Have you ever stopped to consider that feeling unloved is really the primary problem of life? Followed, perhaps, by doubt about the purpose and point of your life?
How often do any of us say this truth out loud? It only just occurred to me, even though it is obviously true.
Our society really does not exist to meet our true emotional needs. It’s not built around that. It is built around meeting our PHYSICAL needs, and it is superlatively good at that. The best in history, many, many times over.
So I GET the people who are saying “oh, this Great Pause is really a spiritual opportunity.” And it IS that, for some of us. It’s been great for me. But not for everyone.
And here is the thing: the nature of this particular beast is that it combines economic dislocation and ruin with loneliness and alienation. Our various governments have ensured that. They have built alienation and social disconnection into their solution. They have made existing problems much worse.
In my own case, I can honestly say I have never seriously considered suicide. There were periods of time where my drinking certainly could have killed me, and periods of time where I was reckless in many ways. But doing the thing on purpose, it was never really on the table, for any reason.
My father was a relentlessly negative man. A determined Eeyore, who could find reasons to complain about a blue sky and perfect weather. I once asked him why he didn’t just kill himself, and he told me “I don’t have the courage”.
I think that answer is part of my own emotional architecture. It’s really a contemptible answer, in many ways, particularly directed at a young man–his son–just starting in life.
But returning to the main point, I wonder how we will all be when this is done. Won’t we be glad to see our friends in the bars again? To go to concerts, after the nation finally tells Fauci to go fuck himself? Will we be closer, listen better? I don’t know, but it seems likely.