Personal Isolationism

This essay is part of an ongoing series I’m writing centered around the phenomenon of the loneliness epidemic, and what we can do about it in our own lives.

  1. Personal Isolationism
  2. Rebuilding Community
  3. You Should Have Kids
  4. …

We in the modern era live in the most interconnected society that has ever existed. With each successive technological enhancement of communication, be it the printing press, telegraph, telephone, mobile phone, internet, smartphone, social media, the world has only gotten smaller and smaller, with it becoming easier and easier to communicate with those we care about, anytime, anywhere.

Why, then, are we all so lonely?

I have no interest in recounting statistics to you on the loneliness epidemic, as numbers don’t do such an intensely personal issue justice11. Also because I don’t feel like looking them up. . In a recent piece for The Atlantic (archive.org link), Derek Thompson argues that a couple of modern trends are responsible for pushing everyone away from each other — (sub)urban sprawl, the decline of church, increasing social and geographic mobility — and right into the welcoming arms of technology and content22. In it he also misunderstands that Sartre quote about how “hell is other people”, but whatever. . Broadly, he argues that we have fewer face-to-face social rituals, with that gap being filled by digital ones. While that is certainly true, that doesn’t seem like the whole picture to me. After all, the concept of the nuclear family is an old one, dating back to at least the mid-1920s etymologically. The decline of religion is a much more recent one, with 90% of Americans identifying as Christians as recently as the 90s, and only two-thirds today. But even then, that still leaves the majority of people with their faith to lean on. So what’s really going on?

In no good alone33. Which is a lovely read, btw, h/t Joss for bringing my attention to it. , Rayne Fisher-Quann writes about her observations of isolation, commenting on the plethora of social media posts glamourising a life lived alone, free of the difficulties that come with dealing with real people in the real world. This strikes closer to the underlying pathology I diagnose here — the freedom that the internet enables has brought forth a cultural wave of individualism, and has shifted the way we treat each other for the worse.

Gone are the days where someone feeling misunderstood by those around them has no one to turn to; on the internet, you can find the digital kinship your physical world lacks. The internet is a safe haven by those who find themselves at odds with common society, and in this way I understand; after all, this was what brought me to these digital spaces in the first place. But this connectedness comes at a cost, and that cost is the curse of optionality. As the saying goes, the grass is greener on the other side; and on the infinite plains of the Web, there is always another side to explore. If the forces of globalization mean that you can now move anywhere in the world, the internet takes it a step further by allowing you to do so without even physically moving.

While particularly insidious and applicable to the world of dating apps44. Which, thankfully, young people are increasingly rejecting. That is likely an essay for another time, though. , this optionality is relevant to our relationships too. The implicit lesson we’re led to internalize is that everyone in our lives is replaceable, their worth measured by what they can do for us. We’ve become so scared of being used or taken advantage of that we make sure others are “pulling their weight” in the relationship lest we drop them. The flipside of this is true too — to our friends, we are as fungible as an NFT screenshot, able to be discarded when the opportunity costs outweigh our utility. We come to fear hurting or burdening others, less driven by a concern for their wellbeing, but for the resulting social rejection that it may cause. In short, we are encouraged to expect perfection from those in our lives, or if not perfection, then simple, uncomplicated, mindless enjoyment; they expect the same from us in return.

And so it is only natural to retreat inwards, concluding that one must achieve complete inner healing first before re-entering society as a perfect ascended individual who can neither hurt nor be hurt by anyone. But even then, deep down, we know full well that we can’t truly make it through that journey alone, and so we turn to the professionals, the capitalistic nature of the exchange being a salve to the guilt of burden. As Fisher-Quann55. Or Rayne? Lowercase-r rayne? Can I refer to other writers, internet or otherwise, on a first-name basis or is that too parasocial? mentions, the proliferation of therapy, life coaches, self-help gurus, and the like is a symptom of our atomisation, our misguided belief that such matters are best left to the professionals rather than poured out upon those we love. Indeed, in the current cultural millieu, going to therapy has become an almost mandatory part of being a functioning adult in society, a positive signal that one is emotionally mature enough for a relationship.

While there are certainly worse ways to signal your preparedness for relationships, it certainly leaves much to be desired. To say nothing of Goodhart’s Law (i.e. therapy for the sake of signaling), I find there’s a tremendous cognitive dissonance in trying to be vulnerable and open in the inherently transactional, virtually one-way, relationship between therapist and patient. You build up this connection with them, ending up friends with — perhaps even loving — your therapist in this bizarre parasocial66. I use the word parasocial here to broadly refer to subversively abnormal social behaviour as the word literally means, and not the more common and narrow definition of thinking you have a personal relationship with a public figure that you don’t. way where you pay someone to perform this deeply personal emotional and psychological labour for you. No wonder it hurts so much to say goodbye to a therapist, because to some degree, that’s the moment that you are forced to acknowledge that while you see them as a close trusted friend, to them you are just a paying client, a customer who no longer needs their services. And that’s if you got anything out of them at all — unless your therapist also moonlights as a private investigator, they know only what you tell them; so if you’re deceiving or misleading them, whether intentionally or not, they wouldn’t know any different.

Aside: On the economic incentives of therapists

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has noticed and written about it, but I’ll say it again anyway — the economic incentives of you and your therapist, life coach, or self-help guru aren’t aligned. Much like the scourge of planned obsolescence, if they successfully solve your problem, they will have been successful in destroying their own jobs, to paraphrase the movie Margin Call. So beyond the sense that such services are implicitly predatory, profiting from vulnerable populations desperately clinging to whatever might help (and clearly have inadequate social support structures), they are directly incentivized to perpetuate that situation. The fact that people benefit from therapists is not because of the incentives, but rather in spite of them.

By contrast, your friendships require no such mental gymnastics. In a relationship built upon mutual reciprocity and interdependence, you implicitly perform the duties of a therapist, with the mutual connection only growing stronger for it. Indeed, it is in this emotionally vulnerable sharing with one another that we invest, deeply, in our relationships; by outsourcing this to paid professionals, we are left all the poorer for it in our personal lives. This all-too-common framing of sharing negative emotion and stress as a burden upon your loved ones is a profoundly harmful one, leading us to fear the behaviours which would help us escape from the prisons of our own creation.

Aside: On boundaries as national borders

A counter-argument I’ve heard to this idea is that it’s good to have boundaries with the people in your life, and thus to have a therapist as a dedicated person to share all these things with where you can be less concerned about overstepping boundaries you may wish to maintain. I’m sympathetic to this idea; after all, I very much wish to not tell my mother about everything in my life. However, I hold a very different attitude towards my friends! I wish I could tell them everything about myself, fully honestly and authentically, and I see this concept of boundaries often as an obstruction towards that end. To this end, I offer an extended mixed metaphor about country borders and macroeconomics.

Relationship boundaries are country borders; without their clear demarcation, you’re likely to have conflict; war or annexation, codependency or hurting each other. So boundaries are necessary! But just as you still need to move goods, services, citizens, et cetera across borders, you need to be able to communicate emotionally across boundaries as well. And the push towards globalization shows us, increased freedom of movement benefits all, but with some caveats. Some protectionism for, say, national security reasons, is still justified, and there may be certain things you don’t wish to share or discuss with certain people (looking at you, mom). Perhaps you don’t want to ship fancy semiconductors to a nation you’re concerned may go to war with you, or you have that one friend who continually tells you about all their toxic relationships that they keep getting themselves into. So, yes, in these cases you probably should reduce the degree of economic and relational connection, because one party is benefitting to your detriment. But in the vast majority of cases where you’re presumably engaging with other countries and people in good faith and mutual benefit, tearing down those boundaries would be a net-positive for both!

So dramatically increased honesty and communication benefits all, and barriers to this communication impair your ability to connect. I may even go so far as to say that some people use the concept of “boundaries” as a way of avoiding being vulnerable, though that’s more an idle musing of mine than a convincing thesis.

I don’t think I’m beating the neoliberal allegations.

Implicit also this hesitancy to be vulnerable is the assumption that if we share our difficulties with those we love, that they will reject us. There’s an analogous psychological phenomenon, the liking gap77. Yes, replication crisis, many psychological findings are poorly substantiated, blah blah blah. , wherein where we think other people like us less than they actually do. We underestimate the willingness, if not eagerness and enthusiasm, of our loved ones to support us in difficult times. Perhaps I’m just speaking from personal perspective here, but it doesn’t really matter what I may be going through personally; if my friends or family need support, I will drop everything to help them. I freely admit that I still sometimes struggle with the reverse, being vulnerable with those I care about; this essay is written for me as much as it is for you. But when I do work up the courage to be vulnerable with those I love, I have found only support and empathy in their warm embrace88. Doing it publicly on the internet is a little more hit-or-miss, but still much better than I expected. <3 .

When we make the choice not to bare our souls to those closest to us, not to invest in our relationships, we further estrange ourselves from those whom we love. Each time our friends ask us, “hey, how’s it going?”, and we phatically answer, “good, you?”, we subtly tell them that we don’t care to share about our lives, even when it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Aside: The faux authenticity of the modern internet

Perhaps exacerbating this inability to be vulnerable is the sort of feigned vulnerability and authenticity that has come to characterize the modern internet economy. There’s this particular aesthetic which I describe as “faux authenticity”. Think of the messy YouTuber bedroom backdrop, the overly-preened “I just woke up this way” shots on Instagram, all-lowercase stylising (and on that count, guilty as charged), this false pretense of throwing back the veil to imply — typically incorrectly — that there’s no deliberate management of their public online persona. It’s so sinister to be weaponizing authenticity as a marketing tool, leaning shamelessly into the parasociality which plagues modern social media. It almost makes me sympathize with Ted Kaczynski.

But in the face of all this misleading information as to what genuine vulnerability and authenticity looks like, is it no wonder that we struggle with how it should actually look like in our own lives? We’re fed all these carefully manicured perspectives of what “authentic living” looks like — made to neatly fit into the iframe for algorithmic virality — that we conclude that our own attempts at authenticity would fall so far short of the ideal that it’s not even worth trying.

Vloggers delenda est.

(except for the Vlogbrothers.)

As the English poet John Donne wrote in 162499. Okay boomer. ,

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.

Humans are social creatures; belonging is as fundamental a need as food, water, or shelter. We are at our best when inescapably intertwined with one another, and there is no avoiding that. I am not proposing that we cast off the concept of individual freedom entirely, and resign ourselves to the traditionalism of old. Nor am I suggesting that we should all stop going to therapy; I’ve profoundly benefited from therapy in the past, and I foresee myself benefitting more from it in the future as well. Rather, that we begin to look at ourselves as inseparably part of a greater whole, surrounded by individuals with incentives and goals aligned with our own. For in the same way that you strive to be connected with your friends and your communities, they long for the same.

There are many little things we can do as individuals to foster stronger connections between us and our loved ones. Answer the “how’s it going?” question unexpectedly honestly, and ask in return about their latest struggles. Have friends over for dinner, and ask them what they find themselves worrying about, how you can support them. Randomly call them up and tell them you’re thinking about them, invite them out on a walk. Accept that you will offend some, perhaps hurt others, and be hurt all the same; be understanding when someone steps on your toes or crosses a line, because you know full well that you will do and have done the same. Such is the price of entry to a life lived vulnerably amongst your fellow man, flawed but trying.

I wish to conclude with yet another strained metaphor. Neoteny is this biological phenomenon where the adult form of an organism retains many of the traits of their juvenile form, and us humans are often used as an example of this, as our adult bodies tend to resemble those of juvenile apes rather than adults. As content mirrors form, then, how beautiful — even as adults, at some biological level, we are still but children, dependent on the support of others.

So the notion of complete individual independence is a ridiculous one — from the moment that we’re born, vulnerable and light-shy, we cry out to our fellow man for support and comfort, and do so until we go into the cold dark, weak and weary with age.

It’s hard, certainly — it’s painful and exhausting and fundamentally terrifying to rip yourself open and leave the guts at the mercy of the people you choose to love. But if I know anything, I know this: It’s better than being alone.
— Rayne Fisher-Quann, no good alone, 2023

Dear reader, there is no escaping that intensely human vulnerability; I encourage you to embrace it instead.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the various friends who offered feedback on the first draft. Chief among them, my dear friend, Emily, who got me thinking about this through some discussions about a month ago, and is the reason this piece exists at all. My life would be deeply impoverished by your absence.

Also Anni, who after reading the draft, asked me pointedly, “would you say you feel lonely often?” Concise, incisive, and sweet of you to check in on me all the same. I’ll miss you tremendously when you move away.

I must also thank Billy, whose detailed and critical reading I very much appreciated. Sorry for spamming your DMs with subsequent versions.

And thanks also to atelier, for being the creative space at which much of the writing of this (and subsequent essays) took place.

Footnotes

  1. Also because I don’t feel like looking them up. ↩

  2. In it he also misunderstands that Sartre quote about how “hell is other people”, but whatever. ↩

  3. Which is a lovely read, btw, h/t Joss for bringing my attention to it. ↩

  4. Which, thankfully, young people are increasingly rejecting. That is likely an essay for another time, though. ↩

  5. Or Rayne? Lowercase-r rayne? Can I refer to other writers, internet or otherwise, on a first-name basis or is that too parasocial? ↩

  6. I use the word parasocial here to broadly refer to subversively abnormal social behaviour as the word literally means, and not the more common and narrow definition of thinking you have a personal relationship with a public figure that you don’t. ↩

  7. Yes, replication crisis, many psychological findings are poorly substantiated, blah blah blah. ↩

  8. Doing it publicly on the internet is a little more hit-or-miss, but still much better than I expected. <3 ↩

  9. Okay boomer. ↩