(2018-11-24) How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart. According to a recent large-scale survey from the health care provider Cigna, most Americans suffer from strong feelings of loneliness and a lack of significance in their relationships. Nearly half say they sometimes or always feel alone or “left out.”

The survey, which charts social isolation using a common measure known as the U.C.L.A. Loneliness Scale, shows that loneliness is worse in each successive generation.

This problem is at the heart of the new book “Them: Why We Hate Each Other — and How to Heal,” by Senator Ben Sasse.

he presciently described what he believes lonely people increasingly do to fill the hole of belonging in their lives: They turn to angry politics.

people find a sense of community in the polarized tribes

Why are we becoming so lonely? One reason is the changing nature of work.

people hop from job to job, and from city to city, as steady work becomes harder to find and the gig economy grows.

Too many Americans don’t have a place they think of as home — a “thick” community in which people know and look out for one another and invest in relationships that are not transient

He describes the high school sports events on Friday nights that drew the townspeople together in a common love for their neighbors and community that made most differences — especially political differences — seem trivial

the trick is “learning how to intentionally invest in the places where we actually live.”

It is about the neighbor I choose to be in the community I wind up calling my home.