quotation on loneliness

In the song _Me and Bobby McGee_, originally performed by Kris Kristofferson but most famously by Janis Joplin, there's this pair of lines:

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
"Nothin' ain't worth nothin', it ain't free."

Do people agree with this sentiment about their own freedom from obligation to others caused by isolation? Or is freedom a true, positive benefit of isolation?

Heh, I'd say having more freedom is definitely a benefit of being alone.

For example, if you're married obviously you don't have the freedom to pursue people of the opposite sex who interest you anymore. That's kind of a big mistake, obviously. A lot of people find themselves unable to cope with this fact and eventually cheat, ruining their marriage.
Even trying to make friends with the other sex is harder, though. Your spouse might get jealous, or not like the person, or think they are hitting on you, or etc. What are you going to do in that position? Continue seeing your friend and ruin your marriage, or stop seeing the person and make them happy? (It's a bad situation to be in, but it still happens a lot just because you never really know...)
Or hey, maybe all of a sudden you want a motorcycle. If you're married you have to convince your spouse to let you buy one, and that's just not in the cards for a lot of people.
Likewise, if you have kids, what if you decide you want to move halfway across the world one day? You aren't just going to have to convince your spouse, you're going to have to pick up your kids from a stable environment that they've always known and change that drastically. It will have a huge effect on them. You have to think about that.

Being alone gives you a lot of freedom that you don't have otherwise. Every type of relationship you can have is, in a way, limiting your freedom.
For example, even if you don't have a 'significant other', it's still very hard to leave behind parents, siblings, or lots of friends if you went somewhere, even for a little while. It limits you.

I disagree it means that you have nothing left to lose, though. Everyone has something to lose, they just might not realize it until it's too late.
This type of 'Freedom' is more about not having to worry about other people when you do things.

As they say, 'the grass is always greener'.

Being emotionally divorced from my family and having few friendship ties I'm generally a free agent in terms of responsibility and obligation. At first it was devastating to know that many people in my life didn't really care about me, then after a (long) period of adjustment I came to see it as quite a liberating state of being. The thing I'm most grateful in having so few attachments is that I've found a way to exist without a great need for social stimulation. I've accrued a level of resilience and self-sufficiency, a hardness, I suppose, that someone on the other side of the proverbial fence may not have to the same extent.

The drawback is that I have few connections to other people and the ones I do have are either shallow or very unbalanced. I guess the truly damning part is that I can live with being so detached from other people if what I'm getting in exchange is a deeper understanding of myself.

I think freedom is absolutely the greatest benefit of being alone.

I've always liked that line "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose". I take it to mean it's ok to take risks. When one gets older *ahem*, it becomes very easy to talk yourself out of risk-taking which is not always a good thing. But I'm not sure I understand your question as I don't personally see any benefits to isolation. I've never been happy isolated and I've never know anyone who was happy to be isolated either. It's not natural. "Isolation" is where they put prisoners to give them extra punishment - away from the rest of the people in prison. It's not something I associate with good times.

-Teresa

Mostly I agree.

Why should I be obligated to be any particular way, take any particular action, or say any particular thing? Society threw me out. They don't get to decide what I do or say any more than they get to decide what a stray dog in the woods does, unless I'm breaking laws. I'm my own and no one else's, but that doesn't mean I have nothing.

What are they going to do if I disobey? Absolutely nothing. They gave me nothing, and so they have nothing to take away from me. They would not give me anything even if I followed along with what was expected of me, which was the case in the past.

Without mutual kindness, trying to help and please others makes you a servant. I'm not obligated to give to others what I don't receive from them, and there's no one here that I have to think about before I make choices but me because no one but me is truly affected by them. If I want to talk to opposing political parties without treating them as enemies, I have no connections from my own that will be angry or who I have to appease. There's no tribal warfare for lone wolves.