Alienation in the Post Cold War Era
Chapter 15
Objectivity as a
Requirement for Love
(page 5)
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Society is very harsh in making sure that we stay oiled and function smoothly with others. It punishes severely with excommunication all those who express honestly their real alienation and their hostility for the suppression of their humanity. Society allows people to show only their social facade in most situations. Thus, human relationships in most social situations (such as at work for example) are based on hidden antagonism that cannot be expressed openly or even rise into consciousness.
In such social order the family and the people that we supposedly love the most become the only persons to unload negative feelings safely, without the restrains that exist in most social situations. We are allowed to express our deepest feelings of unhappiness and dissatisfaction only with close family members and friends. That is why people feel safe to take out their aggression and insecurities on people who are very close to them. The nuclear family and close friends become a release valve for negative feelings.
It is too dangerous for a society that is based on unspoken antagonistic human relationships, in “normal” day to day life, to bar such a release valve. If it did, people’s antagonism would spill over into social and economic situations that would destroy the functionality of present class society. For people who do not try to transcend society’s ills that are expressed internally, these rituals in personal relationships that alternate between fights and “love” can become a ravaging experience. They ruin relationships between lovers, family members, and friends.
Most fights between couples are seemingly about petty matters. But they are not about petty matters, and sometimes not even about different directions in their life. Many times they fight because of the escalation of stress from the social/economic realities. These economic/social realities are the driving forces underneath people’s conscious behavior. Several layers underneath the facade of marketing persona, the person is driven by alienated fears, insecurities, and anxieties. The average person cannot control these driving feelings as long as they reflect the powerful alienating realities that determine the day to day life.
Under the surface, the constant petty fights between couples is about their deep fears and insecurities that reflect their inability to love themselves and relate to themselves and others in a productive and loving ways. The deeper fears and anxieties underneath the social facades are usually barely conscious to the average person. Many people cannot drop their facades with friends; but when they get closer to a main partner in their life, they feel sufficiently safe to let lose some of the pressure that keep the real feelings boiling underneath. The result is petty fights with the partner. This remains the case as long as the partners experience the alienated driving forces of their personality fragmentarily and semi-consciously, and as long as they keep their deeper humanity asleep.
To overcome regular fights the couple need to see things as they are and relate to the self and others in a loving and productive manner — from the essence of a growing human, not from the irrational position of the alienated slave of the market.
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