It's not always easy to be on the outside of consensus reality. Our entire society, after all, has been built upon consensus โ upon a shared agreement about what specific mouth sounds mean, on what money is and how it works, on how we should all behave toward each other in public spaces, and on what normal human behavior in general looks like.
We all share a learned agreement that we picked up from our culture in early childhood that it's normal and acceptable to stand around with your hands in your pockets and babble about the weather to anyone who gets too close to you, for example, whereas it would be considered weird and disruptive to stand around slathered in Cheese Whiz shrieking the word "Poop!" But we could just as easily reverse that consensus on behavioral norms tomorrow, and as long as we all agreed to it we could do it without missing a beat.
In exactly the same way, there exists a general consensus about what's going on in our world at the moment. There's a general consensus that we live in the kind of society we were taught about in school: a free and democratic nation which maybe did some not so great things in the past, but is now a supremely virtuous beacon of light on this earth that kicked Hitler's ass and then surfed into the present day on a wave of truth and sensible fiscal policy. There's a general consensus that the news reporters on our screens paint us a more or less accurate picture of world affairs, that there are a lot of Bad Guys in our world with whom the Good Guys in our government are fighting, and that most of our nation's problems are caused by the people in the other political party.
This consensus is grounded in delusion. It is insanity.
In reality, of course, we live in a world where our understanding of the world is constantly being deceitfully manipulated by oligarchic media propaganda and the utterances of oligarch-owned politicians. Where elections are mostly just a live action role-playing game which allows the rabble to pretend that they have some degree of influence over the things that their government does. Where our government routinely forms alliances with the worst Bad Guys on the planet while manufacturing consent to topple governments whose downfall would be utterly disastrous. Where our nation's problems have almost nothing to do with half its population disagreeing with our personal ideology, and practically everything to do with the loose international alliance of plutocrats and government agencies who actually run things behind the facade of the comings and goings of official elected governments.
Sanity means seeing this as it is, rather than subscribing to the mass delusion of the consensus worldview. Which, as you probably already know, can make it difficult to relate to others in some ways. Conversations about politics often either get heated very rapidly when you challenge a tightly-held orthodoxy or dead-end in awkwardness. Friendships can end. Family relationships can be ruined. Collective narratives about you can be woven and circulated within your social circle which have nothing to do with how you actually see things.
And that's just if you talk about your worldview. If you keep your views to yourself, as many do, that's just another kind of alienation. It's to stand outside of public political discourse completely, unable to participate out of fear of the backlash you'd receive from your friends, loved ones and acquaintances if you started talking about Trump as a symptom rather than the disease, or said that Corbyn is being targeted by a transparently bogus smear campaign, or said that Russia's interventions in world affairs are clearly dwarfed by America's by orders of magnitude. The specific heresies will vary depending upon the social circle, but the inability to voice them necessarily comes with the same sense of alienation.
But the alternative to that sense of alienation is to live a lie. It's to climb back inside the distorted funhouse-mirror reality tunnel of the establishment narrative control matrix and plug yourself back into the same delusions that everyone else is living. Most of us couldn't even do that if we wanted to. Even if we could do the intense mental gymnastics we'd have to perform just to avoid the discomfort of cognitive dissonance would make it not worth the effort.
We close ourselves off from a full sense of participation in our society when we depart from the consensus worldview, but in closing that door we open so many more. Because, as it turns out, all that effort that people pour into staying on the same wavelength as everyone else closes them off to a vast spectrum of potential human experience. The allure of the mass delusion is that you need to devote yourself to being plugged into it in order to achieve what the mass delusion defines as "success", but in so doing you lose the ability to leap down psychological and experiential rabbit holes of consciousness that those still jacked into the matrix can't even imagine. And in so doing you open up the possibility for an immensely more fulfilling and enjoyable life that has really deeply explored the more intimate questions about what it means to be a human being on this planet.
Jiddu Krishnamurti once said, "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." And a profoundly sick society is indeed what we have here. The alienation which we experience is an alienation from something that isn't worth belonging to anyway.
I began this essay with a quote from one of the celebrated thought leaders of the psychedelic movement, and I think the question of what we can do to cope with the alienation McKenna spoke of is best answered by ending with a quote from another such leader, Timothy Leary:
Admit it. You aren't like them. You're not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the 'normal people' as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like 'Have a nice day' and 'Weather's awful today, eh?', you yearn inside to say forbidden things like 'Tell me something that makes you cry' or 'What do you think deja vu is for?'. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others.~
Find the others.
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Reader Comments
Although I detest 'the proles', as a group. like Winston, only their somehow waking up will save society as we have known it.
"In a time of universal deceit โ telling the truth is a revolutionary act." Supposedly by Orwell, but see this fair discussion (and, as far as I'm aware, 'No. It's not 'snopes.lies' etc.) [Link]
R.C.
I don't suffer from alienation.
Of course, there are many different "theories" of alienation. There's dope fiend Terence Mckenna alienation. There's fiend Karl Marx alienation, etc.
I would say that alienation is just the net result of the mind spirit complex not fully engaging with the meat body complex and its surroundings.
And YES... right again!
It relates somewhat to that Carlos Castaneda stuff....
โSelf-pity is the real enemy and the source of manโs misery. Without a degree of pity for himself, man could not afford to be as self-important as he is. However, once the force of self-importance is engaged, it develops its own momentum. And it is this seemingly independent nature of self-importance which gives it its fake sense of worth.โ
Also....
"We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.โ
The woman who writes these articles doesn't know what she's talking about.
and agree with the herd. It is the rare "mad" one (alien) who is brave enough to cling to his own way of being and living. Groupthinkers cannot fathom the dangerous madness of a loner going against the flow. Non conformists cannot fathom how clinging to dogma and habit can be an interesting and exciting life. Each has its benefits and drawbacks. As long as we are happy with our choice, nothing else matters.Truth can be defined solely as concordance with the reality, whereby it allows no presumption and, all the more, no belief, because presumption and belief are based only in assumption, uncertainty and unknowledge as well as in conjectures and convictions, but never in an absolutely given certainty. However this means that an unwavering confidence can be put solely in the truth, which comes forth from the provable reality and is likewise provable, but never in a presumption or in a belief, which are never provable.
They likewise fear that they're losing their bully pulpit's narrative to follks who speak of the logic of reason and rationality helping each as best one can discern truth. For everyone who becomes a SOTType, is one less person they can control.
RC
Maybe I just got lost in their syllable endless words and they were talking about theoretical physics instead of alternate states of mind and various social behaviors.
You know what I mean jelly bean.
Yikes what a silly article, if we could put the McKenna reality together the alcohol industry would go broke or maybe they would just switch their focus to the stronger chemicals.
Various versions of alienation....[Link]
Now listen carefully there are two basic types of alienation .
One is you choose it for yourself and the other is being excluded because they make it clear in no uncertain terms that they do not want you being a part of their group.
I have experienced both categories
We can discuss the finer points of the definition of "to alienate" or "experiencing alienation" but in my view it means you are not particularly suitable to any given situation.
If you are suggesting that I have chosen most cases for myself that is true, because I have come to realize I don't fit into the social norm and I have not nor ever will capitulate to a society that is so blind and ignorant as we have here in America.
So now do you think I would fit into the same crowd as yours that would try to convince me maybe I should compromise if only just a little bit so that further on down the road I can compromise a little more and all I have to do is stop torturing myself and listen to wiser people than me and just go along.
And shebang I'm no longer alienated.
It is your philosophy that I am so diametrically opposed to so in that case I am quite alright with feeling or being alienated.
It has been my experience spread out over 64 years that there are more people with your type of philosophy i.e. the kid is alienated and doing alright.
I am just thankful I will never have to fill out another job application or make up a resume.
God I hated how they forced you to include having to have 2 or 3 or even 4 non families references, in all my life I have had one true friend that I would let speak for me.
All the rest would say is (Yes I would hire him back but I think he feels used up.)
So it was and so I moved along.
I'd bet that where/when you grew up, folks who were 'intellectually? socially? analytically*? 'different' - would not be systemically ostracized by groups of their โpeersโ for simply thinking differently / acting differently; or at least your society had a far more exacting standard before groups would act that way towards individualistic eccentric sorts. (Iโm sure youโll correct or update me as appropriate.)
Meanwhile, over here - and I bet my points apply to KO55, too- โeccentricsโ were 'called out' for purely 'belief' matters, or 'eccentricities' far more quickly and severely than they were in your then almost certainly more intellectual and better educated 'milieu'. Also, those who werenโt part of the Leave it to Beaver lifestyle, could expect grief early and often, until they were psychologically beaten into - or out of - the pack. (E.g., folks over here who didn't believe in the JFK official story? They never spoke about it.)
Said another way,, during the time KO55 and I were growing up in the USA, our country's median 'mentality' was far more closed-minded, and stated bluntly, we were then, and are still, far closer to burning witches than you guys are.
R.C.
*Example. I've always been that way, and in my earlier teens I would get teased with the phrase 'Analyze it, R.C.', although I refused to let it bother me because:
1) I was uniformly proven right on whatever analysis that Iโd been teased about, and โI told you soโ almost became a mantra; and,
2) If friends gave me unfair grief of the immature type tried by 4th graders (and teen assholes) to psychologically hurt others, I would, sooner rather than later, and instantly, after only ONE warning, bitch-slap HARD, folks who would unfairly attempt to psych/ fuck with me a second time. (As Iโd been competing in racquetball since the age of 15, and had a wickedly fast serve, I more than twice was forced to deliver a bitch slap to someoneโs cheek (which would always yield a (mild) black eye) and me trying to kill the guy, ... so that kept groups of supposed friends from getting too uppity.)
RC
I once had a teacher tell my mom that I was the type that become president of the United States but even that teacher as kind as she was to me did not really know me because even in elementary school I knew to be president of the United States you had to fit in.
I would only become physical if they got physical and if that was the case they got more than bitch slapped.
I went to the Marine Corps laughed my way through boot camp and thoroughly enjoyed watching the fools get their pea brains scrambled with basic mind control techniques.
"Turn on, tune in, drop out"
Is Jean-Paul Sartre's....
"Hell is other people".
That is why folk who grew up within the cultural stream that followed, and who have inherited certain ideas about spirituality, mysticism and existential reality because of it (this would include the author of this article, the majority of SOTT readers, plus their anorexic, transgender, generation snowflake, vegan grandchildren) cannot get their heads around Fourth Way concepts like 'self-remembering', because what has been ingrained in them is this kind of self-eviscerating alienation, which is the direct opposite of self-remembering, and they wear it like a badge of honour.
Not me. I grew up in very different political system and climate (call it an authoritarian dictatorship). I see this as a blessing, especially the fact that I witnessed the decay and dissolution of said system firsthand. In a matter of days. And many other things my pampered and naive Western friends would not ever believe.
My number one ideology is that I really don't like people . I tell this to people all the time. Some are amused. Some are shocked. Some agree. Some think it is directed at them and it probably is.
There are people I adore. But the vast majority can keep staring at the shadows of Pluto's cave, and leave me be.
Say it plain faced to someone sometime.
I really don't like people.