The myth of the “loner”

I am a relatively solitary person. I do not have a large social circle. I basically spend all my free time with my wife and kids. I haven’t been out for a few beers in a very long time – certainly more than a year – and I am not sure I miss it. I really only have one close friend that is not part of my immediate family. He lives in France so we don’t get together so much these days. But, and it is a big but, I am really very happy. I am fine spending time alone with a good book, or even with a very bad book, or just going out on my bike. So it is with annoyance that I read yet another newspaper piece describing someone as a “loner” as if that was some sort of explanation for their actions. The latest one is the murdered British spy; apparently his friends have described Gareth Williams as a ‘gifted loner’. That is pretty much the headline in today’s Daily Telegraph and the writers seem to imply that Williams’ status as a loner explains what happened to him in some way.

Another report in The Times today claims that bondage gear and equipment associated with sado-masochism were removed from the 30-year-old’s London apartment by police looking for clues. And further details of Williams have continued to emerge as friends described him as an extremely bright, quiet and determined man. His childhood friend Dylan Parry, 34, said that Williams was:

“Academically gifted but socially naive and could be easily led. He was the kind of person who found it difficult to engage with people on a normal level.”

It really riles me that someone’s lack of social interaction is used as a marker for weirdness. And that idea forms a sort of mood-music within so many news reports with serial killers, murder victims, criminals, etc. being uniformly described as “loners”. I am sure there are plenty of perfectly successful yet solitary accountants, lawyers, bankers, and even journalists if the papers ever took time to look.

A really good book that explores these issues is Party of One: The Loners’ Manifesto – US link/UK link by Anneli Rufus. When I first saw this book I wished, at first, that Anneli Rufus hadn’t chosen the word “loner” for her title, linked as it is with inevitable prefix “crazed” in so many news stories of murderers on the loose. But that’s exactly her point: Rufus is determined to rescue the word — and more importantly, the reputation of the people the word accurately describes — from the misinterpretations and calumnies heaped upon it, and us, for so long. It’s an uphill fight, but it’s definitely worth the effort. This book isn’t one of the many attempts to offer introverts “coping skills” or networking tips for surviving with our sanity in an extroverted world. Instead, it’s more of a call to extroverts out there to understand whom you’re dealing with … or more correctly, whom they’re not dealing with … and what we’re all about.

To do this, Rufus covers a wide range of history and popular culture, showing how introverts have carved out places for themselves and learned to live with at least some degree of peace, despite the constant tug of “caring” people crying, “Come out of your shell and live a little!” It may seem paradoxical for a loner to tell other loners “We’re not alone,” but in this instance, it’s a surprisingly comforting message. Rufus’s chapter on crime may be the most important, and the one with the widest implications outside the introvert community (so to speak), because it’s here that she tackles the myth of the murderous loner and attempts to salvage the word from those who, she argues, misuse it so terribly.

Loners, she says, are people who *want* to be alone, and who enjoy their solitude. But many of the criminals who have been tagged as “loners” don’t fit that description at all. Many of them have been marginalized from society, and want to strike back at it. They want to impress others, and be accepted by those whose approval they crave. Or, like Mark David Chapman, the “pseudoloner” who killed John Lennon, they simply crave attention. There’s no such thing as an “attention-seeking loner.” There are other criminals, she argues, for whom the “loner” label doesn’t even remotely fit, and she roundly criticizes the police profilers and news reporters who use the term so sloppily. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, for example, wasn’t a loner at all, though he’s often described that way. Neither were the Columbine High School shooters, or Ted Bundy, or John Wayne Gacy, though all of them have been called “loners.”

Her point is an important one, if one many may dismiss as mere semantics. And it ties into her other important chapter, on raising loner children. If parents believe — as many apparently do — that any child who prefers to play by himself is liable to grow up to become a mass murderer, and therefore needs to be “cured,” or “trained” out, of his introvert personality, life for that child is simply going to be hell. Though my situation growing up was hardly as extreme as some of the stories told here, I nevertheless sympathized completely with children made to act more extroverted than was comfortable for them. Loner children recognize they’re different, Rufus writes, but don’t know why, or what about them needs defending. If their parents are convinced there’s something “wrong” with the introverted child, and try to “fix” it, they will create wounds that may never close.

There is more of interest here.