Scan barcode
A review by rbruehlman
Together by Vivek H. Murthy
3.0
Hm ... Vivek Murthy is an engaging writer, so this wasn't a slog, but this fell into the camp of "could have been an essay" for me. I don't think I learned anything new.
In short, Together explores what makes people feel lonely, how people behave in response to being lonely, the effects of loneliness on health, and, finally, how to mitigate loneliness and make people feel connected with one another.
To be clear, I think loneliness is an exceptionally important topic in today's society. A staggering number of people report being lonely, and we know from longitudinal research that loneliness has grown exponentially over the past few decades. Despite the world being more digitally connected, we're less socially connected than ever. Loneliness is really bad for us, on multiple levels! From a health perspective, lonely people are more likely to struggle with health problems and die earlier. From an interpersonal perspective, lonely people are less trusting and more suspicious of others, withdrawing instead of leaning in and perpetuating their own loneliness. From a societal perspective, disconnection sows distrust of other people, transactional interactions, and ugly in-group/out-group dehumanization of others. It's not good.
However, I found Murthy's exploration of the topic a bit repetitive. Loneliness: bad. Disconnection: bad. Connecting authentically: good. I felt like his point was made early on, and the rest of the book simply expounded on the same key points. Nothing Murthy explored was something I hadn't thought of already, and I wasn't left with any inspired deeper reflections on my own life or behavior. If anything, it was just confirmation that what I already think about society and loneliness is on point.
I can't tell if this is a fair criticism of the book. I think a lot about loneliness, as someone who has struggled with it a lot throughout my life (better now than it once was). So many of the conclusions Murthy comes to are ones I've already read or thought about. But does the average person think about loneliness that much? I don't know. I'm not them. Maybe this book is really eye-opening for some people. Who knows?
This is no fault of the book, but I really wish this had been written, say, in 2023, than in 2020. It feels out-of-date already. I believe the pandemic was a fundamental pivot point for society, and in many ways, reading this book now, after the pandemic, is like reading a book about modes of transportation before the car came out. It feels anachronistic. Many people found themselves plunged into profound loneliness during the pandemic, their preexisting weak social networks challenged and sometimes imploded altogether. Coming out of the pandemic, we are even more virtual than we ever were before. A third of the workforce works completely remotely; even more works hybrid. Remote work is the social version of Tragedy of the Commons; it's good for the individual in terms of convenience, but destructive to collective society and the larger social fabric, and ultimately to individuals' well-being (even if they don't realize it). There is no central "second place" or "third place" for adults anymore.
I think we haven't even begun to fully understand the impact of the pandemic and the digitization and siloization of society. As a result, this book feels woefully outdated. It's not its fault, any more than a physics book is at fault for being written before the relativity theory, but no one would buy that textbook now, either.
I suppose if there is anything anyone should take away from Murthy's book, it's that we don't truly know what we want in terms of socialization. We think we don't want phone calls, unexpected house visits, or strangers talking to us. But we actually probably do. The lonelier and less social we get, the less we crave interaction with others around us. We start to reject it as "annoying" or "tiring" or a "hassle." In fact, we start ending up dreading it; the less practice you have socializing, the more anxiety provoking it becomes. It's a self-perpetuating cycle, and one we aren't even aware of. But humans are evolutionarily designed to benefit from social interaction. We weren't meant to spend so little time with others, and, yet, more and more, we isolate ourselves.
In short, Together explores what makes people feel lonely, how people behave in response to being lonely, the effects of loneliness on health, and, finally, how to mitigate loneliness and make people feel connected with one another.
To be clear, I think loneliness is an exceptionally important topic in today's society. A staggering number of people report being lonely, and we know from longitudinal research that loneliness has grown exponentially over the past few decades. Despite the world being more digitally connected, we're less socially connected than ever. Loneliness is really bad for us, on multiple levels! From a health perspective, lonely people are more likely to struggle with health problems and die earlier. From an interpersonal perspective, lonely people are less trusting and more suspicious of others, withdrawing instead of leaning in and perpetuating their own loneliness. From a societal perspective, disconnection sows distrust of other people, transactional interactions, and ugly in-group/out-group dehumanization of others. It's not good.
However, I found Murthy's exploration of the topic a bit repetitive. Loneliness: bad. Disconnection: bad. Connecting authentically: good. I felt like his point was made early on, and the rest of the book simply expounded on the same key points. Nothing Murthy explored was something I hadn't thought of already, and I wasn't left with any inspired deeper reflections on my own life or behavior. If anything, it was just confirmation that what I already think about society and loneliness is on point.
I can't tell if this is a fair criticism of the book. I think a lot about loneliness, as someone who has struggled with it a lot throughout my life (better now than it once was). So many of the conclusions Murthy comes to are ones I've already read or thought about. But does the average person think about loneliness that much? I don't know. I'm not them. Maybe this book is really eye-opening for some people. Who knows?
This is no fault of the book, but I really wish this had been written, say, in 2023, than in 2020. It feels out-of-date already. I believe the pandemic was a fundamental pivot point for society, and in many ways, reading this book now, after the pandemic, is like reading a book about modes of transportation before the car came out. It feels anachronistic. Many people found themselves plunged into profound loneliness during the pandemic, their preexisting weak social networks challenged and sometimes imploded altogether. Coming out of the pandemic, we are even more virtual than we ever were before. A third of the workforce works completely remotely; even more works hybrid. Remote work is the social version of Tragedy of the Commons; it's good for the individual in terms of convenience, but destructive to collective society and the larger social fabric, and ultimately to individuals' well-being (even if they don't realize it). There is no central "second place" or "third place" for adults anymore.
I think we haven't even begun to fully understand the impact of the pandemic and the digitization and siloization of society. As a result, this book feels woefully outdated. It's not its fault, any more than a physics book is at fault for being written before the relativity theory, but no one would buy that textbook now, either.
I suppose if there is anything anyone should take away from Murthy's book, it's that we don't truly know what we want in terms of socialization. We think we don't want phone calls, unexpected house visits, or strangers talking to us. But we actually probably do. The lonelier and less social we get, the less we crave interaction with others around us. We start to reject it as "annoying" or "tiring" or a "hassle." In fact, we start ending up dreading it; the less practice you have socializing, the more anxiety provoking it becomes. It's a self-perpetuating cycle, and one we aren't even aware of. But humans are evolutionarily designed to benefit from social interaction. We weren't meant to spend so little time with others, and, yet, more and more, we isolate ourselves.