It is not good for the man to be alone
Apr. 18th, 2026 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseThere is this Discord gaming server I'm on (not my own - this is a rather bigger one organised by a bunch of Irish SCA members), and the other day we were talking over there about co-operative games, which, broadly speaking, I like. There are always going to be a few exceptions either way (I always thought I didn't especially like Hanabi until someone else pointed out to me that every time I play it, Person X is involved, and Person X is not really the best person to play Hanabi with... which is, to be honest, a fair point, though I do get on with that person in general); but generally, if you want to try to get me interested in a new game and you're telling me what it's like, "co-operative" will score positively. (And "trick-taking" will score negatively. I don't especially enjoy that type of game. But each to their own and all that.)
It seemed that everyone in the conversation was of the same mind. Even the WoW players, of whom there are many on that server, said that the thing they most enjoyed about that game was their guild - the co-operative element. And then someone observed that there's a particular subset of people who get really wound up about co-operative games... and it's the people I always refer to as the "doomers". You know. Those folks who are convinced the world is going to end and they are going to survive it, whatever happens to anyone else, so they've got a shedload of ammunition and enough tinned beans to last them for 15 years.
I do not grok doomers. At all. All right, I suppose from my perspective I'm going to struggle anyway, because if civilisation collapses I'll be dead within weeks no matter what, because I'm medication-dependent. But even without that, I look at these people and I think "where is your mutual support network? What happens when you're ill (which you certainly will be, sooner or later)? Who's going to look after you then? What happens when you need to do something which you don't have the strength, or the resources, or the intelligence to do on your own? And what makes you think that surviving entirely alone would be worth doing in the first place? You wouldn't want to spend the rest of your life in solitary confinement, would you?"
It's really not rocket science. Our prehistoric ancestors had a great deal more sense than these doomers. They survived in often hostile environments (ice ages, anyone?) not by disappearing into their own individual little caves with a stone axe and a frozen mammoth carcass, but by living in close-knit, mutually supportive communities. I occasionally find someone on the Internet marvelling at the discovery of a hominid skeleton with a mended bone, revealing that the rest of this person's community took care of them while they were recovering rather than just abandoning them. Well, yes, of course they bloomin' did that, because that is Survival 101. If Grag has broken his leg and can't hunt, you set the bone and take care of him, and then a) eventually he recovers and can help the tribe with the hunting again, and b) if the same thing happens to you later, you bet Grag will take care of you. And nothing's changed in that respect. Just as for Grag, so for Aloysius Q Doomer of Kansas; but Aloysius has decided to isolate himself from his fellow humans, so if he breaks his leg in the traditional apocalyptic setting, he's a goner.
We are, essentially, social creatures. (This isn't quite the same thing as "sociable"; introverts like me need to recharge after spending time with other people, however much we enjoy doing so. In fact, for me, one of the great joys of the Internet is that I get to be as sociable as I want to be but without mental battery drain! By "social", I mean we are mutually interdependent.) And I think that's something to be celebrated, rather than fought against. We are much stronger together than alone. That's the way we were designed.
I don't know what is going to happen to Aloysius Q Doomer and his ilk if they get what appears to be their wish and civilisation collapses. But I can make a good guess. Most of them will be wiped out early on like everyone else. And for the rest, it's really not going to be like being the protagonist in a video game.
It's going to be lonely.
It seemed that everyone in the conversation was of the same mind. Even the WoW players, of whom there are many on that server, said that the thing they most enjoyed about that game was their guild - the co-operative element. And then someone observed that there's a particular subset of people who get really wound up about co-operative games... and it's the people I always refer to as the "doomers". You know. Those folks who are convinced the world is going to end and they are going to survive it, whatever happens to anyone else, so they've got a shedload of ammunition and enough tinned beans to last them for 15 years.
I do not grok doomers. At all. All right, I suppose from my perspective I'm going to struggle anyway, because if civilisation collapses I'll be dead within weeks no matter what, because I'm medication-dependent. But even without that, I look at these people and I think "where is your mutual support network? What happens when you're ill (which you certainly will be, sooner or later)? Who's going to look after you then? What happens when you need to do something which you don't have the strength, or the resources, or the intelligence to do on your own? And what makes you think that surviving entirely alone would be worth doing in the first place? You wouldn't want to spend the rest of your life in solitary confinement, would you?"
It's really not rocket science. Our prehistoric ancestors had a great deal more sense than these doomers. They survived in often hostile environments (ice ages, anyone?) not by disappearing into their own individual little caves with a stone axe and a frozen mammoth carcass, but by living in close-knit, mutually supportive communities. I occasionally find someone on the Internet marvelling at the discovery of a hominid skeleton with a mended bone, revealing that the rest of this person's community took care of them while they were recovering rather than just abandoning them. Well, yes, of course they bloomin' did that, because that is Survival 101. If Grag has broken his leg and can't hunt, you set the bone and take care of him, and then a) eventually he recovers and can help the tribe with the hunting again, and b) if the same thing happens to you later, you bet Grag will take care of you. And nothing's changed in that respect. Just as for Grag, so for Aloysius Q Doomer of Kansas; but Aloysius has decided to isolate himself from his fellow humans, so if he breaks his leg in the traditional apocalyptic setting, he's a goner.
We are, essentially, social creatures. (This isn't quite the same thing as "sociable"; introverts like me need to recharge after spending time with other people, however much we enjoy doing so. In fact, for me, one of the great joys of the Internet is that I get to be as sociable as I want to be but without mental battery drain! By "social", I mean we are mutually interdependent.) And I think that's something to be celebrated, rather than fought against. We are much stronger together than alone. That's the way we were designed.
I don't know what is going to happen to Aloysius Q Doomer and his ilk if they get what appears to be their wish and civilisation collapses. But I can make a good guess. Most of them will be wiped out early on like everyone else. And for the rest, it's really not going to be like being the protagonist in a video game.
It's going to be lonely.
