Loneliness ignites our body and our policy
Medical research shows that social isolation is a serious chronic stress. You can say something similar on its impact on our political system
Eugene Mymrin / Getty Images
Hannah Arendt has been thinking about me a lot lately. The German German political philosopher of the 20th century German escaped the Nazi holocaust and was considered one of the greatest public intellectuals in the world at a time when few women were appointed to university faculties. She relied on history, literature and her own life to identify the conditions under which open and liberal societies turn into authoritarian states. Seven decades ago, she made observations that still offer powerful information today.
In The origins of totalitarianismArentemphase a main factor in the rise of authoritarianism which has little obvious link with politics: loneliness. While we generally consider loneliness as not having satisfied our social needs, Arendt defined the word as something deeper. Loneliness occurs when there are no shared objective facts and no potential collective action to resolve shared challenges. It is a state of being where you cannot trust others. Loneliness, in Arendt’s story, ignites the connective tissues of a company. It weakens the political body so that demagogues and despots can attack. “What prepares men for totalitarian domination,” she wrote, “… is the fact that loneliness, once an experience is generally limited under certain marginal social conditions such as old age, has become a daily experience.”
Arendt – As much as I know – did not use the word “inflammation” to describe the effects of social isolation on a country or a culture. But it is the metaphor which, for me, comes to the essence of its warning.
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Inflammation is the body’s response to a feeling of threat – a protective and contractional response which can extend even at the cellular level. This is an answer that can inhibit healing. A community or a company faced with a significant connectivity deficit is also in a state of perpetual threat; People are unable to listen to each other, to trust themselves, to maintain confidence in common institutions or to collectively overcome divisions.
It may seem familiar.
From 2003 to 2022, the face to face socialization of American men dropped by 30%. For adolescents, it was 45% amazing. It is estimated that 12% of Americans declare that they have no close friends, a quadruple increase since 1990. While social media had to amplify the human connection, the rise in the culture of comparison, social sorting in echo chambers and the rapid decline of social connection in person have rather coincided with unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression and distrust.
It is therefore not surprising that in America, in America, we see a democratic retro -gliding as Hannah Arendt warns it – including mass polarization, intentional disinformation and a policy of fear, retribution and rage.
Loneliness ignites societies.
It turns out that loneliness also ignites the body.
Two decades ago, researchers Louise Hawkley and John Cacioppo at the University of Chicago demonstrated in a historical study that loneliness acts as a factor of chronic stress which triggers the response systems to the innate stress of the body. Social isolation maintains the hypothalamic-pituitary-surrenalic axis (HPA) in a constant state of excitement, resulting in a persistent liberation of cortisol. This hormonal imbalance increases inflammation. And this can, in turn, weaken the immune system, compromise cardiovascular health and worsen vulnerability to mental health problems such as depression and anxiety. In short, the absence of significant social links can literally recalibrate the physiological mechanisms of the body to greater stress and illness.
In the past two decades, other studies have reinforced the link between loneliness and inflammatory paths. George Slavich of the University of California in Los Angeles, underlines that the experience of social disconnection can imitate physical threats in the way our brains and immune systems react – aggravating the release of inflammatory agents. From an evolutionary point of view, sustained isolation disrupts our primordial need for social integration – the head of inflammation and a whole series of consequences downstream.
It is easy to minimize the problem of loneliness. When the former general surgeon of the United States, Vivek Murthy, warned the dangers of social isolation and the solutions proposed, no significant government intervention followed. Likewise, when the British government appointed Minister of Sniples in 2018, many compared the move to a sketch of Monty Python rather than seeing it as a serious political intervention.
But the medical, social and even political costs of growing social isolation mean that we can no longer allow ourselves to ignore it.
Some solutions are simple. Medical innovators now approach social isolation through practices such as “social prescription” – where health professionals connect patients alone to non -medical community services, volunteer programs, exercise groups and artistic activities to improve their well -being. Instead of writing prescriptions for pills, doctors can prescribe a free pass to a museum, an invitation to join a garden club or a support group for people faced with similar difficulties. A recent multi-year assessment of social prescription focused on nature in the United Kingdom has revealed that the programs have considerably helped participants reduce anxiety and improve happiness.
Other solutions are more systemic. When Pete Buttigieg presented himself to the presidency in 2020, he established a program to “belong and cure” – setting up new funding and policies concerning mental health and drug addiction as well as the national service to reconstruct community institutions and promote environmental restoration. Managers should offer an increase in “belonging infrastructure” – transit, green spaces, cultural places and mental health centers – while expanding objective national service programs such as AmericanS and investing in local journalism through public subsidies or tax incentives to restore sources of confidence and restore significant foundations of community life.
This should be a bipartite cause. The conservatives and the liberals have an opening to fight against the crisis by taking advantage of the groups of faith and the veterans, for example, by granting tax incentives or small federal matches which could help the churches, the synagogues and the groups of veterans to build mentoring initiatives, support for the recovery of the drug addict and the efforts to revitalize libraries and civic spaces. There is also an increasing bipartite recognition of the role of social media in the crisis. To combat Big Tech’s impact on young people, leaders through the ideological spectrum should push for complete algorithmic transparency, restrictions on operating design functionalities and robust digital protection mandates for children.
Like inflammation in the body, social isolation weakens our civic “immune system”, fueling polarization and making us more sensitive to authoritarian impulses. But Hannah Arendt stressed that the condition is reversible. By investing in the foundations of shared membership, we can restore our adaptation to adapt to the challenges we face – from forest fires to pandemics to disinformation. It is time to become serious about our healing.
This is an article of opinion and analysis, and the points of view expressed by the author or the authors are not necessarily those of American scientist.
