According to research by the Coop and the Red Cross, loneliness affects at least nine million people in Britain. The Campaign to End Loneliness reports that over three-quarters of GPs say they are seeing between one and five patients a day who have come in mainly because they are lonely. Reflecting no doubt this growing social reality, there has been a lot of talk in the media about the problem of loneliness over recent years, and charitable and campaigning organizations dedicated to addressing the problem have mushroomed. Most recently, following the death of MP Jo Cox, who campaigned energetically on loneliness, the Jo Cox Commission on loneliness was set up by the Government last year, and has recently published its recommendations. The Government has acted rapidly, giving responsibility for loneliness to the Minister for Sport and Civil Society, Tracey Crouch, and promising to publish a cross-governmental strategy on the issue later in the year to implement the other recommendations of the Cox Report. So that’s it then: due to the efforts of many determined campaigners, loneliness has finally come to the attention of our leaders, and they have a plan! We can move on to other matters. [...]
Starting with the historical roots, which go back to the Enlightenment thinkers, loneliness is to some extent the negative corollary of the modern desire for individual freedom from the restrictions and constraints of traditional institutions and forms of life: religion, family, village, tyrannical bosses and so on. Individuals want to exercise greater choice over their work, the place they live, their moral and political beliefs, their sexual orientation and so on.
But the downside of this desire is the creation of the more mobile and restless individuals that we are today, who choose to opt out of traditional communities like extended family, neighbourhood, church, or union. The difficulty is that we cannot always find substitutes for the fellowship and feeling of community these institutions provided and which they need. Increased demand for individual liberty tends to produce more lonely individuals. This is why it is so important for modern societies to create institutions and places which foster community and togetherness, places that people know they can find company and fellowship whilst not sacrificing their individual freedom. [...]
The second way that neoliberalism fosters loneliness is by eliminating anything which is not “productive” in a narrow economic understanding of this term - anything which does not produce a return-on-investment for shareholders. Governments of all colours have in recent years implemented policies which dissolve or undermine youth clubs, sports clubs, libraries, and charities supporting disabled or older people, or other vulnerable groups - exactly the kind of collective projects which protect people from loneliness in modern freedom-loving societies. At the same time, the army of volunteers who once ran such community projects is drying up, exhausted from having had every last drop of their productivity - that is, their energy - squeezed from them in their day job. These are some of the real causes of contemporary loneliness.
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