Freedom and Solitude

Anarchy is the negation of authority of whatever kind, it is affection and solitude.
—L. Ferre

To be alone, liberated from the yoke of collective life. Here is the most logical system for being truly free—free from convention, from dependence and the extortions of others. It is solitude alone that makes the individual really free.

Each day we are victims of hypocrisy, continually reciting the rules of bourgeois etiquette: "thank you... excuse me... I am sorry." Others flatter, judge, criticize. Others decide for us, others live on our weaknesses, others cheat us, others steal from us, others, always others, usurp our lives.

It is they who love us, who hate us, who betray us, rob us of our thoughts, words, life. It would be logical to leave them all, to flee physically and mentally to a proper island of solitude, self-sufficient and courageous. Courageous? Courageous because it is difficult, because we are incapable of living really alone, because we have need of contact with others in order to express our feelings, to realize ourselves, even for the simplification of our actions.

It is difficult for one individual, weak, even psychologically insecure, to do without friendship, love and solidarity. And then, clearly, life in solitude would appear monotonous because, as always, our emotions, our adventures, arise from others, evolve among others.

There is another solitude, perhaps more understood, more naturally respected, than that of the hermit. It is when you no longer feel a part of these others, when you no longer participate in their mode of living, making a world apart from them in which they no longer count, from which they are excluded. It is when you no longer accept their love, their benevolence, their hypocrisy—and your solitude then becomes freedom, rebellion, it is open defiance of society.

Anarchist individualists are alone, their life lies outside the rules imposed by others. They choose the individuals whom it pleases them to have near, to listen. The others they regard as if they were non-existent, or as enemies. Individualists live beyond the walls of society—but not as those driven out.... They are mental, rather than physical, fugitives, and their solitude is loved, it is the realization of their free thought.