Changes

The effects of this are ruinous and self-reinforcing. Social disconnection warps the mind. When people feel unseen, they tend to shut down socially. People who are lonely and unseen become suspicious. They start to take offense where none is intended. They become afraid of the very thing they need most, which is intimate contact with other humans. They are buffeted by waves of self-loathing and self-doubt. After all, it feels shameful to realize that you are apparently unworthy of other people’s attention. Many people harden into their solitude. They create self-delusional worlds. “Loneliness obfuscates,” the interdisciplinary scientist Giovanni Frazzetto writes in his book Together, Closer. “It becomes a deceiving filter through which we see ourselves, others, and the world. It makes us more vulnerable to rejection, and it heightens our general level of vigilance and insecurity in social situations.” We see ourselves as others see us, and when we feel invisible, well, we have a tendency to fall to pieces...

The effects of this are ruinous and self-reinforcing. Social disconnection warps the mind. When people feel unseen, they tend to shut down socially. People who are lonely and unseen become suspicious. They start to take offense where none is intended. They become afraid of the very thing they need most, which is intimate contact with other humans. They are buffeted by waves of self-loathing and self-doubt. After all, it feels shameful to realize that you are apparently unworthy of other people’s attention. Many people harden into their solitude. They create self-delusional worlds. “Loneliness obfuscates,” the interdisciplinary scientist Giovanni Frazzetto writes in his book Together, Closer. “It becomes a deceiving filter through which we see ourselves, others, and the world. It makes us more vulnerable to rejection, and it heightens our general level of vigilance and insecurity in social situations.” We see ourselves as others see us, and when we feel invisible, well, we have a tendency to fall to pieces...

Sadness, lack of recognition, and loneliness turn into bitterness. When people believe that their identity is unrecognized, it feels like injustice—because it is. People who have been treated unjustly often lash out, seek ways to humiliate those who they feel have humiliated them. Loneliness thus leads to meanness. As the saying goes, pain that is not transformed gets transmitted. The data I just cited about social isolation and sadness is, no surprise, accompanied by other sorts of data about rising hostility and callousness. In 2021, hate-crime reports surged to their highest levels in twelve years. In 2000, roughly two-thirds of Americans gave to charity; by 2021, fewer than half did. One restaurant owner recently told me that he has to ban somebody from his place for rude behavior almost every week these days. That didn’t use to happen. A friend of mine who is a nurse says her number one problem is retaining staff. Her nurses want to quit because the patients have become so abusive, even violent. As the columnist Peggy Noonan put it, “People are proud of their bitterness now.” The social breakdown manifests as a crisis of distrust. Two generations ago, roughly 60 percent of Americans said that “most people can be trusted.” By 2014, according the General Social Survey, only 30.3 percent did, and only 19 percent of millennials. High-trust societies have what Francis Fukuyama calls “spontaneous sociability,” meaning that people are quick to get together and work together. Low-trust societies do not have this. Low-trust societies fall apart. Distrust sows distrust. It creates a feeling that the only person you can count on is yourself. Distrustful people assume that others are out to get them, they exaggerate threats, they fall for conspiracy theories that explain the danger they feel.<ref>Brooks, David. How to Know a Person (p. 97-101). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.</ref>}}

Sadness, lack of recognition, and loneliness turn into bitterness. When people believe that their identity is unrecognized, it feels like injustice—because it is. People who have been treated unjustly often lash out, seek ways to humiliate those who they feel have humiliated them. Loneliness thus leads to meanness. As the saying goes, pain that is not transformed gets transmitted. The data I just cited about social isolation and sadness is, no surprise, accompanied by other sorts of data about rising hostility and callousness. In 2021, hate-crime reports surged to their highest levels in twelve years. In 2000, roughly two-thirds of Americans gave to charity; by 2021, fewer than half did. One restaurant owner recently told me that he has to ban somebody from his place for rude behavior almost every week these days. That didn’t use to happen. A friend of mine who is a nurse says her number one problem is retaining staff. Her nurses want to quit because the patients have become so abusive, even violent. As the columnist Peggy Noonan put it, “People are proud of their bitterness now.” The social breakdown manifests as a crisis of distrust. Two generations ago, roughly 60 percent of Americans said that “most people can be trusted.” By 2014, according the General Social Survey, only 30.3 percent did, and only 19 percent of millennials. High-trust societies have what Francis Fukuyama calls “spontaneous sociability,” meaning that people are quick to get together and work together. Low-trust societies do not have this. Low-trust societies fall apart. Distrust sows distrust. It creates a feeling that the only person you can count on is yourself. Distrustful people assume that others are out to get them, they exaggerate threats, they fall for [[Conspiracy theory|conspiracy theories]] that explain the danger they feel.<ref>Brooks, David. How to Know a Person (p. 97-101). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.</ref>}}

== Liberals and friendship ==

== Liberals and friendship ==