Analogizing my current mode of living my life in a very desperate bid-for-survival manner to the opposite of island syndrome feels apt, whereas an adult life lived in enjoyment and fulfillment as a child can be more analogized to island syndrome.
Imagine the tameness that arises from not having much to do except the menial tasks. There is naturally going to be a very different way of interacting with everything. Of course, it is not as if my current lifestyle is in the scope of an entire genus over the scope of millions of years, but the point is that enjoying life and living life not out of desperation, negativity, survival, and pressure can be really bothering, because happiness is a vulnerable thing. The happy, friendly, and trusting dodo is very vulnerable.
It is due to the constant pressure that in many ways, my "plumage" is much less dull and much more vibrant. I am much more "territorial", and I am many other things that make the analogy apt. The desperation as witnessed in the creation and continued development of my —, which is now at over 1.79 million words, is a sign of the opposite of island syndrome.
Island syndrome, or fulfillment mode, creates less pressure to develop more precise ways of communicating. Civilization and society themselves with all their plights and horrors demand from the individual their sanity and capacity to individualize themselves and make themselves distinct. That is why people like me exist. Being caught up in such a rapid, energetic, intense, overwhelming, and chaotic flow funnels pressure into greater and greater innovation, development, and streamlining—to the point of creating things beyond what anyone has ever known or grown comfortable with.
This is why the explorers who came to meet the island natives were clearly so much more capable in war. I am not saying that war is a good thing. I am saying that there is a clear difference between survival mode and island syndrome.
We can see this in how islands are characterized by reduced predation, reduced biodiversity, reduced sexual selection (duller plumages), and reduced parasite diversity (which reduces the level of selection acting on immune-related genes). It is easy to see the analogical parallels. Less biodiversity is the mind constrained to one afraid of the chaos of the world and unable to process it all effectively, like a NEET who does not go outside, does not try and learn skills, and does not interact with the Internet beyond the same familiar online spaces. There is much less pressure (predation), but that also means that one is likely to forget critical concerns and avenues of rapid and consistent growth. Their mind is thus "out of touch."
This is the reason that it was critical for me to have been exposed during my upbringing to innumerable experiences, media (games, films, TV shows, books, novels, toys, animations, and children's books), hobbies, skills, kinds of experiences, people, establishments, venues, places, dynamics, groups, communities, online spaces, situations, contexts, cultures, backgrounds, conversations, social structures, ethnicities, kinds of events (seminars—concerts—outreaches—daily vacation bible schools—bible bowl competitions—literary fests—sports fests—music fests—leadership training—team-building exercises such as jogs, sports, physical games, long walks, hiking, etc.—workshops conferences, camps, etc.)—travels—and organizations, among many others. This is crucial to why even if I am currently technically a NEET, my mind is still very aware, self-aware, explorative, curious, open-minded, adventurous, experimental, reflective, ambitious, diligent, decisive, expressive, organized, systematic, laterally minded, etc.
It is like transporting the soul of one who has lived a million years into the body of a ten-year-old boy.
The older man is seasoned and thus adapted to survival mode, whereas the aforementioned NEET who does not go outside, does not try and learn skills, and does not interact with the Internet beyond the same familiar online spaces is experiencing an analogical equivalent of island syndrome.
I can write 1.79 million words and continue to write more and more not because I am sitting down at a computer desk merely, not just because I have learned how to write better overtime, but particularly because I had such an upbringing and a life well-lived. Without it, I would be very much the aforementioned NEET.
So even I am technically a NEET, I cannot divorce myself from everything that I have ever experienced, learned, known, felt, sensed, imagined, thought, and seen, which underpins why I have practically infinite "material" to cover when it comes to the entirety of my life.
Even now, I am still writing an average of 6,861 words per day and have been doing so for the last 204 days.
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