The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first Century

241 Pages·2009·2.01 MB·English

by  Jacqueline Olds

The Lonely American

The Lonely American
Drifting Apart
in the
Twenty-first
Century
Jacqueline Olds, M.D., and Richard S. Schwartz, M.D.
Beacon Press
Boston
Beacon Press
25 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892
www.beacon.org
Beacon Press books
are published under the auspices of
the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
© 2009 by Jacqueline Olds, M.D., and Richard S. Schwartz, M.D.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
12 11 10 09 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper
ANSI/NISO specifications for permanence as revised in 1992.
Text design by Yvonne Tsang at Wilsted and Taylor Publishing Services
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Olds, Jacqueline.
The lonely American : drifting apart in the twenty-first century /
Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Schwartz.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8070-0034-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Social isolation—United States. 2. Loneliness—United States.
I. Schwartz, Richard (Richard S.) II. Title.
HM1131.O43 2008
302.5'45097309051—dc22 2008019339
To our parents,
our children,
and our friends,
who have kept us
from being lonely

Contents
CHAPTER 1 The Elephant in the Room 1
CHAPTER 2 Frantic without a Peep:
Busyness as a Virtue and a Curse 13
CHAPTER 3 Self-Reliance:
Do Lonesome Cowboys Sing the Blues? 33
CHAPTER 4 Left Out:
An Organism under Stress 57
CHAPTER 5 Free at Last:
American Living Arrangements 79
CHAPTER 6 The Technology of Relationships:
A Brief Review 95
CHAPTER 7 Love and Marriage in a Busy World 115
CHAPTER 8 The Ripple Effects of Increasing
Social Isolation 135
CHAPTER 9 Social Disconnection and the
Mental Health Industry 159
CHAPTER 10 Staying Limber 175
Acknowledgments 195
Notes 197
Index 213

CHAPTER 1
The Elephant in the Room
Americans in the twenty-first century devote more technology
to staying connected than any society in history, yet somehow
the devices fail us: studies show that we feel increasingly alone.
Our lives are spent in a tug-of-war between conflicting desires—
we want to stay connected, and we want to be free. We lurch back
and forth, reaching for both, and are surprised by our sadness
when one side actually wins. How much of one should we give up
in order to have more of the other? How do we know when we’ve
got it right?
This argument probably began as soon as language made it
possible for groups to argue, but it is also a particularly Ameri-
can controversy. Over the last decade, the debate about freedom
and connection in the United States has leaped from rarely read
doctoral dissertations to front-page national news. What caught
people’s attention was a series of alarms, given in the form of
data-driven studies, suggesting that our society is in the midst
of a dramatic and progressive slide toward disconnection. Robert
Putnam’s Bowling Alone was the loudest alarm, combining exten-
sive data on the fraying of social connections with a powerful the-
sis demonstrating the importance of social networks to a healthy
democracy. The book struck a chord and seemingly endless pub-
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