The Lonely Century. Coming together in a world that’s pulling apart
by Noreena Hertz (Sceptre, £20.00)
Frank Litton
It is no surprise that soap operas are a staple of television.
After all, we make sense of where we are and where we might go with the ‘story’ of our lives. We find ourselves cast into roles – daughter, mother, father, son, teacher, plumber – whose scripts we improvise as we plot our course.
The drama on the screen with its twists and turns and high emotions may bear little resemblance to our slow-paced, humdrum dramas, but it does reflect the same reality.
We live in a web of relationships that both enable and constrain us. We need others as we pursue our goals and we need to meet their expectations, sometimes at the cost of attaining those goals. Those who can help can also hinder. We need both to belong and to be free.
To belong without freedom is bad, as much of modern Irish literature attests with its stories of oppression and escape. To be free without belonging is just as bad. Noreena Hertz reports that this is the plight of increasing numbers across the world who live lonely lives disconnected from family, work, and society.
The costs of loneliness are high, paid for by the individual in poor physical and mental health and by society in political extremism, both left and right.
Bookshops
Her book belongs to genre of ‘management books’. You see them stacked high in airport bookshops. Thick, junky, volumes their theme of how you can become a better person (that is, a better paid manger) by making the world a better place (that is, your company more profitable) is played out across a range of topics.
Some years ago, it was marketing, then human resources, today it is leadership. Like a good sermon they bring the general down to earth with personal witness and apt illustration.
She does place the disturbing particulars in a bigger picture and indicts Neo-liberalism and its economics as a source of the problem”
I do not want to disparage Hertz; her theme is important, loneliness blights many lives.
Her intent to make the world a better place is genuine.
Her extensive research delivers illustrations that stick in the mind: stories of elderly Japanese widows who steal from shops to get arrested and into prison where they enjoy the care and company they cannot find elsewhere; the ‘buddy’ service that provides, for a price, a friendly presence with whom to shop and drink coffee (available in Dublin); the surveillance techniques that keeps workers at the job and away from companionship; the emotional connections lonely people make with digital devices and robots – a route out of loneliness that deepens alienation.
She does place the disturbing particulars in a bigger picture and indicts Neo-liberalism and its economics as a source of the problem.
Respect
She calls for a more humane capitalism where the logic of the market is balanced by regard for our need for recognition and respect.
She, however, does not tell us how this might be achieved or where the intellectual resources to sustain the move could be found.
A good sermon depends on a good ‘theology’ and this she does not have. You can find it in Fratelli Tutti.
Francis is truly the Pope for our time.