What causes alienation? When I was younger, I felt it persistently. As I got older, it faded...

What causes alienation? When I was younger, I felt it persistently. As I got older, it faded. I used to think it was because I realized that everyone has the desire to have friends, be liked, be ‘cool’ even, but now I think I just gave up and became a normie. Are losers and outcasts the only ones alienated?

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A sense of superiority to others.

What about inferiority?

A sense of being outside, which can be the product of both a sense of superiority and inferiority. I would posit that it's the result of people attempting to either consciously justify (inadequately) or unconsciously handle their removal from a given economy of cultural capital. When one thinks one is superior, or beyond an economy, or unwillinging to participate out of fear of failure or disdain, these things cause alienation. I think a major reason alienation is so present today as opposed to times gone is that the various fields of cultural production are eliding into one another because of things like social media and the monopolizations of digital space and production, facts which make concrete the intuitive but obscure sense that different fields themselves are within a hierarchy of value. It is now abundantly clear that those in tech design our world, and that media outlets exert an influence radically reduced and subservient to the new publishing platforms, and obviously we can take this down to every kind of profession if we so choose: the game is largely rigged. If remove is a way to justify a kind of retained social capital ('I am not spending myself here') and fields of cultural production are collapsing into each other, it makes sense that a subset of people, maybe even a very large subset, would attempt to remove themselves from more and more, thus heightening the sensation of isolation.

You say you "became" a normie, but I was born in the blandly-colored noise-reducing cloth cubicle walls, molded by them.

good post

Inferiority is the sense of superiority in uselessness or weakness to others.
> I am the most useless being on earth
There is a grandiosity in judgements in general.

I really doubt it's restricted to only social capital. It's simply a sincere belief in being unable to relate to individuals or the world on various important levels. I'm also not convinced of the conceited "superiority of inferiority" angle. Being ostracized or rejected or fearing this is a distinct state from being alienated. A sense of supirority is certainly a way alenation can manifest if in their own perception they feel they understand the nature of whatever it is they can't relate to and reject it, but I think there are plenty of sincerely alienated people who look upon things they can't relate to with confusion. Some people with Aspergers for example who really don't "get it" may feel alienated.

It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with inferiority or superiority.

For me it's just that I'm different. Not like the others. My mind thinks differently. They just accept what their culture had told them as true, they never question anything. For me coming from a migrant background I was never one of them so I was automatically an outsider. Maybe that predisposes you to start reflecting on things more, wondering why are they like that, why am I different from them ?

Once you see they don't question anything it's easy to start thinking you are somehow better than them, but its not the cause of it.

Loneliness is social pain (literally - it uses the same neural circuitry as pain), and alienation is learned avoidance behaviour much like not putting your hand on the stove is.

To avoid loneliness, you attempt to construct a narrative in which you are not lonely (an alienated narrative). This has the side effect of reinforcing your loneliness, because to maintain the narrative you refuse social contact that disrupts it. For example, if you construct yourself as a misunderstood intellectual who normies "don't get", you will avoid things like going out to see popcorn movies with normies because if you accidentally have fun this will undermine your narrative and reveal the underlying and painful loneliness.

The path to overcoming alienation is to admit that you are human, and humans need other humans to be happy. Nobody is happy alone - but there are plenty of people who are alone who alienate themselves to avoid pain. But happiness is not just the absence of pain.

>"but i'm different!"
Okay.

lot's of roastie vitriol in this one.

Nah, I'm speaking from experience.

I used to see normal people having fun and enjoying each other's company and thinking "well why would I want to be like them anyway! I like what I am!"

Doesn't stop you from crying yourself to sleep at night, though.

People are resistant to link their unhappiness to their isolation because loneliness hurts. Loneliness literally hurts, because your brain perceives it similarly to pain. So you'd think people would want to end it, right? But they don't, because they have built up an avoidance narrative whereby the things that make them unique and prestigious in their mind (their intellect, their quirkiness, their unique insights) are also the things that make them pariahs. They believe they face a choice of giving up their essential self, or being lonely. Of course the human chooses to protect its self.

The tragedy of this is that it's a false choice peddled by the avoidance narrative. In reality the reason you're lonely is probably because you're fat and ugly, you talk too loud, have an annoying voice, are boring, don't contribute, are selfish or lazy, etc. etc. - really mundane shit. You could still maintain the worthwhile things about you without being lonely, but the avoidance narrative blames your loneliness on your very worthiness to construct the narrative of alienation rather than subject you to the true narrative of undesirability. To reject this narrative of alienation is to confront your loneliness and the reasons for it: "I am alone because people find my company undesirable, and people find my company undesirable (in my case) because I am ugly, have poor hygiene, complain and whine a lot, am an unreliable friend, am abrasive and acerbic, and do not contribute to social projects."

I realised this at ~22, which is when I started working out and making a conscious effort to be a reliable and positive person who volunteered and pitched in and said yes. It didn't take long after that for me to start making friends and turn my life around. And yet I still do all of the things that I used to think were the reasons I was rejected - I still read, I still talk philosophy, I still care about foreign policy, I still jerk off to fat animals being fucked by robots. And once you actually start talking to normies, you'll realise too that they're the same. They can't articulate their ideas as well as we can because they're not as smart, but all the capacity for unique insight is present in them too. Insight isn't only a product of intelligence, it's a product of experience. Every person you meet has a literal lifetime of experiences for you to learn from. Normies are fine company (although obviously some are better than others).

The point is that if you are alone, that is bad. Full stop. Something has gone wrong and if you fix it, things will be better.

You can still feel a sense of alienation and experience loneliness without being disliked or rejected outright by society. I can exert myself to function within a group setting and be well-liked by my peers, but ultimately find no real emotional connection in others and thus fail to establish a deeper bonds. Perhaps it's a lack of effort on my part, but the loneliness still hurts.

Two potential causes:
1. the people you are hanging out with are incompatible with you, and the solution is easy which is to just try making friends with different types of people (this was my problem for a while)
2. you've got some kind of underlying mental condition which impairs your ability to form emotional bonds with humans. This is unlikely but definitely possible.

As a former salesman, I was very good at creating a superficial level of rapport but unable to bring myself to actually desire or give a shit about human contact. Eventually I realised it was because I was trying to contact the wrong humans. In this situation my advice is to link other people with something you're passionate about through clubs or associations. At first you speak to them because you want to talk about the subject, but with time you will naturally form more wide-ranging bonds and become interested in them as a person and not just as a vehicle for your hobby.

I should have stressed that my posts shouldn't be written as gospel for all people. They're aimed at the "misunderstood pariah" archetype that is so common on the internet, not people who are legitimately impaired in their ability to interact with people because of diagnosed brain problems.

I guess my point is that people shouldn't jump to concluding that people inherently don't like them because of their essential self before asking whether maybe people don't like them because of their superficial self (i.e. fat, lazy, whiny, etc.).

>I realised this at ~22,
The traditional age of wizardry is 30 because your body is still developing even up until around 25.
I feel it is far more likely you just had late puberty and only got a fully rounded out jaw around ~19 then you figured out something special.

Your prose exposes you.

Lmao notice how you only come by the point of view of alienation stemming from social rejection by others, "you're fat, you're ugly, you're boring" Literally cannot fathom needing social validation constantly to function
Massive projection. Just because you're a failed normie, does not mean all others are the same. I've had plenty of friends in my life, plenty of people who wanted to hang out with me or enjoyed my company, but I didn't want it at all. I myself rejected their advances, there's nothing difficult about being accepted by the masses. I found 99% of people boring and useless to me, I enjoyed my time alone 10x more than being around others, that's why I'm alienated. I have a disconnection in my brain that cannot be welded back together. Surrounded by loving friends and family means nothing to me. They accept me but I do not accept them. The only feeling I receive from others is disappointment

This is exactly what the alienation narrative sounds like.

You might be an exception. They do exist. Some people are born malformed, and are incapable of healthy social relations. However, on the balance of probabilities, it is more likely that you subscribe to the alienation narrative.

Ultimately it's up to you to decide what you want to do, and I don't really care one way or the other. I'm not one to cast pearls before swine. I just want to point out that your post exemplifies what I'm talking about par excellence.

>I feel it is far more likely you just had late puberty
Far more likely than what?

I personally just got the impression he felt insecure about his intelligence or taste because someone didn't want to watch the latest "fun" capeshit with him.

>Alienation narrative
Again how does this make any sense at all? Your past post called this narrative a coping mechanism adopted by those rejected by others and failing to develop proper social skills, a position that delegitimizes any reasoning behind the alienation as just some subvert longing for others instead of it coming to fruition because of legitimate concerns, standards, and traits people around an alienated individual might have. Your position holds the masses as always holding the correct default way of life and any move away from this is again just a cope for not fitting in. Literally the pathological mindset held by the last men described by nietzsche. I'm sure your insightful transformation at 22 applies to everyone lol. No buddy, you're just a failed normie like I said already

This might be well and true if it didnt suppose that popular people don't feel lonely which I don't think is true. There's a part of you that wants everyone to recognize you and accept you for who you are. In the pursuit of that feeling you start working out, you start contributing to conversations (whatever that means) you start doing things to improve your life etc. And then you get to a point when you are the perfect normie except you're not. You're still a fucking autist, and these things--working out, looking good being amicable--these are not just things that you do once and then you're it. No these are things you work at. You have to put maintenance into these things or else you know you'll just revert to whatever state you were in before and everyone will leave you and no one will care anymore and at it's after this realization that apprehend the real truth. These people like your work, they like your effort sure and the fruits of it, but they don't really like you at all. And that's a lonely feeling. People like who you want yourself to be, they like their image of you but they dont like your image of you at all. It's like that song "Nobody knows You When You're Down and Out."

If you were of the world etc. etc.

This is an interesting view but if a person cant even judge their lot in life what can they? What can we know except ourselves?

>attempting to philosophise a question that is purely psychological
Nietzsche has no relevance here.

>delegitimizes any reasoning behind the alienation
But this is a hideously misconceived tack to approach the discussion on in any event. Healthy humans are not alienated. This is not a question of reason, it is a question of health.

One of the difficulties of treating the psychological disorders of intelligent people is that they are very good at rationalising away all of the reasons why they are sick. For example: I have legitimate concerns about the standards and traits of people around me, so therefore it's a good thing that I'm alienated.

But it's not. Loneliness is bad for you.

>"i'm not lonely"
Maybe you're not, but that's also what the alienation narrative would say. On the balance of probabilities, you probably are lonely.

>if it didnt suppose that popular people don't feel lonely which I don't think is true
Everyone feels lonely from time to time, but some people are more lonely more often than others.

>These people like your work, they like your effort sure and the fruits of it, but they don't really like you at all.
Sure, and I don't really like them. Friendship is a survival strategy, not an irrevocable soul-bond forged in the fires of Mt Glorious between transcendental beings of pure light.

The point is to beat your alienation, stop being lonely, and spend less time miserable and more time happy. Friends don't make you happy - your brain makes you happy in the presence of friends, because making, maintaining, and having friends is good for you and happiness is how the brain rewards you for doing things that are good for you.

Yeah I'm gonna hop outta this thread in case any sort of meaningful dialogue occurs and ruins my romanticized state of isolation.

>attempting to philosophise a question that is purely psychological
LMAO showing your true colors and basis of life perspective. Imagine believing in a hard line between philosophy and psychology, I know exactly what type of person you are
>But this is a hideously misconceived tack to approach the discussion on in any event. Healthy humans are not alienated. This is not a question of reason, it is a question of health
You are just not getting it. Nobody is arguing that alienation is 'healthy', whatever that's supposed to mean(hint: being content with your surroundings and the status quo). It's about what's behind the alienation. You assume all alienation stems from social failure which I already disagreed with. What causes this 'unhealthy' state? You're lacking in self awareness of your blatant biases
>One of the difficulties of treating the psychological disorders
Again displaying these biases
>of intelligent people is that they are very good at rationalising away all of the reasons why they are sick.
You're just repeating yourself. You cannot fathom that individual's position stemming from something legitimate, only a rationlization. And seriously 'sick'? Lol


>For example: I have legitimate concerns about the standards and traits of people around me, so therefore it's a good
Who said it's good? Stop jumping to made up conclusions
>thing that I'm alienated.
No, it's the reason why I'm alienated
>But it's not. Loneliness is bad for you
Who are you arguing against? Nobody wants to be alienated, just like nobody wants to be hungry. But I'm hungry because I can't stand the taste of any food around me. I'm not hungry because I don't know how to eat food
>Maybe you're not, but that's also what the alienation narrative would say. On the balance of probabilities, you probably are lonely.
Jesus Christ this level of linear thinking is dangerous. Any disagreement is an example of its truthfulness. Like an annoying 14 year old nihilist

>Friendship is a survival strategy, not an irrevocable soul-bond forged in the fires of Mt Glorious between transcendental beings of pure light.
But lets be real here this is what we want isnt it? Why do we read? Why do we philosophize? Why do we speak? Why are we even talking to each other at this very moment? Because we want to be known. Everything else is the lowest form of utilitarianism and bad pop biology rationalization. Answer me this, if you had a syringe that just made you happy all the time would you even see your friends? Your family? Would you even go out? We dont care that much for happiness at least I dont think so. Otherwise every ambitious young person would just run to the nearest heroin dealer. We want to conquer the world, go on the hero's journey but only if it means someone can know our story, can know who we are really. Being more chemically happy isn't how you escape lonliness at least I dont think so.

Based

>Nietzsche has no relevance here
Fix this, Nietzsche has no relevance to your purely materialist mindset seeped into the supposed objective measurements of psychology. Hilarious

>It's about what's behind the alienation
On the balance of probabilities, it's probably that the alienated person is undesirable for conventional and mundane reasons than because the alienated person is a misunderstood genius.

>You assume all alienation stems from social failure
No I don't, as I've made explicitly clear several times. Some people are alienated because they are socially undesirable for extraordinary reasons, or because they are malformed and unable to connect socially with others. But these people are, I suspect, a vast minority. Hence the balance of probabilities.

>You cannot fathom that individual's position stemming from something legitimate
No, I just think that you are lying (deliberately or defensively) or wrong when you say that you are alienated because of legitimate concerns. Of course without actually engaging with you in a proper psychological setting I will never be able to conclude one way or the other. Hence the balance of probabilities. I think it's more likely that you are alienated because you have been rejected by society for conventional and mundane reasons, and have constructed a narrative whereby you defend yourself from the painful consequences of this rejection.

>Any disagreement is an example of its truthfulness.
That's not how the balance of probabilities works.

>Nobody wants to be alienated
Now that's simply not true. There's an allure to being the outsider, which is why the heroes of so many narratives are just that. It can make you feel special and superior.

>if you had a syringe that just made you happy all the time would you even see your friends? Your family? Would you even go out?
Probably not, which is why I suspect a link between increasingly superior entertainment mediums and increasing loneliness (because people are getting more lonely, so something must be causing that).

That doesn't mean it would be a healthy or good decision by me to forego human contact in exchange for drug pleasure, but people make that choice every single day in ways that range from mild to extreme.

>Being more chemically happy isn't how you escape lonliness
It's not, but having more friends is. You won't form a soul-bond with them, but you will be able to rely on them if Mongols try to burn down your village or whatever. That's all your brain wants - that, and the opportunity to better yourself by learning from their experience.

The question is what causes alienation. Alienation is an empirical phenomenon observed in human populations. Loneliness is a perception that originates in the mind. Clearly the appropriate tools to understand this problem are social psychology and neuroscience.

Philosophy addresses right and wrong, not why and how.

Stop trying to jam your hobby into every fucking thing.

>Philosophy addresses right and wrong, not why and how.

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>being this guy
psychology, not even once. so seeped into it's parameters he can't even admit it's existence and instead keeps yapping as if he's explaining a law of mathematics. absolutely pathetic. You literally just keep repeating your same warped projection, acting like you're actually responding to the arguments made countless times against that exact repeated statement. I hate the meme but this might be an npc purely because of the displayed mechanisms of discussion

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>balance of probabilities
uhhhh define your measurements please? By which observation or objective evidence did you base your numbers on? You've never mentioned this
By my balance of probabilities, based on your posts, you're a faggot. You cannot disagree with this, it's objective
Balance of probabilities
Did I mention that already?

Realising that there is rarely the required mutual patience, language or cultural setting to express yourself followed by a cycle of acceptance and further alienation due to new behaviours. Laughing/crying/ sharing other 'innate physical emotional responses' with others is so pleasant because it feels like all of those boundaries are broken at the same time.

>That's not how the balance of probabilities works.

Probabilities do not describe individuals. If you live according to probabilities you are more alienated than you know. To flip your alienation persona or whatever you called it argument you're convinced that the safer bet is the somehow necessarily the right bet. As the alienation defends the ego, your personality is built from taking the safe bet so it defends the safe bet. If you've found a distraction that works for you then good for you but it is only that. Alienation and inclusion are two sides of the same coin, whether you are waiting on a miracle or making do with what you have is just whether you take your reassurances from inside or outside.

I'd rather be lonely than have to nurture and maintain insincere relationships.

Saying philosophy is just morality is poorly informed.

>I'd rather be lonely than have to nurture and maintain insincere relationships.
Quintessential alienation narrative.

You have constructed an ideal of "sincere relationships" that doesn't exist in reality, and then are using the nonexistence of your fantasy as a justification for swearing off real relationships to ignore the fact that you couldn't get a real relationship if you tried. This despite the fact that "insincere relationships" have sufficed for all stable and healthy people for all of history.

>Probabilities do not describe individuals
I'm not attempting to describe individuals.

>Saying philosophy is just morality is poorly informed.
The fact that it's not is my greatest issue with the field. Philosophy is dumb at the best of times, but never so dumb as when it's out of its lane. You don't ask biologists to build bridges, so why do we pretend philosophers have anything useful to contribute to questions like this? Alienation is not a philosophical problem.

>you're convinced that the safer bet is the somehow necessarily the right bet
I have several times allowed that the user I was talking to might be an exception. I just don't believe that's the case, because why would I? Why would anyone?

There's an inescapable problem in communication which ties into this isolation/feeling superior business (and which many autismo's, including myself for a long time, fail to understand).

Every statement is in itself also a metacommunicateve statement. This means that the very fact of communication is in itself a communication about the relationship between two persons (if you talk to someone, this implies there is a relationship of some kind between you two because the fact of talking illustrates the willingness on both your parts to communicate with one another).
So even if you just talk gibberish to each other, there's always an implicit message.

The problem is that you can never escape these metacommunicative statements, even if you don't communicate.
What many people, including myself, do, is because they don't like what is said in the content of the messages (like only having conversations about dumb subjects, saying things that are objectively wrong or maybe even immoral) they stop communicating because an 'authentic' communication would have to include some meaningful agreement or connection on the level of the content (you show your real interests, values, etc., the other person does the same and you find some kind of connection in the overlap).

I fear that this idea is impossible and that it can almost never work in practice. The real of connecting is probably in the act of communication itself, which is incredibly frustrating, since many norms about what are accepted opinions/conversation topics/what you can and cannot say are incredibly idiotic or just plain absurd. If you refuse to communicate because of this, you automaticallly always refuse the other as such, because of the content of what would be said in the communication.

This is bad, but the opposite is also bad. If you only care about the relationships and what is said on a metacommunicative level and disregard the content of what is said, you end up a non-thinking robot whose convictions are eventually determined by what is said around him.
These convictions will guide your behavior all your life and you end up like some kind of a slave of the norms of your environment, never trying anything outside of what is accepted.

There must be some kind of healthy middle ground, where you can do a bit of both, but it's hard to figure out how to do this.

I don't know if you're trolling or not following. I have real relationships, I've had many more acquaintances. It's more than that.

If you can't describe an individual then you can't describe anything, correlation/causation yada yada. As earlier user said where is your data and how was it analysed otherwise you are just a parrot.

Everything is a philosophical problem at some level, that's how philosophy works. Maths and science are built on it though it's not going to necessarily provide a solution but it is there nonetheless. Think Newtonian and Quantum mechanics. Both describe the world accurately in the correct frame of reference. In this case the 'alienation' frame of reference reassures itself internally through contemplation eg philosophy. Your 'safety' frame of reference reassures itself externally through probabalistic interpretation of data (probability is not a cut and dry topic btw). You could argue that both in their most rigid forms deny the other effectively through the same defense mechanisms, overcompensation and appeal to authority. You could also argue that the difference between these arguments is at what point you value your own autonomy or you can distract yourself and forget the whole thing. Also there are probably quite a few field biologists that could build you a bridge nevermind if we change the scale then they work on lots of 'bridges'. Which might seem off topic but that's kind of the point, just because you don't know how to consider it doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered.

>Why would anyone?
This question is a big part of it. Why would I attempt to communicate myself to someone who doesn't want to listen when even someone who does won't understand even if I can communicate the idea appropriately? For you to understand them would mean for you to potentially harm yourself. If you're willing to genuinely doubt yourself you might understand.

Oh I get it, you think you are unique and nobody can understand you. Maybe you are retarded and can't speak properly?

Borderline personality disorder.

Read dialectics and stoics.

t. Psychiatrist

Read Durkheim
Read Weber
Read Marx

People from my own culture understand me. We have shared values. What bothers me is middle class consumerist, hedonist, nihilist whitebois who will never have a family, have no real culture, and have a head full of crazy ideas about who they really 'are', thinking their mentality is just the given state for all humans on this earth, when really it's just a particular cultural manifestation, one of a sick group of people who won't be around much longer.

Not really true when you consider the main contributor to suicide in men is unemployment, i.e. the feeling of being useless to society, with the fatal reaction to this conviction not really contributing to that individual's grandiosity etc.

>basing your use to society on your ability to produce
Peak wageslavery. And people claim the slave caste isn't a biological and supranatural reality.

>main contributor to suicide in men is unemployment
Poor blacks...

(OP)
>When I was younger, I felt it persistently. As I got older, it faded.
Mine continually gets worse the older I get. It started in middle school I think, though I was still fairly normal then. Almost 30 now.

sauce on the pic?

So, you're not part of a clique? Make your own!

Simon Hanselmann. Totally transgressive enfant terrible that...moved to the US and is happily married and gainfully employed selling copy-pasted comics to junkies and trannies. Kinda like Chapo except even worse because comics are shittier than podcasts.

Thanks for the well thought out answer, but I was just messing with you. I don't know what culture you are from, or country you currently reside in.

But what you are experiencing is a normal thing. In order for a society to function there needs to be simple minded people who simply live their lives together without much thought put into it. Since a society full of little Aristotels or Plato's will never work together, there are many average people and few gifted people. Maybe you are some artistic genius who hasn't realized his potential and you are trying to fit in with the average Joes? Either way, I'm no brainiac so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

You are talking about America aren't you?