Loneliness, the greatest threat to Societies

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Every person is born of a family, and there are several families that make up a society.  Within a society, people depend on each other for help and support.  Having people around you gives a sense of inclusiveness and belonging.  Moreover, it may also enable the feeling of being loved and respected.  The experience of being part of a society is diminishing in most societies today.  This created a vacuum of isolation that makes people starting to feel Lonely. Monbiot (2014) claims that loneliness has become the greatest threat to humans than any other causes and is destroying our societies.  Human beings used to have an interdependent history and lived in societies for centuries however this may not be the case for the age we are heading into. As revealed by Independent Age (cited in Monbiot 2014), a recent study in England shows that loneliness is increasing at an alarming rate and had already severely affected 700,000 older men and 1.1 million women.  This signals a warning for us to be aware of the dangers we may face when we start isolating ourselves from our societies. It may be evident that the surfacing of technological advancements have influenced people's ideologies of being in the race for fame, wealth and discovering new knowledge. Monbiot (2014), claims that people are competing against each other for their desire to pursue more which lead to individualism. For example, we may have recently experienced the increasing number of individual entrepreneurs striving to innovate new technologies such as drone technologies, 3D printing technologies and futuristic automobile like the flying cars which have taken technology to new heights.  These desires may have one similar objective and that is to stand out from the competitive crowd so people continue to push technology beyond its limits.

Apart from these, technology boom may also have greater impact on users and create isolation, especially when people develop the addiction to watch television and engage themselves with virtual experiences.  Monbiot (2014) states that TV is a cause of loneliness because it makes people want to isolate themselves to television and this promotes individualism. Furthermore, people detached themselves into virtual reality environments in the hope to discover new experiences which may have neurological consequences.  There are potential risks associated to it such as virtual reality sickness (Stein 2016) and existential hangover (Searles 2016) which may require them to seek medical attention and if the person is alone, this may possibly lead to other serious side effects.  

While much of what the author had presented may be categorized as pull-factors because they attract people to individualism, there are also other push-factors that may force people to live an individualistic life such as those created by family negligence.  Suster (2015) states that loneliness can be caused by certain parental abandonment during childhood years that can lead to depression, resulting in deaths.  He gave examples of two very skilled musicians namely Amy Winehouse and Kurt Kobain, who took their own lives at the age of 27 as a result of depression and loneliness.  This demonstrates the importance of parental love to embrace and encourage societal engagement.

It can therefore be concluded that people and societies depend on each other for human race to live happily.  If humans are driven by their desires for recognition, wealth, new experiences or for their academic integrity, they should also learn to appreciate and maintain the values and morals that will bind and keep them intact for a prosperous living by interacting with their societies.  In addition, parents are responsible to provide tender care and love to their children and ensure they grow up in a conducive environment that will refrain them from loneliness leading to depression.