I'm a bit of a social science buff. I heard an interview with the author of Going Solo, Eric Klinenberg, on NPR, on my car radio, and I went home and ordered the book right away. The book is about people who live alone.
In 1950, only 22 percent of American adults were single. Today, more than 50 percent of American adults are single, and 31 million - roughly one out of every seven adults - live alone.He's saying that this is "the biggest demographic shift since the baby boom." This is definitely not an American-only phenomenon, and it is not as stigmatized as it used to be. In the interview on NPR, he was saying that people who live on their own often have more engaged social lives...than say...somebody trapped in a marriage and isolated from everybody except their mate and/or their kids. People are adjusting to living this way. They prefer it.
Klinenberg uses the term 'lonester' which is not an exact equivalent to how I user the term 'loner' though. His lonesters seem a lot more engaged than my loners.
A couple years ago I read Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam.
Next I would like to read some hardcore social science wisdom focused at online community - online life. Or, I guess I could read all about it online. I did read something from which I remember a salient factoid...I don't remember where I read it, but: It said that people who are already loners really benefit from online interactions, they are only helped by it. But with people who go from being super social - - in the physical, real world offline - - to internet only type human interaction - - it kind of screws them up. Who knows....
What do you think?
I think there is so much material here to think about. I do think an online community fills a need to connect with some people, but it is often out of convenience and time and even a certain amount of anonymity that we communicate in this manner.
ReplyDeleteI think being alone from time to time is a necessity. You begin alone, you end alone, and in between I think we need to spend some time with ourselves to truly know who we are. While I am not in any way saying very social people don't do that, I am saying that I think it is important for everyone, and "loners" may require more of this alone time than others. I'm going to check the first book out. Sounds interesting.
I see a spectrum: from totally alone to totally social/sociable. I wish I could get my dial set right.
ReplyDeletewell...new ideas are reactions to old ideas, right? So, the whole idea used to be this tremendous emphasis on marriage and family and you got married because that's what you were SUPPOSED to do, but perhaps a lot of kids saw marriage as an institution in which their parents were always annoyed with one another, and it was the death of romance, etc. And so, maybe more people question this whole idea of "needing" to be married.
ReplyDeleteHello, can I call you Al? Anyway, I live happily alone in Brooklyn with my cats - Gigi and Buddha. One of my favorite books is A Party of One: http://www.amazon.com/Party-One-The-Loners-Manifesto/dp/1569245134
DeleteThat sounds like it's right up my alley, Sally. That one will have to go on my list. Buddha just had a birthday, didn't he? (ha, The Buddha, I mean)
ReplyDeleteHere's a podcast of one of my favorite radio shows, To the Best of Our Knowledge...in this episode, they interview writers who have written about loneliness: http://ttbook.org/book/alone-time