Exploring what the new world has to show us.

I have lived alone in the wilderness, and I have lived elbow to elbow in big cities. From these experiences I have long held that it is easier to be lonely in a wilderness than it is in a city.

It comes down to knowing the difference between being alone and feeling lonely. It is easier to feel lonely when we are alone, than it is to feel lonely among other people. Context is everything. That we might feel lonely when no one is around makes sense, and that is enough. Feeling lonely among other people makes us look for answers. The answers we come up with are a measure of our maturity. The less mature we are, the more we blame others for our feeling lonely. The more mature we are, the more we accept that we need to put more work into the routines of our lives. Whether it is in making friends and building connections or focusing on our projects and aspirations. Compounding the matter, no one enjoys seeing their maturity level displayed so clearly.

More recently in my life I have been able to explore these concepts further. When living among people, what is the effect when other people’s behavior towards us does not align with how we view our own behavior towards them? And how do we cope with the experience?

The image to work with is of a group of people secretly filtering all of our digital communications and altering it all to make us appear to others differently from how we are actually behaving. Then, when we go out in public and interact with people, their behavior towards us is, to us, completely out of context. Coping with this experience challenges our maturity in the same way loneliness does, for we are forced to search for answers.

In my opinion, the obvious first step is to assess our own behavior to ensure it is what we think it is. Once we establish that we are functioning as we expect, an immature person will create a story that blames the other people for how they are treating them. This will cause their own behavior to adapt to the other people. Thus, giving control of their behavior to outside forces. A real danger if the other people are working on different information than we are. A mature person develops a story that allows the two separate conditions to exist peacefully. A story that does not blame other people for how they behave, because we do not know what they are experiencing, while maintaining control over our perception of ourselves and allowing us to behave as ourselves.

For those of us with the time on our hands, extrapolating these concepts to a societal and cultural level goes far in understanding the evolutionary advantages of believing in a higher power. Especially for community building.