The Male – a prey to the Social Isolation - Dealing with Divorce - Discussion Forum

This article has been inspired from “Trapped in a confined space, the human mind begins to unravel”

Today’s Bangalore edition of the DNA carried an article titled – Trapped in a confined space, the human mind begins to unravel on page *. The article talked about the psychological implications on individuals kept in solitary confinement either knowingly or unknowingly. While I won’t go into the minute details of the article, I would take some quoted texts,

“A couple of years ago, the BBC aired a special show called Total Isolation.*people were shut inside a cell in a nuclear bunker, quite in the dark. After, ** hours, the volunteers experienced auditory and visual hallucinations, visions and an inability to sense time. Tests proved that their ability to complete the simplest tasks had deteriorated. One subject's memory capacity fell ** per cent and all the subjects had trouble thinking of words beginning with the letter 'F'.

This was the psychological impact of ** hours of isolation from the world on subjects who knew they were taking part in an experiment, and were assured of physical safety.”

While the above text emphasizes on the importance of non-isolation and ventilation and the physical as well as psychological impacts of the same; there exists another kind of isolation – called The Social Isolation.

Time and again I have talked about the absence of a proper communication channel for men in my various articles; today we will see what we exactly mean by a communication channel.

A communication channel (in context of the social isolation) is a social structure which entails acceptance and curtails expectations.

The existence of such a communication channel exhibits the available sensitization for the issues faced. And the absence of such a communication channel leads to what I call as a “Social Isolation”.

Men, have been victims of this social isolation since time immemorial as history has no reference to any such communication channel existing for men wherein the expectance potential is low and the acceptance level is high. Typically, it’s always been the case wherein expectations from men have been never-ending while acceptance for them is pathetically low.

This has also been the case largely due to the social role attributed to men, which set its foundation from the hunting days, carrying over its glimpses to modern day expectations from men – the role of a PROTECTOR (read UNPAID BODYGUARD) and a PROVIDER (read FREE ATM MACHINE).

During the hunting days, men used to go out for hunting expeditions and as such expectations typically used to be high from men as the survival of the community was dependent on them and one man had to hunt for multiple people – women, children, elders, etc. In such a case if one hunter was hurt or injured, paying too much attention to the injured hunter would bring down the morale of the entire group and thus taking its toll on the hunt-produce which would ultimately hit the dependents and as such boys were traditionally conditioned to be tough, enduring and less expressive. This social conditioning carried with itself the side effect of what is known as the “emotional castration”. The emotions of pain, fear, sharing, complaining, etc. were brutally subdued in order to make out ruthless protectors and providers outta the male.

This process set the foundation of the male world. Hence, we see that the male world starts out with violence – their emotions are murdered in order to satisfy the social requirements. And then the same emotionally castrated males are burdened with the burgeoning responsibility of managing and maintaining the emotional fluctuations of females (mothers, sisters, cousins, girlfriends, wives, other females and elders of the society) and if they fail in the process – which is most likely the case – they are socially ostracized.

This pattern clearly exhibits lack of acceptance for men and the heavy set of expectations from them. And it is this, pattern that ultimately leads to a complete absence of a “Communication Channel” for men.

As a result of this, men have felt a feeling of “social isolation” wherein men run the risk of expressing their problems only with acceptance of guilt on their part, which expresses itself in diverse forms for men as illustrated below:-

*. Men are killing their wives exasperated from their harassment as explained at Male Hatred is spreading crime in the society.

*. Men are committing suicides with skyrocketing rates and also suffering from reduced life-expectancy.

These gory figures and growing incidences of spousal murders by men are an alarming trend and are a direct result of the psychological suffocation that men are feeling due to lack of communication channel which leads to “Social Isolation”.

As explained in the article in DNA (referred to in the beginning of the article), spatial isolation can lead to serious psychological deviations, similarly the Social Isolation of men, as explained, above, can lead to serious socio-logical deviations as well.