Ecology of life: Why are more and more people choosing loneliness as a lifestyle? Does solitude free you from obligations? How do single people change society itself? What does loneliness mean today and why is living alone no longer a shame? Let's get acquainted with the book “Life Solo. New Social Reality” by Eric Kleinenberg, PhD, New York University, and understand the unique realities of the 21st century.

Why more and more people choose loneliness as a lifestyle

Why are more and more people choosing loneliness as a lifestyle? Does solitude free you from obligations? How do single people change society itself? What does loneliness mean today and why is living alone no longer a shame? Let's get acquainted with the book “Life Solo. New Social Reality” by Eric Kleinenberg, PhD, New York University, and understand the unique realities of the 21st century.

Just 50 years ago, choosing to live alone was associated with something marginal and unnatural. Almost from birth, everyone received the message that living alone is not only strange and condemned, but also dangerous. Exaggeratedly, this idea appeared in the dystopian film “The Lobster” (2015), according to the plot of which singles were prosecuted by the law, and everyone who wanted, but did not find a mate, was turned into an animal and released into the forest.

Indeed, just 100 years ago, the inability to get married was considered a real grief, and tens of thousands of years before that, punishment in the form of expulsion from the community was often perceived as a measure much more terrible than the death penalty.

Today, an increasing number of people deliberately go free swimming- refuses marriage, lives and even travels alone. For example, in 1950, only 22% of Americans lived alone, but today more than 50% of US citizens choose to live alone.

How can one explain the rapid abolition of a set of traditions and rules previously revered throughout the world? Kleinenberg argues that transformations modern society At least four reasons contributed: the emancipation of women, social networks, changing urban spaces and increased life expectancy.

Indeed, for the first time in history, modern realities are such that each individual is a full-fledged cog in the economy, thanks to which a huge number of offers for bachelors appeared on the housing market. Women's emancipation allows you to make decisions about getting married and having children without threatening your future, and an increase life expectancy leads to the fact that one of the spouses inevitably outlives the other and is not always ready to connect his life with a new person.

Thus, loneliness today takes on a completely different meaning than it did 50 or 60 years ago. Now the right to live solo is a deeply personal and completely adequate decision, which millions of people on the planet resort to.

However, despite the fact that physically living in solitude has become accessible, many stereotypes still hover around singles. You need to understand that today living solo does not mean complete isolation. Thanks to the Internet and the ability to work from home, singles are immersed in active social life. In fact, research shows that most single people have more fulfilling lives than their married counterparts. First of all, this is due to the fact that new image life is a choice in favor of healthy egoism, that is, time intended for oneself.

“The masses of people decided to undertake this social experiment because, in their view, such a life corresponds to the key values ​​of modernity - individual freedom, personal control and the desire for self-realization, that is, values ​​that are important and dear to many people. adolescence. Living alone gives us the opportunity to do what we want, when we want it and on the terms we set.”

This position, common today, conflicts with the traditional model of behavior. At the same time, it is known that those who get married or have children just because “it’s the right thing to do,” without unnecessary reflection, often condemn those who choose a life “without obligations,” regardless of their personal level of happiness. Meanwhile, sociological observations show:

“...people who have never been married are not only no less happy than those who are married, but they also feel much happier and less lonely than those who are divorced or have lost their spouse.... All Those who have divorced or separated from their spouse will attest that there is no lonelier life than living with someone you don't love."

Friends and relatives of single people are often worried and want to quickly find their soul mate, get an office job, or see their loved ones more often. In fact, those singles for whom solitude is a personal choice are not outsiders and do not suffer. From a psychological point of view, someone who is not bored with himself is a complete person, not prone to destructive codependency. Kleinenberg notes:

“In fact, the increase in the number of people living alone has nothing to do with whether Americans feel lonely or not. There is a wealth of publicly available research that shows that feelings of loneliness depend on the quality, not the quantity, of social contacts. What’s important here is not the fact that a person lives alone, what’s important is whether he feels lonely.”

In addition, it is quite obvious that today we are forced to rotate in a frantic flow of information. Messages and notifications on social networks mix with phone calls and news on TV, turning our everyday lives into an information grinder. Perhaps the conscious appeal to solitude is also associated with the desire to take a break from external noise.

Recent research cited in Kleinenberg's work suggests that most modern singles lead active social lives. Many of them have jobs, friends and lovers, and some even get married. What does loneliness have to do with it? The new social reality allows you to simultaneously have some kind of relationship and take care of yourself on your own territory. Thus, married couples who need personal space prefer to live separately, meeting, for example, on Sundays.

This approach to relationships often causes misunderstanding and even condemnation - changing patterned behavior rarely causes acceptance by the majority. Also, many accuse single people of self-centeredness, high self-esteem and indifferent attitude towards people. You need to understand that most often such attacks arise from those who lead a less busy social life, have more free time and are susceptible to psychological dependence. Modern singles are ready to maintain social contacts, however are strict in choosing friends. Their external isolation (the desire to live alone) does not mean that they do not need people, or that they do not know how to love. Besides, those who have chosen a solo life understand that the number of friends and acquaintances does not guarantee inner comfort.

Also, many people believe that single people do not face problems because they are deprived of any obligations, which is also not true. Solo living as a lifestyle is a completely new phenomenon, the scale of which the world was not prepared for. This is why single people face many problems today.

Some employers are not ready to hire an unmarried person, suspecting him of irresponsibility. In this case, single individuals are forced to fight against stereotypes. Travel enthusiasts note that the price of a tour or hotel room per person is significantly higher than the cost of a vacation for couples or companies. That is why today entire societies have emerged to protect the rights of single people. It is obvious that it will soon be possible to develop a business whose target audience will be single people.

Now, despite the global rise in single-person households, conscious loneliness causes misunderstanding and accusations of infantilism. However, psychologists and psychiatrists note that ability to live alone required quality, which many cannot learn in their entire life..

It is known that everyone needs to be alone from time to time in order to understand their place in the reality around them. Moreover, a high percentage of singles can afford to spend a large number of time for self-realization. It is no coincidence that most often this lifestyle is chosen by representatives of the so-called creative class.

Eric Kleinenberg published his research just two years ago. In it, he declares a “massive social experiment” in which the whole world is participating. It’s interesting that today, 24 months later, the phenomenon of living solo has become much more commonplace, which means that soon we will be able to talk not only about an experiment, but also a truly new social reality. published

More and more men prefer to live alone. But what do you tell women to do?
“Why are you surprised: there is no man who would like to sleep with the same woman all his life,” a friend drummed into me. “But, on the other hand, no one likes, being married, to run headlong to the ringing phone so that his wife doesn’t grab it.” pipe, make up stories about urgent help to a friend, pull up his pants and rush to where his mistress is waiting. Therefore, all men would like to be bachelors to live separately from their wives and mistresses, but so that they regularly visit them in turn.” AS sad as it is, I have to admit the truth to my Slovak friend. Already today, as studies show, in large and medium-sized cities of Russia more and more men live alone. They do not shy away from women, but they do not marry and, as a rule, do not have children. So far there are approximately 33 percent of such “conscious” bachelors. Considering that men die earlier than women, more often suffer from alcoholism and drug addiction, and die more often in road accidents and wars, it turns out that for every 35-year-old man who lives alone, there are 3-4 single women. Demography itself pushes representatives of the stronger sex towards freedom in their intimate life. Some of them were married in their youth. Some people immediately began a free life, but gradually moving from long-term relationships with one partner to short ones with different ones. And where should the “first” go? A single, unmarried or divorced, temperamental woman who earns her own living, but, alas, far from young, who lost her youth to a man who had no intention of marrying her, and now does not really hide the fact that she is not the only one? Should I paraphrase Vizbor’s famous song “You’re not the only one with me” and come to terms with it? Moreover, this “conscious” bachelor is not some slob. If a man is able to live alone, then he has qualities that ladies like; internally organized, the apartment is always tidy, he cooks dinner (we immediately agreed that we are not talking about degenerate alcoholics). Today it is customary to call such people “self-sufficient” people in the good sense of the word. They don’t need a woman “on the farm”; she’s like a holiday to them. Friends, let's be honest: this is not a man, but a dream! Yes, just unattainable. For now, the consolation is that the “epidemic” of bachelor life has only affected big cities. In a regional center with a population of 100-200 thousand people, such a way of life is practically impossible. Firstly, it causes condemnation from others. Secondly, there is no “metropolitan” variety of ladies. But all this, I repeat, for now. Why are more and more men gravitating toward what sociologists call “one-person households”? There are many reasons. One of them is household. A relatively young man with a head and a profession can easily earn money for a microwave, an automatic washing machine, a dishwasher and other equipment, which, unlike his wife, serves him silently, without demanding feelings in return. There is no need to pretend that you listen attentively to her complaints, take her on a visit, wander when necessary to her mother-in-law, or receive relatives at home. The second reason is that if from all sides they talk about the crisis of the family institution, it means that more people are becoming lonely, and society is getting used to it. Today, no one is surprised by a bachelor minister, a bachelor leader, a head of a company... If earlier in some positions this was unthinkable (imagine the first secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU as a bachelor), then today no one asks anyone for a marriage certificate! But demographers, sociologists and psychologists consider the main reason for the spread of “singleness” to be a revaluation of values, which, following the West, has already occurred in Russia. Why did people get married before? Including in order to have children. They brought joy, despite the many problems they caused. They were the meaning of life, support in old age. It’s sad, but I hear from family experts: a child is no longer considered the main value. The laws of society are such that improving the quality of life awakens in a person the desire for sensual pleasures. And if we talk about the intimate life of men, it presupposes diversity. For example, I don’t like all these observations by scientists. But life itself forces you to listen to their arguments. If in 1964 young women, during a sociological survey in Moscow and Vladimir, stated that they were ready to have a single friend with no prospects for marriage, but provided that he had only one, then today’s research in the same cities has revealed a completely different picture. 80 percent of women with secondary special and higher education admitted that they were ready to tolerate their “rival”, just so as not to meet her face to face and not compare who their lover treats better. “The most interesting thing is that women are also adapting to “one-person households,” says psychotherapist, candidate medical sciences, Professor Alexander Poleev. - If they are offered a “relationship” once a week, and this is not enough for young people, then the ladies begin to accept an additional partner. Although they don't like it. A woman is designed in such a way that stable relationships are closer to her and breaking them is harder. Therefore, she is often ready to endure “what is”, even if such a life does not suit her." All these processes are not only “ours”, not purely Russian. In the USA ten years ago there were 50 million families. And today - 34. And in this The figure also includes civil marriages, that is, couples living in the same house. Family experts predict that if nothing changes, in 15-17 years more than half of men and women of marriageable age will live without a certificate. marriage, each with his own “household.” In a situation where there are 2-3 women for one sexually functioning man, this is completely natural. And everything would be fine, but what about the children? But with children it’s bad here. Of course, they will give birth. And men are not idols to abdicate responsibility for a child, not to date, not to help raise and educate. Futurologists have already given names to such marriages: “guest”, “extraterritorial”. And we have been familiar with the visiting, “Sunday” dads for a long time. Unfortunately, we also know the consequences of growing up in a house where there are “three walls” instead of four. But for now, that's it. This partly explains the widely known and already taken into account in government programs Demographers predict that in the coming years the percentage of the country's child population will decrease by almost a third. You can, of course, be an optimist and expect that life will magically change, pushing us each and every individual towards selfishness, intellectually called individualism, that responsibility for the one you tamed and the one you brought into the world will return. That a child, and not “sensual pleasure,” will bind a man and a woman. One man with one woman. But I say this as a woman, a representative of the fairer sex. Nina FOKINA. "Work".

Scientists who periodically discover mind-boggling truths in the course of their work never cease to amaze us. New research on human loneliness breaks the boundaries of stereotypes - everything is actually not as we used to think. Claudia Hammond, who conducted a survey called the BBC Loneliness Experiment, presented the public with counterintuitive research results.

The experiment is based on an online survey of 55,000 people from around the world. It was developed by scientists from three British universities in collaboration with the Wellcome Collection.

When you imagine someone who is lonely, the stereotype paints pictures of an elderly person who lives alone and hardly sees or communicates with anyone. Indeed, in the BBC Loneliness experiment, 27% of people over 75 said they often or very often felt lonely. This figure was higher than some other surveys, but perhaps because the survey was conducted online, many of those who were lonely wanted to take part.

What is loneliness?

Sometimes you really want to be alone. However, if you need communication and you don't have the opportunity to spend time with people who understand you, you feel abandoned and neglected. Loneliness is a disconnection from the world around you, a feeling that no one around you understands you, and that there are no real, meaningful relationships with people. You can feel lonely in a crowd, and vice versa, you can be absolutely happy when there is no one around.

Young people feel more lonely than older people

Incredibly, but true: the highest degree of loneliness was recorded in the group of 16-24-year-old respondents, with 40% of them saying that they often or very often feel lonely.

The question inevitably arises: why does this happen? Perhaps young people simply honestly admit this, while older people find it more difficult to admit their loneliness and uselessness; older people often “show off”, trying to emphasize their independence. But the trend is this: when people were asked at what point in their lives they felt most lonely, the answer was the same - when they were young.

Not only ours modern life, immersing people in gadgets and “cutting them off” from the rest of the world, makes young people feel lonely, they can feel this way for a number of other reasons. Many people think of the age from 16 to 24 as a new freedom away from their parents, when they can finally take everything from life, because school is behind them, and You are already the master of your life when you start working and earning money. But in reality, a different picture emerges: all this distances us from the friends with whom you grew up and are accustomed to being together and communicating. At the same time, a person at this age is trying to take his place in life, solving the difficult task of finding himself.

Everything in the world passes, we need to take care of business!

In addition to this, young people are not used to the feeling of loneliness, and have not yet realized that this sometimes terrible feeling is also passing, like everything else in the world. It often happens that young people do not have enough strength and opportunity to find a way to cope with these feelings - to get distracted, find something they like, or make new acquaintances.

41% of people think being alone is a big plus

This discovery supports the idea of ​​people like the late neuroscientist John Casciopo, who believed that we have evolved to experience loneliness, and that it can be a healthy, if unpleasant, sensation. People survived thanks to collective life. If they are ostracized from a group, feelings of loneliness may force them to interact with people, make new friends, or rekindle old relationships.

The truth is that this feeling can become chronic and have a serious impact on well-being, as well as significantly undermine a person's health.

The fact is that the negativity from constant loneliness leads to a person’s risk of developing depression within a year. Although 41% of all survey participants said that loneliness could be a big plus for them, only 31% of those who complained about feeling lonely too often considered it a plus for themselves. A lonely person feels pitiful and very unhappy; it is unlikely that if this feeling lasts for a long time, anyone will say that this is good.

Lonely people are as good as others at connecting with other people.

Some believe that people feel isolated because it is difficult for them to establish relationships with others, but the results of the study refute this relationship. When you know how to communicate, it means that you are able to penetrate the soul of another person, understand his feelings, so that when communicating with him you do not offend him or hurt him. One way to measure this skill (understanding people) is to have a person look at several faces or pairs of eyes and try to determine what emotions those faces are experiencing. And when performing such a task in a survey, it was revealed that there is no difference in the assessments of lonely people and those who do not experience this feeling. The respondents assessed differently only the degree of concern of the persons shown to them. So it's possible that anxiety caused by various social situations may be more likely to worsen your feelings of loneliness than your social skills.

Winter is not a time for loneliness

It turns out that people don't feel any more lonely in winter than in other seasons. In the run up to Christmas you often see campaigns from charitable organizations, which help older people not to hang their noses in the midst of family holidays. It seems that if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, then Christmas falls in the middle of winter, when the days are shorter and people find themselves more isolated and therefore feel even lonelier. But as a result of the study, it turned out that for many of these “hermits” winter turned out to be no worse than any other time of the year. The survey asked people to indicate the time of year and day when they felt most lonely. More than two thirds of people said they felt no more abandoned in winter than at any other time of year. The rest called winter, and some even called it fun warm summer.

If a person is lonely, then most likely all year round

At Christmas, many people make great efforts to be in some company rather than be left alone. And in the summer, when everyone around them goes on vacation, people, perhaps, therefore feel abandoned. That's why someone probably feels abandoned all year round, and not just during the Christmas holidays.

Lonely people have higher levels of empathy

The survey measured two types of empathy. One of them was sympathy for the physical pain of people: it turned out how sorry the respondent was for a person who had been burned on a hot frying pan, had his hand pinched by a door, or been stung by a wasp. The second type: they found out how much people are able to sympathize with those who experience heartache from moral humiliation, when you are bullied at school, not invited to a party, or when your lover leaves you. The results are surprising: there was no difference in empathy for physical pain among all respondents. But people who said they felt lonely often or very often showed more empathy for those who were hurt by social humiliation. After all, probably, only when one’s own soul is “wounded” and wounded can one feel with all one’s skin the inner suffering of another person.

Modern psychology and science do not provide comprehensive answers to the questions “Why am I lonely?”, “Why are there so many lonely people?” and this is what can be found in the Vedic texts. This is my personal opinion, my brief interpretation

Loneliness is usually explained by:

1. High expectations and demands on others. Or unforgiven internal grievances towards the opposite sex. People feel this from a distance, often unconsciously, and do not want to communicate, realizing that we will be subject to open or hidden resentment and pressure.

2. Great demands on oneself, internal load of grievances, guilt, negative emotions, which blocks inner happiness. And its absence does not attract, but rather repels.

3. If for a long time before this you wanted to be alone and, roughly speaking, drove everyone away from your universe, then now you need to make the same amount of effort to compensate for this tendency and then more effort to develop the necessary one to invite people into your universe.

This is especially important in our time of loneliness and disunity, where the approach of individual farmers is cultivated. Moreover, if before this we wished misfortune and evil for everyone for many lives, now the trend of many lives will have to be reversed. What many lives have desired is what we have at this moment. The law of cause and effect. Therefore, it is very important to start the practice of wishing everyone happiness to correct this trend.

Those. the universe around us is formed not only thanks to some actions, but also through inaction, as well as thoughts and desires, including subconscious ones.

Therefore, the answer to the question: “why am I lonely” lies in several areas, in our psycho-emotional state, and our karma, when we receive the results of what we did earlier in this and previous lives.

Loneliness dissolves if we are happy on our own!

In order to stop being lonely, it is very important to be kind, cheerful, and happy on your own. If we are happy on our own, then people will automatically be drawn to us. We will immediately find like-minded people, friends and love. Loneliness will automatically disappear.

Loneliness from the burden of grievances

Our happiness is largely determined by the burden of resentment and anger we carry with us. Therefore, if the question arises: “why am I single,” then be sure to review your entire life and forgive all grievances against men (the opposite sex). The more grievances accumulated inside, the less chance there is to destroy your loneliness. People subconsciously feel that it will not be easy to communicate with an offended person and avoid such contacts.

Among the most important factors influencing demographic indicators, I can note the following:

1) Ill-conceived education system
In developed countries, people study a lot, including women. People get married later - as a rule, after graduating from universities and acquiring basic professional skills. That is, late marriages lead to a decrease in the birth rate. That is, we need to encourage young people to start families.

2) Difficulty of competing with childless people
Parents large family It’s more difficult to compete with parents of small families, because prices depend on the purchasing power of people, and this purchasing power is related to fertility rates (the number of children per average family)

Addresses unpopular but necessary childlessness tax

I am not proposing to redistribute the income of the successful, talented and hard-working in favor of the marginalized and outsiders. I suggest reduce the increased purchasing power of the childless, which they have only from childlessness. And also reduce economic pressure on families with children.

Those who earn more will have more incentive to have children. And this is good! Smart and talented people often have better genetic predispositions, and, accordingly, their children can also inherit them.

Simple arithmetic. I explain on my fingers with a piece of land.

Let's take:
1. family with three children
2. childless
Who want to buy land.

Let’s imagine that a childless man and the father of a large family have the same salary of 1000 rubles, but the first spends 80% on his family, and the second only 20% on himself. As a result, both come to the auction. One with 200r, and the other with 800r

The price of a plot is determined by supply and demand. Let's say 10 km2 of land is for sale. Then the first one will buy 2 km2, and the second one will buy 8 km2.

If both were childless, then each would buy 5 km2. That is, in the first example, the childless person received 3 km2 simply due to childlessness. That’s why I say that childless people reduce the purchasing power of families with children and cause harm to society

Therefore, in a country with an average birth rate of 5 children per woman, you can hardly work, and live an order of magnitude better than those who work two jobs to feed their family.

3) Cultural factor

National consciousness and religious identity
The psychological factor plays a role here. Every person wants to leave something behind for their children. It's not just money, business, etc. The desire to preserve national and religious traditions is a more important factor. In addition, national and religious traditions are an important link between generations.

By the way, for this reason I trust childless politicians less. It’s unlikely that these people think about the future, since they don’t even want to have children.

Psychologically, it is important for a person to feel different from others. Let it be achievements in school, career, sports or some other activity. Not everyone, however, can boast of such achievements. In this case, national culture can be the necessary distinguishing factor emphasizing his (the person’s) uniqueness.

4. Value system (connected with point 3)

Promiscuity are the reason for the increase in the number of abortions, infidelity, divorces, and single mothers. T.N. The "sexual revolution" seriously undermined the institution of the family.

For this reason, the TQ fauna is too selfish and is used to only taking and using. Many representatives of the local fauna themselves grew up in families, being the only child, and from childhood they were not used to sharing with anyone.

4) Village support. In rural areas it is easier to raise children, and they help their parents from a young age, while in urban areas they are completely dependent on their parents

And yes, the problem is complex and complex. But it needs to be solved, UN demographers note:

“One thing is absolutely clear: countries with low fertility have no chance of increasing natural increase and to return to large families. Once the birth rate began to decline, no country in history managed to increase it again for any length of time.”

Therefore, we will have to take unpopular measures.