Day 82

Counterpoint

by A Windswept Rock on a Bare Hillside

When I read yesterday’s Isolation Log entry, it made me so upset I sat down immediately to write a counterpoint to Mr. George’s misguided view.

I, a Windswept Rock on a Bare Hillside, have experienced thousands of consecutive years of isolation, in contrast to Mr. George’s claimed 82 days, which cannot even be credited, given his own admission that he often goes to his workplace for hours at a time. His claim that “isolation makes it hard to maintain an identity” is rubbish.

Isolation is not only compatible with the maintenance of an identity, I believe a true identity cannot be formed except in isolation. Mr. George was right to say that people are “used to defining ourselves in relation or resistance to other people,” but that runs contrary to his point. A definition of one’s self made in relation or resistance to other people is an anti-identity. Only by standing apart from the rest of the world do we discover who we are outside of the needs, whims, and suggestions of others.

As contemporary philosopher Ben Lazare Mijuskovic wrote, isolation is “a defensive device to thwart the threat of diffusion, of the self’s evaporation before the overwhelming presence of the ‘others’ as it is assaulted by an impersonal, bureaucratic, industrialised, mechanised society or by violent and traumatic interpersonal relations.”

Whatever “identity” is stripped away by isolation is a mask, ipso facto. Its removal is a step toward the discovery of the authentic identity underneath.

Isolation and identity go hand in hand. If Mr. George believes otherwise, he is delusional.