The US needs a Secretary of Loneliness (Not Satire)

The Hill ^ | 11 10 2019 | Alex Smith

[x]

We have the "real" world of people around us and the "virtual" world of people, things, sites, and experiences far away, and the more we live in the virtual as opposed to the real world the lonelier we feel. The strange thing is that even young people who use the new technologies to communicate constantly with friends may still feel lonely, because the pace of electronic communication is so much faster than real world interaction, and also because for all the communicating, there is less real emotional intimacy.

The separation of the virtual world from the physical world is an extension of the separation of workplace from home that happened further back. The places were people lived and worked used to be closer together in the same community or neighborhood. Maybe they were even the same place. People got to know each other and were able to communicate with each other. There was something reassuring about the stability of the neighborhood and the familiarity of the neighbors. But many people felt trapped by other people being around all the time, knowing all their business, and judging them by community standards.

As home and work became separated - and now as the world of entertainment and ideas and vicarious experiences and global communication comes into its own - people are freer, but also lonelier, less burdened by having to interact with the same people all the time, but more burdened by having nobody close at hand to interact with at all.

...

"Secretary of Loneliness"? Sounds like the job that Beto and Buttigieg are really campaigning for.

[Frank_2001]

“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....”

Harvard? ;))

[ChildOfThe60s]

“When I drink alone, I prefer to be by myself.”

George Thorogood

[GreenHornet]

I drink alone.

With nobody else?

[dfwgator]

The only one who will hang out with me, is my dear Old Grandad.

[frank ballenger]

Great post on this topic.

There is a book called Bowling Alone which deals with that but not in the concise manner you did it.

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
by Robert D. Putnam.((Coming out is a revised,updated version June, 2020. Just saw that listed today.))
Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010
by Charles Murray | (2013)
The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech
by Kimberley Strassel (2017).
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
by Sherry Turkle | 2017

[LeoTDB69]

“what is there to bring us together?”

Social media, texting, Virtual Reality chat programs where we can even design our own avatar. Soon we will have AI bots as friends for companionship. What more could you ask for?

Heck we don’t even need physical presence anymore to come together with other biological units we care about.