The Endgame

Newsletter #38 - Lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows...

Toronto, September 16, 2023

Lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows...

As you get older, you get lonelier. The reasons are obvious—partners and friends die, children go their own way, the companionship of a daily workplace is long gone, chronic illness keeps you homebound, communication becomes more difficult as the senses and intellect dull, you carry the isolating burden of biographical pain... Need I go on? You feel separated from the world. You sense an unbridgeable gap between yourself and everybody else. 

Cheer up! Help is at hand. There are people are on the job. A recent stroll through popular media produced at least three astounding fixes for loneliness.

There’s the bureaucratic fix. This turns loneliness into a problem to be solved by government. A politician is appointed to look after it. The United Kingdom has done that. Japan did it. When UK Prime Minister Theresa May announced a Minister for Loneliness in 2018, she said "I want to confront this challenge for our society and for all of us to take action to address the loneliness endured by the elderly, by carers, by those who have lost loved ones — people who have no one to talk to or share their thoughts and experiences with.” In 2021, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga appointed Tetsushi Sakamoto as Minister for Loneliness. Sakamoto told reporters, "I hope to promote activities that prevent loneliness and social isolation and protect the ties between people.”

Another approach is to call in the Boy Scouts (metaphorically, not literally). The Boy Scout approach overlaps with the bureaucratic fix. In a recent New York Times op-ed (a column far below his usual high standard), Nicolas Kristof writes: “Britain’s anti-loneliness efforts revved up in June, with Loneliness Awareness Week... Programs ranged from poetry workshops to book discussions and litter pickups, followed by a free drink at the pub. In Brighton, more than 100 people nibbled on sandwiches and joined a singalong organized by two local charities.” Kristof thinks “solutions to loneliness are like that — little nudges to encourage us to mingle the way we evolved to.” 

Then there is the completely bonkers approach. Shoji Morimoto, who lives in Tokyo, has written a book about his work-life  called Rental Person Who Does Nothing. Sukhdev Sandu reviewed the book in The Guardian and described what Rental Person does. “His services involve hanging around clients – watching them, eating with them, mostly listening rather than talking to them... Someone wants to send him a photo of her pet and have him reply: ‘That is unbelievably cute!’... He’s an alibi for someone who’d like to sit in the park in the evening breeze with a can of chūhai but suspects it would be weird to drink alone... The most poignant service he provides involves a young woman whose grandmother died the very day she flew out of Tokyo to study abroad. Now, after a year away, she is returning. ‘I’ll be feeling sad when I arrive,’ she messages Morimoto, ‘so it would be nice to have someone waving at me when I get to the airport.’”

All of this is ridiculous. The government can’t fix loneliness. Nor can the Boy Scouts. Litter pickups, free drinks, and singalongs aren’t going to do the job, as pleasant as these events might be in the moment. A Rental Person Who Does Nothing may be the best bet, but I doubt this particular strategy can be scaled up sufficiently. These approaches to loneliness—bureaucratic, Boy Scouts, bonkers—are simultaneously sad and risible.

That’s because loneliness is existential. It’s not going away. It can’t be fixed. It waxes and wanes depending upon circumstances and attitude (on attitude, see Newsletter #35) . It waxes with age. All you can do is embrace it.