Loneliness is failed solitude.

Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. We sacrifice conversation for mere connection.

As we distribute ourselves, we may abandon ourselves.

Kids have moved from, "I have a feeling, I want to make a call," to "I'd like to have a feeling, I need to send a text." In other words, there's a continual need for validation. They're constituting a thought or feeling by sending it out for votes. That's really not where you want to be emotionally.

Terrified of being alone, yet afraid of intimacy, we experience widespread feelings of emptiness, of disconnection, of the unreality of self. And here the computer, a companion without emotional demands, offers a compromise. You can be a loner, but never alone. You can interact, but need never feel vulnerable to another person.

Loneliness is failed solitude.

I think few people of education enter politics because it seems like a contact blood sport.