Solitary confinement is widely considered one of the cruelest forms of punishment that can be imposed on a human being. Is solitary confinement “weaponized boredom?”

This is an astute observation and it provides perhaps the clearest demonstration of the evils of boredom and the fact they represent an abnormal state of being that truly creates a kind of prison for the experiencer, regardless of their place in things and their status and their role in life and their individual circumstances, whether at liberty or incarcerated. Someone can be a free person as a citizen but still living in a prison of their own mind’s creation, in accepting the limitations of their culture and their perceived assigned role in life, and that there is no possibility of changing anything in an appreciable way to make a difference in their lives. To be sure, a prisoner in solitary confinement has the stark reality of an enforced disconnection from life with no possibility of change, at least for the duration of their sentence. It is the most extreme of punishments because it is so antihuman, as people are designed to interact with one another in relationships and a sharing of thoughts and feelings and as a stimulus to one another. This is how you learn and grow and enjoy things. Taking a vacation and experiencing new things is not the same doing it alone as when you are with a life partner who you love, and can share the enjoyment with one another. Enjoying something new and the novelty of a vacation trip, for example, can enrich the self and is a kind of self-love to give oneself such an opportunity. But you are designed to share such experiences—all of life—with others because most roles in life are collaborative in some way or another. If only working as an employee and having a supervisor, it is still interacting with other humans with a give and take, a learning and growth, and sometimes discipline and feedback from those in higher authority that will help provide a stimulus to learning and growth, and refining of skills to develop further excellence, and that sometimes will carry a person much further along than if left to their own devices in doing something in isolation. The prisoner in solitary confinement is experiencing a living death, and that is why it is rightly perceived as cruel and unusual punishment. You were created to be a force for growth and change through the giving and receipt of love, and putting further love energy into the universe as part of the glorious expansion of possibilities that benefit all in existence. When that is cut off by prison bars, it is a denial both to that individual as well as the collective human family. There will come a time of greater enlightenment for correcting the issues that lead to imprisonment in a more positive and beneficial way. Punishment more often than not creates a worsening of things and is not a solution.