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“The Cost Of Sanity, In This Society, Is A Certain Level Of Alienation”
“The Cost Of Sanity, In This Society, Is A Certain Level Of Alienation”
The late psychonaut/philosopher Terence McKenna once said “The cost of sanity, in this society, is a certain level of alienation,” and I think my regular readers will immediately and experientially understand exactly what he was talking about.
It’s not always easy to be on the outside of consensus reality. Our entire society, after all, has been built upon consensus–upon a shared agreement about what specific mouth sounds mean, on what money is and how it works, on how we should all behave toward each other in public spaces, and on what normal human behavior in general looks like.
We all share a learned agreement that we picked up from our culture in early childhood that it’s normal and acceptable to stand around with your hands in your pockets and babble about the weather to anyone who gets too close to you, for example, whereas it would be considered weird and disruptive to stand around slathered in Cheese Whiz shrieking the word “Poop!” But we could just as easily reverse that consensus on behavioral norms tomorrow, and as long as we all agreed to it we could do it without missing a beat.
In exactly the same way, there exists a general consensus about what’s going on in our world at the moment. There’s a general consensus that we live in the kind of society we were taught about in school: a free and democratic nation which maybe did some not so great things in the past, but is now a supremely virtuous beacon of light on this earth that kicked Hitler’s ass and then surfed into the present day on a wave of truth and sensible fiscal policy.
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Anthem!
| Ash: | You still don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you? Perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. |
| Lambert: | You admire it. |
| Ash: | I admire its purity. A survivor … unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality. |
| Parker: | Look, I am … I’ve heard enough of this, and I’m asking you to pull the plug. |
| [Ripley goes to disconnect Ash, who interrupts] | |
| Ash: | Last word. |
| Ripley: | What? |
| Ash: | I can’t lie to you about your chances, but… you have my sympathies. |
| ― “Alien” (1979) | |
| Det. ‘George’ Francisco: | You humans are very curious to us. You invite us to live among you in an atmosphere of equality that we’ve never known before. You give us ownership of our own lives for the first time and you ask no more of us than you do of yourselves. I hope you understand how special your world is, how unique a people you humans are. Which is why it is all the more painful and confusing to us that so few of you seem capable of living up to the ideals you set for yourselves. |
| ― “Alien Nation” (1988) | |
The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theatre or to balls, or to the pub, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you will be able to save and the greater will become your treasure which neither moth nor rust will corrupt—your capital. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being.
― Karl Marx on Alienation, “Economic Manuscripts” (1844)
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