Loneliness arises when thought is divorced from reality, when the common world has been replaced by the tyranny of coercive logical demands. Which is why when Arendt talks about loneliness, she is not just talking about the affective experience of loneliness: she is talking about a way of thinking. Instead, experience conforms to ideology in thinking. And once ideological thinking has taken root, experience and reality no longer bear upon thinking. Ideological thinking turns us away from the world of lived experience, starves the imagination, denies plurality, and destroys the space between men that allows them to relate to one another in meaningful ways. In loneliness, one is unable to carry on a conversation with oneself, because one’s ability to think is compromised. Organised loneliness, bred from ideology, leads to tyrannical thought, and destroys a person’s ability to distinguish between fact and fiction – to make judgments. From Aeon: “‘What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century.’ – From The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) by Hannah Arendt
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |