On Solitude: Why We Need It

This post is part two of a series.

Solitude is not the same as loneliness. Solitude is a positive state: the time and space to enjoy being with oneself — time out, or some space to drop out of the rat race, step off the treadmill, turn off the noise, and maybe enjoy nature.

The US Surgeon General (2023:7) distinguished cleanly between solitude and loneliness:

• Solitude: A state of aloneness by choice that does not involve feeling lonely.
• Loneliness: A subjective distressing experience that results from perceived isolation or inadequate meaningful connections, where inadequate refers to the discrepancy between an individual’s preferred and actual experience.

The love of solitude is not new, of course. St. Anthony the Abbot founded the Desert Fathers, who withdrew from "the world" to the desert to worship God. The most famous of these was St. Simeon the Stylite who lived and died on top of a column to be nearer heaven. This persisted with the founding of the monastic orders in the early Middle Ages, and it persists today in the hobbies people have that give them satisfaction and joy: gardening, stamp collecting, car or card collecting, solo yacht racing, knitting, photography, painting, writing, mountaineering, pigeon racing, or sailing — all are essentially solitary pursuits. As the French sailor Bernard Moitessier explained: “It is here in the immense desert of the Southern Ocean that I feel most strongly how much man is both atom and God.” (Economist 2 May 2020:71)

Poets, scholars, monks, and artists all need solitude for their work. Wordsworth was especially ardent about solitude in “The Prelude” where he describes it as “sweet” and refers to its “self-sufficing power;” then he eulogizes:

When from our better selves we have too long

Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,

Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,

How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.

Saint-Exupery thought about solitude differently. A French pilot at the beginning of World War 2, as German armour was sweeping through France, he was sent on a reconnaissance mission over Arras through occupied territory. His squadron had already lost 17 out of 24 aircraft, each with three men. In a daydream he pondered:

I should wait for night, I said to myself; and if I was still alive I would walk alone on the highway that runs through our village. Alone and safely isolated in my beloved solitude. So I might discover why it is I ought to die. (1969:24)

Safely home, he then visited America, wrote, then returned to France and was killed in 1944.

D.W. Winnicott, discussing the importance of solitude in a child’s development, states: “The capacity to be alone thus becomes linked with self-discovery and self-realization; with becoming aware of one’s deepest needs, feelings and impulses.” (In Storr, 1988:21)

John Bowlby had argued the popular consensus that: “Intimate attachments to other human beings are the hub around which a person’s life evolves.” (Storr, 1988:15) Anthony Storr demurs slightly, arguing that, for many, these intimate attachments are a hub, not the hub (1988:15). (Though Bowlby is surely right that infants and children especially need these secure attachments for their emotional health and well-being.) Solitude provides for many, in their pursuit of creativity and their interests, an important avenue to happiness. Some people do not need other people that much, and Storr discusses many creative individuals, often loners (to use a now emotive word). Indeed, solitude is now seen as a key to mental health, as positive as loneliness is destructive.

That said, the rich world, especially the more capitalist and individualistic world, has fractured into its component parts: atoms. Family, work, and community have all dissolved.

Edmund Burke described the family as the bedrock of society:

We begin our public affections in our families … We pass on to our neighbourhoods, and our habitual provincial connections. These are inns and resting-places. (1986:315)

The extended family of his day, an economic unit in an agricultural economy, steadily destructured down to the nuclear family with the Industrial Revolution, increased social and geographic mobility, and the emphasis on children. With the 60s came the pill, the women’s movement, the sexual revolution, the new Divorce Acts, plummeting fertility rates, and the rise of hyper-individualism. The purpose of marriage, for many, shifted from children to personal happiness and growth, and the fracturing of even the nuclear family. Divorce rates are now about 45%, and more people are not getting married and deciding to have fewer children or none at all. (Brooks, 2020). With the rise of TV and then social media, the family destructured further into individualism. One consequence of all these changes has been the rise in social isolation and loneliness throughout the age spectrum.

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Work relations, which may persist longer than marital relations, are also problematic. Nearly half of American workers hate their jobs, according to a survey conducted in 2022. (Economist 9 Dec 2023:62) The frequency of strikes and the efforts to unionize testify to the widespread dissatisfaction with the conditions of labour. Work relations are segmental rather than total, a thin slice of the pie rather than the whole persona of the individual. Friends at work are often only work friends. Work itself may be highly competitive: dog eat dog, with few rising to be top dog, and competitive connections rather than affiliative. With more people working from home, even those human connections are reduced. There is no corporate commitment to the labour force as companies downsize hundreds or thousands of workers at a time, outsource, and use contract or part-time labour. “Profit over People,” as Naom Chomsky (1999) wrote.

We have a breakdown not only of family and work but also of community. Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone” (2000) documents the breakdown of community ties of religion, civic participation, and volunteerism, with a deepening distrust of others, and even of the democratic institutions and democracy itself. (See the Pew reports on Trust.)

Ironically, the desperate pursuit of individual happiness, especially as operationalized as wealth rather than family and community, has created lower happiness levels in the richer countries of the G7 than in the poorer Nordic nations — poorer in GDP but richer in GDP per capita. Happiness, it appears, is not only a personal quality but also a social one determined by community values, mutual interdependence, and social connections.