Humans are social animals! We are genetically wired to live in groups of 30-40 people, completely inter-reliant on each other, and our value as individuals comes from our contribution to the group.
This no longer exists because in modern society, there is no group to serve. This leads to a profound sense of meaninglessness for lots of people. The irony of modern life is that it has removed hardship and danger, and that's a great thing, but it's only through hardship and danger that we understand our value to society, and we get our sense of meaning from this.
For example, during the Blitz bombs of Germany which showered the United Kingdom, 30,000 people were killed by bombs, and it was absolutely horrendous. However, people were sleeping shoulder to shoulder in the tube stations, where the underground railway was, and putting out fires with buckets, and digging people out of rubble.
When this was over, the British government was ready to take on an enormous number of psychiatric casualties, due to what it's population experienced. However, the opposite happened. The number of casualties went down compared to usual. The suicide rate went down as well. Afterwards, there was a lot of nostalgia in England for the Blitz. Even today, lots of people from those days have admitted that they miss the days of the war, because they were better people back then, and they took care of each other.
So what is the takeaway of this story? Adversity makes people act well. The lack of adversity, safety and comfort, allow people to act selfishly. People feel like they are needed by their society during adversity and if you feel needed, you are able to ignore your own personal troubles. We have been wired to act this way, because our ancestors who acted well toward their society during adversity, lived on and bred.
Social connection is the thing of utmost importance in our lives. If we have no social connection in our lives, loneliness can be fatal. You are at a significantly higher risk of suicide and depression. There's also another story of a woman who had cancer, and at her stay at the cancer ward, she met everyone and hung around them everyday, and made great connections with them, and eventually got better. She later admitted to missing having cancer due to the lack of social engagement in her life.
When people are missing war, and others still are missing cancer, you know something is wrong.
Stay well everyone and hope you have a wonderful day!
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Credit: Sebastian Junger book: TRIBE