Thanks everyone!
Thanks to all who took part today. George is now signing off but has sent this message in the comments:
'How little the potential power of social media has been used to effect change'
George talks below about how, despite the rise of social media, the mainstream media still dominates political discourse. He asks whether the dream of change through technology is a false one. Give your thoughts below the line.
Guardian contributor It's interesting, isn't it, how little the potential power of social media has been used to effect political change. Sure, it played an important role in the Arab spring and other popular movements (though that role has often been exaggerated), but it surprises me the extent to which the mainstream media still dominates political discourse. What will it take to change this? As Chris Bogle, below, points out, we are so busy and so wrapped up in the immediate daily demands of our lives that it is hard to put in the kind of time and resources that the professional media is able to deploy. So is the dream of political change through technology a false one? I don't know the answer to that, but I would be interested in your opinions.
George defines neoliberalism for those who are unsure of its exact meaning:
Guardian contributor I define it here as follows:
Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.
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Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.
Is the answer to reject consumerism?
One reader offers an interesting solution to all of this. What do you think?
Is the culture of loneliness and isolation a product of the way we attribute human value? By which I mean, we seem to have a deep rooted and ugly mentality in our (western industrial) society, where people on lower incomes are ostracised because of their financial modesty. I believe this is a direct result of the competitive, money motivated basis of the neoliberal/capitalist society, and has resulted in the marginalisation of those without means.
It is a fact that wherever you go/whatever you do, in the UK especially, it costs you money. Even a walk in the park will often incur parking fees. Whereas conversely (and somewhat perversely), a shopping centre will often offer free parking, making it an ideal place to while away the hours, where you are then bombarded with imagery/advertising reminding you how terrible your life is, and how much better it would be if you bought more stuff.
So I think my question is, if our toxic money/consumer mad culture is directly responsible for the loneliness/isolation epidemic, can we start by rejecting consumerism and its rudimentary pigeonholing of the haves and have not's. Can we start looking at ways to value people outside of what they own/earn, as a way to re-connect people?
Can we link neoliberalism to Brexit?
One question from one of our readers raises interesting questions.
Can we link neoliberalism to why whole communites voted for Brexit ? Take Wales for eg and in particular Bridgend which suffered the spate of suicides there amongst its youth. If you have nothing in which to feel extreme individulaism about or even get competitive & self interested at the real first opportunity given you reject it ?
George said:
Guardian contributor That's a very interesting question to which I don't have a clear answer. But I believe that the generalised alienation from politics and the sense that it can no longer deliver the solutions that people need derives partly from the neoliberal drive to reduce the scope of government and to prevent it from playing an active role in changing social outcomes.
What do other people think?
Does the language we use matter?
One reader offers an interesting perspective here:
George, first of all a big thanks for highlighting this problem.
However, I see neoliberalism as just an extreme manifestation of this problem, and to address it we need to go deeper to understand how an essentially cooperative and social species that naturally lived in egalitarian societies and revered the natural world, has become an over-competitive species, and lives in individualistic societies where care and compassion for others, and our connection to the natural world has been lost.
After doing lots of reading, research and thinking about the problem for over 20 years it became clear to me what the problem is. Our society has developed a vocabulary and style of language use quite different to previous cultures. This style of language use appears to have developed after powerful rulers took over our societies with the first civilizations, and this vocabulary and language style was developed to facilitate their control of our societies. I've since found that this is not a new idea, and if you see this video by Marshall Rosenberg who founded the concept of Non-violent Communication NVC, you will see he makes similar points.
https://youtu.be/-dpk5Z7GIFs
I believe the reason for the failur of social progress, and the transition to a sustainable economy has failed is because our language style and use is actually designed to perpetuate the status quo. The most fundamental task of the early powerful rulers of our society, and all hierarchical societies ever since, has been to stop people overthrowing them. To do this it was necessary to detach people from the natural environment and their fellow people, to stop them caring so much about what was happening.
Without going into great detail, I believe our language style and use creates deliberate detachment. Detachment from our own feelings and emotions, detachment from other people and detachment from the natural world. In our culture's language style the most important referent is an idea, a definition of the word, not the thing, the actual phenomenon refers to. By having abstract ideas as the primary referent of words and terms, it leads to detachment and a “blindness of abstraction”. We feel detached when thinking about an abstract idea, and what the words or terms refer to are not immediate and deeply felt. In particular it leads to a major logical error, where the person “mistakes the map for the territory” i.e. the word and idea becomes more real to them, than the actual phenomena the words, terms or ideas refers to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation
What I am saying is that to solve the problem, we need to understand how the language use and style our culture has developed, detaches from other people, and the natural world, and makes us highly completive, and allows us to ignore the consequences. What do you think of this? I realise it is a bit complex for a Q&A, and this is something for you to consider.
Just to clarify this I am saying that this vocabulary and language use developed over time after the rise of the first civilizations, essentially controls how people perceive the world around them, and how they think about it. It need not be like this if the map-territory relationship was far more widely understood, and everyone was to understand why the map is never the territory.
Loneliness and consumerism
George has started responding below the line, with this question triggering some interesting debate:
George, I believe that with few exceptions, if any, a neoliberal politician will endorse consumerism and the force behind it, i.e. the constant, ubiquitous, and frenetic generation of artificial demand. Whether consumerism conduces to loneliness I’m not sure, but I do believe it conduces to other spiritual ailments. Contentment in his life is to be found not in the satisfaction of induced wants but in a serious commitment to deep inward yearnings, such as the desire to paint or to design bridges. Would you comment?
George said:
Guardian contributor Thank you. I do believe that consumerism plays an important role, as it is one of the factors that drives competition and a sense of social threat. But I also believe that there is a feedback mechanism involved here, as I think that consumerism is used as a means of filling gaps in our lives. Hence the term retail therapy.
But it extends far beyond the purchase of staff, significant as this is. I believe that the ethic of consumerism now infects away we view ourselves and present our self-image to the world. This is one of the factors that makes social media such a double-edged tool: it has the capacity to bring us together, and to set us apart.
What do others think? You can join this particular discussion here.
Lots of great questions
Already getting lots of interesting questions in, such as this one:
I like the way that your article focuses on societal causes of loneliness rather than individual causes. Since loneliness is by definition a social problem that is associated with more social problems such as ill health, it is frustrating to see that it is often discussed in relation to individual factors (usually, individual failings). That said, not everyone is lonely so there must be individual factors at play too? Why are some people lonely and others not?
Join us today
At lunchtime today George Monbiot will be online from 1pm BST to take part in a live Guardian Q&A. We will be discussing the role of neoliberalism, defined as the 20th century resurgence of 19th century ideas such as privatiztion and austerity, in loneliness and the epidemics of mental illness crushing the minds and bodies of millions.
On Wednesday George wrote:
There are plenty of secondary reasons for this distress, but it seems to me that the underlying cause is everywhere the same: human beings, the ultrasocial mammals, whose brains are wired to respond to other people, are being peeled apart. Economic and technological change play a major role, but so does ideology. Though our wellbeing is inextricably linked to the lives of others, everywhere we are told that we will prosper through competitive self-interest and extreme individualism.
George says neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. “It maintains that ‘the market’ delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning,” he has written.
But do you agree? Is neoliberalism to blame? If not, then why has there been a rise in mental health problems among the young? What role does social media play or consumerism? How can we tackle it? Do we need to look again at our worldview?
Please post your questions for George below.
Updated
Thanks very much everyone for your excellent points and questions. To answer them all properly would take days. So please forgive my rush through as many of them as I could handle, which, as you can see, is only a small proportion. And sorry that, as I spent so long on the early comments, I didn't have time to devote as much effort to the later comments.
I'm off now, but do please continue the discussion in my absence if you'd like to. And thanks again for such a stimulating discussion.