Rethinking Touch: Touch Deprived Culture (Before)

   Touch may be the most overlooked sense of all. I have always thought that touch is the strangest of all five senses, being the only one that doesn't have a single sense organ. Our bodies are in contact with the outside world and receive all kinds of information during the day. We sit, we touch different surfaces, we feel the heat, we wear clothes. Even though our sense of touch is active nonstop, we have poor awareness of it.

   Touch has an undeniable importance for social bonding . As humans, it is clear that our mental health and well-being substantially depend on our social relationships. In addition to that, touch has long been used for healing purposes. Physical intimacy is highly therapeutic and should be acknowledged as a basic human need.

   We have become increasingly disconnected from our sense of touch throughout history. During the pandemic, the situation deteriorated even more. Besides interpersonal touch, restrictions limited contact with our own bodies as well. We become utterly isolated and alienated from the outside world as well as our own hands, our extension into the world and the most associated part of the body with touch.

   As civilization has developed, our relationship with our bodies has radically changed. From our quadrupedal ancestors, we became these modern humans wearing protective clothes all over, which left us with no direct connection to nature. Not only are we losing our connection with nature, but also with each other. The more we developed verbal skills, the less we needed to use our bodies for communication. In the transition from tribal societies to modern nuclear families, organized religion shaped all aspects of our lives. This resulted in a stronger separation between "me" and "others", and our ways of touch for communicating and expressing intimacy were limited by social rules.