Hello fellow members of TL. Although I've played SCBW before and one game of SCII through my friends, I no longer play either of those games. However, ever since my friends introduced me to TL, I've been a regular visitor/lurker browsing through many of its interesting threads.
The reason that I'm starting a blog here on TL is not an effort to socialize and connect with my TLers. In fact, it's the very opposite. This will be a blog about my attempt to socially isolate myself from the rest of the world for a full year (365 24-hour days). Now you may be asking yourself why I would be so crazy as to do this. After moving to a new city to attend university, I've already been minimizing much of my day-top-day social interactions and the only means of socialization I really had was talking to my old high school friends through Skype. Making new friends at the U wasn't as easy as ABC's and even when I had a couple "acquaintances", it really didn't feel like I was connecting with them at all. When I got tired of the usual routine of "Hello, my name is so and so... and you are?" along with a whole bunch of other meaningless routine questions to introduce myself to others, I asked myself why I'm doing this. Was it because social connections were an essential element to one's survival as a human being? Was it something essential to maintain mental health?
Which lead me to the ultimate question: "Do I need to be dependent on others for my psychological well-being?"
I had this thought for a while, but decided not to do anything about it. However, having an extremely impulsive nature, I decided to do something extreme. I wanted to see if I could withstand, be unaffected by, or even gain a positive result out of isolating myself from the rest of society.
TL;DR===>start here
I'm going to carry out an experiment in which I will try my best to minimize my social interactions in every aspect for a full-year. This will be done in order to measure effects of social isolation on mental health and as a test to my willpower. I have not yet decided when to start counting down my 365 days, but I will post it here as an edit later on when I do. I will also post a set of conditions, I will impose on myself in order to isolate myself from society (since some level of interpersonal interaction will exist between myself and the rest of humankind, these conditions will help me limit the extent to which I interact with fellow humans and to minimize those interactions as much as possible without endangering my survival). Several conditions will have to be made in order to make an operational definition for "social isolation," so it'd be helpful if you guys can think of some and post it here!
e.g. Subject must not communicate to others, whether it be verbal or some other means of communication, his emotions or opinions regarding any given topic. An example of what the subject should not do is shown in the short dialogue below:
Person A: How was your day today Subject A? Subject A: It was horrible! I was late for my class and that mean old professor wouldn't even let me in!
End of dialogue.
The content of this blog will basically be my day-to-day journal entries (unless I'm too busy) for the 365 days spent in social isolation. The journal entries themselves will mostly consist of my daily introspection and a record of my productivity (for whatever I was doing that day). I will try to improve on the experiment by setting some empirical means to measure productivity/motivation/mental health in order to record the effects of social isolation on different aspects of human life/my life. I think my Psych professor could help me with this bit and you TLers can contribute to this too! *Brain imaging perhaps...? I really have no idea on how to deal with this yet >_>*
I know it will be extremely hard to socially isolate myself while living in a busy city, attending university and sharing an apartment with my brother, but I hope I can set solid conditions in which the effects of possible social interactions in those circumstances can be minimized.
List of conditions for the subject in social isolation:
(To be updated later)
Edit: I talked to my psych. prof. today and he said he'll help me suitable people to help me work on this as an experiment/case study! I'll have more updates on Thursday, but I think this is going to take a bit more time for preparation than I had initially thought of (preparation for this would probably consist of explaining what I'm doing to my family/close friends/others among other things).
Edit(July 13th): I'm scrapping this idea for another day because of many complications =/ Among the few main reasons are that my professor did not respond to my e-mail regarding the matter--which means I have no one to help me set this up as a legitimate experiment to maybe help my academic career in any way whatsoever--and because as someone has mentioned, it would be more interesting to do this sort of thing after I obtain many more social relations. I might revisit this idea some time later, but for the time being, this will be cast aside and I am thinking of blogging about horribly boring ideas that I think of on a daily basis.<===philosophical junk that none of my peers are willing to hear to the end.
On June 06 2011 08:58 KrAzYfoOL wrote: I think you'd be better off pulling a Christopher McCandless, if you want to achieve absolute social isolation.
Except actually properly prepare yourself so you don't end up dead within months. But that is a ridiculously extreme measure and quite a commitment, plus how would you inform TL of your progress?!
It's kinda like how long you can go without sleep, for a little while it's no problem and in this context - one year is a "little while". From what i've heard you'll become an emotional mess though (Ming @WoM did something quite similar to this and ended up crying at Naruto) and it's not recommended.
Another important thing to note is that this is quite different from the frustration i imagine you'd feel on an uninhabited island. Having the option to return right there will take the edge off of this and keep your consciousness pretty clear.
On June 06 2011 08:58 KrAzYfoOL wrote: I think you'd be better off pulling a Christopher McCandless, if you want to achieve absolute social isolation.
Except actually properly prepare yourself so you don't end up dead within months. But that is a ridiculously extreme measure and quite a commitment, plus how would you inform TL of your progress?!
As long as it's a one-way communication, I don't think it should have any implications on the experiment... and maybe I'll prevent myself from reading the comments too (once the experiment starts that is) =D
On June 06 2011 09:02 ClysmiC wrote: Uh, this is a social experiment? Deliberately avoiding having a social life is not the best idea in my opinion D:
An antisocial experiment, maybe.
I think studies about solitary confinement in prisons show that there is significant evidence doing this long term will seriously fuck you up. That has some major confounding factors though, so maybe it will go different. You could probably start with those and do some research on the subject if you wanted to find out how they keep track of those mental health/productivity measures you want, or find some similar studies closer to what you want to do to yourself.
On June 06 2011 09:02 ClysmiC wrote: Uh, this is a social experiment? Deliberately avoiding having a social life is not the best idea in my opinion D:
An antisocial experiment, maybe.
I think studies about solitary confinement in prisons show that there is significant evidence doing this long term will seriously fuck you up. That has some major confounding factors though, so maybe it will go different. You could probably start with those and do some research on the subject if you wanted to find out how they keep track of those mental health/productivity measures you want, or find some similar studies closer to what you want to do to yourself.
GLHF~
Yeah... I do realize the potential risks to my mental health and a host of other problems that could arise from this, but this is something I've already given some thought to, and nothing's final. Also, if anything, I could pull out from this any time I wanted to. Regarding studies about solitary confinement, I think that has many major confounding factors as you mentioned... for one... I would definitely go insane from being confined... period. Let alone being in a very tiny concrete box for most of my days and being limited to a very small number of activities among many other limitations/conditions imposed on you in prison would turn me into a human vegetable. Many of these conditions in prisons are ones that I would not be exposed to.
I thought about searching up other studies that have done similar case studies to use as a guideline in order to find some way to measure mental health, etc, but I'm not sure where to start. I'm thinking about asking my psych prof., but if you know any specific studies done in a similar fashion, I'd be glad to receive your help.
Also, thank you for posting the first relevant/serious response to this.
I avoided healthy social interaction for 4 months and I was a mess. I seriously think that you will commit suicide if you follow through for the entire year unless of course you quit early.
I don't understand how you voluntary try to do that...
Since about 1 1/2 years i'm involuntary in a situation without much social interaction (except from work) and it's not something i would recommend to anyone.
What do you plan on doing on weekends? Holidays? Christmas? Your Birthday?
From experience i can tell you that sitting alone at home on your birthday and on christmas sucks really, really hard. Weekends sitting at home are a constant drain, too, i'm almost happy when i can go to work again (at least until the next dilbertesque situation happens there and destroys my motivation again (so about 5 minutes after i arrive at work on mondays))
I'm not so big on celebrations, so that aspect about social seclusion would be the easiest to deal with. Also, I'm relatively new to this city, so I have very little social obligations (in terms of going to birthday parties, etc).
Hmm... sounds like social seclusion will not be a big problem for you.
If you really want to make an interesting study for someone with your mindset, you should really make the reverse experiment: not to be alone for a whole year. Try constantly and frequently to surround yourself with people and get as much human interaction done as possible. Experience how this affects you. Take notes about your mental health. Try to establish some fundamental principles of interaction in the different social processes in which you will partake, and see how these affects you, the people you are interacting with, as well as the whole situation at hand: your life?
My point is: it is not as interesting to study a person who already has anti-social tendencies to develop these further, as it is to study a person with anti-social tendencies trying to break these anti-social patterns of thought.
It will be a much bigger challenge, but I'll bet it will be more rewarding in the end - both for you personally, but much more importantly for science as well.
Age? I think the modern teenager might have a harder time going 1 year without social connection to the internet than interaction with ppl in our everyday lives lol. I assume no social interaction means not having access to read/write blogs, forums, internet social shit like facebook, cell phones, texting, etc, etc as well?
Longest I've ever been away from human contact is 23 days while camping on a remote surf spot on the Pacific desert (no dog either btw). Finally had to pack it up and head for civilization after water supply ran dangerously low. Your first encounter with another human (more so your first conversation) is an odd feeling. 1 Year without any human contact would definitely have some serious effects even if you weren't "locked" up in a confined space. Being isolated from civilization is a great experience tho and something everyone prob needs in small doses now and then.
I applaud your effort. Gaining independence from the world might not be a bad thing. However, I believe that after a year it would be extremely difficult to go back into society. You would become afraid of the world and maybe never be able to fully go back out into it. I would rather than experimenting with no social interactions experiment with one year of doing exactly what you want to do, rather than what society wants you to do. You would probably be able to gain the same independence without the negative side effects.
On June 06 2011 20:12 Dieoxhide wrote: Hmm... sounds like social seclusion will not be a big problem for you.
If you really want to make an interesting study for someone with your mindset, you should really make the reverse experiment: not to be alone for a whole year. Try constantly and frequently to surround yourself with people and get as much human interaction done as possible. Experience how this affects you. Take notes about your mental health. Try to establish some fundamental principles of interaction in the different social processes in which you will partake, and see how these affects you, the people you are interacting with, as well as the whole situation at hand: your life?
My point is: it is not as interesting to study a person who already has anti-social tendencies to develop these further, as it is to study a person with anti-social tendencies trying to break these anti-social patterns of thought.
It will be a much bigger challenge, but I'll bet it will be more rewarding in the end - both for you personally, but much more importantly for science as well.
I also thought about this as well, but it would be quite difficult to suddenly make a horde of friends before such a thing. Not only that, but if there are more people that I familiarize myself nearby, it would be even harder for me to physically isolate myself from them also (not to mention there will be a lot of other inconveniences). However, I think even with the little social connections I have in this city at the moment, it would be quite different to have none for a year as compared to having some everyday to a certain degree.
Thank you for your input and I appreciate the suggestion, but when I first thought of this experiment, it was going to be more like a vow of silence for me for a year. This is just an extension of that in order to see what, if any, effects this could have on my mental health.
A lot of the people here seem worried, but this is much like the "vow of silence" that many religious people go through in order to obtain spiritual enlightenment. The practice is fairly common and as said before, if anything goes wrong, I can just start talking to people again.
It'd also be interesting to hear some thoughts from someone who's done a vow of silence or anything similar.
We'll all miss you munching hippo (you have a really cool name).
Oh by the way, as long as you're trying it, you may as well look into some of the spiritual enlightenment stuff. Eckhart Tolle is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in spirituality these days, I read a few of his books. One of the most prominent being Power of Now.
But what I would recommend, as does practically every spiritual teacher I've read or heard from, is to meditate. 15 minutes in the morning and evening should be enough (that's typically what I hear being recommended); just focus on your breath going in and out...and when you have thoughts, just refocus on your breathing and don't reprimand yourself for thinking too much otherwise it actually gives more power to your thinking.
From a medical perspective, I know that its supposed to create strong benefits for your mind and body, and from a spiritual one its supposed to aid in unlocking intuitive abilities and give you a sense of peace that will help you live in the world without being so strongly affected by your ego/ the fearful part of the spiritual you (some say it actually helps you communicate with spiritual guides...but I don't want to get too esoteric here).
Of course I'm not really certain whether the spiritual stuff is all true (although I do have some personal experiences with the spirit guide stuff that I feel is quite convincing), but its certainly worth a try since it doesn't conflict with your experiment, and can only lead to positive results.
Actually typing this now I'm motivated to try meditating again! Its tough at first, but apparently it gets easier and easier each time, just like with growing muscles.
On June 07 2011 03:36 radscorpion9 wrote: We'll all miss you munching hippo (you have a really cool name).
Oh by the way, as long as you're trying it, you may as well look into some of the spiritual enlightenment stuff. Eckhart Tolle is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in spirituality these days, I read a few of his books. One of the most prominent being Power of Now.
But what I would recommend, as does practically every spiritual teacher I've read or heard from, is to meditate. 15 minutes in the morning and evening should be enough (that's typically what I hear being recommended); just focus on your breath going in and out...and when you have thoughts, just refocus on your breathing and don't reprimand yourself for thinking too much otherwise it actually gives more power to your thinking.
From a medical perspective, I know that its supposed to create strong benefits for your mind and body, and from a spiritual one its supposed to aid in unlocking intuitive abilities and give you a sense of peace that will help you live in the world without being so strongly affected by your ego/ the fearful part of the spiritual you (some say it actually helps you communicate with spiritual guides...but I don't want to get too esoteric here).
Of course I'm not really certain whether the spiritual stuff is all true (although I do have some personal experiences with the spirit guide stuff that I feel is quite convincing), but its certainly worth a try since it doesn't conflict with your experiment, and can only lead to positive results.
Actually typing this now I'm motivated to try meditating again! Its tough at first, but apparently it gets easier and easier each time, just like with growing muscles.
Anyways, good luck!
Thanks for the optimism! It's interesting to see that you're the first one to think about the possible positive effects of doing this. Although my memories are vague on the details, I recall many religious practices much like this, involving social isolation, in order to obtain some form of spiritual enlightenment. However, many people tend to focus on the possible negative effects coming from this, and that's probably one of the questions I hope to answer from doing this.
Hmm... okay, now I see what you are looking for. But wouldn't it be better to find a place that was more isolated from other people? It may be easier to find inner peace in peaceful sorroundings than in the hustle and bustle of city life. And do you have certain spiritual beliefs that lies beneath this project?
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can "see the folks," and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate himself for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and "the blues"; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.
He actually describes it as something healthy, but I don't know if he is painting a neat picture here that is mostly to his own liking - probably not, though.
You can actually live a while in complete solitude even in the middle of a city. You can order groceries online, I know a lot of people that are gluten-free and do this for convenience. I'm sure that you can find regular food online too.
You could type up all of your thoughts into a word document and then just post them at the end of the year for maximum isolation too.
i still think that if this is to be a true experiment in isolation from society, then it would seem almost a requirement not to be able to log onto the internet and especially not be actively communicating in any forums. No multiplayer video games as well. .. ouch!
I would bet there are at least a handful of TLiquiders that already are living this experiment having almost little or no contact with others outside of their "internet" social life.
On June 08 2011 05:33 Bajadulce wrote: i still think that if this is to be a true experiment in isolation from society, then it would seem almost a requirement not to be able to log onto the internet and especially not be actively communicating in any forums. No multiplayer video games as well. .. ouch!
I would bet there are at least a handful of TLiquiders that already are living this experiment having almost little or no contact with others outside of their "internet" social life.
As I said before, I have not started this yet! Please pay more attention when you're reading although I know I can be quite a bore. =P When I start this, I wouldn't be doing most of the things you mentioned, although I will be posting my progress on TL. This shouldn't interfere with what I'm doing though because I won't be reading or responding to any of the comments posted here after I start and I will only be posting my progress. I imagine it wouldn't be so different if I kept a journal for 365 days and posted on TL only after it was over. However, even though it'll be a one-sided communication from my side (posting a daily journal on TL that is) it could potentially affect the contents of the journal and this whole thing because I might be typing up only what is socially desirable in my opinion.
I doubt many TLers are truly living out this experiment because I intend to cut off all aspects of communication (including online means) as much as possible.
I'll think about whether I should post the journal after my year is over and/or keep a separate/private journal since its contents could be affected by me posting it here.
As always, thanks for the input and I hope all goes well!
Are you going to write a novel or something? I would get too bored not being able to make any type of social interaction. Sounds like fun though. I hope you get back to us after a year and tell us how it went.
I did something similar about a year ago for a month. Although that was... substance induced, nevertheless I had absolutely ZERO human contact (no calls, no writing, no blogs, NOTHING) for ~5 weeks. I didn't even go out for food/necessities because I had stocked up before hand.
Let me tell you; I went more crazy because of the lack of human interaction than the substances. We each have varies degrees of "social tolerance", but eventually you're going to change for the worse because we're social animals.
I mean the choice is yours but personally this sounds like an awful idea to me. Doing this in college, a place where you are supposed to make new friends that you will keep for your entire life and learn how to be "social" in a different setting? Of course there is some level of superficial interaction when you are meeting new people. It's just something you have to go through to find the people you actually like. I applaud your initiative to do this as an experiment. However, I am also worried about long-term effects this could have on your relationships. Friendships/relationships can unintentionally die out when interaction starts to decrease, "out of sight out of mind." Idk, this sounds extreme and something you should think about carefully. Relationships are too damn valuable to be risking through "experimentations."
EDIT: I am making assumptions here but from what I can gather it doesn't sound like you are a social / outgoing person to begin with. (I apologize if I am wrong about this). I am concerned whether that could get even worse after your experiment.
This is an interesting experiment, though, one would never do myself! I moved 1000 miles for grad school last august and intentionally kept myself from having a life to do better with classes. Now that classes are over (and passed!) I find it extraordinarily depressing to only have a few buddies, no social niche, and at most one outing every 2-3 weeks. I'm unhappy with it and working on finding that niche, but for the life of me I can't understand why you'd INTENTIONALLY do this!
Still, it will make for an interesting case study and I'm sure the psych professor has no problem letting you be your own guinea pig.
You mentioned posting a regular blog, but do you also plan on reading the responses? It isn't direct communication, but people talking about you certainly gives rise to the attention-seeking a lot of people do in social situations. I'm an engineer, so I have no idea if that matters...
lol I dunno about this idea man, I think you need human interaction otherwise you'll go fucking crazy. Good luck if you decide to do this... see you in a year?
Don't want your next blog post to read: I am Howard Hughes reborn! Quickly I must continue to bottle and store my urine and hair...
EPT
(you have a really cool name).
