(2018-06-17) Kyles Files Depression Loneliness And Invisible Asymptotes

Kyle Eschenroeder on Depression, Loneliness, and Invisible Asymptotes.

5. David Brooks in Conversation with Tyler Cowen

Brooks notes the increase in loneliness and notes that "suicide's a proxy for loneliness"

I’m a cultural determinist. So I tend to think the loneliness is primarily a cultural problem, that we went through a culture in the ’50s where we were the opposite of lonely.

Big unions. Very tight neighborhoods. Conformist organizations. Deference to authority.

And then people decided around about 1962 that wasn’t working. And so they created a culture that was very individualistic.

In my view, if you leave people naked and alone, they do what their evolutionary roots tell them to do, which is revert to tribe. And so they pick a bad form of community, which is tribalism

Quality of relationships correlates extremely well with happiness levels. If you join a club that meets once a month, that produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income.