Hell is indeed other people
50,7% of people are introverts. For them, the 49,3% of people who are extroverts
are, often, “hell” to put up with…
Most people have to live in cities, packed like sardines with millions of others. That can be hell.
Cosmopolitanism is a nice ideology, but groups of people, whose values and practices are different, find it difficult, sometimes impossible, to share a public space or territory with other groups of people. Culture shocks are common, leading sometimes to conflicts; think of the hellish civil war in Syria...
Most people have to live in cities, packed like sardines with millions of others. That can be hell.
Cosmopolitanism is a nice ideology, but groups of people, whose values and practices are different, find it difficult, sometimes impossible, to share a public space or territory with other groups of people. Culture shocks are common, leading sometimes to conflicts; think of the hellish civil war in Syria...
Most of us, to some extent, are afraid of and reject those that are
different from ourselves. History is a long list of one people excluding, rejecting, persecuting,
exploiting, denigrating, or trying to annihilate another people. Just one
example: the White supremacists in the USA are more active than ever and they
intend to continue making the lives of Blacks “hell”.
Some people are/become bad. Rapists, terrorists, and other such criminals,
hurt and sometimes kill people, often for no apparent reason. They shake our
faith in the goodness of humanity, making us feel unsafe and isolated.
Emil Cioran wrote: "Knowledge
subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our secrets, we come to loathe our
kind, precisely because they resemble us." Hell is other people precisely because
they are like ourselves. Perhaps we are all, to various degrees, guilty of self-loathing and misanthropy?
But hell is also the absence of other people...
Loneliness is the state of being alone and
feeling sad about it. It affects everyone no matter their origins, gender or
age. In fact, 1 in 5 Americans suffers from loneliness. In the United Kingdom,
51% of people aged 75 and over live alone (ONS, 2010). This problem has become
so common it isn't surprising anymore when someone says that they are suffering
from loneliness. “I don’t feel well in this society” is a recurring sentence
heard by psychologists. However, their answer is often: “Don’t worry, it’s
normal.” Yet it shouldn't be. Loneliness is a growing problem and studies show
that it shortens your lifespan. But the number of lonely people keeps
increasing. Even very young kids are confronted with a major problem: how to
make friends. People who suffer from a lack of human contact are at risk of
depression and other mental illnesses. This proves how important human relations
are.
Most people would not survive outside society.
Community means safety and the sharing of knowledge; progress comes from people
working together. Solidarity is what makes us human and I believe that feeling
supported is crucial to a person’s well-being. When you have a family and you
have friends, when you live in society, you are usually happy.
People also help you “discover” yourself, and
open up your mind to give you a different view on the world. That is why
children need to learn to live with other children in order to become sociable
adults. Without positive interaction with others, we become totally close-minded
and self-centred. If I was all alone on this earth, my existence would have no
meaning whatsoever because it is social interaction that brings colour to my life.
We should try to do our best to get on with
each other, so as to make our world more bearable, less hell-like, less lonely, don't you think?
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