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Why loners are more sane and authentic than popular people

There is a myth among the herd that loners are people without social skills. But this is just a copout excuse to ostracize others and try to place them below you on the pecking order. The truth is something quite different and outside the box, beyond the paradigm of the conformist.

Many loners are people who have discovered how to live an authentic life, inner or outer, and prefer it to the fakeness, facade and pretentiousness of "going through the motions" with others at parties. When one sees life clearer and the bigger picture, it often feels better to live authentically alone than with fakeness with others. These people who are more sane, realize that their "inner authenticity" is more precious and valuable to the hassle of dealing with others and the pretentiousness and lies that go along with it.

Thus, loners tend to be more authentic and sane than popular people, who have to practice being good liars in order to get along with the maximum number of people. The sad truth is that people who tell the truth all the time have few friends. But this is politically incorrect and unpopular to mention. It goes against our nature to conform. But many, especially great thinkers and intellectuals, have transcended the need to conform. This sets them apart from the herd. These are the kind of people who make history.

This tends to be more true in fake cultures like the USA and Canada, more so than with more authentic cultures like in Russia, Latin America, parts of Europe, etc. Thus you find the biggest number of loners from the USA or other Western cultures where fakeness is the norm and authenticity is not.

So this begs the question: Are the majority sane or insane?

Most hold the following assumptions:

1) The majority of people are right, normal, sane, friendly and sociable.
2) Misfits and people who don't follow the herd are crazy, insane and weird. They are the problem and to blame for any incompatibility with others.

However, many great thinkers and intellectuals with deep insight, from ages ago to recent times, have seen through this fallacy, and realized that the reverse was true. Here are some quotes from them:

"The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." - Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

"The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth." - H. L. Mencken

"Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth." - Gandhi

"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." - Frederich Nietzsche

"Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools, and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion." - Thornton Wilder

"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." - Oscar Wilde

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Frederich Nietzsche

"Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone." - Ayn Rand

"The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation; in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society — and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic." - Eric Fromm (The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness)

This parable illustrates the truth that Fromm described very well:

"The parable of the poisoned well

There was once a wise king who ruled over a vast city. He was feared for his might and loved for his wisdom. Now in the heart of the city, there was a well whose waters were pure and crystalline from which the king and all the inhabitants drank. When all were asleep, an enemy entered the city and poured seven drops of a strange liquid into the well. And he said that henceforth all who drink this water shall become mad.

All the people drank of the water, but not the king. And the people began to say, "The king is mad and has lost his reason. Look how strangely he behaves. We cannot be ruled by a madman, so he must be dethroned."

The king grew very fearful, for his subjects were preparing to rise against him. So one evening, he ordered a golden goblet to be filled from the well, and he drank deeply. The next day, there was great rejoicing among the people, for their beloved king had finally regained his reason."

"Honesty is such a lonely word. Everyone is so untrue..." - Billy Joel, in his hit song "Honesty"

Thus it is sad and no wonder that we live in an upside down world, as Michael Ellner describes in this profound statement:

"Just look at us. Everything is backwards. Everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information, and religion destroys spirituality." - Michael Ellner

What all this means is that if you are even aware of the truth of social realities, you will have the hardest time breaking into cliques in Anglo/Oriental countries, because cliques and groups in rich cultures are full of fakeness and conformity, and one has to be on a similar vibration with the social clique to even have a chance at breaking in (besides playing the tricky social games too). This means that if you are on a "truth vibration" and see things the way they are, you will not be compatible with most cliques, thus if you recognize the reality above, you are already a misfit. This is the sad reality. Also, people who always tell the truth tend to have few friends and won't fit into large cliques.

So the question we must ask is: What is the value and price of truth, freedom and liberation of mind? And is the price worth it?

Most people though, prefer the practical benefits of conformity, rather than the truth or the value of owning oneself.

This explains my high school experience quite well. I never wanted to make the sacrifices it took to be in a specific clique. Instead, my friends were scattered across many cliques and I never belonged to any specific one. It made for many lonely nights when everyone was doing something exclusive.

Good point. Same here. It seems that you have to become something you're not in order to fit into a clique.

What I never understood was how I could be so friendly, open and sociable, yet not have any real friends in high school? It never made any sense and defied logic.

Also, if all the cliques in high school were so closed, then how was I the problem, since after all, I'm not closed and antisocial like the cliques were.

Isn't this an insane bizarro world?

Here are more witty quotes I found about how insane the world is, thus it is the misfit who is often sane, not the herd majority.

Dogbert: "Reality is always controlled by the people who are most insane."
Scott Adams, Dilbert

"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
Marcus Aurelius

"We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal."
Carl Bernstein, U.S. journalist. Guardian (London, June 3, 1992)

"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher."
Ambrose Bierce

"Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage."
Ray Bradbury

"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they are okay, then it's you."
Rita Mae Brown

"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe."
Johann von Goethe

"What luck for rulers that men do not think."
Adolf Hitler

"In a mad world, only the mad are sane."
Akiro Kurosawa

"Insanity -- a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world."
R. D. Lang

"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?"
Ursula K. LeGuin (b. 1929), US author, "The Princess"

"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives.... I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends ... and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it."
John Lennon, Interview BBC-TV (June 22, 1968)

"The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is apt to spread discontent among those who are."
H.L. Mencken

"In America, the criminally insane rule and the rest of us, or the vast majority of the rest of us, either do not care, do not know, or are distracted and properly brainwashed into acquiescence."
Kurt Nimmo

"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."
Friedrich Nietzsche

"America is an insane asylum run by the inmates."
Lester Roloff (1914-1982)

"When the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity; since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the madness on which the whole world happens to agree."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish-born British playwright

"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat."
Lily Tomlin (1939 - ), Actress

"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."
Voltaire

"A time will come when the whole world will go mad. And to anyone who is not mad they will say: 'You are mad, for you are not like us.'"
St. Anthony the Great (attributed to)

"Sometimes I think that the greatest sign that there is intelligent life somewhere in the universe is that it hasn't tried to contact us yet."
Bill Watterson, "Calvin and Hobbes"