The Strange Cause of the Silent Destruction of Togetherness and the Rise of Loneliness

If You Have No Friends, No Family, and You Don’t Bother with People, This Is Why It’s Not You

Photo by aarigalangg Courtesy of Pixabay

We are now a low-trust society with no communities, neighbours and in some cases even families to speak of, but how did we get here?

There is an aspect of pathological narcissism which, if left unchecked and allowed to get out of hand, can explain the diabolical situation we each find ourselves in.

Narcissism is a pathology focused on how their peers perceive them; this is the most crucial aspect to a narcissist, and they will betray the people they have intimate relationships with for the approval of strangers they haven’t even met.

The effects of this on society are that for the past two or three decades, narcissistic people have been organising individuals into groups to attack innocent people who have been the target of their abuse before.

This led to the individuals who needed help being delivered out of the hands of these wretched people, being crushed by the society that they so desperately sought help from instead.

The domino effect is that we subsequently become a low-trust society, spearheaded not just by the people who were targeted and betrayed by it, but also by those who bought the lie and ran around in the street doing what they were told.

Such people eventually learn that they were lied to and used by their peers, and this causes them to distance themselves from everybody involved.

They are unlikely to get involved with such things in the future because people do not like to be wrong; it’s just part of human nature not to want to be seen to have been on the wrong side of something.

I’ve seen this happen in workplaces, communities, churches, and even schools.

The long-term consequences to the individual are widely known and are often spoken of, but the damage that is done to the communities involved and society as a whole is extreme but rarely acknowledged, and we are only just now starting to feel the effects.

We are approaching a time of unprecedented individualism where we don’t know our neighbours, communities are absent, and as much as we would like to be a part of something, we feel that they aren’t worth the risk.

Humans are risk versus reward creatures, if the risk outweighs the reward, then we won’t bother.

Consequently, the risk of being betrayed by everyone you know, ousted as a lowlife and publicly shamed and humiliated without any proof is far too high.

Especially when the reward of companionship and solidarity could be temporary, as these communities have shown time and again that their loyalty to the individual turns on a dime.

Reaping What You Sow

In recent years, I have noticed the kinds of people who were attracted to idle gossipers trying in vain to backtrack on the slander, tone it down, and attempting to build relationships instead of tearing them up.

Needless to say, it doesn’t work because they have already conditioned people in society not to trust anyone outside of their household.

I know why they’re desperately trying to backtrack now, they’re realising that the gossip and the slander weren’t free.

Unto everything, there is a price, and what the gossipers did was no different.

The long-term cost is that society fragments.

Without trust and the reassurance that, as long as you’re a good person, then no one should have a reason to say anything bad about you, rapid individualisation will take over.

This leads to loneliness becoming an epidemic where no one talks to one another, and they don’t even bother to say good morning as they pass each other in the street.

This might not seem so bad on the surface, after all, now they don’t have anyone to talk about.

But if we dig a little deeper, we can see that somewhere down the line, some of the people in these communities might not be okay; in fact, they may actually need some help somewhere down the line.

Who are they going to turn to? What are they going to do?

When we look at the situation, where it is headed, and then we start to ask the difficult questions, we can see that the uptick in narcissism and the damage it has done to society is setting the world up for an unprecedented amount of suffering.

These were short-term games with long-term people, and with the collapse of institutions all over the West, there will be precious little for them to fall back on.

They say that no man is an island, but for the first time in human history, this is increasingly what we are all becoming.

The number of people who are happy living like this is rising too.

There is nothing wrong with them; they are just happily self-sufficient, and they enjoy their own company.

Funnily enough, a common interpretation of the works and philosophies of Nietzsche is that:

"The most dangerous weapon is not a sword, it's a man who enjoys his own company."

If society continues on this downward trajectory, I suspect that we’re all headed that way.

The impact of this isn’t just sociological; there is an economic aspect to this, which is just as destructive.

This sort of character assassination often happens in the workplace, where the security of your job is all too often dependent on the insecurity of a local narcissist in residence.

This is when it starts to affect the company’s bottom line, and productivity starts to suffer when the best talent has been bullied out of the workplace.

Those who were driven out were the smart ones: thinkers, innovators, and creators of the future.

In the UK, they have found a way to outlaw overhearing gossip about an employee in the workplace, and I’m confident that the motivation for this move has its roots firmly planted in how much money is being lost when the victim of the gossip leaves the company.

While I disagree with this move as I think it is heavy-handed and negatively impacts free speech, I do agree that something had to be done about it.

A better option might have been if they had made HR punish the responsible party instead of the victim, then the problem might have gone away by itself.

The decay and business collapse that we’re all witnessing is what happens when employers dare those who have options to show them just how many they’ve got and walk away.

What Now?

Is it too late to go back? I’d say “Probably.” The saving grace is that there are still tiny pockets of places which haven’t been contaminated with this mind virus yet.

Although society has fallen, you can still maintain a micro utopia in the places it hasn’t toppled.

For most of the bustling cities, it’s already too late. I’d recommend selling up and getting out of them before the rule of law implodes in these densely populated concrete jungles entirely.