The article makes a good effort to identify the root causes of loneliness and provide solutions, but it misses the mark a bit.
Loneliness is an involuntary reaction that arises from a lack of meaningful social connections. Here a meaningful connection is defined as one where there is a mutual sense that you can confide in each other, you understand each other, and you would be there to support each other through difficult situations large and small.
You can have hundreds of social connections but if they don't have these properties, they're of limited utility in combating loneliness. This is why even in a city where it's easy to meet people, loneliness is still a common ailment. This is why celebrities adored by millions can still be so lonely that they end their lives.
It's difficult though not impossible to develop meaningful connections during adulthood. It takes years of contact and requires social or environmental conditions that may not be easy to find. So historically, the #1 source of them has been family (though not everyone is born into a family which supports and encourages them, and the prevalence of such healthy families is decreasing).
The loneliness epidemic in modern times is thus attributable in great part to the erosion of family units and other early age relationships. What makes it difficult to solve is that there were a number of grievances with that model which the liberal, individualist project intended to address, such as the oppression of women who were economically dependent on their husbands, and the way in which tightly knit families often stifled self-expression. The modern system in which all adults are workers and consumers also supports the interests of capital (more workers equals cheaper labor, more consumers means bigger markets, together you get record growth). No one really wants to roll back the progress that the liberal project achieved, but the side effects are ravaging society.
The colloquial solution is Friendsgiving dinner--let's still do all the things people used to do with their families, but do it with our friends. However it misses the point that meaningful relationships must be developed over years of regular contact, mutual trust, and even sacrifice--not impossible, certainly worth attempting, but hard to do reliably in adulthood with people who may develop divergent interests over time (for example, starting their own families). Therefore it is unlikely to be a systemic solution. I have no systemic solution to propose.
> However it misses the point that meaningful relationships must be developed over years of regular contact, mutual trust, and even sacrifice
The benefit of family over friends is that you start with a high degree of trust which can only ever be lost; whereas with friends trust either takes time, effort, or is accidental (in which case, unless you're lucky, you need to expend effort to find). Friendship bonds that started from a young age are more like family in that regard.
I always thought that the emphasis on "trust" was a pop psychology cliche and not very constructive, but only recently have I learned to appreciate that trust doesn't come easy for many people, and that I may be an outlier in being able to more readily trust others on the one hand, and requiring less trust as a precondition to being open, even after they've hurt me. (I suppose a similar dimension is your predisposition to feeling vulnerable. I experience embarrassment and shame all the time, but I don't think those feelings make me feel as vulnerable and hurt as they do for many others, even in the context of my closest friends and family. If you feel more vulnerable to actual or perceived judgments, then it stands to reason you might be less willing to trust others enough to be open and honest--to experience a relationship from which you can derive strength, which may not require sharing secrets but definitely requires being receptive to feelings of affirmation.)
And to the extent one needs external validation, actual or at the ready, active or passive (e.g. a good listener), to maintain a positive, healthy mind, then I could see how loneliness could be especially devastating for some people. The very thing you would need to cope with loneliness is the one thing you lack; digging yourself out of that hole could be difficult, indeed, because not only does the simple act of meeting people and beginning relationships require effort in the face of diminishing psychological strength, developing the type of relationship needed to stop your descent requires even more effort and time.
Yeah. Everyone says the media causes loneliness, but I think that misses the mark. A more likely cause is that modernity gives people no path to making allies - you can get by without having anyone who will back you in a fight - but people still feel terrible when they don't have allies, for evolutionary reasons.
Maybe one individual solution is to take risks together with other people: startups, joint creative projects, and so on.
> Loneliness is an involuntary reaction that arises from a lack of meaningful social connections
It might be a cause for most people but not everything. For example, when I feel lonely it's not because of "meaningful social connections" just that I have nothing worth doing.
I take the pragmatic view that meaningful interaction is as weighty as meaningful connection. You can be lonely in your own family, for instance, and find great pleasure in good conversation with people you barely know. We do seem to form 'bonds' with people, however (particularly with partnership), so I would not discount the impact of closeness with others, but I think it takes very few to be satisfied here. Even in a large family, you're probably only very 'close' to few people.
> erosion of family units
They're smaller now, but can we really say they've gone? Besides the scattering which is not really new, we choose our level of involvement with family.
> Loneliness is an involuntary reaction that arises from a lack of meaningful social connections.
If you have these meaningful social connections and you can talk with them about stuff that really matters to you, that's great. However if you cannot do any fun activities together, that can also provoke a sense of loneliness. Ideally the full package is available, including a satisfying job and all that but maybe that's just unrealistic ;)
> The loneliness epidemic in modern times is thus attributable in great part to the erosion of family units and other early age relationships. What makes it difficult to solve is that there were a number of grievances with that model which the liberal, individualist project intended to address, such as the oppression of women who were economically dependent on their husbands, and the way in which tightly knit families often stifled self-expression. The modern system in which all adults are workers and consumers also supports the interests of capital (more workers equals cheaper labor, more consumers means bigger markets, together you get record growth). No one really wants to roll back the progress that the liberal project achieved, but the side effects are ravaging society.
Don't forget the increasingly intensifying idea that children are basically small adults that are capable of making their own decisions and that major interventions into their lives are coercion. I understand the idea of preventing repression of another human's self, but there's a massive field of conflicts and situations no child is prepared to respond to; just like actual people, they just look around their peers and other signaling for answers. That's not good.
In the case of young men, it's no wonder so many are flocking to people like Jordan Peterson for guidance later in life. People who grew up in the 90s were the first wave and now they are having children.
Effectively, it is almost impossible to pass down learned wisdom and effective judgement in a society that, from all asides, for every vector, promotes a pigeonholed rationalism that in practice turns into a kind of narccissism.
Loneliness is an involuntary reaction that arises from a lack of meaningful social connections. Here a meaningful connection is defined as one where there is a mutual sense that you can confide in each other, you understand each other, and you would be there to support each other through difficult situations large and small.
You can have hundreds of social connections but if they don't have these properties, they're of limited utility in combating loneliness. This is why even in a city where it's easy to meet people, loneliness is still a common ailment. This is why celebrities adored by millions can still be so lonely that they end their lives.
It's difficult though not impossible to develop meaningful connections during adulthood. It takes years of contact and requires social or environmental conditions that may not be easy to find. So historically, the #1 source of them has been family (though not everyone is born into a family which supports and encourages them, and the prevalence of such healthy families is decreasing).
The loneliness epidemic in modern times is thus attributable in great part to the erosion of family units and other early age relationships. What makes it difficult to solve is that there were a number of grievances with that model which the liberal, individualist project intended to address, such as the oppression of women who were economically dependent on their husbands, and the way in which tightly knit families often stifled self-expression. The modern system in which all adults are workers and consumers also supports the interests of capital (more workers equals cheaper labor, more consumers means bigger markets, together you get record growth). No one really wants to roll back the progress that the liberal project achieved, but the side effects are ravaging society.
The colloquial solution is Friendsgiving dinner--let's still do all the things people used to do with their families, but do it with our friends. However it misses the point that meaningful relationships must be developed over years of regular contact, mutual trust, and even sacrifice--not impossible, certainly worth attempting, but hard to do reliably in adulthood with people who may develop divergent interests over time (for example, starting their own families). Therefore it is unlikely to be a systemic solution. I have no systemic solution to propose.