A Culture that Encourages Isolation Must be Fought to the Death

You gotta get out there

For a long time I’ve joked to people that my personal motto is “you gotta get out there”. It’s a good motto, because it’s vague enough to work for many purposes: an exhortation, a justification, an explanation, a defense. “Hey Luke I don’t know if I’m going to be able to make it over for the bonfire tonight” “C’mon man! You gotta get out there!”, “Luke was that you I saw dancing in the front row of the Sugar Ray concert at the casino?” “Hell yea it was, you gotta get out there!” “You plan on bringing both the kids to the demolition derby? I’ll figure it out, you gotta get out there!” “Are you really going to spend twelve hours at a bar with your buddies watching the first day of March Madness?” "-shrug- “You gotta get out there…”.

This is all good and well. I am blessed to have a wife that is very understanding about my extroverted nature. I’m “out there” as much as can be expected considering I also want to be a good dad and husband. It’s a good life, and until recently, I would have considered it a notable life only it its normalcy. Nowadays though I’ve begun to feel a little rebellious when I say “you gotta get out there”, a little countercultural. I hate that this is the case.

There’s a lot of things in modern society that make me feel like I’m taking crazy pills, like there’s a mainstream narrative that no one ever questions that is just on its face false, and the exact opposite is obviously true. But the thing that makes me feel the craziest is this idea that society needs to work harder to accommodate introverts, that extroverted people are somehow oppressors and that our society should be redesigned in order to afford people more “me time”. It seems on the face obvious to me that the exact opposite is true.

The pandemic didn’t help, but in America we’ve been “social distancing” since way before 2020. The stats bear this out, and the effects on our people have been devastating. For almost a decade now, I’ve been saying that the biggest problem in America that no one talks about is isolation and loneliness. Finally some people are beginning to talk about it, mostly pastors and doctors in my experience. But no one is doing anything about it, and I fear that it’s getting worse.

Never has it been easier to stay home, and never has it been harder to go out. We are able to trick ourselves with a simulacrum of human interaction (the internet), without leaving our bedrooms. Meanwhile, more and more of us live farther and farther from our families and the communities where we were raised. Technology and the economy have joined forces in a covert effort to isolate us. We should be fighting this temptation but instead our culture reinforces it.

Sometime in the last decade something flipped: it’s now not only acceptable but encouraged to cancel plans with friends, to stay home all weekend and watch Netflix, to ‘ghost’ not only potential romantic partners but potential hangout partners. You don’t even need an excuse. You will be told the fact that you don’t feel like leaving your house is the only excuse you need.

I’m sure that some of you reading this will think I’m exaggerating, or arguing with a straw man. But I’m equally sure that if you look deep in your brains heart you will be forced to admit that what I’m saying is true. How often in the last few years have you had someone cancel plans with you for no reason? How often have you done it? How many of your friends regularly post stuff like this:

Want to act like an asshole and get away with it? Simply call it “Self Care”!

Plenty of mine do!

Here’s the paragraph where I do all of the annoying couching. Look: I know that sometimes people are just exhausted. I know that not everyone is as extroverted as me. I know that all of us need alone time at some point, and some people need more than others. And believe, me, I know that laying on the couch usually feels damn good.

But I also know (and this is one of those things that feels completely obvious but never gets said) that giving in to your first instinct all the time is not healthy! And I really believe that a lot of the people who are so quick to claim “self care” when staying home and watching Netflix are the same who would be best served to force themselves out in to the world, to interact with other humans, in person. Maybe you are one of these people. Ask yourself this: when you are tempted to stay home alone and force yourself out with friends, or even just in to the world, most of the time do you feel better or worse? Be honest.

I blame therapy culture for a lot of this. I think there are some truly awful therapists out there who encourage peoples worst instincts and their martyr complexes, who rarely if ever call people out on their bullshit, which seems like an essential part of therapy to me. But most people have never darkened the door of a therapists office, and they still swim in this culture. As with all things, a simple and accurate source of blame is the internet (if I was czar of America it wouldn’t exist), which amplifies and spreads this toxic stew of faux social justice language and therapy speak. And I suppose the Marxist explanation would be that this is all due to late capitalism, which has overworked and atomized us.

There’s certainly a lot of truth to that too, but it doesn’t mean we need to give in to it, to atomize ourselves further. Isolation can be fought. It must be fought, preferably to the death. You, as an individual, can make a choice to engage in your community.

There’s a lot to be lost by caving to the ease of isolation, and a lot to be gained by fighting it, both for an individual and our society as a whole. I know people who think of their neighbors as enemies, because they have a Trump flag or a rainbow flag. Meanwhile they’ve never actually talked to their neighbor, who likely has more in common with them than 99.9 percent of humanity. A world where we are isolated is a world where it is easier to pit us against each other. I also know people who think of themselves as organizers, or as part of a movement, who do all of their “organizing” online. Again, this may seem like a straw man to you, but I promise you there are a lot of these people out there. Go to a DSA meeting. If you’re not out in the real world, talking to real people in person, and instead viewing the world through social media, you will inevitably have a distorted view of what the urgent issues are in your community, your country, the world. You might start thinking that drag queen story time is a pressing concern.

Put simply, you can not be an organizer through a screen. You can’t even be a good citizen.

Maybe go to a diner. Maybe ask the waitress if she’s ever seen a UFO.

So I implore you, do not cave in to a culture that tells you it’s heroic to cut off contact with others, that you don’t need anything but yourself and your screens. A culture that tells you those who desire time with you are an imposition and a burden, rather than an essential and wonderful part of a meaningful life on earth, that love and community sometime necessitate willpower. At the very least go to a coffee shop and talk to the barista, I guarantee she has something interesting to say. Ask your bartender what he thinks about the local high school football team. Ask the guy sitting next to you if he’s ever had a bigfoot sighting. Organize a picnic with a friend. Show up to a church potluck. Do it for your community, your country, humanity. Do it for yourself. Refuse to become atomized.

When we lived downstate I would take my son to the local diner every Sunday morning while my wife prepped for church. Over the course of years we became close with the waitresses, who would bring him little treats and presents. They’d sit and talk with us when they weren’t busy, talk about their kids, the neighborhood, the local issues of the day. We grieved it as a real loss when we moved. You can do this too. A cup of coffee is still just $1.50.

Us elder millennials occupy an interesting place in time. I’m old enough to have clear memories of a period when people would stop by each others houses unannounced, call each other on the phone. A time when “shooting the shit” was a much more common way to spend an hour or two. Sometimes I fear that I’m still young enough that I’ll be alive when it’s all gone for good. The last old man at the last diner counter, drinking the last cup of coffee. Drawing circles in spilled sugar. Waiting for a fill up and a conversation.

You gotta get out there.