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Famous Michael Finkel Quotes

“Modern life seems set up so that we can avoid loneliness at all costs, but maybe it's worthwhile to face it occasionally. The further we push aloneness away, the less are we able to cope with it, and the more terrifying it gets. Some philosophers believe that loneliness is the only true feeling there is. We live orphaned on a tiny rock in the immense vastness of space, with no hint of even the simplest form of life anywhere around us for billions upon billions of miles, alone beyond all imagining. We live locked in our own heads and can never entirely know the experience of another person. Even if we're surrounded by family and friends, we journey into death completely alone.”

DeathSpaceFamilyJourneyLonelinessFriendsExperienceBillionsMilesAloneFeelingWorthwhileLockedImmensePersonModern LifeAlonenessVastnessAvoidPhilosophersTerrifyingCopeSurroundedHeadsOccasionallyOrphaned
Book:The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
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“In 1988, a cave explorer named Véronique Le Guen volunteered for an extreme experiment: to live alone in an underground cavern in southern France without a clock for one hundred and eleven days, monitored by scientists who wished to study the human body's natural rhythms in the absence of time cues. For a while, she settled into a pattern of thirty hours awake and twenty hours asleep. She described herself as being "psychologically completely out of phase, where I no longer know what my values are or what is my purpose in life." When she returned to society, her husband later noted, she seemed to have an emptiness inside her that she was unable to fully express. "While I was alone in my cave I was my own judge," she said. "You are your own most severe judge. You must never lie or all is lost. The strongest sentiment I brought out of the cave is that in my life I will never tolerate lying." A little more than a year later, Le Guen swallowed an overdose of barbiturates and lay down in her car in Paris, a suicide at age thirty-three.”

ScienceLyingPurposeValuesStudySocietyReturnSolitudeSuicideAloneClockAwakeEmptinessLiveTolerateLieHuman BodyJudgeScientistsExperimentOverdoseExpressAsleepPatternExtremeExplorerCaveUndergroundPhaseRhythmsSettledMonitoredBarbituratesCave ExplorerVolunteered
Book:The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
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“Knight, of course, felt that anyone's willing assistance tainted the whole thing. Either you are hidden or you're not, no middle ground. He wished to be unconditionally alone, exiled to an island of his own creation, an uncontacted tribe of one.”

CreationAloneAssistanceExileOneHiddenTaintedIslandMiddle GroundTribeExiledUnconditionallyUncontacted
Book:The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
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“One's desire to be alone, biologists have found, is partially genetic and to some degree measurable. If you have low levels of the pituitary peptide oxytocin--sometimes called the master chemical of sociability-- and high quantities of the hormone vasopressin, which may suppress your need for affection, you tend to require fewer interpersonal relationships.”

Alone
Book:The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
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