Isolation Nation: Why Modern Life Feels So Empty
You can also read this article in Psychology Today here
Greetings from Greece,
Hello there! I’m here at a conference with about 200 leadership researchers, the food is wonderful and the backdrop to the conference breathtaking.
While at the conference, which focused on AI and leadership, I reflected a lot on the words of Einstein. “We cannot solve our problems,” he once said, “with the same thinking we used when we created them.” I thought about his point and how it relates to artificial intelligence. AI parses and condenses information that has been published on the Internet up to this point in time by human beings. It’s invaluable. It expands our foundational knowledge to perform many tasks and expand our collective knowledge.
AI is knowledge on steroids, actually. But it’s not wisdom. We still have to create that. This, I believe, is the role of leaders. If leaders cannot add value to what can be easily churned out on AI, there is little need for them. This will be one of the greatest challenges of leadership going forward.
I recently published a new book called Love and Suffering: Break the Emotional Chains that Prevent You from Experiencing Love, and I’m trying to gather some Amazon reviews before the end of May so we can launch our PR campaign. 100% of the proceeds go to education programs for children and youth in Africa and Latin America — and with international aid decreasing, every bit of support really matters. If you’re up for it, you could either buy a copy on Amazon (so your review is “verified”) or I can send you a free Advance Reader Copy to read. Your review would help us give Love and Suffering wings — and I’d be really grateful, even just a few sentences is all we need. If you purchase Love and Suffering and do an Amazon review by May 31, you will be invited to an exclusive 1.5-hour Zoom discussion and Q&A with me about the book. Here’s the book link on Amazon: amzn.to/42kjCE3
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Have you been feeling more isolated from others and unable to put your finger on what is causing these feelings and reducing your day-to-day happiness? Loneliness is not just an intrapersonal phenomenon: it’s also compounded by the greater society and culture you live in.
Not Looking Good
Let’s take a look at the direction our global society has been moving in for quite some time now:
1) Economic disparities have widened at an unprecedented pace and scale. In the twenty-nine years from 1989 to 2018, CEOs went from earning 58 times as much as the average employee’s salary to 278 times their salary. In 2018, the top 0.1 percent earned 196 times per year what the bottom 90 percent earned.
2) Civic institutions have been shuttered and we have become shuttered. In the UK, for example, one-third of youth clubs and 17 percent of public libraries have been shut down since 2010. Where have young people gone? Indoors. British children now spend less time outside than prison inmates.
3) We have become politically polarized, with cross-aisle civic discourse now a fleeting memory. Politicians are rewarded for dividing us: a Cambridge University study found that negative, hostile messages attacking an outgroup are twice as frequently shared or retweeted as messages toward one’s ingroup. We even now prefer strangers who share our political views to real-life friends who don’t.
4) We have become more self-indulgent, with development assistance and aid for those in need in developing countries and impoverished regions of our own cities and towns precipitously declining.
Loneliness is Global
Both cause and consequence, we have become more individualistic, socially isolated and lonely. Based on the UCLA Loneliness Scale, over three of every five Americans now feel socially isolated from others.
It’s a global epidemic: in Australia, 62 percent of young adults and 46 percent of the elderly are now lonely. Twenty-five to 30 percent of Canadians experience persistent loneliness. Three of every 4 people in Britain do not know the names of their neighbors. Crimes among the elderly in Japan have increased by 400 percent over the past two decades, as at least in prison there are people to talk to and one is not ignored.
All of the above and much more has led to innumerable people feeling psychologically, economically, socially and/or politically not included, not valued and not respected. These feelings, as I have found in my recent research, lead to the experience of high levels of loneliness.
“OK, I get it,” oh-doom-and-gloom author,” you may be thinking. “Now please tell me what I can do about it.” Fair enough.
What Can You Do?
Here are three strategies you can get started on right away to invite more social connection into your life and keep loneliness at bay.
1) Join a Group. Research has found that not only do we need groups to belong to in order to live a fulfilling life, but groups that meet in person, in real time. Plain and simply: Join. A. Group. One whose values are aligned with your own. IRL. (In Real Life.)
2) Create a Home Team at Work. Do you know why many children become lonely when they enter middle school? Because they have just left an elementary or primary school that is typically smaller and closer to home than the new, larger middle school. They feel like they don’t know anyone and do not fit in.
The best middle schools are aware of this phenomenon and counter it with a homeroom classroom children go to first when they arrive at the beginning of the school day. Each day, they see the same students in their homeroom class and, if it’s done well, engage in exercises to connect with these students and form a robust, meaningful social group.
What happens to us later in life, when we start a new job? We’re thrown into the mix with no support whatsoever. For this reason, I recommend forming a “Home Team”—a group of 5-10 people from various departments within your larger company or organization who meet each week for at least half an hour and talk about how their work and lives are going.
You can expand these meetings to lunches and other off-sites to foster group cohesion and reduce loneliness throughout your work day. This strategy is not nice to do, but need to do not only for you but for the organization you work for, as it reduces silos and increases collaboration throughout the organization. Pitch it well to your CEO (and, if you like, include a copy of this article).
3) Find the Right Friends. It’s not just about having friends, as I write in my free ebook The Myth of Friendship, but friends with whom you share values and create meaning together. Ask yourself at the end of the day who you have interacted with whom you like and feel values congruent. Reach out to them with a low-commitment invitation, such as having lunch or coffee together.
To your development of the Compassionate, Meaningful, Sustainable Relationships (CMSRs) that keep loneliness out of your life,
Anthony
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Practicing acceptance diminishes the negative emotional states that result from fighting against a changed life situation that you would rather do anything other than confront.
A study of mothers of children undergoing bone transplants to survive cancer, for instance, a highly painful and invasive medical procedure, found that the mothers who had accepted their children’s situation were less depressed.
Another study of Americans after 9/11 revealed that those who had accepted the current situation were less traumatized by it.
Do you feel frustrated, overwhelmed and even helpless at times about the direction the world is moving in today? How can you leverage the power of acceptance to first embrace the world as it is— lonely screen-staring people, climate crises, narcissistic leaders included?
Once you have accepted the current reality as you see it, develop your vision of how you feel the world ought to be. Then begin taking action to move it, even in a small way, toward what you believe it can become.
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