solitude

I remember hearing a song on the radio back in the ’90s by some generic alt-rock band, with a chorus that went, “If I could be all by myself, I could be free.” But as Christopher Knight, the Maine Hermit, noted from experience, true solitude dissolves such romantic adolescent fantasies of authentic selfhood. It sets you free from everything, including meaning and purpose. Most people’s notion of solitude and independence only extends to arm’s length, understandably enough.

Intellectual (or epistemological) solitude, like what Brad Warner is talking about here, has a similarly unsettling effect. If, like Descartes, we sit down to rigorously and thoroughly determine what we really know about the topics we opine about, we’re soon forced to admit that we don’t have the time (or inclination, if we’re feeling especially honest) to become deeply informed. For most of us, in most areas of knowledge, our feeling of certainty rests on Arguments from Various Authorities. If asked “How do you know?” persistently enough, we will end up pointing toward someone else. “Because they said so, and I generally trust them.”

There’s no shame in that, of course. In a world as complex as ours, there’s no way for any individual to be an expert in all the things that matter. Nevertheless, acknowledging this diminishes a flattering self-conception most of us hold, where we like to imagine our opinions being rooted in objective facts and reason, unlike those people over there. Most startling, perhaps, at least for those of us who write online, is the recognition of how much of this type of writing requires being completely invested in the conceit that our opinions are well-founded and, especially, that they matter. The sort of emotionally-balanced honesty that Brad is talking about, well — it sounds kind of boring, doesn’t it? Who wants to read the musings of someone who can’t even seem to take a side in an argument? As a writer, who wants to sit down every day to affirm his own ignorance and powerlessness? It’s much more viscerally satisfying to both parties to scream and throw things at those people over there. Most of what we consume online is empty-calorie junk food and cheap beer, briefly sating a fleeting desire while simultaneously stimulating the appetite for more. No one wants the equivalent of a raw-food vegan showing up and ruining the fun.

How do we maintain our independence while still remaining within touching distance of other people and events? How do we generate meaningful things to say from within ourselves, rather than rely on the trivia/outrage du jour to give us our cues? This is something I wrestle with regularly, trying to find that golden mean between “Dear Diary” self-indulgence and ephemeral social-media punditry.

Emma C. Wiliams:

At primary school, I rarely played with other children. For me, playtime usually meant a walk around the edges of the playground, observing others and thinking to myself.

There were lots of reasons why I found it difficult to connect with my childhood peers, none of them particularly interesting or unusual, but I do sometimes wonder whether my early experiences have defined my temperament; I’ve never been much of a joiner, and I find many people frankly depressing.

…Experience has certainly taught me that being part of a group is not in my nature, and broadly speaking I am proud of the fact that I won’t play ball for the sake of staying on the team. It may not be my most attractive quality, but it’s the one that will drive me to raise the alarm whilst everyone else stays silent; it also makes me the kid who will shout that the emperor’s got no clothes on.

For obvious reasons, perhaps, I consider my lifelong aversion to casual companionship the most fundamentally defining feature of my personality. The most significant currents in my character, both positive and negative, trace back to this wellspring. Sometimes this trait can indeed lead to original perspectives and intellectual independence. At other times, it can make me sound like an adolescent cliché of self-regard and sour grapes, like a Pinterest image of a Nietzschean aphorism overlaying a Caspar David Friedrich painting.

The philosopher George Carlin, expanding on his predecessor Aristotle’s idea of the Golden Mean, once theorized that everyone who drives slower than you is a moron, and everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac. Both of these great men were identifying something that is probably inherent in our neurology itself. Buoyant as cork, our ability to always portray ourselves as the sane, reasonable individual surrounded by mindless fanatics can never be submerged by self-doubt. And yet, we can all look back and recognize many instances in which we were embarrassingly wrong, times when we were the morons or the maniacs, without disturbing this narrative. There have been episodes in my life where my isolato nature has given me insights that many others seem to miss. But there were also times when a wiser friend or family member could have saved me a lot of unnecessary trial and error, had I only been willing to ask questions and listen.

Like everything else, a solitary nature is neither good nor bad in itself; unfortunately, it does not present a shortcut to truth, integrity and enlightenment. Its seductive self-image may even become one more false idol to be jettisoned during the search for wisdom.