Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

people are so fucked up by consumerism that they expect to be just consumers also in their sociality... like they expect that social relations to be like commodities.

in consumer societies people flee real freedom's anxiety by conforming to market ways, treating connections as consumption not production. lasting bonds need effort patience vulnerability, all anti-consumer virtues.

Fromm said that in market societies love and relations follow the commodity and labor market exchange pattern. they want low-effort replaceable humans. So they became low-effort replaceable humans.

Many years ago I read the classic 'How to win friends and influence people' and I was just hit with, according to that book, how little people actually care about other people and how fundamentally lonely our existence is.

I don't think that was the message the book was trying to give, but that's what I got out of it.

So yes, people will wonder, subconsciously or not, what's in it for them. If you can give status or if you are naturally entertaining, this might all seem a little less obvious.

It's excellent that you're working on loneliness! Somehow. What is it your startup actually does?

I see this is still front-page news.

There’s really two main ingredients to loneliness:

1) We don’t meet others in a way that sparks relationships.

2) We have personal issues that interfere with our ability to have relationships.

#1 is fairly straightforward. We have the ability to make friends; but lack the opportunity. If we can meet and interact with others, we’ll make friends, and mitigate our isolation. We need to “get out more.” We can join organizations, go places, right-swipe on apps, and we’ll eventually break our isolation. I’ve found that a key is to get together with others, over shared interests or goals.

#2 is a different beast. We need to work on ourselves, first and foremost. We may often need help, like therapy or guided self-help. Usually, there’s a lot of pretty humbling work involved. If we don’t treat the root cause (our own issues), then we can meet as many people as possible, and we’ll still be lonely.

Lots of potential reasons for our problems. Could be trauma, neurodivergence, addiction, mental health problems, personal insecurity, or simply lack of experience. Often, a combination of these.

The good news is, is that if we get serious about treating our own issues, we will absolutely end the isolation. Almost every treatment involves a lot of interaction with others, and relationship-building.

For myself, I was definitely in the #2 category. I’m “on the spectrum,” and I had an addiction problem. Intervention was required, and I needed to stop running, turn around, and face my demons. I needed to learn to ask for, and, even more importantly, accept, help. I had to develop a taste for crow and humble pie. Doing this, changed everything.

That was 45 years ago, when I was 18. The road has been anything but smooth, but it’s always been onward and upward. Today, I have close relationships all over the world, with an enormous variety of people, and have done work that affects thousands of lives in a positive manner.

I’ve also found that helping others to deal with their own issues has been effective.

go outside, talk to people