Anatomy of a Hollowed Existence
Preface
We humans, unlike other animals have a special kind of desire to be social. This, in part, has to do with the evolutionary advantage and thus better odds at survival as a species, but you would agree that the constant gratification of social co-existence evident in poetry, films, literature, sex and even science cannot merely be understood as Darwinian reductionism. Is it or is it not routine to find ourselves requiring companionship, desiring others, avoiding prolonged loneliness and struggling to compensate the occasional spikes in our repulsion towards togetherness? This ability, therefore, to not only co-exist but to co-operate with each other to further our lives is the central theme to any human endeavor worth discussing.
However, we are all guilty of suspending the virtues in our moments of weakness. In fact, these lapses in moral and ethical continuity is what provides us an opportunity to calibrate our instincts which then strengthens our emotional resolve to respond to challenges.
But, this has a serious implication- The natural order of right and wrong, it means, is merely a moral evolutionary machine that over time perfects one over the other. And if it is indeed true then one is compelled to ask- why even bother being good?
I have struggled with this question a lot. One has to conduct a Gedanken (thought) experiment to contrast the good and the bad in a very realistic way. In other words, one has to contrive a dystopian society which is not merely a product of pornographic social de-generation or political mis-calculation (as depicted in Hollywood movies), but as a viable and original conception of a taxidermic existence where we are hollowed from inside and then filled with selfishness, egotism, narcissism and hatred. It’s only after conducting an exhaustive exploration of that world and it’s people, can you dismiss and defeat the argument conclusively and finally.
There are many good reasons why such a world does not exist. But if only I could glimpse into such a world, however fleeting it might be, I will discover truth and wisdom.
There are, among us, people who embody the hollowness discussed above with varying degrees of perfection and they can offer a view into such a hollowed existence. I call them the Hollow Man.
Fortunately, or unfortunately depends how you look at it, I recently got to spend a lot of time with one such Hollow Man. What struck me immediately was his personality- the core of which was a perfected self-centeredness forged on the mantle of solipsism, surrounded by a thick cushion of self-denial. This design, if you examine closely, was extremely resilient to any threat from critical thinking or self-reflection.
If the personality wasn’t intriguing enough, the Hollow Man more than made it up with his fantastic indifference to his own mental state. But then it shouldn’t be all that surprising, for after all isn’t self-awareness an obvious casualty of solipsism.
I felt like I was an investigative journalist, passionate to discover the truth behind the Hollow Man, peeling each complex layer of his corrupted mind while risking my own sanity. I had to travel to dangerous areas, if only in my mind, to eavesdrop his thoughts or to indulge in muted conversations. The journey forced me to enquire almost every established social construct- marriage v/s divorce, happy v/s dysfunctional family, friends v/s enemies, professional v/s pathetic.
The Anatomy

The beginnings of the Hollow Man can be traced back to his younger self. It is in this age that he develops a peculiar behavioral anomaly where the echo chamber between that-which-he-senses and that-which-he-understands is expanded and altered ever so slightly such that every human interaction gets amplified through this chamber until it falls obediently into the following two utilitarian and counter-factual categories- 1) a short term opportunity with measurable gratification, or 2) a long term opportunity where a twisted version of it be safely stored in annals of memory so as to perform a historical reflection on future shortcomings (more on this in next paragraphs). The otherwise natural progression where information eventually becomes knowledge preserving both the facts and it’s interpretation simultaneously yet discernibly, gets short-circuited. Instead, the information flows through the echo-chamber getting filtered, altered, abused and enhanced such that knowledge becomes permanently hostage to self-deception, resulting in a disfigured world view.
Narcissism, with an over-dose of self-confidence is the the most precious virtue of Hollow Man. Therefore it is imperative, by definition, that a reliable syllogistic infrastructure be constructed that is custom designed to mass-produce self-serving propaganda. It is this machinery that produces coherent arguments when faced with internal and/or external conflicts to vindicate and calm the troubled mind.
To normal beings like us, in-admission of obvious mistakes is not only counter-productive but almost impossible to reconcile factually, morally or ethically. With the Hollow Man however, the proposition is ironically reversed. Admission of a single mistake can result into a tsunami of past reconciliations, eventually leading to an unstable mind. Instead, he has to change the narrative of the mistake such that it can be attributed to someone else, thus absolving himself of guilt and responsibility, yet preserve the original misery for self-pity. To this end, he surgically separates the sufferings from the mistake. He then recounts some past from his memory (this is the later of the two categories we witnessed in the earlier paragraphs) that suits the act. To preserve the causation rules of the mistake, he further corrupts the already twisted past. Finally, he retrofits the sufferings to the new narrative and skillfully repeats it to himself. The echo chambers do the rest.
Cynicism is the critical part of his machinery. The infrastructure including the echo chamber is the choke point of Hollow Man’s hollow existence and is constantly subjected to extreme pressures and urges from the seductive nature of normalcy. He is, therefore, understandably sensitive to companionship and it’s established outcomes like love, compassion or empathy. He is constantly forced into finding newer ways to reject it’s offerings. It is for this reason, he employs cynicism. It allows Hollow Man to refurbish any act of goodness with a veneer of suspicion. This leads to an emotionally abusive (or physically abusive in patriarchal societies) relationship between the Hollow Man and the Normals around him including his parents, (ex-)spouse, siblings, in-laws, colleagues, friends (if any).
The social contract among the Normals and between the Hollow Man is asymmetric. So, for example, while the family has much more capacity to absorb the abuses, colleagues and friends have much lower thresholds. This is the primarily why Hollow Man is a loner.

The family acts as an enabler but for no fault of their own. What choices do they have- 1) they can reflect the reality to him in which case he would banish them to eternity and continue to exist the way he does, or 2) they participate in his self-deception in which case he might occasionally offer them some kindness.
The family employs some combination of both. This arrangement is ideal for the Hollow Man because he has dominion over his social surrounding with complete impunity. To maintain status quo, he only has to manufacture very low quantities of social gestures while in return yielding infinite largesse. Since the family constitutes more bodies than what can be fed by the Hollow Man, he rations his gestures so as to yield optimum results.
He further optimizes the social construct by carefully engineering common enemies and common friends. Gossip is therefore his favorite past time. It is through this kind of shallow interaction that he builds a case for artificial affection or genuine hatred. The engineered affections are generally short lived while the misplaced hatred is permanent and that is simply because he has a natural disposition towards negative emotions. Once he has permanently associated hatred with the guilty, he finds it impossible to turn it around even after the accused is acquitted or pardoned by the victim. It is worth noting that ‘the guilty’ and ‘the victim’ are just characters played by the Normals in an imaginary drama orchestrated by the Hollow Man. Every actor, involuntarily, gets to play every character in at-least one act.
This reveals the final and the most sinister nature of Hollow Man- Sadism. The more wholesome the Normal is, the more likely it is to play ‘the guilty’, while the more miserable the Normal is, the more likely it is to play ‘the victim’. The contract is crystal clear.

It‘s extremely difficult sustaining this lifestyle. Excess of it would make the Hollow Man a socio-path and the lack of it would lead to normalcy. Neither is desirable. Sociopathy is a not a sustainable long term strategy because it either mutates into Psychopathy or it fizzles out because of medically advanced anti-dotes. On the other hand, normalcy would mean accepting defeat to the Normals. The survival of Hollow Man depends on an extremely fine-tuned state of parasitic existence with almost no margin for error, in which the Hollow Man is both the parasite and the host simultaneously, hollowed from within, in an endless cycle of self-destruction and re-generation.
He is a perfect personification of a singularity. His appearance in any physical space instantly drains all the energy in the geography. Conversations are reduced to alphabetical arrangements with no human relevance. It’s impossible to reason with him because the foundations of common knowledge is absent in him. All offerings of kindness, love or compassion are unidirectional with no gratitude. In fact the more it is offered the bigger it grows, becoming even more stronger and demanding even more until there is nothing left to devour.
The system described above is iron-clad but that by itself cannot explain the phenomenal perseverance of Hollow Man, especially when we consider the impossible odds. No matter how optimized the system is, it is after all balanced on a knife edge. There’s ought to be circumstances where the echo-chamber fails, or the cynicism gives way to clarity or narcissism is suspended in favor of self-reflection. And any of these incidental feelings can permanently damage the machinery.
I had a gnawing inkling that I was missing something, the last and the biggest piece of the suddenly expanded puzzle.
I frantically started looking for answers- What could be the source of energy that is so permanent and so much bigger than the sum of everything I described above? Is it some literature, authored by some pathetic philosopher that I haven’t read? Who inspired the Hollow Man? Or maybe it is some deep childhood trauma that infested his mind? After carefully evaluating these options and many more, I was convinced that none were satisfactory.
The source must be, and has to be, kind yet greedy, surplus yet lifeless and benign yet hateful. But wait, that sounds awfully familiar.
Aha!
The cloud of confusion that occupied me for days suddenly collapsed into the obvious. The source is yet another Hollow Man. It makes sense, doesn’t it. The irony of Hollow Man’s existence had to be hinged on another of it’s kind such that the binary co-existence becomes indistinguishable from it’s parts. Each feeding from itself and each other constantly, and each stabilizing the other in a macabre romance.
It was now a matter of confirming the hypothesis by performing some simple & rudimentary mental calculation to identify the source.
The puzzle was complete.

The anatomy was satisfying to me party because it reassured in me the value of social good but also because it brought me close to everything I stood against. Where I could only ponder, vaguely, over the opposite of that which I believed in, I can now claim a better, if not thorough, understanding of it. In that sense, I do hold some affection for the Hollow Man.
But, with every dissection performed on the Hollow Man, I inflicted an abject sense of responsibility upon myself.
I sometimes wonder- Had I broken my silence, would that have made any difference? Am I guilty of observing the pogrom without interference? Could I have reversed the tide? Then it occurs to me that I am a product of the Normals and it’s in our nature to romanticize happy endings.
