In some way, bonds and the exchanging of words/communication is what defines individuality. Individuals cannot be individuals without differentiation of the other.

They crave human interaction with an equal (intimacy) and this kind of gives the women power. Like huey said Gilead used the method of seperating women in order to oppress them.

This is a form of rebellion, subversion. This cannot be stamped out as shown in the "palimpset".

Adam Smith thought that there were two sides to us, one side is our concern for SELF, that gets what it needs to survive but the other side is our empathic side for OTHERS, we cares for the welfare of others. His economic design theory distilled into THE WEALTH OF NATIONS was based on the assumption that these two would act in a balanced way.

There are also two other important and related variables at play that combine with Whybrow's findings:

1. Death Denialism (Ernest Becker) A growing meaning crisis in the world due to the waning influence of Christianity and significant misinterpretation of most religions as an immortality project emerging from the psychological denial of death

John Vervaeke's Meaning Crisis: https://www.meaningcrisis.co/all-transcripts/

Glenn Hughes writes about Becker and Denial of Death: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fernestbecker.org%2Flecture-6-denial%2F&group=world

1. Illusion of Immediacy of Experience Jay L. Garfield explains how philosophers such as Nagarjuna, Chandrakurti and Dogen have taught us to beware of the illusion of the immediacy of experience that consists of two major ways in which we mistaken conventional, relative reality for intrinsic reality: perceptual faculty illusions and cognitive faculty illusions. https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2FHRuOEfnqV6g%2F&group=world