Some people would be perfectly happy in a situation where there was limited to no stimulus; others would go quite mad in very short order. I’m not sure how much of that is due to innate nature, and how much is due to cultural programming. As with nearly all human behavior, I think it is a mix of both factors–Some people are culturally conditioned to have other people or things around them, and others… Not so much. One recalls that family of Russian peasants that went into the Siberian forests after the Revolution, and which was not found again until the 1970s, having missed out on everything in between. They weren’t even aware of Stalin or WWII…

The article is derived from a full-length book. I was a little disappointed that the full-length book (referenced in the article) had only a few additional direct quotes from Mr. Knight. The book gives considerably more background & follow up, and includes a fascinating chapter on other hermits & sensory deprivation scenarios, including shipwrecks and cave experiments — some of which turned out fine, some badly. It is a fascinating field.

Granted, after a couple of years I managed to get the discussions across the corridor at high volume down to far less than daily, but there’s always something.

I don’t need to like the man to have gotten tired long ago. I’ve got real things to think about.

SO it goes. So I couldn’t object to a bit of respite, but it shouldn’t have to be me in the box.

On a more serious note, I have always been above average in readiness to enjoy solitude, so I’m on board up to a point. But I would really want to think about it- there’s avoiding talking to folks, then there’s hiding out at home, then there’s cutting off even friends, then there’s cutting off web comms and TV and music, and then at last there’s total darkness, sound isolation, and sleeping on a bathroom floor for 30 days.

I’ve wondered what sensory deprivation tanks or anechoic chambers would be like as experiences, but as I get older I lose the easy assumption that I would be able to handle let alone enjoy either, mentally or even physically. Too many unknowns. I suppose if anyone offers me the chance I’d need to try either.

Just call me Squirrelly Joe, because that’d be my state of mind.

Guess the monastery isn’t my retirement plan after all.

I think a lot of people would be surprised at the crap humans have tolerated, and what they have done historically. The peasants in parts of Europe used to essentially go into hibernation in the winter, and would emerge in the spring like so many bears, none the worse for wear. Of course, that was well before the modern era, so we’ve forgotten all that.

Before a friend of mine ran out of college money and had to join the Army, he’d been at some school back east, and eked out a good deal of his expenses by serving as a test dummy for various experiences. He described one test they did where they were examining the effects of sensory deprivation, and they had left him locked in a sensory deprivation chamber from some time on a Friday afternoon until Sunday, when the researcher realized they’d forgotten to get him out at the end of his session, which was supposed to be later Friday afternoon. His description of it all was that it was an interesting experience, because he had no idea what had happened–He thought it was the regular session the way it was supposed to go, and didn’t clue in that he’d been in there for nearly 48 hours until he was getting dressed to leave. The graduate student who’d left him in there was acting weird, and extremely solicitous, which made my friend think something was wrong. He thought it was because he’d had to use the bathroom while in the tank, and was apologetic, but the real reason was that he’d just set some kind of record, and they usually took people out of those tanks under such circumstances in a state of mental disturbance. He was disturbing to the researcher because he was just like “Hey, can I get my check now? I want to pay some bills, this weekend…”. At that facility, everyone else who’d even done half the time in the tank he had needed counseling… Him? “Hey, it was kinda nice… I’ve never gotten such good rest!”.

Humans are wildly variable…