Posted on 05/16/2023 1:44:22 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
NEW YORK (AP) — At the end of “The Searchers,” one of John Wayne’s most renowned Westerns, a kidnapped girl has been rescued and a family reunited. As the closing music swells, Wayne’s character looks around at his kin — people who have other people to lean on — and then walks off toward the dusty West Texas horizon, lonesome and alone.
It’s a classic example of a fundamental American tall tale — that of a nation built on notions of individualism, a male-dominated story filled with loners and “rugged individualists” who suck it up, do what needs to be done, ride off into the sunset and like it that way.
In reality, loneliness in America can be deadly. This month, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared it an American epidemic, saying that it takes as deadly a toll as smoking upon the population of the United States. “Millions of people in America are struggling in the shadows,” he said, “and that’s not right.”
He cited some potent forces: the gradual withering of longstanding institutions, decreased engagement with churches, the fraying bonds of extended families. When you add recent stressors — the rise of social media and virtual life, post-9/11 polarization and the way COVID-19 interrupted existence — the challenge becomes even more stark.
People are lonely the world over. But as far back as the early 19th century, when the word “loneliness” began to be used in its current context in American life, some were already asking the question: Do the contours of American society — that emphasis on individualism, that spreading out with impunity over a vast, sometimes outsized landscape — encourage isolation and alienation?
Or is that, like other chunks of the American story, a premise built on myths?
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
That is a great answer.
This article “Made in China.”
The author actually was an AP correspondent based in China at one time.
You’re never really alone living under communism
>> You’re never alone when you’re a schizophrenic
We know.
Who cares? I’ll never get lonesome
‘Cause I treasure my own company.
Such stupidity. There is a lot of loneliness in America but it has nothing to do with movie characters as role models. Two major causes that can be identified are the dissolution and diffusion of extended families, especially resulting in the aged being left alone; and second, the penetration of the personal relationship sphere by the techie sterility of social media. Technology after all, has no soul, and in the end it isn’t even alive.
“Who cares? I’ll never get lonesome
‘Cause I treasure my own company.”
Exactly right. When somebody tells me they are lonely and don’t know what to do about it, I tell them they have to appreciate their own company. There is a lot to be said for living alone.
Oh, get a life, snowflake.
(Not you, OEB.)
our kids, for that matter our society needs to realize one can be more lonely in a crowd than when physically isolated.
I come to the garden alone, when the dew is still on the roses. And He walks with me and He talks with me....
Agree.
So these lefists try to blame the American Way of Life for the isolation of tech addicted, game addicted people.
The old times used to have multigenerational houses (as the Waltons) and family meals like Blue Bloods. And as that book Bowling Alone described, people used to go out in groups for blowing leagues or pickup baseball games in school yards on weekends or various types of group activities. “Canasta cake” could be baked and brought to a neighbor’s house while playing that card game weekly.
“bowling” leagues-——didn’t mean to single out Dems like that.
It's a limp 'thought' piece begging to be sent back to 1997.
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