Comment by Htsthbjig | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Htsthbjig | Hacker News Reader

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Is Lisa Simpson lonely?

I mean, If you go to play with the other kids, and they want to do something you don't enjoy, and what you find fun to do no kid does... Does it mean you are lonely?

When I was a kid I loved to play sports like the other kids, and was very good at it, so I was very social,but I also loved reading tons of books and mathematics. Most of the other kids did not.

When you read Kant, Descartes, Stefan Zweig(in german) books that tell you how to raise a kid while you are the kid!, Asimov (in english), Feynman ... all the other kids behavior becomes so childish and stupid.

You could be alone while standing with other people.

For me the fact that Lisa Simpson is alone is not that she is lonely, but the consequence of being unique while other unique people live far away.

I got to find and regularly meet other people like me only as an adult. Most of them are really successful now, but most of them also lived Hell in the school days.

They were alone, but they are not lonely.

Word. When I got to MIT, I found my community. I didn't realize up to then that I had been restraining some of my nerdiness.

Same thing with my wife. When we met, I discovered that I didn't have to censor the literary references... she read way more than I.

I love being around people I can be myself with.

Nobody likes to feel lonely in a crowd. Everybody prefers the company of their herd.

However there is plenty to learn from those who are not like you, even if you struggle to understand them, or they you.

Variety is the spice of life. Avoiding the company of most others -- or the correlate of exclusively preferring the company of one group -- risks stagnation.

Ah yes, embracing your inner elitist.

It's not elitist to like something that makes you happy, even if that thing is being around a group of wealthy, intelligent people. Elitism is about how you treat the other people. Being elitist would mean refusing to socialise with any group other than the one MIT crowd because they're too 'dumb' to be fun around. I don't think that's what jkestner is suggesting; that he found a group he's happy with doesn't mean he refuses contact with the other groups.

That response is why I usually censor myself.

The desire to have a community and shared culture doesn't make one elitist. The GP could have as easily said they found bookish people they could relate to by becoming a librarian. Would that have sounded elitist or was the MIT name-dropping what upsets you?

"Elite" simply means "drawn out of the larger pool". Sure, there is a lot of social baggage around that word, as in a sense of superiority, but the in the general case there is no such implication.

What's wrong with hanging around with folks who get your jokes (and vice versa)? They don't have to form the totality of your identity.

Somehow it seems uncontroversial when someone finds a group of, say, fans of their favorite team (or rock band) and says, "now I am with my people!" Is there some peculiar difference in regards to books or maths jokes?

Is it elitist to want to be around other kids you can mentally relate to? I suffered in school until I transferred to a 7th grade public magnet school. For the first time in my life I felt like I belonged because I could be myself with the other kids, most of whom happened to be from poor immigrant families (it is not a class or culture issue).

Humans are social beings and need to feel the closeness to other human beings. This does not mean, that Lisa Simpson is lonely - of course the exact level of closeness you need differs from human being to human being and she has parents after all. But more statistically speaking I would say that being alone does make you lonely, even though the reading German philosophers as a child part appeals to the exceptionalism of the other commenters.

But physical proximity is not emotional closeness. Being surrounded by people having negative effects (disrespect, incompatible value system,...) on you is far worth than bubbling alone walking in a forest.

Physical proximity certainly does help, that is why lovers cuddle and parents hug their children. They need this physical proximity to gain the ability to trust and build more complex relationships on more abstract forms of closeness.

I do not think that high intelligence removes this need and magically gives you the ability to create relationships or fight loneliness by brain power.

These are affectionate relationships and an exception rather than the norm. It's a massively important need, but you only have a handful of people you cuddle with. The vast majority of your relationship are social, smalltalkish, gossipish, etc.

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