The conventional wisdom is likely true: The country and most of the world are experiencing an epidemic of loneliness. The main explanation is also likely true: We’ve come to depend too heavily on electronic communication at the expense of real time together in physical spaces.
If all that is true, there is a cure. We need to find our community and figure out a way to make that the basis of genuine human connection. It’s an essential part of the rebuilding process after the “social distancing” of the pandemic period broke our social habits, drained life out of our networks, divided communities, and shattered many civic bonds.
For a time, nearly everyone was forced to endure loneliness and told to use technology alone to communicate and socialize with others. Early on, there were virtual cocktail hours and virtual family reunions, even virtual weddings and funerals. During this time, everyone discovered the same reality. It is not satisfying at all. It is better than nothing perhaps but also tremendously frustrating. A major part of the information that in-person meetings provide is taken away.
Human interaction became reduced to digits only, with no smells, subtleties, handshakes, hugs, or full-body motions. We were all just faces staring at dots, struggling to say things with words alone but realizing that vast amounts of information were completely lost through this medium.
By the end of 2020, most people had become burned out from the whole thing, but no real options emerged for another year or so. By then, we had another issue to keep communities apart: the vaccine. The willingness to take the injection regardless of need, risk, or effectiveness was deployed as a proxy for cleanliness. Whole cities were shut to the dirty ones and families split further at a time when they were the most vulnerable. Incredibly, many worship communities did the same thing.
Last week provided me with a reminder of just how irreplaceable the physical community truly is. I was at an event called Porcfest in New Hampshire. Brownstone Institute has a tent with chairs and sofas for meeting, greeting, and discussion. I met so many interesting people with fascinating life stories and professional experiences plus intellectual insights. I got a revealing picture of the frustrations and joys of contemporary life and of learning from others about every manner of topic.
The experience has been strangely tactile, almost like discovering the world in a completely new way. It’s true that Porcfest never stopped meeting during the COVID years, even in 2020 with a down attendance. The organizers put the community ahead of panic and never looked back. The mainstream news media tried to drum up some kind of controversy about this but found itself frustrated that no one associated with the conference would speak to reporters. They finally gave up.
Today the conference is thriving but has a fascinating character about it. People think of this event as political, but this seems less true than ever. There are very few political signs around, and the talks instead are mostly about personal finances, professional development, health and diet, travel and entertainment, culture and religion, and everything else. Whereas this meeting used to be for organizing libertarians for political reasons, it seems these days more like a place where people are simply seeking and finding their community and their people.
This is because so many people these days are seeking out some kind of connection to others. And because so many institutions and practices were shattered by lockdowns, they are having to form new institutions and seek out new friendships, essentially rebuilding what was lost. As for libertarianism itself, which was always famously doctrinaire and partisan as an ideology, these days it seems much more simple and practical. It really is about seeking a way to get our lives back.
Along with this comes a major culture-wide effort to rediscover civility, manners, commitments, work, decency, and social skills generally. I have an insightful friend who posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that her own professional life seems more and more characterized by strange fits of rudeness: people scheduling meetings and not appearing, unanswered messages, strange ghosting of people, missing deadlines, and a seeming lack of interest in productivity and helping others. The thread on her account was packed with others who have observed the same thing. Everybody is wondering why this is happening.
Again, this is a problem that comes with the breakdown of organic community. It is within communities that we acquire social skills, experience rewards for being kind and keeping commitments, and otherwise develop the etiquette associated with living well in cooperation with others. Take that away, and we perform a social experiment in how long it takes a formerly civilized people to become like characters in “Lord of the Flies.” Today we have a sense of the answer: It happens in about one year.
Now the issue is developing and recreating norms, customs, protocols, and habits as they pertain to real human engagement, which is radically different from and more challenging than any digital experience. Nearly everyone these days is out of practice, and the only way to get there is by throwing yourself into a community experience. There are not nearly enough of them available, and, ideally, you would find one that is not expensive in these hard economic times. That’s not so easy.
I’m writing now from Porcfest during this beautiful season when all is in bloom and so many communities all over are struggling to reconstitute themselves and rediscover meaning in times of loneliness, isolation, economic decline, and suffering from so much pain of the past few years. These times are truly a test of human resilience in hard times. We simply will not find the answer in ideological fanaticism of any sort or through endless clicking of our laptops and phones. We find the answer through real world interactions with others, around tables and sitting in sofas, sharing truly and honestly our stories, pains, heartaches, hopes, and triumphs. This is the only path to rebuild what has been lost.
