What are the psychological effects of one becoming a hermit? I've read segments of Rousseau's Solitary Walker, some things written by Epictetus, and a few Taoist's thoughts on hermits, but I haven't read anything about the psychology of a hermit. Have there been any studies on this subject?
They are probably autistic in the first place. I doubt there are any effects, except the relief from having to deal with people.
I would think that the urge to be a hermit is the effect of a psychological disorder rather than the other way round. Homo sapiens is a pack-social species like dogs and dolphins. We have a hard-wired instinct about ten million years old to live with a small group of companions whom we know intimately and most of whom are blood relatives. We've spent twelve thousand years using our massive forebrains to override that instinct and become MORE social, so that we're now comfortable in much larger groups and so that most of us feel some rudimentary kinship with people on the other side of the world who are mere abstractions. To think that two of us could give birth to a member of the species who is comfortable being LESS social, not merely less social than we are but less social than the ORIGINAL humans and even less social than our ape ancestors--that is quite an aberration.
I really can't see that humans are becoming more social. People spend much more time now engaged in solitary activities like watching TV or sitting in front of a computer, video games, etc. People also have fewer close friends than thirty years ago. Technology has destroyed community. Also, the number of children with borderline autism is skyrocketing. This could be the result of pollutants. But, I think it's intersting how these children also look like the next step in human evolution - highly intelligent people, with hyper-specialized interests (work is becoming more specialized), and little need for human contact.
grover makes a damn good point. I made similar observations not too long ago. Technology is replacing our social lives to an extent, and I fear this situation will refuse to improve. I would venture to guess that the goal of complete isolation and abandonment is clarity of thought or "purity of heart". But I cannot see how this can lead to anything but delusion from lack of human contact. There have been cases where people have lead isolated lives and were still nutcases - Ted Kaczinski would be one that springs to mind. Then we have also had Philosophers who lead such lives. An argument for this might go like, "materialism is the antithesis of 'purity', which can only be acheived by abandoning the material world."
Perhaps. But the individual sardines don't know or care about any of the other sardines! You can pack humans together in major cities, but you can't get them to interact and have anything that resembles a "community" of humans. It's just more sardines in the can, that's all, with none of them knowing or caring about the others. Baron Max
Just one example: After dinner people used to sit on their front porches and walk around and "visit" with their neighbors...that ended when the TV was invented.
It's not only technology, it's mass society/economy in all theirs entirety destroy remnants of old traditional societies. Technology is just a tool.
I remember times when friends/neighbors/relatives could just walk in to house unannounced&unscheduled to ask for something or just to chat. It's rather rarity these days even in my, technologically rather backward, motherland. Total free market seems does destroying, one need to run faster and faster and once exhausted (not only physically) stare into some kind of a screen to recuperate in the "parallel reality"; + status issue + forcefed individualism+ crash of traditions + specialization + .... Technology, again, is just a tool.
Yes, technology is a tool. But, you make it sound like the tools don't have an effect beyond the use the were designed for. I don't think anyone would say that the only importance of the atom bomb is that it is a tool that can destroy cities. Its significance is much greater than that.
Significant of what? Ha, are you joking? Significant like mankind can now destroy the world with the push of a button.
You're right I guess. But gee, that really makes me wonder why they called it the "nuclear revolution" since apparently it changed nothing.
