Alone In A Crowd Of A Billion, Part 1

Question: Loneliness is a scourge of modern society. An inner feeling of loneliness lives in a person who is surrounded by a huge number of people. Most of all, this phenomenon is common among young people, and it is gaining momentum and strength.

Teens spend half a day at school where they are surrounded by a lot of friends, and the second half of the day, they spend on the computer in virtual social networks, and nevertheless, they all suffer from loneliness.

Another group for whom the problem of loneliness is especially acute are elderly people aged 65 and older, but generally, loneliness affects all ages. Even a small child who complains that he is bored, in fact, means that he is alone, and he has no one to play with.

Obviously, loneliness is purely an inner feeling not related to how many people are around. What is the reason that people feel lonely?

Answer: The problem of loneliness started emerging from the middle of the last century, growing more and more as humanity came to the peak of its development.

By the middle of the 20^th century, man had completed the “linear” development of his egoistic nature, which lasted for thousands of years. The growth of linear egoism is over; the world has become integral and global and has turned into one small village where everyone depends on each other.

Development has contributed to the fact that today it is easy to travel from one end of the globe to the other. Before this, people traveled only for business and trade. In the modern world, everyone is commuting somewhere—flying, going—and it would seem, how can one feel lonely here? Tourism is the most developed and powerful business in the world, but at the same time, people are still lonely.

Maybe that’s why we move all the time. Perhaps we hope to fill this inner void, this inner need? But, this does not happen. On the contrary, the tourist comes to a foreign country to separate from all others even more.

It would seem that he goes on a journey to see the world, to get acquainted with other countries. But, wherever he goes, he always remains alone, feeling even lonelier than at home. The fact that the world becomes more and more connected externally and more individualistic and separated internally is a paradox.

In the same way, people are interdependent in business and work and cultures influence one another, but no one profits from it personally or feels the need or desire for it.

Egoism within a person grows individually, but at the same time, the world around us forms a global system. There is a gap between a whole and interconnected world and people who do not want to have any connection to each other. On the contrary, egoism grows in them and turns them into ever larger individualists.

Therefore, we see that modern man does not want to accept this world, and the world does not accept man. We just do not fit the framework that nature has made for us. Nature wants us to be together, bound by kind relations, but we do not want this.

The world can easily provide us with everything we need: food, clothing, medicine, housing, absolutely anything, but we do not want to unite as the world requires us to do. Instead, everyone wants to stay on their own. Some time ago, an entire family could live in one room and a few families in one house. The newlyweds lived together with their parents. But today, every adult and every child needs to have a separate room.

Modern technologies encourage this trend (naturally, they work for the consumer). As a result, everyone has a personal mobile phone and a personal email address.

Egoism evolves within a person, increasingly isolating him from others,  and forces us to think about what to do next. After all, our desire to enjoy requires a fulfillment that cannot be obtained alone only for oneself.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 4/4/17