The lethality of loneliness

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ATimeBeing

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I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with TED Talks but I am a fan and love watching the videos through a wide range of subjects. I came across this while on youtube. It's a speak by John Cacioppo on Loneliness. He explains how the feeling of loneliness is part of our biological warning system like hunger or thirst is. He talks about how loneliness is not only a sad condition but also a dangerous one and how it can be dangerous to live on the social perimeter.
It's an interesting talk with some interesting points/views and just thought I'd post it. Video below for your perusal.

[video=youtube]http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0hxl03JoA0[/video]
 
Cacioppo is one of my favorite researchers, but in this case I must say… screw Cacioppo! It is scientifically demonstrated that even the company of a rat highly diminishes the effects of loneliness on health. According to him I should be dead since twenty years
 
I can't watch the video for technical reasons but have read about Cacioppo and found that I agreed with a lot of the things he said. The problem is that while I agree that loneliness is a warning sign that we need more connection with people, it often feels impossible to get this connection.
 
If isolation kick-starts the body into fight-or-flight mode and leads to a negative memory bias, then what are we supposed to do with that information- guilt-trip people into responding the way we want?
 
Guilt tripping wouldn't work as it would stir up resentment. I know that when others have tried to guilt trip me, it has only worked in the shortterm.
I think the only thing to do is to put ourselves into situations where we meet different people and try to connect with some of them. It's hard though because most people don't want to hear about how lonely we are-it tends to put them off, so in order to get to know them, we have to put on our social mask, and this can leave us feeling even lonelier.
 
I never liked the attitude that many seem to have where solitude is seen as for the most part exclusively bad. It allows reflection and deep thinking. Many philosophers and scientists were sort of introvert/loner types and that seems to have allowed them the time they needed to discover the breakthroughs or theories that they did. Our society has developed in a way in that there is a large bias towards people like that. That the only way to be happy and successful is to be overly social and to "sell" yourself. We reward the loud and aggressive even if they are obnoxious and don't have anything meaningful or nice to say. Our entertainment certainly reflects that. To me, that's just... sad.
 
Hey there, ATimeBeing ! I watched this video (and loved it) and that is how I found this forum :)

I Googled the title of that video, and your post came up in the results.

But, guess what made me click on the search result ? Your signature, which I absolutely LOVE !!!

Thanks for pointing me to that quote ... and to this forum :D
 

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