Solitude

SOLITUDE: A SINGULAR LIFE IN A CROWDED WORLD
By Michael Harris

There seems to be no end to the impact of the digital revolution on our lives and its ongoing transformation of the ways we work, relax, socialize, express ourselves, and even think. Clearly technology is changing everything.

Naturally, it is a subject that has been exercising critics and commentators a great deal, and there have already been a host of books on the subject. One of them, The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection by Michael Harris, won the Governor-General’s Award a couple of years ago. With Solitude Harris is back covering a lot of the same ground. Charitably, we might call it a sequel. With less charity we might think he’s repeating himself.

Even the form the presentation takes will be familiar: personal anecdotes alternating with items drawn from Harris’s eclectic reading and interviews he’s done with various experts in the fields of business and psychology. The basic point he draws from all of this is also nothing new. Modern life, and in particular our always-connected technology, is alienating us from ourselves. We need to recharge and reconnect with absence/solitude in order to regain a sense of personal authenticity.

If this sounds like the sort of felt truism typical of a lot of pop spirituality (think of the mindfulness movement, for example), that may give some clue to the source of Harris’s charm. In his hands what are often banal observations take on an air of profundity (or fail, as when we are told that “not till we are lost can we hope to be found”). But he is always an engaging writer, easy to read and capable of expressing his arguments in what are often memorable and helpful ways. His main thesis, that solitude is a beneficial resource that has to be responsibly managed and saved from being exploited by profiteering tech companies and other agents of distraction, is particularly well imagined. The environmental analogy works nicely, finally presenting us with the dangerous possibility of a clear-cut “Easter Island of the mind” and stressing the need to make the preservation of individual solitude (so as to “safeguard our inner weirdo”) a personal mission.

The comparison of solitude to a threatened environment is extended in various ways, culminating in Harris’s visit to an off-the-network island retreat. Such a retreat, however, can also be seen as symbolic of a withdrawal into an intellectual comfort zone. Harris is not big on raising counterpoints, such as, for example, whether our protective weaving of “stronger weirdo cocoons” might be seen as narcissistic. He also allows his argument to spread a bit thin at times. The chapter on the grand, “final and inviolate solitude” of death seems particularly out of place and doesn’t connect all that well with the rest of the book.

There is, however, a strong takeaway. Solitude has real benefits: leading to enhanced creativity, a better understanding of the self, and the ability to connect more fully with others. It is, however, a psychological and emotional resource that is increasingly under assault. We have to be aware of this, and look for ways to defend the endangered singular life.

Notes:
Review first published in Quill & Quire, April 2017.