The paradox of solitude and loneliness

The paradox of solitude and loneliness PDF Author: Cordula Reimann
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3754314971
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Get Book Here

Book Description
Do you enjoy being alone? Are you often lonely? Regardless of how you answer these questions, I would like to offer you some new ways of seeing them. A conscious and mindful life and experience of solitude is the best way to prevent loneliness. Based on interviews with 150 people worldwide as well as current findings from international research on loneliness and results from philosophy, sociology and political science, this book encourages you to embrace and appreciate solitude and loneliness as important companions in life. Solitude is an important process and resource that enables us to become aware of our own wishes, fears and needs. By better understanding how to be alone, we can develop healthier and more self-determined ways of living and more effectively manage our own loneliness. But solitude and loneliness are not only personal feelings and states of mind but also social and political phenomena. How we as a society deal with both says a lot about us as post-modern society and about our values and human needs for connection and belonging, not only in times of Corona. Thus, the book also explores government responses to loneliness, and new initiatives for living lives in which solitude and loneliness are recast as key aspects of being human.

The paradox of solitude and loneliness

The paradox of solitude and loneliness PDF Author: Cordula Reimann
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3754314971
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Get Book Here

Book Description
Do you enjoy being alone? Are you often lonely? Regardless of how you answer these questions, I would like to offer you some new ways of seeing them. A conscious and mindful life and experience of solitude is the best way to prevent loneliness. Based on interviews with 150 people worldwide as well as current findings from international research on loneliness and results from philosophy, sociology and political science, this book encourages you to embrace and appreciate solitude and loneliness as important companions in life. Solitude is an important process and resource that enables us to become aware of our own wishes, fears and needs. By better understanding how to be alone, we can develop healthier and more self-determined ways of living and more effectively manage our own loneliness. But solitude and loneliness are not only personal feelings and states of mind but also social and political phenomena. How we as a society deal with both says a lot about us as post-modern society and about our values and human needs for connection and belonging, not only in times of Corona. Thus, the book also explores government responses to loneliness, and new initiatives for living lives in which solitude and loneliness are recast as key aspects of being human.

The Art of Solitude

The Art of Solitude PDF Author: Stephen Batchelor
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300252277
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Get Book Here

Book Description
In a time of social distancing and isolation, a meditation on the beauty of solitude from renowned Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor “Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it. A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.”—Kirkus Reviews “Elegant and formally ingenious.”—Geoff Wisner, Wall Street Journal When world renowned Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor turned sixty, he took a sabbatical from his teaching and turned his attention to solitude, a practice integral to the meditative traditions he has long studied and taught. He aimed to venture more deeply into solitude, discovering its full extent and depth. This beautiful literary collage documents his multifaceted explorations. Spending time in remote places, appreciating and making art, practicing meditation and participating in retreats, drinking peyote and ayahuasca, and training himself to keep an open, questioning mind have all contributed to Batchelor’s ability to be simultaneously alone and at ease. Mixed in with his personal narrative are inspiring stories from solitude’s devoted practitioners, from the Buddha to Montaigne, from Vermeer to Agnes Martin. In a hyperconnected world that is at the same time plagued by social isolation, this book shows how to enjoy the inescapable solitude that is at the heart of human life.

How to Be Alone

How to Be Alone PDF Author: Sara Maitland
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 1250059038
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 145

Get Book Here

Book Description
IN THIS AGE OF CONSTANT CONNECTIVITY, LEARN HOW TO ENJOY SOLITUDE AND FIND HAPPINESS WITHOUT OTHERS. Our fast-paced society does not approve of solitude; being alone is antisocial and some even find it sinister. Why is this so when autonomy, personal freedom, and individualism are more highly prized than ever before? In How to Be Alone, Sara Maitland answers this question by exploring changing attitudes throughout history. Offering experiments and strategies for overturning our fear of solitude, she helps us practice it without anxiety and encourages us to see the benefits of spending time by ourselves. By indulging in the experience of being alone, we can be inspired to find our own rewards and ultimately lead more enriched, fuller lives.

Becoming Human

Becoming Human PDF Author: Jean Vanier
Publisher: Paulist Press
ISBN: 1616431857
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 142

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this deeply compassionate work, Jean Vanier shares his profoundly human vision for creating a common good that radically changes our communities, our relationships and ourselves. He proposes that by opening ourselves to others, those we perceive as weak, different, or inferior, we can achieve true personal and societal freedom. The 10th anniversary edition includes a new Introduction by the author.

The Lonely City

The Lonely City PDF Author: Olivia Laing
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250039576
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

Book Description
There is a particular flavor to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by thousands of strangers. This roving cultural history of urban loneliness centers on the ultimate city: Manhattan, that teeming island of gneiss, concrete, and glass. How do we connect with other people, particularly if our sexuality or physical body is considered deviant or damaged? Does technology draw us closer together or trap us behind screens? Laing travels deep into the work and lives of some of the century's most original artists in a celebration of the state of loneliness.

In The Realm Of Solitude: The Paradox Of Isolation

In The Realm Of Solitude: The Paradox Of Isolation PDF Author: Nicky Huys
Publisher: Nicky Huys Books
ISBN:
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 113

Get Book Here

Book Description
"In the Realm of Solitude: The Paradox of Isolation" delves into the intricate interplay between solitude and the human experience. Through thought-provoking essays and poignant reflections, this book explores the paradoxical nature of isolation, uncovering the profound insights and personal growth that can emerge from moments of solitude. From the existential struggle for meaning to the innate human longing for connection, the author navigates the complex emotions and experiences that arise in the realm of solitude. With a blend of philosophical inquiry and psychological depth, this book offers a compelling exploration of the human condition and the transformative power of embracing solitude.

Loneliness as a Way of Life

Loneliness as a Way of Life PDF Author: Thomas Dumm
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067403113X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
“What does it mean to be lonely?” Thomas Dumm asks. His inquiry, documented in this book, takes us beyond social circumstances and into the deeper forces that shape our very existence as modern individuals. The modern individual, Dumm suggests, is fundamentally a lonely self. Through reflections on philosophy, political theory, literature, and tragic drama, he proceeds to illuminate a hidden dimension of the human condition. His book shows how loneliness shapes the contemporary division between public and private, our inability to live with each other honestly and in comity, the estranged forms that our intimate relationships assume, and the weakness of our common bonds. A reading of the relationship between Cordelia and her father in Shakespeare’s King Lear points to the most basic dynamic of modern loneliness—how it is a response to the problem of the “missing mother.” Dumm goes on to explore the most important dimensions of lonely experience—Being, Having, Loving, and Grieving. As the book unfolds, he juxtaposes new interpretations of iconic cultural texts—Moby-Dick, Death of a Salesman, the film Paris, Texas, Emerson’s “Experience,” to name a few—with his own experiences of loneliness, as a son, as a father, and as a grieving husband and widower. Written with deceptive simplicity, Loneliness as a Way of Life is something rare—an intellectual study that is passionately personal. It challenges us, not to overcome our loneliness, but to learn how to re-inhabit it in a better way. To fail to do so, this book reveals, will only intensify the power that it holds over us.

Empty Set

Empty Set PDF Author: Verónica Gerber Bicecci
Publisher: Coffee House Press
ISBN: 1566895006
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 183

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Verónica Gerber writes with a luminous intimacy; her novel is clever, vibrant, moving, profoundly original. Reading it made me feel as if the world had been rebuilt." —Francisco Goldman "From the very beginning, Verónica Gerber set out to write a novel that would end up at a loss for words. She alone could achieve this feat: because she's a visual artist who takes everything she reads in as concentric circles threaded with color, and because she writes essays on painters who write across canvasses and writers who paint plots from the realities of life. . . . She alone could bring the necessary silence to a novel so perfect it ended up leaving me speechless as well." —Jorge F. Hernández How do you draw an affair? A family? Can a Venn diagram show the ways overlaps turn into absences, tree rings tell us what happens when mothers leave? Can we fall in love according to the hop skip of an acrostic? Empty Set is a novel of patterns, its young narrator's attempt at making sense of inevitable loss, tracing her way forward in loops, triangles, and broken lines. Verónica Gerber Bicecci is a visual artist who writes. In 2013 she was awarded the third Aura Estrada prize for literature. She is an editor with Tumbona Ediciones, a publishing cooperative with a catalogue that explores the intersections between literature and art.

Thinking Through Loneliness

Thinking Through Loneliness PDF Author: Diane Enns
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350279765
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This is the peculiar paradox of loneliness: I am unseen yet I feel exposed, as though my most internal suffering were on public display, as though I am disclosing to the world the vulnerability it does not want to see." By reflecting on the experience of loneliness through the author's own life, the narratives of others and analyses from Arendt to Berardi, Thinking Through Loneliness explores the ambiguities of being alone. It seeks to defy the reductionist tendencies of the current loneliness experts, looking beyond loneliness as a collective health crisis to consider what it tells us about our great need for one another and what happens when we fail to meet this need. Our social needs vary, however; to investigate loneliness is to inquire into the contradictions of the human condition-we are alone and together, separate and attached-which gives rise to the need for individuality on the one hand, and for intimacy on the other. To be lonely is to suffer from an unfulfilled desire to be close to others. But we can also suffer from an unfulfilled desire to be separate from others. Diane Enns explores how loneliness might be an inescapable dimension of human existence, but also the collective symptom of social failure. The lonely are not to blame for their distress; they are witnesses to the failure of our contemporary social world, dramatically transformed in recent decades by digital technology, and changes in how we work, love, socialize, and live together in households, neighbourhoods and cities. Enns argues it is crucial to recognise the structural conditions-economic, political, institutional, technological-that give rise to the isolation that produces loneliness. Only then can we work to undermine these conditions, preserving all that is best about human social life.

Solitude

Solitude PDF Author: Michael Harris
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781444835137
Category : Information technology
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Get Book Here

Book Description
Solitude is a rapidly vanishing experience. Our society now embraces sharing like never before: time alone is being forced out of our lives by the constant pings of smartphones and prods of social media. But what if being alone still has something to offer us - something we have forgotten, but still desperately need? Michael Harris reflects on the paradoxical feeling of isolation that emerges from being constantly connected - and on how learning the beauty of solitude can help us escape it. After all, it is when we are alone that we realise the greatest truths about ourselves...