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This is to say that loneliness can be thought of as not just a sense of lack of connection to other people but a connection to the world. This loneliness is evident because of our lack of consistency of our actions with results. People have a 'back to nature' kind of philosophy when they talk about it because that is the most common way to find the consistency - farm to table and all that.
But I think it's more broad. For example, Minecraft has the kind of consistency that makes a person feel more connected to, at least, that world because it is participatory and makes a kind of intuitive sense that our normal lives lack.
I know it seems reaching to correlate the two - in some way, it is. However, the thing a lonely person lacks is more than just an empty person to talk to. It's a deeper purpose which can be often found in activity with other people but isn't limited to it.
Some of the least lonely people are those with projects they are passionate about. They have a connection to the world that feels consistent but it isn't other people.
Of course a desire for a return to nature is not necessarily "modern", see for example Walden, but I think the degree of disconnect has increased to the point it is harder to ignore for a larger number of people.
What I see in online discussions is people repeating this mantra, because it agrees with their own inner experience. But it’s unnecessary to force this onto others that this doesn’t resonate with as much, invalidating their experiences.
Solitary confinement is a form of torture.
We are a social species. Social interaction is core to our survival and critical to our well-being.
So there's actually no contradiction.
I have the complete opposite experience. I spend as much of my vacation time as possible hiking, camping, and backpacking alone. I go to places where the landscape is so beautiful that it makes me weep; where seeing the unusual flora makes me feel like I'm home; where the night sky is like diamond dust on black velvet. These places don't make me want to reconnect with others. They make me want to build a cabin and get away from everybody else.
I'm skeptical of this idea in general especially with examples of people like John Muir. If reconnecting with natures gives you the immediate instinct to reconnect with others then why do people like him have to be coaxed away from it?
The quickest solution might be to remove yourself from others so that you don’t mentally make the comparison. The best long term solution might be to form the social bonds.
And sometimes you need to tackle the short term solution to change your mood in order to enact the long term solution.
I am sometimes surprised that so many fall into producing and consuming this overblown, dense, turgid content, however then I look around and see that there exists an absolute deluge of essays on the misogyny of Gone Girl, and then I kind of understand how it's just the nature of a good chunk of humans to produce and consume such essays.
Even this is one such example...
> We are a social species. We need others to be happy.
The flipside is that we can make each other miserable as well.