The age of loneliness is killing us
For the most social of creatures, the mammalian bee, there’s no such thing now as society. This will be our downfall
Seven ways to end loneliness
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George Monbiot
George Monbiot
The Guardian, Tuesday 14 October 2014 19.49 BST
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When Thomas Hobbes claimed that in the state of nature, before authority arose to keep us in check, we were engaged in a war “of every man against every man”, he could not have been more wrong. We were social creatures from the start, mammalian bees, who depended entirely on each other.
Three months ago we read that loneliness has become an epidemic among young adults. Now we learn that it is just as great an affliction of older people. A study by Independent Age shows that severe loneliness in England blights the lives of 700,000 men and 1.1m women over 50, and is rising with astonishing speed.
Ebola is unlikely ever to kill as many people as this disease strikes down. Social isolation is as potent a cause of early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day; loneliness, research suggests, is twice as deadly as obesity. Dementia, high blood pressure, alcoholism and accidents – all these, like depression, paranoia, anxiety and suicide, become more prevalent when connections are cut. We cannot cope alone.
Yes, factories have closed, people travel by car instead of buses, use YouTube rather than the cinema. But these shifts alone fail to explain the speed of our social collapse. These structural changes have been accompanied by a life-denying ideology, which enforces and celebrates our social isolation. The war of every man against every man – competition and individualism, in other words – is the religion of our time, justified by a mythology of lone rangers, sole traders, self-starters, self-made men and women, going it alone. For the most social of creatures, who cannot prosper without love, there is no such thing as society, only heroic individualism. What counts is to win. The rest is collateral damage.
British children no longer aspire to be train drivers or nurses – more than a fifth say they “just want to be rich”: wealth and fame are the sole ambitions of 40% of those surveyed. A government study in June revealed that Britain is the loneliness capital of Europe. We are less likely than other Europeans to have close friends or to know our neighbours. Who can be surprised, when everywhere we are urged to fight like stray dogs over a dustbin?
We have changed our language to reflect this shift. Our most cutting insult is loser. We no longer talk about people. Now we call them individuals. So pervasive has this alienating, atomising term become that even the charities fighting loneliness use it to describe the bipedal entities formerly known as human beings. We can scarcely complete a sentence without getting personal. Personally speaking (to distinguish myself from a ventriloquist’s dummy), I prefer personal friends to the impersonal variety and personal belongings to the kind that don’t belong to me. Though that’s just my personal preference, otherwise known as my preference.
One of the tragic outcomes of loneliness is that people turn to their televisions for consolation: two-fifths of older people report that the one-eyed god is their principal company. This self-medication aggravates the disease. Research by economists at the University of Milan suggests that television helps to drive competitive aspiration. It strongly reinforces the income-happiness paradox: the fact that, as national incomes rise, happiness does not rise with them.
The researchers found that those who watch a lot of TV derive less satisfaction from a given level of income than those who watch only a little. TV speeds up the hedonic treadmill, forcing us to strive even harder to sustain the same level of satisfaction.
The bosses earn – sorry, I mean take – 120 times more than the average full-time worker. (In 2000, it was 47 times). And even if competition did make us richer, it would make us no happier, as the satisfaction derived from a rise in income would be undermined by the aspirational impacts of competition.
The top 1% own 48% of global wealth, but even they aren’t happy.
Hobbes’s pre-social condition was a myth. But we are entering a post-social condition our ancestors would have believed impossible. Our lives are becoming nasty, brutish and long.
イギリス人は老いも若きも孤独に苛まれている人が多いが、孤独は、毎日たばこ１５本吸うのと同じくらい、あるいは、肥満の２倍程度、危険であり、また、ボケや高血圧、アル中や事故などにもなりやすくなる、と。
競争と個人主義が、現代の宗教であり、一人で、起業し、自力でたたき上げの人が英雄であり、人間は社会的存在であるにもかかわらず、ホッブスのいうような万人の万人に対する闘争社会になってしまっている。
子供たちには、消防士や看護婦になりたいというのではなく、金持は名声を得たい、と思う始末。
２０００年には、社長は、平の４７倍の給料であったのが、いまでは１２０倍も、もうけており、１％の富裕層が、世界の４８％の富をにぎっているが、それでも幸せではない、という。
ホッブスのいうような、社会が成立する以前の自然状態は嘘話ではあるが、しかし、われわれは、万人による万人の闘争社会に突入している、と。
Loneliness: a silent plague that is hurting young people most
For young Britons, loneliness is an epidemic – and they are even more likely to fall victim to its insidious dangers than the elderly
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Natalie Gil
The Guardian, Sunday 20 July 2014 16.00 BST
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Loneliness has finally become a hot topic – last month, the Office for National Statistics found Britain to be the loneliness capital of Europe. We're less likely to have strong friendships or know our neighbours than residents anywhere else in the EU, and a relatively high proportion of us have no one to rely on in a crisis.
イギリスは欧州で、もっとも孤独な国であり、イギリス人は、友情を築き上げたり、隣人と関係したりすることが欧州でもっとも少なく、危機のときに、頼る人がいない、と言われている、と。
あとは面倒だから省略。
