On Being Alone: Return of the Phantom

 L'enfer c'est les autres

--Sartre

Alone, alone, all, all alone. Alone on a wide, wide sea

--Coleridge

Hiroo Onoda, lieutenant in the Imperial Army of Japan was ordered to hold the Philippine Island of Lubang in December of 1944, as the inevitability of defeat was only beginning to set into the minds of the Japanese.  He lived alone in the jungles surrounding villages on that island, encountering islanders and possibly the occasional Filipino or American soldier as he emerged from the underbrush, by his count 111 times, but he did not surrender or end his mission until 1974 when a major in the Japanese army arrived to relieve him and bring him back to Japan, where he lived until age 91, dying in 2014.  He spent the years from age 21 until 51 alone in the jungle. He was alone, but he knew, on some level, there were other people within reach. He could see them. He occasionally stole from them. He was voluntarily alone. The book I'd like to read is what he was like living in Japan among people for 40 years. Just a normal guy in the neighborhood?

At age 8, I read Robinson Crusoe and was captivated and horrified by the idea of being involuntarily stranded on an island, where there were no other people and no likely prospect of ever seeing another person. But the operative word in that sentence is "likely." The ocean, as Dylan said, is vast, but it ends at the shore, and as long as there are ships at sea there is always the possibility, however faint of human contact.

Hollywood did an admirable job of the horror of complete isolation in "Cast Away" with Tom Hanks, who goes mad and creates his own toy human being to keep him company. It's an uncomfortable film to watch.

"Passengers,"  the Jennifer Lawrence movie, addresses the problem head on: It asks the question, what would you do to not be alone? Would you commit the awful crime of condemning someone else to join you in your isolation simply to keep you company? Would you kidnap your playmate? In this movie, space travelers are held in their cocoons in suspended animation for the 120 year journey to another planet but one cocoon opens prematurely, and at only 30 years into the journey a 30 year old space man faces the prospect of spending 60 years alone. Or, he can open the cocoon of the fetching Jennifer Lawrence and spend that time with her. Let's see: Jennifer Lawrence/aloneness/Jennifer Lawrence/aloneness? Of course if you open her cocoon, she'll never reach the new planet with the hundred fellow travelers to live a full life on a lovely planet. She'll die before arrival, or, at best be an old hag by the time they land.

So there's that moral dimension, in "Passengers." It's one of those movies which reminds me how weak and despicable I really am, because I know for sure I'd open Jennifer's cocoon. And even Crusoe and Cast Away remind me I would not do well in total isolation, even if I had animals for friends.

When I went to college I had had enough of playing the popularity game in high school and decided I did not need people, so I went from class to library to cafeteria to bed and the only time I spoke to another person was in class or briefly to my roommate at night. Which is how I got the name, "Phantom." The designated crazy man of the dorm, a guy who urinated in the stairwells and bounced bowling balls down the stairs just to annoy people, heard about this guy, me, the Phantom, who lived apart, never ate with anyone, did not go to parties, just went to class and the library and it terrified him. He literally ran in the other direction when he saw me. Sociopath that he was, he still needed people, if only to abuse them.

My brother heard I had gone to see a movie alone and was horrified. He made me promise him to never go to see a movie alone again. I resisted but just to get him off my back I promised, which meant I never saw another movie on campus the rest of my time in college.

You know there was some psychopathology with Onoda. His refusal to believe the war was over, his insistence on living the hermit's life might have been, initially, motivated by some idea of duty, but after a decade, there was something else going on there.

Not true for those shipwrecked on the islands or in outer space. Those folks are truly faced with what for most people would be a nightmare. 

Today we have libertarian types, who believe government is oppressive and bad, the ultimate version being the live off the grid types.  And we have the guys on their motorcycles gunning their motors as they rumble down the streets, Trump flags flying, through our town, spitting in the eye of the townsfolks, figuratively speaking, with their ear splitting noise. They want to separate themselves from the dominant society and live with each other, living off the grid, lite. They are rebels without a cause, but with a definite pathology.

It's that old tension: People, you can't live with 'em and you can't live without 'em.