We hear their loud or soft voices, plaintive or irate, timid or demanding, at ever deepening intensity. When these voices reach their climax we hear only the dead silence of apathy.
It is at the two extremes of life that loneliness is more acutely felt - for in the years between, action and involvement absorb our time and energy. Many are the causes of loneliness; one has been established by the behavioral scientists beyond any hope of a doubt: the child that is not fondled and caressed in the first two years of his life will become either neurotic or miasmic, or unresponsive or autistic or delinquent or underachieving - the choice being determined by genes or culture. Each of these afflictions generates isolation and loneliness. A friend of mine traveling in Mexico saw a beautiful child and asked permission of the mother to photograph him. She was pleased by the request but when the photographer was leaving she stopped him and said, "Touch him" and hen she added, "A child that is not touched will be unlucky." This Mexican mother expressed in another way the same obvious fact that modern science has proved.
The main communication an infant has with the outer world is through the skin. For the nine months of gestation, he feels no boundaries between his body and that of his mother. The shock of birth is partly due to that separation; suddenly alone in an incomprehensible universe, he longs for and needs one thing more than any other - skin contact. This has been dramatically illustrated by Dr. Harlow, who found in experiments with baby monkeys that the baby would relinquish food almost completely, eating from a mechanical source the absolute minimum to keep alive, and would pass his time nestling against the imitation monkey whose softness had some resemblance to a live monkey.
And what about the other age of loneliness, when person young in body and spirit finds himself obliged to retire professionally? He could enter a period of challenging exploration in work, study, and styles of life he never had the opportunity to experience before. However, many do not take advantage of this opportunity, find themselves alienated from their families, often give up their homes to live in groups and loneliness. Trying to fill the gap between past and future, they forget on beautiful opportunity of here and now involvement.
For PROJECT CARESSING I envisage in every city block a serene, soundproof, pastel colored room, furnished only with comfortable rocking armchairs and pillows. In this room the new and the old's loneliness meet and dissolve. The adult participators would give an hour or more of their time to HOLD A BABY, knowing that their warmth and affection will magically infuse his entire life with responsive tenderness. No words will interfere with the soft melting of loneliness into silent loving communication: only soothing humming in the caressing room, or golden silence. For the world of the infant it is the contact with a living body that counts, with beating heart - not contact with those wretched plastic bassinets that have, in America, substituted embracing arms. The busy mothers and fathers will be able to leave the infant in the CARESSING ROOM knowing that only affection and tranquility will be given instead of the catastrophic noises, lights, radiation and vibrations of the TV, so often used as a built-in, never quiet, never caring baby-sitter. And the older people who more and more are becoming separated from their grandchildren will feel the joy of giving - not money or work or things - but giving themselves and their love for the sheer pleasure of it. They will HOLD A BABY, feel his pure tender skin - by the magic of touching they will be touched.
Anthropologists have found that, in societies where infants are touched, held and carried the incident of violence is much less that in societies where infant care is restricted to merely feeding and changing. This has been confirmed by recent scientific research which shows that an infant deprived of rocking and caressing fails to develop the pleasure centers in the brain: "The frustration of not being able to experience pleasure often lead to violent behavior." In our society the growth of violence is ever more menacing. The voluntary self chosen grand parents will, by tenderly rocking a baby, not only imprint its future with loving feelings - they also will benefit society by preventing loneliness and violence.
The urgency of PROJECT CARESSING cannot be overemphasized. It is sufficient to see the escalating statistics on "battered" children - in America the leading cause of death among children under five years of age is torture by their parents or guardian - on adolescent suicide, on people of all ages depending on psychiatric care, on the number of children waiting to find a foster home. PROJECT CARESSING will be outdated only when our society will be so enlightened as to take the birth of a new human being as the most important happening of the society - a happening for which a man and a woman and the group they live in will prepare for physically and emotionally, intellectually and spiritually - prepare for with intelligence and love. Then we will have a race for which love is living and each breath is a caress. Certainly the actualization of such an idea will take thought, money, organization and the overcoming of obstacles. However much it takes it will be a thousand times less money, energy and time than it takes to produce a single hydrogen bomb which is constructed for the purpose of perpetuating a chain reaction of death and hate.
Again, it is our choice whether to support a chain reaction of death and hate or one of life and love...
