The Ethics of Solitude
Years ago, as the head of a university honors program, I noticed that a disproportionately large number of honors students were musicians. In one sense, that wasn’t surprising: The university had a large and highly competitive music school, so there were lots of musicians to begin with. But despite the presence of several other good schools on campus, the musicians seemed to prevail in our program. Why?
Was it because music is more intellectual than, say, engineering? That doesn’t make sense. Was it because any good student wanting to become a good musician had to be a disciplined, hard-working time manager? Perhaps, but that’s also true about good student-athletes, a cohort not noted for its presence in our program. Was it because music soothes the troubled mind, making it easier to concentrate? Sometimes, except that a lot of what I heard over there — I remember one percussion piece written for hammered brake drums and piano strings strummed with scissors — was anything but soothing.
I think the answer was simpler. The music students had mastered solitude. They didn’t just tolerate it; they sought it out, yearned for it, loved it. Why? Because only in solitude could they master their instruments, spending hours each day alone in tiny practice rooms. Of course they came together in ensembles to perform, but the only way to keep their performance skills in good condition was through constant practice. And practice — for musicians, unlike athletes — happens in isolation. Having learned the value of solitude as musicians, they naturally imported it into their academics, where they found that reading, too, is a solitary occupation. While their peers kicked against the pricks of solitude — confusing it with loneliness — musicians happily sought out a quiet nook to sit for hours reading a book. Little wonder they thrived in our program.
I was reminded of all this by an op-ed piece in the New York Times last month titled “The Rise of the New Groupthink.” In it, author Susan Cain traces (albeit selectively) the connection between creativity and solitude. In addition to the famously introverted Isaac Newton, she cites Steve Wozniak (the genius behind the invention of the personal computer) and Pablo Picasso as models. “Work alone,” she quotes Mr. Wozniak advising in his memoirs. “Not on a committee. Not on a team.” And she notes Picasso’s comment, “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.”
Yet how are we, as a culture, making sense of that message? “Most of us,” Ms. Cain writes, “now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.” Yet she adds that “research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption.”
Writers, of course, know this. Whether they work in garrets or coffee-houses, libraries or bars, they find ways to shut out interruption and concentrate for long periods on their work. While I’ve never been an engineer, a dancer, or an intelligence analyst, I suspect they, too, are most creative when they have private and secluded places (mentally, if not always physically) to go. And I’m pretty sure that a fine way to inhibit creativity is to subject would-be creators to a relentless bombardment of texts, tweets, and emails.
Yet isn’t that what we are doing? Aren’t we telegraphing in every way — through our new media, our ads, our classroom designs, even our hobbies and entertainments — that solitude equals loneliness and that loneliness is bad? Aren’t we then taking it one step farther, arguing that the only normal, healthy, and right choice is the collective choice? And if we then acknowledge that one of our core ethical values is responsibility, aren’t we in effect saying that the responsible thing to do is to promote as much camaraderie, interchange, and teamwork as we can?
This isn’t an argument for extremism. We want musicians who, once skilled in their art, come together happily and voluntarily to play with and for others. But it is an argument for a proper sense of ethics. Ethics itself is a communal venture: You can argue that the mountain man and the castaway only have need for ethics when somebody else strides or swims into view.
How we build an ethical case for solitude, then, may be one of the conundrums of our future. It won’t be easy, with the currents of conviviality and social responsibility running powerfully in the opposite direction. But unless we make the ethical case for reconnecting creativity and solitude, we stand to lose the very inventiveness and innovation on which our future rests. To stand by and watch that happen would be supremely unethical.
