Allan, This is a really important post on loneliness the part that technology has played in the rise of loneliness. While we might feel seen and heard online in places like Substack, FB, etc, we've isolated ourselves from the real life interactions that really matter. Time spent with each other, phone calls instead of text messages, and hugs. All so important and far more potent loneliness busters.
I’m a “chatty introvert”. I think Susan Cain created that label…. I’m both a writer and long time speaker/seminar leader… and regardless I spend large chunks of quiet time alone… necessary to recharge…and in my work as a psychologist I certainly learn of sense of “deprivation” some extroverts experience with too little connection… I think it’s essential for us to understand the differences… and that alone for introverts does not necessarily equal loneliness. Your writing contributes to better understanding…. 👍
Dear Linda, first I fully understand your response and tell you that it's the same for me. Second, thank you for your thoughtful and understanding response.
Linda, I am an introvert and a high level empath. I need quiet time alone, but I also need to be around people and I don't feel that just extroverts feel the "deprivation" of too little connection. I think that goes for all of us in today's technology driven world that can not replace hearing a voice, getting a hug, spending quality time with other people, before retreating to one's own home.
It definitely is key to find the balance. Also key is enlightening people to the issue of technology and how it has an effect on our psyches. I studied this about 10 years ago in a class on the effects of technology at UMass Amherst. Having worked online for 29 years, I am acutely aware of those effects.
Thanks, Allan, for the lovey writing and sentiment, but I see aloneness as the gateway to a closer relationship with Mother Nature, my Creator, and my Better Angels. We live in a time of massive diasporas and exploding, fragmented families, all the consequence of massive human overpopulation and overconsumption. I just watched the 3 part History Channel retrospective on the life of FDR, and could not ignore the comparison with the spoiled rich kid, deeply psychologically scarred monster who occupies the WH today. There is no comparison. In 1950, when I was 5yo and moved back from Topeka, KA, where I was born Sept. 11, 1945, 9 days after Japan signed the formal surrender, we numbered 2.5B, and, now, we are 8.2B, over 3.5 times as many. Your thoughtful critique of "modern" society and its stressors is fully elaborated in my 2018 "Stress R Us", PDF available FOR FREE from the e-library out at Stanford. As Sir Robin Dunbar has written extensively about our social roots in the H-G clan/band with his Dunbar number of 150, we are now 3,000 times more numerous and consuming the entire planet in our mindless greed, which our current Mad King (wannabe) Donald the 1st so clearly displays. He is the paramount example of an abandoned child and the tangle of ego defenses that rise to the fore in such a case. Still wonder why 77M blindly follow his selfish, self-centered, ignorant, brutal, anti-democratic, nightmareish example?
Mother Nature, thank god, has had enough of us, as the days long unprecedented weather we have just witnessed, and She will drive us into extinction, if we keep burning fossil fuels and releasing/trapping the heat energy equivalent of 20 Hiroshima nuclear bomb blasts PER SECOND, where each one releases another 63 trillion BTUs of heat energy. According to recent reports from C3S and ENVIRONMENT (Hansen, etal.), we are driving the Global Average Surface Temperature up 1 degC EVERY FIVE YEARS, 3 degC by 2032 and the extinction level 5 degC by 2042, 17 yrs. hence. Our corporate overlords, the MUSKRAT and his fellows, are purchasing and controlling a distraction narrative to the contrary, but don't for one moment believe their self-serving BS. Go to "Hottest May on record spurs call for climate action", June 5, 2024, and the 2-5-25 Hansen, et. al., paper "Global Warming Has Accelerated:...", and decide for yourself, if you still have the capacity for critical thinking God gave us. Have a blessed day.
I am absolutely certain that you know and understand the difference between a aloneness versus loneliness. I value my time alone. Separate and apart from those times or those periods of time short or long brief or longer or I feel lonely and that is painful.
Allan, I am NEVER alone OR lonely in my dear Mother Nature’s always awe inspiring world, although it can be difficult to find in this “built” manmade faux physical environment. Unfortunately, my failing health has limited my ability to walk along my favorite riverside nature trail, but I can still shuffle along for the half mile down to the Muskingum River, past my well known trees and occasional familiar fellow walker, past the always miraculous Spring wild flowers, to my familiar porch swing overlooking the river my dear mother, now long gone, used to proudly announce that she swam across as a teen. I am NEVER lonely, and embrace my aloneness. God is everywhere, if I am ready to greet Him, or Her, or may Better Angels. I am not attacking you, so why the defensiveness? Have a blessed day. Gregg
Allan, This is a really important post on loneliness the part that technology has played in the rise of loneliness. While we might feel seen and heard online in places like Substack, FB, etc, we've isolated ourselves from the real life interactions that really matter. Time spent with each other, phone calls instead of text messages, and hugs. All so important and far more potent loneliness busters.
Pamela, agreed.
I’m a “chatty introvert”. I think Susan Cain created that label…. I’m both a writer and long time speaker/seminar leader… and regardless I spend large chunks of quiet time alone… necessary to recharge…and in my work as a psychologist I certainly learn of sense of “deprivation” some extroverts experience with too little connection… I think it’s essential for us to understand the differences… and that alone for introverts does not necessarily equal loneliness. Your writing contributes to better understanding…. 👍
Dear Linda, first I fully understand your response and tell you that it's the same for me. Second, thank you for your thoughtful and understanding response.
Linda, I am an introvert and a high level empath. I need quiet time alone, but I also need to be around people and I don't feel that just extroverts feel the "deprivation" of too little connection. I think that goes for all of us in today's technology driven world that can not replace hearing a voice, getting a hug, spending quality time with other people, before retreating to one's own home.
Finding the balance is the key!
It definitely is key to find the balance. Also key is enlightening people to the issue of technology and how it has an effect on our psyches. I studied this about 10 years ago in a class on the effects of technology at UMass Amherst. Having worked online for 29 years, I am acutely aware of those effects.
Thanks, Allan, for the lovey writing and sentiment, but I see aloneness as the gateway to a closer relationship with Mother Nature, my Creator, and my Better Angels. We live in a time of massive diasporas and exploding, fragmented families, all the consequence of massive human overpopulation and overconsumption. I just watched the 3 part History Channel retrospective on the life of FDR, and could not ignore the comparison with the spoiled rich kid, deeply psychologically scarred monster who occupies the WH today. There is no comparison. In 1950, when I was 5yo and moved back from Topeka, KA, where I was born Sept. 11, 1945, 9 days after Japan signed the formal surrender, we numbered 2.5B, and, now, we are 8.2B, over 3.5 times as many. Your thoughtful critique of "modern" society and its stressors is fully elaborated in my 2018 "Stress R Us", PDF available FOR FREE from the e-library out at Stanford. As Sir Robin Dunbar has written extensively about our social roots in the H-G clan/band with his Dunbar number of 150, we are now 3,000 times more numerous and consuming the entire planet in our mindless greed, which our current Mad King (wannabe) Donald the 1st so clearly displays. He is the paramount example of an abandoned child and the tangle of ego defenses that rise to the fore in such a case. Still wonder why 77M blindly follow his selfish, self-centered, ignorant, brutal, anti-democratic, nightmareish example?
Mother Nature, thank god, has had enough of us, as the days long unprecedented weather we have just witnessed, and She will drive us into extinction, if we keep burning fossil fuels and releasing/trapping the heat energy equivalent of 20 Hiroshima nuclear bomb blasts PER SECOND, where each one releases another 63 trillion BTUs of heat energy. According to recent reports from C3S and ENVIRONMENT (Hansen, etal.), we are driving the Global Average Surface Temperature up 1 degC EVERY FIVE YEARS, 3 degC by 2032 and the extinction level 5 degC by 2042, 17 yrs. hence. Our corporate overlords, the MUSKRAT and his fellows, are purchasing and controlling a distraction narrative to the contrary, but don't for one moment believe their self-serving BS. Go to "Hottest May on record spurs call for climate action", June 5, 2024, and the 2-5-25 Hansen, et. al., paper "Global Warming Has Accelerated:...", and decide for yourself, if you still have the capacity for critical thinking God gave us. Have a blessed day.
I am absolutely certain that you know and understand the difference between a aloneness versus loneliness. I value my time alone. Separate and apart from those times or those periods of time short or long brief or longer or I feel lonely and that is painful.
Allan, I am NEVER alone OR lonely in my dear Mother Nature’s always awe inspiring world, although it can be difficult to find in this “built” manmade faux physical environment. Unfortunately, my failing health has limited my ability to walk along my favorite riverside nature trail, but I can still shuffle along for the half mile down to the Muskingum River, past my well known trees and occasional familiar fellow walker, past the always miraculous Spring wild flowers, to my familiar porch swing overlooking the river my dear mother, now long gone, used to proudly announce that she swam across as a teen. I am NEVER lonely, and embrace my aloneness. God is everywhere, if I am ready to greet Him, or Her, or may Better Angels. I am not attacking you, so why the defensiveness? Have a blessed day. Gregg