When Our Need to Belong Goes All Wrong: What Hannah Arendt Says About Loneliness
Hannah Arendt ends The Origins of Totalitarianism — a book about the most anti-human form of government in history — on a deeply human note. Hitler, Stalin, and their respective movements created their Frankenstein monsters from already-existing parts, above all antisemitism and elements of imperialism. But it was loneliness that “prepare[d]” people to accept the unacceptable.
This was a new kind of loneliness, brought on by changing economic conditions and modern industrial inventions like the assembly line. As mass-produced as Ford’s Model T, it took root in a person even if they were surrounded by family and friends, which is to say it wasn’t caused by isolation.
At times, we all need isolation (or solitude). It allows us to reflect and find ourselves. We don’t feel like something’s missing when we’re in it. On the contrary, Arendt writes, in solitude, “I am ‘by myself,’ together with my self, and therefore two-in-one, whereas in loneliness I am actually one, deserted by all others.”
Loneliness, “once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age,” had “become an everyday experience of the evergrowing masses.” Totalitarianism offered an “escape” from it through ideology.
