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I hope if you're a loner, you're a true loner and not a pseudo-loner.

A few weeks ago, I did a diavlog with Bella DePaulo in which I brought up the Jonathan Rauch essay "Caring for Your Introvert." She read and liked it and has this post:

The same year that Rauch's essay appeared, the witty and wonderful Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto was also published. Loners, notes author Anneli Rufus, are people who prefer to be alone. They are not sad, lonely, or deranged.

Contrary to stereotypes and TV-punditry, loners are not serial murderers and they are not school shooters, either. True, there are criminals who look like loners, in that they spend lots of time alone. Typically, though, they are just pseudo-loners, who never craved all that time to themselves. They wanted to be included but were instead rejected.

True loners do not withdraw in order to stew in misery or plot violent revenge. Instead, Rufus reminds us, loners "know better than anyone how to entertain themselves...They have a knack for imagination, concentration, inner discipline, and invention."

If you spend a lot of time alone, don't you also spend a lot of time thinking about why you are spending time alone? Rauch and Rufus and DePaulo are doing PR for solitariness, and I wonder if it's working. Rauch wrote:

How can I let the introvert in my life know that I support him and respect his choice? First, recognize that it's not a choice. It's not a lifestyle. It's an orientation.

If you have the introvert orientation, do you feel free to be out about it? Don't you have to worry that people will think you're one of the pseudo-loners?

Full post as published by Althouse on August 23, 2008 (boomark / email).