Wednesday Wisdom: Loneliness, Moral Isolation, & Solitude
March 27, 2024's Wisdom
Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living by presenting three quotes, three observations, and three questions.
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Loneliness
🤨 Quote
“We're tribal. We're preoccupied with status and hierarchy; we're biased towards our own in-groups and prejudiced against others. It's automatic. It's how we think. It's who we are. To live a human life is to live groupishly.”
Will Storr
Source: Selfie
Observation 🧐
We are social creatures. At our most basic being, we are built and thrive in groups, with others.
And yet in today’s world, we are disconnected and have this overshadowing sense of loneliness.
“Caring about what others think of us is thought to be one of humanity's strongest preoccupations,” writes Will Storr.
We obsess about others’ opinions of us but refuse to get to the root of our problems—loneliness.
We cannot help but continue to build loneliness into our lives—we are the product of modern day technology. We refuse to get off social media and the internet. We’re continually comparing ourselves to those we see online.
Our real-life relationships are diminishing daily.
To combat loneliness, we need to allow ourselves the ability to be vulnerable, to make connections in real-life, to be face-to-face with others, and to get outside of the technology addiction that has become so normalized.
🤔 Question
What is one habit you have with technology that if you were to let go of it, would make you 10X happier? Why haven’t you done it yet?
Moral Isolation
🤨 Quote
“Man has a horror of aloneness. And of all kinds of aloneness, moral aloneness is the most terrible.”
Honoré de Balzac
Source: The Second Mountain (by David Brooks)
Observation 🧐
It is one thing to be lonely because of the technology we’ve surrounded ourselves with, but it is another to be lonely because of the moral beliefs we hold.
We’ve all experienced a situation where the group or person we’re with does something we don’t morally agree with. Some of us stand up to the person and let them know our objection to how they acted.
But for a good majority of us, we choose to not disrupt the relationship, we don’t want to rock any boats, we don’t want to look like we don’t belong with our group.
But our moral beliefs are built from our core values. When we allow these values to be tested and we don’t back them up with action, what becomes of them? Of us?
🤔 Question
Pick a moral-value that is critical to your life. If someone were to oppose it to your face, how would you react? Would you approach the situation with calmness and reason or lash out in emotion?
Solitude
🤨 Quote
“Many of us would benefit from more of the "deep silence of pregnancy," where thought grows and develops until it is truly ready to be born. We need more silence and more solitude.”
Nate Anderson
Source: In Emergency, Break Glass
Observation 🧐
The act of taking time and space for oneself, the process of finding solitude, does not make one anti-social, but simultaneously, it does not negate someone from feelings of isolation and loneliness.
We require solitude to properly compose our thoughts and think freely for ourselves. But when we lack human connection we feel isolated.
The key is to understanding and structure our lives to have dedicated time for both.
The angel investor Naval Ravikant once stated:
“Time spent undistracted and alone, in self-examination, journaling, meditation, resolves the unresolved and takes us from mentally fat to fit.”
Solitude is the unique ability to sit with oneself and just be. Many take time for themselves to process thoughts and ideas, things that cannot be concentrated on with the constant demands of the day.
Finding the balance that works for you, between social interactions and solitude, will provide you benefits beyond imagination.
Friedrich Nietzsche used to go on long walks, Albert Einstein would walk home from work (and was often so distracted with his thoughts he would get lost), and the psychologist Carl Jung would escape to Bollingen Tower in Switzerland to work and reflect.
As the writer Tim Kreider has put it:
“Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets... it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.”
Solitude is where we attain idleness. It is where we shutout the world and give ourselves back time, to think, to reflect, to better understand how to approach the ever-changing world.
🤔 Question
Will you build into your life time for solitude so as to do deep work?
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Until next week,
D.A. DiGerolamo
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