[NightShadows]

I really think it's really and it's pretty obvious to me. It honestly bothers me all of the time, and it makes me feel like there's wedge between me and the rest of other world, a big cold dark empty space that shouldn't be there. All of the things that seem to matter the most are denied, and more or less made inappropriate or 'off-limits' in some manner or another by our society and instead quite often we simply cast away our souls and become more or less "human doing's" or some such thing, wherein the main objective is to always obey or follow authority; an authority much removed from our own lives any anything remotely meaningful to our own selves.

It just drives me nuts, I see it probably all of the time. There's so many things I'd like to talk about or connect with others and even do in the world, but yet it's all denied, it's all as if it's some strange shadow world. I come across it all of the time and it's always so stark and obvious to me and yet, quite often it's simply just "the way things are" "reality" for most others and it's the most indomitable thing to witness and see. I mean, what do you think? what do we think? who are you, what are we even doing?

It's just might as well be strictly a religious thing, or at least it's certainly become something to that nature. It's as if human beings have all been crucified and become prisoners of their own advent desires.


I struggle so much with acting, with pretending. What does anyone else want when they themselves don't even know? You're supposed to stand around in a world made drab, grey, and as coldly removed from our own innate selves as humanly possible and yet we stand around with arms outstretched in our collard, grey polyester suits and waive our hands around, as if just continually directing the traffic in which ever direction to go, and that's simply the world. Cynical, detached, perfectly planned and decided. It just reminds me of that one John Lennon song for some reason "look at me me, what am I supposed to do, what can I do for you? here I am, what can I do for you? what can I do for you?"

[MistyTiger]

Do you need a hug?

Who makes you feel alienated?

Personally, I have often felt like an outcast. Even in a crowd of people I can feel so alone.

I get through the feelings of aloneness by telling myself that I do not need people to feel like a complete person. I just need to know where I am going and how I want to live.

The times I am around people I know, I do not really participate in the conversation. It may be that the topic is shallow or it is about a topic that I know little of like Superbowl wins or professional baseball.

There is a benefit to being alone. I can focus better on my tasks. I can filter out the noise and identify who I am. I have a pretty good idea of my strengths and weaknesses.

[Eamonor]

It certainly drove me nuts, I was actually in a pretty bad spot for a while, although not nearly as bad as some people get. My advice would be to find out who you are and to whom you belong. I know that sounds like philosophical mumbo-jumbo but that definitely worked for me, there is no substitute for God!

[Joka]

I honestly feel like I have nothing in common with 98.9% of other human beings. I try not to be judgemental and try my best to get along with others but such is my brutal honesty. I seem to get along with people more online than actual real life offline.

Beyond my fiancé I am just your typical loner or shut in.

[Hong Wu]

Everything you see on TV, advertisements, music videos and 90% of what you can read in print is fake, and most of society is raised primarily by the system, so they have no substance to them besides a sometimes suppressed mania and trembling fear of reality. Alienation is normal these days. Everyone can feel that the system is designed to bring a tiny poison into their lives through every extant avenue, but none of the poisons are big enough by themselves to trigger a reaction, we know this is wrong because the little poisons add up over time but who will risk being called a nazi?

[The Immortal Goon]

Since this is in the communist section, I presume that Nightshadows is speaking about the Marxist conception of alienation.

This is a cute little piece, but you'll note that it speaks in the past tense and puts qualifications upon everything that Marx doesn't—so that it implies that capitalism has solved the issue.

But it hasn't.

Let us start with, work is lame. That's why we get paid for it. But it's not actually something we'd volunteer to do, for the most part, it's something that we must do in order to live. We like to think that it's something of a choice, you could just die, but it's not really much of a choice. You must work. And in doing this, you're participating in something alien to you for an abstract reward.

He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification.

...As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions – eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc.; and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal.

Certainly eating, drinking, procreating, etc., are also genuinely human functions. But taken abstractly, separated from the sphere of all other human activity and turned into sole and ultimate ends, they are animal functions.

Perhaps more interestingly, what I've seen in my lifetime, in that if nothing else it reflects a bit of what Marx himself witnessed.

This is how in the 1960s they thought that the world in 1999 would look:

I was working, had been working, and continued to work in 1999. They were somewhat correct in how the computer was going to be able to calculate things, make work easier, etc. And the premise of the film was that these things would make life easier, which would allow more time for the worker, more leisure, and nicer things.

This did not happen. In fact, we work more and longer hours now that we have computers.

This is the same thing that occurred in the Industrial Revolution. Suddenly one man could produce a thousand times more than he could before—and yet people had to work longer hours.

How could a labour saving device lead to more time working?

The answer, in the least abstract, is that capitalism will simply demand more of its workers in order to stay ahead of the competitor. It is not in the interests of the forces controlling the market to just start giving time off when needed. And if there's too much time, it's laying everyone off until they can find jobs servicing the increased productivity of their machines. Until this too is automated and the job becomes more scarce while paradoxically more and more stuff more efficiently. The result of this, ultimately, is that:

The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity – and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general.

This is one way that the objects, the things that we create with our machines, become objects that control the workers who created them:

This fact expresses merely that the object which labor produces – labor’s product – confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor which has been embodied in an object, which has become material: it is the objectification of labor. Labor’s realization is its objectification. Under these economic conditions this realization of labor appears as loss of realization for the workers; objectification as loss of the object and bondage to it; appropriation as estrangement, as alienation.

This is, naturally, something of a simplification and there is more detail to it.

But ultimately, the fact is that you become alienated from your function, from your work, from the objects you buy, from each other, and from yourself as a result of how we interact with the world in a system like ours.

@NightShadows

[SSDR]

Just stay away from fake people. Stay away from wackos that tell you that you "need to have more faith." Stay away from people who love money like they're dogs. Stay away from people who judge you according to your family. And stay away from child abusers and wife abusers. They're usually the ones that make people feel alienated.

[Igor Antunov]

Hit the gym OP. Everything you wrote is screaming 'Low Testosterone'. You sound broken, defeated, lethargic. Stimulate your skeletal muscles and get those juices flowing. Confidence restored. You will start talking to people again. Yes this also applies to girls.

[SSDR]

@Igor Antunov, Well, it's kind of like saying if you're a slave, and if you're against it, while the majority of the others around you support it, that would make you feel alone, and thus depressed. Your response would probably help someone feel happy, but they would still be truly alone. Thus, not answering the real question.

[MistyTiger]

Wow. I did not remember this thread.

Running has done wonders for my mindset and my health. I sleep better too. I feel good and some guys at work find me attractive because of the energy I exude. I am not amazing, but I feel years younger.

[Igor Antunov]

@Igor Antunov, Well, it's kind of like saying if you're a slave, and if you're against it, while the majority of the others around you support it, that would make you feel alone, and thus depressed. Your response would probably help someone feel happy, but they would still be truly alone. Thus, not answering the real question.

Here's a high powered pro-tip that WILL change your life. Ready for it? Are you? Truly? Ok.

Even with limited financial resources, you are free to do a complete personality-reset by traveling. Start with...India. Maybe it will help you appreciate the little things again, and from there you can rebuild yourself. Most of all it will force you to socialize on a level you never thought possible. A sea of humanity will be washing over you 24/7, there will be no escape. The language barrier will even force you to connect with other humans using eye and body communication, the most intimate form of communication. If you don't drown, you will learn to swim. When you come home you will be striking up conversations and forming social bonds with ease.

Just don't give beggars money.

Wow. I did not remember this thread.

Running has done wonders for my mindset and my health. I sleep better too. I feel good and some guys at work find me attractive because of the energy I exude. I am not amazing, but I feel years younger.

Damn straight. Health is an attraction, and it's so easy to get into the habit of keeping healthy. Personal anecdote to illustrate; The other day I was looking for new T-shirts, it's busy due to Christmas season. Anyway I was in the singlet section and I overheard a woman tell her husband; 'That could be you' while looking at me. Apparently they were looking for gym clothes.

Anyway, these sneaky compliments are the most gratifying of all, because you know they are 100% genuine. And it doesn't happen once in a blue moon - it starts to happen regularly. That may tickle the ego, but keep that ego under control and your confidence will become very real. Suddenly a bunch of surprising possibilities open up.

[Red_Army]

Being swole is great, but you're probably lying to yourself if you think it imbues you with an adequate response to the existential dread of living in a doomed world full of people you will never know or understand. Travel is the same - both are like a shot of adrenaline that will fade away and leave you with yourself eventually. That said I love fitness and travel for the recreational drugs that they are.

[SSDR]

@Igor Antunov, I understand what you're saying, but what you're saying isn't answering the question.

Let me put it in words that someone with the ideology of YOURS can understand: If one is a socialist, but no one else is around them, that makes them feel alone. So they would need political encouragement.

I don't view it like that, but someone like you would.

[One Degree]

We are unique human beings. Simply accept this for the wonderful thing it is. The alternative to feeling some alienation is being a mindless drone. This is why we should enjoy arguing with others as a celebration of our uniqueness rather than ‘right and wrong’. Enjoy the common existence of uniqueness by understanding others are just as alienated as you. What a wonderful thing to have in common.

[Sivad]

Personally, I enjoy alienation. This freak npc world of shitheads and dinks forces you to develop inner resources and self-reliance. You should be grateful for the experience, it builds character. I think going through spiritual and social alienation is necessary to becoming a real person. And if you make it to real personhood then that's really something because most don't. Most people fail to become actual persons, the developmental process is aborted for whatever reason and they end up as shithead haters or mindless babbitt dinks. So I thank Bog for the privilege of being subjected to this demented fuckhole, the horror and wonder of it all is a true initiation into conscious being.

[MistyTiger]

Damn straight. Health is an attraction, and it's so easy to get into the habit of keeping healthy. Personal anecdote to illustrate; The other day I was looking for new T-shirts, it's busy due to Christmas season. Anyway I was in the singlet section and I overheard a woman tell her husband; 'That could be you' while looking at me. Apparently they were looking for gym clothes.

Anyway, these sneaky compliments are the most gratifying of all, because you know they are 100% genuine. And it doesn't happen once in a blue moon - it starts to happen regularly. That may tickle the ego, but keep that ego under control and your confidence will become very real. Suddenly a bunch of surprising possibilities open up.

I am not used to the attention so to be noticed due to my level of fitness is so new to me. I have been a bookish nerd all my life, always with a book or pen in my hand, ink staining my knuckle. I try to keep a low profile but I never quite succeed at being invisible. Maybe some people will lose interest in me after awhile, they must still be amazed by my weight loss. I weighed today and I lost 2 more pounds, 17 pounds lost in 1 year...a record for me!

I do not and will not have a big ego. It serves no useful purpose. I do feel more confident though, low self esteem has been one of my issues. Part of that had to do with my traditional upbringing and feeling like I was never good enough. The good thing about that though is I hold myself to a high level of accountability and high level of quality, I try my hardest to be the best I can be, I push myself hard. With exercise, I have to remind myself not to push too hard and injure my muscles and joints.

If people like me only due to my appearance, I feel bored and unflattered in the long run. My ego says they should like me for my personality.

[Igor Antunov]

Being swole is great, but you're probably lying to yourself if you think it imbues you with an adequate response to the existential dread of living in a doomed world full of people you will never know or understand. Travel is the same - both are like a shot of adrenaline that will fade away and leave you with yourself eventually. That said I love fitness and travel for the recreational drugs that they are.

Wielding Confidence means wielding one of the most powerful tools in a society.

And you addressed the very problem you bring up. Never stop being Swole. Never stop traveling. Never stop being high.

@Igor Antunov, I understand what you're saying, but what you're saying isn't answering the question.

Let me put it in words that someone with the ideology of YOURS can understand: If one is a socialist, but no one else is around them, that makes them feel alone. So they would need political encouragement.

I don't view it like that, but someone like you would.

You've lost me. Politics never even entered my mind. I don't understand the relevance of your analogy. Most of my friends and acquaintance are polar political opposites to me. I hold a very extreme, tiny minority political opinion. And even then it rarely gets in the way of anything nor does it become relevant to functioning in someone else's society.

I am not used to the attention so to be noticed due to my level of fitness is so new to me. I have been a bookish nerd all my life, always with a book or pen in my hand, ink staining my knuckle. I try to keep a low profile but I never quite succeed at being invisible. Maybe some people will lose interest in me after awhile, they must still be amazed by my weight loss. I weighed today and I lost 2 more pounds, 17 pounds lost in 1 year...a record for me!

I do not and will not have a big ego. It serves no useful purpose. I do feel more confident though, low self esteem has been one of my issues. Part of that had to do with my traditional upbringing and feeling like I was never good enough. The good thing about that though is I hold myself to a high level of accountability and high level of quality, I try my hardest to be the best I can be, I push myself hard. With exercise, I have to remind myself not to push too hard and injure my muscles and joints.

If people like me only due to my appearance, I feel bored and unflattered in the long run. My ego says they should like me for my personality.

If your newfound appearance is the result of seriously hard work and high discipline upkeep, then you should feel entitled to receiving compliments based on looks alone. They are complimenting your hard work by proxy.

nobody is born nor do they stay fit and appealing. All those legs for miles hotties drawing stares? I see them in the gym 5 days a week. That's their secret...hard work.

[SSDR]

@Igor Antunov, Well, everything subconsciously evolves around politics. What the poster of the forum means is that he doesn't have enough socialist encouragement (I am trying to say it in a way that is easy for you to understand, hence I don't view it like this).

[Igor Antunov]

Well, everything subconsciously evolves around politics.

You fail to provide evidence of these subconscious political thoughts. If you mean base emotions in the cerebellum, which subconsciously influences every single thing your cerebrum processes, sure. But that's not politics. Politics occurs much higher up in the frontal cortex. If it was subconscious then you could apply your political reasoning to cows and dung beetles, creatures which have no perception of the polity.

[SSDR]

@Igor Antunov, Well, everything evolves around politics in only a conscious manner. And why do I need evidence? All of the evidence that you have are lies.