This post is part of a new series exploring philosophical perspectives on loneliness. If you are interested in contributing to this series, please submit a pitch.
Loneliness is in the business of getting a bad press. Amongst the popular and academic literati of the post-developed world it has been variously labelled a pandemic; a silent epidemic; a behavioral epidemic; the leprosy of the twenty-first century; an international public health issue and a hidden killer. It has been medicalized; individualized, stigmatized, and weaponized, and is now the concern of policy makers, NGOs, charities, and health organizations of all stripes. Interventions to manage and alleviate loneliness proliferate daily and a multi-billion dollar loneliness industry provides anti-loneliness products to those of us who just do not know what to do about what Clark Moustakas, in 1961, termed a condition of human life.
Psychologists have pointed to its evolutionary value through the Evolutionary Theory of Loneliness. This suggests the pain of being alone motivates us to seek the safety of companionship, in turn benefiting the species by encouraging group cooperation and protection. This is wholly rational when gathering around the fire and negotiating the overnight watch or the tasks of hunting, gathering, and protecting. Could it also be the residue lurking behind our itch to share who we’re following or what we’re watching on Netflix?
Loneliness researchers have been busy demonstrating the links to both physical and mental illness with persuasive evidence of correlations between loneliness, high blood pressure, and heart disease, as well as between loneliness and depression. Neuroscientific research has identified a region of the brain believed to generate feelings of loneliness known as the dorsal raphe nucleus, best known for its link to depression. Loneliness is also charged as a factor in early aging and cognitive decline and implicated in engagement with unhealthy behaviors such as smoking and alcohol consumption. Supportive social relationships, it seems, can reduce the probability of people adopting such behaviors by minimizing the impact of daily stressors or stressful events. Loneliness is also a factor in conditions which are less obvious; it can lead to a decrease in physical activity, leading, in its wake, to increased risk of frailty. It is also a predictor of early death, with at least one study finding that after adjusting for various socioeconomic and health-related covariates, loneliness and social isolation were associated with lower expectations of longevity. So there is a sad, circular, self-fulfilling logic to this; feeling lonely demotivates, it makes bad situations feel worse, keeps our narratives silent and ruminations unheard. Alone, who is going to remind you that you’re on your tenth cigarette, the dishes need washing, and you haven’t done your burpees?
But hold on. When I look around at our mega-connected, hyper-networked, clicked on, algorithmic-driven, narcissistic, voyeuristic, individualistic attention economies argued by some to be creating the next generation of seriously unhappy, ill human-beings forever elsewhere, my question is why we are not more lonely. When we consider the dramatic cuts in welfare (a nominal one hour visit by an adult social carer is said to actually last fifteen minutes); library, recreational, and green space closures (and failures to build these in to civic planning); reduced public transport services, especially in high loneliness risk areas such as remote and rural locations, and the steady erosion of community, as well as arts and charity venues and their activities, surely it doesn’t take a generation of psychologists and sociologists to work out there is a price to be paid? This price, according to the mounting loneliness literature, is more likely to be paid by the poor, the minoritized, and the disadvantaged. Bizarrely, policy movers and shakers erode our communities then benignly target us with interventions against loneliness offering suggestions that are both trite and ableist.
And while the moral panic about loneliness may well be concentrated in WEIRD populations with some critique that loneliness research inhibits the revelation of cultural context and heterogeneity, something is nevertheless afoot on a global scale. According to the United Nations, in June 2023, 110 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced from their homes due to persecution, conflict, violence, and human rights violations. UNHCR estimates there are around 35 million refugees in the world—with that number likely to have risen, tragically, by the time you have read this. Loneliness, as a symptom of not belonging; of lacking agency, being unseen and untethered—begins to reveal itself as one whose aetiological power lies less in the traits and failings of the individual and more in the micro and macro structural arrangements through which governments govern and organize our loneliness.
For those of comparative privilege there are gig economies to keep us on our toes but isolated; digital nomadicy giving us its own brand of wandering loneliness; gated communities keeping us sequestered and emotional outsourcing, bots, AI companion apps, doom-scrolled rabbit holes, and social media echo chambers galore. All the trappings and choice of the neoliberal society with its inherent paradox wherein ‘loneliness is both a fulfilment and a disruption of its possibility’. We are free to bowl alone, to live alone, age alone and die alone, should we so choose. And never before have we been able to tell so many people about it without ever having to actually meet them.
For some, especially women, escaping oppressive cultural, religious, and relational structures as part of a new order, the price of loneliness may be one we are willing to pay. But surely it needn’t be a zero-sum game. Meandering the new lonescape may be one of the new existential challenges to which we, resourceful, resilient, and creative humans need to adapt. The task at hand may be to actively reframe the negative perceptions we hold of being alone, and learn, from scratch, both to better be alone with ourselves and to cultivate human relationships of quality rather than quantity—away from the pseudo-intimacy of online friends, followers, and dubious parasocial relationships that diminish us while eroding our social skills and capacity for compassion. When Blaise Pascal observed in the 1600s that “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone” he joined an army of thinkers stretching back to Buddhism’s roots and forward to contemporary psychoanalysts who would urge us to take the plunge and do the work to make friends with ourselves. Beginning a frank and compassionate internal dialogue with the self would be a good starting point towards a psychologically rich life, where we might connect properly with others in a spirit of redefined conviviality. We might then just begin a slow push back against the slide underway towards the Eremocene—the Age of Loneliness.
Olivia Sagan
Olivia is Professor of Psychology at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK. A former psychodynamic counsellor, she first became interested in loneliness and its vicissitudes when counselling people with long term depression. She went on to develop her academic career as a narrative phenomenological researcher in the area of mental health. Comments about this blog can be made to her at osagan@qmu.ac.uk
