There is a Week Against Loneliness. Loneliness is not new, but that we look at it as a threat to public health is. Also new: the collective fear it instills. That fear says a lot about the times we live in.<\/p>\n
There is a Twitter account with over half a million followers that Skylights become eyes, a half-opened zipper a sullen mouth, the handle of a discarded jerry can turns into a dainty nose.<\/p>\n The photos invariably get thousands of likes, sometimes tens of thousands.<\/p>\n I thought of Faces in Things when I read about a study conducted a decade ago by researchers at Harvard and the University of Chicago on the link between loneliness and anthropomorphism – attributing human characteristics to non-humans.<\/p>\n What turned out: subjects who were lonely – or who, in the name of science, had been made temporarily lonely – were more likely to discern human traits in clocks, battery chargers, air purifiers and pillows than were non-lonely subjects.<\/p>\n They also believed more strongly in the existence of supernatural forces and were more likely to attribute human emotions and intentions to their pets. And in abstract drawings, solitary subjects, more often than their non-solitary counterparts, disclaimed a face.<\/p>\n Those who are lonely, the scientists concluded, see the world Who sees Faces in Things.<\/p>\n “Loneliness,” wrote American sociologist Robert S. Weiss in 1973, “is discussed more by songwriters than by social scientists.<\/p>\n He saw this lack of scientific attention as professional negligence: loneliness, for those who experienced it, was so distressing, disruptive and sad that psychiatrists, psychologists and sociologists should do everything in their power to understand it. Weiss’ book Forty years later, things are very different. All over the world, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists do, On the heels of that scientific interest, a social and cultural fascination with solitude has also emerged, as evidenced by the steady stream of See, for example, this report: The Many Sides of Loneliness (2017).<\/a>reports,<\/span> <\/span><\/span>See, for example, this newspaper report, “Who are the 80,000 ‘severely lonely’ Amsterdammers?<\/a>media reports,<\/span> <\/span><\/span>See, for example, this book: The Lonely City (2016).<\/a>books<\/span> <\/span><\/span>and See, for example, this BBC documentary: The Age of Loneliness (2016).<\/a>movies<\/span> <\/span><\/span>devoted to it.<\/p>\n The collective fear of loneliness says a lot about the times we live in<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Loneliness is nothing new, of course: God already didn’t like the idea of Adam going through life alone, and we haven’t stopped talking about it since. Thinkers of (I often think of Sting who, with a mixture of anger, despair and amazement endlessly repeating the two-word chorus of What is new is the way we look at loneliness – as a public health threat, and therefore, as a problem for all of us. Also new is the collective fear instilled by the phenomenon. That fear says a lot about the times we live in.<\/p>\n
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\n Find the Faces in Things Twitter account here.<\/a>
\n ‘Faces in Things’<\/span>
\n <\/span>
\n<\/span>is called. Once in a while it posts photos of objects – security cameras, buildings, clouds, plants, moving boxes – that have suspiciously human traits.<\/p>\n
\n differently. <\/abbr> <\/span>
\n<\/span>Who sees a world in which battery chargers have intentions, dogs are like people, and random pencil scratches
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\n can be read as eyes, ears and mouths. <\/abbr>
\n <\/span>
\n<\/span> <\/p>\nLoneliness: a problem for all of us<\/h2>\n
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\n Read more about Loneliness by Robert S. Weiss on the MIT Press site.<\/a>
\n Loneliness: The Experience of Emotional and Social Isolation<\/span>
\n <\/span>
\n <\/span>
\n<\/em>was intended to help his professional colleagues do just that.<\/p>\n
\n See, for example, this article on the genetics behind loneliness.<\/a>geneticists<\/span> <\/span>
\n<\/span>and neuroscientists are researching the prevalence, causes and consequences of loneliness.<\/p>\n
\n Adam Smith <\/abbr> <\/span>
\n<\/span>to
\n Hannah Arendt <\/abbr> <\/span>
\n<\/span>have addressed it, there are
\n novels written about it <\/abbr> <\/span>
\n<\/span>and the history of pop music is, indeed, partly a history of loneliness.<\/p>\n
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\n The Police: So Lonely (1978).<\/a>So Lonely<\/span> <\/span>
\n <\/span>
\n<\/em>repeats).<\/p>\n