{"id":135587,"date":"2020-12-05T17:33:10","date_gmt":"2020-12-06T01:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=135587"},"modified":"2020-12-08T09:15:25","modified_gmt":"2020-12-08T17:15:25","slug":"lost-connections-why-youre-depressed-and-how-to-find-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=135587","title":{"rendered":"Lost Connections: Why You\u2019re Depressed and How to Find Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"

Johann Hari wrote in this 2018 book<\/a>:<\/p>\n

* When I was a child, something unexpected happened to my parents. My father grew up in a tiny village in the Swiss mountains called Kandersteg where he could have named every other inhabitant, and my mother grew up in the working-class Scottish tenements where if you raised your voice, all your neighbors heard every word you said. Then, when I was a baby, they moved to a place called Edgware. It is the last tube stop on the Northern Line\u2014a suburban sprawl of detached and semidetached houses, built on what used to be London\u2019s green edges. If you fall asleep on a train and find yourself there, you\u2019ll see lots of houses, some fast food joints, a park, and lots of decent, likable, alienated people hurrying through them.<\/p>\n

When my parents moved in, they tried befriending people in the neighborhood, in just the way they would have in the places they were from. It was as natural an instinct to them as breathing. But when they tried to do this, they were perplexed. In Edgware, people weren\u2019t hostile. We knew our neighbors to smile at. But that was it; any attempt at engagement beyond brief chitchat was shut down. Life was meant to happen, my parents learned slowly, inside your house. I didn\u2019t regard this as unusual\u2014it was all I ever knew\u2014although my mother never got used to it. \u201cWhere is everyone?\u201d she asked me once when I was quite small, looking down our empty street, baffled.<\/p>\n

Loneliness hangs over our culture today like a thick smog. More people say they feel lonely than ever before\u2014and I wondered if this might be related to our apparent rise in depression and anxiety.<\/p>\n

* For decades now, a Harvard professor16 named Robert Putnam has been documenting one of the most important trends of our time. There are all sorts of ways human beings can come together to do something as a group\u2014from a sports team, to a choir, to a volunteer group, to just meeting regularly for dinner. He has been gathering figures for decades about how much we do all these things\u2014and he found they have been in free fall. He gave an example that has become famous: bowling is one of the most popular leisure activities in the United States, and people used to do it in organized leagues\u2014they would be part of a team that competed against other teams, who would mingle and get to know each other. Today, people still bowl, but they do it alone. They\u2019re in their own lane, doing their own thing. The collective structure has collapsed.<\/p>\n

Think about everything else we do to come together\u2014like supporting your kid\u2019s school, say. \u201cIn the ten short years between 1985 and 1994\u201d17 alone, he wrote, \u201cactive involvement in community organizations \u2026 fell by 45 percent.\u201d In just a decade\u2014the years of my teens, when I was becoming depressed\u2014across the Western world, we stopped banding together at a massive rate, and found ourselves shut away in our own homes instead.<\/p>\n

We dropped out of community and turned inward, Robert explained when I spoke with him. These trends have been happening since the 1930s, but they hugely accelerated during my lifetime.<\/p>\n

What this means is that people\u2019s sense that they live in a community, or even have friends they can count on, has been plummeting. For example, social scientists have been asking a cross-section of U.S. citizens a simple question for years: \u201cHow many confidants do you have?\u201d They wanted to know how many people you could turn to in a crisis, or when something really good happens to you. When they started doing the study several decades ago, the average number of close friends an American had was three. By 2004, the most common answer was none.18<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth pausing on that: there are now more Americans who have no close friends than any other option.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not that we turned inward to our families. The research he gathered showed across the world we\u2019ve stopped doing stuff with them, too. We eat together as families far less; we watch TV together as families far less; we go on vacation together far less. \u201cVirtually all forms of family togetherness,\u201d19 Putnam shows with a battery of graphs and studies, \u201cbecame less common over the last quarter of the twentieth century.\u201d There are similar figures for Britain and the rest of the Western world.<\/p>\n

We do things together less than any humans who came before us. Long before the economic crash of 2008, there was a social crash, in which we found ourselves alone and lonely far more of the time. The structures for looking out for each other\u2014from the family to the neighborhood\u2014fell apart. We disbanded our tribes. We embarked on an experiment\u2014to see if humans can live alone.<\/p>\n

* To end loneliness, you need other people\u2014plus something else. You also need, he explained to me, to feel you are sharing something with the other person, or the group, that is meaningful to both of you. You have to be in it together\u2014and \u201cit\u201d can be anything that you both think has meaning and value. When you\u2019re in Times Square on your first afternoon in New York, you\u2019re not alone, but you feel lonely because nobody there cares about you, and you don\u2019t care about them. You aren\u2019t sharing your joy or your distress. You\u2019re nothing to the people around you, and they\u2019re nothing to you.<\/p>\n

And when you are a patient in a hospital bed, you\u2019re not alone\u2014but the help flows only one way. The nurse is there to help you, but you aren\u2019t there to help the nurse\u2014and if you try, you\u2019ll be told to stop. A one-way relationship can\u2019t cure loneliness. Only two-way (or more) relationships can do that.<\/p>\n

Loneliness isn\u2019t the physical absence of other people, he said\u2014it\u2019s the sense that you\u2019re not sharing anything that matters with anyone else. If you have lots of people around you\u2014perhaps even a husband or wife, or a family, or a busy workplace\u2014but you don\u2019t share anything that matters with them, then you\u2019ll still be lonely. To end loneliness, you need to have a sense of \u201cmutual aid and protection,\u201d John figured out, with at least one other person, and ideally many more.<\/p>\n

* These days, when my parents go back to the places where they grew up\u2014which had been so rich with community when they were kids\u2014they find that those places, too, have turned into another Edgware. People nod to each other and close their doors. This disconnection has spread over the entire Western world. There\u2019s a quote from the biologist E. O. Wilson that John Cacioppo\u2014who has taught us so much about loneliness\u2014likes: \u201cPeople must belong to a tribe.\u201d Just like a bee goes haywire if it loses its hive, a human will go haywire if she loses her connection to the group.<\/p>\n

John had discovered that we\u2014without ever quite intending to\u2014have become the first humans to ever dismantle our tribes. As a result, we have been left alone on a savanna we do not understand, puzzled by our own sadness.<\/p>\n

* It wasn\u2019t long after Robert arrived that he first saw the alpha baboon. At the top of the troop of baboons he was going to follow for the next twenty years, there was a king of the swingers, a jungle VIP6\u2014who he quickly named Solomon, after the wisest king in the Old Testament. Baboons live in a strict hierarchy, and everybody knows their place in the rankings, from top to bottom. He saw that Solomon, at the top, could do whatever he wanted. If he saw anyone else in the troop chewing something, he could snatch it from their hands and take it for himself. He could have sex with any female he wanted\u2014half of all the sexual activity in the whole troop cut Solomon in on the action. When it was hot, he could just shove anyone who was sitting in the shade out of the way and claim the cool places for himself. He had climbed to this position by terrorizing the old alpha male, and driving him into submission…<\/p>\n

Robert saw a scrawny, feeble creature who he named Job,7 after the unluckiest man in the Torah and the Bible. Job would tremble a lot of the time and have what looked like seizures. Sometimes his hair would just fall out. Anyone in the troop who was having a bad day could take it out on Job. His food was snatched, he was shoved into the heat, and he was beaten up a lot. Like all low-status baboons, he was covered with bite marks.<\/p>\n

In between Solomon and Job, there was a chain of male control and command. Number 4 stood above Number 5 and could take from him. Number 5 stood over Number 6 and could take from him. And on and on. Your place in the hierarchy determined what you ate, whether you got to have sex, and every moment of your life.<\/p>\n

* To avoid getting savaged, the baboons with the lowest status10 would have to compulsively show that they knew they were defeated. They would do this by making what are called subordinance gestures\u2014they lowered their heads, crawled on their bellies. It was how they signaled: Stop attacking me. I\u2019m beaten. I\u2019m no threat to you. I give up.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the striking thing. When a baboon is behaving this way\u2014when nobody around him shows him any respect, and he\u2019s been pushed to the bottom of the pile\u2014he looks an awful lot like a depressed human being. He keeps his head down and his body low; he doesn\u2019t want to move; he loses his appetite; he loses all his energy; when somebody comes near him, he backs away.<\/p>\n

One day, after Solomon had been at the top of the hierarchy11 for a year, a younger baboon, Uriah, did something shocking. When Solomon was lying on a rock with one of the hottest babes of the troop, Uriah walked up in between them and started trying to have sex with her\u2014right in front of the boss-man. Incensed, Solomon attacked him and ripped Uriah\u2019s upper lip. Uriah ran away.<\/p>\n

But the next day, Uriah came back. And the next. And the next. He kept getting beaten up\u2014but every time, Solomon got a little more exhausted, and more wary.<\/p>\n

And then one day, when Uriah struck, Solomon backed off a little. Only for a moment. Within a year, Uriah was king, and Solomon had sunk to Number 9 in the hierarchy\u2014and everyone he had smited or spited was seeking revenge. The whole troop began to torment him, and his stress levels went through the roof.<\/p>\n

One day, Solomon was so despairing12 he simply walked away into the savanna and never came back.<\/p>\n

Robert had discovered that our closest cousins are most stressed in two situations\u2014when their status is threatened (like Soloman, when Uriah struck), and when their status is low (like poor Job all the time).<\/p>\n

The psychologist Paul Gilbert started to make the case that depression is, for humans, in part a \u201csubmission response\u201d\u2014the evolutionary equivalent of Job, the baboon at the bottom of the hierarchy, saying\u2014No, no more. Please, leave me alone. You don\u2019t have to fight me. I\u2019m no threat to you.<\/p>\n

* Go to work and you\u2019ll have to obey the whims of a distant boss earning hundreds of times more than you.<\/p>\n

Even when we are not being actively humiliated, even more of us feel like our status could be taken away at any moment. Even the middle class\u2014even the rich\u2014are being made to feel pervasively insecure. Robert had discovered that having an insecure status was the one thing even more distressing than having a low status.<\/p>\n

* It\u2019s been known for a long time that all sorts of mental health problems5\u2014including ones as severe as psychosis and schizophrenia\u2014are considerably worse in cities than in the countryside…<\/p>\n

* the people who moved to green areas saw a big reduction in depression,6 and the people who moved away from green areas saw a big increase in depression. <\/p>\n

* They got people who lived in cities to take a walk in nature, and then tested their mood and concentration. Everyone, predictably, felt better and was able to concentrate more\u2014but the effect was dramatically bigger for people who had been depressed. <\/p>\n

* \u201cWe have been animals that move for a lot longer than we have been animals that talk and convey concepts,\u201d she said to me. \u201cBut we still think that depression can be cured by this conceptual layer. I think [the first answer is more] simple. Let\u2019s fix the physiology first. Get out. Move.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard for a hungry animal moving10 through its natural habitat and with a decent status in its group to be depressed, she says\u2014there are almost no records of such a thing. The scientific evidence is clear that exercise significantly reduces depression and anxiety.11 She thinks this is because it returns us to our more natural state\u2014one where we are embodied, we are animal, we are moving, our endorphins are rushing. \u201cI do not think that kids or adults who are not moving, and are not in nature for a certain amount of time, can be considered fully healthy animals,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

* The biologist E. O. Wilson\u2014one of the most important people in his field in the twentieth century\u2014argued that all humans have a natural sense of something called \u201cbiophilia.\u201d13 It\u2019s an innate love for the landscapes in which humans have lived for most of our existence, and for the natural web of life that surrounds us and makes our existence possible. Almost all animals get distressed if they are deprived of the kinds of landscape that they evolved to live in. A frog can live on land\u2014it\u2019ll just be miserable as hell and give up. Why, Isabel wonders, would humans be the one exception to this rule? Looking around us, Isabel says: \u201cFucking hell\u2014it\u2019s our habitat.\u201d<\/p>\n

* This leads to another reason Isabel thinks depressed or anxious people feel better when they get out into natural landscapes. When you are depressed\u2014as Isabel knows from her own experience\u2014you feel that \u201cnow everything is about you.\u201d You become trapped in your own story and your own thoughts, and they rattle around in your head with a dull, bitter insistence. Becoming depressed or anxious is a process of becoming a prisoner of your ego, where no air from the outside can get in. But a range of scientists have shown that a common reaction15 to being out in the natural world is the precise opposite of this sensation\u2014a feeling of awe.<\/p>\n

Faced with a natural landscape, you have a sense that you and your concerns are very small, and the world is very big\u2014and that sensation can shrink the ego down to a manageable size. \u201cIt\u2019s something larger than yourself,\u201d Isabel said, looking around her. \u201cThere\u2019s something very deeply, animally healthy in that sensation. People love it when it occurs\u2014its brief, fleeting moments.\u201d And this helps you see the deeper and wider ways in which you are connected to everything around you. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a metaphor for belonging in a grander system,\u201d she says. \u201cYou\u2019re always embedded in a network,\u201d even when you don\u2019t realize it; you are \u201cjust one more node\u201d in this enormous tapestry.<\/p>\n

A FRIEND EMAILS: <\/p>\n

Traditional Chinese Medicine practicioners note that rural people get sick less often and when they do their maladies are straight-forward and easy to treat. Urbanites get complicated conditions requiring sophisticated remedies.<\/p>\n

Tangentially, Academic Agent had an interesting insight about the rise of the Nazis. After World War 1, the German economy was destroyed and Jews in Germany had access to capital from their non-German coreligionists. Some *urban* Jewish filmmakers made films lampooning the largely *rural* German soldier as being buffoons. This kindled tremendous resentment and it was the rural areas from which the Nazis got the bulk of their support. The condescension urbanites display toward country folk does seem to eventually come home to roost.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Johann Hari wrote in this 2018 book: * When I was a child, something unexpected happened to my parents. My father grew up in a tiny village in the Swiss mountains called Kandersteg where he could have named every other … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5769],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-happiness"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t