Party of One: The Loners Manifesto by Anneli Rufus

By: Lance Winslow
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:42:00
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Anneli Rufus has written a very interesting book in Party of One: The Loners Manifesto. The book describes so many of the super humans of our past, who were loners and made a huge dent in the forward progression of the human species. Too often, it appears society misjudges its loners. Often loners are considered misfits of society or perhaps even possessing criminal elements. But why is this?

It appears the misconception of what a loner is happens because society and a human being is a social creature and win society cannot place an individual in a frame of reference; that is to say a particular individual who is not like them that is when the labeling starts. The reason that loners are often stereotyped as possessing criminal elements is because the loners are the hardest types of criminals to catch and of course those are the ones that we remember.

Actually, in this book it points out that many of the loners do in fact contribute more to society and civilization than any other group of people. They create the best art, writing, theories, discoveries and are generally overachievers off the scale. It is the individual that moves societies and civilization and it is the masses who follow them.

Personally, having the ability to work as a loner or in a group I find myself straddling between the two worlds. Most people do not like loners because they do not think like them and they do not tend to want to socialize and chitchat about the weather. They may on occasion do this, but they don't like it. Therefore, society generally outcast these individuals, yet at the same time honor their work and their minds.

For instance, take the story of Rocky, we all loved the story but if we knew that individual personally chances are we would not like that person. This is because they are still committed to whatever they're doing and they love their work so much that they tend not to socialize as much and this bothers us. In fact in the book they point out that as our society turns more towards socialism and away from the individual we honor the group rather than the individual.

This however is only in recent times, as in past periods we have always been intrigued with the super status of the individual. In fact, those who are more leaning on the side of liberalism tend to dislike the loner, yet at the same time tell us that everyone in society should accept people the way they are and for who they are. However this dichotomy poses a problem when it comes to loners for the liberal mind, which is more geared towards socialism.

Of course, it has been said that socialism pushes down the individual and capitalism pushes up the individual. Loners tend to have very high self-esteem and are not in need of any group, organized religion or even a society or government. You might say they own their own minds. Most of the loners of our society are indeed very strong intellectually and they are not necessarily void of socialization or the ability to socialize, rather they tend not to be involved in such activities because they simply don't like it and because it takes them away from what they truly wish to be doing. Loners are generally focused, intelligence and live without boundaries.

And additional thought after reading the book is that perhaps we as a society should not pick him the loners, as they have given more to mankind than any other single type of personality. Rather we should look to these people for their expertise in there chosen field of study to help guide us. For the most part even though society does not like loners they do so can up all their information. It is interesting that as a society we condemn these loners who we so desperately need. It was an interesting book. So, consider this in 2006.

Lance Winslow

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