There is safety in solitude

School of the Vestals, a painting by Hector Leroux, 1880

 How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

 

-- Alexander Pope 

An Aristotelian critique of solitude

 Whosoever is delighted with solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.

-- Francis Bacon

Solitude, the nurse of sense

The Solitude Mansion, Philadelphia PA

Bear me, some god! oh quickly bear me hence

To wholesome solitude, the nurse of sense;

Where contemplation prunes her ruffled wings,

And the free soul looks down to pity kings.

-- Alexander Pope

Introspection! Solitude! Reflection! Convictions! The lonely way! Henry Kissinger!

What?

Inundated via social media with the opinions of multitudes, users are diverted from introspection; in truth many technophiles use the internet to avoid the solitude they dread. All of these pressures weaken the fortitude required to develop and sustain convictions that can be implemented only by traveling a lonely road, which is the essence of creativity. ... The digital world’s emphasis on speed inhibits reflection; its incentive empowers the radical over the thoughtful; its values are shaped by subgroup consensus, not by introspection. ... The Enlightenment started with essentially philosophical insights spread by a new technology [the printing press]. Our period is moving in the opposite direction. It has generated a potentially dominating technology [artificial intelligence] in search of a guiding philosophy.

Read the whole thing here.