We are not alone

For Josh Cohen, Psychoanalyst and Professor of Modern Literary Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London, "there are many different kinds of loneliness. It’s a state that allows for all kinds of variegation. The expression “being in one’s own company”, or “liking one’s own company”, captures for him what’s at stake in the whole idea of loneliness and being alone; it puts into ordinary language the sense that, internally, we are more than one."

Someone in our minds

We’re the person who moves through the world, but there is also someone in our minds, in ourselves, who moves alongside us, providing a kind of companionship as well as a running commentary on the state of our lives. That companion can be somebody that we find congenial; somebody that helps us to be curious about ourselves and interested in the world. When we feel lonely, that companion can be somebody that we’d rather not be with; somebody that seems to offer no solace or interest of any kind. That’s when the experience of the world starts to feel empty and sad.

A very lonely experience

Francesca Happé, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, King's College London, tells us of another type of "very lonely experience", that of autistic people. While non-autistic people automatically think like other people because they can’t help but absorb others’ thoughts intuitively, autistic people can think their own thoughts, without those being watered down by the thoughts of others, and therefore, they are often capable of highly original thought.

Building a society of equals

There’s a question about whether, from a point of view of equality, we should worry about loneliness. Jonathan Wolff, Alfred Landecker Professor of Values and Public Policy, University of Oxford defines a society of equals as one where no one looks up to anyone and no one looks down on anyone. No one is exploited, no one is dominated and no one is subjected to violence. A society of equals is not so much about the distribution of resources but the way in which we relate to one another and the many ways in which we regard one another. If people are lonely, it can make them extremely unhappy and can diminish the other experiences in their lives.

Loneliness and modern culture

Lyndsey Stonebridge Professor of Humanities and Human Rights, University of Birmingham speaks of another kind of loneliness identified by Hannah Arendt and that arises when the world no longer makes common sense. Kant was a great believer in the idea that we had to share a sense of what the world was grounded in. Once that goes and you just have competing opinions, loneliness sets in. You simply don’t know what is true anymore. That’s an epistemological crisis, but it’s also, as Arendt would say, a moral and political crisis. Loneliness for her goes with modern culture makes people very susceptible to conspiracy theories – fictional versions of the world in which there are villains and everyone’s out to get you, rather than the version of the world that says you’re totally insignificant.?This is what allows totalitarian or fascist systems to come into play.

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