Where are all the people?
A reflection on atomization
A friend articulated the problem clearly to me one day when describing the difficult transition between university and employment. In college she had had a close circle of friends who she shared each day with, but now she felt like she was constantly alone.
“I keep asking myself, Where is everyone?” she confessed. “Where are all the people? I have this persistent feeling like there are supposed to be people around, but they are missing.”
In recent years I’ve often heard that we are in a crisis of loneliness. While this is true, my friend’s sentiment strikes closer to the heart of the issue: we are in a crisis of atomization. Where loneliness is a feeling inside of us, atomization speaks to the reality of our circumstance. Loneliness is a feeling which can present itself in any culture and time, but its current excess is a byproduct of atomization.
Atomization is the process by which larger units — compounds or cultures, molecules or families — are broken down into their subcomponents; their individuality gaining clarity as their relationships disintegrate. It affects not just our situation, but our capacity. Culturally, we lack the social technology which would once have bound us together. We are atomized in that our lives are less intertwined, but also in that we are less able to withstand close contact and the constraints it brings. Our society has changed significantly, and many of the solutions that once held us together seem unfit to the new texture of the world, and the new problems it brings.
Will getting married and having children solve the problem? I watch people romanticize married life, but families are atomized too. They lack neighborhoods, or they send their kids to daycare as both parents work just to pay the cost of modern life. Family may be critical, but is it really enough?
Will living in a group house fix it? While this can provide temporary relief, it rarely brings necessary the longterm stability and commitment, and is much more difficult to scale.
Will therapy heal your loneliness? Is the problem really within you? These questions are hard to answer, because while they all contain handfuls of truth, they miss the enormity of the ocean before us.
I’m sure you’ve heard the stats of marriages failed to form or to last, of children glued to the TV, of adolescents unable to manage conflict. If not, you’ve been in public spaces, seen people consumed by their devices, seemingly fully withdrawn from the physical environment and people around them. It will be hard for me to write accurately about all the factors which have led us here because there are many and they are highly complex. There are a few key pieces, however, which bear addressing.
Careerism, as it is understood, has had a detrimental effect on our population. Careers are often embedded within companies whose reach is too large for us to really comprehend. Our effect on the system as a whole is obscured by its vastness. Yet, we feel that if we rise higher in the company, university, or institution, we will have a larger impact. I believe there is a conflation of status with real power to affect people. Combine the human desire to set right that which is around us, and the fact that the entirety of the world now lives in our mind’s eye: how can we resist the urge to rise to the top? The decline of tangible ways to impact our community and the global awareness brought by mass media has rendered our only routes to unity superficial. It seems that in our attempt to transcend the masses, we have become them. We end up with everyone believing they will be the one to change the world, competing with each other to increase status while failing to cultivate any real skill or ability to coordinate amongst themselves. I don’t think this is the whole story but it’s an important aspect to keep in mind. I often see people who have divorced their career from their personal desires, as if their mission in the world could be understood through the binary of professional and personal. This leaves people feeling simultaneously unfulfilled by their job and their family life.
Let us turn next to the pursuit of freedom, as it is often currently conceived of; which is not a freedom of the spirit which relies on self mastery, but a freedom from all constraints. Freedom, I believe, is a complicated and beautiful thing which entails a much longer analysis, but for now I will say that the problem here is freedom of the weaker parts of the self, not the stronger. The freedom of license is merely trading one master for another. Ultimately this concept entails freedom from one another, the emancipation of the individual from the group. If we hold the stated desires and preferences of individuals as a moral absolute, the function of the group erodes. Class transcendence quietly implies a departure from family and place. While this has benefits, it seems that we have too many people moving and too few staying put to maintain a stable society. Perhaps the problem is that we do not have good enough places to rise to, or that the stable life of the lower class has become increasingly untenable. Today, the modern rise through the lower classes increasingly involves reliance on technology. To stay connected with the people who can help pull you upwards, you must dedicate hours upon hours looking through the portal to the virtual realm. It captures much of our attention and often gives little back. While its usefulness is undeniable, we are psychologically unequipped to manage it, and it has crept increasingly into our shared time and common space.
The coffee shop in its origins was a place of community, where people came together to share ideas and create things. Now it is a convenient comfort which fuels the modern worker, helplessly affixed to laptop and phone. Yet, why were we so vulnerable to this technology? It preys on a weakness and weakens us further, and we need novel solutions to combat its grip on us moving forward.
Throughout this, we have lost or abandoned our common values, which has allowed elements of our world like money and personal pleasure to rise to the status of the divine which they were never destined for. In the churn of upward mobility, we have lost touch with our roots, and in doing so find ourselves working long hours in an expensive city where we have no personal equity and few friends. How, amidst all this, are we to have a stake in the future, when there seems to be no place for us in it?
I believe this placelessness describes the situation of many young people today quite literally. Another friend grew up in a coal mining town. After many years spent in the city, she felt keenly the loss of her family and community, but there was no way to go back. The jobs are gone, and as people move away, any prospects of a future there fade. “If I could go back I would, but at this point there’s really nowhere I can go that feels like home. I feel stranded,” she said. This generation has seen many people pulled into this narrative of progress only to find themselves disillusioned and stuck, with nowhere to turn.
It is a cruel irony that in focusing on the apparent needs of individuals, we have found ourselves without place, personal fulfillment, or prospects. This is the great omission of our time; a fundamental error in our understanding of people. We forgot that the individual’s needs include the family, the community. They cannot be cleanly separated. Yet, in growing into an atomized world, something has changed within us. In creating a system for individuals and not for community, we have fundamentally changed people’s capacity to live a non-atomized life, form healthy bonds and maintain them.
How do we move forward?
While it may be necessary, the problem is not one that can be solved by a simple change of circumstance. Nearly every system around us exerts an atomizing pressure, and wherever we go the problem will follow us — inside us and out. I’ve come to believe that the real culture war is not political, it is this. Atomization that laid the groundwork for polarization, and if we want to solve the latter we must bring about conditions in which it cannot survive. Our increasing inability to stay close to friends and family makes it easier to pull us apart. People won't reach out, so it will often be up to you to do so. And you'll have to keep going, and be persistent, even when your efforts aren't reciprocated. It requires intense humility and persistence but I believe it is the only way forward. Regardless of where you are, I guarantee there is something you can do. Host dinner parties regularly and invite people you meet to them. Take on projects with friends and family that benefit both of you and contribute something to the world. When things break down and conflict arises, persist and work through it. Try to invest your energy in things you will keep, whether it be places, friends, homes, or institutions. I think moving to small towns near large cities will prove a promising strategy. Even neighborhoods within cities may do. The point is you must get to know people around you and work together to help one another grow and thrive.
Real progress on this front requires a change of heart. Without it, we will be lost. Valuing freedom, comfort, and personal satisfaction is at odds with forming community. The problem is immense, and it takes a great amount of will to stand against it. We must live each day in radical opposition to the world, and embrace it with radical love. While it has been the focus of this piece, community is never the whole story, never the end goal. We are not here simply to form connections, but to accomplish something great together. Without close bonds and high trust, we will be quite incapable of doing this. I believe that with the right understanding of human nature, we need not make a harsh tradeoff between individuality and community. If these things were fundamentally irreconcilable, I expect humanity would have ceased to exist long ago. We need each other in order to seek greatness, manifest beautiful ideas, and build the foundation of a world which might make this possible.
