“Descartes’ Loneliness” by Allen Grossman (2007) – Anthology & Interpretation

“Descartes’ Loneliness” by Allen Grossman (2007)

Toward evening, the natural light becomes
intelligent and answers, without demur:
“Be assured! You are not alone. . . .”
But in fact, toward evening, I am not
convinced there is any other except myself
to whom existence necessarily pertains.
I also interrogate myself to discover
whether I myself possess any power
by which I can bring it about that I
who now am shall exist another moment.

Because I am mostly a thinking thing
and because this precise question can only
be from that thoughtful part of myself,
if such a power did reside within me
I should, I am sure, be conscious of it. . . .
But I am conscious of no such power.
And yet, if I myself cannot be
the cause of that assurance, surely
it is necessary to conclude that
I am not alone in the world. There is

some other who is the cause of that idea.
But if, at last, no such other can be
found toward evening, do I really have
sufficient assurance of the existence
of any other being at all? For,
after a most careful search, I have been
unable to discover the ground of that
conviction—unless it be imagined a lonely
workman on a dizzy scaffold unfolds
a sign at evening and puts his mark to it.

My Interpretation

Our minds are a fortress.
Constantly guarding is territory
With little communication with
The outside world.

It becomes lonely,
Needing to speak,
Needing relationships.

We reach out to others that
Bring forth an ideology of community.
Being bound by a common unity with
Others. But all we grasp is a
Falsified, glorified, traitorous loneliness.

Our grasp at human connection
Is gone. It is false. It is nothing.

Bound by the deafening quiet,
We can barely quench our feeling of
Despair. It drives us mad, manifesting as
The ghosts of yesterday and the problems of
Tomorrow.

It hallucinates people within its walls;
Each manifesting an aspect of real life.
Each a manifest of the truth.
The only problem is-
What is real?

The insane in the world seem to
Have it right. They see the world through
Their mind’s eye. Their loneliness quenched.
Rooms full of a common unity.

Their minds are too far gone for the good of their
Heart or the strength of their soul to pull them
Out.

In our own quest for unity-
We feel the need to
Fix, nip, tuck. We believe this
Is the pursuit of happiness.

This has become the most
Fleeting of all feelings.

Why is it that we, not just our minds but our
Souls, block off the world from entering our
Space. We hide behind our screens and
Headphones.
We have become a shell in
Culture with which our common unity
Is our disunity with the outside world.

It is no wonder that our minds make up a
Version of our world and
The desire to be “normal” rises.
We bar-and-chain our comrades who do not conform
As we sit alone in isolation.

Our stupidity manifests inside of our minds
Like the stupidity in the world. We become
what we cannot stand
And we cannot stand what we have become.

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