Alienation - the one thing we have in common

Whenever I see footage of fires (especially fires that affect human life, like the ones burning in Los Angeles right now), it makes me starkly aware of how close we all are to… displacement. To alienation from home and our material belongings.

Fires don’t judge. They’re brutally inclusive. They displace and alienate without discretion.

So, as I was doom-scrolling through endless footage of entire neighborhoods being ravaged in LA and feeling hopeless as usual, I started thinking about this book I just finished reading by philosopher Todd McGowan called Embracing Alienation, which has changed the way I look at, well… Life. He follows the train of thought of a lot of thinkers I’ve wanted to understand better but have had a hard time grasping (Kierkegaard, Lacan, Rollins, etc.).

McGowan talks about the universal nature of alienation. Not only do we live with constant fear of being alienated from our homes, communities, etc. (external alienation). We also live with a sense of being alienated from… Ourselves (inner alienation). This is what it means to be a subjective being. If this weren’t the case, we’d melt right into the worldview of our upbringing, and we’d remain there. But this isn’t the case. We doubt. We question. We have a hard time deciding what is right and wrong or what we even want!

If the self is a building, well, the building is always on fire.

So, we flee. We run toward community because we want to feel at home. We don’t want to feel alienated anymore. We want to feel whole and complete. As seductive as the community is, and though it promises wholeness and belonging, we bring our subjective selves with us. After a while, we start to see that we don’t fully belong. We get itchy:) Maybe we stray from the edicts of the community to varying degrees. Maybe we notice hypocrisy. Maybe certain members of the community just flat-out don’t like us. Maybe we change.

In his book, McGowan points out how every community is, by definition, exclusive. There’s an inside and outside. The right-wing needs the immigrant to stand against. No immigrant, no right-wing. On the other hand, the left-wing needs the nationalists to stand against. No nationalist bigots and the left-wing ceases to have a reason to exist.

No community is fully inclusive.

He contrasts this with the public (the commons). In the public, we are more aware of our subjective nature. The commons are not held together by community edicts or identity. When you sit next to someone on a public bus, you don’t know what their religion, worldview, politics, language, heritage (etc.) is. The public is the only place where we are foundationally equal. It’s when the community encroaches on the public that oppression happens. This is what the Civil Rights movement stood against. Rosa Parks made the statement that the White community was allowing their community edicts to encroach on the commons. (There’s so much more in the book; I highly recommend it.)

The assigned weekly Scripture reading for Epiphany is awash in the theme of alienation. The Gospel reading from Matthew is the story about the magi arriving at the star in Bethlehem. God is revealed, not to the violent and oppressive community organizer - King Herod. God enters flesh in a displaced child (baby Jesus) and is revealed to those outside the covenant - the magi - Zoroastrian wisdom seekers from the East. God shows up to alienated people.

In fact, all of Scripture - Old Testament to New - is awash in alienation. God always seems to show up to those who have smacked face-first into alienation and displacement. Whose identity has become burned to the ground. This goes for Moses. Abraham. Ruth. Sarah. Mary and Joseph. All the disciples. The Syrophoenician woman. The woman caught in adultery. The Roman centurion. Leppers. The demon-possessed. Zacchaeus, the tax collector, up in the tree, hiding from the community he’s been alienated from.

And then, the founder of the Christian faith himself, Jesus, hanging on a cross… Alienated. Not just from the Roman Empire. Not just from the Jewish religious elite. But from God. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Certain theologians have made the argument (and I’m starting to get more on board with this) that in Jesus, we see that God is alienated from Godself.

So, if this is the case… Instead of fleeing alienation toward an exclusive community… We can embrace our alienation and know that it isn’t actually oppressive, but GENERATIVE!! Our alienation from self and community provides the fractures that new life can be born through! We can never flee our alienated state. And though we’ll never stop seeking identity, it will never give us shelter for long.

As we see in the public sphere, our alienation is the ONE thing we all (!) have in common. We are all subjective beings and there’s no getting over it. If we could come to terms with this, maybe we could live better together as humans.

I think it’s at least worth exploring.