Here, Let me Solve the Loneliness Problem

Last updated on: October 19, 2016 at 7:44 am by Anne Kennedy

Here, Let me Solve the Loneliness Problem 2016-10-19T07:44:11-04:00 Anne Kennedy

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Well. This is alarming. Utterly depressed myself on Twitter for ten minutes only to end up with social apocalypse. The article, as your finger is hovering over to click it, is about the epidemic of loneliness in modern life, and the sharp catastrophic rise in mental illness. The thing is packed with depressing statistics landing, somewhere towards the bottom, with this:

“Loneliness has a comparable impact on physical health to smoking 15 cigarettes a day: it appears to raise the risk of early death by 26%. This is partly because it enhances production of the stress hormone cortisol, which suppresses the immune system.”

Isn’t that just great. The author keeps going. Social media. Competition in the work place. General modern isolation. It is building and building and reaching the point of societal catastrophe. At the very end he writes, “This does not require a policy response. It requires something much bigger: the reappraisal of an entire worldview. Of all the fantasies human beings entertain, the idea that we can go it alone is the most absurd and perhaps the most dangerous. We stand together or we fall apart.”

Why does everything have to be a policy response, or even something “much bigger”? In this case, a total change in world view. Actually, I agree with that, although he wouldn’t at all like what I would happily propose. His solution, by the way, is that he’s started some sort of organization around music. He goes into pubs and gets people to sing along or something. I didn’t read the second link very well.

I have two things to say. One, I agree that modern life is ridiculous and of course we are all mentally ill. When I would have to come back to America as a child, and then when I finally had to move here permanently, I easily and instantly noticed that the complex social and societal demands made on individual people were excessive. In high school I once had to spend six whole months in the US and I had a sharp and inescapable headache the entire time. When I stepped off the plane back in Africa it went away. Fortunately when I came back for college I coped much better, but I often went around mourning the high level of sophistication a person has to possess to “do well” in a place like this. Just doing laundry is a stressor, and setting up a bank account, and getting a phone. It’s not that you don’t interact with people, it’s that you can always be in trouble and wrong. But maybe that’s another blog post.

My first experience, of course, with American life was before social media. And that is the second point I’d like to make. Social media, which, naturally, I am using to try to get you to buy my book, is, to say nothing original at all, a double edged sword. On the one hand I have met actual friends in real life because of the Internet, and would be truly lonely if the miles couldn’t be overcome by the touch of my index finger on the screen. But on the other hand, there is the deep isolation that comes from looking at that same screen, exposing myself to the charmed lives of others or the trauma of this election. In one single moment I can make a connection with and be alienated from someone I thought I knew.

But really, I quibble with the author’s diagnosis that what ails us in modern society is loneliness. Loneliness is maybe the manifestation of the more original problem, the reason that we are all desperately clinging to our phones in the first place. And that is that the human person needs to be known. Why snap a selfie? Why so many status updates? Why argue and battle it out on Twitter? It’s because we want other people to know us, in all the vast richness of that English word.

This is the most primordial need. Adam in the garden was known by God, and then Eve was brought into that knowledge. There was settled peace. But then the two of them, as indeed we each would have, decided they wanted to know themselves and the world without the knowledge of God residing at the core. God could be dispensed with. And so they cut him out. It’s no new problem. And there’s no new solution that can fix it. If you try to know yourself and be known by others without God at the very center, you’re going to be lonely, and ultimately, of course you’re going to suffer all kinds of other troubles including but not limited to mental illness.

The solution is to return to the one who can know you perfectly, even and especially when no one else can not even yourself. The solution is not, to flip it around, to try to just know more people and make people connect through programs and more government. The more each of us continue to look to other people who are just as wretched as we are to solve the loneliness epidemic, the worse it will get, and is getting. At some point individual people have to look to God to discover that he is enough. His knowledge of the individual is sufficient for that individual to be satisfied. Then each of those people, rooted and grounded in the love of God, can turn out and make connections with other human beings. And then we can have, what do you call it, Community. But no, we have to keep doing Adam and Eve day by day, moment by moment, sucking all other people dry for self satisfaction, wondering why there’s never enough to fill the deep well of isolation and anxiety.

Happy Wednesday!

Previous Post

October 18, 2016

Perfection, Anger, and the Cover of my Book

Next Post

October 20, 2016 Trump Mansplains Hillary

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category books Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Children in Conversation culture watch Daily Devotions Demotivations with Anne faith alone for the grandparents GAFCON In conversation with children In the News Kitchen Notes Lambeth Learning Notes Life Going On Men are Human Notes from Home Pictures Reading the Bible Saturday Links Sermons Signs of the Apocalypse The Bad Word Association The Prayer of Jonah Travel Notes Uncategorized Witless Wednesdays Work and the Christian

Select a Month June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 July 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which book contains the famous "Shepherd Psalm"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Proverbs Isaiah Psalms Job

Books by This Author Books by Anne Kennedy

See All Titles »