The Outsiders (1987)

It is known that humans require the company of other human beings or else bad things start happening (think solitary confinement: anxiety, depression, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, and psychosis).

I wonder to what extent it is important to just be around other humans, versus, be around other humans who are similar to us. For the super unique, I imagine it can feel incredibly lonely. It doesn't have to be limited to intelligence, it can be cultural, linguistic, etc. The article even says "He is saying that they are a different kind of mind, a different kind of human being."

It is like humans have a built in mainstream-ification device which inherently punishes those who stand too far from the middle. What is particularly interesting is how good our tools are at connecting people with similar interests. The internet is helping isolated individuals feel like they are part of a community, good or bad.

I wonder how one differentiates the possibility that exceptional individuals are alienated from others around them by their exceptionality from the possibility that exceptional mental ability is intrinsically accompanied either directly by social difficulties or by social development that is less resilient to negative aspects in one's upbringing. I suspect that both of these happen to some degree, but they seem difficult to disentangle.