Jeremy Nobel’s latest work, published by Penguin Publishing Group, takes on a dynamic look at loneliness and the growing issue of chronic illnesses associated with it. Recently, WHO declared loneliness as a ‘pressing global threat’, so much so that the average mortality quotient is equivalent to the effect of smoking 15 cigarettes every day. Project UnLonely commenced as a non-profit initiative launched in 2016 with grants from the AARP Foundation and UJA-Federation of New York, aiming towards creating ‘Creativity Circles’ workshops or community-based organizations addressing the crisis. The author declares – ‘we are no longer facing a Pandemic crisis. We are living in the pandemic era… if we don’t know what’s coming, we don’t know if we can handle it.’ Anxiety turns out to be a biological response to threat, and the post-2020 times add to it with expanding inequality and horrific social psychology experiments, creating mental health issues for 40% of Americans alone. It can lead to cancer, dementia, diabetes, as well as diseases of the coronary, gastrointestinal, and respiratory systems all over the USA, UK, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The middle-aged demographic of working-class Americans is attacked by the ‘deaths of despair’ caused by alcoholism, drug overdose, and suicide, bringing down life expectancy to its lowest since 1996.
Project UnLonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection (2023)
Loneliness Is A Knotted Web
In 2018, a study was conducted by Cigna, where it was shown that nearly 46% of US adults feel lonely sometimes or always. Surprisingly, it was the younger adult who reported feeling lonelier, falling in the age group of 18-22. During the Pandemic, a website called ‘Stuck At Home (Together)’ was put up with the mission of connecting participants in hour-long Creative Socials, accelerating meaningful, personal and authentic conversations. The virtual program was ideal for Persons with Disabilities (PwD), destigmatizing loneliness from trauma (and shame) with a sense of commonality. The primary care physician of Beth Israel Hospital had reported in the 1980s how his patients were reluctant to take care of themselves, failing to attend follow-up visits that led to blindness and amputation. “I am not sure anyone cares about me” – the succinct reply. Lonely citizens are laden with guilt and a fear of judgment or ridicule. The ‘social history’ of the patients display a lack of routine contact and a regular depression diagnosis. Unlike depression, however, loneliness is not a disease. There is no medical treatment for it. It is the stubborn resistance to change that exposes their deficient self-worth.
Mental Health Evaluation and Loneliness Scale
Susan Sontag designated in ‘Illness as Metaphor’ – ‘Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds this dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.’ It is the lonely heart that starts with the ruins. As Anselm Keifer emphasizes, growing up as a German painter during the Allied bombing of World War II – ‘with the debris you can construct new ideas’. Yearning for a regulated lifestyle, the people with the dangerous lonely heart provide primary value to stagnancy. It is important to overcome that juncture when hopelessness becomes the only hope. Lonely employees in our modern-day MNCs have three times the rate of opioid-use disorders, indicating an addiction risk. As per the healthcare spending in 2021, over $4.3 trillion were spent, approximately 18.3% of US GDP. The focus should be towards a shift in human misery and contingency funds, allocating more towards improvement of education, transportation facilities, infrastructure development as well as sustainable mitigation measures against climate change.
Was My Life Meaningful? Is There A Legacy?
It has been proved that a continuous fight-or-flight response can significantly raise inflammation levels, slowing down the immune function. In isolated macaques, for instance, the antiviral response had decreased in the gene species. This isolation syndrome can be effectively identified with these four kinds of responses:
‘I feel left out.
I feel that people barely know me.
I feel isolated from others.
I feel that people are around me but not with me.’
The author shows the frequently marginalized populace are people with psychosomatic disorders, with no supportive peer groups. E.g., obese people usually tend to incline towards self-medication and constant provocation by a seemingly image-obsessed culture leads them to stay away from healthy behaviors. The lonesomest disease, as written by Helen Furnas in ‘The Saturday Evening Post’, is a rare kind of hemophilia, commonly known today as Type C. It was assumed till 1953 that it could only be malignant in male, but with amusing mediums like ‘Hemophilia: The Musical’, it is now easier to know detailed insights on undiagnosable medical conditions. A positive affirmation is all that is needed to concentrate on a productive life. A British-born financier James got involved in Buddhist practice and painting late in his life. A week before his death, he left a voicemail, mentioning he was too weak to lift a brush, but he was still painting – ‘I’m painting in my mind.’
Why Should We Read Project UnLonely?
The author has been the founder of The Foundation for Art & Healing and initiated the formal management of healthcare and delivery systems around loneliness. He provides his readers a Jungian analysis of aging, elaborating on our first adulthood as the time when our primary choices are shaped, influenced by the perspectives and needs of others. The second adulthood brings forth further autonomy, self-realization and renunciation, aiming towards a more voluntary approach towards the world. Being vulnerable restricts our neural activity much more than environmental causes. He provides us with the example of a Latino-majority neighborhood in Little Village, having lower death rates than Black-majority strengths of North Lawndale, even though both have similarly high-levels of poverty. He guides bereaved individuals to the Togetherness Program and offers them home visits or phone calls from CareMore personnel. This model is similar to the ‘Time Banks’ of Japan. One needs to address the epidemic of loneliness now in order to create more vibrant public spaces and prevent the politics of hate from ruining our holistic camaraderie.
