Man emerges from 75-day silent retreat with no knowledge of past few months: ‘How is humanity doing?’

[Robert59]

A Vermont man is being called a “modern-day Rip Van Winkle” after spending 75 days in a silent retreat — separated from all news about the ongoing state of the world.

Daniel Thorson, a podcast host and staff member at the Monastic Academy training center, entered full isolation in mid-March, according to the New York Times. In the Buddhist retreat, he had no communication with the outside world, let alone any knowledge of the growing global pandemic.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/man-emerges-silent-retreat-no-162100526.html

 

[Sunny]

Interesting! Probably life has changed more in the last 75 days than it usually does in that amount of time. This guy probably does feel as if he has emerged into a different universe.

 

[StarSong]

This story didn't sound right to me so I did some sleuthing.

If he was in isolation for 75 day and emerged on May 23, that means he went dark on March 9th.
Wuhan had already been shut down for 46 days,
Feb 4th the Diamond Princess was placed under quarantine,
a state of emergency had been declared 10 days earlier in Washington state (Feb. 29),
Italy was in a disaster that caused them to shut down that very day (March 9).

The pandemic was international headline news.

He obviously wasn't paying any attention to world events before going silent. Either that, or he's full of beans. Methinks it's the latter.

 

[JimBob1952]

The pandemic will be more or less forgotten in 10 years.

The impact of the George Floyd killing and subsequent events will be permanent.

 

[Sunny]

Well, it does sound as if he was training to be a monk, so probably your first suggestion is also correct, Star.

 

[fuzzybuddy]

Can you imagine if the last 75 days happened back in any other time in history? It would have been a mega disaster. Millions of deaths. How could the world be organized to combat the virus. How could you notify every nook and cranny of every nation. How could you hunker in place without a world wide delivery system to keep goods flowing. There wouldn't have been the scientists, who saw the virus coming. When you think about the last 75 days took place when we were best able to combat it. Hopefully, in the future, this will be the last time we endured "75 days".

 

[StarSong]

Well, it does sound as if he was training to be a monk, so probably your first suggestion is also correct, Star.

I was thinking that too, but if he's so wired into the larger world that the first thing he does is send out a tweet, I had to call bullsh** on him.

 

[fmdog44]

He came back to the reason for retreating. So what good is retreating?!

 

[gennie]

I was thinking that too, but if he's so wired into the larger world that the first thing he does is send out a tweet, I had to call bullsh** on him.

Me, too, but it made for an interesting story. If life is dull, 'what if' situations give the public something new to dwell on rather than important stuff.