Lonely People, Alvin Toffler, and Bertrand Russell

"The hurt of being alone, is , of course, hardly new. But loneliness is now so widespread it has become, paradoxically, a shared experience. . . They hunger for institutions worthy of their respect, affection, and loyalty. . .For lonely people, cults offer, in the beginning, indiscriminate friendship . . . A cult, however, sells community, structure, and meaning at any extremely high price: the mindless surrender of the self. For some, no doubt this is the only alternative to personal disintegration. But for most of us the cult's way out is too costly." Alvin Toffler, author, The Third Wave My mentor - Bertrand Russell, as a lonely man during his younger years, had a creative way out. He searched for the truth via mathematics, philosophy, logic, science, physics, sociology, anthropology, history, war, peace, and in the human family. But unlike many great and lonely people, however, Bertrand Russell cultivated a rather self-conscious sensitivity to the troubles of others. Bertrand Russell wrote: "The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. What the world needs now is not only love but the greater knowledge about the nature of love, in all its complexity." For my part, as a happily and creatively lonely man myself, more than Jesus and his apostles in hell, more than all the saints blessed together by God in heaven - I'd rather have more love, more respect, more loyalty, and more admiration for Bertrand Russell. He encouraged me to QUESTION EVERYTHING including his logic, mathematics, indeed - his philosophy. As he wrote it himself: "Truth is a shinning goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable." Poch Suzara