Building Community in The Lonely Century

The Lonely Century by Noreena Hertz is a must-read for those who care deeply about community, health or democracy. Hertz describes the growing epidemic of loneliness which is another way of talking about the erosion of community. She has compiled vast evidence linking loneliness to a decline in the health of individuals and democracy. Most important, Hertz identifies causes of loneliness and recommends solutions.

With an extensive bibliography and more than 900 detailed footnotes, the book synthesizes much of the research and literature on loneliness and community. Hertz builds on this with her own stories and observations. With this review, I will highlight some of the book’s key findings. I will also expand on Hertz’ work by identifying additional impacts of loneliness and advocating more comprehensive solutions.

The book begins by citing research showing how pervasive loneliness has become in our society. Even in a pre-Covid survey of the United States, three in five adults considered themselves lonely. More than one in five millennials say that they have no friends at all. Hertz is based in England, but she shows similar findings for countries all over the world.

The health impacts of loneliness are devastating. Hertz cites studies showing that lonely individuals…

• have a 29% higher risk of coronary heart disease
• have a 32% higher risk of stroke
• have a 64% higher risk of dementia
• are ten times more likely to be depressed
• have a 30% higher risk of premature death

According to Hertz, “The research shows that loneliness is worse for our health than not exercising, as harmful as being an alcoholic and twice as harmful as being obese. Statistically, loneliness is equivalent to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.”

Hertz doesn’t mention it, but loneliness erodes the prophylactic power of community for which no health care professional can substitute. With the pandemic, we saw how people who thought of themselves as members of a community were more likely to care for one another and act responsibly towards one another. Likewise, community can have a major influence on social determinants of health such as the physical environment, housing, education, access to food and mutual support.

Hertz also fails to note the key role that community plays in caring for the environment, preventing crime, and responding to emergencies. Thus, it isn’t just individuals who suffer from loneliness. The corresponding breakdown of community has dire consequences for society as a whole.

One societal impact that Hertz does focus on is the threat to our democracy. She describes how lonely individuals often display anger, hostility, a lack of empathy, and a belief that others don’t care about them or their opinions. Yet, like everyone else, they crave belonging. Such individuals can be fodder for aspiring dictators as Hannah Arendt learned from her experience as a Jew in Nazi Germany. Hertz quotes from Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism: “(Totalitarianism) bases itself on loneliness . . . The chief characteristic (of its adherents) is not brutality and backwardness, but their isolation and lack of normal social relationships . . . It is through surrendering their individual selves to ideology that the lonely rediscover their purpose and self-respect.”

Hertz identifies numerous causes of loneliness. These include the usual suspects such as smartphones, social media, contactless shopping, urbanization, racism and the loss and degradation of public spaces. She describes at length how changes to the workplace resulted in a global survey showing that 40% of office workers feel lonely at their jobs. Contributing factors include the move away from shared meals and a greater reliance on technology. Hertz claims that open-plan offices have counter-intuitively caused workers to withdraw socially from their colleagues. Now the pandemic-induced trend to work from home has greatly exacerbated loneliness in the workforce.

The ideology of neoliberal capitalism as championed by politicians ranging from Reagan to Clinton receives much of the blame for the current epidemic of loneliness. Hertz contends that the policies and practices of government and business alike have incentivized the pursuit of self-interest rather than the common good and fostered an enormous and growing gap in incomes and wealth. “Neoliberalism has made us see ourselves as competitors not collaborators, hoarders not sharers, takers not givers, hustlers not helpers . . . (and created) an all about me selfish society in which people feel that they have to look after themselves because no one else will.”

I would add that government, business and other institutions foster loneliness when they focus on people solely as clients and customers with needs rather than as citizens with gifts. Recognizing that everyone has something to share and encouraging gift giving is basic to community. As more and more professionals do to and for rather than with community, there is less of a role for community itself. People come to think of themselves as individual taxpayers, clients or customers rather than as fellow community members. That’s a recipe for loneliness.

A related problem is the way in which institutions and their professionals are so specialized. The community has been disassembled and organized the way in which the institutions, professionals and their programs are organized. There are separate silos for youth, elders, immigrants, individuals with disabilities, those who are housing insecure, etc. You can’t build community in institutional silos. Ironically, I’ve found that the strongest communities tend to be in those places where there are the fewest professionals trying to help the community.

Nevertheless, we are social creatures and long to belong. Hertz shares incredible stories of the desperate measures people take to feel some connection whether that is renting a friend, developing a relationship with a robot, or as some lonely older women are doing in Japan, committing petty crimes in the hope of finding social connections in jail. There must be better solutions!

While government may have inadvertently eroded community, it can also help to strengthen it. Hertz suggests the following measures:

• Move from neoliberalism to a more cooperative form of capitalism that works for society as well as the economy. Ensure full employment, workers’ rights, economic security and greater equity.
• Regulate social media so that it is less addictive and so that its algorithms reward kindness over anger.
• Give citizens a meaningful voice in government and the workplace.
• Provide more funding for shared public spaces.
• Initiate programs that bring diverse people together for conversation and/or community service.

I would add the following:

• Focus government on those things that it is uniquely suited to do, support the community to do what it does best, and collaborate on those things best done together.
• Focus municipal government on whole neighborhoods and communities and not simply on its separate silos.
• Remove the red tape that makes it difficult to hold street parties, plant street trees, build playgrounds and take other community action.
• Offer leadership training for citizens to help them be effective community builders.
• Replicate Edmonton’s program of volunteer block connectors.
• Support neighborhood-led planning as Hoogeveen and Peel en Maas have done so successfully in the Netherlands.
• Engage neighborhood activists in working with the municipality to develop neighborhood strengthening strategies as Hamilton, Kitchener and London have done in Ontario.
• Join hundreds of other cities around the world in replicating Seattle’s Neighborhood Matching Fund which provides a cash match for the neighbors’ volunteer time in support of community-initiated projects.

Hertz recognizes that community building can’t simply be a top-down initiative. She offers numerous suggestions of things that individuals can do to counter loneliness:

• Devote more time to personal interactions and less to social media
• Participate in local associations and events
• Buy locally
• Get to know your neighbors
• Listen to others and practice empathy
• Reach out to those who are lonely
• Demand social justice

I would also urge individuals to focus on the principles of asset-based community development as popularized by John McKnight and John Kretzmann:

• Start where you are – connect with your neighbors to act on shared interests by utilizing the unique skills, knowledge and other resources that everyone possesses.
• Focus on the gifts of those we have labelled by their needs. People with labels such as homeless, disabled, at-risk, old, poor, etc. tend to be lonely. Yet, everyone has both gifts and needs. Community is about sharing one another’s gifts to meet one another’s needs.

We certainly can’t afford a century of loneliness. Let’s get busy building inclusive community.