The Outsider Problem

In the world of work that celebrates conformity and reward predictability, many of the knowledge workers who are intelligent and imaginative find themselves haunted by profound sense of alienation. The modern work place, for all its sophistication, rarely offers a totality of experience. Instead, it fragments attention, drains vitality and leaves even the well-paid feeling listless, pointless, and meaningless.

If you are a knowledge worker, intelligent, imaginative and securely employed – you may know the feeling. Perhaps not always, but often enough. The things that drive others-the job, the home, the family, the second home, the vacation- no longer drives you in same way. Chances are that you often experience a loss of motive that grip others but does not grip you anymore. You see through the trivialities of everyday that irritates you and perhaps makes you feel accidental, mortal and mediocre.

Probably you see too deep and too much, and what you see is chaos – The Outsider Problem.

Let me tell you two stories from different times and places. The first is about what might be the earliest outsider in the recorded history of human civilization. The second is about a man who became preoccupied with this very condition of alienation — the one who brought it into modern thought and defined it as the outsider problem

Let us travel back to 3000 years in time, to the ancient land of Bharat that is India, the land of seven rivers, in the shadow of Vedic age.

It is hot summer, just prior to the onset of monsoon, when the cracked surface of the earth yearns for rain. In a small village nestled amid mango groves, a middle-aged Brahmin sage hosts a fire ceremony to appease the gods, seeking prosperity, peace, and a bountiful year. He proclaims he will surrender all his possessions, including a vast herd of cows, as offerings in the sacred flames.

Nachiketa, a handsome young boy, adores his father deeply. He watches the ritual intently, entranced by the crackling fire, the rhythmic mantras, and the smoky scent of burning wood tinged with clarified butter called Ghee. The village hums—leaves rustle in the hot breeze, distant cattle low, and the crowd murmurs in reverence. Yet Nachiketa’s keen eyes catch a dissonance: the cows his father donates to the poor are old, sick, and worthless, a mockery of the promised sacrifice.

Disturbed, Nachiketa goes to his father, his heart pounding with conviction. Locking eyes with him, he challenges, “Father, you vowed to give your finest possessions, yet you offer the weakest, the worst. Am I not your possession too?” The crowd stirs, the fire snaps louder, but his father, flushed with embarrassment, snaps, “Go away, this is not your concern.” Undeterred, Nachiketa presses, “To whom will you give me?” Twice, thrice, he asks, his voice steady. Fury overtakes his father, who bellows, “To Death, I give you, my most precious!”

Nachiketa takes it and sets out to meet God of death and offers himself.

This tale, retold many times across India is not merely a lesson in ethics but a quest for truth. The point here is why Nachiketa saw this. It is not about the moral and ethical standard that he took it is about what he saw.

He saw too deep and too much. And what he saw was chaos. And why he -maybe he was gripped by the evolutionary appetite for meaning and purpose. Perhaps he was the first outsider.

Let us come back to the modern times to a place that is very closed to where I lived in England for many years.

It is grey, damp afternoon in Leicester, England, in the autumn of 1947. The world is still raw from the scars of the war, in a small cluttered chemistry laboratory at Gateway Technical Secondary School, 16 yrs old boy born to a shoemaker father in a working-class family stands alone on the edge of oblivion.

The air is heavy with the weight of his disillusionment, a melancholic fog that has followed him through years of meaningless jobs and a restless intellect yearning for purpose. At the age of thirteen, his appetite for truth made him pre-occupied with the problem of meaning of human existence. In his hand, he holds a small glass bottle of hydrocyanic acid—cyanide—its label faded, its contents a promise of swift, silent escape. Yet, in this moment, chaos and clarity collide, and he glimpses a truth that will define his life: he wants not less, but more life.

He loses interest in sciences and convinces himself that he can make a living as writer. For the next 7 years, obsessed with the problem of the meaning of the human existence he continued to work on his book while doing odd jobs. During this period, he does many manual and odd labour, sleeps out on Hampstead Heath in sleeping bag and during the day reads and writes in British Museum. At the age of 24, he publishes a book “The Outsider” a study of alienation and lack of sense of meaning in the modern society. This makes him literary sensation.

The boy’s name was Colin Wilson. He kept on working until the age 82 and died in 2013. A prolific writer who published more than 150 books in his life time across wide range of subjects with a central theme – the outsider problem and the way forward.

Colin Wilson was the first one to give clear articulation to the outsider problem. He studied three hundred years of literary character and discovered a pattern of behaviour and named it as a type “the outsider”.

What is this outsider problem and why it matters now? Is the outsider problem a new phenomenon to the modern world? Is outsider an artist or man of genius? What is the way out of the outsider problem? Why others cannot see what the outsider see?

The outsider problem is not unique to the modern era. Wilson compares the outsider to a “pimple on the face of civilization in decay” suggesting that this condition has persisted across time, surfacing whenever societies prioritize superficial values over spiritual or intellectual depth. In the Middle Ages, before the rise of scientific materialism, outsiders found refuge in spiritual institutions like Churches, Ashrams, Viharas, and Monasteries. These spaces provided a framework for pursuing salvation—the awakening of the spiritual life within, which Wilson sees as the highest human aspiration. Through disciplined practices like meditation or prayer, individuals could work toward realizing a purpose greater than themselves, countering the laziness and complacency that keep humanity “second-rate.”

In contrast, modern society, with its focus on comfort, security, and material success, offers little room for such spiritual seriousness. The outsider’s quest for meaning becomes a liability in a world geared toward efficiency and conformity. Where once they might have found solace in a monastery, today’s outsiders are left adrift, their hunger for purpose is at odds with a culture that values practicality over transcendence.

The outsider’s defining trait is their acute perception of life’s chaos and their refusal to accept it as the whole truth. They are gripped by a sense of unreality in daily life, feeling that there is “something more” beyond the mundane. This perception sets them apart from insiders, who are comfortable with routine and societal norms. The outsider’s appetite for truth leaves them vulnerable, as they lose grip on the motivations that propel others—career ambition, social status, or material gain. Often, they believe something is wrong with themselves, attempting to fit into a world they cannot fully accept, yet unsure of how to assert their unique purpose.

Importantly, the outsider is not necessarily an artist or genius. While creative individuals may embody the outsider’s traits, Wilson emphasizes that anyone can be an outsider, regardless of talent. A person of no particular genius may still feel estranged, haunted by the sense that life holds a deeper meaning they cannot grasp. This universal potential for alienation underscores the outsider’s plight: it is not about exceptional ability but about a fundamental misalignment with the world’s trivialities.

The outsider problems start with seeing too deep and too much, and most of what he sees is chaos. Not everyone wakes to chaos, but very few gripped by an evolutionary urge experience the sense of unreality in everyday living. To these the sense of lack of meaning and purposes is very prominent. They mostly have comfortable life, the safety, the security but there is also a nagging urge that there is something more to life.

The outsider finds himself as a kind of misfit in the world, he is not in harmony with insiders those who are content in the world. His appetite for truth leaves him vulnerable as he loses grip on the world and all the motive that propel others. He believes that there is something wrong with him and tries to fit in and settle for an uncomfortable position. He cannot accept the world and its trivialities but he does not know what he should do with his life to assert himself.

Wilson draws on Robert Ardrey’s concept of the “dominant 5%” to further contextualize the outsider. Ardrey suggests that 5% of any species seek dominance, requiring others—whether through business, politics, or fame—to express it. However, Wilson identifies a minute fraction, perhaps 0.005%, who are inner-directed “self-actualizers.” These individuals pursue creative activities for their own sake, driven by the joy of challenge and the expansion of consciousness, not external validation. They are the makers of civilizations, shaping culture through their intrinsic motivation. The outsider, particularly this rare subset, embodies this inner-directedness, seeking to transcend the ordinary through personal growth and creativity.

The outsider’s isolation stems from the fact that others do not share their vision. Wilson uses a striking metaphor: the outsider is like a man hypnotized and placed in a cage of apes. The hypnosis prevents him from understanding why he finds apes disgusting and stupid. He only knows that he detests them. He believes that he is an ape too. His solution lies in deliberately fighting the hypnosis, in telling himself. I am not an ape. I must be something more than ape. A difficult matter if his hypnosis, his conditioning as an ape inclines him to give up the struggle and became ‘a member of the similar race’ and a good citizen of the ape community.

The outsider is often destroyed by his own weakness and his inability to understand what it is that is tormenting him. Instead of wallowing in hopelessness, he needs to understand that what is being demanded of him is to learn to be creative and optimistic.

The outsider problem is the problem of narrowness of consciousness to a man gripped by evolutionary urge for intensity of experience that is to play full scale of your instrument. In other words, it is problem of expanding your consciousness. It is a problem of trivialities of everyday experience contrary to peak experience in act of creation in the field of symbolic domains.

But how can one experience one’s peak that is intensity of experience. Experience of feeling alive, when time vanishes, self dissolves, an experience of totality that connects you with deeper source of meaning and suppose.

Perhaps the first step is to encounter the outsider within. The pressing search for meaning and purpose, the feeling of alienation is not a flaw but a call to action, demanding they channel their existential hunger into act of creation in the field of symbolic domains. Truth is destructive appetite and it offers no strength to survive in a world that puts enormous demand on living.

Next step is to reinvent your values. To live is to work and to work is to expend energy in exchange of value. We spend life time of energy to respond to survival imperative. I call it primal value. We are also driven by evolutionary urge to know, to make things, to build and to create. And this is what that separates us from animal, our ability to think, to reason, to hold and image long enough to reflect upon it. In other words that is our capacity to create. So, living a life is not just making a living but it is anchoring our capacity to create.

Once we are clear that we want to do something with our life then we confront the problem of discovering our true work. I am not referring to your day job. What I mean by work is that which has form to anchor your capacity to create, to make and to build. It has to be in a field of symbolic domain that is evolved enough like music, science, philosophy or any other similar domain. An evolved field in a symbolic domain offers right mix of challenges and skill with scope to get feedback.

Industry without art is brutality. Next step is to know Art of work that is application of art in execution of work. Art is not in the artifact but it is the very knowledge of making things well. Art in this sense is window to transcendence.

This prepares the ground for the knowledge worker to experience one’s peak while creating in a developed filed of symbolic domains. And the key here is deliberate practice. Deliberate practice as defined by Anders Ericsson, is a focused and purposeful way to improve a skill. It means practicing with clear goals, working just beyond your comfort zone, and using feedback to correct mistakes. It requires full concentration and reflection rather that routine repetition. Done consistently over time, this kind of intentional effort – not innate talent – is what leads to true expertise.

We make false start in the society. Bernard Shaw wrote in the preface of his early novel immaturity that he could publish only after many years when it was written. He said “The truth is that all men are in a false position in society until they have realized their possibilities, and imposed them on their neighbours. … Everyone is ill at ease until he has found his natural place, whether it be above or below his birthplace.” Shaw himself was an outsider and he claimed his true position in the society by discovering his work and committing to it.

The outsider problem is a profound reflection of the human condition, embodied by figures like Nachiketa and countless others who see beyond the surface of life. It is the struggle of those who perceive too much and too deep, alienated by a world that prioritizes comfort over meaning. Far from a modern anomaly, this condition has persisted across history, finding solace in spiritual traditions now sidelined by materialism. The outsider, whether a creative genius or an ordinary individual, is defined by their refusal to accept triviality and their hunger for a greater purpose. By rejecting societal hypnosis, embracing creative pursuits, and expanding their consciousness, outsiders can transform their alienation into a catalyst for personal growth and cultural innovation. In doing so, they not only overcome their isolation but also contribute to the evolution of human awareness, proving that to see too much and too deep is not a curse but a call to create something extraordinary.