This combination leads them toward suicide, in a way. Insight takes
away the protections of false hope and blind obedience; amoung others.
It stripps you of the little lies people live on - religion, love,
purpose. It provides slim consolation; highly intellegent people are
sent out into the world lacking the spiritual - if I may use the word,
atheist though I am, and lacking belief in the spirit - comforts that
these things provide. However, in many cases, being human, they hunger
for what their brian has deprived them of - the wool, so to speak, of
a sheep that follows the herd.
Isolation prevents other humans from amplifying what comforts they do
have; and cuts them off from the hurly-burly social life that serves
to , paraphasing the immortal Terry Pratchett, bounce them against
each other and remind them that they are, well, humans. If it were
not for social lives, most people would collapse. They have no meaning
beyond the herd; but certain folk are cut off, to face 'a high and
lonely destiny.'
Some find that they can live quite well feeding only from themselves.
Some find that they cannot, and go dangerously insane (not pleasantly
so, as I am.)
Some lead lives of quiet desperation, never seeing a way out.
Some see that suicide is the only way out - the only way, if you think
on it, to cheat Death - and are drawn to it - or choose it, perhaps,
as a nobler fate - and a quicker, in botht the modern and ancient
senses - than the gradual thievery of nobility (even a ruined and
abandoned castle looms on the skyline and strikes admiration into the
hearts of travellers) that will wear them down if they choose to
remain . . .
--
ALICE AFORETHOUGHT
'Let us die young or let us live forever'