller and people are more accessible on mass than ever before, but we are isolated by being aware of how little influence we realise we have. What I mean is that we know now the vast scale of the amount of others that are not interested in us. Imagine yourself in a small Welsh village in 1947, you probably know everyone in the village from the grocer to the school teacher, you know virtually nobody from the outside world and they have no way of knowing you either, and you’re fine about it because there is no expectation of a relationship, and no great feeling of something being missing without it. Imagine you add the internet into that mix and let’s say you have a strong point to make, the expectation that all can listen, but the realisation that all don’t, a choice on their part because you are available, can feel like an insignificance of sorts.
I watched a motivational speaker once explain why black Americans from impoverished circumstances joined gangs, his theory was that it made them a somebody to some people, it validated them. I read a book on mindfulness where the writer urged the cultivation of the introspected self to such a degree that the performer of his techniques would need no external validation. I’ve heard people say “I don’t care what people think”, then observe social norms and stay within the rules. My favourite writer/speaker was Christopher Hitchens, he seemed to revel in being read/heard and disagreed with.
Who is correct? The corona virus caused us to be more alone than ever before, less relevant than we’ve ever been in both a personal and professional sense. Herbert Marcuse said we know ourselves in our purchases and transactions, but that has changed now also Herbert, now our person, our “self” is changed by events as new survival based motivations arise. What do we have to do to become significant to some again, and to give less than a damn that we are not significant to the masses?
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