Pandagon

Here's something depressing---two of the first articles I read this morning when I was first able to read something were about the holidays and loneliness. The Salon article is okay, and it would be better without the whiff of evo psych just-so stories on it. There's something more than a little fishy about engaging in elaborate and relatively undemonstrable fantasies about hunter-gatherer ancestors and how they must have felt about being alone. The truth is that the evidence that we're social animals is right in front of us---no matter what society you're talking about and no matter how they're organized, ejection from it into the wilderness would mean certain death for the majority of people. This is true of hunter-gatherers, medieval people, and modern people. The "other people or die" theory doesn't do shit to explain why some people feel lonely while surrounded by others. What saves the story from being trite is that the author gets another opinion besides the evo psychologist one on the nature of loneliness, and talks to another author who suggests that our society breeds distance between people, and loneliness with all its attendant health problems is the result. This makes more sense to me, and our bitter, grudge match political culture that encourages people to hate and fear their neighbors isn't improving the situation. That's why I hate the mandatory "bash the internet" part of these stories (get off your computer and see people, they preach), because before the internet, the opportunities to relieve loneliness were even worse. Go out and meet people, sure. But who and when and why? Internet communities are increasingly giving people an opportunity to develop real communities. Meeting your romantic partner online has gone from being sort of weird to more common than not.