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Comment by yannis | Hacker News Reader

>go into solitude so as not to drink out of everybody's cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think I really think. After a time it always seems as if they want to banish my self from myself and rob me of my soul.

I always liked this piece, as it fits with me being able to be alone for days on end, without missing anyone's company.

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The flip side of this is people tend to get weird and ornery without a proper community enforcing standards of behavior. It's pretty common to not even realize how unacceptably eccentric you're getting. Bear in mind that Nietzsche wound up totally insane.

The traditional christian teaching is that solitude is bad. Man is a social animal and can only properly develop joined to family and community and church, fulfilling duties and obligations to each.

Nietzsche was likely driven insane by CADASIL leading to frontotemporal dementia[1]. CADASIL is a genetic disorder and has nothing to do with being solitary.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18575181 and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17087793

> a genetic disorder and has nothing to do with being solitary.

You don't really know that. We know very well that weak social ties aggravate all kinds of health problems. Extensive time alone is probably worse for you than smoking. It's perfectly plausible the Nietzche's habit of spending many weeks alone at a time brought about his early demise.

You are certainly correct that weak social ties can aggravate health problems, but there's no indication that was the case with Nietzsche. The median onset of stroke in people with CADASIL is 50 years[1], but Nietzsche was 53 or 54 when he had his first stroke, so he beat the odds.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15364702

Christian teachings that man needs to be joined to a church in order to be whole may have less to do with what a man really needs and more to do with what leaders of churches think they need....

On separate (but related) note: I understand cults generally very strongly discourage solitude and periods of deep introspection. Keep everyone busy so they don't have time to figure out what we are doing with their money and their daughters. Or something like that.

> The traditional christian teaching is that solitude is bad. Man is a social animal and can only properly develop joined to family and community and church, fulfilling duties and obligations to each.

I wouldn't ascribe too much significance or meaning to 'Christian' teaching. It has no basis in science or empiricism.

And actually some quite important founders of Christianity (Jesus, Joseph) spent some time alone, in the desert and I don't think it's pictured as a 'bad' thing in the bible.

Whereas the grandparent post and Nietzsche's thoughts are thoroughly empirical...

Psychology is a science, yes, and it holds that time spent alone is perfectly normal and for a large section of the population absolutely necessary for mental health.

But is it always clear that the community sees as "proper [...] standards of behavior" is actually a proper standard of behaviour, or the sign of a dysfunctional community?

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