3 ms·

The article argues that Orwell’s greatest fear wasn’t torture or totalitarianism, but the loss of solitude, and he fled to Jura Island to preserve his inner lif

The article argues that Orwell’s greatest fear wasn’t torture or totalitarianism, but the loss of solitude, and he fled to Jura Island to preserve his inner life. If he thought solitude was hard to obtain then, one can only imagine his reaction to today's constant connectivity. I'm sure many people do their best thinking collectively, but I'm with Orwell, and value long periods of solitude and nurturing my inner life. It seems to be a theme lately. One of the big ideas in Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu is that the only defense against the all-seeing-all-knowing superior being who intends to crush humanity like bugs is the inner thoughts of the Wallfacers. Individuals must preserve their inner lives against constant assault by not only the state, but by bosses, coworkers, advertisers, friends and family. Maybe most modern psychological, social and even political problems can be traced to the collapse of individual interiority into the collective hivemind of social media and political parties. The enemy isn’t Big Brother, the enemy is everyone.

jjtheblunt 3y ago
Your comment resonates with me, and is better worded than I would have.
giraffe_lady 3y ago
Sure but you need to be careful not to reflexively reach for modern-style revanchist individualism as the solution. All of our notable achievements have been the result of people acting together, and maintaining a collaborative, even collectivist approach is reconcilable with deeply private individual inner lives. Not that, reading your comment, I think you're approaching it that way. But I could easily imagine someone reading this and being like "yes exactly that's why libertarianism" or whatever.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  What popped into my head at your mention of the libertarian outlook is I was watching an anthropology/history show about all historical cultures/tribes having something similar to Aboriginal "going walkabout". In Nordic tribes and native Americans too, its okay to just go "tread the earth". The point being to feel joy and gratitude returning to the group. In fact I'm sure it's a biological hard-wired need. I often have to just pack a bugout bag and go wild with no phone etc. It's always lovely to come home to family and friends. But isolated urban living of the technological libertarian seems like an attempt to do that all the time, alone within the group. I think that's a mistake because one is stuck in limbo, neither alone nor in company, getting the joys of neither.
johnea 3y ago
> "terror at the thought of never being alone" Yea, I think the very concept of this will be very difficult for anyone who's childhood was in the internet era. I mean, imagine the horror of turning the cell phone off 8-)
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  And yet an irony is that generation suffer from deep loneliness. I guess we always knew that 1000 Facebook friends and constant IMs doesn't add up to a single IRL friend if you're physically isolated in your room. The mind-body knows the difference. Maybe we have to make a better distinction between connectedness/company and being disconnected/alone for that conversation to make sense?
nonrandomstring 3y ago
It's quite a common concept in existentialist philosophy. Heidegger's "The They" and Sartre's "The Gaze". In psychoanalysis Lacan's "Big Other" is related. (I actually have no idea whether Orwell riffed on that.) Not to get into it deeply, but it's a force that has two sides. One is external, the group's desire to overwhelm the individual a la communism/the Borg. And another is internal, the fear of being overwhelmed by the group, stripped of identity. Of course that whole concept is itself the flip side in tension with its opposite; affinity/coviviality/socialbility and love/belonging of the group.
- alpinisme 3y ago
  A tangent but Lacan just distinguished Autre and autre (Other and other), but more recent philosophers in English (especially Zizek) popularized the more pronounceable distinction between the big and the little other. To be fair though, “l’objet petit a” does occur in Lacan, though, so he wasn’t above the “big”/“little” terminology himself
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    where capitalised (B)ig other is a more spiritial (God) thing? I don't read French so that's a nuance I miss. Thanks. Edit: sorry tired and getting mixed up with Heidegger's being/Being
    - coldtea 3y ago
      The small 'other' is just the other people in life, as regular people. The capitalised Big Other is the organized, concrete and symbolic forces created/imposed by all other people into the individual: law, culture, social obligations, morality, language. It's the organised imposition/force of others, also called as "the symbolic order".
      - nonrandomstring 3y ago
        nice summary, thanks
hyperthesis 3y ago
There's an automatic conformity within us, which is useful for communication, learning, trade, custom and law. e.g. It's helpful that we try to use the same words for the same things. But we can't think outside our frameworks with this conformity engaged. Hence, the need for solitude. I think the greater problem of a "person on business from Porlock" (https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_on_business_from_Porlock https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_on_business_from_Porlock) was not the interruption itself, but that it engaged Coleridge automatic conformity... and so, without moorings, his imagined unreality drifted away like a dream on waking. I must add that this is a higher human intellectual need - but we are also gregarious by deep mammalian nature, and if isolated, will invent and converse with imaged persons.
m463 3y ago
I think peace is a necessity, like quietly reading a book. I remember reading about having a healthy life by maintaining boundaries, and the definition went into gray areas that made a lot of sense. Healthy boundaries are not only about physical or emotional, but also digital, time and even energy boundaries. It is ok if you don't have enough energy to cook. It is also ok if you don't want to create and account, sign up for a newsletter or read an advertisement. Sort of amazing that kindle e-readers make you pay for no advertisements, and carefully qualify the claim "Without Lockscreen Ads"
jrsdav 3y ago
This perspective is well received; made a bit serendipitous by the unexpectedness of it (for me). It came as an insightful thing to think about when linking it to the idea that we, humans, are a just a Darwinian biological system, and the rate at which we accelerated away from the eons in which basic tribalism ruled our pretty static social environment and cognitive real estate, was a giant shock to it. I kinda love with silly endearment all the neat things we discovered to help our feeble little homunculi try to engage and wrangle it all; feudalism, monarchies, democracy, socialism, communism, cults, religion —- c’mon, you’ve got to give us animals a little credit for being quirky. But oh!!! When you manage to glimpse at the mass representing the futility!
Kubrick2001 3y ago
Excellent commentary. This is what Kafka was writing about all along, and specifically in The Trial. Josef K's (and Kafka's, and ours) enemy is himself. The mind traps itself. Within its own hologram.

jjtheblunt 3y ago

Your comment resonates with me, and is better worded than I would have.

giraffe_lady 3y ago

Sure but you need to be careful not to reflexively reach for modern-style revanchist individualism as the solution. All of our notable achievements have been the result of people acting together, and maintaining a collaborative, even collectivist approach is reconcilable with deeply private individual inner lives. Not that, reading your comment, I think you're approaching it that way. But I could easily imagine someone reading this and being like "yes exactly that's why libertarianism" or whatever.

nonrandomstring 3y ago
What popped into my head at your mention of the libertarian outlook is I was watching an anthropology/history show about all historical cultures/tribes having something similar to Aboriginal "going walkabout". In Nordic tribes and native Americans too, its okay to just go "tread the earth". The point being to feel joy and gratitude returning to the group. In fact I'm sure it's a biological hard-wired need. I often have to just pack a bugout bag and go wild with no phone etc. It's always lovely to come home to family and friends. But isolated urban living of the technological libertarian seems like an attempt to do that all the time, alone within the group. I think that's a mistake because one is stuck in limbo, neither alone nor in company, getting the joys of neither.

johnea 3y ago

> "terror at the thought of never being alone" Yea, I think the very concept of this will be very difficult for anyone who's childhood was in the internet era. I mean, imagine the horror of turning the cell phone off 8-)

nonrandomstring 3y ago
And yet an irony is that generation suffer from deep loneliness. I guess we always knew that 1000 Facebook friends and constant IMs doesn't add up to a single IRL friend if you're physically isolated in your room. The mind-body knows the difference. Maybe we have to make a better distinction between connectedness/company and being disconnected/alone for that conversation to make sense?

nonrandomstring 3y ago

It's quite a common concept in existentialist philosophy. Heidegger's "The They" and Sartre's "The Gaze". In psychoanalysis Lacan's "Big Other" is related. (I actually have no idea whether Orwell riffed on that.) Not to get into it deeply, but it's a force that has two sides. One is external, the group's desire to overwhelm the individual a la communism/the Borg. And another is internal, the fear of being overwhelmed by the group, stripped of identity. Of course that whole concept is itself the flip side in tension with its opposite; affinity/coviviality/socialbility and love/belonging of the group.

alpinisme 3y ago
A tangent but Lacan just distinguished Autre and autre (Other and other), but more recent philosophers in English (especially Zizek) popularized the more pronounceable distinction between the big and the little other. To be fair though, “l’objet petit a” does occur in Lacan, though, so he wasn’t above the “big”/“little” terminology himself
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  where capitalised (B)ig other is a more spiritial (God) thing? I don't read French so that's a nuance I miss. Thanks. Edit: sorry tired and getting mixed up with Heidegger's being/Being
  - coldtea 3y ago
    The small 'other' is just the other people in life, as regular people. The capitalised Big Other is the organized, concrete and symbolic forces created/imposed by all other people into the individual: law, culture, social obligations, morality, language. It's the organised imposition/force of others, also called as "the symbolic order".
    - nonrandomstring 3y ago
      nice summary, thanks

hyperthesis 3y ago

There's an automatic conformity within us, which is useful for communication, learning, trade, custom and law. e.g. It's helpful that we try to use the same words for the same things. But we can't think outside our frameworks with this conformity engaged. Hence, the need for solitude. I think the greater problem of a "person on business from Porlock" (https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_on_business_from_Porlock https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_on_business_from_Porlock) was not the interruption itself, but that it engaged Coleridge automatic conformity... and so, without moorings, his imagined unreality drifted away like a dream on waking. I must add that this is a higher human intellectual need - but we are also gregarious by deep mammalian nature, and if isolated, will invent and converse with imaged persons.

m463 3y ago

I think peace is a necessity, like quietly reading a book. I remember reading about having a healthy life by maintaining boundaries, and the definition went into gray areas that made a lot of sense. Healthy boundaries are not only about physical or emotional, but also digital, time and even energy boundaries. It is ok if you don't have enough energy to cook. It is also ok if you don't want to create and account, sign up for a newsletter or read an advertisement. Sort of amazing that kindle e-readers make you pay for no advertisements, and carefully qualify the claim "Without Lockscreen Ads"

jrsdav 3y ago

This perspective is well received; made a bit serendipitous by the unexpectedness of it (for me). It came as an insightful thing to think about when linking it to the idea that we, humans, are a just a Darwinian biological system, and the rate at which we accelerated away from the eons in which basic tribalism ruled our pretty static social environment and cognitive real estate, was a giant shock to it. I kinda love with silly endearment all the neat things we discovered to help our feeble little homunculi try to engage and wrangle it all; feudalism, monarchies, democracy, socialism, communism, cults, religion —- c’mon, you’ve got to give us animals a little credit for being quirky. But oh!!! When you manage to glimpse at the mass representing the futility!

Kubrick2001 3y ago

Excellent commentary. This is what Kafka was writing about all along, and specifically in The Trial. Josef K's (and Kafka's, and ours) enemy is himself. The mind traps itself. Within its own hologram.