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The power of lonely

boston.com

75 pointstmsh10 comments

Is it a stretch to see a political aspect to the academic focus on solitude as a pathology? At a fundamental level, liberals (whose ideals have paradoxically been claimed by conservatives in modern America) glorified the individual and defined the highest ideal to be freedom, a state in which reciprocal obligations are minimized. Leftists have defined themselves in opposition to liberal/conservative ideals by celebrating collectivism, promoting mutual obligation as a good in itself, and denigrating individuality as an unhealthy delusion and a denial of humanness, which is inherently social and collective.

The split can be seen very easily in how (to revert to the modern American terms) liberals and conservatives talk about difference. Conservatives celebrate individual difference; liberals celebrate group difference. It is very interesting that to be different as an individual is a conservative ideal, treated suspiciously by liberals, but to be different as part of a group is a liberal ideal, treated with suspicion by conservatives.

(Note that I'm talking about the two groups' rhetoric here; I'm not talking about who is actually more hospitable to difference in practice.)

Is it any wonder then, that psychologists in academia would see aloneness as a pathological state, a departure from the psychologically normal and healthy state of functioning as a group member?

IMHO People's minds, in the conceptual realm, work on a black-and-white basis. I find it can often be very difficult to discuss the grey region with folks.

Which is somewhat amusing, considering the underlying hardware works on a billion shades of grey.

I think ignorance relies on black-and-white whilst intelligence thrives on grey. I've seen little problem to discussions of grey areas here on HN where we prize intelligence over conformity.

Ignorance needs ignorance to survive, it's like a pathogen. The more ignorant people there are, the easier it is to survive as an ignoramus.

I've found it easy to discuss grey regions with people, so long as they're moderately intelligent - at least from my point-of-view.

"liberals (whose ideals have paradoxically been claimed by conservatives in modern America)"

Resolving the paradox is easy. "Classical liberalism" [1] basically won, but it won a long time ago. If you stick to "classical liberalism" you're basically being a conservative in the stick-to-the-old-stuff-that-works sense. (Because you should never use the words "conservative" or "liberal" without being clear about exactly which meaning you are using. Leave them adrift and they are worthless.) What we call liberals today is not where the term started; call it "progressivism" if you like. But absolutely there is a way in which an older meaning of "liberal" matches up with the modern meaning of "conservative", without contradiction.

I wouldn't say it is correct to say conservatives have "claimed" liberal ideas; conservatives are (broadly) the ones who, for better or worse, never let go of them in their classical liberal form, while the term "liberal" moved on over the years and turned into something totally unrecognizable by the original meaning of the term. (I do not mean that as any sort of moral judgment. It is simply an observation that language shifts over time.)

[1]: In this sense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberal

Sometimes explaining the path you're on is more work than its worth and a distraction from continuing on it. People can't really accept what you believe about it without some proof that its valid, which you can't supply because you're discovering it.

You're probably not going to gain any confidence from such an interaction. You may even come off like a wing nut. So keeping things to yourself until you have something solid and a way to explain it can be best.

Yet being around people you can relate with is priceless. We hackers need new thoughts and cross fertilization of ideas. The web helps but personally, my most interesting moments of this year so far where in a Linux meeting in Quebec and a San Diego HN social event last week, before returning home to my tropical island. Don't underestimate the power of socialization until you start to really live outside north america/europe/australia-nz/japan.

I never got preparing for exams in groups. It's fine to exchange material but actually learning in groups doesn't seem so work for me at all because it is so distracting.

I used to have the same problem.

I discovered if I unofficially turned it into a loosely directed review session taught by me, they suddenly became very helpful. 'teaching' my peers the material forces me to think about everything much more critically, and justify and explain everything. The process of doing these things myself crystallizes my understanding, assembling together everything I've learned.

(I believe this phenomenon is very similar to the way you can be stuck trying to find a bug for hours, and then instantly realize the solution as soon as you try to explain the problem to a peer)

"The leaders of the world’s great religions -- Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Moses -- all had crucial revelations during periods of solitude."

Regarding Jesus, the two times of solitude that immediately come to my mind, based on the Gospel accounts, are his time spent in the desert and in the garden of Gethsemane.

In neither case did he have what I would call a "crucial revelation." (And I'm sure some theologians would argue that it's not technically possible for Jesus to have had a revelation.)

I wonder what the author had in mind.

Usually the ones that criticize solitude are those that can't handle their own, and get lonely, and thus can't realize its great benefits. Solitude can offer the power to better relationships because it anchors a person.

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