Long after the midnight, we woke up to the crying of our neighbor. Noise of mayhem caused by our neighbors could be heard in the corridor. Curiosity prompted us to open the door of our apartment. Our neighbor was beating his chest and crying loudly. We find out the reason behind the man’s hue and cry but wondered how come during our one year stay we never came to know that our neighbor’s 26-year-old wife had mental problems.

After two days of this incident, the man’s wife ran away from their home, and so far there is not any clue about her.
In today’s world, neighbors are alienated from each other in the mega cities and are unaware what’s happening in their neighborhood. Neighbors living in the one building don’t recognize each other and cannot recall each other’s names. They just say hello when they see each other in the parking lot, in corridors or outside.
According to sociologists, the unsocial behavior resulting in alienation became prevalent in the world following the industrial revolution. This phenomenon alienated people from their own culture, religious values, traditions and eventually from their national identity.
In this background, the university professor Dr. Shahram Vaziri, psychologist, pointed out that all these problems are not the product of a post-industrial world or capitalism as expressed by Karl Heinrich Marx (1818 –1883).
“We see that countries such as Germany, France or Britain, which are regarded as industrialized nations, are not confronting this phenomenon to a great extent because they apply the achievements of industrialization for the prosperity and welfare of their nations,” he said.
Dr. Vaziri says: “The first negative aspect arising from the alienation is depression and anxiety and it is quite natural that if depression has a rising trend in a nation then alienation increases and finally it paves the way for any sort of deviation, including tendency towards smoking and addiction.”
Philosophers’ views on alienation
Philosophers and scholars have always considered city as a phenomenon that keeps man away from his real identity. Despite the fact that if man in all aspects of life does not find his natural inner identity, he becomes gloomy, disappointed, isolated and eventually alienated.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) in an essay writes that inequality is the main source of alienation.
Meanwhile, Marx believed that alienation is the systematic result of capitalism. In his analysis of capitalist system Marx uses the term of alienation and says the capitalism causes alienation. He believes what makes the character of man is labor, but in capitalism the production system does not flourish the capabilities of man.
Marx says in these circumstances labor is alienated from labor because it has no control over the process of labor as it is alienated from the labor’s outcome and does not belong to workers which causes the disintegration of the inner side of human being and at last disrupts the character of man. He says in capitalism human beings are regarded as economic products in social life who are facing with alienation.
The Holy Quran and alienation
The Holy Quran says the biggest losers are “self losers”. “The losers will be those who lose themselves and their housefolk on the Day of Resurrection. Ah, that will be the manifest loss!” (Al-Zumar 15)
According to the Holy Quran, “self losers” means man has lost divine identity and refers to the greatest “human resources” and thus becomes alienated from humanity.
How to prevent alienation
One of the reasons of ever-increasing alienation in developing societies is to depend on foreign culture and forget their own identity. In Iran, courtesy of rich cultural heritage, people have demonstrated that they are strong enough to withstand the onslaught from the foreign mass media outlets.
In order to pave the way for our society to be immune against alienation, the recognition of individual and group identities, preaching of Iran’s magnificent cultural heritage, maintenance of cultural values based on the old traditions and costumes are necessary.
Inclination towards scientific society, humanism and materialism are among the advanced manifestations of technological progress which create new tendency toward alienation in the world today. That’s why a cultural revitalization is required to cope with this social phenomenon at national and international level.
HIGHLIGHT:
One of the reasons of ever-increasing alienation in developing societies is to depend on foreign culture and forget their own identity.
CAPTION:
The first negative aspect arising from alienation is depression and anxiety.