| | Regi,
With regards to my comment on self-sufficiency... sorry about that; it was late, and I was tired. I should have stated that those comments were in response to my noting the term, "autonomist"... I saw the comment about parasitism and then that term, and I perceived a danger of overextending the notion of autonomy into unrealistic territory.
But I do have to call you on one thing, that you probably have no way of knowing about, but I do...
When you say that "no one has ever died from a lack of human touch", that's very likely, actually false. There is research in the last 10-20 years, called "touch research", that has primarily been headed by a University of Miami Medical School researcher named Tiffany Field, Ph.D, in conjunction with researchers from places such as Duke and Princeton... And while it may sound simpering and weak perhaps, it is actually very important, valid stuff.
Dr. Field's research has found that infants -- particularly premature infants -- who are not sufficiently handled in a close and relatively constant way, experience "failure to thrive", and frequently die as a result. I'm not sure whether she attributes Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) to this or if it's the same phenomenon, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was.
Her research finds that human touch is actually a basic requirement of our health. Humans and animals which are touched experience the following physiological loop: The touch receptors in the skin relay signals back to the brain, signalling the hypothalamus to cause an overall bodily switch to the "rest and repair" mode, otherwise known as the parasympathetic mode... the mode in which immune, reproductive, digestion, and growth functions switch on.
To achieve this requires the activation of such glands as the pituitary (at the base of the brain) and the adrenal (on the top of the kidneys) glands, which mediate these functions. Until this mode is activated, the body stays in the sympathetic mode, which is the "fight or flight" mode... in this phase, all the functions that occur during the parasympathetic mode... the immune and growth functions, and so on, do not occur. This is why creatures kept in a constant state of fear and vigilance get sicker more often and experience stunted growth.
And be aware, the immune system does not just fight bacteria and viruses... its job is also to kill off cancer cells as they inadvertently pop into existence; perpetually vigilant and stressed creatures also die of cancer more often, for the reasons I've already stated above.
In addition, growth is something that should always be happening in the healthy body, at a rate that matches or exceeds cellular death and wear-down. This is why routine touch is such a vital but little-known ingredient to human health.
Now, I do agree to some extent with what you say when you say:
"If I want the pleasure of, "human touch," whatever that is, I better have earned it, else I am enjoying the unearned, that the guilt of the unearned pleasure will be more painful than any deprivation of "human touch," I might experience."
Yes, receiving affectionate treatment from someone who has little but contempt for you, or for you have contempt for, is not pleasurable, but creepy. It may very likely be actually painful to bear. But, in certain cases where a person is superficially unpleasant, because of shoddy treatment by others or uncontrollable life circumstances, but essentially decent just below the surface, I do not think that they should be shunned and denied something like touch, which would soothe them and allow to come forth, their latent, nobler qualities. Such intervention might be ambulatory or even critical.
But, to come back to the major point of this post... yes, it is probably very likely that many people die from a lack of human touch. We've just never known what to significantly attribute it.
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this guy reminds me of you. 
