Posted on 11/10/2019 11:43:54 AM PST by yesthatjallen
A year ago last month, I welcomed former UK Prime Minister Theresa May to a community center tucked under a bridge in rapidly-changing south London. She was there to meet younger and older neighbors who were enjoying a quiz hosted by the charity I run, and to launch the world's first ever government-level loneliness strategy.
As May mingled with octogenarians and millennials and shared local trivia over tea and biscuits, her strategy was being met with a mixture of derision, gratitude and curiosity. For critics, loneliness was nothing more than a natural and episodic personal emotion — an unavoidable part of the human experience like longing, anger or fear — and certainly no place for government policy. For supporters, government intervention was a welcome new tool in the battle against a long overlooked social problem reaping havoc over a creaking public health system.
Others wondered: How would the strategy work? Who would be accountable? What are the factors that are driving loneliness? And can we really make people less lonely?
SNIP
Alex Smith is founder and chief executive of The Cares Family, an Obama Fellow, and an Encore public voices fellow with The OpEd Project.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
A theory on the rise of loneliness.
Multiculturalism and our PC culture have forced people to isolate themselves because the levels of common histories, backgrounds, experiences, and trust have been eroded.
A couple years ago I went to an event in my neighborhood that I had gone to for years and there were Muslim women with head-covering. It was disquieting, disorienting, and a cultural shock.
It didn't stop me from going back but it makes for an uncomfortable experience that it didn't used to be. If the tend continues, I can see myself not wanting to go anymore.
When we no longer share a common culture, a common language, a common religion, and common experiences what is there to bring us together?
Beer?
“When we no longer share a common culture, a common language, a common religion, and common experiences what is there to bring us together?”
Perhaps, but bottom line, you’re only as lonely as you allow yourself to be.
Muzzies don’t drink beer. (well at least they claim they don’t)
I drink alone.
I think you’ve summed it up. The left has systematically destroyed the churches, the schools, the neighborhoods, concepts of cultural commonality (even or especially innocuous childhood things, like we’re Americans se we like peanut butter and like to sing Christmas carols), and are working hard on destroying the concept of the fundamental anti-loneliness barrier, the relationship between men and women. They’re doing this by subverting and twisting the definition of male and female from biological and real to non-existent.
The best cure for loneliness would be for the left to pack up and go back to where they came from...begins with an H....
However, I see the rise of multiculturalism fragmenting society. Diversity is not a strength because most people eschew people who are radically different from themselves. People want to be around people like themselves who share common backgrounds, ideology, and experiences.
I can see an emerging tend of people self-isolating when the world outside becomes strange and disorienting.
“and are working hard on destroying the concept of the fundamental anti-loneliness barrier, the relationship between men and women.”
It has become difficult as a male to develop male friendships as they have you fearing any guy who tries to be nice is gay.
How about a Department of Wishful Thinking?
I got a couple idea on how to fix this -
1. Bring back the family
2. Destroy feminism
Loneliness is caused by our politically correct culture and electronics (computer, television, internet, video games, and cellphones). People try not to offend others because it would ruin their lives. It is better to be alone and not socialize so that it lowers the risk of losing everything (homes, jobs, kids, etc.) Then, there is the war on men. Men are evil people. Women are good. Certain skin colors are preferred. We can stay at home and experience the world there instead of going out and exploring. No need to meet people face to face.
Even though I wasn’t around then, the 50’s sound like a really good time to be alive in America.
And what about a department of “IF ONLY”??
m
My favorite dept. would be “...but...”
People don’t interact anymore, that is the problem today.
America is way too Balkanized.
People outside of the internet/online world wide web tech culture since the 1990s and politics get along.
Found George Thorogood's alt...
Like that Vonnegut movie, Slapstick of Another Kind
Yes, the same is true with women. Despite my name (taken from a Spanish translation magazine title when I had to sign up for my “only” post, LOL!) I’m a woman but I can’t say “going out with my girlfriends” anymore. It used to mean my friends who are “girls,” although of course they could have been any age but were female. But I can’t say that now without people wondering exactly what’s going on.
This nonsense is destroying same sex friendship and male-female relationships. So it’s no wonder we’re lonely.
I don’t want a nanny government and I sure as hell don’t want a Mommy government. The lonelier I am from the government the better I like it. Another word for that is liberty.
Loneliness is the cure for STD (Socially Transmitted Disease), the worst and most devastating of which is friendship.
Friendship is ruinously expensive and time consuming. With friendship comes secondary infections called responsibilities and commitments.
It’s horrible!
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