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Loneliness is a serious public-health problem:
Doctors and policymakers in the rich world are increasingly worried about loneliness. Campaigns to reduce it have been launched in Britain, Denmark and Australia. In Japan the government has surveyed hikikomori, or "people who shut themselves in their homes". Last year Vivek Murthy, a former surgeon-general of the United States, called loneliness an epidemic, likening its impact on health to obesity or smoking 15 cigarettes per day. In January Theresa May, the British prime minister, appointed a minister for loneliness.
That the problem exists is obvious; its nature and extent are not. Obesity can be measured on scales. But how to weigh an emotion? Researchers start by distinguishing several related conditions. Loneliness is not synonymous with social isolation (how often a person meets or speaks to friends and family) or with solitude (which implies a choice to be alone).
Instead researchers define loneliness as perceived social isolation, a feeling of not having the social contacts one would like. Of course, the objectively isolated are much more likely than the average person to feel lonely. But loneliness can also strike those with seemingly ample friends and family. Nor is loneliness always a bad thing. John Cacioppo, an American psychologist who died in March, called it a reflex honed by natural selection. Early humans would have been at a disadvantage if isolated from a group, he noted, so it makes sense for loneliness to stir a desire for company. Transient loneliness still serves that purpose today. The problem comes when it is prolonged.
[...] A study published in 2010 using this scale estimated that 35% of Americans over 45 were lonely. Of these 45% had felt this way for at least six years; a further 32% for one to five years. In 2013 Britain's Office for National Statistics (ONS), by dint of asking a simple question, classed 25% of people aged 52 or over as "sometimes lonely" with an extra 9% "often lonely".
Other evidence points to the extent of isolation. For 41% of Britons over 65, TV or a pet is their main source of company, according to Age UK, a charity. In Japan more than half a million people stay at home for at least six months at a time, making no contact with the outside world, according to a report by the government in 2016. Another government study reckons that 15% of Japanese regularly eat alone. A popular TV show is called "The Solitary Gourmet".
[...] The idea that loneliness is bad for your health is not new. One early job of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the Yukon region was to keep tabs on the well-being of gold prospectors who might go months without human contact. Evidence points to the benign power of a social life. Suicides fall during football World Cups, for example, maybe because of the transient feeling of community.
But only recently has medicine studied the links between relationships and health. In 2015 a meta-analysis led by Julianne Holt-Lunstad of Brigham Young University, in Utah, synthesised 70 papers, through which 3.4m participants were followed over an average of seven years. She found that those classed as lonely had a 26% higher risk of dying, and those living alone a 32% higher chance, after accounting for differences in age and health status.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @04:07PM (11 children)
Of course most of you will die, and that is a good thing.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 10 2018, @04:20PM (9 children)
In the event of a nuclear apocalypse, I hope to be included in that group of most, whom I consider to be the lucky ones.
Some may disagree. And I am not looking to hasten my demise. Living in the stone ages fighting for resources is probably not the best retirement.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by KritonK on Monday September 10 2018, @04:27PM (8 children)
On the other hand, building a new world, hoping to get it right this time, might be pretty rewarding.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Monday September 10 2018, @04:46PM (7 children)
Two things:
0. If you're young enough
1. People have tried for millennia and still can't get it right. THAT says something very powerful about the problem being on our inside, not an external problem. It would explain the very reason for the nuclear war. The new world built by human hands would ultimately be destined to self destruct. The seeds of our destruction are carried within us. (IMO since we bit the Apple.) We try to fix it but find it to be unrepairable. People are inherently selfish with lust for power over other people. A Star Trek utopia could never work. Just an opinion and observation.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 11 2018, @02:13AM
> 1. ... The seeds of our destruction are carried within us.
This is the theme of Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Player Piano (although the destruction isn't nuclear). Highly recommended.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday September 11 2018, @02:32PM (4 children)
Look at any group of intelligent social animals. Examine the interpersonal violence. Human societies suddenly seem remarkably pacifist.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday September 11 2018, @04:34PM
I cannot disagree.
I will simply point out the irony considering the subject line is about us destroying not only ourselves, but probably most other species on the planet.
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(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday September 11 2018, @04:43PM (2 children)
Bonobos. You know, like chimps except they prefer to fuck anything that moves rather than bite anything that moves' face off.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday September 11 2018, @06:34PM (1 child)
Someone once referred to bonobos as "failed chimps".
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday September 11 2018, @07:46PM
Sounds like envy to me. I mean there's something to be said for occasionally eating someone's face off just because it's Tuesday but all in all I think I'd rather spend most of my time fucking.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 11 2018, @03:22PM
I think the issue is that we are primates, which are inherently violent (harem groups I think are at the root of this). However, if you look at it, humans are less violent than most primates, so I think we are making progress. I think we are down to the level of infanticidal lions*. Yay us?
That said, we are currently in the least violent time we have ever been in history. You know those news stories about people being murdered in Yemen? The reason you hear about them is that there wasn't much of anything closer to talk about that day. Its like how cancer is so bad now, because we live long enough to die to it.
* I can't find the exact study, though these seem to contradict me somewhat: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/09/human-violence-evolution-animals-nature-science/ [nationalgeographic.com] https://www.livescience.com/56306-primates-including-humans-are-the-most-violent-animals.html [livescience.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @07:24PM
I'm thinking that there may be 2 billion humans still alive 10 years after a global nuclear exchange, but that's a wild guess.
Most won't die on N-day (whenever that happens. 2025... maybe--I didn't get my 2018 riots). N-day will be horrific, certainly. Life will likely end for city-dwellers. Those of us in flyover country will probably find a way to continue on, just without the big corporations and financial shenanigans and bullshit from DC. The worst will probably be, depending on how much radioactive ash is kicked up into the atmosphere, the summer after N-day having low crop yields. The big question in my mind is how many humans will get killed by other humans fighting over what's left before they figure out they need to rebuild.
Also look at Chernobyl. N-day doesn't mean that the world ends and it's a lifeless wasteland like Mars forever. Life finds a way. Earth abides.
John Titor's ghost writer made a lot of very good sociological predictions imho. There will be some awareness that it was the careless use of technology that led to N-day, and people will be more cautious towards it. They'll value face-to-face interactions and knowing their neighbors and local communities more. They'll care less about far-off events.
Or maybe nothing will change.
The only certainty in my mind is that nuclear weapons will be used on a massive scale at least once. Very probably again and again.