We may be no strangers to worried moods. Something awful often feels like it is about to happen. Perhaps some past misdemeanour will come back to ruin us. Perhaps our kidneys are failing; our minds disintegrating. Or perhaps, more broadly still, civilisation may be on the verge of collapse…
At this point, we might ask a question of our mood that sounds deliberately and provocatively strange: might I principally, at heart, be lonely rather than worried? The question rests on a particular thesis about the mind: we may prefer the discomforts of persecution to the quiet torments of isolation…
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