I recently subscribed to Brendan Howard, author of Reading University Library and Pocket University and podcaster of What People Do. My obsession started with his post Experience vs Wisdom which connects with many topics I'm interested. Howard referenced “The Bet” by Anton Chekhov, so I read and became obsessed with a few topics related to the story. And now I'm seeing connection everywhere, from Taoism to hermits to solitary confinement. Another post by Howard caught my eye Why Do Anything? It's a very good question. One that isn't so obvious if you've been reading the The Bet or Tao te Ching.
When I read "The Bet," I loved the premise of the story. Chekhov, writing in the late 1880s, displays a death penalty debate that is relevant in 2023. From there a "wild, ridiculous bet" captures so many aspects of what makes a human life meaningful.
In the story, you should read it yourself, a young lawyer lives as a prisoner in solitary confinement for fifteen years. At one point he reads only the Gospels for a year. At the end, SPOILER ALERT, when the lawyer breaks the bet minutes before he would have won to live the hermit life, I thought that's not quite right. A Christian doesn't do that, but maybe a Taoist does. I was wrong about the Christians. They have a rich history of hermits, see list below. But my misconception led me to write my own version of "The Bet."
From there I looked up solitary confinement. I found a bunch of fun cliches within the literature. The US solitary confinement origins go back to the Quakers, who locked people in solitary confinement with a Bible, very appropriate to The Bet. Charles Dickens, in his American Notes, wrote that the Eastern State Penitentiary performs a "slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body." I found that ~20% of US prisoners, state and federal, spend some time in solitary confinement. There are multiple reasons including prisoner safety, overall security, control contraband, prisoner evaluations, and punishments. Furthermore, in the US, a Yale study in 2001, found about 6,000 prisoners had been in solitary confinement for over a year. The UN has declared solitary confinement over 15 days as torture and many prisons and states in Europe are adopting that standard. US states like New York are also moving in the same direction as the UN.
The effects of solitary confinement on prisoners are very bad. Prisoners who spend time in solitary confinement are correlated with a lot of negative outcomes related to mental health and self harm. The conclusion the articles I read assume is that solitary confinement increases these risks. That's probably true, but a less obvious conclusion that I didn't find in my research is that people more likely to have mental health issues or self harm might be more likely to commit offenses that would result in solitary confinement. I'm not suggesting any moral claims. Whether solitary confinement is justified or should be used is for another rant. I'm curious what are the effects of solitary confinement? I need to know for my story!
If there was a random controlled study that forced solitary confinement on random Americans, I'd predict the results would be negative. Humans are social animals. None of our ancestors survived and reproduced living in solitude, and yet there is an interesting flip side.
People who voluntarily confine themselves to solitude benefit!
People pay thousands of dollars to go to mediation retreats where many are kept in solitary confinement for all or most of the day. It's ironic compared to the prisoners. Even more extreme and rare, some prefer and spend years in solitude with little to no human contact. I collected a list of famous-ish people as I read and researched, see below.
But these people are a selection bias too. They are choosing to leave. As the commenter Wattsian suggested, they are running away. Some, maybe many, might be running from something more than seeking for something. Either way, they decided before the confinement that it was a good or better idea. The prisoner in my story isn't going to be like the tens of thousands of American prisoners in solitary confinement, or the thousands spending years in confinement. The character won't be retreater. My character, like Chekhov's, is going to be one of those rare hermits, who society mostly thinks highly of, who prefers to live decades of their life in solitude.
My favorite hermit is Christopher Knight. I highly recommend the book The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel. It tells the story of Christopher Knight, The North Pond Hermit. He spent 27 years in voluntary solitary confinement near the North Ponds of Maine. He accidentally had two brief interactions with humans in his 27 years of isolation. He lived off burglarizing the local population and committed close to 1,000 burglaries. He was caught, plead guilty, served several months, and as of last reported information lives with his family in Maine. His story is incredible. I was sad to finish the book, and I was sad to hear Mr. Knight returned to society. This is a quote from one of his brief interaction with the author Finkel:
“Solitude bestows an increase in something valuable ... my perception. But ... when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. There was no audience, no one to perform for ... To put it romantically, I was completely free."
Conclusion
In my version of The Bet, the prisoner is inspired by Mr. Knight! He'll read the Bible although not for a year. He'll read the Tao te Ching too. But he'll read more than that as well. He'll try to read everything. So what will he conclude? Will he leave a manuscript like Lao Tzu? Will he break the bet early? I don't know yet. I'm still writing and reading. Looking for a better ending than Chekhov. I won't be satisfied unless I can find a better ending than Chokhov's ending. Looking for a better ending than Chekhov makes me appreciate and find his story and ending more and more satisfying.
The question that ties back to Mr. Howard's other post: why do anything? Yes, why? My bias takes over from here. My Darwinian, existentialist and utilitarian beliefs don't provide me a difinitive answer. And I can't help but have at least a little envy of the leaf eaters. The leaf eaters who, "They eat, eat, eat the leaves of the lotus tree, and they don’t care about anything else. They’re happy. Stupid, dull, useless, but blissful." Are they any more useless than a cow or sloth? I kind of like the idea or interpretation of them being Taoist.
Is the Tao correct? Of course not, but then the Taoist will tell you. The Tao that can be told, named, explained, choose your verb, isn't the true Tao. I think this is a cop out, but it expresses a reality of human perception. It hints back to experience and wisdom. It's what the hermits know. It's what the lawyer in "The Bet" learned. It will be what my character has to learn.
That's an unsatisfying conclusion, but it will have to do for now.
Revised 11 Jun 2023.
My List of Solitary Figures
Solitary confinement (involuntary, aka Hell)
Robert Stark- “It’s a hell all to yourself”
Thomas Silverstein- “Buried alive for an entire lifetime.”
Todd Ashcur- “A continuous silent screaming.”
John Catanza- He was glad to lose his sanity because it might release him from the horror of reality.
Isolation (voluntary) (heaven- or connection with self and nature, not hell for many)
Christopher Thomas Knight- “solitude bestows an increase in something valuable ... my perception. But ... when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. There was no audience, no one to perform for ... To put it romantically, I was completely free."
Alexander Bichkov, lived alone in a Russian forest for nearly 20 years and was shot to death by police (probably more like Hell)
Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber – lived as a hermit for 25 years in Montana (probably more like Hell)
Carl McCunn, wildlife photographer who became stranded in the Alaskan wilderness and eventually killed himself when he ran out of supplies (Heaven to Hell)
Richard Proenneke, spent 30 years at Twin Lakes in the Alaskan wilderness
Agafia Lykova, last survivor of the Lykov family who lived in the Russian wilderness starting in 1936, without contact to the outside world for 40 years
Tom Neale: Neale spent 16 years living alone on a small island in the South Pacific. He documented his experience in the book "An Island to Oneself."
Alexander Selkirk: Selkirk was a Scottish sailor who spent over four years living alone on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. His story was the inspiration for the novel "Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe. Alexander Selkirk's journal, unfortunately, has not survived. However, based on his eventual rescue and the accounts of his rescuers, it is known that he became very skilled at hunting and surviving on the island, and he learned to appreciate the simple pleasures of life. He was said to have a newfound respect for nature and the environment, and he became more introspective and reflective.
St. Anthony the Great (251-356): Considered the father of Christian monasticism, St. Anthony lived as a hermit in the Egyptian desert for over 80 years. His life and teachings inspired countless others to follow in his footsteps.
St. Simeon Stylites (c. 390-459): This Syrian monk lived for 37 years atop a pillar, practicing extreme asceticism and attracting thousands of followers. He is known as the first pillar saint and is venerated in both the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.
Julian of Norwich (1342-1416): This English anchoress lived in a small cell attached to a church for most of her life, devoting herself to prayer and contemplation. She is known for her mystical writings, particularly her book "Revelations of Divine Love."
Thomas Merton (1915-1968): This American Trappist monk lived for many years at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, where he wrote extensively on spirituality, social justice, and interfaith dialogue. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential spiritual writers of the 20th century.
