George Carlin in l969 |
Have you ever had the feeling that someone is not really there? It could be them or you. Either the person in question is quite distant
and removed because they are thinking of someone or something else or you are
having one of those out of body experiences in which you experience both
yourself and others as strangers. This last is almost like amnesia but not
quite. Verfremndungseffekt is a term for alienation in the theater coined by Brecht, but it can happen in real life. You know exactly who you and they are. You are simply experiencing one
degree of separation, as if you were hovering like a doppleganger right outside
the confines of personality. This condition, which we might term, “the absence
of presence,” is becoming an increasingly common affect disorder that had been
camouflaged by more globalized feelings of alienation (experienced, for
example, by baby boomers against the military industrial complex in the 60’s).
Ask anybody if they haven’t experienced it at one time or another. George
Carlin humorously commented “I’ve adopted a new lifestyle that doesn’t require my presence.” Human beings are social animals and alienation is a social phenomenon, what the sociologist Emile
Durkheim described as “anomie,” while “the absence of presence” is a syndrome
that has the earmarks of a neuropsych disorder. What is the cure?
Followers of Zen or the recovery movement talk about living in the now. “You only have
today,” they will tell you and alas, this may be the best and only known
analgesic, capable of lessening the disturbing feeling of apartness that comes
to those who suffer from “the absence of presence.”
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