Philosophy Now Forum

My loner-life is not voluntary, it is a compromise and in-grown habit from being bullied in school and sufferings years of social (and other forms of) underdevelopment as a cause.

I've confined myself to Trondheim because it's one of the few parts of Norway where I don't have any family which can bother me, for instance. As for friends, I only have one strong friend (which is also an adult, the rest of my friends are not adults but kids I came to know when living on my parent's farm), I didn't manage to get any strong relationships with the other kids I grew up with and we drifted apart (except those who were my initial friends and which I related strongly to, but which I was removed from forcefully when I had to leave my first school because of the bullies, so I lost opportunity for long-standing strong bonding there).

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"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone." - Arnold Schwarzenegger






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'I admire people who don’t feel the need to see friends on Saturday night or even to mingle with the crowd in the line at the local movie. I associate the desire for privacy with intellect. The people I know who genuinely don’t want to go to a party are my smartest friends. We are naturally gregarious creatures and it’s the superior people who are so self-contained over long periods as not to need the inconsequential companionship that goes with a party or a night out. We all know a few. They’re either super-human beings or they’re a little strange. We need each other and we need to get away from each other. We need proximity and distance, conversation and silence.' Andy Rooney

Or maybe one characterizes those most like them, as more, because they've placed themselves amongst them. I'm getting flashes of the gorilla enclosure at my local zoo. There are no inequalities amongst men, only those that choose to do and see things otherwise, i.e., difference!

But as to solitude, yes it can be a great thing, yet it can be overwhelming, best that each finds their own particular balance, not of better or worse, rather only ever different.