Is loneliness a 21st century phenomenon or are there historical precedents for such a phenomenon?

Is loneliness a 21st century phenomenon or are there historical precedents for such a phenomenon?

youtube.com/watch?v=V5EsxU84ay4

historical?

yeah ive been lonely all my life

I'm talking about it more as a trend.

I don't experience loneliness.

I want to be left alone tbqh. Talking/socializing with people stresses me to no end. Thats talking lightly. I should be saying, socializing and talking to people cripples my mind and body. Literally can't walk/talk/think when I'm around people.

I think its just a byproduct of civilization
loneliness in savage times was certain death.

I imagine loneliness is certainly a purely modern phenomenon. Since the beginning of mankind all the way until the Industrial Age people lived extremely communally.

I'm not a Communist but Marx was right that modern labor is alienating- both from the product of your labor and from other workers. (And, funny enough, the ruling class itself. Feudal lords spent most of their time surveying their lands and were much closer to the seeds than modern bosses are to people's.) Indeed, almost all jobs today you can work require basically no interaction unless you purposefully seek it out- this simply wasn't possible during, say, the feudal times for instance.

Are you me, user? Well, to a higher degree anyway. I can stomach maybe one or two hours of socializing, and it numbs my mind. Anything past that starts giving me a headache.

Serfs* not seeds

I don't think it even stresses me that much, I guess it still does to some degree, but the main issue is that I really don't like what being social actually entails.

I don't care about people's lives, I don't care what they do, what they like and what their relationships are, nor do I care about talking about myself or what did I do or what I want. I still don't dislike people on almost any level, just that people don't appeal to me on any level, so I'd rather just avoid them, since they are always at least slightly bothersome to me, so I prefer anything that doesn't involve them.

It doesn't give me headache but as I said, it literally slows down my mind/body and puts them in rigid position that lasts for couple of days. Catatonia is what its called.

Not sure what your situation is, but yea I can't tolerate people for x amounts of minutes.

Nope, people have only experienced being lonely in the last 16 years. Before that we were completely self reliant and generally preferred to live as hermits.

Son, 15th century poets wrote about loneliness. It isn't new.

>almost all jobs today you can work require basically no interaction unless you purposefully seek it out- this simply wasn't possible during, say, the feudal times for instance.
salesman
teacher
coach
police officer

I'd argue that modern jobs require much much more social interaction than feudal jobs.

I'm referring more to the massive amount of it, hundreds of millions of old people alienated from their neighbours and speaking maybe twice a day to the milkman, poor Chinese migrants heading to the cities where they fail to make friends because they are seen as bumpkins, that sort of thing.

Don't be a jackass. Substitute 21st century with 'modern' if you really need help getting your head around the question.

...

...

Have you ever read any poetry from the Middle Ages or even from Antiquity? Tons of writers talking about loneliness of the most extreme kind, as in people who never talked to anyone and who pined away silently without ever approaching anyone or ever being approached in return.

What's with idiots thinking loneliness is a Modern invention? It's actually less prevalent...

Look at all the advanced communications tools we have, and people are still lonely. Now imagine that none of these tools existed.

God bless the internet, without it I could spend weeks not talking to anybody
I'm still not physically saying words but it's much better than total loneliness.
I think a lot of people are like me, fucked in the head because of it but also have speech impediment because of the fact that you might just say a few sentences a day, just talking to yourself and never having actual conversations
I honestly don't think the people who went through it for an extended period of time will ever have a normal social life ever again

Try singing, especially songs from old musicals. It really helps you get into the habit of projecting your voice.

I do that and it's ironic because now my spoken english is much better than my native language when I speak it because of the fact that I only listen to anglo music.

It is definitely more common today but the characteristics could be pointed to people throughout the centuries.

I gave you a dumb answer because it's a dumb question, people have always spoken about loneliness and feeling isolated, there's nothing about our society that would make that more the case. If anything the ability to instantly connect to a huge number of people thanks to the internet would reduce it in people that would otherwise be pretty much completely hermits.

desu most people died before they got to this point in life

unless they were the hermit sort.

AHHHHH

LOOK AT ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE

dundundundundundundundundundun