I am a student and I really enjoy playing volleyball with others. I am a beginner so I always feel like an outsider when I play with them. The ball stays on the court with barely four or five players and the rest of us just stand there and I go back to my room with a feeling of insecurity. So should I keep playing with them or should I avoid going to a place where I feel like that?
Yuvraj, IndiaA.
When a question is sent to me, it can go one of two ways. Either I have to spend a long time pondering the topic – digging out a few books, finding a quiet corner of the house and pondering in front of a candle with all the effort of Descartes. Sometimes, like Yuvraj’s question, a word or an idea just jumps out at me. It grabs me and demands my attention like a chocolate-handed toddler heading for the sofa.
This week the word was “alienation.” It’s an interesting word. It’s a complicated feeling with a well-filled philosophical history. We’ve had a concept of something like alienation for a very long time; it’s often been associated with alienation from God or family. But philosophically the idea didn’t really take off until Georg Hegel (and then Karl Marx, but I won’t use Marx this week to protect my inbox from angry replies).
Yuvraj’s question says that he felt alienated by his exclusion. He was excluded. He wanted to join the volleyball game, but was forced to be a spectator. Worse, he is denied any kind of cathartic and vocal complaint because he was supposedly included – after all, he was allowed to play. But he felt excluded, which is a lonely, alienating state of mind. “What do you mean we excluded you?” His teammates can say, “You were on the court!”
To help Yuvraj, we will look at two theories of alienation: that of philosopher Albert Camus and that of psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan. In doing so, we need to ask Yuvraj a deeper question: Why does he feel alienated?
Camus: Meaningful surrogates
When Friedrich Nietzsche declared, “God is dead!” he was not claiming a heroic victory. It was probably not a judgmental statement, but a descriptive one – he was saying that God was no longer relevant in the same way that he had been for thousands of years. Today we live in a god-sized hole. We wander around in listless boredom, desperately trying to find something or someone to give us meaning again.
When Camus wrote his philosophical essay The myth of Sisyphus and novella The Strangerhe took up that Nietzschean baton. Camus argued that alienation is natural to us because we are goal-seeking creatures staring into a cosmically indifferent universe. DNA, the fundamental forces, and the eccentricity of orbit are fascinating on an intellectual level, but they hardly feed the soul. What is the purpose of a universe of atomic collisions and entropy? What is the meaning of our transient organic life?
And so we form communities, religions, and political institutions. We create workarounds. A few hundred years earlier, Hegel argued that individuals can only realize themselves—become full human beings—by connecting with each other and with the world. We need to be family members, team players, colleagues, and citizens. But Camus argues that these are inadequate substitutes. They can only hide the problem for so long, and with only limited success. Eventually, we go home. We crawl into our beds for the company of our thoughts and ourselves. And then the great shadow of alienation and absurdity is waiting to strike.
So, Yuvraj, interpret Camus’ argument in one of two ways. You can either accept the absurdity of your volleyball team — stick with it and try harder to integrate yourself into the team. In the sweaty camaraderie of sport, alienation is forgotten. Or you can stare at your alienation and try to cope with it. See the volleyball team as the replacement or tool you want. If it doesn’t serve its purpose — if it doesn’t alleviate your alienation — find something else to do the job.
Sullivan: the “single-genre” principle
From a philosophical perspective, Hegel argued that human nature is only satisfied when it forms a unity with other human natures. Like a utopian Borg, we are happiest when we are a collective; we are most fulfilled when we are together. In a sense, Sullivan offers us a psychoanalytic version of Hegel’s thesis.
Sullivan argues that most of us have a sense of what it means to be human. We know what it is to be human, and a big part of that is living in families, tribes, and societies. When we do something wrong or “sinful,” we feel like we’ve lost our sense of humanity. We feel inhuman. Sullivan argues that many patients with mental illness view themselves as “failed” people, or as a species detached from everyone else. So when Yuvraj isn’t part of his team, when he doesn’t play volleyball well, he feels not just like a bad volleyball player, but also like a bad person. He has failed to fit in. He has failed to follow the “one species” imperative.
Our self-esteem, or “self-concept,” as Sullivan put it, is vital to our well-being. People with a damaged or confused idea of who they are will be deeply and traumatically unhappy. If Yuvraj’s experience playing volleyball undermines his self-esteem and distances him from feeling like he’s a “good person,” then he should stop doing it.
Rethinking a simple case
I often get grumpy when people say I’m “thinking too much” about a subject, or when they say, “It’s very simple.” I feel that most things are never simple, and that thinking rarely makes anything worse. But in this case, I hear the mocking voices coming closer. Is this really about alienation? Is this about the human condition and mysterious psychodynamic forces? Or is it really just that Yuvraj isn’t very good at volleyball yet?
When we all learn something for the first time, we can’t avoid the awkward, awkward virginal phases. We have to slog and stumble until we find our way. Yuvraj isn’t “alienated,” he’s just embarrassed. He’s not experiencing existential angst; he’s just grumpy because a skill wasn’t developed quickly enough.
So I would say this: If after a while, when Yuvraj is getting better at volleyball, he still feels “alienated,” then stop. According to Sullivan, volleyball is harmful, and according to Camus, it is an inadequate substitute. But for now, go ahead and start again. Try a little harder, and try a little longer. My guess is that something will change, and that your feelings will change. You will write back to me in a few weeks and tell me that your volleyball team is great. You love volleyball. Volleyball is the perfect balm for anyone’s existential angst and psychoanalytic neuroses.
