What is alienation? I often find myself preoccupied into the search of an answer to this question. In a naive way we often use this word referring to distance between a system and a person, components of a system or two or more systems. Perhaps all these things can, some way other, be meant by the word. But the most fundamental manifestation of the idea of alienation is the separation between each two individuals in a community. This causes all the other forms of alienations mentioned.
Consider relationship between two persons. By the word relation, here I mean a positive, friendly trusted connection. This sort of relation is characterised by a process of lessening of the mental difference between two persons; or at least the state of difference should remain stable or static.
It seems that naturally, every species possessing mental "qualities" (of course humans and some other lesser beings) maintain such stable relation between themselves. This ensures security of their feelings. For humans, this idea of feeling is a little bit complicated. Sentiment plays a very important role here. It is a complex of several components like security, likings, disliking, values etc. When any one (or more than one) of these fundamental feelings of a human is hurt by interaction with some other person, this sows the seed of distance. If the damage is not controlled in time, the distance grows, and this finally takes the shape of alienation.
What a human being expects from those, whom he or she considers to be a friend (or at least a close person who can be trusted) are empathy and sympathy. That gives a sense of security, which brings two people closer, which can cure alienation.
Let us have a closer look at the ideas of empathy and sympathy. Sympathy is the manifestation of capability of sensing others pain (and also joy). Some are more sensitive than others. This degree of sensitivity is innate to each individual. Empathy, on the other hand, is the quality of understanding others’ perspectives. This can be developed by practice, which does not call for any extraordinary characteristic. Also, sympathy helps empathy. Thus, conscious effort can stop the tendency of alienation between two persons.
The idea expressed above can quite well be extended to the context of other more complex structures of communities or systems.
Let us assume there are N nos. of persons in a community. Then, each individual can have a distinct mutual relation with (N-1) other persons. Each of these (N-1) relations will satisfy the characteristics of mutual relations between two persons discussed earlier. Also, there must be some people who will have same mental characteristics; and such people may form communities. Such communities again have relations. These two kinds of relations (one to many and many to many relations) will, essentially, maintain the rules of relationships between two persons. As, by alienation, we mean an increasing difference between the parties of a relation, may be individuals or may be communities, the remedy to the problem in all the contexts is the same; and that is empathy.
This calls for unbiased perspective. Free from preconceptions, whenever we face a new situation, we should be ready to review our ideas and opinions. Stagnation in ideas gives birth to arrogance, which in turn buries our sensitivity, sympathy and empathy, giving way to alienation.
