The Architecture of Solitude

A Conversation with RJ Starr

By Arthur Vance, Jr.

RJ Starr has spent decades writing about why people experience the world the way they do. His work spans psychology and philosophy, and it reaches readers and listeners through books, essays, podcasts, and lectures. The life he values most, by his own account, is a quiet one: books, music, cooking, familiar surroundings, and Pepper, the Amazon parrot who has shared his home for nearly twenty years.

We spoke on a weekday morning, a few hours into a day that, for Starr, usually begins well before sunrise. He speaks deliberately, sometimes with the cadence of a lecturer and sometimes with the ease of someone talking across a kitchen table, and there is a kind and gentle humor under most of what he says.

I began with the obvious question. How does a man who has spent his life studying people come to prefer his own company?

“That started long before any of the work,” he says. “It goes back to when I was a little boy.”

The Boy Who Was Already Content

Starr was born in Miami and raised in Colorado. I ask what he was like as a child.

“I loved being home. I could spend hours doing my own thing. I had my books and my toys, and I was always interested in something. I don’t remember being bored, or feeling that I was missing out because I wasn’t outside playing with other children. I was quite happy.”

Did the adults around him see it that way?

“No. I remember being sent to knock on neighbors’ doors to see if somebody wanted to come out and play. I absolutely hated that. It was embarrassing. I didn’t want to bother anybody, and I hadn’t wanted to go out in the first place. I was happy doing whatever I was doing before somebody decided I needed company.”

He laughs at the memory, then turns it over.

“We have some very peculiar ideas about what happiness is supposed to look like, don’t we? We assume people should want certain things because most other people seem to want them. And when somebody doesn’t, we start wondering what’s wrong. It took me a long time to appreciate how much of that is simply expectation.”

Was there anyone whose company he did want?

“Papa. My grandfather. He was my best friend.”

His grandfather had served as a combat medic in the Second World War.

“He was a quiet, gentle man. I loved being with him. There are certain people we feel completely comfortable with, and when we’re children we don’t understand why. We just know that we feel safe and loved and that we can be ourselves.”

His grandfather died when Starr was fourteen. I ask how he made sense of it at the time.

“I didn’t, really. I was trying to understand what it meant that he was gone. Here’s this person you love, who’s been such an important part of your world, and suddenly he isn’t there anymore. Where did he go? What happens to everything that made him who he was? I was fourteen, and those questions were enormous to me.”

Those questions stayed with him. They run through much of the work he would go on to do on consciousness, identity, existence, and meaning.

A Private Temperament, a Public Life

Starr’s adult life took him somewhere his childhood would not have predicted: a long professional career outside academia that required constant work with people, and later a public life as a teacher, professor, and speaker. I ask whether that has ever felt like a contradiction.

“Not really. I’ve never had any difficulty engaging with people when there’s a reason to. I’ve spent much of my life doing exactly that. I’ve worked with all kinds of people, handled difficult situations, taught classes, spoken to audiences. Those things can be very rewarding. But when I’m finished, I’m quite happy to go home and enjoy my own company.”

So introversion, for him, is not the same thing as shyness.

“People misunderstand it. They imagine someone who’s uncomfortable around others. That may be true for some people, but it isn’t the whole story. I can enjoy a wonderful conversation, appreciate somebody’s company, and still be perfectly happy when the evening ends and I have some time to myself.”

Years of watching people under pressure fed into his work. Psychological Architecture, the framework at the center of much of his writing, organizes human experience across four domains: Mind, Emotion, Identity, and Meaning. It is one part of a broader body of work in psychology and philosophy. I ask what drew him to building it.

“I’ve always wanted to know why people experience the world the way they do. Two people can go through what looks like the same situation and come away with completely different experiences of it. Something that seems insignificant to one person can be enormously important to another. I find that fascinating.”

Does he worry that the terminology keeps people at a distance?

“Psychology becomes valuable when people can recognize something of their own experience in it. We can develop all kinds of terminology and elaborate explanations, but eventually the question is whether any of it helps us understand what it means to be human.”

The Quiet Pleasures of an Ordinary Life

Away from his writing and teaching, Starr’s interests are domestic: cooking, reading, jazz and classical music, and character-driven books, films and television. I ask what draws him to that kind of story.

“I love a good story about people. I like getting to know the characters, understanding their relationships, watching how they change. And sometimes, when I’ve completed a book, or a series ends, I really miss those people. I know they’re fictional, of course. But you’ve spent all that time with them. You become attached.”

He is easily moved, he admits, especially by kindness between strangers.

“I’ve watched videos of people helping someone they’ve never met, offering a meal or a place to rest or just being kind, and found myself getting emotional. These people don’t know one another. They may never see each other again. And yet for that brief moment somebody recognizes another human being and responds with kindness. I find that profoundly moving.”

When I ask about Pepper, he laughs.

“Well, Pepper runs the household. I’ve called him my project manager, and I’m only half kidding. He’s been with me for nearly twenty years, and he’s quite a character. He has his own personality, his own expectations, and very definite ideas about how and when things should be done.”

And underneath the joke?

“When you’ve had an animal in your life that long, they become part of your history. They’ve been there through all sorts of changes. There’s something very comforting about that, about knowing one another so well.”

What does a good day look like?

“I love my home. I love my books and my music. I enjoy cooking something good, watching a film, spending time with Pepper. I can have a perfectly wonderful day without going anywhere or doing anything another person might consider exciting.”

Does such a life ever become lonely?

“Of course there are moments when I miss companionship. I’ve had people in my life whom I’ve loved very much, and there are relationships and experiences I cherish. Sometimes you want to share something with another person, or you miss having somebody around who knows you especially well. That’s part of being human.”

He takes a moment before going on.

“But I’ve also learned that I really do enjoy solitude. I don’t experience being alone as some kind of deficiency that needs to be corrected. It’s a natural and very comfortable way for me to live.”

Learning to Be Less Visible

For years, Starr’s YouTube channel was built around extended lectures and formal presentations, and his imprint, Depthmark Press, became the home for his written work. Recently he renamed the channel Life, Noticed and moved toward shorter, conversational reflections on ordinary experience. I ask what prompted the change.

“I’ve been thinking about what I want the next part of my life to look like. I’ve spent years writing, teaching, developing theories, and putting my work out into the world. I still love doing those things. But I’ve become less interested in some of what seems to come with having a public presence.”

Such as?

“There’s an expectation now that if you create something publicly, you should also be constantly accessible. You should be responding, engaging, explaining yourself, joining whatever conversation is happening. I’ve been questioning how much of that I actually want in my life.”

Does stepping back sit uneasily with wanting the work to reach people?

“No. I want people to have access to the work. I’ve always believed psychological literacy should be available to everybody. That’s why so much of what I write and teach is freely accessible. But that doesn’t mean I have to make every part of myself available as well.”

The changes extend beyond the format of his videos. I ask whether his understanding of what matters has changed as well.

“At a certain point you start asking yourself what you’re holding on to, and why. Is something still meaningful to you, or are you continuing it because you’ve been doing it for years? Sometimes the thing itself still matters, but the way you’ve been approaching it doesn’t feel right anymore.”

His newest project, What Keeps Us Human to One Another?, pairs an essay series with weekly podcast readings about everyday kindness and connection. I ask what draws him to such small moments.

“I’ve become more interested in the things we overlook. A conversation with a stranger, a moment of kindness, something somebody says that stays with you for years. They seem very small, but they can tell us something important about ourselves and the people around us.”

What Sixty Years Have Taught Him

Starr is sixty. I ask whether the number feels like a turning point.

“I don’t think you suddenly arrive at sixty and become a different person. You’re still you. You still have your interests, your feelings, your questions, and all the peculiarities that make you who you are. But your perspective changes.”

In what way?

“When you’re younger, you spend an extraordinary amount of energy worrying about things that turn out to matter very little. Recognition, other people’s opinions, whether you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. And then one day you begin to wonder how much of your life you want to keep giving to those concerns.”

He pauses.

“I’ve come to appreciate that I don’t have to want what everybody else wants. I don’t have to live by somebody else’s definition of happiness or success. And I don’t have to keep doing something simply because it used to be important to me.”

I wonder whether this greater clarity has brought him any closer to feeling that he understands himself.

“I still have so many things I’m interested in. I still want to learn, to write, to explore ideas. There are things I want to understand better, and I’m sure there are things I believe today that I’ll see differently ten years from now. I hope so, anyway. That would mean I’m still growing.”

Near the end, he returns to something he has said before.

“This is my life, my home, my bird, my quiet little life. I mean that affectionately. I’m happy with those things. There’s plenty in the world I find fascinating, and plenty of people whose lives move me deeply. But I don’t need to be in the middle of everything to appreciate it.”

I ask, finally, whether any of the boy at the neighbors’ doors is still in him.

“I suppose in some ways I’m still that little boy. I’ve learned a great deal, experienced a great deal, and changed in all sorts of ways. But that part of me has always been there. I’ve simply become more comfortable allowing myself to be who I am.”