Ben Sasse's book: "Why do we hate each other?": Epidemic of loneliness, our biggest crisis

The crumbling of America social infrastructure presents a daunting challenge.

ISenator Ben Sasse is right – he was not wrong recently on something important – the most controversial political problem of the nation is entangled in the least understood public health problem. The political problem is furious partisanship. The public health problem is loneliness. Sasse's new book states that Americans are richer, more informed and "connected" than ever – and less happy, more isolated and less fulfilled.

In Them: why we hate each other – and how to healThe subject of Sasse is "the evaporation of social capital" – the satisfactions of work and community. This reflects a perverse phenomenon: what ended up counting as connectivity displaces reality. And things could quickly get worse considerably.

Solitude in "epidemic proportions" produces a "literature on loneliness" containing sociological and medical conclusions about the effects of loneliness on the brain and body of individuals, as well as on communities. According to Mr Sasse, "there is a growing consensus" that loneliness – not obesity, cancer or heart disease – is the country's "number one health crisis". "Persistent loneliness" reduces the average longevity by more than twice that of excessive alcohol consumption. three times more than obesity, which is often a consequence of loneliness. Research shows that loneliness is as serious as physically 15 cigarettes a day and contributes to cognitive decline, including faster progression of Alzheimer's disease. Sasse said, "We are literally dying of despair," of failure "to fill the void that millions of Americans feel in their lives."

Big and small symptoms are everywhere. Time passed, he notes, the Americans "filled their imagination with the same thing": in the 1950s, 70% of televisions used were listening. I like lucy. Today, while 93% of Americans have access to more than 500 channels, the most watched cable TV show, Hannity account for about 1% of the US population. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the average number of times Americans had fun at home decreased by almost 50%. Americans are hyperconnected but disconnected, with "fewer non-virtual friends than ever, for decades". With the US median (according to a Pew poll), a smartphone every 4.3 minutes and nearly 40% of 18-29 year olds connected online almost every minute, we are "addicted to distraction" and "dressed for a real community". Social media, the "tendrils of resentment" that Sasse calls the accelerators of political anger, create an indefinite "indignity loop" for "professional rage." -peddlers. And for those for whom the enemies have the psychic value of giving a coherence of life.

The work, which Sasse calls "probably the most fundamental anchor of human identity," is at the beginning of a "dramatic upheaval," faster and more radical than the transformation of America itself. rural and agricultural country to an urban and industrial country. Alcoholism, at the origin of prohibition, was one of the answers to the social upheavals. Today, one of the reasons why the average lifespan of Americans has declined for three consecutive years is that many more people die from overdoses of drugs – one of the "diseases of despair" – annually that died during the whole Vietnam War. People "need to be needed," but analysts at McKinsey & Co. estimate that globally, 50% of paid activities – jobs – could be automated. currently demonstrated technologies. The largest job class in America is "driver" and, with the advent of autonomous vehicles, two-thirds of these jobs could disappear in a decade.

This future of accelerating flows exalts educated and socially agile people. It frightens those who, their erased job identities and their atomized communities, are not tempted by what Sasse calls "healthy local tribes" but by the political tribalism of grievances, or by chemical oblivion, or both. . In today's bifurcated country, 2016 was the tenth consecutive year in which 40% of American children were born out of wedlock. America has "two almost totally different cultures," exemplified by this: marriage, compared to nearly 70% of births among women with high school graduation or less.

Repairing the US physical infrastructure, while expensive, is conceptually simple and involves steel and concrete. The crumbling of America social Infrastructure is a challenge: we do not know how to develop what Sasse wants, "new habits of mind and heart. . . new neighborhood practices. "We know that a bigger government, which means greater saturation of society with politics, is not a sufficient answer.

Sasse, a fifth-generation Nebraskan who devotes his book to Kiwanis and Rotary clubs and other Fremont platoons in New Jersey (population of 26,000), wants to revive the feeling of hometown on Friday night. . "But Americans can not go home to Fremont anymore.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group