The feeling of loneliness is an epidemic in the world. Many studies say so. It is paradoxical. We are already 8,000 million inhabitants and the more we are and communicated we are through social networks, the more alone we feel. What a contradiction! How to solve that equation?
The feeling of loneliness has gone from being a personal drama to a social, political and economic problem. There are a few brushstrokes. Before COVID, America’s top health official said his country had an “epidemic of loneliness,” driven by the fast pace of life and the use of technologies in all of our social interactions. In 2018, 20% of Americans felt lonely. Britain and Japan formed Loneliness Ministries to address it with public policy. The WHO said in 2018 that Britain was the European country where people felt most alone, which they estimated at nine million. Two hundred thousand people could go a month without talking to any family member or friend. In Japan, 15% of its adults had less than one conversation every two weeks. In Spain, the Red Cross says that 27% of the elderly they serve never or almost never receive visits and 23% have no one to tell their concerns. According to IPSOS, the feeling of loneliness has been increasing rapidly in the world. Four out of ten interviewees say they feel alone on the planet. And in Chile? According to IPSOS, in 2021 almost half of Chileans felt lonely, 47%! More than the world average of 41%. Well, well! Another record! Now that’s desolation!
True, some figures are influenced by the pandemic. But there are many studies before and after that point to the same thing.
And what does Love have to do with loneliness? Strictly speaking, Love is not an antonym, antidote or vaccine against loneliness. You can experience Love and feel loneliness at the same time. Or vice versa, you can feel in company but at the same time not experience Love. They are different feelings.
But we all long to be loved. And Love is a remedy that mitigates loneliness. Basically because Love according to E. Fromm is a way to overcome our “state of separation”, for an interpersonal fusion and transcend individual life. We are part of an original totality that has fragmented and we have the desire to end or mitigate that human separation that originated in hatred. Love is a way to avoid what separates us from others, to unite. That may come from Empedocles, orator, magician and prophet of the fifth century B.C., who wrote about love and spoke of the fusion and separation of the four essential elements, water, fire, air, earth, which are born and perish by their mixture or separation, caused by Love or Hate.
Ancient philosophers such as Empedocles, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Catullus, Lucretius and Ovid, wrote beautiful and important texts on Love. From there arose the classic Four Loves or types of Love: Eros, Affection, Friendship and Charity. However, other types of Love have appeared. (In 2018, for example, a Briton analyzed more than a thousand ways to express Love in 50 languages. He found more than 600 words. From this he proposed fourteen forms of Love.)
And throughout the centuries we have continued to think about Love. To name a few celebrities of the last 100 years, there are Freud, with his “Contributions to the psychology of Love”, C.S. Lewis with “The Four Loves”, Erich Fromm with “The Art of Loving”, Leo Buscaglia with “Reflections on Love”, Byung Chul-Han with “The Agony of Eros”, and in Chile the Dr. and humanist Sergio Peña y Lillo, with “The Four Loves” and “Love and Sexuality” and R. Caponni with “Love after Love”. And in Chilean and universal literature and poetry why talk.
But Love is not a theory but a human experience. We all love and are loved from birth. We have experience – the best school – in Love and heartbreak. But that does not mean understanding it well.
Today we suffer from a lack of Love. There are many thirsty. Loneliness makes you thirstier. That encourages me to write to you about Love, not to teach you anything, but to ask ourselves and think about something so unfathomable. As deep as it is human. A riddle full of imprecise words. I intend only to insinuate, to ask, to provoke.
And the first of the Loves that I will address will be Eros. The Love of desire, of attraction, of passion; the Love of lovers and lovers; Erotic love and sexuality. Sounds captivating! But I will grope with my flashlight entering the cavern, in search of Spring Eros, maybe we discovered treasures amazing.
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The content expressed in this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.
