Postmodern loneliness is the result of a long process in which the concept of individualism has gradually been consolidated and gradually contradictory ideas were imposed on culture. One, who each has to create his own clan, the other, this loneliness is a terrible thing.
Likewise, postmodern loneliness arises from an increasingly palpable fact: we are afraid of the other, the concept of the next has almost disappeared. In the world there are people around us and also foreigners, and we have no interest in meeting them, there is something threatening about strangers.
“I’ve never found a partner more sociable than loneliness. “Henry David Thoreau
The result is a society in which people are increasingly alone, but fighting loneliness. We have created a world in which we cannot live in community, but in which we cannot live alone. Loneliness and companionship have become a problem.
The theme of loneliness did not make much sense until romanticism, before that, loneliness was not a source of great reflections, nor of profound existential problems, it was generally accepted that we were born alone and that we would die alone.
Individualism also had no preponderance, people basically lived in community. It was common for an entire family to live in the same house: grandparents, children, grandchildren, and often other close relatives. The relationship with the neighbors was also very strong, people knew each other when they lived nearby.
Similarly, there were collective rituals involving virtually the entire population of the region. Mass or novenas, street parties, etc. In short, there was a clear concept that they were all part of the community.
With romance, that’s changed. The couple became the answer to everything, an isolated and private couple, immersed in their own world, the company began to organize gradually around the couple and at the minimum family nucleus that involved them, at the same time that loneliness began to take on a dramatic connotation tone and became undesirable.
After this transition from a large family in community to a society of couples, with the introduction of new technologies begins to emerge a new reality, thus inaugurating postmodern solitudes. These evolve into a fundamental contradiction: we are connected to everyone and feel more alone than ever.
People feel so alone with themselves that they feel bad when they don’t like it when they post on social media, in fact, there’s so much loneliness that there are already people addicted to social media, people are addicted to receiving and sending messages, even if they don’t say anything important.
In turn, in the context of postmodern loneliness, the couple has acquired a totally disproportionate meaning, it is assumed that not being part of a couple is being alone, as if the world were composed only of the couple and that a loving ending would throw us into the abyss of total misfortune, as if a single relationship could be a source of happiness.
Perhaps the time has come to challenge these myths surrounding loneliness and love. Postmodern loneliness proves we’re missing something. Culture, as it is today, does not give us a sense of peace, fullness or happiness, it is doing the exact opposite. Emotional difficulties or psychological problems are becoming more common.
Let’s start by remembering something that most of us already know: everyone needs love, yet couple love is just one of the many manifestations of this feeling, there is also love in family, between friends, for ideas and causes, for humanity and, of course, for ourselves. Reducing our concerns and expectations just to love as a couple greatly impoverishes us and makes us more vulnerable.
Therefore, it is worth questioning the content of this current loneliness. When do we begin to deny loneliness? This is a reality for which there is no antidote, we were born alone and we die alone. The rest will always be borrowed in our life, the more we understand each other in solitude, the better we can live and also die.