A Biography of Loneliness
The History of an Emotion
Fay Bound Alberti
Having read it
★★★★★
An interesting read and, despite its premise of loneliness, thoroughly informative for groups, as well as individuals!
Some really good research bolstered by an approach that saw and explored some really good connections between seemingly separate issues and subjects. I was left feeling informed and slightly empowered after reading it and feeling it isn’t necessarily individuals that are lonely per se (especially if they’re seeking solitude) more the many things society makes and sells, indirectly and directly, to avoid loneliness.
We seem to be living in a society that seems to push individualism and/or it’s essence (certainly through neoliberalism), but strangely, is making everyone fit into a homogenous group; society and the economy has problems with loneliness, not necessarily individuals, as it costs too much!
A good passage
Loneliness is expensive, which is arguably why it has attracted so much government attention. The health and social care needs related to loneliness are escalating in the West, because of an ageing demographic. Notably the West: very little attention has been paid to the rest of the world, to how loneliness changes over time, or how it looks different in different lights. Presuming that loneliness is universal and part of the human condition means that nobody is very accountable, no matter how much deprivation prevails. So, loneliness is political too.
A second good passage
One of the most important claims in this book is that the commercialisation of the individual, at the expense of the social, was dominant from the late eighteenth century in Britain, and that loneliness developed as a result. Some forms of social media in the early twenty-first century can be seen as evidence of modern isolated individualism: the articulation and consumption of the self, the production of multiple identities, and the focus on individual wealth as a manifestation of networking success.61 By arguing that loneliness and social media are linked, I am not claiming that social media itself is negative. On the contrary, I believe that the digital world has the potential to transform individual and social lives for the good. The pressing consideration in loneliness interventions then becomes how to utilise social media in successful and collaborative ways.
A third good passage
Most twenty-first-century discussions of loneliness focus on its pathologisation as an emotional state. In addition to the economic reasons why this might be so – the association of loneliness with a wide range of emotional and physical ailments that incur financial costs and discussions of moral responsibility – there is also an implicit presumption, which has dominated since the emergence of the mind sciences, that solitude and introversion are neurotic, negative states. Yet introversion and solitude are essential for creativity.