What I learned about solitude from my time with hermits

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/06/hermits-solitude-wilderness-new-mexico

by kevbam • 9 years ago

99 30 9 years ago

Renaud• 9 years ago

Being an hermit doesn't automatically make you insightful. There are various reasons for someone to live away from everyone else. Some of these have to do with mental health.

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.

slothtrop• 9 years ago

Well said. Loneliness is easily the driving force behind widespread depression.

AnimalMuppet• 9 years ago

  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

If you're looking for a chance to see what's going on in your heart, solitude can be great, and can give some insight. If you're just running from people, well, when you go to solitude you still bring one person with you - yourself. That can ruin the peacefulness of the solitude...

Retric• 9 years ago

There is some wisdom to be gained by comparing such people with society.

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.

dasmoth2• 9 years ago

This has been posted a few times before, but when I think about living alone, it's the story of Paul Lutus that comes to mind:

http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programmi...

peterwwillis• 9 years ago

You can find solitary people in a big city, too. But if you have a respect for nature, it would make sense to get out into the outdoors.

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.

afterburner• 9 years ago

Wow, never thought of that, especially the flight path one. No reason for airlines to care about a supposedly empty patch of land. Although if you're far enough from an airport, they're probably high enough not to bother you.

wbracken• 9 years ago

This guy knew how to do solitude:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Proenneke

Mitchhhs• 9 years ago

Who assumes that hermits are insightful? Thats definitely not my connotation and the fact that the author goes in with this supposition is weird.

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.

placebo• 9 years ago

The assumption that hermits are insightful is probably derived from an image of some experienced meditating wise soul, contemplating in solitude the meaning of life. While people who genuinely want to meditate upon life might sometimes wish to do so in solitude, the converse is not true and finding a hermit will definitely not guarantee finding some enlightened spirit. I'd bet on there being a larger probability of finding someone who is mentally unstable, whose condition was made more extreme by the solitude.

msla• 9 years ago

Who assumes that hermits are insightful?

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.

jasode• 9 years ago

An observation about hermits...

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".

pbhjpbhj4• 9 years ago

I think when you say hermit you mean a recluse (and probably in the OP too), someone who separates themselves from society, if they do it for religious/philosophical reasons then I'd call them a hermit.

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.

dasil003• 9 years ago

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 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

munificent• 9 years ago

I have social anxieties that inhibit me contacting others but I think I can be reasonably good company.

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.

cerealbad• 9 years ago

some people enjoy good food and drink, the company of others, to sing and dance and laugh; to love and hate in one breath, and feel the passions of life like a spark across their skin.

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.

pbhjpbhj4• 9 years ago

Interesting he mentions religious _communities_ along with hermits, they seem very divergent to me. A monk is normally a part of a tight knit community working towards common goals. They also talk about hermits being constantly visited by people for them to take advice, that doesn't sound like my notion of a hermit at all? Not much solitude if you're continually advising others.

Mikeb853• 9 years ago

A hermitage is a type of monastery that goes back to the origins of monasticism. Hermit monks generally live in complete solitude on the outskirts of the monastery to pray/meditate for days, weeks or even months at a time, then come together for certain liturgical celebrations.

petra2• 9 years ago

I think there's an interesting middle ground in tibetian buddhism, with 3 year retreats that are done in groups, but in silence. i think i read some of them don't feel alone this way.

pbhjpbhj4• 9 years ago

To me a hermitage is just a hermits home?

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.

JoshMnem• 9 years ago

I had planned to become a hermit when younger. I studied "hunter gatherer living skills" for many years, intending to do it all without any modern technology. (https://goo.gl/CACwPc) Life took me in unexpected directions, and I ended up writing computer programs and organizing online/offline communities instead.

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."

Mikeb853• 9 years ago

In the west, the idea has had a profound cultural impact. Peter France explores this in his book Hermits, attributing the creation of monasticism to the example set by the earliest Christian hermits, the Desert Fathers of Egypt.

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.

antognini• 9 years ago

The Carthusian monks are probably the closest to hermits in the Catholic Church. They spend almost all of their time alone in their cells. Although they don't take a formal vow of silence, unnecessary talking is discouraged. The one exception is that they take a communal walk on Mondays where they're allowed to talk about whatever they want.

(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.)

autogn0me• 9 years ago

Sam Harris said it well, "We spend our entire life seeking out pleasure and avoiding pain." In my opinion if you are going into solitude for avoiding pain - the pain will continue. Like others here have posted: your heart (emotions, thoughts, etc) follow you.

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".

qxzw• 9 years ago

J.D. Salinger, Syd Barrett... I hate it when pop culture romanticizes isolation. These people need help. Good example is Christopher McCandless (movie: Into The Wild), whose decomposing body weighed only 30 kilograms when it was found.

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.

What I learned about solitude from my time with hermits

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