So not liking people is good

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Susan Sontag, one of the most influential intellectuals and cultural critics of the 20th century, was known for her sharp insights into art, culture, and human experience.
Her quote on eloquence and its relationship to solitude reveals her understanding of language and its connection to the individual’s inner world.

Sontag believed that the ability to speak well, to articulate thoughts clearly and compellingly, was not something innate or natural, but rather a product of isolation.
In a society dominated by communal life—whether in families, groups, or communal settings—people often resorted to simpler forms of expression.

According to Sontag, it was in solitude and separation from the crowd that a person could truly cultivate eloquence, as it was within these moments of isolation that individuals could confront their thoughts deeply and express them with clarity.
Sontag’s ideas about language were shaped by her larger body of work, which frequently examined the intersections of personal identity, social constructs, and the human condition.

She explored the impact of isolation on creativity and individuality in many of her writings, such as in her groundbreaking essays on photography, film, and literature.
For Sontag, eloquence was a sign of a developed, introspective mind that was not afraid to challenge the status quo. The “painful individuality” she referred to pointed to the existential cost of being alone, but also the creative freedom it afforded.
It was through solitude that one could experience a more authentic form of self-expression, not shaped by societal expectations or norms, but born from the individual’s own inner dialogue.

Her reflections on solitude, art, and language have continued to influence generations of thinkers and artists.

Sontag’s assertion that “thinking in words” is something derived from solitude offers an important insight into the nature of creativity and communication.

In an increasingly interconnected world, where groupthink and collective experiences often dominate, Sontag’s ideas remind us of the power of individual thought and the transformative potential of solitude.

Her work continues to resonate today, especially for those who seek to find their voice in a world filled with noise and distraction.

Susan Sontag’s Books: Amazon.com : susan sontag books

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What i sure is that clear thinking and ability to analyze and expose one thoughts are not innate.

One needs training and tools. And more when specialized.

Tools are words, concepts, syntaxe and grammar. One does not learn them by oneself, in solitude.

It is the same with art. Before painting in cubism style, Picasso had a high level education in classical painting.

When you master them, solitude can be needed to produce something, especially in art, but not only.

But again, you don’t produce from nothing, or from just your memory.

When Susan Sontag wrote her books, she had her library, researched and so.

And finally, one needs to submit one’s work to an editor, to peers and so. solitude has a term.

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Thank you for injecting that touch of pragmatic realism.

What about parents and family and interacting?
Human beings do not learn to speak well, or how to articulate thoughts, in isolation.

We aren’t point source-Minds - mind is produced by something more than internal reflection.

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Au contraire, isolation chambers produce hallucinations and potential insanity.

Isolation chambers can have negative effects on humans. Conditions in isolation units, combined with the lack of rehabilitation programmes, can exacerbate existing mental health conditions and create new ones, such as anxiety, depression, and paranoia1. Prisoners in solitary confinement often experience severe mental health issues, with 30-50% of inmates in solitary confinement being mentally ill or cognitively disabled2. Isolation can cause severe and permanent damage, as humans are social creatures and lack of human contact can lead to loneliness and mental health problems45.

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Some times alone is not being in an isolation chamber.

Have ou ever tried to work with people around you, interrupting you asking uninteresting questions at the time?

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I haven’t read her. I’ll check out her books. That was a nice description you provided and from a personal perspective I really, really find a lot of truth in it. I mean, how can you present a deep perspective to others if you haven’t first had a deep “discussion” with yourself?

As you know, I read a lot. But I have recently taken to drawing. It provides me with some creative solitude. And more importantly for me, it is a way to get to know myself better. I have a fairly strong hand tremor so the frustration can be strong at times. But that sparks a conversation within me about how incredibly lucky I am that this is the sort of thing that creates “stress” in my life.

Fortunately, I have learned that drawing is not a “gift” but rather a skill that can be learned. My favorite times in High School involved the arts. I was a percussionist (I can read music) in the concert and marching bands and also had a pretty good rock band outside of school. I loved the drama classes in East Brunswick NJ High School. We often went to see off-broadway plays in NYC. The artsy types accepted me more quickly (I had a southern accent at the time as I had moved from Houston) than the other kids.

At any rate, I very much value solitude and try to make good use of it.
Here are some boots I drew a few days back. I’m just happy that they look anything like boots. :slight_smile:

Photo on 4-26-25 at 12.02 PM
Photo on 4-26-25 at 12.02 PM1440×960 186 KB

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level-1-boots4608×3072 2 MB

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Uninteresting by who’s standard? Everything is relative to the POV of the Observer.
At a deeper level this results in wave-interference and superposition.

Gary Zukov wrote a great book about the metaphysics of spacetime titled:
“The Dancing Wu Li Masters”

The Dancing Wu Li Masters begins with the author’s explanation for the impetus behind his writing: a visit to the Esalen Institute in Northern California for a conference on physics. At the conference, one of his acquaintances, a Tai ‘chi master named Al Huang, told Zukav that in Taiwan, physics was called “Wu Li,” translated into English as “patterns of organic energy.” He argues that this meaning reflects the fact that matter and energy exist and correlate at the same time in subatomic domain. This relationship fascinated Zukav, bringing about an inquiry into whether quantum mechanics indeed had a metaphysical nature.

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For sure!!! I never felt more alone than when I was married to my first wife. :slight_smile:

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She wasn’t talking about isolation chambers. It’s obvious, so I question your motivation for saying such a thing

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That’s incredibly ironic.

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She wasn’t? Why then do you have to insert a qualification?
The logical interpretation of “isolation” is absence of all external interference, not just human babbling. What better isolation than an isolation chamber.

Perhaps you are confusing “isolation” with “solitude”?

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There is nothing logical about that. More like extreme. The context and details of the quote do not infer it. Maybe you should sample some of her work to clarify instead of imposing your own definition and commenting on your own thoughts.

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Yes, isolation is an extreme condition and therefore psychologically damagingfor lack of intellectual stimulus and the eventual collapse of the brain into total hallucination.

Note that the brain itself is isolated from the environment, and only gets its information second hand.
Sensory lack of Sight, Hearing, Smell, Touch, all render the brain unaware of those experiences. The brain itself has NO sensory experience except as an emergent cognitive experience based on secondary neural information processing.
Take that information away and the mind is “isolated” from reality. (Descartes)

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I think you are right that she meant “solitude”. She meant isolation from people, not from everything. Like spending time in a home or room alone, or out in the woods.

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That’s an arbitrary over simplification created for simple minds.

I don’t see how embracing such a simplistic assumption helps us understand anything about ourselves, or our lives, or how this incredible natural world around us functions.

Where’s the benefit of constantly embracing the thoughts of someone who lived before any real science happened, either anthropological, or psychological. His insight were gut level feeling of a genius doing the best he could with what was available - but he died in 1650 and was still trapped in a mindset where everything was about God.

Now we’ve traded God for the “Ultimate Truth” as thought such a thing can exist for something so self-absorbed and self-serving as we human are.

I know I’m saying the same thing, but Descartes has been saying the same thing since the seventeen-hundreds, this is 2025, the information at hand today is literally light years beyond what he had to work with.

I can’t grasp why that doesn’t’ matter to so many.

Is your brain isolated from stress?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-021-00457-5

How can people write off our bodies internal functions and communications channels as “not being real experiences”.

This seems a contrived definition to convince oneself of a preordained position: “The brain itself has NO sensory experience except as an emergent cognitive experience based on secondary neural information processing.” Ever have a concussion? Of course, one can massage the message to get around that.

And what’s with the invalidation of our bodies intermediate biological messengers - as real and physical entities?
It feels to me like saying I never spoke to that person on my iPhone, because their words were discombobulated during the transmission to me.

And after all my trying to communicate a more holistic physical reality respecting perspective - how can you still embrace something as theological as “I think therefore I am” with such alacrity - it’s truly baffling. And an insult to Earth’s biological processes.

You are an evolved biological animal that creates its’ own consciousness through constant interactions - on a myriad of levels - some of whom we are still unaware of, based on the amazing breakthroughs of recent decades.

That is the physical biological reality we exist within, but we are so good at ignoring all that,
because, of course, it’s all about us and our dreams and desires.
That stuff is simply some triviality?
Always has been, reckon it always will be.

As demonstrated by how we treat our home planet, (the sources of all we have and know). With such contemptuous disregard, resulting in this slow motion train wreck we have trapped our children into

… If we consider the heart as a pump and the liver as a filter, then the brain can be said to be a device that predicts the future on the basis of the past. To go further, it may be useful, or even necessary, to think along the lines of Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900–1975), who noted that:
“nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”

During evolution, the environment has imprinted itself very strongly to the structure and function of the brain. The most evident examples are the omnipresent circadian rhythms driven by and adjusted to the day/night cycle on the Earth.

More generally, many functioning principles of the brain can be understood on the basis of the regularities of the world, although such an approach is seldom taken. Thus, let’s, as an example, consider the macroscopic physical law that describes the movements of objects in the world and the corresponding organization principles in the brain. …

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No, its fundamentally true for all brained animals. Descartes may have been wrong about God, but he was definitely right about the 'brain in a vat". It’s demonstrably true.
An experience must be experienced before it becomes an experience.
You do not consciously experience homeostasis. Even when you are totally unconscious, your brain and neural network continue to balance your biochemistry. But you won’t “experience” it. You just stay alive.

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How would you demonstrate that?

Okay.
What does that straight forward physical reality prove about the notion that our brains are isolated in a vat?
How does that statement make your point?

I imagine that can be nitpicked to no end.
Do you ever feel thirsty?
Or do you ever have to drop everything to run to the bathroom in a near panic, that you simply can’t wish away no matter how badly you want that feeling to go away?
etc., etc..

Why do you believe that can be dismissed outright?

A) So what?

B) I get the impression you think consciousness is sort of binary thing, on or off - whereas I see consciousness as a multilayered continuum within the body. I’m conscious of some of things within my body (that others don’t seem to be in touch with) only because I have learned from modern science coupled with modern imagery, which has informed my brain to be more aware and attentive to what’s physically going on inside of there.

Also since I’ve absorbed many lessons from Earth’s evolution and medical science, I am aware that my body is an entity separate from my mind, because it is my body/brain interacting with life creating that mind (Solms, Damasio, Salpolski, etc). Key being “interacting with”, and the constant back and forth channels of communication that entails.

No amount of philosophizing can change that bedrock reality. That fact shouldn’t justify dismissing our internal physical body as unimportant, or irrelevant, or simply beside the point.

Furthermore that my body has vast amounts of internal knowledge and agendas, beyond my conscious awareness - although just like with Black Holes that are said to be invisible, they are not totally invisible, because of BH associated phenomena. We can observe - accretion disk, optical curvature of space and such.

Similarly we can become intellectually familiar with some of our hitherto untouchable internal functions through education and applied knowledge. That along with a more attentive respectful attitude towards the subtle ways your body communicates with your Mind - opens up whole new layers of awareness and real potential that impacts one’s day to day and their personal health. I know this from living the experience.

Running away from (which is what the glib dismissals are all about) such physical realities to embrace nice philosophical/theological notions seems like endless dead-ends that do nothing to improve our relationship with ourselves and coping with the particular world we are embedded within.
And it certainly doesn’t help us better cope with community and conflict. Or with what we continue doing to this planet that we totally depend upon.

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an unconscious brain can keep a body alive for years without consciousness of any experience. It is a biochemical computer and as long as it receives sufficient energy to function it does no need to be conscious.
This is how lower level systems like the slime mold stay alive without conscious experience.

A simple example is heat expansion and contraction of many objects that have no consciousness. It is reactive but not experiential.

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As I pointed out you seem to have a binary view of consciousness that research doesn’t support.

A coma, is not one discrete thing - look at the papers and reports out there, it makes that plain. I don’t pretend to have done more than skim these, but that superficial review makes clear that unconsciousness and comas are way more complicated than this idealistic thing you have in mind.

https://msktc.org/tbi/factsheets/facts-about-vegetative-and-minimally-conscious-states-after-severe-brain-injury

ScientificAmerican also seems to have some good related articles, but don’t have a subscription.

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We agree do agree that a living body - be it a fish or a human, or mosquito for that matter - is fairly more complex that a stick of metallic elements? Don’t we?