An epidemic of loneliness haunts America, with its young people suffering the most. Some say this loneliness comes from a lack of social connection, blaming technology and social media, or from a lack of civic engagement. Others say that we have lost traditional institutions that used to provide the moral guidance needed for social engagement.
In The Lonely Mind, Benjamin Sells pushes beyond such explanations to explore the deeper sources of America’s loneliness. Sells looks at America’s legacy of white supremacy, the drive to always be busy, the origins of American fundamentalism, love American-style, the numbing effects of America’s violence, and especially America’s founding ideals of individualism, independence, and equality to ask if America’s loneliness is telling us something essential about America. Instead of just being a personal or collective symptom, Sells says that America’s loneliness points to the state of America’s soul and how it has become isolated from a cosmos of belonging. There is a message in America’s loneliness, and The Lonely Mind shows how we might find ways to receive and appreciate it.
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