When Bradley Manning was arrested on suspicion of being the source of the thousands of top secret documents passed on to Wikileaks, many people protested the treatment he received. Bradley was tortured, his case highlighting that the USA routinely subjects prisoners to treatment internationally condemned, and for which they criticise other countries.
Was he put on the rack? Beaten? Exposed to electric shocks? No. Along with other tips the US picked up from Bolshevik Russia’s ‘conveyor belt torture’ technique, Bradley was isolated from all meaningful human contact. Isolation has been shown again and again to have serious detrimental effects on people. You can destroy a human mind without touching your victim: isolation produces measurable abnormal brain activity in people. Social isolation can, in fact, kill you. It’s been shown to be as dangerous to your health as smoking.
You have to take care not to fall into isolation. It’s so easy, especially when we replace actual face to face contact with Facebook, Twitter, phone conversations, texts, emails. These are all important ways of staying in touch, but you must find a way to spend some social time with people face to face as well. It’s as vital to your health as taking in food and liquid.
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Comments on: "Social Isolation" (1)
Heh, I know this firsthand. Working at home is very isolating, I’ve found. While people come home at night, they are generally talked out from a day filled with seeing people at work. And it’s the same people all the time. In a way, social networks like FB have saved me from total isolation, but I agree with you completely. People need to interact face to face; there is something exchanged, whether it’s nuances we don’t normally perceive or an actual physical energy, a reciprocation felt. Hope we don’t come to people entirely isolated, all communication via cyber-mode!