The cost of individualism

After reading the first few pages of an essay by Kolontai (who she is is not important at the moment), I began to think about the reference she makes to the inevitable sense of loneliness that one feels in modern society. This loneliness was felt by people of her time and is still felt now. You've heard her idea before; something along the lines of how someone can feel lonely even surrounded by good friends, in a room full of people, and living in a crowded, booming metropolis. (I'm not talking about generalized depression per se.)

One of the most recent incarnations of this notion of loneliness tinged with despondence that lies at the heart of things, beneath the layers of constructs influenced by social conventions and personal convictions, and a dose of urban ennui (stop being so jaded you spoiled brat...I'm only half-kidding), was Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation." (I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and recommend it, but don't take my word for it. Listen to the critics and the Academy who've also sung its praises.)

Where does this subtle but weighty feeling come from? (Admittedly, perhaps part of it is the unsuccessful search for the "meaning to life.") One answer came indirectly from that essay. It was startlingly obvious, yet I feel as though I never looked at the situation in such a way. Why are people mystified by this sense of loneliness while they simultaneously emphasize the individual in every way?

Of course that cold sense of loneliness is an implied price to be paid for the desire to be individualized, distinguishing yourself from others and becoming self absorbed in ego. There's no mystery to it. It comes from the pervasive ideology of the individual over the collective, which is especially pertinent to westerners. Perhaps in realization of this we should not be so unequivocal and uncompromising about the individual and instead encourage more of a sense of community and compassion as people who are sharing time during a common period of the human experience.

We should avoid both extremes; absolute isolation and complete monotony and dilution of the individual in the populous, treated as nothing but a single entity. Our efforts should lie somewhere in between where there is a healthy sense of self coupled with a sense of context in society that is practiced, not simply thought of abstractly but manifest in some effort to encourage a sense of togetherness, be it community service, participating in a social cause (minus the condescension that a person who is better off tends to carry with them), or simply bringing people together.

While this runs the risk of sounding incredibly idealistic and completely unfeasible, it is definitely possible and it is conceivably the people who manage to strike a balance between the two that struggle the least against a perceived inner void.

To expect to fill this perceived void with one person places a lot of pressure on the other person. This is perhaps why people are almost always (okay, we'll say a lot of the time, for the sake of optimism) ultimately disappointed and left unfulfilled by their intimate, monogamous relationships; partners (for the lack of a better word) place an unrealistic or at least terribly hard task to fulfill on each other's shoulders. It is oftentimes too unwieldy a weight to place on one person: "here, take all my love, just don't disappoint me, ever mkay?"

While obviously during people's lives they involve themselves in a spectrum of relationships that reward them in different ways, both emotionally and physically, they will sometimes choose to devote all of themselves to a single relationship, neglecting others, further promoting a sense of individualism. If this relationship fails, for the individualistically minded person this is a crisis and a moral failure. Had there been less of a sense of the relationship being all-or-none, and less deviation from the wider circle of relationships that are fulfilling in different capacities, perhaps the unrealistic expectation from one relationship that came to disappoint would not have been there in the first place.

While I'm not necessarily advocating free love and orgies abound, there may be merit in being less slavish to arbitrary social conventions of Christian monogamy (that have propagated themselves into other religious and physical territory and rendered beyond recognition in some ways, but the influence remains) that extend the exclusivist and often lonely path of individualism..

While obviously I'm not advocating the idea that we drown every individual in a sea of collective social interests, whatever those may be, perhaps there is some reason in the seemingly extremist rhymes of people in history. We can't be too quick to judge the mentalities of people before us, because ultimately in the context of their time there was enough self-righteousness to convince them that what they believed was incontrovertible truism.

We can't assume an arrogant position wherein we believe we are supremely enlightened and have surpassed all those before and those who shall come to pass. The next generations would just as quickly look back on us and snicker as they say to themselves "What were they thinking?"

Just think about that, a time when many of the ideas we believe are absolute maxims will evoke the same emotions in the next generation that you get when you see yourself in an old photo, where maybe a trend or two found themselves glaring through the picture, making their transience all the more obvious. Beware cocky "progressive" thinkers of the 21st century, your creed may be worth a grand sum of nil tomorrow, so keep your mind open today.

(This trite message bears repeating; so if it has made you on some level, however superficial, think about your own perspectives and maybe sobered you out of your delusions of grandeur, then perhaps you can save me the chastisement and use the energy you would've wasted on it to help someone out. Thanks.)

Lloyd Chebaclo is a sophomore and has not yet declared a major.