Somehow, most may not like to accept it, yet, the fact remains that those in drift and those rooted well, can never have a singular worldview. A person on a moving train never has the right feel and acceptance of the true speed of the train, even though those stationed at a platform may see the train as well as the moving passenger differently.
Majority of people in fast moving lifestyle and cultural train of life, land themselves in a drift that takes away the realism and its true situational perspectives from them. They shall not usually accept some realism, which the rooted people keep saying. Rather, being in the drift is such a powerful expression of modern, liberal, consumerist culture and its associative worldview of instant-self-gratification and populist benchmarks of success and self-worth that very few actually think it as right choice to be anything but be in perpetual drift… being rooted surely stands out as a position of a duffer — a certain loser…
Somehow, in populist cultural perceptions, which definitely is the collective or crowd consciousness of the contemporary cognition; being lonely and not being part or the usual drift of constant self-gratification and mad multitasking is considered a sure sign of failure. Nobody wants to be a loser and that is why, being lonely becomes a bad word. Consequently, loneliness has over the years become a word, which signifies a psychological syndrome of dysfunctional personality. We all live in a populist culture, where an illogical, unscientific and populist shade of psychology has come to stay as the core element of populist cognition, thereby affecting our consciousnesses in a wrong way.
It is this deep-seated populist collective consciousness of denying ourselves this golden right and liberty to be lonely, which makes most of us keep a constant date with the drift. This has brought about a bizarre situation for huge numbers of humanity. This drift makes people go crazy over consumption and instant self-gratification at all costs and this also becomes the populist benchmark of success and self-worth. More we consume, more we possess for sustained and unfettered consumption, more successful we are; in the eyes of society, markets and mass media.
This in turn makes clutter a fashionable realism in lives of more and more people. The more and more we have, more items are there in our limited spaces — both in our home and our lives. Naturally, more clutter we have in our home and life. This clutter unconsciously fills in into our subconscious minds and starts to adversely affect the very process of our cognition and causality. The golden poise of the 3Cs in our lives goes for a toss.
The success benchmark in contemporary populist culture is — more cluttered your life-living situations, more successful and self-worthy you are. This wrong and dysfunctional causality, leads to this calamitous cognition that being lonely is disastrous and a bad sign. The golden shine of solitude becomes a scary scenario for most of us. Surely, a conflated cognition!
However, this is only one face of the bizarre life-living situation of the modern culture. A group of concerned socio-economic leadership is warning us that the more and more we consume, more we possess, yet we have into turned pleasure-starved societies. This liberal consumerist culture is based on the notion that consumption in all shapes and sizes actually enhances joys, thrills and happiness. The sane voices assert that this is the ideology and blind hypothesis of a culture and society in perpetual drift. The reality is; the developed high consuming cultures have become the graveyards of pleasure-starved, cluttered-consciousness, drifted people. We talk about the scientific logic of this hypothesis later.
So, we consume blindly, almost anything, which the markets, media and celebrities endorse to us as must have. And we all consume in loads as we say to ourselves — everyone is doing the same and if I do not follow the same, I shall be left lonely, isolated and out of the mainstream. This nobody wants to do as nobody wishes to be labelled a loser. Majority of people being in drift and flux, is what suits markets, media and celebrities. We keep piling up the clutter in our lives and they love it. Often, in contemporary world, trade is tainted, business bewilders and markets manipulate!
Surely, being lonely is the first step towards personal empowerment and this empowerment means; we have this liberty and resolve to say a conscious and definitive no to the drift. Living in a true liberal world and having our golden rights to freedom means, we have all the choices for our wellness. But in reality, the freedom is limited to having limited consumerist choices. This is truly suffocating.
Yes, we have freedom to choose which television channel we can see among the many hundreds we have. We have the freedom to choose from hundreds of brands of soaps and cosmetics. We have the moneys and liberty to pick our best choices from the smorgasbord of most consumptions and self-gratifications. However, ask yourself, do you have any effective freedom to have any say in what economic or social policy you want to choose for your own wellness? Do you have any freedom to exercise over governance mechanism?
We all know the answers. This meaningless freedom of choices is a state of flux and drift, we all live in. We happily accept a cognition which hardly exists there. We think we are free, which we are not. We think we are happy, which are not. Similarly, we think, we are lonely, which we are not. We think being alone and lonely is bad, which is not. This is a clear case of wrong causality affecting our cognition and in turn our conscious minds get fluxed and drifted.
Actually, the markets, media and celebrities never want to allow us to have true and real freedom of choices as it shall smother their profits. Indulgence of a cluttered consciousness suits them fine. The masses being in the deep ocean of optionlessness of consumption and self-gratification is what the clutter culture is all about.
Being lonely suits you fine. Basking happily in the sunshine of golden solitude suits you fine and it is true freedom of your happy choice. But the collective culture never has this as happy option for it. That is why there is huge mass-media frenzy to popularize this theory that being lonely is a dysfunctional psychological syndrome. Psychology is being played out in our minds by the populist cultures and their presiding protagonists to keep the masses in constant drift — away from the sanity of a lonely space of wellness and excellence.
Similarly, we have turned into a hyper-sexualised culture, yet simultaneously, we have become sex-pleasure-starved as more sex, more variety in sex, more sex partners and loads of other more in sex is not actually converting into more joys and happiness in sex and intimacy. We all think that we live in a happy liberal world where we are actually empowered by having freedom of choices in matter of sex. This is another wrong cognition and a bad causality of realism. The reality is; more sex means more clutter, more drift, more flux and more suffocation of optionlessness.
The markets and media want that people should keep in drift and they overly sexualize things. All expressions, including sexual expressions are being marketed to land into more profits for producers and marketers. That is why, all sorts of transgressions are being turned into profitable propositions and that is why, media, markets and celebrities ensure that all transgressions of consumption, including sexual transgressions become norms.
Gradually, many saner voices all over different societies have begun to say that we have become a dysfunctional society — both sexually as well as in general, because, majority of people, young or not so young, have very limited and restrictive views of sexuality and we all need to understand the complexities of the mechanism of joys and happiness of humanity. Everywhere, the rationalists and saner elements of humanity are questioning this populist cognition about true and real happiness and satisfaction of life-living. The troubles need to be seen and accepted from the viewpoint of the 3Cs — consciousness, cognition and causality.
No doubt, this is a philosophy and worldview of those who see the troubles of the drift of humanity and are rooted, far away from the clutter and madness of liberal, consumerist and thrill culture. However, what we are talking about here is the express need to accept it as the right worldview for wellness of larger humanity. This we shall do in coming chapters with the holistic approach, involving scientific logic as well as spiritual wisdom.
This is however, only the second aspect of the bizarre life-living realism. The third and most crucial aspect is the hypocrisy that is being pumped into the culture, as a by-product of the drift. Eight year old girl is being sexualized by media and markets, in their zeal to earn more profits by selling thongs and fishnet stockings to them. The girls want it as they do not wish to be called a loser in the drift-culture.
They are only kids but their mothers also buy them as they too do not want them and their girls to fall behind in the race of modernism and be labelled as losers. Success is very demanding. Everybody wants to be in the crowded space of successful icons. Not being part of the crowd gives this undesirable sense of being left out and lonely!
This obsessive desire to be with pop cultural benchmarks, even if it is calamitous, is reflected in the way teenage girls are starving themselves to look thin. Surveys reveal that majority of teenage girls want to thin down, even when they are fine and healthy, just because they accept that most celebrities are thin and this is what they have to be at any cost.
The survey also reveals this black fact that majority of these girls are told by none other but their own mothers to unhealthily thin down. Doctors have been educating people about the right body weight and troubles of unhealthy starving to be thin. Yet majority of people are not listening to the saner voices as for them, what matters most is celebrity culture and obsessive adherence to benchmarks of celebrity successes.
Everyone knows and can see it with the bare eyes that this dysfunctional mis-adventurism of sexuality and consumption is having a very debilitating impact on kids and teens. So, the hypocrisy creeps in. The markets pushes in the whole population, including the kids into all sorts of transgressions, including sexuality and then, the media and governments push in the stupidity of ‘Protect The Kids’ drama by preaching ‘abstinence’ in schools.
The hypocrisy is not only in schools but spread in entire culture. This is a world, where nothing is sacred, nothing is banal, nothing is undoable and almost nothing is as bad as to be not accepted as norm. Celebrity culture has diluted most healthy norms of appropriates. This is a scenario, where the self, the ‘I’ is perpetually challenged to stretch its domain and dimension to unknown or untouched heights.
This ‘I’ is not allowed to settle, never left alone and lonely, to have a dialogue with higher consciousness. Rather, it is clear that being alone and lonely is so scary for most as they are not comfortable with their own consciousness. The drift takes over the self and ‘I’ stands conflicted and split.
We all need to have a settled and poised ‘I’ and a sense of self. This drift is calamitous. We need to live in a true liberal socio-cultural milieu, where we have real choices and true freedom to be, not what we want, but what is best for our wellness and personal excellence.
Somehow, the populist cultures and pep psychology of modernist life-living has ingrained in the mind of average people that being lonely is a huge burden and you have to jerk it off and join the mainstream of social drift to be happy, to live life in full. It is not easy to come out of this populist mindset to know and accept that in reality, you are the happiest when you are perfectly lonely deep within and in perfect poise with your higher consciousness.
All over the globe, millions of people are battling with loneliness and find it a burden on their wellness. It surely is a worldview and life-living hypothesis very much against the contemporary populist cultural benchmark of success to accept that being happy and joyous is not truly about external attainments of name, fame and moneys; even though they matter a lot. It is about a consciousness position, where one is content, confident and consistently in affectionate reception of one’s treasures within. This in turn extends the latitude to manage our external attainments well.
The difference is so subtle and intangible. This idea of true life attainments and true success is something only a rooted person can understand and accept. The qualitative difference between the thrills of material consumption and satisfaction of poised consciousness cannot be known but can only be realized. This hypothesis is surely antagonistic to the worldview of people and cultures in drift. The contemporary populist culture and celebrity-driven consciousness of even an average person makes him or her believe that a person’s true identity is in his or her material attainments and external successes. The markets, the mass media, the celebrity culture as well as the pep psychology keeps enforcing this idea about success identity on average people. Once people accept this populist perspective about one’s true self, one’s identity; they become part of the drift. This then lands them in perpetual fear of being alone and lonely. There is this frenzied and forced perception about being lonely as a calamitous thing, which is very untrue.
Often, when an average person, especially the young people, is in celebrity mode, he or she is onto an overdrive of action and reaction. There is so much of attainment to achieve and so much attainment to defend. All the time, there is this huge burden of being successful at all costs. In our subconscious minds, this self-identity is working overtime for external attainments of money, name, fame and utilities as mass media, celebrity culture and psychological benchmarks egg them to accept that a person has to be perpetually happy and thrilled in order to be labelled successful. Everyone wants to be a celebrity and perpetually happy!
Scientists warn us that this very hypothesis is a killer and a non-starter. Nobody can be happy all the time. This very hypothesis rather conflicts the whole personality. The subconscious self works overtime and in overdrive to attain the identity of a celebrity, whereas the conscious mind has equally potent longing for peace and leisure. This is our mechanism; it is the way our mind works. This conflict creates split consciousness. We see only the shiny visible side of the celebrities, which they and the mass media flaunt. However, we do not see and accept the dark or grey shades of their lives, which every celebrity shall definitely have, as they are humans too. They look always shiny and always happy but it is not the whole template. We wrongly accept that unreal picture as real and create havoc with our lives.
That is why, whenever someone is alone, he or she feels uneasy and unsettled. How could one enjoy peace and leisure of loneliness, when inside, the grind is on, working intangibly for the fear of the empire one is presiding over. The grind of action-reaction never leaves one alone and that is why, even when one should have been happy and at peace with his or her leisure, he or she feels unsettled and nervous. It is not very difficult to understand and accept as why people all over the world fear loneliness.
If I wish to be in happy state of life, I surely have to make a deal with my higher consciousness. I just need to have a good, innocent and confident talk with my own conscious self. I need to tell myself in definitive terms that look I am lonely but very happy. I am successful as I am in singular consciousness of reception of self; very much happy with my attainments deep within me, not what I might have attained outside in the social sphere. I know, my real empire of attainments and successes is my deep consciousness and my real diamonds and dollars are my innocence, my simplicity and honesty, my affectionate and compassionate self. My true possessions are all intangibles of my own creation, engendered by my higher consciousness. This surely I have to keep growing and evolving but whatever I have within me, it is going to remain there for good. I do not have to be in overdrive of action-reaction to defend it and sustain it.
Once we do it, we start enjoying our precious golden loneliness. It is a huge artistry to learn to be in absolute reception of tangible and intangible elements around us. When we are lonely; in this state of higher consciousness, everything begins to talk to us. This facilitates the artistry of being in better control of our destiny, as we are better aware of all elements in our ambient milieus. The mind consciousness is not only acting or reacting to milieus and elements around us but simply imbibes them. We sit on top of all layers of the collectivity and actually preside over them as a king or queen, for hours all alone and truly enjoy our peace and leisure.
We need to cultivate this very interesting idea. When we do something all alone, we usually feel bored and accept it as drudgery. However, if you have a company, especially of a loved one, the same work becomes a festival and joy. Why not consider the realism that one is never alone as he or she always has and must have this intangible company of affection and compassion for the people and of the people he or she is doing something, even alone.
True, one should never be lonely in his or her hearts and minds. We all need to be joined by the joys and blessings of the people, whom we love, wish well of and value. There is little need for all these people to be physically with you. It may even be a burden. Scientists also emphasize that emotional loneliness is dangerous and it is not about not being with people. It is about not having affection, compassion and mutuality feelings in hearts. This in turn clearly means, we ourselves create the ghost of loneliness as we fail to own the real attainments in life and then blame it on others for our troubled feelings of loneliness. This also amply suggests, nobody else can help us clear away the clouds of loneliness, as it has little to do with others but self.
There is this lovely and very satisfying idea of emotional and ideational company, which one always can have, even while physically alone. We just have to accept and understand that one can never be lonely when the heart and mind is populated with affection and compassion for everyone. People become lonely primarily because they keep beautiful emotions of mind away, while seeking physical company with an agitated and sad heart.
So many people have experienced this magic within. If you love yourself enough, there is this filled up space within and you actually wish to be alone and lonely to enjoy exclusive audience with yourself. This is the difference between what we accept as loneliness and solitude. When we are happy with our selves, when we love ourselves well, when we have sense of attainment and self-worth within, when we accept that listening to our own emotions is great music, we are in happy state of solitude. If not, the same situation becomes a dreadful emotion of loneliness. It is all about being comfortable and friends with our own selves.
# Excerpts from author’s life-utility eBook, ‘Be Lonely, Be Your Best…
