iQuote

John Cook, fishing guide, Montana
"I often think about how I would want to die. My own father recently died a slow death of lung disease. He lost control over his own life, and his last year was painful. I don't want to die that way. It may seem cold-blooded, but here is my fantasy of how I would die if I had my choice. In my fantasy, Pat would die before me. That's because, when we got married, I promised to love, honor, and take care of her, and if she died first, I would know that I had fulfilled my promise. Also, I have no life insurance to support her, so it would be hard if she outlived me. After Pat died -- my fantasy continues -- I would turn over the deed of my house to my son Cody, then I would go trout-fishing every day as long as I was physically in condition to do it. When I became no longer capable of fishing, I would get hold of a large supply of morphine and go off a long way into the woods. I would pick some remote place where nobody would ever find my body, and from which I could enjoy an especially beautiful view. I'd lie down facing that view and -- take my morphine. That would be the best way to die: dying in the way that I chose, with the last sight I see being a view of Montana as I want to remember it."

~ Jared Diamond, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed"

Self-reliant, each loner swims alone through a social world -- a world of teams, troops and groups -- that scorns and misunderstands those who stand apart. Loners are accused of being crazy, cold, stuck-up, standoffish, selfish, sad, bad, secretive and lonely -- and, of course, serial killers. Loners, however, know better than anyone how to entertain themselves -- and how to contemplate and create. Thay have a knack for imagination, concentration, inner discipline, and invention -- a talent of not being bored. (But) too often, loners buy into the society's messages and strive to change, making themselves miserable in the process by hiding their true nature -- and hiding from it.

Loners bristle at being advertised to. We might not mean to bristle, might not even see the bristle, but what else would loners do at being told to buy not just objects but lots of objects, and for dubious reasons -- because others buy them, because someone who is being paid to say so says so? Objects doomed to rapid obsolescence. Objects whose shimmer onscreen and in magazines is the exact same kind that loners see in the real world and realize is false, is cheap, is there only to trick the stupid and will disappoint. We know this on some level when the cheese melts on the pizza ad, but sudden hunger lunges out of nowhere and plucks our guts, too. We know we do not need a car, nasal spray, lipstick, life insurance, or at least not the specific brand or color being waved in front of us. How dare you tell me what to do? And yet we want.

Advertising is antithetical to the loner mentality. Yet it is masterful. It makes us clench. It turns us into accidental rebels: suffering the ache and labor of resisting strong-arm tactics, shunning the attractive, the seductive, the lavishly marketed. Reisting ads, insisting on buying what we want when we want and if we want, is radical. And failing to resist makes us feel, deep down, even just a bit, like Judas.

Time spent alone has a way of winnowing the inventory of what we need. It reveals that some of our best delights derive from the intangible -- from actions, experiences, thoughts -- rather than objects. Not every loner is a miser or minimalist, but to decrease contact with others is to decrease the number of items that seem necessary ... Desiring and requiring stuff means casting your lot with others. Intrinsically we know this. Being a rebel is tiring. Especially when you are up against a great hypnotic army that looks lke Naomi Campbell and whose battle cries are so catchy that you cannot get them out of your head.


Meeting anyone at all is not a loner's long suit. Meeting an assembly line of maybes has as much appeal as severe sunburn. Opening lines, small talk, seem repulsive -- and we haven't even mentioned pursuit. Spending any time even with those we know, even with old friends, can grate. For loners, spending time with strangers, again and again, and a stream of strangers, not merely to get over with but to discern whether someday you will put your tongue inside this person's mouth, is the definition of surreal. All this reality has little bearing on what outsiders presume. Prejudiced minds think in extremes, imagining that all loners want to be all alone at all times ... "loner" is not a synonym for "misanthrope." Nor is it one for "hermit," "celibate," or "outcast." It's just that we are very selective. Verrry selective.

~ Anneli Rufus, "Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto"