An observation about hermits...<p>If one skips sexual companionship, you get the 27-year total isolation like Christopher Knight.<p>However, if one allows that one activity of procreation, he can suddenly become a <i>hermit hiding in plain sight</i> that nobody calls a "hermit".<p>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 <i>never</i> 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.<p>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.<p>Growing up around him, the repeated description was <i>"he's extremely reserved"</i> -- as in <i>"yeah, my dad is extremely reserved and private"</i>. 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".
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.<p>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.<p>Solitude is great.
Loneliness sucks.
Who assumes that hermits are insightful? Thats definitely not my connotation and the fact that the author goes in with this supposition is weird.<p>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.
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:<p><a href="http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programming.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programmi...</a>
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. (<a href="https://goo.gl/CACwPc" rel="nofollow">https://goo.gl/CACwPc</a>) Life took me in unexpected directions, and I ended up writing computer programs and organizing online/offline communities instead.<p>This is a good quote from the article:<p><i>"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."</i>
This guy knew how to do solitude:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Proenneke" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Proenneke</a>
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.<p>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.<p>most people overlap. you can hardly be expected to enjoy yourself all the time, what's the fun in fun.
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.<p>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.
> 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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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".
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.