— Paul McCartney of Beatles in “Eleanor Rigby”
We live in a predominantly lonely world and as observed by Bartleby in
The Economist, the lockdown due to the COVID-19 has exacerbated this problem that has been spreading for decades in developed nations. As a developing country, the Philippines may not have reached that alarming level but if we don’t watch out, we may succumb to the same malaise.
In an important new book,
The Lonely Century, economist Noreena Hertz notes how loneliness is the defining condition of our time, worsened by ever increasing social and economic inequality. If that last part of the statement rings familiar, we ought to be unduly concerned as a country.