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Loneliness a 'bigger health risk than smoking or obesity'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Loneliness a 'bigger health risk than smoking or obesity'

#51

Post by the-dude »

mkr-hn wrote: post #26
raxxorrax wrote: post #10

My impression was that more and more people withdraw because the "public" has become quite toxic.

There's definitely an element of the last several years revealing how many people are just awful human beings. I'm wary of spending time getting to know someone only to find out they think certain people (like me) don't deserve equal rights, or something like that. I know on some level people were always like that. Bad ideas are pervasive and always have been. But there's more echo chambers reinforcing bad ideas now.…

If you see and describe 'the other side' in terms of deplorables as you do, you are as much a part of the polarisation problem as anyone else.

Believing about half of your fellow countrymen are 'awful human beings' is bonkers.

Re: Loneliness a 'bigger health risk than smoking or obesity'

#52

Post by mkr-hn »

the-dude wrote: post #51
mkr-hn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely an element of the last several years revealing how many people are just awful human beings. I'm wary of spending time getting to know someone only to find out they think certain people (like me) don't deserve equal rights, or something like that. I know on some level people were always like that. Bad ideas are pervasive and always have been. But there's more echo chambers reinforcing bad ideas now.…

If you see and describe 'the other side' in terms of deplorables as you do, you are as much a part of the polarisation problem as anyone else. Believing about half of your fellow countrymen are 'awful human beings' is bonkers.

You said deplorables, not me. Clinton is as useless as the rest of them[1]. Maybe follow up and ask for an example before assuming I'm hitting on your favorite political bugaboo or part of The Other Team. Your reply is an example of the problem.

>> "Believing about half of your fellow countrymen are 'awful human beings' is bonkers."

You said half, not me. You have literally no insight into what I mean and you think you know everything about me because of the media you consume. This is the problem.

To be clear: I don't think the noisy few are representative. I think most people don't have strong opinions on anything. That's not great, but I can work with them. But I can't tell whether they're just politically zoned out or waiting for something in a comment to latch on to for an unhinged rant until spending time getting to know them.

[1] Historical context for future readers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basket_of_deplorables

Re: Loneliness a 'bigger health risk than smoking or obesity'

#53

Post by [deleted] »

the-dude wrote: post #51
mkr-hn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely an element of the last several years revealing how many people are just awful human beings. I'm wary of spending time getting to know someone only to find out they think certain people (like me) don't deserve equal rights, or something like that. I know on some level people were always like that. Bad ideas are pervasive and always have been. But there's more echo chambers reinforcing bad ideas now.…

If you see and describe 'the other side' in terms of deplorables as you do, you are as much a part of the polarisation problem as anyone else. Believing about half of your fellow countrymen are 'awful human beings' is bonkers.

[deleted]

Re: Loneliness a 'bigger health risk than smoking or obesity'

#54

Post by BurningFrog »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #17
camillomiller wrote: post #3

>One woman who felt isolated in lockdown said loneliness was now a bigger health risk than smoking or obesity. So, this is the source of the article. No reference to any single study, despite all the research available on the topic. What a piece of anecdotical crap this article is. >Pre-pandemic, the Royal College of General Practitioners Wales called for all practices to have their own social prescriber in a bid to…

I've noticed that the BBC has been churning out a good number of "loneliness epidemic" articles for a few years now (since before covid). I haven't noticed this trend in any other publications that I read. I have no idea why they've been doing this. To be honest, I haven't looked further into it, and maybe I'm just noticing a pattern where there is none. But it's a thought that's crossed my mind a few times now.

UK now has a loneliness minister: https://time.com/5248016/tracey-crouch-uk-loneliness-ministe...

She is not the only one.

Re: Loneliness a 'bigger health risk than smoking or obesity'

#55

Post by bjornsing »

mkr-hn wrote: post #26
raxxorrax wrote: post #10

My impression was that more and more people withdraw because the "public" has become quite toxic.

There's definitely an element of the last several years revealing how many people are just awful human beings. I'm wary of spending time getting to know someone only to find out they think certain people (like me) don't deserve equal rights, or something like that. I know on some level people were always like that. Bad ideas are pervasive and always have been. But there's more echo chambers reinforcing bad ideas now.…

This rings very true to me. The combination of Twitter and pandemic has been very revealing to me. I used to think most people agreed on fundamental human values, and that political disagreement was about details like level of taxation, size of government, some moral judgements like abortion, that kind of stuff. Now I have the impression that we live in entirely different worlds / value systems, and that the correlation with politics is quite low. Also, not very many people support the fundamental values I took for granted, like equality before the law, the really basic stuff.

PS. I’m in Sweden, so not part of the US political debate. This is probably a global phenomenon.

Re: Loneliness a 'bigger health risk than smoking or obesity'

#56

Post by yummypaint »

laurent92 wrote: post #35

Since lockdowns, I hate everybody. I just broke up with the idea that we are a society. No, we’re just insane people who are eating at other people’s sanity, using lockdowns as a means to dismantle our fellow citizen. How to become homeless when you start millionaire and CEO of a small/moderate company? Well this is the first and main step, because on any major problem, you are alone and no-one is going to testify in…

It sounds like you can afford therapy, you should strongly consider it. They can probably help you deal with your problems in a way that doesn't externalize your negative experiences onto others. If everything is someone else's fault, then there is so cause for self improvement and you will remain stuck where you are.

Re: Loneliness a 'bigger health risk than smoking or obesity'

#57

Post by ajsnigrutin »

Our local "CDC"-equivalent has posted a warning (mostly to media) to avoid reporting about suicides during "the plague"... so yeah...

For young people, the school closings, dorm closings, curfews, movement restrictions and other "only for 14 days" decrees will cause greater psychological harm (and number of dead in that age group), than just letting them all get the virus.

Older people have a higher chance of dying due to corona, so the number might be different, and their social circles are usually a lot smaller, but suicide numbers are going up there too.

Re: Loneliness a 'bigger health risk than smoking or obesity'

#58

Post by raxxorrax »

bjornsing wrote: post #55
mkr-hn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely an element of the last several years revealing how many people are just awful human beings. I'm wary of spending time getting to know someone only to find out they think certain people (like me) don't deserve equal rights, or something like that. I know on some level people were always like that. Bad ideas are pervasive and always have been. But there's more echo chambers reinforcing bad ideas now.…

This rings very true to me. The combination of Twitter and pandemic has been very revealing to me. I used to think most people agreed on fundamental human values, and that political disagreement was about details like level of taxation, size of government, some moral judgements like abortion, that kind of stuff. Now I have the impression that we live in entirely different worlds / value systems, and that the correlat…

Don't base you view on the opinion of others on the content of Twitter or you will end up a supervillain that wants to destroy humanity. At least anyone with a heart would, ironically.

Re: Loneliness a 'bigger health risk than smoking or obesity'

#59

Post by blablabla123 »

laurent92 wrote: post #35

Since lockdowns, I hate everybody. I just broke up with the idea that we are a society. No, we’re just insane people who are eating at other people’s sanity, using lockdowns as a means to dismantle our fellow citizen. How to become homeless when you start millionaire and CEO of a small/moderate company? Well this is the first and main step, because on any major problem, you are alone and no-one is going to testify in…

Lockdowns are pretty bad, I think this cannot be emphasized enough. Still I think nobody wants to experience full-fledged pandemics like in the past that not just wreck social lives but whole economies. Right now some economies are quite well off again.

I think society is fading during lockdown, it really goes by the distance, let's hope that's changing back to normal soon.

> Everyone likes feminism! Men commit suicide at 5x the rate? Not a problem! Men work themselves till death

So do women, even in the G8 nations. Not sure if everyone likes feminism but also men have to suffer from the fallout of toxic masculinity. Like over-competitiveness, and yes this can also result in overworking. Even unrelated movements bring something anyone can benefit from. It's like with software, you think you fix a bug but at the same time you improve a structural problem.

Re: Loneliness a 'bigger health risk than smoking or obesity'

#60

Post by flamble »

_notathrowaway wrote: post #44
laurent92 wrote: post #35

Since lockdowns, I hate everybody. I just broke up with the idea that we are a society. No, we’re just insane people who are eating at other people’s sanity, using lockdowns as a means to dismantle our fellow citizen. How to become homeless when you start millionaire and CEO of a small/moderate company? Well this is the first and main step, because on any major problem, you are alone and no-one is going to testify in…

I feel bad about you man, and I wish people in this website could recognize your experience rather than simply downvote it because it is not aligned with their political views.

What I found so frustrating about the comment was how close it was to some sort of insight, while maddeningly not connecting the dots.

He has some vague sense that his unhappiness is related to "workaholism", but is so fixated on gender politics that he twists it to revolve around that. He imagines that women have a "choice of careers, choice of being a mother while the husband provides", apparently oblivious to the economic reality that single-income families are an impossibility for the majority of people, not because of feminism, but because of market forces.

You can see the alienation and the sense of rage and despair engendered by social atomization and hustle worship, only to be channeled not against any of the root causes, but some bogeyman like feminism which, precisely because of the aforementioned dislocation, hits closer to home emotionally.

And the worst of it is hearing echoes of my previous self in the words (projected or not), but being aware of the irony that it's only people who ARE close to you who have a chance of helping you out of that kind of morass.

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