Solitude and Time to Think

One of the books I received for Christmas is "You Can Go Home Again" by Gene Logsdon (one of my heros). It's a great read and I highly recommend it if you are interested in homesteading, self-sufficiency, or just common sense. Reading this excerpt, got me to thinking and agreeing with what he had to say here. Of course, I'm a bit of an introvert and MUST have time alone or else I tend to melt down. But I do feel that even those more extroverted types would do well to have some time alone. How else can you think about things?

"If people are no longer polite to each other, no longer tolerant, as socialologists say, could that be because of a lack of home life, a lack of suitable periods of privacy and solitude? Where people live more "lonely" lives, at some distance from each other, as in pioneer days, they tend to be more friendly to each other when they do meet. As a traveler I noticed that civility in public places increased as I went from more populated to less populated regions. Even between Minneapolis and Watertown, South Dakota, where I used to go with a cattle buyer when I lived in Minnesota, there was a marked difference in people's attitudes toward strangers. People "far from the madding crowd" appreciated company more, logically enough. But a bunch of humans jammed together would kill each other as rats did in similar situations. Road rage was a desperate cry for solitude.

There is so much to be gained from regular hours alone. Only alone do humans bring to fruition paintings, poems, music, books, scuplture, artistic design of all kinds. How many more good works of art in all fields would be created if people provided for more solitde in their lives?"