Discussion » Statements » Rosie's Corner » Years ago I saw a scifi movie which showed humans living in hive-like structures. Tiny rooms all alike. Isolated. Are we there?
RosieG

Years ago I saw a scifi movie which showed humans living in hive-like structures. Tiny rooms all alike. Isolated. Are we there?

I don't know how many folks live alone. I did for 20 years. It's fine when it's by choice. Isolation. It's also okay if it doesn't impact you hugely as it does some. It's not okay if it wrecks your entire life and the lives of your loved ones. How will this end? I forget how that movie ended but I left the theater and went back home and resumed my life which was under my control.

Adaptation. Constant I guess in small increments and therefore tolerable. But upended completely and for an unknown amount of time? How do you ever ADAPT to that?

Posted - August 10, 2020
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Responses


  • 6477
    I have always been a sci-fi fan and so I know there are many stories based around that kind of theme.. one of my all time favourites, (using this answer to bleat on about it as I love it so much) is a short story called The Machine Stops by E.M Forster, (it's often available free online I believe) and everyone lives in their room and never goes out.. they get weaker and less able to deal with real people and more reliant on tech.. 

    It ended in disaster, as these things usually do.. because although we can see signs that we ARE heading that route, mostly, it's not actually healthy for us to become too isolated.. and that can be more likely to happen when one lives alone, (not always but it increases the chances). 

    My personal gripe is that it also drives up the number of houses needing building.. and that's a big problem here in environmental terms and in terms of congestion, services etc in some areas. 
      August 10, 2020 11:14 AM MDT
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  • 113301
    Solitude is very comforting. No one is there to demand anything of you or from you. But isolation day after day after day after day? I dunno. Could drive some people bonkers. My favorite scifi short story is called 'Flowers for Algernon". It was made into a movie with Cliff Robertson who starts out  amentally very slow but very sweet man whom coworkers make fun of all the time. He never gets angry at them. in the story he becomes a scientific experiment and is made to be a BRILLIANT genius. He learns languages and reads and recalls much knowledge. He also becomes very sexy very appealing. A HUNK! A woman falls in love with that version of him and they are ecstatic....for awhile. And then whatever they did to his brain starts wearing off and in the end he goes back to being very slow and very sweet. Very sad I think. Oh the movie was called CHARLY and I believe Cliff Robertson might have won an Academy Award for his performance. The question is was he better off having that experience or would he have been better off left alone? He did not recall at all what he became. But of course the woman who loved him did and her heartache was palpable. Thank you for your reply Addb! :)
      August 11, 2020 4:21 AM MDT
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