@SmashTheState Amou may very well be content, but there wasn’t anything to support this in the 137-word article you referenced written by star Huffington Post (HP) reporter whom will from now on be known to me as Poopboy for his fabulous vocabulary and obsession with Amou’s smoking habits when there are many more important issues at stake here in understanding Amou’s frame of mind.
However, within this dearth of data, there are a couple of red flags in the articles referenced in Poopboy’s HP article hinting that he may not be content, to wit:
(1) ”...he said he had gone through some emotional setbacks in his youth and from then on decided to live an isolated life.” (HP)
(2) “He said he adopted his extreme, isolated lifestyle after suffering emotional setbacks in his youth.” (From the Jezebel blog as referenced in hyperlink 1 in the HP article)
(3) “The villagers say that he had suffered severe emotional setbacks in his youth, which led him to make these extreme choices.” (Oddity Central blog as referenced in hyperlink 2 in the HP article)
These statements could represent unresolved psychological issues leading to a possibly unhealthy lifestyle.
(4) ”...and for the last 60 years he has not taken a bath, because he believes ‘cleanliness brings him sickness,’ according to the _Tehran Times.”_ (Jezebel referencing a Tehran Times article, also referenced in hyperlink 3 in the HP article, which is now a Dead Link: Article HTTP Status 404)
(5) ”...the thought of a bath after all this time makes him very angry.” (HP)
(6) “Even the suggestion of a bath makes him very angry.” (Oddity Central)
These statements could represent a phobia and, as anyone who has had a phobia knows, unresolved phobias lead to everything from minor discomfitting changes in habits to major psychological and physical health problems.
Equally as important is the statements that he gets very angry at the mere mention of bathing. This could be a sign of mental illness, or it could be a normal reaction of a man just goddamned sick and tired of being told by everybody around him for the past 60 years to take a bath. He has his reasons and has stated them: he believes taking a bath will make him sick. Is it rooted in an irrational fear? Possibly. Even you must admit that his hygiene habits are against all tenets of medicine both East and West as to maintaining homeostasis.
However, this is a most unique case, possibly unprecedented, and it is possible that he is now so encrusted in a thick layer of dead skin and dirt (as evidenced by the photographs) that his skin pores are now effectively sealed off and no longer serve as a vector for disease and infection and now this tough crust serves as a shell of protection against the latter and even injuries that would open the skin of a person without this crust. Sealing off one’s skin pores inhibits aspiration, but Amou seems to have adapted to that also. And removal could involve a long and painful debridement process which would remove this protection—something Amou might object to.
As to Amou Hajib’s general psychological and physical health, there are no objective doctor’s reports to peruse to help determine this and there is no personal interview with Amou available. There are no direct quotes of Amou claiming good nor bad health, and there is nothing to determine his level of happiness or contentment. Like the rest of us, he probably has both good and bad days.
In a related personal note, I tell people all the time that I’m fine, that I can anything any average 63 year can do, which I believe is true and I think I prove on a daily basis. But if you were to see my medical history you would probably think otherwise when you come across the fact that I’ve had two heart attacks. So, sometimes the patient’s verbal statements can be misleading—but we don’t even have Amou’s words to read in order to make this determination.
I spent nearly a quarter century in nursing, some of that time as an admissions nurse and, in that time, I ran across a few hermits, mostly male and mostly with what the general public would consider poor hygiene. Some of them were certainly ripe for psychiatric diagnoses and some of them were people who just wanted to be left alone to live out their lives in solitude and in their own way. Nothing wrong with that.
Some of these weren’t even genuine misanthropes, they had nothing against the rest of humanity. They just didn’t find us interesting enough anymore to hang with us anymore and, as everybody knows, with humanity comes drama and with drama, complications, problems nobody seems interested in really solving, trivialities, inanities… it’s a long list and we are all familiar with it. I, personally, can understand people who would like to minimize all that and use their energy and time to pursue often more rewarding, solitary enterprises, even if it means just sitting under a tree and thinking about things, or living in a hole in the ground outside a village in Iran. Solitude. It can be nice. And some people need more of it than others to be happy.
But as an admissions nurse, I would be remiss to ignore those red flags I listed above.
Composing members:
0
