Prompted by e-mail list discussions concerning my last post, I have realized that, although the human condition is at heart solitary, we have the option, in a world of 6 billion inhabitants, to choose an interruption.
That is to say, although the links idealized by religion and popular sentimentality are a mirage, there are benefits to gaining access to human intercourse (yes, gutterminds, in that sense, too). In the world of individuals, as in that of nations, we sail in international waters, we journey in a moral jungle in which survival remains always a struggle.
After all, interrupted solitude is merely that.
Relationships, much like relations between the nations, are based on compacts if conflict is to be averted -- this includes those encounters that do not surpass exchanges as lacking in intimacy as one might have with one's mail carrier. There's a protocol, commercial agreements of coincidences, treaties, etc.
At heart we return to what's been said here, so long as we can exercise our sovereignty we are sovereign beings, different, solitary. We have the option to interrupt solitude and whenever we do we expose ourselves to the consequences.
The important thing is not to fall into the delusion that the abundance of people that may surround us at one point or another, due to the accident of large families, or because we belong to a union, or for whatever reason, constitutes an inexorably independent reality, a vectorial sum that exceeds the total of the individuals.
The society and laws that we accept, or have been forced to accept, are perishable. Community or society does not exist. It is a temporary mirage. Sure, it's the mirage of life, the brief period in which we acquire awareness, we squander it, then return to eternal sleep.
When one holds up these realities for all to see, the common response is a protest that is actually the fear of death. We need to have the valor to see things as they are to be who we are and, at a minimum, to enjoy the profligacy of life.
