Two

STATES OF ALONENESS: NOTIONS AND NUMBERS

1. Introduction

In the movie, Now, Voyager, actor, Paul Henried, in solemn, even ominous tones, proclaims that “some people are alone in all ways, and all people are alone in some ways.” As stipulated in the introduction, the manners in which personality is impacted by states of aloneness, especially , is the main focus of the present project. In this chapter, this kind of emotional will be compared and contrasted with other types of aloneness, including what I call “aloneliness,” “loneness,” “alonism,” “lonism,” and “lonerism,” in addition to , rec- lusiveness, seclusion, physical and , desolation, and solipsism.

2. Loneliness and Aloneliness

Loneliness is the unwanted absence of meaningful intimacy and intimate meaning(fulness); henceforth, a lack of intimacy unless otherwise stated. This intrinsically negative experience of alone can be divided into primary and secondary species, depending upon whether the intimacy wanted is, re- spectively, the exclusive or ancillary motivation for inherently needing or consciously desiring others. If the lack concerns the company of particular others, it will be known as person loneliness; if the lack concerns their com- panionship in general, the absence will be known as species loneliness. Thus, if dining with friends is solely for the purpose of enjoying their company, then the failure to satisfy this wish results in primary loneliness. If being with the friends is principally to enjoy the restaurant’s food and am- bience but subordinately to delight in their company, then the inability to do so is a matter of secondary loneliness. When individuals want to be with others not because they exclusively or at least mainly seek the of their presence, but because they are afraid of being or feeling negatively alone, then they are subject to aloneliness. Like loneliness, aloneliness can assume primary and secondary species, contingent upon whether eluding loneliness—or some other negative state of feeling, being, or doing something alone—is, respectively, the sole or subsidiary in- tention in relating to others. Accordingly, if dining with friends is exclusively to evade loneliness or some other type of unwanted aloneness, such as those of a physical, social, or mental sort, it is an illustration of primary aloneliness. If the evasion is a sub- 18 INTIMACY AND ISOLATION altern reason for dining with the friends, then it is a question of secondary aloneliness. If individuals are afraid of feeling, being, or acting alone, they will be known as “alonelies” instead of “lonelies” even if emotional isolation is the chief in wanting to be with others in general or in particular. Individuals who consider what is, in effect, aloneliness as the most fun- damental of all motivators maintain that people come together to gain some sort of intimacy only or chiefly to avoid being or remaining lonely or nega- tively isolated in some other fashion. Insofar as the of aloneness in any form, including that of loneliness, is prepotent to the of togetherness, then aloneliness may be deemed the most elemental motivator except perhaps that involved in attaining such basic necessities as food and water. In another volume, loneliness will be examined as a kind of hunger and thirst for intima- cy. Where such inwardness fits in the scheme of (meta)needs and values is also taken up at length in a subsequent work. Hence, an alonely is an individual who experiences chronic trepidation concerning states of aloneness whether they pertain to social, physical, men- tal, or spiritual sorts of separateness or separation. Aloneliness can assume one of the three processes associated with the mind. It can be cognitive such that the individuals are, for example, frigh- tened to think independently; conative and in particular volitive, in that, for example, they are afraid to choose on their own; and affective, in that they fear or dread feeling all by themselves, an apprehensiveness that attains its culmination in emotional isolation (loneliness). Generally speaking, fear is understood as pertaining to something known and specific; dread, to the un- known and unspecified or unspecifiable. Loneliness is a complex of negative affects concerning feeling alone. People can be lonely regardless whether they are physically all by themselves. Consequently, emotional isolation is an (inter)subjective phenomenon instead of an objective one, like, for instance, the physical isolation of reclusiveness. Individuals who fear any sort of aloneness, including loneliness itself, will be designated monophobic, or universal, alonelies. Universal aloneliness is, in effect, depicted by Ben Mijuskovic in his assertion that whatever human beings do or not do stems from but a single “source, or fund, of frightened psychic energy,” to wit the “fear of aloneness—loneliness” (1979, p. 2). Consequently, the American philosopher reduces all apprehensiveness regarding any type of aloneness—even that kind pertaining to solitude, which by almost all other contemporary philosophers (and psychologists) is deemed a positive way of being alone—to what I reference as aloneliness. Not only does Mijuskovic compress solitude to the fear of aloneness, but also, he does so to such diverse phenomena as alienation, , and , all of which I consider not to be loneliness but its cousins (ibid., pp. 20, 49–56). In support of his thesis, namely that loneliness—or what is, for Mi- juskovic, the fear of aloneness in general—is the absolutely universal, basic, and ineradicable motivator of human beings in all their consciousness and