Some ways truth is established, practically:

• In representing the contents of life in a clear, orderly and self-evident way. Truth = tidiness.
• In accurately anticipating and influencing the future. Truth = security.
• In bringing fragmentary facts home to a unified body of understanding. Truth = digestion.
• In reaching agreements with those around you. Truth = home.

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On that last point, truth as home: Young philosophers love to believe they don’t need a home, that they don’t need to share truth.

Fact is, the philosopher needs to share his truth more than any other kind of person. Sharing truth is the philosopher’s job.

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The youthful philosopher (who seeks truth) is larval, just fry. He is aware only that he cannot share the prevalent truth. This is his point of departure. He heads off toward an oasis – his truth – he sees hovering on the edge of the horizon. He dreams of sitting at the side of his own pool, reflecting in solitude to his heart’s content. He drives at his truth, driven by idiotic instinct, just like a salmon drawn back to the head of the stream where he was born. Does he reach his truth? Yes, but not the truth he thought he’d find. He doesn’t find any oasis, but he certainly finds himself submerged in something cold and disturbingly fluid, and it can be summarized as something like: “My God, I don’t want to be alone here.”

Look for this form, and you’ll see it again and again. Wittgenstein slowly losing his mind alone in his house high on a cliff above Norwegian fjords; Nietzsche (who called his philosophical kind “hyperboreans”) living alone in Sils Maria; Christopher McCandless hitchiking to Alaska and dying there; and so on.

Anyone who goes out into true solitude and comes back knows three things for certain: 1) physical sustenance is nowhere near sufficient; 2) the power to coerce is the opposite of what is needed; 3) religion is not about magical miracles, but something more radically surprising.

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It doesn’t matter how tough or antisocial a human being is. A person in solitary confinement goes insane.

A philosopher who thinks too far can fall into plain-sight solitary confinement. He can speak with others, but he cannot make himself heard and he cannot digest most kinds of company.

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Longing is the core of mystery
Longing itself brings the cure
The only rule is suffer the pain.

Your desire must be disciplined,
And what you want to happen
In time, sacrificed.

– Rumi