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Professor G (Scott Galloway) offers a chilling reminder of how hungry we are for connection and how lonely we’ve become. In a recent article, Lonely Fans he says,
“Humans are hard-wired to connect. Interacting with families and friends is as essential as food, water, and shelter. Through the 1970s, Americans seemed adept at forming social groups: political associations, labor unions, local memberships. Those bonds have faded. Weekly religious service attendance has fallen to 30% from 42% two decades ago. Marriage rates have plunged. ‘Third places’ — public gathering spots outside home and work — are disappearing.”
For more than fifty years I have worked with men and their families. In my latest book, Long Live Men! The Moonshot Mission to Heal Men, Close the Lifespan Gap, and Offer Hope to Humanity, I say,
“Millions of men are lonely and isolated, and many aren’t even aware of it. Many of the most successful people I know, and have worked with, feel emotionally alone, but never slow down enough to let their feelings catch up with them.”
I quoted Dr. Thomas Joiner, author of the book, Lonely at the Top: The High Cost of Men’s Success, who talked about the hidden problem that most men try and hide.
“Men’s main problem is not self-loathing, stupidity, greed, or any of the legions of other things they’re accused of. The problem, instead, is loneliness. As they age, they gradually lose contacts with friends and family, and here’s the important part, they don’t replenish them.”
I grew up with a father who suffered in silence and in desperation took an overdose of sleeping pills when he felt increasingly hopeless and worthless. Although he didn’t die, our lives were never the same. I grew up wondering what happened to my father, when it would happen to me, and what I could do to help other families like mine.
I got my first clues when I discovered a journal my father had written in the months leading up to his final act of desperation:
July 3: “Oh, Christ, if I could only give my son a decent education — a college decree with a love for books, a love for people, good, solid knowledge. No guidance was given to me. I slogged and slobbered and blundered through two-thirds of my life.”
August 8: “Sunday morning, my humanness has fled. I’m tired, hopelessly tired, surrounded by an immense brick wall, a blood-spattered brick world, splattered with my blood where I senselessly banged to find an opening, to find one loose brick, so I could feel the cool breeze and could stick out my hand and pluck a handful of wheat, but this brick wall is impregnable, not an ounce of mortar loosens, not a brick gives.”
November 9: “A hundred failures, an endless number of failures, until now, my confidence, my hope, my belief in myself, has run completely out. Middle aged, I stand and gaze ahead, numb, confused, and desperately worried. My hope and my life stream are both running desperately low, so low, so stagnant, that I hold my breath in fear, believing that the dark, blank curtain is about to descend.”
Men need support and safe places they can share their feelings and receive support and guidance before they become suicidal.
Losing 40,000 Men a Year to Suicide is a National Tragedy
According to Richard V. Reeves, Founder of the American Institute for Boys and Men,
“Suicide is a gendered health crisis. Boys and men account for 80% of the deaths from suicide in the United States. This amounts to almost 40,000 male deaths a year, about the same as the loss of women’s lives from breast cancer.”
In a recent post, Reeves backs up his assertion with a chart comparing male and female suicides within various age groups:
“These are indeed very striking gender gaps,” says Reeves. “But in the age bands below that, the real change in recent years has been a dramatic rise in loss of life from suicide among young men. Suicide rates among young men have risen by a shocking 30% since 2010.”
Loneliness is Lucrative
Scott Galloway says that “loneliness is lucrative” and offers startling and disturbing reflections on the website “Only Fans.”
“Leonid Radvinsky, the secretive owner of OnlyFans, received a $700 million windfall last year, while the platform’s top tier of content creators — mostly women — earn millions annually,” says Galloway. “With $7.2 billion in annual gross revenue and just 46 employees, OnlyFans may be one of the most profitable companies on the planet. The site is viewed as a porn-centric hub where men pay women for sexual content. The company claims it’s giving creators and their 378 million fans (greater than the population of the U.S.) something more: an opportunity to forge ‘authentic connections’.”
The Price We Pay For Artificial Intimacy
Yet these kinds of on-line, pay-to-play, connections do not satisfy our human need to bond with others and to find real lasting love. Instead, they create an addictive hunger that never gets satisfied and, like all addictions, leads to an increasing hunger for more intense stimulation.
Men are especially vulnerable. The most unstable, violent societies have one thing in common: A large population of wounded, unhealed, men. We are creating millions of these lost souls. In her book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat says,
“Ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of truth, treasure, and the protections of democracy. They promise law and order, then legitimize law-breaking by financial, sexual, and other predators.”
Comedian Elayne Boosler offers a humorous and insightful view of these gender differences.
“When women get depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It’s a whole different way of thinking.”
Without healthy guidance from healthy male elders, our young boys and men are vulnerable. Richard Reeves of the American Institute for Boys and Men says,
“Forthcoming research from AIBM, shows that among men aged 15-34, more than half a million years of potential life are now being lost every year.”
In my book, The Irritable Male Syndrome: Understanding and Managing the 4 Key Causes of Depression and Aggression, I say,
“Research demonstrates that up to 30 percent of boys and men, especially those in adolescence and midlife, exhibit symptoms of Irritable Male Syndrome. In its mildest forms, IMS can cause males to be moody and irritable. At its worst, it can lead to violence and suicide.”
What Can Be Done: Tapping Into Living Intelligence
Many believe that the world is becoming too complex for humans to solve the many problems we face. They believe that artificial intelligence is the answer. While I believe that we should use whatever tools are available that have been shown to be most helpful, I don’t believe that artificial intelligence is the answer to our loneliness pandemic.
Living intelligence is a force that has been with us for millions of years. In their book, The Universe Story, mathematical cosmologist Dr. Brian Swimme and historian Dr. Thomas Berry tell us that life on Earth evolved 4 billion years ago and has continued ever since. They say the first humans evolved 2.6 million years ago followed by Homo sapiens 200,000 years ago.
I do not believe we have tapped into all the wisdom that is available to us. In his book Pure Human: The Hidden Truth of Our Divinity, Power, and Destiny, scientist and author Gregg Braden has this to say:
“We humans are an ancient and mysterious form of life. We’re the unlikely convergence of invisible thoughts, emotions, and imaginations woven into the fabric of tissue, bone, and blook that make possible our choices, and the consequences of our choices, each and every day of our lives.”
Braden believes we are at a crucial choice point in human evolution that will determine our continued evolution or our demise.
“We now have at our fingertips the technology to alter ourselves — to rewrite the code of our DNA and the neural networks that define us — in ways that, once implemented, can never be reversed, and will forever change what it means to be human.”
He concludes,
“By the year 2030, we will either have awakened to the truth of our untapped human potential, or we will be locked into a society of hybrid humans that has engineered away our powers of creativity, emotion, empathy, and intuition.”
There is Still Time to Get Real
The Velveteen Rabbit (or How Toys Become Real) is a British children’s book written by Margery Williams. It chronicles the story of a stuffed rabbit’s desire to become real through the love of his owner. The story was first published in Harper’s Bazaar in 1921 featuring illustrations from Williams’ daughter Pamela Bianco, and the book was first published in 1922.
I have always loved good books and know they will never be replayed by AI.
Here is an excerpt that reminds me of how real love can change us all:
“The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces.
“He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
“What is REAL? asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
Getting Real: A Course for Men and Women Who Still Believe in Real Intimacy
For those who have visited my website, MenAlive.com, you have seen my introductory video, “Confessions of a Twice-Divorced Marriage Counselor.” I have learned that finding real lasting love isn’t easy and it takes courage and tenacity and guidance from elders.
My wife, Carlin, and I have been married now for 45 wonderful years. We described our own healing journey in my book, The Enlightened Marriage: The 5 Transformative Stages of Relationships and Why the Best is Still to Come. I will be offering a new course for those who would like to improve their love lives. Whether you are in a relationship that could use some additional support or are looking for that special someone, I invite you to join me.
If you’re interested, drop me an email: Jed@MenAlive.com and put “Getting Real About Love” in the subject line and I will send you more details.
