Critical distance requires withdrawal from public opinion, not from people

Evidence

YOU MIGHT BE surprised to find me emphasizing the importance of other people in a book that started out with my solitary retreat to a rose garden. Recall that in “Solitude and Leadership,” William Deresiewicz warns that one needs to remove herself in order to be able to think critically. But in the part that I quoted earlier—where he warns against “marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom”—Deresiewicz is talking about “Facebook and Twitter and even The New York Times.” In the very same essay, he mentions the importance of having a close friend to have real and substantive conversations with. If critical distance is what we’re after, I think there is an important distinction to make between isolating oneself versus removing oneself from the clamor and undue influence of public opinion. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 481

Categorization

• DEFINE: Directly answers the reader’s core defensive task: distinguishing ‘isolating oneself’ from ‘removing oneself from the clamor of public opinion’ — this is the precise refutation of the withdrawal misreading.
• XREF: This is the chapter’s hinge; it reframes the entire book’s opening rose-garden retreat as a move toward encounter, not away from it. Essential for the reader’s defense. — connects to: Critical and ideal projection depends on a distance that simulation progressively abolishes. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 394; Eliminating ceremonial distance between people produces estrangement, not intimacy. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 36