What I learned about solitude from my time with hermits(theguardian.com) |
What I learned about solitude from my time with hermits(theguardian.com) |
If one skips sexual companionship, you get the 27-year total isolation like Christopher Knight.
However, if one allows that one activity of procreation, he can suddenly become a hermit hiding in plain sight that nobody calls a "hermit".
An example of that would be my friend's dad. Because my home life wasn't always the most joyful, I spent a lot of time at my friend's house. His dad was a doctor so they had a big enough house where we could play and make noises without bothering the parents. Anyway, I noticed that his dad never went out with his buddies for golf or have colleagues over for drinks. He shared a private practice with 3 other doctors but they never came over. His only outings were walking to a nearby creek to fish with one of his kids.
As another example, his dad would spend $100 for a pay-per-view boxing match but the only people watching was the 3 of us: his dad, my friend, and me. Many other guys that spend $$$ on a pay-per-view would use it as an event to invite all their friends to get maximum mileage out of it.
Growing up around him, the repeated description was "he's extremely reserved" -- as in "yeah, my dad is extremely reserved and private". Now that I'm a lot older and share many of the same traits of extreme introversion, I can look back and sum up his disposition as "hermit in plain sight". Having a family fooled a lot of people. Instead of "hermit", you get more society-approved labels such as "dedicated family man".
Did your friends dad ever get invited to your own parents' house, did he go? Perhaps he just had no friends rather than choosing to be a recluse?
I match the description you give of your friends dad quite well, except without the money. I've one friend who'll send a birthday card, none that will ring me and suggest we hang out; I try to do things for my children to encourage them not to fall in to my pattern (perhaps that's what the pay-per-view was, a treat for his son and you?).
I like people, enjoy shared work to a common goal, get involved when I can with things like helping out at school clubs and Scout events (was previously a leader with Cub Scouts) but somehow things just don't really work; I have social anxieties that inhibit me contacting others but I think I can be reasonably good company.
"Dedicated family men" seem entirely orthogonal to the matter at hand. To me it's an epithet - mostly used for dead people - to say they spent time with their kids and put them before other things like their career.
It's very difficult to take the first step, but a good therapist can really help. Cognitive behavioral therapy seems to be a promising style these days.
If you have the desire to be around people more but something is holding you back, it is absolutely worth working to overcome that.
It's an epithet to put your family before your career? Wow, I pity anyone who views life that way.
Edit: Ah, didn't realize epithet could be non-negative, in that case it makes sense
I have the sentiment that without some philosophical reason underpinning and supporting that choice, and without good self-control and a balanced mind, you are more likely to waste away than gain any meaningful insight.
Solitude is great. Loneliness sucks.
It's the fear of silence
That gives us away
Cause when we're alone
We have to hear
What our aching hearts try to say.
-- Randy Stonehill
In a group people tend to conform to the groups ideas. But, on their own most people are not going to come up with such ideas on their own. Common points of divergence are worth considering.
PS: Travel used to provide similar benefits, but people have gotten a lot more homogenized over time. I assume truly alien society's would provide even better contrast.
The general vibe of the assumptions feels like a bunch of privileged millennials going to become hermits for 6 months and then talk about all they learned from their solitude on their Harvard Business School essays and how it shaped them into a better leader.
Centuries of ascetic mysticism and veneration of same disagree with your skepticism.
As for your scorn for privileged people becoming hermits and thinking they gained something from the experience...
I'd laugh, but that's literally the foundation of one of the great world religions.
http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programmi...
This is a good quote from the article:
"It is better to live among the crowd and keep a solitary life in your spirit than to live alone with your heart in the crowd."
some people enjoy problem solving in a dynamic environment with limited resources; relying on self-sufficient generative skills, careful planning and patience in the face of cascading life threatening circumstances.
most people overlap. you can hardly be expected to enjoy yourself all the time, what's the fun in fun.
The really sad thing is it's difficult to be alone in the wilderness. You have to cross check maps with flight paths so when you're in the middle of some remote mountain range you don't have to listen to the drone of planes flying overhead dozens of times a day, or the passage of cars on a highway reverberating off canyon walls, or the buzz of electric wires crisscrossing the countryside.
I'm curious why, given this little bit of insight, he never sought out any hermit monks? I personally know of an Orthodox Christian hermitage in Canada that's the real deal, not to mention there's plenty of Orthodox hermit monks in places like Greece, Russia, Romania, Egypt, and elsewhere... Not sure if there's any true Catholic hermit monks, but I'd guess there are. Instead we get this fluff piece about visiting an angry, drunk man who wanted to escape society, and obviously just became crazy rather than gaining any sort of insight.
(As an aside, for anyone interested in their lives, there's a great documentary called Into Great Silence. It's long and has no narration, but there's a great scene at the very end where it shows the monks on one of their Monday walks going sledding in the Alps.)
On one hand you have Zarathustra, the sage coming down from mountain after 10 years of meditation to spread the wisdom. On the other hand you have everyone else, decaying, dying slowly and suffering in silence.
There is a show on Youtube by BBC _Extreme Pilgrim_ that is pretty good first hand documentation of solitude in 3 different traditions or flavors. Think the guy spends 3 weeks in each location in solitude.
I believe if I were to start this sort of exercise I would attend some sort of Vipassana retreat. This way I would have some framework for managing thought. I could not imagine going out into nature and having mind relentlessly "work its way through things".
What are the recorded origins of monasticism? The Ancient Greeks formed intentional communities around philosophies/religion I think but I doubt they were the first?
Hermits forming an intentional community still seems too contradictory to make sense to me.
In Christianity you have liturgical events which are meant to be communal, for example, communion must be done with multiple people present. Not to mention certain holidays. That's why hermits, although they live on the outskirts of society and are solitary, generally keep a minimal amount of contact with others.
> What are the recorded origins of monasticism? The Ancient Greeks formed intentional communities around philosophies/religion I think but I doubt they were the first?
Depends on whether or not you consider mythological religious figures, and some religions which didn't commit things to writing. But some of the earlier communities would be Greek yes, and also Indian monastics within the sramanic movements (Buddhism/Jainism). There's also semi-historical figures in Chinese Daoist mythology who lived as hermits/monastics, druids and shamans in some religions were reclusive and likely had a practice which resembled monasticism, etc...
Within Christianity it of course started with the Desert Fathers who were emulating St. John the Baptist as well as applying some of Jesus' exhortations literally.
Some epithets are negative. But certainly not all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epithets_in_Homer
Apparently the Greeks got this from earlier Indo-European traditions.
A vow of silence when you still "talk" with sign seems a bit of a cheat to me.