Our Biggest Problem

Justin Stone on Life

By Justin Stone

Loneliness is one of the most important problems in our society, much more so than in Eastern ways of living. In China, Japan, and India, the family and, in the case of Japan, the clan take precedence over the individual, though that may be slowly changing. Here, if we have a family of four—two teenage children and their parents—we are apt to have four cars. When I was growing up, there was usually one car in the family. The family ate most meals together and lived as a tightly knit unit. Today, each member of the family seems to live a separate life, very seldom even having dinner together. Everybody is off in his or her car, one lonely figure in an island surrounded by other lonely figures. Perhaps this is why people like to take their vacations in such places as Peru, where, in smaller localities, everyone comes to the central market place, where much laughter is heard and where the local gossip is exchanged. In Carmel, California, a vote was taken and all the villagers opted to keep getting their mail at the post office, where friends came for their mail and news of what was going on locally. That was half the fun of getting your mail.

Loneliness is most prevalent in big cities, where one is seldom acquainted with his or her neighbors in the apartment house where one lives. In small communities, neighbors are there for help, if needed, but, in apartment houses, one only sees the neighbors in the elevator, and a nod of the head passes for communication.

This cult of the individual private way of life may be great for the rich or very attractive person, but most of us do not fit that description. How many lonely women and men go home after work to a solitary dinner we’ll never know. Living in crowded circumstances does not keep one from being alone. Hence the television is so popular, making noise and faintly simulating some sort of companionship.

We live in a competitive society, where the unattractive person is not catered to, and not all of us are born able to compete in such a society.

Can we change the society? Probably not. I reluctantly feel that loneliness is here to stay.