All the Lonely Peoples

The word “lonely” often conjures up a sad feeling. Isolation and separation from others is perceived by most of us as a negative thing, at least in excess.

There’s another way the word is used, though. Lonely can also mean solitary, which I personally regard as very different from the sad meaning of the word. It can also refer to a far-off geographic area or unfrequented area, like a lonely stretch of fields in the middle of nowhere.

The Sentinelese of India’s North Sentinel Island have chosen to be lonely in this willful sense of the word. This is a small, densely forested island in the Andaman archipelago, part of the Bay of Bengal.

This small group of somewhere between a few dozen to a few hundred individuals lives by Dunbar’s Number—everyone knows everyone else, and there’s plenty of social proof if someone needs to borrow money or asks for another favor.

They don’t like to be visited by outsiders, to say the least, and often hurl spears or shoot arrows at people they view as invaders (that’s what happened to Christian missionary John Allen Chau in 2018).

Perhaps most interestingly of all, the Sentinelese are descendants of people who left Africa around 55,000 years ago, and they have remained more isolated in the modern era than nearly every other group of people anywhere. It’s entirely possible that there are more isolated groups in the world, but we probably don’t know about them yet.

India has adopted a “hands-off” policy to protect the Sentinelese, strictly limiting access to North Sentinel Island and respecting their wish for isolation.

The Paradox of the Internet is that two people can sit next to one another on a couch, side by side, and yet be completely isolated from one another. There’s a digital divide that is creating echo chambers of thought in real time, isolating ideas and cutting people off from the rest of society. We talk about these things as though they’re terrible, and yet here we have a group of people who would prefer to be left entirely alone.

One arguably very good reason is historical trauma for the Sentinelese. Perhaps unsurprisingly, negative experiences with colonial powers have manifested in a deep mistrust of non-Sentinelese human contact. During the 1880s, a British naval officer named Maurice Portman was assigned as an administrator to the Andamans (the island chain where the Sentinelese live).

Apparently frustrated by their inability to make contact, Portman’s team kidnapped an elderly couple and four children. He brought them to Port Blair, the administrative center of the islands, where the adults died of illness.

Portman returned the children, along with several gifts to smooth things over.

Are there lessons to be learned from the chosen loneliness of the Sentinelese? “Don’t kidnap elderly people or children” is a pretty obvious takeaway, but what else might we learn from their chosen loneliness?

I, for one, enjoy being alone every day for a while. The sense of solitude isn’t the sad type of loneliness, but I also reconnect with the rest of the world on my own terms, as I’m doing right now, talking to you here.

What are your thoughts on the Sentinelese and their isolation? Let’s talk!