Have we become more lonely than ever? Is not a rhetorical question. Or at least not for such insightful analysts of modern reality as American Derek Thompsoneditor of The Atlantic magazine and author of essays such as “On Work: Money, Meaning, Identity and Hitmakers”.

In Thompson’s view, the United States, and perhaps the planet as a whole, suffer from a self -imposed loneliness epidemic that transforms “Our personalities, our ideologies, and even our relationship with reality”. He has named the time when we live in “antisocial century” and says that he is experiencing its disasters both in his own life and in the lives of most people in his immediate environment.

In an article in the magazine he publishes, Thompson begins with a story: at the Mexican bar in North Carolina, where he frequents for years, almost no one comes to drink some beer and chat with the patrons. Today, the job looks better than ever, but it has become a ready -made food store. People order them using an application, receive them from a bench next to the kitchen, pay them and take them home. A delicate consumption choreography performed with mechanical precision and, at least for Thompson, heartbreaking: it is completed in a matter of seconds and without anyone exchanging a single word.

A shop that just a few years ago flourished in spontaneous and talkative social interaction has become a quiet hub. Waiters no longer function as psychologists. Tables are rarely used- they are no longer social clubs or improvised offices. The United States of Frasier, Norm and Sam Malone cease to exist.

What has happened to us?

Speaking to the bar manager, Thompon managed to understand exactly what was going on: they don’t want to interact with anyone. They are satisfied with integrating a simple, “sterile” act of consumption into their daily lives. Why insist on getting them out of their comfort zone?

Thompson has a place: an invisible enemy forces us to spend more and more time in our homes, established as comfort and recreation shelters. This has reinforced two types of human relationships: the narrower (with the nuclear family and close friends) and the farthest, the tens, hundreds or thousands of people with whom we interact sporadically on social media.

What we sacrifice with this change in habits and the general reorganization of our time is the wide range of relationships in between. Neighbors, people from the neighborhood, colleagues, waiters and store staff. People, in short, who belong to our immediate environment, but not in our narrow circle, and to whom we recently dedicated a significant part of our time.

Loneliness

The unstoppable erosion of this intermediate cycle would explain, again according to Thompson, because the only thing we exchange with familiar faces is a careful and cautious greeting and why, more and more, we eat breakfast alone, lunch, dinner, dinner, dinner. But it’s not just that.

In places like bars people give themselves (or gave themselves) the opportunity to explore, get to know, understand each other. Political parties and social clubs were formed in bars, fast friendships and romantic relations began there. All this is antidote to loneliness.

Mental health experts say that no generation of Americans has spent as much time alone (voluntary or unintentional) as today. The main symptom of this increase in antisocial behavior is that one in four Americans eats on its own every day or almost every day of the week, increased by 53% since 2003. This trend is so impressive that the United Nations World Fair on Happiness dedicated one of its main capital.

1 in 10 Greeks often feel lonely

What can we say about Greece? How does this (supposed) global epidemic of self -imposed loneliness translate into our country, which makes people increasingly unhappy?

One in ten Greeks (10%) often feel lonely, while more than four in ten (43%) meet with their family or friends at most once a month, according to a study by the European Commission.

Greece, however strange, has one of the highest rates in Europe both in terms of the subjective sense of loneliness of people and the most objective state of social isolation, evaluated on the basis of the frequency of family and friendly contacts.

The lexicological definition states that loneliness is the feeling of man living aloneisolated from others, without contact and substantial communication with other people. Loneliness is a different situation. Loneliness is one alone, without companionship, because he chooses it. Here loneliness is deliberate.

It has been 43 years since Paul Auster wrote the book “The Invention of Loneliness”. In the modern world it seems that we are reinforcing it …