Transcending loneliness and present-day alienation

“How can a person who is “alive” live in a world that is “dead”
and not feel lonely and alienated?” asked me blueangelwolf.

Isn´t this a very essential question, if not, THE most essential, when you are
a decent person living in today´s world?

Erich Fromm considers the same predicament:
A person who has remained a person and not become a thing, cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his “normal” contemporaries.”
Further on:
“Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society.”

The following line is very illuminating and highlights the point I want to make:
“In the process of going further in his analysis, i.e of growing to greater independence and productivity, his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves.”

With other words, you can grow to such aliveness, gradually healing to such an extent,
that despite living in this dead world, you will reach the point of feeling neither lonely nor alienated. Along with it, you will naturally heal everyone coming your way.

I have to admit that I am the first to question the truth of my last paragraph.

But even if my reason considers this far-fetched, my Inner Voice
assumes this to be true beyond any doubt.
Most assuredly, despite being very much aware of the critical state of things, you may step by step come to realize that your distress of having been lonely along with the uncanny estrangement you once felt, are latterly nothing but loose memories.

Related articles:

http://beyondmeds.com/2013/09/08/the-whole-world-is-sick/