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My hair is grey, but not with years, Nor grew it white In a single night, As men’s have grown from sudden fears: My limbs are bow’d, though not with toil, But rusted with a vile repose, For they have been a dungeon’s spoil, And mine has been the fate of those To whom the goodly earth and air Are bann’d, and barr’d—forbidden fare…
The Prisoner of Chillon, By Lord Byron (George Gordon)1
I
was twelve and just beginning the seventh grade in school when my new
English teacher assigned us the task of reading collections of poetry
and choosing a stanza of a poem to memorize. Somehow, I found my way to
Lord Byron and his magnificent work, The Prisoner of Chillon. I can
still recite it at will.
I
was engrossed with the idea of being a captive, of being isolated and
locked up, and I spent time contemplating how I could survive such a
fate. Perhaps it was very early Bible stories, like the description of
Daniel in the lion’s den, lost in the mists of childhood, that fed my
imagination. Or my discovery, a year earlier, that local stray dogs were
being held captive in a ramshackle shed at the edge of the town dump.
The pleading eyes of the six or eight captive dogs haunted me, and I
returned again and again to that shed the city called an animal shelter.
I
do remember concluding that despite all other hardships, as long as my
mind was intact, I could survive anything, even a dungeon. But I was
just a twelve-year-old child.
solitary confinement, noun ˈsɑl·əˌter·i kənˈfɑɪn·mənt/ the condition of being kept alone in a room in prison2
Solitary confinement has been used for centuries to control prisoners.3 In
recent decades, the practice has been used to control or punish what
many would classify as political prisoners, including journalist Julian
Assange and Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who allegedly provided documents
to WikiLeaks.4 Many articles and papers have been published debating and criticizing the practice of solitary confinement.5,6,7
Most
poignantly, an essay by Atul Gawande in 2009 describes the inhumane
experiments of Harry Harlow, a University of Wisconsin professor of
psychology, on infant rhesus monkeys in the 1950s.8 The
separation at birth from contact with any other monkeys, including the
mother, led them to become “profoundly disturbed, given to staring
blankly and rocking in place for long periods, circling their cages
repetitively, and mutilating themselves.” The article continued to
describe the effects of the isolation: In
a later study on the effect of total isolation from birth, the
researchers found that the test monkeys, upon being released into a
group of ordinary monkeys, “usually go into a state of emotional shock,
characterized by . . . autistic self-clutching and rocking.” Harlow
noted, “One of six monkeys isolated for three months refused to eat
after release and died five days later.” After several weeks in the
company of other monkeys, most of them adjusted—but not those who had
been isolated for longer periods. “Twelve months of isolation almost
obliterated the animals socially,” Harlow wrote. They became permanently
withdrawn, and they lived as outcasts—regularly set upon, as if
inviting abuse. Other
psychologists repeated and amplified the studies and findings, leading
the way to massive reform culturally and legally regarding the treatment
of children. (The abuse of animals in Harlow’s studies gave strength to
the animal rights movement.)
The
author of the New Yorker article, Gawande, then gets to the nub of his
essay pointing out that much less has been considered regarding the
effects of brief and prolonged isolation of adults. He surveys various
reports — from prisoners of war and astronauts to solo long-distance
sailors, examining how they felt and how they experienced their
isolation along with other deprivations. The desolate loneliness that
would overcome these explorers and others alone for months was reported
to be the most difficult challenge. Among
our most benign experiments are those with people who voluntarily
isolate themselves for extended periods. Long-distance solo sailors, for
instance, commit themselves to months at sea. They face all manner of
physical terrors: thrashing storms, fifty-foot waves, leaks, illness.
Yet, for many, the single most overwhelming difficulty they report is
the “soul-destroying loneliness,” as one sailor called it. Astronauts
have to be screened for their ability to tolerate long stretches in
tightly confined isolation, and they come to depend on radio and video
communications for social contact.9 The
problem of isolation goes beyond ordinary loneliness, however. Consider
what we’ve learned from hostages who have been held in solitary
confinement—from the journalist Terry Anderson, for example, whose
extraordinary memoir, “Den of Lions,” recounts his seven years as a
hostage of Hezbollah in Lebanon…. Gawande
continued in his New Yorker article to describe Terry Anderson’s report
of the experience and effects of seven years in captivity: He
missed people terribly, especially his fiancée and his family. He was
despondent and depressed. Then, with time, he began to feel something
more. He felt himself disintegrating. It was as if his brain were
grinding down. A month into his confinement, he recalled in his memoir,
“The mind is a blank. Jesus, I always thought I was smart. Where are all
the things I learned, the books I read, the poems I memorized? There’s
nothing there, just a formless, gray-black misery. My mind’s gone dead.
God, help me.” In
reviewing these findings about imprisonment and solitary confinement,
it is clear that solitary confinement, while sometimes done to protect
prisoners from other inmates (for instance, when police officers are
incarcerated), is often being used, as it has been from the beginning,
to further punish.
To
their credit, I notice that criticism of solitary confinement in the
prison systems was most often expressed by reformers on the Left.
Criticism of solitary confinement in the mental institutions was more
broadly politically based. But all the criticisms have been muted, never
rising to a national level of awareness demanding change.
Julie
Kelly blew open the silence around J6 with the release and promotional
interviews about her book, January 6. Kelly, along with some brave
family members of J6 prisoners, have been speaking out about the
extensive solitary confinement and other tortures and neglects these
confined prisoners are suffering, most of whom have still not gone to
trial.10
Looking
back to the developing plans for COVID-19 and the takeover of the
world, I am struck now by how many of the imposed “public health safety
measures” were indeed requirements that isolated one individual from
another.
Perhaps
the most terrible of all was the isolation of patients from family,
friends, and advocates. Anyone sick with COVID was not allowed to be
seen or accompanied in hospital by family. Those classified as sick at
home were ordered to isolate in a separate room with a separate bathroom
until well, a recovery period that often took weeks in 2020.
The
masks were also dreadfully socially isolating by cloaking identity,
putting up a physical barrier between two communicating human beings.
This was also true of the demands for six feet of distance between
individuals and for the no physical contact rules. Handshakes and other
physically connecting gestures go back into the deep mists of time in
cultures all over the world. To ban the traditional greetings of an
entire people is a hubris that knows no bounds, both authoritarian and
humiliating, as we struggle to figure out how to greet one another,
achieving awkwardly, at best, an elbow tap. The
imposition of these strategies in schools and with young children are
beginning to show signs of long-term harm to the children.11,12,13,14,15
I
am struck by the cruelty and malevolence of the imposed restrictions
and rules of the COVID-19 era. There is so much coincidence in the rules
actually replicating circumstances that have proven in the past to be
destructive and torturous to the spirit of both higher animals and
humans. Too much coincidence for it to be happenstance!
We
know evil has always been with us on this earth. But evil used to lurk
in dark alleys, hiding from the sunshine. Now, it is emboldened,
swaggering about in broad daylight and ordering us about, demanding that
we wound, humiliate, and torture one another and submit to all the
irrational orders and to doses of toxic and often deadly injections.
We
need to open our eyes. Cling to our rationality, to our reason, and to
our God. Then we need to reject evil. Reject the humiliation. Reject the
irrational and wounding behaviors and rituals being demanded of us.
Take back our dignity and reclaim our sovereignty. Primary author: Ginger Ross Breggin
References: 1 The Prisoner of Chillon by Lord Byron (George… | Poetry Foundation 2 https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/solitary-confinement 3 Solitary Confinement: Punishment Or Cruelty? : NPR 4 Is Solitary Confinement A Form Of Torture For Army’s Alleged WikiLeaks’ Source? : The Two-Way : NPR 5 Solitary Confinement: Punishment Or Cruelty? : NPR 6 Ban solitary confinement for youth in care of the federal government | The Hill 7 How Solitary Confinement Hurts the Teenage Brain – The Atlantic 8 Is Long-Term Solitary Confinement Torture? | The New Yorker 9 Is Long-Term Solitary Confinement Torture? | The New Yorker 10 Amazon.com:
January 6: How Democrats Used the Capitol Protest to Launch a War on
Terror Against the Political Right: 9781637582640: Kelly, Julie, Smith,
Lee: Books 11 A scoping review of the impacts of COVID-19 physical distancing measures on vulnerable population groups | Nature Communications 12 [Impact
of social distancing for covid-19 on the psychological well-being of
youths: a systematic review of the literature] – PubMed (nih.gov) 13 Impact Of Covid-19 On Children’s Social Skills (forbes.com) 14 Indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on children relate to the child’s age and experience | Pediatric Research (nature.com) 15 Influence
of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic on physical activity
in children: A scoping review of the literature – PMC (nih.gov)
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