No man is an island, said Donne. Yet I long for solitude. Perhaps it's meant only in doses. The goal is the belonging to a community, membership. We are to be to a group what an organ is to a body: indispensable, irreplaceable. But the collective rears its head. You're just a number. Is this what Thoreau fled from? That he moved only a couple miles from the city is beside the point. The shoulder was taken out of joint, not severed. If it was severed, the body will eventually make due. But if out of joint, the body's attention is focused on that pain until the problem is fixed. Thoreau was being a gadfly to his town. Two things to avoid: a selfish solitude and a selfless collective. A bad Church breeds the former; institutions breed the latter. A good Church is family.