GENIUS FORUMS

Of society I mean.

I saw Kevin mentioned it briefly in a bio page and David in one of the podcasts. Nietzsche is pushing it too, and of course many other people have in the past.

Who else on here has tried it? Is it the way to go?!

There seems to be 2 options... just living in poverty amongst society or living in solitude.

Advice? Pros and cons?

WhorlyWhelk wrote:Advice? Pros and cons?

Better to be a professional than a convict.

Seriously, it's better to have a little money than be constantly scrounging around. It's better to drop out of society and be in it, at the same time. That's for me, having tried both separately. You may be suited for something different: the ascetic life, or whatever.

Do what is right for you, as an individual, to do. If you are an introvert, being alone may help give you the time and peace of mind to clarify your thoughts. If you are an extrovert, being alone could drive you mad. I am somewhat more of an extrovert than an introvert, but circumstances led me to dropping out of society for a couple of years as an adult. I learned things - like that even though I had very little contact with peers when I was very young and through summer breaks, and spent as much time as possible away from my parents as I grew up, just even the little abusive contact I had with my parents was different from no contact at all.

When I tried to re-integrate, I found that it was much more difficult to tolerate being around anyone for any length of time, or even talking through Skype with anyone for very long. There were even physical changes where talking with someone for an hour would cause an asthma attack.

As Carl suggested, if it is possible for you to do, it is better to only mentally separate yourself from society. It is possible to think with your own mind and not be unduly influenced by the thoughts of others while physically being in society. If you as an individual need to physically separate from society to find your own thoughts, then that is an option, but once you re-integrate into society, you will still have to take the step of learning to not be unduly influenced by the thoughts of others while physically being in society.

Although I was fairly different from others to begin with and stood my own ground on things that were important enough, I am currently at the step of learning not to automatically defer to the wishes of another on less imperative matters. It would have been more efficient for me to do this without going through the isolation stage.

Thanks for the insight.

I think complete isolation from society would be more inspiring and useful at least for me personally. However survival would become more difficult and time consuming and thus thinking time would suffer.

Then join a commune or a monastery. See how you like that.

People get squirrelly in 'complete isolation.' Whether they are put there, or they go there, they get squirrelly. One already has a tremendous heap of 'complete isolation' at their disposal in the subjective human condition. But this subjective condition is necessarily a permeable one as well.

People who try to make themselves impermeable ('complete isolation') to everything around them are:

1. fooling themselves that a retreat from society is an isolation from it, or an 'escape.' In this scheme, society is actually isolating you; surrounding you on all sides and in command of a large degree of your thoughts and movements.

2. restricting what their naturally permeable condition is permeable to, i.e. restricting themselves to themselves. All closed rooms start to smell after awhile, remanding all their contents to internal hermetic decay. It is in this manner that any serious isolationists that I've known (including my experimental self) take an extraordinary nose-dive in their capacity to intuit what's around them. Their pores are clogged shut with both themselves, and the effort to maintain it that way. Fertile soily ground for a nice case of narcissism or megalomania to set in, at worst. In the best cases, the isolationist has simply lost the capacity to assess things happening around them (that at this point, even a child will best them in alertness and alacrity). The good ego knows to expand, diffuse, into the world, and not hold itself in the same pair of underpants - much less on principle.

3. like Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov. Sitting at the police station the first time - feeling the relief that they had not called him there under suspicion of the murder - Raskolnikov also knew his commerce with the world had come to an irremediable end. That not only could he not think of anything to say to these people just then, but he did not think he would have anything to say to anyone ever again. He's stuck with his secret in his isolated self. That's what happened when he literally killed two people; that's what could happen when you figuratively try to kill them all. That's what one is trying to do when one thinks they can isolate themselves from humanity(society). And of course, paradoxically, we know in this what really starts to die . . . .

One comes to oneself in anything, everything. in the fluidity amongst and between.

(Of course, in the case of Raskolnikov, he cannot not have this commerce with the world; he cannot not speak at all. It's like Porfiry the detective tells him when he finally has him cornered in his room: "You need us." He needed people to become a criminal and he will need people again when he is driven to confess . . . and he will be driven . . . .)

no . . . . all one can do in any case is develop tastes. If you like being alone a lot, then go toward it. One needn't lug rejection into their solitude with them.