03-12-2020, 11:07 AM
Last night I read a story on my cellphone feed where this one writer shares her ordeal of loneliness stating that she really has no life as a single mother with a young daughter. And this situation is bound to get even worse if the coronavirus continues to create more situations of cancelled public events and isolation, whether forced or not. The situation is already enough that we can consider it to be the other pandemic, the one that does not get talked about nearly enough. As a lifelong single person, I went through the loneliness batter fairly early in life. Didn't have much social life during my 20s, part of that stemming from a prolonged muted adolescence spent in two different boarding schools. Had issues as a child but later determined that it probably was Asperger's even though the diagnosis of that wasn't available at the time. Made up for lost time big though during the late 1970s and some of the 1980s before the AIDS scare made more people afraid of others again.
Many such as single parents may be craving some alone time when children are in school, but more often than not they are out working themselves so they seldom if ever get that, even though the work from home option is become ever more popular. There is often a need to just get away from it all and hide. Beginning in the late 1980s there was a sharp trend toward cocooning, which in essence means exactly that. This trend was spotted by a woman named Faith Popcorn, who saw it coming during the days when life seemed like one big party. In the hale days of my generation's youth, we pretty much lived to go out. Some maybe stayed in once a month on a Monday night or something like that. Staying in on a weekend night unless you were deathly sick was akin to blasphemy. One with the Asperger's condition is often prone to go so far as to say something impulsively, which will certain get you that alone time, but not in the way you had envisioned, but you'll regret it later on. It does seem that the balance between freedom and connection is getting more elusive.
I do tend to believe that much of today's isolation, whether self-imposed or not, is due to excessive debt and work loads, which I have said many times on the forum is the exact opposite of what so many pundits expected with the advent of modern technology. Remember when we were told that said technology would give most of us so much leisure time that we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves? There was even a book written on the subject, titled "The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure" by Juliet Schor. I read that book and remember toward the end the author stating that we won't have more leisure unless a significant portion of the society determines that we must have it. Obviously it has not happened yet. Ms. Schor followed it up with another book titled "The Overspent American" in which she describes heavy debt loads as a big contributor to the whole "I don't have time" syndrome.
Here is a link to one article on how the loneliness pandemic seems to snowball:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...ss/521841/
Now perhaps the best known song dealing with loneliness and isolation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuS5NuXRb5Y
There are many more articles dealing with the loneliness pandemic.
Many such as single parents may be craving some alone time when children are in school, but more often than not they are out working themselves so they seldom if ever get that, even though the work from home option is become ever more popular. There is often a need to just get away from it all and hide. Beginning in the late 1980s there was a sharp trend toward cocooning, which in essence means exactly that. This trend was spotted by a woman named Faith Popcorn, who saw it coming during the days when life seemed like one big party. In the hale days of my generation's youth, we pretty much lived to go out. Some maybe stayed in once a month on a Monday night or something like that. Staying in on a weekend night unless you were deathly sick was akin to blasphemy. One with the Asperger's condition is often prone to go so far as to say something impulsively, which will certain get you that alone time, but not in the way you had envisioned, but you'll regret it later on. It does seem that the balance between freedom and connection is getting more elusive.
I do tend to believe that much of today's isolation, whether self-imposed or not, is due to excessive debt and work loads, which I have said many times on the forum is the exact opposite of what so many pundits expected with the advent of modern technology. Remember when we were told that said technology would give most of us so much leisure time that we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves? There was even a book written on the subject, titled "The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure" by Juliet Schor. I read that book and remember toward the end the author stating that we won't have more leisure unless a significant portion of the society determines that we must have it. Obviously it has not happened yet. Ms. Schor followed it up with another book titled "The Overspent American" in which she describes heavy debt loads as a big contributor to the whole "I don't have time" syndrome.
Here is a link to one article on how the loneliness pandemic seems to snowball:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...ss/521841/
Now perhaps the best known song dealing with loneliness and isolation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuS5NuXRb5Y
There are many more articles dealing with the loneliness pandemic.