Isolate to Unite: How being isolated for some days with total strangers can help us reinforce the sense of community?
Some words by Thomas Mandl, founder of What Else Europe and participant of 180 Creative Camp 2017.
I have experienced the power of isolation in many different positive ways, like church visits, time alone in nature or time together with others in remote places.
Unfortunately isolation has a lot of negative connotation, due to many bad types of isolation: Countries isolating themselves from the rest of the world, individuals getting isolated by the rest of society, like it happens currently in refugee camps and social isolation happening often closer to us than we think. This could be individuals isolated through domestic violence, diseases, loss of a spouse, un- employment or disabilities, just to name a few. At the same time isolation is a very helpful tool and can achieve even more community and social bound, when it is used in the right way.
Isolate somewhere isolated
Isolation in our everyday environment sometimes only lasts for a couple of hours, before you get distracted or pulled back into your usual life or routine. Except when you live already in complete isolation and you have someone supplying you with food and toilet paper every week, turning off your phone and the door bell could alarm your friends, family, neighbours or the DHL deliverer never reaching someone after some time. Therefore isolation has to happen somewhere out from your usual environment. The more your surrounding knows that you will be isolated for some time, the more they will grant you this isolation without disturbing.
Max vs. Tom
My friend has been isolated in the desert for three days and he told me that it cleaned his head and opened it up for more spiritual things as his mind at one point had thought through everything possible it could think about. This is a ritual performed by Native Americans for a long time and helps individuals to gain new perspectives on life. The importance about this is the time limit and that you are pulled out from isolation again before you get the feeling of being lost or before you get mad. Everyone has either heard of Robinson Crusoe or Cast Away. Tom Hanks played the main role in the movie Cast Away and was nominated for an Oscar playing a system engineer ending up alone on an island after a shipwreck and getting mad due to its isolation. The stories of Max and Tom teach us that isolation has to happen together with someone else. Either there needs to be someone getting you out after a certain time before you get desperate or you should isolate together with others.
The case North Korea
But its also not only about isolating with others. North Korea is probably the most isolated country in the world. From a North Korean perspective this isolation has enabled the country to bundle forces and succeed in building nuclear weapons, which only a few countries have achieved so far. At the same time this unity and power through isolation comes with high costs for North Koreans: Forced labor, prison sentences and even executions have become necessary for the regime to maintain its power and isolation from foreign influences. Every human has the right to life, liberty and security of person, as this is not granted in North Korea, people flee their country and its isolation must be seen as a bad form of isolation. North Koreans that leave their country need to visit special schools to learn how to live in the 21st century.
The story of North Korea teaches us that even isolation together with others has to be controlled. This can only happen when isolation always keeps itself open for the rest of the world. Either by bringing the outside world in or by the individuals returning back into their usual surrounding after their isolation. All the bad examples of isolation have in common, that people were either forced to it, or isolated without a time frame or alone. The power of isolation has to be controlled in order for it to change individuals in a positive way and to create unity.
Bad Gastein — Good Isolation
I just came back from a one week trip to Bad Gastein, a very remote place in the Austrian Alps. Bad Gastein is also called “Manhattan of the Mountains” due to his brutal concrete buildings and abandoned Grand Hotels forming an unusual skyline next to rocks and a huge waterfall. Friends of mine have a wonderful hotel there and when I planned my trip I thought that I would spend most of my time alone, but it was actually the time I spend with other guests and my friends that made the trip special. I met people working with similar projects like me and being away from our usual surrounding helped us to get new perspectives on our work and projects we were in. One day two other guests and me decided to do a hike together and we ended up walking through snow covered landscapes without trails and up a mountain without knowing were we would end up. We had to jump over half frozen rivers by holding each others arms and found a way down in the end. We had good conversations and shared great experiences together and felt a strong sense of unity.
I have experienced this kind of community through isolation several times already, like at 180 Creative Camp, where about 100 creatives gather every summer in the remote city of Abrantes in Portugal to create together, where people step out of their everyday life and come together in one location to unite for one cause. When I gathered creatives from different countries in Venice two years ago, I could feel the power of creative minds thrown together in a place they have not been to before with people they did not meet before. After spending one week together in Venice we all became friends and still have a very tight bond together. This week changed everyone of us and gave birth to a project I am continuing ever since. This year I will gather creatives from all over Europe for one week in Antwerp, to inspire each other, get inspired by a new environment, network and co-create together in workshops. Isolate to unite!
