Link: http://ddjango.blogspot.com/2009/05/alienation-and-isolnation.html

The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself. ~ Saul Alinsky

In 1956, I was nine years old when the screen adaptation of Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit was released. These notes from Wikipedia ...

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, by Sloan Wilson, is a novel about the American search for purpose in world dominated by business. Tom and Betsy Rath share a struggle to find contentment in their hectic and material culture while several other characters fight essentially the same battle, but struggle in it for different reasons. In the end, it is a story of taking responsibility for one's own life ...

Tom and Betsy Rath live in a rundown house in Southport, Connecticut around 1955. They have three TV-addicted kids (two girls and boy) and have money problems. Tom is 33 years old, a Harvard graduate, and barely survived as an Army officer during World War II. He fought in both the European and Pacific combat theaters (an unlikely scenario, but it sets the stage for his wartime love affair). About the first third of the movie presents haunting flashbacks to the affair as well as his combat experiences — clearly the stuff of PTSD, viewers recognize today. His stay-at-home wife, who only knows Tom is somehow "changed" since the war, feels his job with a Manhattan charitable organization pays too little, and she and a fellow train commuter urge him to interview for a job at a New York-based television network.

Tom lands a public relations job working in a staff position for the top man at the network (Fredric March), an apparently affable empire-builder surrounded by politicking yes-men who is to propose the establishment of nationally improved mental health services to a group of physicians and offer to put his own prestige and network toward that end. The problem Tom has to solve is how the top network man can best present the proposal to the learned doctors so that the doctors will rise in unison after the speech and appoint the network top man to spearhead the campaign. Meanwhile, as a subtext to the various plot lines of this mid-1950s film the mental health theme frames the struggles of just about every character (including even the TV-addicted kids) ...

Nearly 55 years later, American Dream #2 has left American Dream #1 in ragged tatters. American Dream #1 was the white picket fence, Mom, apple pie, family and community dream. The other is the best, most powerful, most wealthy nation in the world dream. I propose that Dream #2 did not "win" the competition, but only succeeded in destroying Dream #1 in the process of decimating itself and it's adherents. And I maintain that without our wonderful toys (TVs, home movies, personal computers, iPods, iPhones, and plastic microwave meals), we would descend into a crazed withdrawal state that would make kicking smack feel like fairy dust. We have, I think, finally won a lion's share of Pyrrhic victories and are on the edge of losing a war which need not have been fought.

Competition, product against product, man against man, lie against lie, nation against nation, god against god has done us in. Those of us in my generation have lost the art of simple human close interaction, while those of subsequent generations seem to have been taught that such interaction is meaningful only if fancy gizmos facilitate it.

During my year of homelessness in 2007 and 2008, I lived in a rather large shelter facility. I owned almost nothing; certainly no gadgets, not even a telephone until a friend gifted me a cell phone and the money to keep some time on it. I didn't use it to chat, but to contact people to meet for coffee and conversation, to find work, to get to 12 step program meetings. The risk of human interaction was absolutely critical to my survival in a nearly hopeless, sometimes very dangerous setting.

Often human interaction meant simply knowing when to leave someone alone or refrain from challenging their indiscretions and quirks. It meant restraint, empathy, humility, and acceptance. I found it both enlightening and discouraging when some in my community, who were fortunate enough to afford a DVD player or PC or plenty of time on their phones would completely withdraw, or worse, use those machines in close quarters as if there weren't 60 other people in the dorm trying to rest, read, carry on a quiet conversation, or sleep. "I got mine - you don't matter."

Lest I be accused (as I have in the past) of being self-righteous, let me continue my story. I have been living alone in my own apartment for over a year now. Literally everything in it, from microwave and pots and pans to TV and books and powerful computer, were given to me. Between part-time work and subsidies (I'm partially disabled), I have a little money. I don't own a car. Guess what? I've reverted. I don't see those friends very much who saved my life. I rarely go out, except to shop or engage in therapy. My "social life", sadly enough, is on Twitter.

Lest you also think I'm whining, I tell you I'm not. I accept that I am not exempt from the affliction I have consistently called Americanism. I do what I have become used to. I use my toys as distraction from the fear of risky interaction. But I still have enough social interaction to survive. And make sure that part of that social interaction consists of helping others when they need help. I was not a therapist for ten years for nothing.

The phenomenon of social alienation and isolation was a popular theme in the 1950s. Capitalism exploded after the war, more and more production was performed by wage laborers, life became very busy and complex, and personal, industrial, and ideological competition (along with attendant fear and stress) intensified.

According to Wikipedia ...

Marx's Theory of Alienation is based upon his observation that in emerging industrial production under capitalism, workers inevitably lose control of their lives and selves, in not having any control of their work. Workers never become autonomous, self-realized human beings in any significant sense, except the way the bourgeois want the worker to be realized. Alienation in capitalist societies occurs because in work each contributes to the common wealth, but can only express this fundamentally social aspect of individuality through a production system that is not publicly(socially) owned, but privately owned, for which each individual functions as an instrument, not as a social being ...

Marx attributes four types of alienation in labour under capitalism. These include the alienation of the worker from his or her ‘species essence’ as a human being rather than a machine; between workers, since capitalism reduces labour to a commodity to be traded on the market, rather than a social relationship; of the worker from the product, since this is appropriated by the capitalist class, and so escapes the worker's control; and from the act of production itself, such that work comes to be a meaningless activity, offering little or no intrinsic satisfactions.

This theme has not been static in our mangled society. It has evolved. But the effect has been predictable. In order to assuage this alienation and isolation we have been force-fed bread and circus and we are now dependent on it. Without personal and community integration we needed the balm of entertainment and adventure. Now we are facing the failure of our economic system to provide those toys, and we are lost. No wonder that people sometimes go crazy and turn their alienation into psychopathic and sociopathic expressions of rage, rather than reach out to community for help, with trust they will receive it. For we are alienated and isolated not only from and within our selves, but from and with each other. We tend to see "the other" as the problem.

These days, I am beyond convincing that "things will work out". Even if the economy stabilizes, there are other cataclysmic issues to address - there's only so much room on the front page or in the TV headlines, so we don't pay attention until it comes around again. The problem is that these myriad issues are all of a piece - economy, ecology, war, weapons, social relations, fascism/corporatism, greed, and on and on - none is more important or less troubling than another.

Whether it happens in the next ten years or the next fifty or a hundred, we are facing wrenching upheaval. To a great degree, our entertaining toys will be much less available and affordable. Money will be hoarded by the rich and fearful (they're just humans, too). We may even be forced by the collapse of capitalism to reacquire ourselves and our spirit through the direct connection with our labor, whether that be in production or service.

The question is not whether we will have to choose, but whether we will choose before we have to.

Be at and about peace.