The rule:

Man may be a social animal, but solitude has traditionally been a societal value. In particular, the act of being alone has been understood as an essential dimension of religious experience, albeit one restricted to a self-selected few. Through the solitude of rare spirits, the collective renews its relationship with divinity. The prophet and the hermit, the sadhu and the yogi, pursue their vision quests, invite their trances, in desert or forest or cave. For the still, small voice speaks only in silence.

@ The Chronicle Review

The exception:

I only wanted to be left alone. I could not bear the jostle of people.[…]

No one here had ever believed that anyone could want to be left alone. To them the worst fate that could befall anyone was being left alone and solitary. “All work is better in company.” “A man sits alone only to plot evil.” “Not even monkeys walk alone.” The very worst of the terrible consequences of the greatest moral and magical trespasses (fratricide, witchcraft, the breaking of treaties), following the leprosy, madness and dire disasters that befell such evil doers, was the most horrible fate of all: “and such a man will sit alone in a silent homestead.”

The fate they abhorred was a necessity to me. (173-174)

~ Elenore Smith Bowen, Return to Laughter