The internet should have emerged as something that would have the capacity to diminish the constant loneliness in human beings. But on the contrary, it displays this loneliness to the world and helps create even more superficial bonds. People talking to themselves on Twitter, chatting on sites with strangers, creating relationships that can be ended with a click.
In the age of Skype, Facebook, Twitter, the internet presents itself as a tool where friends and relationships can be made regardless of where people live. We can find people similar to us who live on the other side of the world and become friends with them. But what seems to happen is that we end up distancing ourselves from those around us, valuing screen‑to‑screen contact more than face‑to‑face contact.
But is this destroying relationships or just creating a new kind of relationship that fits the busy life of big cities, where we do not have time left to go out and see friends in person? In a world of weakening relationships or the emergence of a new kind, one word, one feeling, one expression comes into focus: loneliness. According to the Houaiss dictionary of 2004, loneliness is a feminine word that means the “state of someone who is or feels alone”.
No subject is just one thing or the other, the famous inner‑direction and other‑direction, where the human being would not be defined totally by the environment nor totally by their subjectivity, as David Riesman cites in his book “The Lonely Crowd”. Thus, this is also how I think about loneliness: no one is totally solitary or has never felt loneliness, everyone has a bit of both. The difference lies in the duration and in the depth with which each person feels it.
Many claim that loneliness is something of this new era, but we can say that it is not. First, it arises with individualism. In Greek society, according to Aristotle, individualism still did not exist, because value lay in the whole, in the city. It is in the Hellenistic Greek schools, in the form of the extra‑world individual, that this concept of individualism arises. By renouncing social values, the individual begins to think of themselves as a unique being and their individual will becomes the source of their dignity and integrity.
“Hellenistic thought shifts the principle of the individual’s fulfilment from the Greek ethical‑political world to the extra‑worldly ideal, which emphasises the individuality of man as a subject outside the world, as a universal individual through the law of universal nature or of reason.” (COSTA, 1997)
And in this way, it is in the bosom of this holistic society that Christianity finds space and leads the individual into a transcendental and personal relationship. Thus, Christianity inaugurates an individualism of a universal transcendental nature, totally dissociated from socio‑political reality.
With Saint Augustine, these concepts become even more radical: he suggests an extra‑worldly, subjectivist individualism of a singular nature, that is, human freedom is first experienced in one’s relationship with oneself, and only afterwards does the social sphere gain importance. For Saint Augustine, individual freedom would be a gift from God, and the principle of this freedom would be free will.
Now that we have a better understanding of the emergence of individualism, we can go back to analysing loneliness further, continuing to find examples of it in art, books, films, etc. There in Madame Bovary, the French classic by Gustave Flaubert, loneliness is shown in earlier times. “To escape the monotony of marriage and provincial life, the dreamy Emma Bovary loses herself in idealisms, lovers and debts. In narrating the decline of this woman, and also of bourgeois society, Flaubert offers us the modern novel par excellence.” (SKOOB).
Madame Bovary shows how her bonds are superficial, for example in her relationship with her child. She also uses several methods to try to make up for the loneliness that surrounds her, such as having several lovers and shopping until she is in debt. Even though she is always accompanied, she feels alone. And at the end of her life, she dies alone, without leaving any real mark on those who lived around her.
“For any society to function well, its members must acquire the kind of character that makes them want to act in the way they have to act as members of society or of a particular class within it. (…) External force is replaced by internal compulsion and by the particular kind of human energy that is channelled into character traits.” (RIESMAN)
This recalls how contemporary society shapes its individuals to appear “self‑sufficient”.
In modernity, saying that you need company is seen as a lack of self‑love. After all, those who are happy with themselves do not need others. And the person refuses to admit that they need someone, they really want to appear independent. But loneliness resides there and tends, in modernity, to be increasingly camouflaged and covered over with superficial things.
In times of networks, human beings want to turn everything into a network. To be able to connect and disconnect just as they do with the computer. It is undeniable that technology has changed human beings, and it seems that loneliness has always been here and now is seen as something good, perhaps a choice. With the way we think about relationships, we want to be able to control them.
Relationships are something that limit. Without a partner, the modern being is open all the time to new things, to the novelty of modernity. With a partner, they are limited. But deep down, human beings know they need contact, but are reluctant to admit it; after all, they want to appear independent and happy alone in the generation of self‑sufficiency. Even if self‑help books that help to win over the beloved or things like that always become bestsellers.
And dogs, and dog‑maniacs, also tend to replace real relationships with “trainable” animals…
Replacing the lack of contact by adopting trainable animals is also another practice that highlights this loneliness. After all, a cat or a dog fulfils the need for contact and does not bring the problems that relationships with people do.
But human beings want this agility of the network in real life; it is no coincidence that this generation is mostly about “hooking up without getting attached”. One‑night or one‑hour relationships show independence. Men and women want the pleasure of company without the prison of the sacrifices of relationships. They live the network in real life, totally disposable relationships.
“They want to end relationships in real life with a click, just as they can end them on the internet.”
The consumerism of the present also applies to relationships. We live in a consumer society, victimised by capitalism. One of the themes of this society is circulation, not the accumulation of goods. Relationships work the same way, the pleasure lies in something new.
“Consumer life favours lightness and speed. And also the novelty and variety that they promote and facilitate. It is turnover, not the volume of purchases, that measures success in the life of homo consumens.” (Bauman)
The drama of weight and lightness developed by Milan Kundera in his book published in 1984, “Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí” (in Brazilian translation, A Insustentável Leveza do Ser) can also be applied to relationships.
“The heaviest of burdens crushes us, makes us bend under it, crushes us against the ground. In love poetry of all centuries, however, the woman wishes to receive the weight of the man’s body. The heaviest burden is therefore at the same time the image of the most intense fulfilment of life. The heavier the burden, the closer our life is to the earth, and the more real and truthful it is. On the other hand, the total absence of burden makes man soar, distance himself from the earth, from the earthly being, makes him become semi‑real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.” (KUNDERA, A Insustentável Leveza do Ser)
Society has preferred the lightness of superficial and disposable relationships. But this kind of relationship does not sustain; with it, life always seems incomplete. People also flee from heavy relationships, because weight crushes, limits. And the drama of weight and lightness becomes the drama of contemporary human beings.
People have “fragile, flexible and floating” relationships because they do not want to bind themselves to others, they want to feel free, so as not to miss a good opportunity to relate.
Relationships are ambiguous blessings, as Bauman already said.
“The hypothesis of an ‘undesirable but impossible‑to‑break’ relationship is what makes ‘relating’ the most treacherous thing one can imagine” (BAUMAN).
The idea that what is to come will be better than what is happening is what drives relationships. With each experience, one gains more knowledge to make the next relationship even better. The human being who lives always in search of something perfect, with the motto of “always try one more time”.
“And the fascination with the search for a rose without thorns is never far away, and is always hard to resist” (BAUMAN).
Part of society says it is different, says it does not fit into these fragile relationships. In truth, they do fit, but they were lucky enough to find their perfect one faster than most.
However, being lucky enough to find someone who fits their standards for relating does not prevent them from having moments of loneliness. After all, loneliness is a natural feeling of human beings. Contact with someone only makes this loneliness bearable, even something forgotten at times. But it is enough to watch a good film that portrays the theme or listen to that sad song and you still identify with it. Loneliness is still there, just camouflaged.
And it comes to the fore when we tweet or post selfies on Facebook.
Small signs that we need contact, we frequently need contact. A book, a purchase, something that fills the existential void when the loved one is not there to fill it.
Relationships that completely fill the void are a utopia of society and, no matter how much we relate, as in the case of Madame Bovary in Flaubert’s novel, in the end we die alone.
The possibilities of the virtual world are also traps for lonely hearts and beings with an evident existential void. We dive into the web and spend hours talking to people we only know by nickname, people who may be just a sham, a constructed being. But since there is the possibility of relating as “invented” beings, it is also possible for us to hide behind these nicknames and be whoever we want.
There, you no longer need to be the devoted wife or the lonely bachelor.
There, it is possible to be the “needy‑married‑woman” or the “40‑year‑old‑bachelor”. Invented personalities for a liquid world, where liquid relationships happen. Liquid relationships that, in those moments, manage to fill the void.
Leave a Reply