Rapist was Gregarious

He was also

OUTGOING and FRIENDLY

Police are BAFFLED

 'Anyone who does not partake of society is either a beast or a god'

-Aristotle, Politics

For several years now I've collected news articles detailing arrests, trials and convictions of a nefarious type - I refer to those villains who, although they behave suspiciously and make no secret of it, evade justice nevertheless - for years, even. Worse still, they are hardly rare - two or three of them probably lurk in your own neighbourhood; your next-door neighbour might even be one of them. Look out. Be careful. They are dangerous. They are wicked. They are monsters of depravity.

In the Daily Mail, for example, we have this.

Arrested Afghan boy, 16, who was friends with Munich gunman was in contact with the deranged loner and met him just before the shooting spree that left nine dead.[i]

This description is surely tautological: loners are deranged; that is part and parcel of the condition. A murderous rampage of some sort is, sooner if not later, perpetrated by the solitary. In the USA, loners spray bullets around college campuses - the gregarious never do it! We are dealing, as everyone knows, with vicious psychopaths: loners commit murders and rapes, because that's what loners do. This fact is now so well-attested, that no sensible person will gainsay it.

At any rate, that is what those awfully clever media people repeatedly tell us.

The authorities might compile dossiers on the sociability of every citizen. Those with suspicious predilections for their own company should be monitored - with electronic tagging, say - and placed under strict curfew. The serious crime statistics would plummet. Women would walk the streets in safety. And goodbye high-school massacres!

The Daily Mirror tells us this.

Connecticut school shooting: Adam Lanza was a loner plotting his killing spree in his bedroom. [ . . .] He shot dead his mother, a gun-obsessed survivalist.[ii]

I wonder that slovenly journalists are not roundly condemned, as they'd be for certain parallels. The prevalent ethnicity among street muggers is controversial - these statistics can scarcely be compiled, let alone published. We'd imply Ethnicity X is criminally inclined, we are told. We mustn't generalise across ethnicity, we are lectured. Sure, a few of Ethnicity X are criminals, but the rest are respectable and honest. Are there not, also, muggers amongst Ethnicities Y and Z?

Today, newspapers are incomplete without their discrimination article concerning ethnicity or women or homosexuals; but the same periodical will happily vilify the solitary. Is this deserved? I'm no sociologist, but I'm fairly sure our prisons are reasonably well stocked with gregarious rapists and partygoing murderers; I'd wager an entire year's salary on it; but in many years I've never seen headlines such as, 'Rapist was Gregarious'; or 'Murderer was Partygoer'. Perhaps the respectable, law-abiding loners outnumber their vicious psychopathic brethren? I know a respectable loner: he lives in my house. I have not informed the authorities. Do my own neighbours, I wonder, suspect me of criminal lunacy? I myself enjoy my own company. . . and yet I've never stabbed or shot anyone. I'm aware that spending time on my own makes it look as if I'm up to something. Well, I am. I'm writing this.

A predilection for solitude is met by questioning; sometimes censure. You see, loners have personality disorders; for to enjoy one's own company, is a personality disorder. Loners are not marooned by shipwreck; they are Robinson Crusoes by choice. For their own good, loners must be prodded out of their shells; they must be 'cured'. The negative inferences that society draws, when it perceives any want of social interconnectedness, are present in the freighted terminology; for the antonym, 'gregarious', is an approving word. Perhaps loners should rebrand themselves as 'soloists', 'solitaries' or 'solitudinarians'.

The Independent tells us this.

Jo Cox death: detained man described by neighbours as a 'loner'.[iii]

In this tragic case I wonder what on earth the neighbours were up to. If they knew all along that an unhinged maniac lurked nearby, then why didn't they inform the local constabulary? Granted, we might overlook an occasional incident; but if it keeps happening: if a man hasn't attended any parties; if he goes to the pub, but just sits there with the newspaper; if his supermarket trolley contains 'meals for one'; if he spends his evenings at home, on his own - in short, if he 'keeps himself to himself' - well, the evidence just keeps on stacking up, doesn't it?

Lest 'meals for one' be thought fayre for the psychotic, I should distinguish between two quite different activities: utilitarian and hedonic. Society overlooks solitary activities with unavoidable purpose: shopping, obviously. We escape censure, mostly, if we are seen wheeling a shopping trolley on our own. Hedonic activities are quite different: restaurants alone, cinema alone, art galleries alone, etc., are impermissible aberrations; for fun and pleasure mandate company. There is a term for solitary hedonists, and it's not a very nice one: 'friendless'. We make friends after all by being likeable; ergo, the solitary hedonist must be unlikeable. And yet a sociable man is not necessarily a likeable one.

The Independent has this to say.

Shannon kidnap accused is 'loner and fantasist'. [iv]

It is commonly assumed that loners subscribe to a misanthropic credo of some sort. Such suspicions explicable from an anthropological perspective. Humans are social creatures; ergo, loners are deviants: unhealthily dysfunctional, they are messed up in some way. But this distinction is sociocultural. In pre-history, when it was impossible to survive on one's own, to be shunned by the tribe, banned or cast out, meant death by predation or starvation. The freedom to spend time alone, and in great quantities too, is one of man's greatest advances! This is because, as I will show later, private space fosters creative expression.

The Daily Mail has this to say.

A deluded loner who planted a bomb on the Tube was jailed for 15 years yesterday. As the judge said, commuters escaped injury or death only by luck.[v]

Those prisoner dramas puzzle me; an inmate commits some infraction and we hear something like, 'You'll get thirty days in solitary.' In other words, to take a man from one environment, in which he is pushed into close proximity with others, and put him into another, in which he enjoys private space, is regarded as punishment. Similarly, children's television programs, books and comics used to confuse me: misbehaving children were sent to their rooms. Why was bad behaviour rewarded? Of course, this parallel is not quite apt. I would manage solitary incarceration tolerably well, provided my cell was well-stocked with decent literature and writing materials; enforced idleness is quite another matter. I write not of solitude so severe that it causes mental disintegration; rather, of its rewards when enjoying the comforts, say, of my own home, and the pleasures of the mind.

The Sun says the following.

Final days of ISIS trucker [. . ] Neighbours describe him as a 'weird loner' [ . . .] One neighbour, who gave her name as Jasmine, 40, said Bouhel was a loner who was rude.[vi]

Two states of mind are only superficially similar. Rather than loneliness, the feeling I experience during solitude, and which gradually intensifies, especially when I'm writing intensively (of which more later), I would instead characterise as 'aloneness'. Where loneliness connotes absence, incompleteness and a need for company; aloneness is a feeling of completeness or fullness; joy, even. The lonely need solace and companionship; the alone need nothing, other than their reflection. It is frequently assumed that being alone means feeling lonely. This is an error.

The fear of being alone, which might more properly be called fear of loneliness, should not be confused with the capacity or ability to be alone, which may or may not be exercised. I write not of these, but the need or wish to be alone, which underscores the notion that, at times, others constitute a hindrance or interference.

It is seldom recognised that aloneness has a value equivalent to company; and there is a general unwillingness to consider it as an essential component of mental health; a psychological imperative, as it were. As the psychoanalyst Ester Buchholz records, 'alonetime has no identification that isn't somewhat tainted pejoratively, even solitaire. If you're in actuality a nun or monk, your aloneness is acceptable. But for one outside the church to be so called is a put-down.' (p.300) We should 'unshackle aloneness from its negative position as kith and kin to loneliness.' 'Few in our society respect the sanctity of chosen alonetime.' [Added emphasis.]

And, as I will show later, aloneness is a creative force.

The Metro tells us this.

Edward Tenniswood has been found guilty of the rape and murder of India Chipchase. [. . .] Described as an "oddball" by his own lawyer and a friendless loner by his landlord, he stuck to the lie in court, forcing her friends and family to listen to his claims that 20-year-old Ms Chipchase had gone willingly with him and that they had had consensual sex.[vii]

Newspaper articles such as this one tells us that loners are ogres with disagreeable temperaments. Among children, adolescents especially, 'loner' is a popular and powerful insult; for it does not mean 'he likes his own company'. As Anneli Rufus puts it, in Party of One - The Loner's Manifesto, 'Of all the ways in which loners are demonized, one of the most insidious regards our capacity for friendship.' 'Seeing us alone, the mainstream jumps to conclusions: that we have no friends, want no friends, are not capable of finding friends. They conclude that loners are either too mean for friends or unlikeable' (p.68) But incapacity for friendship is hardly the point. Of course loners have friends! Less than the gregarious that is true, but they have them nonetheless.

The solitary are a problem for the in-crowd, as, to them, number of friends is their index for amicability, and thus of their value as human beings. Friendship is something they can understand - the capacity to form attachments. Whether there may be other criteria for a good life, such as the capacity to be alone, is anathema to the in-crowd. The gregarious enjoy hours and hours in the company of anyone; they'd rather have someone around than no-one. To be without companions, is to them an abomination. Such high tolerance for company, I would argue, makes for lower standards in friendship.

Rather than lazily categorising loose associates as friends, we should enquire into the depth of friendships; but we cannot, as there is no convenient measurand. I suspect that many friendships are rather superficial - at least, according to my own standards. A significant percentage of friendships may even be delusional: social scientists asked their subjects for a list of friends; they then went to these friends, and asked them whether their subjects were friends. Only for one in two 'friendships' was the feeling reciprocated![viii] In today's social media, friendship is solipsistic: it is about nurturing the ego.

According to the San Francisco Chronical,

Man in ricin case described as a loner. A down-on-his-luck Roger von Bergendorff, 57, lived in his cousin's home for more than a year before moving to Las Vegas about a year ago, said Tammy Ewell, who lives across the street [. . .] 'He was very much a loner. I would say socially regressive. He just barely got by in life.'[ix][x]

When destructive acts result from isolated, antisocial lives, the media associate them with some friendless loner. Destructiveness and want of social interaction are, in journalese, two sides of the same dysfunctional coin. Serial killers may well be loners, but battery and deaths result equally, if not more, within the family milieu. Psychotics who spray bullets around are not, even, kosher loners: they are failed joiners; pseudo-loners. They chased the in-crowd, but were shunned; cast out; rejected. 'I'll show you', they responded. True loners are not joiners: they are complete as they are; and, unlike joiners, they eschew the fads and peer pressure of groupthink.

When, in 2002, Charles Bishop crashed his plane into an office building in Florida, initial news reports predictably labelled him a 'loner'. In a day or two however it became clear that, following testimonies from teachers and classmates, he had friends; following which journalists and news reporters were full of apologies for having thus smeared him - the dead boy's sociability then became more newsworthy than his crime. But there was now a problem: how could anyone with friends do such a thing? Similarly, Mark Chapman, who murdered John Lennon, is in some news reports described as a 'loner', even though his amicability has been well-attested by his . . . friends. The myth manufactured by contemporary journalists, is that murderous acts cannot be perpetrated by the gregarious: hence, homicidal maniacs must be loners. But, even though outcasts may well plot their revenge in solitude, far greater numbers plot murder and pillage in gangs.

The Los Angeles Times says this.

Loner likely sent anthrax, FBI says. The FBI is hoping its portrait of the perpetrator - as an antisocial loner with some peculiar mannerisms in his handwriting and phrasing - will help lead them to whoever mailed at least three anthrax-laced letters and killed four people.[xi]

In infant class I remember my absorption in books, while other children idly jabbered. Does this predilection for reading - a solitary activity - foretell the maladjusted adult? Marti Laney, a psychoanalyst, gives examples in The Introvert Advantage - How to Thrive in an Extrovert World. A father was distressed about his daughter. 'All she does is read in her room', he said. 'I think it's a serious problem. She's avoiding life.' (p.145) Laney could not disagree more. Such children 'may be criticized or shamed or made to feel guilty for needing to enjoy solitude'. (p.239). An adult patient said, 'My mother would come into my room, take the book I was reading out of my hands, and make me come out and be with the family. [. . .] I needed seclusion, but my family thought I was avoiding or withdrawing'. (p.239) Laney made a study of parenting books: most of them neglected the childhood need for solitude. She found that parents understood the need for private study in homework, but did not respect the need for chosen alonetime.

The Daily Mail tells us this.

Exclusive: Congress shooter was 5'6" rude loner who creeped out female bar staff at BBQ restaurant where he spent happy hours. [. . .] But just after 7am he left the YMCA were he showered every day and went to Simpson field, opening fire with his M-4 rifle and loosing (sic) off as many as 100 shots at Republicans practicing baseball[xii]

As Susan Cain writes in Quiet - the Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, 'College students who tend to study alone learn more over time than those who work in groups. (p.81). 'Teens who are too gregarious to spend time alone often fail to cultivate their talents because practising music or studying math requires the solitude they dread'. (p.82).

We learn this from the Daily Mirror.

A jobless loner who used a gay dating app to blackmail scores of men has been jailed for two and a half years. Liam Hull, 22, targeted scores of men, many married with children, on app Grindr and threatened to expose their double lives unless they paid him money.[xiii]

When my time for a career choice drew near, I was interviewed by the school careers officer. Entering his room, I saw the form I'd filled out beforehand, on which children were asked for their suggestions. He'd doubtless expected to find the usual teenage fantasies. Rock star. Footballer. Hollywood actor. Celebrity chef like that Gordon Ramsey. It was his life's mission to divest pupils of these silly fantasies; to bring them around to the mundane and worldly. Plumber. Shop assistant. Bartender. My own variety of teenage fantasy was quite different; for I'd written 'shepherd', envisioning long days of solitary hill-top striding, the crags echoing with bleats. With my second suggestion, 'light-house keeper', I reasoned that if solitude were impracticable, then I might just about tolerate two other men. The careers officer stroked his chin and frowned. 'For someone as asocial as you' he said, 'I would recommend serial killing as a career'. For this reason I enrolled at the local college on a course of serial killing. I thought I was doing, well, okay, but at Michaelmas the principal summoned me to his fusty office. 'We had high hopes for you', he said, 'but you've been seen in the King's Arms, where you were laughing and having a good time with your . . . friends'. (He seemed to find this last word particularly distasteful, closing his eyes and swallowing nervously before he said it). 'You've let the college down, you've let me down, but most importantly you've let yourself down.' 'By the way, when are you planning your next murder?'

I should say that parts of this memoir have been invented for dramatic purposes.

When George Michael died, the Daily Mail had this to say.

George Michael was NOT a loner: iconic singer received at least 10 visitors in the days before he died. New information appears to quash claims the pop icon was an insular recluse. [. . .] A delivery from Ocado suggests he was planning a Christmas bash. [. . .] It looked like they were preparing for a gathering - which makes George's death even more tragic. He definitely wasn't alone.[xiv]

I was formerly unaware that George Michael came under suspicion of clinical psychopathy. Fortunately, our journalist was able to reassure us on this score. If George Michael was NOT a loner (phew!), then he also lacked the narcissistic or self-destructive tendencies that accompany this dysfunctionality.

In his poem Vers de Société, Philip Larkin has this to say:

Just think of all the spare time that has flown

Straight into nothingness by being filled

With forks and faces, rather than repaid

Under a lamp, hearing the noise of wind,

And looking out to see the moon thinned

To an air-sharpened blade.

A life, and yet how sternly it's instilled

All solitude is selfish.

These lines are surely the loner's anthem: they contrast the vacuity and perfunctoriness of social life with the restorative comforts of solitude. A dinner party, it is argued, is a poor substitute for alonetime's benediction. The wind sighs; the rain patters; the clock ticks; a dog barks from afar. Reading quietly under a lamp, and looking up occasionally to think, while gazing at the motes adrift in the cone of light, alonetime is repaid. A familiar room, the restful surroundings, imbue a feeling of ease. 'When holy and religious men are at their beads 'tis hard to draw them thence, so sweet is zealous contemplation'. On these evenings, just one fork and one face will do very nicely, thank you. This is serene contentment. It is the gratification of aloneness. It is the plenitude of solitude.

And yet to many, such behaviour is odd and selfish. To waste their own time is not enough: they must waste everyone else's. They do not understand. Writing is a solitary occupation, and it requires that a huge number of hours be spent in this condition. I have no idea how the gregarious handle it.

The Daily Express says this.

It is 10 years since Natasha Kampuchea escaped through the front gate of the house in the Vienna suburb of Strasshoff and ran for her life through gardens and by jumping over fences [. . .] For 3,096 days obsessive-compulsive loner Wolfgang 'Wolfi' Priklopil had kept Natasha in a secret cellar measuring little more than 53sq ft, where he beat her, starved her and raped her.[xv]

More correctly, alonetime is midwife to creativity. In The Origins of Creativity, the painter Françoise Gilot makes a telling remark. To explain what makes an original artist, she says this: 'I can tell you that it's very simple. How many hours can you remain alone during the day, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime? If you can remain alone almost all of the time you can be a painter'. (p.163). Edgar Degas also stated that artists must live alone. Alternatively put, the 'creative' requires solitude to create. Unswerving dedication to creativity goes hand-in-hand with solitude. Creative products such as novels, symphonies, artworks and scientific theories are not written, composed, painted or formulated amidst the jabber of parties, the chatter of barbeques, the din of discos, or nights out with the lads. To the 'creative', solitude is not enervating but endlessly fructifying.

Now, 'creativity' as I use it here, denotes an ability to devise meaningful and original ideas, rules, forms, patterns, relationships, etc., by transcending existing belief-systems. A gentle, undisturbed environment best nurtures this trance-like state, hence, many 'creatives' live as solitaries; or at least lock themselves away for protracted periods, where they are able to concentrate. Inspiration is a momentary flicker, easily snuffed out by mindless chatter. And it is not summoned at will: the mind can only be primed to receive it, when it comes. Yes; creativity is the fruit of solitude. Or, as Edward Gibbon famously put it, 'solitude is the school of genius'.

Solitude not only correlates strongly with creativity, it drives it: a thesis magnificently argued in Anthony Storr's wonderful book, Solitude. 'It seems to me that the capacity to create provides an irreplaceable opportunity for personal development in isolation. [. . .] The artist or philosopher is able to mature primarily on his own. His passage through life is defined by the changing nature and increasing maturity of his work, rather than by his relations with others [. . .] We should also expect that such people would use their work rather than their interpersonal relationships as their primary source of self-esteem and personal fulfilment.' (p. 154) 'Many highly creative people [are] predominantly solitary, but [it is] nonsense to suppose that, because of this, they [are] necessarily unhappy or neurotic. (p. 201) 'Creatives', to whom the world of ideas is far more motivating than the world of people, nurture their talents more carefully than their personal relationships because, to them, their fields of endeavour imbue life with greater significance. Any paucity of friends just reflects time, not inclination: there is simply so much to create; so much to study; so much to achieve; and life is finite. Shared time must be eked out and, only in the company with true friends, is it unwasted. Why should I feel lonely, anway? I have me for company! I am holding a party at my place for loners - I mean, solitudinarians. If you're the sort of person who prefers his own company, then this is the party for you.

The Guardian says this.

Yeates murder: there is no excuse for the wholly unbalanced media reporting. [. . .] Unfortunately her landlord, Mr Chris Jeffries, seems to have been the 'ideal suspect'. On his arrest, the media seized on his background and appearance to make their views about him clear. [ . . .] The Enemies of Reason blog summarises the coverage as follows: 'His photograph has appeared on the front page of national newspapers 11 times. He was described as "weird", "lewd", "strange", "creepy", "angry", "odd", "disturbing", "eccentric", "a loner" and "unusual" in the course of just one article.'[xvi]

As for whether my predisposition for solitude makes me deranged or unhinged, you might ask my . . . friends about that.

Bibliography

Buchholz, Ester Schaler; The call of solitude - alonetime in a world of attachment.

Caine, Susan; Quiet - the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking.

Laney, Marti Olsen; The introvert advantage - how to thrive in an extrovert world.

Pfeffinger K.H., Shubuk V.R. (Eds); The origins of Creativity.

Storr, Anthony; Solitude.

Rufus, Anneli; Party of one - the loner's manifesto.

References

[i] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3706022/Teenage-friend-Munich-gunman-arrested-allegation-knew-plans-shooting-spree-failed-warn-police.html

[ii] http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/connecticut-school-shooting-adam-lanza-1493709

[iii] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/jo-cox-detained-man-described-by-neighbours-as-a-loner-tommy-mair-a7086331.html

[iv] The Independent; p.16, 15/11/8

[v] Daily Mail; p.30, 27/5/17

[vi] https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1455260/nice-killer-smuggled-84k-to-his-family-in-tunisia-days-before-massacre-as-neighbour-reveals-he-knifed-daughters-teddy-in-divorce-meltdown/

[vii] http://metro.co.uk/2016/08/02/inside-squalid-home-of-edward-tenniswood-killer-convicted-of-rape-and-murder-of-india-chipchase-6044145/

[viii] This research appeared in a respectable journal, but, alas, I've been quite unable to re-locate it, and so I cannot provide the reader with a suitable reference.

[ix] http://metro.co.uk/2016/08/02/inside-squalid-home-of-edward-tenniswood-killer-convicted-of-rape-and-murder-of-india-chipchase-6044145/

[x] http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Man-in-ricin-case-described-as-a-loner-3224676.php

[xi] http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/lonerlikelyanthrax.html

[xii] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4604820/Congress-shooter-creeped-women.html

[xiii] http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/loner-who-blackmailed-men-contacted-8706069

[xiv] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4099432/George-Michael-received-10-visitors-days-died-proving-NOT-loner.html

[xv] https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/life/703629/Captive-Natascha-Kampusch-eight-years-sex-salve-kidnappers-home

[xvi] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/jan/05/chris-jefferies-media

(c) cufwulf

cufwulf@aol.com