He definitely meant a different type of healthy solitude, rather than the one on which newspapers and studies report when they assert loneliness and isolation among young people is at an all-time high.
> He definitely meant a different type of healthy solitude, rather than the one on which newspapers and studies report when they assert loneliness and isolation among young people is at an all-time high.
Maybe it's because people spend too much time exchanging msgs in forums such as this, instead of having meaningfull exchanges with real people. Even walking down the street, they have their noses buried in a device.
A lot has to do with how cultures perceive individuals and individuality. Traditionally, individuality has always been seen as something "bad". ingroup/outgroup, cultural norms to abide by, etc. etc. Sociology, anthropology,... there are entire research domains devoted to these questions.
The interesting part is how society has evolved over the past 200, 100 and 50 years. Industrialisation, mass media, the information age,... have all stripped away the traditional tribal or clan-like way of living which has kept us alive for hundreds of thousands of years.
Over the past 50 years, individual consumerism and producerism have come to dominate our societal framework. So, we are taught to look at relationships as affordances that help us to advance in a materialistic world; rather then to look at the deep intangible value they embody. And we are also taught that emotions are only really valid if they are useful or contributing to our well-being.
What I hear from younger people is this notion of suffering from social anxiety. I'm sure that's a real thing. It's not easy to approach another human being and try and befriend them; and it's harder as we become older.
But building meaningful relationships is also a learned skill which takes tons of time. And the journey starts first and foremost with learning to befriend yourself through self-aware kindness, compassion and empathy. For one, it starts by not beating yourself up over stuff you don't control. Or trying to adhere to an irealistic ideal.
And it also consists of calling out those who push ideals that nobody can ever hope to attain. (Yeah, sure, Elon does great stuff. But neither you nor I are like Elon. You do you, go for it if you want to give it a shot, but who are you to judge what I do with my life?).
The problem with social media is that they tie into our innate urge to connect with others; but at the same time push this idea that we all need to have our separate, successful materialistic lives. It's a disparity that only enhances the anxiety that's already there. And the only good way to deal with it is to wean yourself from your device as best as you can.
> It's not easy to approach another human being and try and befriend them; and it's harder as we become older.
Anecdotal, and not to dismiss that reality, but I find the opposite to be true. It is easy to befriend people, with no strings attached. We have a lot in common with almost everybody.
>Over the past 50 years, individual consumerism and producerism have come to dominate our societal framework. So, we are taught to look at relationships as affordances that help us to advance in a materialistic world; rather then to look at the deep intangible value they embody.
Marx noticed this in the 19th century, and he called it alienation, caused (in part) by commodity fetishism, in which we tend to confront others not as humans but as bearers of goods.
> Maybe it's because people spend too much time exchanging msgs in forums such as this, instead of having meaningfull exchanges with real people.
What does "meaningfull" mean? For example, I learn a lot more from fora such as Hacker News, so I'd argue that in-person interactions tend to be less meaningful.
Meaningful means more according to several hundred millennia of evolution as social animals that need actual proximity.
It means the person on the other end of the conversation will come to your house and help you when you're sad, desperate, sick, and not just be some alias in some other city/country who'll forget all about you just after you've stopped chatting (or give total priority to his real world friends and family).
It means common shared friendship building experiences - not just the sharing, via talk, of experiences each had in isolation in a totally different place, in another context.
It means having you back and you having theirs, which is rarely if ever the case from people in forums.
>the person on the other end of the conversation will come to your house and help you when you're sad, desperate, sick
People really have to grow out of this. This is what in my understanding learning being alone exactly is about. Once you are sad, desperate, sick you have to come out of it as quick as possible with what is available to you. It is your responsibility before yourself and the world, like taking shower or brushing your teeth.
I say to grow out - because as children most of us learned the trick to pretend sad to get attention and it developed into all sorts of manipulations. When you don't get what you want, for whatever reasons - that is just it, to become sad or joyful is your reaction, it just shows your level of maturity in this world. Children would cry to get attention, grown-ups would keep going.
But you can cry for attention only if there are people around you. If you stay alone you will quickly realize all bullshit you are creating and stop it, because anyway it has no effect. In this way being alone is a powerful way to bring one down to reality.
And parents use it sometimes when they feel kids are crying to manipulate - they ignore it all-together.
This is relevant to I would say 90% of mental issues, of course in case of physical sickness you need to see a doctor, not someone to calm you down, but someone to fix your body.
Actually, they should grow to the opposite direction. They're not "rebellious teenagers" who "don't need nobody". And delivery food + home alone, with "relations" mainly on the web is not a lifestyle.
And how people end up discovered dead in their apartment for weeks, with nobody caring earlier, and their pets having chewed on them...
>Once you are sad, desperate, sick you have to come out of it as quick as possible with what is available to you. It is your responsibility before yourself and the world, like taking shower or brushing your teeth.
If you mean people should stop abusing others when they don't need help, sure.
If you mean it as stated above, that's as far removed from humanity as possible. Some loner animals, sure, they might do this. We built society and civilisation to do better than that.
First, sadness is normal human emotion and not just attempt to manipulate others to get attention. The feeling of sadness is not childish or immature.
Second, isolation does not make people more resistant to anything. Isolated people are more depressed, more passive rather then trying to change things and have more mental health problems. More likely to develop problem with alcohol or drugs.
That holds true for stay at home moms who have to often deal with long term isolation. It holds truth in extreme cases, such as in isolation in prison, where people go crazy.
>sadness is normal human emotion and not just attempt to manipulate others to get attention
It is a human emotion, I never said it is not human or not normal. What I am saying is you are the one who creates emotions. Growing up means to realize it and to get charge of it instead of being reactive as children do.
>Second, isolation does not make people more resistant to anything
I am not talking about resistance or isolation, I am talking about paying attention to how your emotions and thoughts work, the less external noise you have the better you can do it. The more you pay attention - the better you understand it, the better you understand it the better you can handle it. Not resilience, but learning the way one learns to handle legs and walk or to handle hands and write. That's that simple.
>Isolated people are more depressed, more passive rather then trying to change things and have more mental health problems
That is exactly about learning how to be alone, it's like if one is accidentally got into deep water they can drown but if you do it slowly, consciously, you become more and more comfortable, stop worrying and start enjoying it. It can also be done with support, like they do in retreats and some monasteries.
Unfortunately in western culture this was not understood and denied on many levels, and I see how that links to current epidemic of loneliness.
Think it’s more likely that it’s normal and healthy for social animals to seek each other in times of stress. This casting of social survival behaviour (including seeking attention, which social animals need from each other their whole lives to feel happy and secure) as “manipulative” and “immature” “bullshit” seems very odd to me. Sounds like a coping mechanism for your expressions of emotion having, as you say, no effect on people around you. No one cares. So you play all the roles yourself - you comfort yourself, you be your own support network. That doesn’t sound like a normal or good situation though.
The socially normalized buried nose produces an interesting effect when passing by someone in a hallway or sidewalk - the deferred acknowledgement:
I rarely have my device out while walking in order to indicate that I am receptive to an approach. When I see an incoming buried nose, I assume they are too busy and keep my gaze past them as they are clearly not going to be available for a nod or pleasantry exchange.
The thing is, after the acknowledgement window has passed and we are closing proximity, I perephrially see them look up at me at the very last second before passing.
Not sure if it's just me misinterpreting social circumstances, or if there's a new standard of interaction that I need to figure out.
I don't think you are misinterpreting anything. I think those glances are part of survival instinct, assessing whether the moving object they registered out of the corner of their eyes (you), that is getting near them, is dangerous or if it can be safely ignored.
Maybe it's because people spend too much time exchanging msgs in forums such as this, instead of having meaningfull exchanges with real people. Even walking down the street, they have their noses buried in a device.