Solitude and you (day 12)

I was listening to Spark this afternoon.  William Deresiewicz was talking about solitude and wondering whether we've lost the ability to be by ourselves.  He recalled asking some students about spending time alone and one student wondering what the point was of spending time alone ('what can you do alone that you can't do with someone else?').   At first the student's response seemed ludicrous to me.  Of course being alone is different than being with someone.    But perhaps I was too hasty to judge.  It may all be in the contrast.  Alone time can be being with fewer people than usual.   I could also be that in an increasingly oral world, alone time is just less valuable.  If you're not talking, you're not being.  This would be in contrast to a more text-based world where writing (an introverted activity) is more common.

I just finished reading the book "Orality and Literacy" by Walter Ong in which he describes the qualities of an oral-based culture and how the rise of writing and literacy changed the culture.   Near the end of the book he talks about a secondary orality arising.   I can see this happening more and more.  And looking at it this way, some of the characteristics of the primary oral culture are re-emerging.   One of the qualities of an oral world is this propensity toward the concrete and the constant sharing of information.  In a primary oral world, the information could not be written down so sharing was the only way for an idea to survive and also the only way to perfect an idea or technique over time.   When writing came along, introspection came with it.

So here we are, in a world of constant conversation.   The difference is that we are not as concrete as the primary oral cultures.   We may be talking a lot but we may not be doing enough to really acquire deep knowledge.   And then we're back to my earlier blog entry where I wonder about the disconnect between doing and networking.   I love being alone so it's hard for me to picture how you could ever learn anything significant without spending lots of time alone.

It may be that alone time comes later in life stages now.  It may be that alone time is just not as necessary anymore.  It may be that there are so many people in the conversation that it only seems that no one is taking a breath.