The Case for Intellectual Loneliness

Intellectual loneliness is a challenge that many people feel, but nobody talks about. It’s built on a paradox where you feel alive when you’re learning on the Internet but soul-crushed when you try to talk about those same ideas with friends and family.

Encountering for the first time communities in the real world founded on ideas, I began to realize that I had always felt what my friend David Perell calls “intellectual loneliness.” It’s a feeling that almost no one in your social circles shares the same passion for ideas as you. I realized I had always felt that there was no one I could share my ... See more