I think the intuition here is: - Being surrounded by people one cannot connect with, increases the feeling that one is socially isolated and an 'outsider'. They are unable to engage with their organic natural (social) environment - Whilst being in 'a forest alone', offers the person a chance to engage with their natural environment and more easily connect with it, just by being there. You don't have to do anything but just exist in it. In a way you are accepted and do belong to that environment (genetically/instinctively). So it acts to counter feelings of 'not fitting in'.

What I object to is this: "the disconnect with nature, oneself and to a lesser extend the community". No, loneliness is not a disconnect with nature or yourself. It's a disconnect with the community.

The focus on nature might be a product of the time we live. However, the idea that loneliness is due to feelings of alienation beyond just interpersonal is a powerful one.

This is to say that loneliness can be thought of as not just a sense of lack of connection to other people but a connection to the world. This loneliness is evident because of our lack of consistency of our actions with results. People have a 'back to nature' kind of philosophy when they talk about it because that is the most common way to find the consistency - farm to table and all that.

But I think it's more broad. For example, Minecraft has the kind of consistency that makes a person feel more connected to, at least, that world because it is participatory and makes a kind of intuitive sense that our normal lives lack.

I know it seems reaching to correlate the two - in some way, it is. However, the thing a lonely person lacks is more than just a empty person to talk to. It's a deeper purpose which can be often found in activity with other people but isn't limited to it.

Some of the least lonely people are those with projects they are passionate about. They have a connection to the world that feels consistent but it isn't other people.

I think the focus on nature might be a byproduct or reaction to modern jobs, technology and creature comforts decreasing the participation people have with the world around them. This makes it easy to want to return to a time (real or not) where people lived harder but more fulfilling lives, with camping and games offering ways to act out this ideal.

Of course a desire for a return to nature is not necessarily "modern", see for example Walden, but I think the degree of disconnect has increased to the point it is harder to ignore for a larger number of people.

We are a social species, but we also heavily compare ourselves to others.

The quickest solution might be to remove yourself from others so that you don’t mentally make the comparison. The best long term solution might be to form the social bonds.

And sometimes you need to tackle the short term solution to change your mood in order to enact the long term solution.

It’s not ridiculous. It’s short-circuiting the depression that comes with loneliness by allowing the primal part of you to reconnect with nature. It works. There’s a whole industry around this premise. Once you reconnect with nature, your immediate instinct is to reconnect with others. So in a way it’s paving the path back to social relationships and community.

> Once you reconnect with nature, your immediate instinct is to reconnect with others.

I have the complete opposite experience. I spend as much of my vacation time as possible hiking, camping, and backpacking alone. I go to places where the landscape is so beautiful that it makes me weep; where seeing the unusual flora makes me feel like I'm home; where the night sky is like diamond dust on black velvet. These places don't make me want to reconnect with others. They make me want to build a cabin and get away from everybody else.

I'm skeptical of this idea in general especially with examples of people like John Muir. If reconnecting with natures gives you the immediate instinct to reconnect with others then why do people like him have to be coaxed away from it?

I think you might be seeking escape rather than reconnecting with nature. Those are two opposing desires. One is the desire to escape the monotony of everyday life by getting back into nature. The other is losing oneself to nature. No going back. Only forward. Akin to hiking the Appalachian trail or the PNW trail in one go. It’s not an escape, it’s a calling or yearning for growth.

“Social species” is a generalisation. As such, it’s not a good argument against a more particular statement. (Different species aren’t born with an axiom of solitary/social which would then produce more particular consequences, but particular behaviours are imperfectly generalised into a taxonomy. The specific here has a higher weight than the general.)

What I see in online discussions is people repeating this mantra, because it agrees with their own inner experience. But it’s unnecessary to force this onto others that this doesn’t resonate with as much, invalidating their experiences.

Infants deprived of social contact who have their other needs met, will die.

Solitary confinement is a form of torture.

We are a social species. Social interaction is core to our survival and critical to our well-being.

But human social needs aren't fulfilled when all the people in your vicinity are busy with their own duties, problems, thoughts and don't have much capacity left to perceive you.

So there's actually no contradiction.

What helped the most with my depression was meditation. All alone. A difference between hopelessness and a positive disposition (also among people, despite not knowing or interacting with any of them).

> We are a social species. We need others to be happy.

The flipside is that we can make each other miserable as well.

This is HN, a reply that rewords "just don't be sad" into a turgid essay of meandering variables and equations will shoot to the top or close to it.

I am sometimes surprised that so many fall into producing and consuming this overblown, dense, turgid content, however then I look around and see that there exists an absolute deluge of essays on the misogyny of Gone Girl, and then I kind of understand how it's just the nature of a good chunk of humans to produce and consume such essays.

Even this is one such example...