Hannah Arendt on Loneliness and the Temptation of Totalitarianism

After World War II, Hannah Arendt set out to understand how totalitarianism could take root in modern societies. In *The Origins of Totalitarianism* (1951), she argued that mass loneliness - not just private sorrow, but a felt "non‑belonging to the shared world" - is both a precondition for, and an instrument of, totalitarian rule. As she put it, totalitarian government “bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man.”

Arendt distinguishes isolation (being cut off from political action) from loneliness (being deserted by others and by a common reality). Loneliness, she argues, dissolves the “common world” - the shared facts, institutions, and spaces that anchor public life - and thereby prepares people to accept ideological fictions in place of lived reality.

Contemporary life can intensify this dynamic. In today’s information economy, much of what we “know” arrives pre‑packaged - memes, snippets, and ready‑made takes - rather than ripening through experience and conversation. We consume processed information the way we once learned to consume processed food: easy, quick, and often denaturing. The result can be a thinner common world and a thicker sense of aloneness—exactly the soil Arendt warned can nourish the worst political temptations.