Isolation from Others Can Be Deadly
What language would you speak if no one ever taught you a language?
I doubt that’s a question any of us have stayed up nights pondering. But it has been pondered. If the claims are correct, four times in history an experiment has been attempted to discover the origin of human language. The most well-known was conducted in the 13th century by Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor.
Here was his thinking: take a bunch of infants and give them nourishment through a host of nurses, but don’t give them anything else. Absolutely nothing else. Don’t talk to them. Don’t even hold them. Just feed the little fellas. Frederick II figured that, without any outside interaction, these children would eventually talk, but they would talk with the language that God originally instilled in Adam and Eve. Clever, huh? Would these youngsters start speaking Hebrew? Greek? Latin? Pig Latin? Hmm. Time would tell.
Only time did not tell. The infants did not live long enough. According to a monk named Salimbene , he wrote in his Chronicles that “he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments.”[1] Without any human interaction through speech, touch, or even a smile, each infant died.
There is debate as to whether these experiments actually happened, but more recent experiments can verify a similar outcome. In the 1970s. Dr. Harry Harlow of the University of Wisconsin–Madison experimented on monkeys to see if he could trigger depression through extreme isolation. Emphasis on the word extreme. He actually called the chambers he built to isolate the infant monkeys the “pit of despair.”
From infancy, these monkeys were completely isolated. They were fed and watered but couldn’t see out and had no contact with any humans or other animals. After thirty days, it was observed that these monkeys were deeply disturbed—and some were kept in this state for a year. When finally released, they did not interact with others. Some refused to eat and starved themselves to death.
So here we have one possibly apocryphal story from medieval history and one from recent history, and both of them point to a key truth: we need interaction with others. We cannot live or thrive without it. By the way, the scientific community then and now condemned Dr, Harlow’s monkey experiments. As Wayne C. Booth wrote: “Harry Harlow and his colleagues go on torturing their nonhuman primates decade after decade, invariably proving what we all knew in advance—that social creatures can be destroyed by destroying their social ties.”[2]
Social creatures can be destroyed by destroying their social ties. We were created by God to be just such social creatures. After all He created, the first time God said, “It is not good,” was when he saw that the man was alone (Gen. 2:18). While many want to put this in the context of marriage since God turned around and gave Adam a wife, it is equally important to note that Adam needed interaction with others.
And so do you. Zoom calls don’t cut it. Hanging out with your favorite move characters on Netflix is not enough. You were created for community: living, vibrant, touching, hugging community.
Get involved and connected to a small group Bible study. And if you’re in a group, reach out to that isolated person and bring them to the group. They need the interaction—and so do you.
“Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their efforts. For if either falls, his companion can lift him up; but pity the one who falls without another to lift him up. Also, if two lie down together, they can keep warm; but how can one person alone keep warm?” (Ecc. 4:9-11).
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[1] https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/salimbene1.asp.
[2] Booth, Wayne C. Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent, Volume 5, of University of Notre Dame, Ward-Phillips lectures in English language and literature, University of Chicago Press, 1974, p. 114.
