Loneliness v. Social Life

Certain mornings one just wakes up badly; even if one had a healthy dinner and read a book of Stoic philosophy and fell asleep by ten pm. This morning, I simply woke up feeling sub-normal and then I checked my email and found that a woman I wanted to bang had sent me a disguised rejection, although blatant if one considers the crucial information and ignores the sunny language. A lacklustre start to the day; a bad taste in my mouth and a confirmation of my suspicion that the opposite sex finds me less than appealing nowadays.

But let me not mislead you, even when I was in my prime; twenty-three, head full of hair, heart big and flexible, body strong and brown, mind buoyed in the champagne of hope and dreams, I was still as lonely as lost migrating bird.

If you can believe Marcus Aurelius, successful Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher, there is no evil in the ways of nature. Where he draws the line between humanity and nature I’m not sure, since at the same time he says that humanity is not separate from the Universe but is indeed part of it. In which case, humanity and all its actions are part of the Universe. And so, any and all of humanity’s actions are also the actions of nature and therefore could not possibly be evil. None the less, ignoring what I see as a contradiction, he makes it clear that the influence of desire leads to the actions of evil. Furthermore, any activity that does not lead to one, or both, of the intertwined goals of  1. advancement in human welfare, and 2. personal enlightenment, is not a worthy activity.

This, however, is the attitude of a responsible emperor and might not apply well to the life of the average citizen. He declares that one needs to be social, which one would expect to hear from the adopted son of Antonius Pius (fifteenth Roman Emperor) and then heir to the Roman empire.

This social aspect is endorsed with less gusto by a slightly earlier Stoic philosopher, Seneca. Seneca, also a holder of high public office, periodically, was less in support of the social life and more concerned with adjusting oneself to fortune. This is what one would expect from a man significantly less powerful than the emperor and more subject to the whims of other people. Quite a wise attitude as it turns out, since the emperor Nero ultimately ordered him to kill himself, which he did by slitting his wrists and drinking poison, but this did not kill Seneca and he is said to have finally died on that day by suffocation, from breathing the steam of a hot bath that was supposed to expedite exsanguination (death by blood loss).

Seneca believed in activity, even social activity, but foremost he believed in reaching a state of equanimity (this was one of Marcus Aurelius’s parallel concerns, too). This also meant equanimity in the face of death. Seneca’s ambition, which one might believe he attained, was to be able to lose everything material, including his body, and still remain undisturbed. This was not supposed to be attained by any bold act of will, but by gradually coming to the knowledge that fortune will do with you what it wants.

He also advised that what we call good fortune is often not so good, and what we call bad fortune is often not so bad.

Seneca prepared himself for loneliness.

He fought with Caligula, was then banished to Corsica by Claudius, then recalled to Rome by Claudius’s fourth wife to tutor Nero who then became Emperor and subsequently ordered Seneca to kill himself, as described above. Such a life would certainly make one feel the winds of change, and the pain of loneliness. But through it all it seems that ultimately he had only one thing to declare; that we should preserve our equanimity.

Everyone will agree that loneliness is extremely painful, the emotion of extreme loneliness is like being suspended at the point where you are about to collapse. A kind of dry despair that can cause you to sleep twelve hours a day and then hold you in a state of horror for the other twelve.

However, In its milder forms it can be useful, particularly to the “liberal studies”, as Seneca calls them, but I would include that to mean also self-examination and meditation. For Seneca, these activities were of the highest value in a life that is so short. More worthwhile, he felt, than knocking down one building and then constructing another.

Men that he did not value highly he called “preoccupied”. The preoccupied included almost everyone. The rare few that he might have called “focused” were those who, through concentration on the fickle ways of fortune and the inevitability of death, had strengthened themselves to the point where they would not be overcome by desires, who would remain equanimous, and therefore able to appreciate the present to its fullest extent.

He was not an ascetic, Seneca believed in amusements; drinking, fucking, getting to know ones children, producing literature, having friends, filling office honourably and so on. But being able to live peacefully without these things, as much as with, was the reward of attaining wisdom.

What I can say in conclusion is, loneliness is no obstacle to the fulfilment of a human’s purpose.