Happy Sunday! Welcome to the first edition of Etcetera. This month’s newsletter includes my musings on isolation, ‘Meet My Friend’ my regular Q&A which this month features astrophotographer Josh Kirkley, and finishes with a list of what I’ve consumed and written this month. If you're new here - subscribe to get next months newsletter.
As I spent last night reliving what ‘real-life’ felt like by watching a DJ set on Youtube, I was struck by how profoundly altered my feelings about my life and the world are from this period of prolonged isolation.
This isolation feels akin to moving to a new country on my own. At first, there is a period of ‘foreigner awe’, where you walk around in awe of this new city (or walk around your living room pleased to be working from home). Eventually, a feeling of isolation can creep in. Slowly at first, bleeding into the corners, but if something major happens - like you or your family get ill - that feeling of isolation suddenly floods you. It’s a common experience for ex-pats, aptly called ‘ex-pat depression’.
I have spent the last few months thinking about the role of self-perception in this extended isolation. Self-perception theory suggests that we learn about ourselves in the same way that we learn about others; we observe our own behaviour around other people, and then we prescribe meaning to our own behaviour. In other words, as Goffman writes in his seminal work “The Presentation of Self” —when we are in the presence of others we learn about ourselves. We learn both from how we act (what we wear, what we say, what we do), and also from how others react to us (do they laugh at our jokes, do they smile when we speak, am I liked?’).
In the absence of participation in an external world, are we learning less about ourselves? Or, are we somehow learning more?
I watched a documentary the other week about ‘Hikikomori’. Hikikomori is a form of severe social withdrawal, where adolescents and young adults in Japan become recluses in their parents’ homes, unable to work or go to school for months or years.
Young Japanese people one day decide that they are done with leaving the house. They often spend hours each day on the internet, their sleep patterns often get messed up, and years go by without meaningful employment or education, and then they feel trapped out of society. There are new not-for-profits popping up in Japan offering reintegration services to support the ‘epidemic’ of Hikikomori.
It made me wonder, what is it about having extended social withdrawal that makes one feel trapped out of society?
This reminds me of Neil Ansell, a man who accidentally became a social recluse. While living in an overly expensive, 20 person apartment in the 1980s, he saw an ad to live in the Welsh mountains for only £100 per year, so he moved. At his Welsh house, not a single person walked by the house for 5 years.
“When you’re alone, you start to lose your sense of who you are, because you don’t have an image of yourself reflected in the way that other people react to you. So I think to some extent, when I returned I had to rediscover who I could be in a social setting.” - Neil Ansell
Neil’s account highlights how being withdrawn from others socially for a prolonged period of time, begins to feel like looking in a dirty mirror. Over time, we find it harder and harder to see our reflection.
I was thinking about Hikikomore and Neil Ansell when I watched a recent Netflix show called Away, a show about one crew’s mission to Mars. The show focuses on the crippling feeling of isolation for astronauts.
Meet My Friend ft. Josh Kirkley
Josh is an incredibly popular astrophotographer and astronomy educator in NZ. This month we caught up and spoke about what space can teach us about isolation.
Josh’s beautiful photo of the Milky Way galaxy seen from Lake Pukaki NZ
Nicola: In your experience, how do people generally feel about space?
Josh: “Virtually everyone is interested in space to some degree. The scale, grandeur and the mystery of space. There is so much that is not known. It’s something we can see, even if we can’t understand all of it.
But, there are people who are frightened by the scale and size of the universe, it makes them feel small and insignificant. But I lean the other way, for me, it’s a grounding and humbling thing to know and understand the universe. It’s significant for us as a species to be able to talk about the vastness of the universe.
A lot of young kids are so fascinated with the universe - they want to know about black holes and aliens, and with adults, it really scares them, like they are facing their own mortality when they see the universe.”
Nicola: Can you see similarities in our current isolation, and say, being in space?
Josh: “There are huge parallels between going to space and self-isolating. A huge difference is that Astronauts are literally trained to be in these situations where they are separated from the entire population of the earth, either by themselves or with a small group of people.
Astronauts always report that they miss their friends and families as the biggest thing they miss. Why do you think have we haven’t been to Mars? Often it’s the isolation aspect, sending people so far away from earth for 3-4 years at a time is the most isolated probably any of us could ever feel.
I think it’s hard for people on earth because we aren’t trained for any of this isolation. Astronauts get trained for this. On earth we aren’t trained to be alone. And it has a really detrimental effect on our mental health and our wellbeing in general.
Nicola: Do you think isolation is something they eventually get used to?
Josh: “Well, this reminds me of the story of Apollo 11 back in 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had gone down to the moon, and the 3rd astronaut, Michael Collins spent time in the command module which continued to orbit the moon.
There was a period of time where he was the most isolated person in history. He was physically alone, and he would go into the shadow of the moon where he couldn’t even contact earth. You can kind of imagine the mental toll that would have on you as you imagine you are literally the most isolated person in the universe.
But interestingly being in space often prompts a profound cognitive shift. People get a new perspective. It’s called the overview effect - it’s a phenomenon commonly experienced by astronauts.
They report this cognitive shift in how they view the world. Basically, they stop seeing the world as countries and borders. In space, they just see this one single organism which we all share and is our home, and it changes the way they see the world.
Often they come back much more empathetic, caring and understanding of our duty to look after this place, this one home that we have. Astronauts all report the thing they love the most is looking out the window in space and seeing the earth in all it’s glory. Seeing the earth as this living and breathing thing that we share.
Navigating that new mind-frame back on earth is challenging though. For example, in one of the later Apollo missions, one of the astronauts recalls he was standing on the moon looking at the earth, just a dot floating in space.
He looked back at the spacecraft which had a plaque on it that read “we come in peace for all mankind”. And at the time of the Apollo missions, the US was dropping napalm bombs on civilians in Vietnam. He recalled that he wished he could just take all the world leaders at the time to the surface of the moon and turn them around make them look at the earth and shake some sense into them and let them see this one place we share is all of ours.
How can we claim to be a peaceful civilisation when all we do is kill each other and kill the planet as if we have another one to go to?”
Perhaps akin to looking out at the vastness of space, people facing the vastness of prolonged isolation in the face of a pandemic are also coming to terms with their mortality. But maybe we can collectively refrain this experience to one of curiosity, scale, and grandeur, focusing more on the mystery of ourselves finally liberated from the presentation of self.
Just as space travel is essential for us to understand the universe, maybe this pandemic can be significant for our species to be able to talk about the vastness of isolation that plagues so many people, even in their pandemic free life.
As Josh describes, the astronauts are trained for these situations. Maybe we can finally adapt and improve our education to train people in emotional intelligence and mental health tools. Remember, it was in 2018 that the UK government introduced it’s first Loneliness Minister and loneliness strategy. These feelings of loneliness and isolation were impacting people long before the pandemic, perhaps we can finally start to address these issues out in the open instead of treating loneliness as a form of 21st-century epidemic.
Most importantly, on my most optimistic days, I can feel my own cognitive shift, my own overview effect kicking in. It’s these days where I too am struck by how the world is so much more than nation-states and country borders. I feel hopeful when I read about how covid could finally prompt a green recovery.
On my better days, I ponder that perhaps it’s not just me who has experienced the overview effect in isolation. Maybe many people are beginning to understand that this planet is just one single organism which we all share.
Yet, I can’t deny that on days like today, where the news is filled with stories of vaccine nationalism, I too find myself looking back at the equivalent of the spacecraft plaques which read “stay home, be kind, we are facing covid together”, and find myself wishing I could take all the world leaders to space and shake some sense into them.
How long before we realise that what we learn from being together far exceeds what we learn from being alone? How long before we realise that no one country can succeed in this covid battle, or in the climate crisis, by protecting our own and forgetting the rest. Each moment we waste forgetting that we are all on a precious blue dot, floating together in space, is another moment we delay making meaningful progress towards the issues that really matter.
Thank you for being one of the 6500+ readers who read my writing in January. This month 10% of the profit made from my readership was redistributed to Black Minds Matter UK, an organisation providing free 12 week courses of therapy to Black individuals in the U.K. If you have a cause you want to nominate, let me know in the comments or on Instagram.
In the February edition of Etcetera, I will explore the psychedelic revolution. If you have any specific questions for the Q&A - leave a comment.
Some things I wrote in January:
Some things I consumed in January:
Katherine May’s book ‘Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times’. This book was the antidote I needed to lockdown this month. It’s a cosy read - and will make you feel reflective and OK with being trapped inside in -2°c.
Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem. If you haven’t watched this then immediately stop reading and watch this poem! Bonus - her interview with Anderson Cooper - brilliant.
A good read if you are also disturbed about the proliferation of facial recognition - Algorithms associating appearance and criminality have a dark past. Bonus - in NZ police conducted a trial of controversial facial recognition software without consulting their own bosses or the Privacy Commissioner.
Netflix series ‘Away’ about a team of 5 people trying to make it to mars. It’s an interesting take on the human factors which could potentially jeopardise a space mission to Mars and a cool lockdown watch.
Neil Ansel’s article about living in the Welsh mountains.
Hikikomori documentary, it’s a great 20-minute youtube watch which you won’t regret.
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Great to read, Nicola 😊
💜💜💜