1) I'm going to guess that what my grandparents meant by "lonely" isn't quite what my generation or yours, means. I think we use this as a relative term - "less connected than other people" to at least some extent. So that might skew longitudinal statistics. If you only had two friends to talk to (almost every day) in the village back then, you were lonely, and probably being ostracized to boot.
2) To a significant extent, it's possible to translate "I'm lonely" into "I'm too disgusted with the ethics, crudity, vile political opinions, manners, dress, accents, musical tastes, spiritual nonsense, etc of the people I meet these days to go out of my way to meet them again, thanks." This may be a downside to diversity (for those too-easily put off), or a reflection of the fact that we're all social climbers, who are too optimistic about our "social value" in the eyes of all the other social climbers, I don't know.
After all, almost all of us have solutions to loneliness handy if we aren't at all picky about our company. And back in the day, you couldn't be - your village was your world.
A hidden factor, IMHO, is the rapidity of cultural change. Last long enough (age 28 in my case) and you are necessarily a time-traveller, in a foreign culture to a large extent, and it hurts mightily to know that your tribe has moved on; but it has (unless you joined an uber-traditional church or cult as a youth.) If you opt to deny this, as many do, your world is gonna shrink and keep shrinking from that point on. You're gonna miss a lot of fun, too.
PS - volunteer.
PPS - I'm not 28, that's just how old I was when I realized I wasn't part of "the younger generation" anymore, and had to decide fast whether my generations' taste in everything was going to be forever supreme in my head, or to start making an effort to see what the real kids were up to, and whether I might like any of that, too. I chose the latter and bless that day.
> 1) I'm going to guess that what my grandparents meant by "lonely" isn't quite what my generation or yours, means. I think we use this as a relative term - "less connected than other people" to at least some extent. So that might skew longitudinal statistics. If you only had two friends to talk to (almost every day) in the village back then, you were lonely, and probably being ostracized to boot.
As I understand it, „loneliness” in the article is understood as the feeling of loneliness, not a measure of how sociable you are. You can be lonely while continually being around people which you have relationships with which look warm on the surface, but don’t give you much of a satisfaction. I think it is the case with a lot of people suffering from depression.
I agree with everything you say, and don't see it as contradicting anything I've said. [I ain't saying I couldn't have been clearer.]
Note that our feelings are influenced greatly by social comparisons. For example, those whose immediate neighbors are all poorer than they feel much happier than those who are richer but the poorest in their immediate neighborhood. As Buddha said, expectations tend to rule feelings.
Modern society, both for dating and friendships, sets up false expectations ("The Illusion of Choice"), that often leave us without partners. Some combination of finding a crowd you like better, and lowering your expectations has to suffice: or nothing will.
This is just speculation-- but to jump on your point, I suspect one of the reasons the rate of depression and loneliness is highest in males is because male friendships are often more guarded (less warm or emotionally close).
Could it have more to do with near past, namely 1950 nuclear familly ideal? Middle class women were housewifes - which can be very lonely if you don't put effort into keeping relationships. People have to make effort to meet you and if you alienate them, they simply cease to make effort.
Meanwhile men went to work where people have no choice but to communicate with you. You don't have to put effort into relationship, you are guaranteed not to be really lonely. In fact, too much relationship can be detrimental as you all compete for position and salary etc. Being a bit of jerk can pay of and you don't have to care whether people like you - if they don't it is up to them to deal with it. Plus there was influence of past war on expectations on males (be like veterans are).
That leads to two different kind of socializations for boys and girls - where boy socialization leads to loneliness in long term, when you are too old to pick up new habits.
I'm not disagreeing - and am speculating as well - but this lack of intimacy might not matter if we males were cooperating in groups a lot (other than by emessage), say on a hunt; but we just don't do that anymore. I think my grandfather's male friendships were shallow-but-substantive meaning not intimate and squishy, but based on hard cooperative tasks, often physical such as "branding parties" on farms. Even as a kid these seemed to me to be all-shop-talk relationships, often. But they did find them satisfying, they knew they could rely on these guys in a pinch. Whereas I'm not at all sure that the guys I share my squishy feelings with would be there for me in a pinch.
Are you sure that majority of grandparents generation in United States lived in close knit rural villages where having two friends surely means you are ostracized?
Grandparents generation lived through world war, end of great migration of blacks, were adult through civil rights fights and had TV. American men went over the sea and even Easter European existing close knit village were destroyed by fighting, hunger, repressions, just to be later disrupt by communism.
Nope. Which is why I haven't said that. But even in cities, people did move less then, and did rely on their neighbors more, due to poverty if nothing else.
As it happens, one set of my grandparents lived on a farm with no neighbors within something like four miles; the other, in a few small farming villages with maybe 32 people.
My grandparents on both sides lived in shack-house farms, far from any villages or towns or whatnot. This was after the family moved to Canada. They had large families (6+ kids), which was also common, and I suspect it was hard to be lonely surrounded closely by so many brothers and sisters and daughters and sons.
Agreed. Not only is his writing just a bunch of loose thoughts imagined into very Brooks-centric concept, this is also the guy who left his wife of 20 years for a woman 25 years his junior. How do they spend their time? He pimps work like "The Road to Character" and she leads an institute that studies and teaches "character". Just...what?
Give your life to someone for 25 years (think about what that means and what one gives up for that other person) and then see what you think of that other person if they simply leave you for an upgrade. This is not controversial. It is, however, controversial to consider marriage something either party is free to slip in and out of. I’d like to know which commenters here are married; it’s actually impractical to think of marriage as a non-commitment.
You sound a lot like the catholic church here. It could have been 25 pretty nice years, and in the last 5 both people found that they had grown apart over time and mutually decided they might look for something else (maybe after the kids are out of the house, etc if they have kids). I have no idea if thats the case here. Blanket statements on the morality of human relationships are rather foolish.
It only works that way up to a point. That point is when the private stuff is either illegal or is directly relevant to the work, as in this case. #metoo anyone?
Character is a theme (and title!) of many of his writings. Ending an avowed life-time commitment in the circumstances around the way he did it brings that into question. We should all be questioning it, even if we're free to come to different conclusions.
That's everything what modern marriage today isn't. That's basically a religious view of marriage, which can freely exist, but has no legal binding at all, and whether divorce is ethical or not for one or some religions/"philosophies" is not necessarily universal.
If that were the case, no one would bother with marriage. It would be completely meaningless. This is an incredibly naive view.
The relevant question is not whether it's legal nor what one's religion has to say on the matter. The question is whether he showed character, and we can evaluate that by whether he lived up to his word and--especially--by how his wife took it.
Sorry but BS. Marriage is an economical (oiko- in oikonomia---the Greek word that is the etymological origin of economy---means family/home), legal and religious phenomenon. In modern societies the accent is on the first two, and we separate the legal meaning of it from its religious one; the former being an official bond regarding two person and their children, which governs how responsibilities, goods and resources belonging to a family core are parted and used among those individuals. That's the big part of why people bother with marriage (or things like civil unions) even if they are not religious.
Regardless, "living up to one's words" means nothing regarding the validity of a statement. I can say 1 + 1 = 1, but then in my private life behave as if it was 2; that does not affect the truth of the former statement.
How? You referenced #metoo, which is a movement in which people that have sufferent sexual attacks in various forms "come out" publicly. I can easily see how the gp comment interpreted that that way.
The context of that conversation is about whether one's private life should affect how we take one's work. #metoo is an excellent reference in that case.
They may have read it uncharitably (saying you're equating rape to age gap) but talking about the age gap between his current spouse and then metoo in the next breath conjures up the idea that that's what you mean.
It's not like some people find age gaps in sexual and romantic relations uncouth, so it's not hard to make the jump as that's what you meant.
> The context of that conversation is about whether one's private life should affect how we take one's work. #metoo is an excellent reference in that case.
No, it's not; sexual assault and harassment are part of working life and/or public offenses, not “private life”.
Sexual assault and harassment can also happen in a marriage, as it is a question of whether some person acts according to the consent or refusal of other(s). Still, divorce and a second marriage is neither sexual assault nor sexual harassment; and age difference among partners alone---as long as all the parties' ages are within legal consensual limits---is not a proof of sexual agression or illegality of the relation, so, nothing to do with #metoo here, regardless of it being priavate or public.
Edit: Not contesting you, btw; just correcting a misinformation.
I haven't read much else he's written, but I did enjoy The Road to Character... should I now be suspicious of the claims he makes about the people he described?
He's been around for decades, dutifully moving the goalposts being the 'reasonable' guy. But now he's just appalled the people he thought he spoke for voted for _that_ guy.
I do like that he's still around for the NYT's commenters. They remember everything.
Well, no, I will admit you can probably still get quite a lot out of it. I mean, I believe he's trying to do good work, but I put him in the same category as Thomas Friedman and Charlie Rose. That is, extraordinary media people with great potential who just can't get over themselves.
The question is to ask though is if the New York Times prides themselves on their quality of journalism - why do they continue employing him? Why does the top US newspaper continue to publish his articles?
While I like a lot of the New York Times content (their investigative journalism is top notch), I question what their vision is if they continue publishing his stories. His gaffes (not citing sources, not vetting sources, not issuing corrections) go against the basis principles of science, social sciences, and journalism. Simply put, he shouldn't be allowed to publish in any paper that takes itself seriously.
It's a matter of "balance". Get a right wing writer, left wing writer, diversity writer, business writer and so on. Brooks is the "reasonable" right wing guy.
I would be fine if they cancelled all opinion pieces and just reported news but I don't think that would sell.
The day I realized that just because people are talking about it, doesn't mean anything's meaningfully changed, is the day I learned how to discern signal from noise in society's whingings.
There's an extreme bit of ranting about Brooks here (not a fan at all but it's a bit much.) A better source is the blogpost he quotes[0]. Unless the topic is Brooks specifically.
The claim "loneliness is increasing" is false according to the stats. That loneliness is prevalent in society (20% is a hell lot of people) is possibly a true statement. Moreover, that it's stable throughout the last couple of decades doesn't mean we should accept it either.
I feel like this warrants a longer, better supported post, but it seems like the meaning of "lonely" is extremely (overly) relative. Since a lot of studies hinge on self-reporting loneliness this has a huge impact on the data available to diagnose long term trends.
Two important things that get conflated into "loneliness" is social isolation (the quality/depth of social relationships) and "loneliness" (the quantity of social relationships).
The blog post was crappy and seems the bulk of the context was shitting on the shitty journalist, rather than debunking thoroughly and straight-forwardly the claim at hand. I find the claim on loniness as more aparent on a global scale and demogralhically varying than in one single nation and a single demograph, so the post seems not only obnoxious but narrow too.
I don't know if it's an epidemic but I don't need an article to tell me the obvious -- that there are a lot of lonely people and loneliness causes problems of the mind which at times translates to problems of the body.
I wonder how many more people would hit the gym or outdoors if they had a companion?
I couldn't even get to the main content, there was too much vitriol to wade through first. I'd never even heard of David Brooks and don't have an opinion on him, but I can't take seriously the opinion of anybody who's this wrapped up in his own bitterness.
Mandela, though he was in solitary confinement for much of the 27 years he spent in jail, came out of it spiritually and mentally unscathed. And we have a suicide epidemic, if you'll believe the press, of people who were never in jail, and were surrounded by people whom probably could have helped the person.... provided he or she asked for help rather than deciding they were lonely or alone.
I'm not saying loneliness isn't real... all I'm saying is, it is a choice that needs to be recognized as such, even if we keep choosing it over and over and can do no other sometimes.
So if you feel lonely, unless you're in solitary, please at least TELL SOMEONE how you feel... if nothing else. Tell me, I'll listen.
The sort of loneliness that impacts life negatively is probably more of a mental space than a physical one. While Mandela was isolated, he was not without cause or without allies even if he was physically separated from them.
If you're on a purposeful mission you can endure a lot of destitution. The loneliness that is making the news is more of a secular malaise. People without purpose, task, meaningful communities to be part of, and so on. They might not even be literally lonely in a physical sense.
"Tell someone", just stop smoking, leave the drugs, find a career... be happy! Unless you are in jail. Realy is it that easy?
I think getting to a point in life where you are alone and haven't maintained any meaningful relation is very hard. It is not easy to just speak to someone random but also not sure it helps, unless the relation develops.
A layperson might ask, What difference—besides diss’ing social scientists—does it make if these interesting articles about loneliness growing are off a bit? First, they are off a lot. But more important, they are a critical distraction. Chatter about feelings (of mainly affluent folks) distracts us from the many real crises of our time—say, widened inequality, children growing up in criminally and chemically dangerous neighborhoods, the dissolution of job security for middle Americans, drug addiction, housing shortages (where the jobs are), a medical system mess, hyper-partisanship, and so on. That’s what makes the loneliness scare not just annoying but also another drag on serious problem-solving.
Ahh the cruelty of science. I would agree that the claim Brooks, an op-ed writer, made is overblown and sensationalized a bit in order to get readers interested, but that doesn't make those who are indeed lonely, and those who the NY Times article focuses on, any less lonely or visible.
It seems like the post's author is dismissing that there are lonely people out there because Brooks wrote something that overstates their numbers. As any social scientist would tell you, even the best numbers we have on these phenomena are problematic and incomplete.
The author never dismisses that lonely people are out there.
He is specifically attacking the claim that loneliness is a new and quickly accelerating trend.
even the best numbers we have on these phenomena are problematic and incomplete
Sure but he does not say this. He says "In the 1980s, 20 percent of Americans said they were often lonely. Now it’s 40 percent. "
Don't think that communication and discussion at a national levels becomes more difficult when people can just make up any numbers they want to support their point, and never have to correct them?
He seems to be addressing a specific claim, that loneliness is an epidemic and trending up, which doesn't seem to be the case. Sensationalized news is deception and in that sense, not news.
It seems like the post's author is dismissing that there are lonely people out there because Brooks wrote something that overstates their numbers.
Indeed. It should be clear that measuring loneliness is quite difficult given measuring any feeling is hard and given people may define "not lonely" relative to whatever they've experienced as that rather than some absolute criteria.
Certainly, one might attribute the growing epidemic of opioid addiction and suicide to loneliness - or to despair but it seems reasonable to attribute it to something like that.
And there's no reason loneliness, inequality and etc aren't connected problems. Once, one could point to those with lower incomes still having the vibrant social life of "the streets" but the poverty of those in outer suburbs does not necessarily generate that same situation.
People have had to deal with desperate, impoverished lives throughout all of history, and usually managed to muddle through without committing suicide en masse or dying of drug addiction/overdose. People in the past most likely managed to deal with their poor circumstances because of social factors (i.e., they weren't lonely). Throw in an epidemic of loneliness and social isolation, as is common in modern urban/suburban life, and it's easy for even people in not-so-horrible circumstances to break under the strain.
It's a slightly higher-flown version of "We can't talk about your problems because other people have worse problems!"
The problem with that idea, in addition to it being morally repugnant and utterly disdainful of human life, is that there's always a worse problem. Oh, you want to talk about polio? Malaria is a worse problem! Oh, you want to talk about income inequality? Access to abortion is a worse problem by far!
It's a perfect way to shut down any discussion, simply by shouting "HEY, LOOK OVER THERE! WORSE PROBLEMS!" and claiming the moral high ground.
People have limited attention and time. It's perfectly valid to point out how the media is withholding information and distracting from more serious things on purpose. Otherwise it is just bike shedding.
We need a good catchy term for the fallacy that "the media is reporting on X but not reporting at all about Y!".
This is mostly confirmation bias since no one individual has the bandwidth or resources to look at every single story produced on every single topic on a single day. I tend to see people complain "this tragedy happened today and I don't see it being reported by the news!", implying that the media has something to hide or they value certain groups of people over others, but this is not a claim worth its salt.
There are many reason, both from the organization's standpoint and from the individual's standpoint, why this claim isn't true. It's a weak argument that only serves the purpose of distracting from topics at hand.
It's relatively easy to analyze media outlets, quantify and classify what kind of stories they publish, what kind of topics they focus on, what views they are pushing, etc. Definitely doesn't take much time. Few hours per day for a few days can get you very far. But you probably need some background on propaganda first, manufacturing consent, things like that.
It doesn't change anything though. Media is still not going to focus on important problems. It exists to influence people, not to report on all the right things. And it's worth pointing this out.
2) To a significant extent, it's possible to translate "I'm lonely" into "I'm too disgusted with the ethics, crudity, vile political opinions, manners, dress, accents, musical tastes, spiritual nonsense, etc of the people I meet these days to go out of my way to meet them again, thanks." This may be a downside to diversity (for those too-easily put off), or a reflection of the fact that we're all social climbers, who are too optimistic about our "social value" in the eyes of all the other social climbers, I don't know.
After all, almost all of us have solutions to loneliness handy if we aren't at all picky about our company. And back in the day, you couldn't be - your village was your world.
A hidden factor, IMHO, is the rapidity of cultural change. Last long enough (age 28 in my case) and you are necessarily a time-traveller, in a foreign culture to a large extent, and it hurts mightily to know that your tribe has moved on; but it has (unless you joined an uber-traditional church or cult as a youth.) If you opt to deny this, as many do, your world is gonna shrink and keep shrinking from that point on. You're gonna miss a lot of fun, too.
PS - volunteer.
PPS - I'm not 28, that's just how old I was when I realized I wasn't part of "the younger generation" anymore, and had to decide fast whether my generations' taste in everything was going to be forever supreme in my head, or to start making an effort to see what the real kids were up to, and whether I might like any of that, too. I chose the latter and bless that day.