Cabin Fever: The Philosophy of Isolation [with Lars Svendsen]
How the COVID-19 pandemic may provide us with something more than just fear and loneliness
“So much is at stake now, and this pandemic could be game changer.”
— Lars Svensen
In his timeless book, Walden, Henry David Thoreau fittingly devotes a short chapter to his experience with solitude during his two year stay in a small cabin that he had built with his own hands in 1845. The work details his philosophical experiences with self-sufficiency while he willingly and enthusiastically did something that we’re all currently doing: self-isolating.
“I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighbourhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant.”
— H.D.T.
As we find ourselves in the midst of a collective self-confinement like none we’ve experienced in our lifetimes, the world watches itself slowly…
