It can be a rough experience; for the first time in your life you are confronted with moral questions that you as a young woman or young man have to deal with personally. You also have to cope with the question of love, and with sexuality. You are all of a sudden surrounded by a complex new reality, you did not expect it could exist, and your parents did not prepare you for it, so:
“How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
You’ve gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you’re gonna have to get used to it
You said you’d never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain’t no good
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain’t it hard when you discover that
He really wasn’t where it’s at
After he took from you everything he could steal
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They’re drinkin’, thinkin’ that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you’d better lift your diamond ring, you’d better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwOfCgkyEj0
Bob Dylan’s 1965 classic "Like a Rolling Stone" tells the story of a formerly privileged, middle class young woman, who as a child was sheltered from the outside world (fictionalized as "Miss Lonely") who loses her social standing, and is now confronted to street life and isolation, a world she cannot ignore anymore now she is forced to find an own personality. She reminds me of a Bulgarian women, Joanna M., who wrote me last month she was finally trying “to figure out what I wanna do exactly.” Being 28 years now, she cannot evade this existential question anymore, her youth is over, and the question is “I just want a place where I can belong.”
Ten years ago, on Saturday 21/5/2016, I quoted Frances Moore Lappé. “Time for Progressives to Grow Up.” 2008:
“We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy — from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses — that only recently have we awakened to see not only that ‘regular’ citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.”
https://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.com/search?q=to+belong
As early as the first half of the nineteenth century, the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville warned in his legendary treatise *On Democracy in America* that “the more equal the classes become, the less strong people are individually, the more easily they allow themselves to be swept along by the masses.” Regarding the “feverish” excess of U.S. culture, he remarked: “In America I saw the freest and most enlightened men placed in the happiest circumstances that the world affords, it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung upon their brow, and I thought them serious and almost sad, even in their pleasures. The chief reason for this contrast is that [they are] forever brooding over advantages they do not possess. It is strange to see with what feverish ardor the Americans pursue their own welfare, and to watch the vague dread that constantly torments them lest they should not have chosen the shortest path which may lead to it. A native of the United States clings to the world’s goods as if he were certain never to die; and he is so hasty in grasping at all within his reach that one would suppose he was constantly afraid of not living long enough to enjoy them. He clutches everything, he holds nothing, but soon loosens his grasp to pursue fresh gratifications.
Death finally overtakes him, but it is before he is weary of his bootless chase of that complete felicity which forever escapes him. At first sight there is something surprising in this strange unrest of so many happy men, restless in the midst of abundance. The spectacle itself, however, is as old as the world; the novelty is to see a whole people furnish an exemplification of it. Their taste for physical gratifications must be regarded as the original source of that secret disquietude which the actions of the Americans betray and of that inconstancy of which they daily afford fresh examples. He who has set his heart exclusively upon the pursuit of worldly welfare is always in a hurry, for he has but a limited time at his disposal to reach, to grasp, and to enjoy it. The recollection of the shortness of life is a constant spur to him. Besides the good things that he possesses, he every instant fancies a thousand others that death will prevent him from trying if he does not try them soon. This thought fills him with anxiety, fear, and regret and keeps his mind in ceaseless trepidation, which leads him perpetually to change his plans and his abode. Men will then be seen continually to change their track for fear of missing the shortest cut to happiness.”
The feeling of being perpetually psychologically mobilized, the threat from both within and without, is fueled by desire, with the fear and insecurity inextricably linked to it. The Other is thus seen as a competitor in the hunt for scarce goods. Certainly today, now that women have also appeared en masse on the labor market, giving rise to major societal changes. All this prevents many Americans, especially those from the middle class, from feeling rooted in a viable community. My contemporaries, all of whom were born during and just after the Second World War, suffer from this alienation. As exponents of the Baby Boom Generation (born between 1940 and 1955), they are/were obsessively focused on themselves, on their position in the pecking order, on their image.
More about the brave Joanna M., the alienation in post-modern society and the urge to belong next time.
