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How extreme isolation warps the mind

bbc.com

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Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#61

Post by delluminatus »

richardlblair wrote: post #32
delluminatus wrote: post #5

A psychological gem was dropped in the middle of the article: People in her circumstances have their world suddenly inverted, and there is nothing in the manner of their taking – no narrative of sacrifice, or enduring for a greater good – to help them derive meaning from it. They must somehow find meaning in their predicament – or mentally detach themselves from their day-to-day reality, which is a monumental task wh…

> you can be an affirmation of the strength of humankind. Well, that gave me goosebumps.

Thanks!

In all seriousness, I had the same response when I read Man's Search for Meaning the first time. The first half of the book describes, in clinical detail (Frankl was a psychiatrist) the details of daily life in Auschwitz and other Nazi camps. I don't need to say that they are disturbing, but you might be surprised to hear that they're also uplifting.

The book will make you cry. Not because it's sad but because it's a reminder that although humans are capable of causing great evil, we're also capable of looking that evil in the face, even through our own powerlessness, without turning away. We dish it out but we can take it, too.

Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#62

Post by ZenoArrow »

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #55
ZenoArrow wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a gift. I see you edited your post, but honestly your autobiography piece was enchanting, I've rarely read prose I've connected with more. Thank you. I do not know you, but I can recognise some of your struggles as similar to those I've encountered. I can't summarise both accurately and succinctly but perhaps if I say that purposelessness is both disheartening and liberating you will recognise what I mean. A…

thank you sir or madam!

You're welcome. :-)

Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#63

Post by softatlas »

AimHere wrote: post #26
jqm wrote: post #2

Good article. Now I have an excuse for getting on HN from time to time while locked away in the solitary confinement of VIM.

See, this is why you should have been using emacs all along. Theological and ergonomic considerations aside, for your sanity's sake, GNU emacs comes with two IRC clients, a web browser, an email reader and a usenet reader to stave off isolation-induced hacker-madness. And in extremis, with no network connection, there's always M-x doctor. Truly, RMS thought of everything, and then put it in emacs twice, just in case.

tmux will do just fine. My text editor should do text editing well, nothing more.

Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#64

Post by biot »

jqm wrote: post #24
biot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the comment you should have made originally. Your initial comment comes across as little more than an unsuccessful attempt at a funny one-liner. Here's what pg has to say[0] about those kinds of comments: "The most dangerous form of stupid comment is not the long but mistaken argument, but the dumb joke. [...] Whatever the cause, stupid comments tend to be short. And since it's hard to write a short comment t…

Stupid comments might tend to be short. But all short comments are not stupid. Sometimes it is possible to say much with humor in very few words. Thank you for providing a guys opinion. But I don't happen to be religious.

  > Sometimes it is possible to say much with humor in very few words.
I completely agree with that, though I disagree that you said much in your original comment (or that it was funny) which is why I think that your subsequent comment explaining what you meant would have been better to start with. Your original comment mentioned nothing about working remotely in isolation or less severe version of the symptoms, and "the solitary confinement of VIM" is a pretty absurd statement to make unless you explain what you mean.

Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#65

Post by dkarapetyan »

For some reason people separate mind matters from body matters but this separation is artificial. Just like your internal organs operate within a biological ecosystem shaped by millions of years of evolution so does the mind. The mind has both an internal and external ecosystem that it was shaped by and operates in. So just like all biological systems it goes awry when equilibria that shaped it suddenly go away.

Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#67

Post by abruzzi »

This article unfortunately elides "sensory deprivation" and "social deprivation." Which I suspect are two very different things. They may bot be difficult for most people but I suspect there are very different mechanisms in play.

Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#68

Post by simczak »

From a interview with Lama Lodru Rinpoche about the challenge of three year silent retreat:

"The physical obstacles are not so difficult for people. After one week people have no problem with fewer hours of sleep. After several weeks the pain of sitting cross legged is overcome. The physical obstacles are not the problem; physical problems we can control. Mental problems are more difficult to control. It is very difficult to discipline the mind. No matter how much discipline you have, when a thought comes you have no power to stop it, unless you can employ very powerful effective techniques to cut off those thoughts.

Q: Are these techniques only available to people on 3-year retreat? LLR: People outside 3-year retreat have no time to employ these techniques. First of all you have to tame your mind, make your mind soft and gentle, and then you can utilize more active techniques. Without this taming of the mind the techniques are not useful, and could even bring lots of difficulties. It is not so much that people outside 3-year retreat cannot learn or be given these techniques it is just they have no time to apply them. They have to make a living, there are lots of distractions, and this type of distracted mind is not good for the pr ofound teachings you learn in 3-year retreat. Also during 3-year retreat the teachings are given in sequence, not all at once. When one teaching is complete another is introduced."

Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#69

Post by 3rd3 »

delluminatus wrote: post #5

A psychological gem was dropped in the middle of the article: People in her circumstances have their world suddenly inverted, and there is nothing in the manner of their taking – no narrative of sacrifice, or enduring for a greater good – to help them derive meaning from it. They must somehow find meaning in their predicament – or mentally detach themselves from their day-to-day reality, which is a monumental task wh…

I cannot understand why people still decide to base their motivations on slippery concepts like the meaning of life or on some romantized, conjectured intrinsic values of our species. It seems to me that there are much better mental models of our existence that can help us to organize our thoughts and lifes, most notably things that are derived from the theory of evolution, neuroscience and from behavioral biology.
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