“I've lived the life of a man without teeth, he thought about it. A life of a man without teeth. I've never bitten, I've been waiting, keeping myself for later - and now I've just ascertained that I don't have teeth anymore.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre, “The Age of Reason”
“Individuals today have more freedom than ever before, but at the expense of “givens” which would help them determine what they should do with that freedom.” -O.G. Rose “Belonging Again: An Explanation Part 1”
I have been reading voraciously for the past few weeks, delving into Martin Heidegger (hardly a surprise) and Byung-Chul Han. Last month, I went on my good friend and writing mentors podcast (
) to discuss Han’s work and popular culture. Don’t ask me what Lana Del Rey and Pepsi-Cola have in common.I hate to admit it, but I have been spending far too much time online, doom scrolling and pulling out what little hair I have left. I miss the high of drinking and am trying to make up for it in less nefarious ways. I should be writing. Instead, I have walked through two pairs of shoes, put holes in several pairs of socks, and had several run-ins with questionable strangers. That’s for another time.
I am looking for something that we all want: meaning and belonging, two sides of the same coin that are trivial without the other. Sure, meaning can help one bear their cross of suffering, but it's pretty lonely otherwise. And what is the point of belonging if it’s with the wrong group? I can put on a mask and make friends fairly quickly—we all do to some extent.
I want to belong to a group that stimulates me without having to deal with airs, tribal factions, and the typical 1980s high school tropes.
Understanding at times feels like a prison, one built and guarded internally. I can let myself out at any time, but it still feels hollow on the outside. Learning helps you see the social and historical factors we are thrown into. These external factors shape and mold us, much like Bane in the darkness. However, upon leaving Plato’s cave, we are greeted with blinding loneliness.
We can be with others in the dark, enjoying amusements, or become obsolete free persons, perched above, lonely, basking in the light.
Aletheia, uncoveredness, having being reveal itself to us, is wonderful, but it doesn’t sit across from you at the dinner table. It doesn’t ask how your day was or pick you up from the airport.
However, sitting across from someone who you are a stranger to can be far lonelier. I do not have two wolves inside me; I have someone begging for connection and a Diogenes asking for more sun.
All I know is the more I read, introspect, and dwell in the house of being (i.e., language), the more I realize I have an unfulfilled need. I have to scratch my philosophical itch. Otherwise, I feel others are pulling my strings. I at least want to be aware of who is the puppet master, even if I am hopeless—a deterministic slave to my unconscious, libidinal economy, or reptilian shills.
In my early 20s, much like Sartre’s protagonist in “The Age of Reason,” I wanted freedom. Unbridled freedom. I accepted my thrownness and embraced the alienation of the experience of objects (ad nauseam). And all I got was student debt and a predisposition for downers.
Freedom is fun and all, until it isn’t. Until you realize it is a nonsensical idea, and something that can be as demanding as it is chilling. I suppose what matters the most at this point in my life, as a 36-year-old man, is purpose and belonging.
All I can do to achieve it is keep reading, writing, and not give up. I am working my way through
’s Belonging Again I and II, Lacan’s Seminar XI and Heidegger. Next month, I will be taking two courses—one with O.G. Rose, and another at Theory Underground taught by Todd McGowan. Both are means to fight this ennui, to learn about this shit sandwich we all inherit during our slide down the birth canal. I am looking forward to being in a class full of fellow obsessives, trying to come to terms with our plight and navigating uncharted territory. People who are not worried about tenure, or appealing to the masses. Instead they are on a Holy Crusade to find truth, and liberate others. And collaborate with anyone and everyone who is eager to know why, and fight for what truly matters.I have to have faith that this riddle of the Sphinx can be solved and I am not in some C-list episode of a Greek tragedy. I do not want a tragic or heroic death, nor do I want to get burnt in the light of the Good, alone. Someone needs to apply the aloe.
Well, that is enough angst for one evening. I have to finish Han’s “The Agony of Eros.” And stop neglecting my cat.
Excellent piece Christopher, and it's an honor to have you join us for the Parallax Course this July! It also means a lot that you'd be so supportive and interested in Belonging Again. Thank you!
I think increased literacy can cause loneliness for a lot of the characteristics that it holds identified by Ong (orality and literacy) One of the big ones i can think of now being the fact that that literate exposition needs to assume that the audience does not share in the same immediate surroundings. For example, I can't say to you right now, "oh wow what a great post, it reminds me of her." Who is her? am I pointing? I think when we get habituated in literate language use, where we get good at assuming a distance, we can also fortify distance. Further inside of literate language use its much easier to talk about and hold in mutual shared attention objects in the H's house of being (ie. justice) rather than objects in being (ie. the particular tree I sit beside) and so our topography of salience shifts to those things.
This is getting long.. but I wanted to say that though I'm a fellow lonely reader, reaching out to the same circle for the same form of connection, I also have a really nice nest of life-long non-reading friends I can talk to. When I can step down from my book encrusted tree-fort and just talk in a orally-oriented mode, they are more than happy, and more than capable of discussing all the big questions closest to my heart, but just with different source metaphors and references and analogies.