
The Benefits of Solitude - tintinnabula
https://thewalrus.ca/the-benefits-of-solitude/
======
japhyr
I haven't spent 5 months in Antarctic solitude like Byrd, but I did live on a
bicycle for a year while circling North America. I'd go multiple days without
seeing anyone else, sometimes in the desert and sometimes in the forest. It
changed my life, in ways that's hard to communicate to people who haven't
spent time in actual solitude.

These days I live in a fairly remote part of Alaska, but we have good cell
coverage here now. It's different being in wilderness while still having the
possibility of being connected. I feel different when I get into a valley
where there's no coverage. I'm tempted to get a satellite device for
emergencies, but part of me relishes the impossibility of contact with the
outside world for a time. That's a good issue to wrestle with.

If you haven't experienced true solitude yet, go find some. It's pretty
grounding.

~~~
avenoir
A few years ago, I did a solo hike around midnight to a spot in Bryce Canyon
hoping to get a glimpse of the night skies. I had my camera situated on an
outcropping taking pictures at set intervals while i was laying down staring
at the night sky and the canyon below. I felt a strange and comforting
sensation... Goosebumps and everything. I was in this vast wilderness in the
middle of the night and yet i felt "cozy" like i'm in a small place. Like this
is it, I'm home. I was miles away from civilization but felt i was still a
part of something much bigger at that particular moment. I imagined that's
what a lot of old explorers must have felt when being out on their journeys. I
live in Colorado and play in the mountains quite a bit and while I don't want
to sound like a crazy hippy but that experience and a few others like it have
really showed me that people (maybe not all but some) are tethered to nature
on some subconscious level. It's mysterious and almost magical. But these are
the experiences i cherish when I'm out alone in the wilderness.

~~~
jack_pp
Another hypothesis might be that people know on some subconscious level that
the real threat in the world is other people. I don't mean threat in the sense
that you'll be killed but in society there is constantly a power struggle, as
a man you try to climb the dominance hierarchy or if you don't try to climb it
you feel weak because you know deep down that you're not top dog and there's a
lot of consequences to that status etc.

Where as if you go somewhere where you're certain there's no other people
around then you're free of all that, free to express yourself without worrying
even a little about other people judging your every little movement, every
behaviour.

~~~
andai
In a somewhat different way, this is the same reason I prefer to work at
night. I can get an 8-10 hour stretch with no distractions!

------
rubicon33
This article is really more about the need to experience nature, and wild
environments (non-urban), than it is about the "benefits" of solitude. In
fact, it does more to point out the negatives of solitude (potential death
from frostbite) than it does to highlight positives.

Based on my own experience some solitude is healthy and positive, even
necessary for deep work. But too much is quite dangerous for one's mental
health. So while I whole heartedly agree that we could all benefit from
experiencing more natural environments, I don't think solitude is the answer.
We are social animals, even those of us who don't identify with being so.

~~~
shopkins
The "wild environments" offer concrete examples of the benefits of solitude.
They're reduced anxiety, not being on pills, boosts to your the immune system,
etc. Solitude generally accompanies the wilderness, and wilderness is the
tangible gateway to the insight and humility you might gain from solitude.

But of course the wilderness doesn't strictly mean not socializing. Talk to
anyone who's thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail or similar and you'll hear about
how social of an experience it was, between the times of solitude. The thing
is that there is _no_ solitude in heavily populated environments, where things
like _work_ are what you're supposed to do. This is the point of the article:
in cities, in society, you're not able to focus on the simple joy of your
existence, as Byrd was. In solitude you're free from the urban burdens and
obligations that stress us, despite how well we've adapted to them.

~~~
cgh
The Appalachian Trail isn't wilderness. I recall reading somewhere that by
some definition related to road building (if memory serves) there is no true
wilderness in the lower 48. Alaska is it for the US, at least by that
particular definition. Sorry, no citation.

Of course, Canada is handily next door.

~~~
wavefunction
You have to go into some parts of the Rockies for what wilderness remains in
the lower 48. I've fished some alpine lakes that likely hadn't seen any human
in a year, if even.

The road rule is actually part of why certain groups push to build roads on
public lands, because it reduces the land's environmental status and access to
protections from exploitation.

------
literallycancer
_A study from the University of London, for example, found that members of the
remote cattle-herding Himba tribe in Namibia, who spend their lives in the
open bush, had greater attention spans and a greater sense of contentment than
urbanized Britons and, when those same tribe members moved into urban centres,
their attention spans and levels of contentment dropped to match their British
counterparts._

This should be the study:

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235002874_Urbanizat...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235002874_Urbanization_Decreases_Attentional_Engagement)

~~~
AndrewOMartin
That same team did the most remarkable (in my eyes) experiment with the same
tribe too.

They basically controlled for everything, if you read the paper, except for
the language used for colours, and showed how a colour that's incredibly
distinct for us, is incredibly hard to distinguish for them and vice-versa.

Go here: [https://vimeo.com/120808489](https://vimeo.com/120808489) You need
to find the odd colour out in the rings at: 5:40 (easy for them, hard for us)
6:30 (so easy for us that it's hard to imagine it being hard for anybody)

~~~
joepvd
That is an awesome video. Thanks for sharing!

------
andrem
Are there jobs like this out there that you can do for months at a time
without being too skilled?

He was manning the Antarctic station - that sounds like it involves routine
work that anyone can do (absolutely no offense), are there jobmarkets out
there for these sort of gigs?

Just curious really.

~~~
mxvzr
I enjoyed reading some of the blog posts on here awhile back:
[http://www.gdargaud.net/Antarctica/index.html](http://www.gdargaud.net/Antarctica/index.html).

The author spent a number of seasons, including winter, in Antartica. From
what I remember he was a "techie" who would run/maintain experiments for
European universities; outdoor experience & knowledge on how to operate a
LIDAR were his qualifications for the job. The tasks may sound mundane however
even running an ethernet cable by -70c is more challenging than it sounds.

There is also an American station but it's rather crowded so I doubt you'd get
to enjoy solitude there. The British station is less crowded but I heard it
smells terrible.

------
keerthiko
Since most of the comments (and TFA) is about solitude, but more in nature, I
want to chime in about solitude in an urban setting. For the 18 months I was a
digital nomad (while waiting for a US visa to move back near my cofounders),
About 6 months were spent in cities where I didn't know anyone when I arrived,
and roughly about 3 months were spent in "city solitude", the first couple
weeks in each new city I went to.

During this time I wouldn't really have any directed conversation with humans.
I'd thank a store clerk, make an order at a cafe or restaurant, that's it.
Mostly because I didn't know the local languages in some of these countries
(Asia), but sometimes even where I did. I was incredibly lonely the first time
it happened due to the former (language), but towards the end of my nomadism
it meant something else. I began to seek that time, and use it to commune with
the place, the city, and to think truly independently without disrupting my
lifestyle. These are big bustling people-filled places I'm talking about --
Seoul, Tokyo, Taipei, Osaka, Bangkok. I can speak Japanese fluently, yet every
other week I spent in Tokyo I'd avoid personal interactions, while still going
out regularly for dinner, or a run, or to a cafe. You start to see the place
as a friend, and understand it more.

Ironically, you begin to be able to understand humans better from this time
not being a part of their society. It's stepping away from individuals
(friends/family/coworkers/date) you focus on, and suddenly you can observe the
humanity around you with an even emphasis. You can see which things they take
for granted, how they prioritize life, what makes them tick. You see things,
learn things, understand the guiding fabric of their society (and to some
extent the global one) from a third-person perspective, which is very
different from what I saw while an active part of it.

This same perspective also makes you feel a great deal of freedom from those
social rules, yet acute awareness of them (much like with a friend, you don't
have to deal with their lifestyle if you don't want to, you can look at their
life more objectively than if they were your partner or family). You think
about things, try things, plan things, make choices very differently than if
you are being socially influenced directly by those around you. Being a
foreigner/outsider in those places probably accentuated it, but likely is a
prerequisite to feel that way in a city.

I really feel like it permanently changed the way I see the role of society,
places, and my human relationships to be a completely different perspective.

------
codingdave
There are moderate ways to experience nature and escape the cities. I try to
get outside for walks every day, and out to the desert or the mountains once
or twice a month. And I set my home office up with a window looking out at a
large mountain. Small efforts like this do add up.

------
to_bpr
I don't believe the author did much of a job in selling the benefits of
solitude, but it has once again stoked the embers currently within me to get
away from everything connected to a socket, and from everyone (or almost
everyone) connected to one another through a device.

Given the consistency at which articles of this nature appear on HN and other
tech communities, it appears to be either a common residual feeling or one
that is on the rise amongst us in the tech world?

~~~
Baeocystin
It strikes me as the simple intersection of the fact that tech people as a
group are significantly more introverted and solitude-seeking than the
population at large, and that solitude is most easily achieved away from
civilization.

(Not to imply any judgement. I unashamedly fit the stereotype in this respect
to a T.)

------
jwilk
Translation for metric units users:

−57 °F ≈ −49 °C

------
andars
"consider stationing employees who need to concentrate outside the city"

This reminds me of the Bell Lab's old Holmdel research complex. A ton of early
microwave research was done there in the 50s when it was basically just a
farm. It wasn't till later that they built the facility that now stands there.

~~~
asdfasdf32r3
Cray Research was similar. Business org in the city, R&D on a purpose built
farm in Chippewa.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray#Cray_Research](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray#Cray_Research)

~~~
pklausler
It's true that hardware engineering and manufacturing were in Chippewa Falls,
Wisconsin, while the corporate HQ and software people were various suburbs of
Minneapolis, Minnesota (first Bloomington, then Mendota Heights and downtown
Minneapolis, then Eagan, then back to Mendota Heights, &c...). But that's
mostly because Control Data had set Seymour up with a lab in Chippewa Falls,
and he just stayed in place in '72 when he quit.

~~~
projectileboy
True, but that wasn't accidental. Cray helped start Control Data, and he
placed the lab in Chippewa Falls in order to do R&D away from nuisances.

------
notadoc
Turn off your cell phone. Go take a long walk in nature, away from a city and
the related noise and distractions. Try to make it a regular habit. You will
benefit and find it enjoyable.

The Santa Cruz mountains, redwoods, Point Reyes, etc, are all great for this
right in the bay area.

------
SkyMarshal
Worth reposting, one of the best essays on this topic is William Deresiewicz's
_Solitude and Leadership_ , previously discussed at HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10073663](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10073663)

------
fredley
Firewatch is an excellent indie game that deals with themes of solitude and
escape.

