POETRY: ‘Modern Man’s Alienation’
Contributed by: Ryan Hughes, psychology major
“Our alienation goes to the roots. The realization of this is the essential springboard for any serious reflection on any aspect of present inter-human life. Viewed from different perspectives, construed in different ways, and expressed in different idioms, this realization unites men as diverse as Marx, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Tillich, Heidegger, Freud and Sartre.”
-R.D. Laing-
“Modern Man’s Alienation”
To be in a state of alienation
is the condition of modern man
if you don’t understand your own alienation
let me try to give you an explanation
We are alienated from our work,
where work means nothing
except a pay day and a raise,
or a busyness to help us
run away from its hopeless sense
of meaninglessness-its empty glaze.
We are alienated from each other
as we are just too busy
to simply slow down
and learn something
of our foul and lovely internal gutters
We are alienated from our land
in the most profound way
as we no longer even know
the comfort of silence
or the sweet fluttering song
of the earth’s rich mothering bond
We are alienated from
Any sense of community,
For there is too much
Fragmentation, internally
And externally,
To find any sense of unity.
We are alienated from ourselves
as we no longer seek the
silence of reflection
that returns us to oneself
because we are constantly
running away from ourselves.
We give ourselves no
time to return to the Self,
Because we are as alienated
from Solitude
as much as we are immersed
in the molasses of the multitude.
We no longer search or thirst
for a higher state of
freedom or clarity of thought,
because we have been
bought and sold
on the economic whore market.
Alienation is the state
of modern man
It exists in you,
and it exists in me.
If you do not see this fact,
you better do some reading and reflection
because you are missing a large
piece of modern’s man condition.
This must be repeated again and again
Because the realization of this
is where we all must start
if we are ever to understand
the poverty that exists
in all our hearts.
Any serious reflection must
have this starting point
if we want to understand
our unceasing restlessness.
For heaven’s sake, just for a start,
go read Kierkegaard or Hegel,
or Marx or Sartre
They will give you a head start
in the understanding of the alienation
that is at the heart
of all aspects of the personal realities
that invariably keep us apart.
Why can’t we see the barren boon
of the emotional and spiritual tragedy
of our inter and intra personal realities?
If you have the ambition to get
a read on this sad condition,
Turn your view to the select few
with the vast view.
They are, as Pound would say,
the antenna of the race.
They will help you fine tune
your perception to this sad
and stale state of alienation.
This is a quest we should all pursue,
If we want to get a grasp
On a larger lynchpin of truth.
And what the great thinkers of the past
and present day
attempt to portray
is a profound and deep sense
of a tragic inner decay.
This decay can be expressed
in many different ways.
But the one with the most
clarity and coherence
is the one that makes you think of it
as a complete fragmentation of experience.
It has been split in a myriad different ways
And the people with enough sense
try to get a handle on this
mysterious but sad malaise.
The great thinkers try to show
that becoming normal means letting go
and departing from the structure of being
Left only with a crippled and dulled
state of poverty of feeling.
Instead of possessing a symphony
of feeling, and learning how to create
a jazzy opera in a place of silence
we are shot to pieces only
left with the broken pieces of
a fragmented experience.
Our relation to our inner content is as vague
as knowing that china is in the orient.
We negate, deny, project,
introject and alienate
the wholeness that was
once our god-given being’s presence
And all we are left with now is
an essence and appearance
with no rich inner existence.
We run away from the Self,
causing our own
worthless hollow shells.
We cut ourselves up
and split ourselves in two…
No, not only just two, many more
than just a few.
In the end, we are
only left with black and blue
We cannot see the
nature of own bad faith
because our consciousness
often doth wear a deceptive false face
And a pure fool knows not cliche
coloring shades of grey
I keep asking myself,
being stuck with such a fate,
how did we arrive in such
a stale and dead inner state?
This is a question many a great
men and women have pondered
And they seem to be
where I am at, thinking
deeply about the quandary
of this paradoxical anomaly
Finding no answers,
and without a clue
They simply venture forth
into the unknown,
to see if they can come up
with something new
to help maybe just a few,
maybe me and you
They simply go forth into
the great yonder
and dig into the depths of their minds
to find the hidden gems
that exist in our mysterious mental mines
They somehow find new and higher forms of thought
to try to get a hold on this perplexing spiritual knot.
But as Yeats once lamented,
we no longer know
the learner from the learned,
or even the Is from the Ought
So just as Yeats lost his ladder
I have lost mine too.
So I am going to do what
he did to stand apart
And go forth to where
all ladders of thought start,
“in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.”
