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1103 points MaxLeiter | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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alex-moon ◴[] No.45124947[source]
I'm increasingly convinced that social isolation is the single great social ill of our time. I am not one for "respecting others' opinions" at all, make no mistakes, if someone believes something incorrect - or worse - then they need to be corrected. But so much of the hate simmering away like a pot about to boil over is the result of loneliness. The evidence on this is startingly clear.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235215462...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795362...

https://www.psychiatrist.com/news/hate-lies-and-loneliness-f...

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1. jl6 ◴[] No.45126348[source]
Humans are moored to their social web: having to exist amongst others continually pulls you towards the average feelings/views/activities of the people you are connected to. Change is slow.

When humans become unmoored from this web through loneliness/isolation/alienation, they can freewheel and drift further from that average. This can be liberating! But if you don't re-connect, either with your previous web or a new one, there's nothing stopping you falling off the deep end; nothing to give you a little correction that keeps you "normal". Political extremism of various flavors, or identity crises founded in over-rumination, are what we see - but also innovation and removal of constraints. Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies relates. The social isolation moonshot is to break from convention and be a hero auteur, but the risk of failure is very high. Nullum magnum dementiae sine mixtura ingenium fuit.