There is a gigantic hole in the middle of my philosophy

Over the last eighteen months or so I have been working out a new approach to life. Not new in general terms, as there have been plenty of misanthropes before, but one new in relative terms, because... one new to me. In short, I have decided to stop wasting my time on human contact. The strategy is undemonstrative: I am not going to move onto an uninhabited island or into a tree; as far as the outside world is concerned there won't seem to be any difference: I continue to be friendly and polite; I say hello to my neighbor and to my fish monger; I attend some new year and birthday parties; and I answer -- briefly, but not by any means coldly -- the correspondence I continue to receive; I am still prepared to run small errands or lend money. But, unlike before, I put no psychic energy into any of these interactions; and I limit my investment in them to the bare minimum: I smile, I say Happy New Year, and Fine, thanks!, send a card, and -- move off. In other words, the way I used to handle my interaction with 98% of the human kind -- polite but stand-offish -- I now apply to 100% of them. No more intimate conversations, no more bosom friends, no more lovers. I now live my life totally alone, in silence, between myself, my books and music, my journal and the occasional blog entry -- whose only reader I am. The only person I ever talk to about anything important is the only person who has ever had anything interesting to say to me -- myself.

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The theory has been that since no one I have ever met in the flesh (including all the commentators on all my blogs past and present) has had anything interesting to say to me (and with good reason, most being less intelligent than I am, less well-read, less well-informed and less well-traveled); and since most of those I have met though their books have likewise proven undeserving of my intellectual attention (vast majority of books having been a disappointment); indeed, even many of those who have written great books -- books which I consume with passionate pleasure -- Thomas Mann, for example -- have likely been dull in personal contact; I would simply be better off not wasting my time on any of them. And, so far, it's working. The most difficult aspect of the plan, I had expected, would have been the absence of women in my bed, but even that I do not seem to miss. I no longer have disappointing conversations, I am not bored, I do not have to stoop to low intellectual levels, I do not have to unravel hidden agendas, I do not have to please. There really is such a thing as zhu-che, it turns out, self-sufficiency.

The success of this plan has led me to entertain a kind of extreme philosophical position: that the existence of other people is totally indifferent to our happiness.

But, of course, that is not true.

A typical happy day in my life will be filled with two kinds of experiences: nature and culture. Nature -- sunbathing, riding a motorbike in the mountains, watching reflections in the water, sitting through a sunset, dusk and nightfall while listening to birds and breathing in the perfume of tropical flowers wafting on the evening breeze, strolling in my garden in the moonlight or at day-break -- seems to prove the point: in those experiences the fewer people around the better, zero being the ideal number. But culture disproves it. Opera, film, drama, ballet, painting, calligraphy, philosophy, architecture -- all of these take up at least half of my time; without them my life would not be as rich or as happy as it is; and they are, alas, the work of -- men. Not the sort of men I have known, or ever can; and, if Thomas Mann is any guide, not the sort of men one would want to talk to in person any way, but men all the same.

So, it proves, that men are essential to my happiness.

And that is a very disappointing thought.