Quotes About Alienation

Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.

PTSD is a disorder of recovery, and if treatment only focuses on identifying symptoms, it pathologizes and alienates vets. But if the focus is on family and community, it puts them in a situation of collective healing." Israel

We are not good to each other. Our tribalism is to an extremely narrow group of people: our children, our spouse, maybe our parents. Our society is alienating, technical, cold, and mystifying. Our fundamental desire, as human beings, is to be close to others, and our society does not allow for that.

Given the profound alienation of modern society, when combat vets say that they miss the war, they might be having an entirely healthy response to life back home. Iroquois warriors did not have to struggle with that sort of alienation because warfare and society existed in such close proximity that there was effectively no transition from one to the other.

We are not good to each other. Our tribalism is to an extremely narrow group of people: our children, our spouse, maybe our parents. Our society is alienating, technical, cold, and mystifying. Our fundamental desire, as human beings, is to be close to others, and our society does not allow for that." One

And as society modernized, people found themselves able to live independently from any communal group. A person living in a modern city or a suburb can, for the first time in history, go through an entire day—or an entire life—mostly encountering complete strangers. They can be surrounded by others and yet feel deeply, dangerously alone.

I hate it here. I hate everyone here. I hate that I am so different. I love it here and I want to belong and I know that I never will.

We'd become aliens in our own land, he'd warned, denied our own laws, our own language, even our yesterdays, for a conquered people are not allowed a prideful past. Worst of all, we'd be leaving our children and grandchildren a legacy of misery and loss, a future bereft of hope.

Loving-kindness challenges those states that tend to arise when we think of ourselves as isolated from everyone else—fear, a sense of deficiency, alienation, loneliness.

He wanted to die, too, and I didn't even really know him. I don't think anybody did. How are you supposed to know someone who stares at his hands all day, and cracks his head open on a concrete wall?

Each of them, withdrawn and apart, is like a stranger to the destiny of all the others: his children and his particular friends form the whole human species for him; as for dwelling with his fellow citizens, he is beside them but he does not see them. . . .

Lately I feel that I'm living in a badly written, badly directed foreign movie that's running on late-night TV in black-and-white with lots of static and inadequate subtitles.

I had left the tribe, and I was being punished for that.

But despite the fact that Reardan is a tiny town, people can still be strangers to each other.

But he wasn't ugly, just misplaced and marked by loneliness.

Yep, now even the teachers were treating me like an idiot. I shrank back into my chair and remembered when I used to be a human being. I remember when people used to think I was smart. I remember when people used to think my brain was useful. Damaged by water, sure. And ready to seizure at any moment. But still useful, and maybe even a little bit beautiful and sacred and magical.

No, he wasn't a pig. He was a lonely, hurt man who didn't know how to cope in a world that had turned its back on him. [Astrid]

We're always alone. You can be in a crowded room and still feel the bite of loneliness. Personally, I find that it bites deepest whenever others are around.

I'm not saying that I don't experience people in life as evil, but writing is not a place of alienation; writing is the place where we can try to be human.

If whites bored me, it was because they bored themselves. They seemed to get little fun out of life and were desperately lonely.

This world we exist in is populated by people who have really shut themselves off from life.

You can live in the same city your entire life and still be completely a foreigner when you step out, in your old age, onto the street.

I want some time without you organic life forms.

If you don't live a normal life, how do you relate to people?