Loneliness & Hegel

Contemporary loneliness is a Hegelian antithesis. It is a reaction to the Hegelian thesis of the world before of creepiness and darkness that was pervasive as well as its hyperbolization in the media such as in the horror and the true crime genres. A Hegelian antithesis is a psychological phenomenon of reactance to a norm.

One example, I have used in an artistic context, is the idea that the literati disdains happily ever afters and otherwise sweet stories of life going relatively well. These criticisms have nothing to do with the depth or complexity of the work but merely the fates and things like the cortisol and epinephrine levels of the characters. As I have said before, the problem feminists have with Disney princesses is not their supposed misogyny, that is merely a rationalization for their distaste for the happiness and traditionalism of the stories.

It is the same phenomenon that incites the members of Black Lives Matter for being against mass incarceration in a BLM protest but with the same people being #metoo warriors wanting to jail hobos for catcalling. In earlier articles, I have advocated a scientific solution consulting psychology and sociology, the bulk of the movements just unthinkingly take the obvious anti position to whatever problem they’re protesting. In this case, the problem is the discomfort of friendly human intercourse which was associated with crime, sexual misconduct, and more, but ultimately was the manifestation of bourgeois, suburban, culture wishing to sanitize their environment and finding an ideological means to do so.

Loneliness is a radical political act. I don’t say that as a positive value jugment. It is the Jacobin position as juxtaposed to the Bourbonism of the erstwhile era of creepiness, as Hegel might put it. It is the ultimate respecting of boundaries. It is the radical opposition to the world it is lashing out against. It is not a traditional Hegelian antithesis in all ways since it is more interpersonal and cultural than political. It is borne of an anxiety and terror of human interaction and justified philosohpically by liberalism through Lockean rights to the person being extended to include comfort.

The position that all unwanted interactions, platonic and romantic, are unethical means that since one does not know the position of the other party prior to the interaction that the most ethical position is to be lonely. Not only is it radical for the aforementioned reasons of being relatively juxtaposed against the former mainstream but also in its radical liberalism. That loneliness is the apotheosis of liberalism. It is the ultimate severing from the influence of the unelected culture to live a life of maximum democracy since you vote for everything about yourself.