There is something powerful about loneliness. Have you ever, while alone; that is to say alone with no plans of not being alone, achieved some sort of mental flow, the activation of a mechanism in your mind, designed to solve a particular problem, a problem so beyond your comprehension that you could in no way predict that you would be able to solve it?

Now, maybe your mind is not powerful enough to sustain the mechanism. Maybe it can sustain it, but you lack the creativity required to generate solutions. It’s quite possible that you don’t even have the ability to fathom the problem itself. However, you are alone, and the mechanism has started to run. 

What does the modern human do while alone. They find themselves engaging in gluttony, and sloth. Two cardinal sins, mind you, but perhaps, perhaps there is a purpose in this action. Perhaps they haven’t just been tricked into shovelling content into their vision, their ears, their mouths. Perhaps it’s not just cunning and manipulative psychology that has designed an institution of entertainment that is powerful enough to hypnotize the masses.

Maybe we needed to be tricked into loneliness so that we could start the mechanism. Now, pretend for a moment that you are a modern human. You are alone, and your responsibilities for the day have been completed. You are juggling two screens, and quite possibly ingesting vaporized or liquified dopamine. But something about today is different. You are not fulfilling the necessary requirements that the receptors in your brain demand. You have been riding a dose that is too high, and you are strung out. 

But what, what do you do? Get up? Instantly that feels like an impossibility. So you stay. You observe, for a moment, your surroundings. But, they are bleak, so you cast your mind outwards. Now, stay with me while I articulate what that might sound like, as an internal monologue.

My God. The world is ending. How could I have never noticed that the world is ending?

There must be a cause. Well, of course there is a cause. Radical Conservatives. They are Fascists! My God, something has to be done! Who could stop these people. Ah, it must be the job of us, the radical Liberals. Yes, we are the antidote. The virtues that we all believe in, the good values of what makes good people, these are what we need to push forward. We will stand strong against the rise of evil and we will recognize that all human beings are equal and are beautiful and matter. And we all deserve to live the way that we want to live. 

We will need to educate these Fascists, these Nazis that this is no way to behave. Moreover, it is no way to think. Unacceptable. 

Wait, do I have this right? Am I comprehending the problem? Maybe I’m getting the terms wrong. I think… oh yes I just remembered in particular a leader I don’t like. He is a Liberal. My bad. Those ones, I think, are the Nazis. So, the same argument stands, however I just mean to reverse the roles here. We, as the Radical Conservatives will stand against this Liberal agenda and teach the values of good, moral virtue. All are equal under the eyes of God and we must protect ourselves from interference. 

That feels better. I feel assured that I am now on the right side of fence.  

Except, I don’t think I believe in God. No, how could I? No, what proof stands? People die, I’ve seen it. Look what’s happening overseas! God? No, we live in a godless world. I know all about the church and what they do to people. No, no perhaps I am mistaken yet again. We are godless and so therefore we place our faith in science. Human reasoning. We are intelligent, and we have built ourselves a modern way of life, just look at how we live! How impressive we are. Anyone who places faith in God is clearly a stupid person, ignorant to the ways of technology.

But, but this system we live in only hurts me. I am taxed, I am forced to work and can barely pay my bills. And what do they spend my money on? Things I don’t agree with, certainly. And look at how many celebrities are evil and twisted? Find one who isn’t? And science? Surely I scoff at that. These scientists will tell you anything that they are paid to say. So, surely I reject the principles of science.

Now, the modern human can carry on like this for some time. They are, of course, aided by the devices in their hands. They are lonely, and they are strung out, and they are given the tools to erode all sense of appreciation and faith in the world around them. But, I say again, maybe this is exactly what we need. Because, the aforementioned mechanism is whirring in the background. As the id picks up a sledgehammer and takes its best shot at destroying the superego, the ego is forced to to regulate. This level of despair, sustained for a long period of time, is dangerous to ones health. Truly dangerous. 

In order to save oneself, this mechanism aims to solve all of it. 

So here, the individuals that make up our species sit and despair, and the mechanism continues to operate. Some fall into anxiety and can’t find a way out. And some pull themselves away from the despair and compartmentalize their lives in healthy, achievable ways. But isn’t it possible, that in a world of billions, the right brain may exist in which the mechanism can reach its full potential? The program can run as long as necessary? That everything just might be solved?

Almost certainly, one mind could not achieve that level of clarity. But a network, something we could tap into, a place in which mechanisms could operate in an extended system, a theological production line, a factory of thought, may just produce that level of enlightenment required to take the human species to our next evolutionary position!

Ah, maybe not. Maybe we just need to clean up our minds and stop being lonely. 

My lonely mind just created a rambling stream of consciousness that I now send out to a network. Maybe it makes it’s way into your thoughts, maybe you hear the whirring of the mechanism at the back of your lonely mind, and maybe you spend some time with it before kicking it to the next lonely person. And at least in that, we have shared with each other a moment of creativity.