Does Authenticity Lead to Alienation? Part II
Of dissecting on to what extent do our emotions hold novelty
The borrowed title might as well represent this post specifically, but it’s not so much about the first original entry as an entirely different topic. I would like to think that the more recent these writings are, the more I have grown since the last time. That being said, I’m learning to be more forgiving of my past ignorance by doing everything I could to learn more and verify new information.
Statements which hold the intimations of coming to awareness through reading that one's feelings were already experienced beforehand by their predecessors have been phrased in a variety of forms. James Baldwin, especially, has delivered this particular message multiple times in different ways. We all are familiar with these passages: "You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read," or "You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky." The similar sentiment was expressed by Ocean Vuong in his interview with Emma Brockes on The Guardian: "I beg my students to do it (reading biographies), because everything that they’re feeling, Sylvia Plath felt 70 years ago. And Ginsburg and Lorca and Rimbaud. There’s Virginia Woolf, this genius, who’s going on a crisis walk. You read the prose and you would never think this woman has any doubt. And yet here she is, out there, asking: what am I doing?”
However, to what extent do we allow ourselves to actually comprehend those expressions?
One of the discourses that appears most frequently in the book/reading community is the conviction that one’s appraisal for a book’s quality should not mainly rely on their capacity to relate with that book, be it its story or characters. I hope there’s no debate about whether or not I agree with the previous statement, because I do. Egregiously so.
Books, music, visual arts, and other different forms of arts created by humans are coming from a certain place. My European Urban Culture and Economy professor once discussed the topic of graffiti and street art. She emphasized that for graffiti artists, graffiti is a way to display their political views in public locations. I firmly believe that political views transcend beyond graffiti because every artwork is political or contributes to these following areas of politics: critical thinking, aesthetic perspective, communities, and peace and order maintenance (Demirel & Altintas, 2012).
In this case, many books serve to portray real-life events, even if it’s fictionalized. The act of genocide by people in power you are reading about is a real-life event for the Palestinians who suffer from day-to-day bombings and unceasing grievances. The human rights violation depiction you are immersed in was a real life-event for 1998 activists in Indonesia. So I understand why if there’s someone out there living comfortably in their penthouse with a fat bank account who rates books solely based on their capacity to relate to them can be outrageously concerning. Reading can be fun, but reading can also be an act of resistance which calls out on our privileges and shakes our ground. Reading should help us to build our empathy.
After having laid the foundation, it’s important to point out that I don’t believe the expressions I have mentioned beforehand hold conscious intent whatsoever to support the notion of one’s detachment from the rest of the world while one is holed up in their own special reading bubble.
Following his "this happened once to my buddy Dostoevsky" statement, Baldwin also said: "This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone.” I genuinely do not think that Baldwin said or wrote any of that to fulfill his selfish tendency to find someone’s words he can project his own tragedy onto. While there’s nothing wrong with experiencing interconnectedness between human beings, imagine the moment of revelation one must have after knowing that they share the same emotions as someone out there! Even someone archaic! Imagine the epiphany that follows after realizing that life went on for those people, and life goes on still for us, despite everything.
Here’s a controversial take: our suffering is not unique; our pain is not something we invent with novelty.
“The deeper you love, the deeper your compassion grows and the more you realize that other suffers just as you do.”
— From “Notes of A Crocodile” by Qiu Miaojin
A couple of months ago, I was scribbling on my journal to let out my frustration. The page was messy but the point remains: why do humans have the tendency to alienate themselves from the general population?
I was writing a letter to my friend to express the same unanswered frustration. I was telling them about the terminology of “worker” in Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian language). Before the New Order regime arose, “buruh” was a common word to refer a worker until communism was banned from this country therefore a political decision was made to massively and simultaneously shift the term “buruh” to “karyawan” to abolish the sense of unity among workers and consequently widened the gap among classes. This euphemism drastically changed the dynamics of our current workforce. Now, plenty office workers or white-collar workers perceive the term “buruh” specifically refers to blue-collar workers which they believe are not, tenaciously alienating themselves from falling into the same category as the latter. This does not make any sense since “buruh” is a universal term for any kinds of workers who receive a salary from their employer.1 According to a totally ridiculous personal experience, one of those people actually proposed for a labor party in Indonesia to be called “corporation’s slave party” as opposed to incorporating the term “buruh”.
Why do we do this? Why are we so firm in maintaining a social construct which serves false hierarchy in order to fulfill our ego? Why do we shy away from unity and sense of belonging?
Upon watching oliSUNvia’s video essay titled “the desire to be sad: “tragically beautiful" art & romanticizing mental illness”, I learned just a glimpse of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy. She mentioned that the concept of “good” is synonymous with the superior traits of aristocratic nobles which values power, wealth, strength, bravery, so on and so far. In conclusion, “bad” is the concept that emerged as the absence of good traits.
Aside from those good traits, I wonder if capitalism and the state of destruction—clearly orchestrated by people in power—are partly perpetuated by humans’ instinct to hold on tightly onto their last shred of authenticity, something that they believe cannot be replicated by others: one’s exact amount of wealth, one’s most prized possessions, one’s social status.
The said video essay also mentioned how common people then established their own moral system of “evil” versus "good", in which “evil” consists of those previous good traits valued by the aristocrats and “good” is the opposite of “evil”: not having power, not wealthy, not ambitious, etc. Nietzsche called this “the internalizing of man” where we purposefully subject ourselves to pain in order to be “a good person”. Humans' pleasure in cruelty started to be directed inward ever since the modern era, willfully causing ourselves to suffer.
I am afraid that by thinking that one suffers ever so exclusively and uniquely, one starts to develop a sense of destructive entitlement. Entitlement over other people’s achievements. Entitlement for forgiveness after heinous behavior. Entitlement over a land that belongs to other people.
This entire train of thoughts was mainly prompted after watching the incredible user @simkern on Tiktok talking about theocratic ethnostate. Their explanation on the genocide that has been happening in Palestine by Zionist movement meticulously covers a wide range of topics. It’s worth to note that I am completely aware that most of our suffering is indeed a byproduct of a systemic oppression that should be abolished quickly and immediately, but does it ever give us the justification to oppress someone else in search for liberation?
The journey to recover from grief is tiresome, fluctuating, and seemingly never-ending, but I don’t think pain is something we must endure alone. Acknowledging that other people are capable of being empathetic to our situation is the first step to a series of humbling realization that other suffers just as we do.
According to Pasal 3 Undang-Undang Nomor 13 Tahun 2003 tentang Ketenagakerjaan (Indonesian Labour Law - Act 13 of 2003)