Mattias Desmet and Aaron Kheriaty Talk about Why So Many Suffer from Profound Loneliness

basically all age groups with the exception of the very elderly have seen marked rise in suicide in the last 20 to 25 years it's very highly correlated with use of Technology the more technology use the more lonely people feel in a country today two of the world's leading thinkers on bioethics and group psychology join me together for the first time Dr Aaron kotti is a former Psychiatry professor and director of the medical Ethics program at the University of California Irvine medical school he's the author of the new abnormal Matias desmat is Professor of psychology at gent University and author of the psychology of totalitarianism totalitarian leaders can only cease control and a society where a lot of people feel lonely this is American thought leaders and I'm Yan Kell Arin karotti Matias desmat such a pleasure to have you back on American thought leaders and together amazingly it's great to be with you and it's great to be with my new friend Matias yeah likewise happy to be here together with you ER and thanks for having us on yeah well so you were together in a session here at this Brownstone conference this year and you brought up the issue and this is something we've both talked about in previous interviews I've talked about with both of you is this issue of loneliness and it as the years have gone on I keep thinking about it as a foundational issue so I want to start start by discussing that and of course atomization is this concept that comes from that so maybe let's start with you Erin you you actually mentioned that Vivic Murthy said himself that there was this you know crisis or huge epidemic of of loneliness which is very much the case that's right yeah merthy a man with whom I have many disagreements um but on this point he was absolutely right announced in 20 I believe it was 2018 somewhere around that that there was this epidemic of loneliness in the United States and he wasn't just using that word sort of metaphorically to describe a social phenomenon he was looking at it as Surgeon General from a health related phenomenon and looking at robust data that loneliness produces negative Health outcomes on the same level as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day that this epidemic of loneliness was as serious in terms of compromising Americans physical and mental health as heart disease cancer other things that the Surgeon General sort of traditionally pays attention to in connection with that there was a couple of researchers at Princeton case and Deon who were doing a lot of work around that time on so-called deaths of Despair and deaths of Despair deaths by Suicide alcohol rated illnesses and drug overdose which since 1980 uh 1999 had been on the rise so about 20 year rise in deaths of Despair the drug overdose deaths in 1999 were 20,000 a year which is a tragic number but that had ballooned to 70,000 a year by the year uh 2019 and then with covid lockdowns and our response to covid we basically threw gasoline on that fire and so that 70,000 number jumped in 2021 after lockdowns to 100,000 a year same thing happened with alcohol rated deaths 69,000 a year pre pandemic to 999,000 a year post pandemic and that crisis has continued to worsen the suicide numbers from the CDC have continued tragically to go up every year so basically all age groups with the exception of the very elderly those over the age of 75 all age groups in both men and women have seen Market rise in suicide in the last 20 to 25 years I think all of this suggests a profound um crisis in society the cause are complex um technological developments have certainly played a role but I would I would say certain uh social and ideological developments have also played a role like what's driving us to embrace this technology it's not the technology itself is not necessarily alone leading to all of these changes why have we as a society uh pursued the use of Technologies in certain ways that lead to these kinds of problems you know Matias you've had had uh you're looking at this from a different Vantage Point perhaps I'll get you to build on that now yes I think it's very interesting is to see how loneliness to a certain extent is a spontanously emerging phenomenon as Erin mentioned um uh the use of Technology plays role it's a very highly correlated with use of Technology the more technology use the More Lonely People feel in a country uh which is surprising of course because we always believe that uh technology connects us to each other that's true at the level of the exchange of information but it disconnects it is it disconnects us at the level of the resonating bond between humans so it destroys the resonating bond to a large extent so that's one thing like this spontaneously emerging phenomenon as a consequence of uh the increasing use of Technology uh but what is also very interesting I I believe is that sometimes sometimes it is intentionally created like that is what Hana aren said totalitarian leaders can only Sease control in a society where a lot of people feel lonely okay they need loneliness loneliness which spontaneously emerged and which was used or abused by totalitarian leaders uh because they probably didn't know but they just noticed that their propaganda was very efficient because there was a lot of loneliness once people feel lonely propaganda uh people are very vulnerable for propaganda and a new type of uh Mass emerge emerged in the 20th century which ja elul called The Lonely Mass uh meaning that like uh in medieval times there were also Mass formations and masses uh but there were physical masses people had to meet physically in order to uh experience this kind of group dynamic that that I refer to as mass formation and um so it all mass foration always existed but in the 20th century it became stronger because of the emergence of mass media and propaganda uh but also because much more people felt lonely and in this way the propaganda really kicked in became very successful and led to to to to a new kind of mask a lonely Mass where people did no longer have to meet physically to to form a mass but could form a mass while they were all sitting uh uh in a lonely state in their houses because they were all infused by the same uh uh narratives through the mass media and the interesting the interesting thing is the following as soon as a totalitarian leader or a totalitarian system uh can use loneliness to seize control of the population the first thing it will always do according to Han arand is replace loneliness by isolation physical isolation meaning that it will try to impose travel restrictions it will try to prevent people from meeting like as Stalin did with more than two persons because they know if you can use loneliness and replace it by physical isolation preventing people to meet physically propaganda is extremely successful you have perfect control to propaganda so we we can see that uh this atomization of society on the one hand was a spontaneous process and that's the most important thing I believe it was a spontaneously emerging process as a consequence of the industrialization of the world the use of uh technology but it was also sometimes intentionally and artificially created by by by by totalitarian leaders and then there is this last thing that I would want to add to that and it is that we really have to try to understand the complex relationship between loneliness and narcissism because they are related to each other and that's the the deepest psychological level that's the the root cause of the phenomenon of the emergence of loneliness in our society like something that I will try to describe in a in a tangible way in my next book our modern uh worldview uh started to emerge somewhere 16th 17th century when the human being left the religious F man of the world behind and replaced it by uh the rationalist materialist F man of the world which believe that uh it's not so much God that reveals the truth we have to construct the truth ourself by observing the world with our eyes and um trying to understand the rational connections between the facts that we establish with our eyes so that metaphysical Revolution which the richest F man in the world was replaced by the materialist F man in the world basically boiled down to this the human gaze the eyes the focus changed it was no longer focused on our ethical awareness and uh ethical rules and stuff no it was focused outwards we started to believe that the real world is the world that we could observe with our eyes and that was a moment where we also started to believe at a level of of our own identity that we could see who we are in the mirror yeah we are our outer Mirror Image our our Ideal Image and that at the same time immediately on the one hand isolated the human being from other human beings because in all human intera human interactions we were like a few percentages but which was enough to have a substantial sub substantial impact more focused on our own Ideal Image meaning that we couldn't see the image of the other anymore we resonated less with the other because we are more focused on our own outer Ideal Image and our own ego and that the ego is literally like a superficial shell of your own being and if you invest a lot of psychological energy if you focus your attention on your outer Ideal Image you get disconnected from the other because you do not mirror the other's image anymore and there is no spontaneous emergence of empathy anymore so the human bonds gets weaker the real human bonds and that at the same time explains like it's the it's the this rationalist Fuel Man world at the same time led to isolation and narcissism and I mean you could see that in living color as uh young people are curating and airbrushing their Ideal Image and projecting it literally onto Instagram um and they they can't experience the real being together with other people in spontaneous convivial friendship and relationship you know young people going to a dance and the whole purpose of the dance is to take pictures and post them otherwise it's like it didn't happen right um and another thing that happens in that context is that one's own interior life disappears and so the possibility for real human friendship intimacy and connection that Matias is describing also disappears because it's it's one person's character armor which is a psychoanalytic term that you know the analysts 100 years ago used to describe the narcissistic personality it was it was characterized by this hardening this one person's character armor bumping up against another person's character armor and Society inre recently isolated and then characterized by conflict when people um are together or are trying to connect the the other thing I'll say just to just to Riff on minus' comments about the the rise of a kind of rationalism over really the last 500 years is that the end point of that hyper rationalist Pro uh program or process uh can be seen for example in the in the philosophy of KL Marx and I'm not talking about his economic theories I'm talking about Marx's metaphysics is view of ultimately the the world and how we know things and and what human beings are I mean the first thing he said is basically there is no such thing as human nature we are what we make um and and the the whole the whole project of rationalism uh and it's it's kind of apotheosis in the 19th century was uh that we can recreate ourselves we can create the world we can recreate ourselves by recreating the world that was basically the Marxist revolutionary program and um and there is no already given um elements in the world or in human nature that need to be respected and regarded or treated with a kind of contemplative gaze everything needs to be subjected to our rationalist control um this leads to a top- Down managerialist Society of total control and totalizing surveillance it leads to um it leads to sort of extreme ideologies like transhumanism that begin from the premise that there is no such thing as human nature we could just recreate ourselves and you know become demigods or you know bigger faster stronger through the use of let's say biotechnology or or te you know nanotechnology or other technological enhancements so we're in the process of creating this this this unreal world and then trying to conform ourselves to a kind of virtual unreality that we were never built for and that can only lead to unhappiness and misery and all kinds of Downstream social problems Aaron Matias we're going to take a quick break right now and we'll be right back um and we're back with Aon karotti and Matias desmat there's two things that just struck me one of them is this you know this spontaneous rise of loneliness through technology It's Curious that a lot of that these masses it's all mediated I I don't know if ironically or just obviously through technology right so it's almost like the the connection gets to use your word duded through the through the fact that it's all seems to be a lot of it seems to be mediated through technology so it makes sense you would you know prevent physical contact at some level the other thing that struck me is this cause and effect question you know is it with this the the totalitarians taking advantage of the the spontaneous rise of uh of loneliness could it be the the cause and effect is reversed in fact that the technology itself gives rise to more totalitarian Tendencies because of these kinds of behaviors like to get you I me either you to I think it runs in both directions so the technological developments obviously have an impact um but also the ideologies Drive the technological developments and the white widespread Embrace of those technological developments so you think about lockdowns during Co which is the most extreme example of what natias was describing before I mean the the 20th century totalitarian dictators from Stalin to Hitler never dreamed of such rigid controls on I mean they never told people to stay six feet apart they never told people that they couldn't go to you know couldn't go outside or or go to work so the world globally um and supposedly free western Democratic societies embrace a level of control and organized loneliness that had never been seen before and the question is why and some people have pointed out well if the laptop class had not that that you know already had available Zoom technology then lockdowns never would have been possible and there's certainly there's certainly truth to that but I think also we had been conditioned for decades into thinking that it's possible to live a human and Humane life staying in my room and you know ordering my food from people that I will never actually see and actually never encountering a real person face to face somehow human beings globally had developed the belief that it was actually possible and in some cases even desirable to do that and I think it was clear that the human Bond had become already very painful for m most people most people felt lonely most people suffered from an or 25% I believe of the world population deals with the psychiatric disorder which almost always uh is part of a social problem problem in the connection with other people so many people actually like like many young people in in Japan don't have sex anymore uh uh many uh uh uh young people just prefer virtual reality over uh in person contacts and conversations and I feel it as well something that that is very enticing in the use of your mobile phone uh uh mobile phones are our major addiction I think and the most dangerous one def definitely in in uh in our era and uh in that way as soon as you start to see how throughout the last two maybe three centuries uh the social fabric uh deteriorated step after step how for instance the introduction of Television radio reduced the number of inperson contacts we had maybe with 50% or more and then the introduction of the internet with another 30% how uh The Disappearance of the physically labor physical labor working together in a physical way uh also destroyed the direct contact between human beings and so on and so on then you start to understand how suddenly uh people who just because of their blind belief in this rational system and this rationalist the world viw uh and their blind striving towards rational control and manipulation of nature in general and Society in particular how these people started to feel that maybe the next step could be taken and that we slowly could get people used to the to the fact that maybe it was better for everyone that people stayed in their houses from now on better for nature better for climate change better for it will protect you from uh from dangerous viruses and so on and so on so um that's indeed the situation we find ourselves in now and if we uh do not start to really think about how we can escape it I believe Humanity might end up uh in a in a very well organized prison yes it's a kind of bizarre thing to to think about and kind of it is it's a funny it's a funny image you have to laugh but so like it's a kind of a very dark kind of a very dark future right well there's a there's a real lack of um intellectual humility there's Behind These converging ideologies if you will and and converging uses of tech Technologies I think there is a lack of self-awareness and understanding first of all that the world is enormously and beautifully complex and complicated and the the sort of hyper rationalist ideology says no we can figure everything out and then we could put the really smart people into positions of permanent power and they can in a top down sort of manage arealist control organized f tell everyone what to do and uh and figure out all the dangers and minimize them and um and and kind of refine all the pleasures and maximize them and it's a very naive view of the the cosmos and of the world that we live in and the the immediate lived environment which is enormously complex beyond our Reckoning and beautifully um um beautifully beyond our ability to uh to to fully comprehend it so science and and I I should say and I'm sure Matias would say the same thing both of us are a fan of of science as a process for discovering more and learning more about the natural world and and I'm not opposed to the to technology is a way of of managing our lives in the environment but to but to put those things at the service of human beings and put those things at the service of the actual complex World in which we live in is going to require a very very different approach than the one that we're the the path that we seem to be going down now well Matias Desmet Aaron karotti such a pleasure to have had you on together thank you guys thanks for having you thank you all for joining Aaron karotti Mattias Desmond and me on this episode of American thought leaders I'm your host Yan Kell [Music]