on loneliness
the loss of these small groups, in favor of nation-level organization of atomized individuals, has had serious consequences for human welfare and human agency. We are missing a layer of organization essential for our happiness.
Sarah Perry • Gardens Need Walls: On Boundaries, Ritual, and Beauty
Experiences with strangers can shape how we define our community and politics.
Creative Destruction • Rabbit Holes 🕳️ #38
Samuel Johnson, the literary giant and depressive, found much to fear in the quiet absence of loneliness. His best advice for those of a similarly melancholy disposition was, “If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.” (This quotation I first came across in the wonderful book, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by
... See moreJonny Thomson • Solitude is not loneliness. Here's the key philosophical difference.
The sadness, the dramas, the fractures of other people’s lives as well as the ascensions and the celebrations of other people’s lives. We have done this forever: project our repressed wishes on the lives of what we can call “familiar strangers.”