"Dans le monde à travers lequel je voyage, je me crée sans cesse" - Frantz Fanon
After countless hours spent constrained by the machinations of university life, I, like Zarathustra, have emerged from my cave of slumber to treat the world with something it is likely to forget. When I refer to alienation, I do not refer to the common use of the term denoting hostility, nor do I intend to contribute to the long philosophical dialectic surrounding alienation as scholars more renowned than myself have done. By 'alienation' I simply mean 'isolation'. You, dear reader, must excuse me of my verbose style and intellectual facade, I am after all in university and such things are required of me whether I like it or not.
I went to the laundrette near my building a few days ago and amidst the dreary stench of clean linen, a sad TV displayed the weather and some 'interesting' facts. I usually pay no heed to this dull and frightfully boring display, but today something caught my eye. Something so obvious yet brilliant. So mundane yet insightful. So boring yet 'interesting'. It simply read "New Warwick survey indicates that 44% of students report a sense of loneliness". One almost feels the need to jump up from his proverbial seat to declare "Why of course! It's because of Covid-19, social distancing, lockdown's, etc, that's obvious!" But why exactly? Video conferencing technology, whilst patchy at times, certainly provides us with human connection. WhatsApp, Zoom, Skype, Teams, Discord, etc all provide what explorers hundreds of years ago could only dream of having. Why then do we still feel lonely? Perhaps Covid-19 has uncovered an essential characteristic of human nature?
Whilst I am not the first to posit this, (Aristotle uncovered his marvellous thesis [that humans are social creatures] before I was even capable of thought), it's interesting to note that despite being able to see and hear a dear friend online, we prefer to see and hear him in a cafe or a bar. Perhaps it is the cacophony of noise surrounding you, the panache with which your companion drinks his coffee while interspersing conversation, perhaps it is the bartender, with a wry smile, instructing you to try the "Graveyard" to spice up your evening, or the table across from you filled with beautiful women glancing ever so femininely at your general direction. These elements of physicality are precisely what make us human (to simplify a grandiose philosophical claim to a phrase likely to be uttered by a man who has had far too many shots of Jaegar). To think, for as advanced as we take ourselves to be, for our claim of scientifically objective truths, we mammals still rely on the subjectivity that is interpersonal physical interactions.
Before this period of Great Alienation, dictated by constant worry of assignment deadlines and seminar performance, I had the pleasure of meeting a man named Seth when I travelled to Loughborough for the Christmas break. Seth was a man detached of worry (but not sin) and couch-surfed in our apartment for the duration of our stay. He seemed to be in a world of his own but never once betrayed a sense of loneliness. To me it seemed near superhuman how he was able to maintain a world unto himself, without alienation or a crushing longing for company. He was able to maintain his self-certainty despite the changing world around him (and believe me, the world changed ever so swiftly every minute we expended in that shanty town). One evening, after I had baked chicken strips for that night's meal, I sat down to watch Netflix, when Seth, back from gallivanting god knows where, asked me "So, what do you plan on doing when you go back?" Naturally it being exam season I replied "Well study of course, I've wasted enough time here"
"No no, I mean what will you do besides study? How will you occupy your time now that everything's in Tier 4?"
This shook me to my core, I realised I didn't have anything, I didn't have anyone as all of my flatmates had left, fleeing for more agreeable climates in the comfort of their own homes. I wasn't as self-certified as Seth to be able to be comfortable with myself and only myself, nor was I willing to accept the bastardisation of the connection of spirit and will, the 'online experience', so I replied, half with defeat and half with a grin of inevitability, "I will create each day anew".
Ever since, and even as I write this article, I am living day to day. Alienated from precious human experiences for sure, as I'm sure everyone else enduring this trial by death is aware. The human spirit can only take so much before the cracks betray its imperfection. Not all of us can be as carefree and psychologically calm as Seth, thus we need not seek salvation from alienation; we need not curse Seth for his immunity to alienation; we simply must look to the day ahead and manage to get through it. As simple as it sounds, and as non-intellectual as it sounds, creating a world out of 'today' helps reduce the sense of alienation that can pervade ones soul in the long run.
Whilst elsewhere I might argue for the potential benefits of alienation, here, in this ripe moment, admittedly slightly inebriated, I declare to you dear reader, if you were to take anything away from this drunken rambling; this article of the soul; this passage of passion, it would be to create an endless amount of 'todays' every time you wake up. The 'today' you create, your plan, your schedule, you realise is unique to yourself, and whilst isolation may lurk around every corner, your plan to impose order upon this chaotic substrate of a world attenuates the feeling of alienation that may lead to the demise of ones soul.