Loneliness, gasoline of the new populisms

What is behind the resurgence of populism? Why do many citizens seek the solution to their problems in leaders who offer a simple, divisive and essentialist discourse? The answer, according to the British thinker Noreena Hertz, is that we feel more and more solos, further away from the neighbor, from the community, from the institutions.

We live in what Hertz has called “The Century of Solitude”, the title of a book (published in Spanish by Paidós) that has sparked debate in the United Kingdom.

The tribalization of politics is just one of the symptoms that the 54-year-old academic from London points out in her essay, prepared thanks to multiple interviews that the author had over the years and a wide bibliography with which she makes a diagnosis about the “epidemic” of loneliness that the world suffers.

“Assuming that we are inherently interested, that we don’t care about others, or that we are selfish by nature is a misnomer. But the truth is that in the last decades, selfishness and competitiveness have been revalued, while values ​​such as empathy, kindness or civility have diminished ”, he assures.

The author does not want to be misunderstood. There must be room for competitiveness and determination. Nor does he ask “to sit around the bonfire to sing ‘kumbayá'”, but to remember that “goodness and collective interest matter.”

“In my research I discovered, thanks to interviews and empirical data, that those who vote for populists are more likely to feel lonely, in the sense that they have fewer friends and acquaintances, but also in the sense that they feel disconnected from the state, from other citizens, often in places where community and identity was obtained in the workplace and no longer ”, he says.

Hertz especially draws attention to the isolation felt by men, the main vectors of the populist boom.

For the author of the influential essay “El poder en la sombra” (2001), the decline of unions and other associations that traditionally grouped men has influenced the feeling of loneliness to skyrocket in this group.

“In recent years we have seen an increase in politicians who say: ‘Nobody cared about you, but I did.’ That ‘you’, when we talk about right-wing populists, is a very limited group. His message has been very concerned about his voters, (but) of course it has been anti anyone other than his potential constituency, ”he explains.

And he gives the example of the Spanish party Vox, which “with its anti-immigrant rhetoric is telling its voters: ‘We listen to you, we see you, we are here for you,'” he adds.

For this reason, he underlines that the great challenge of today is “how to maintain a strong sense of personal identity and at the same time the will to create links with people who are different from us.”

Despite everything, he is optimistic thanks to the “emphasis” he perceives in many countries “to return its value to the welfare state, invest in the needs of the marginalized …”, something that he qualifies as “one of the most interesting phenomena of the last times”.

This “shift towards a capitalism that cares more about the people” is also taking place among the right-wing parties that picked up the ideological heritage of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberalism in the 1980s, when, in their view, individualism flourished. as “capital value”.

Always supported by one of her references, the philosopher Hannah Arendt, Hertz dissects through her book how loneliness alters the way we see the world around us, making it a more hostile and insecure place.

And the pandemic has exerted two pressures in opposite directions: on the one hand, “it has brought people closer to their local communities”, but at the same time it has accelerated the trend towards a “contactless existence”, in which anything from give a yoga class to do the shopping for the week, it can be done without leaving home.

“Knowing the name of the postman or greeting the fruit vendor is very important to feel connected. According to studies, a conversation of just a few seconds with a bartender in a bar can make you feel significantly less alone, ”he explains.

However, at the same time “the danger is that we unconsciously change community for comfort” with a more secluded life in homes, which is something that had already been happening before the arrival of COVID-19 but has skyrocketed after the confinements.

And Hertz points to the paradox that young generations, who are largely more involved in large collective causes such as the environment or gender equality, feel more alone than ever.

“The main explanation is that, in this generation between 15 and 26 years old, much of the connection happens through telephones and digitally, and that is a different form of connection, of lower quality. Only when you are face to face do your mirror neurons empathize with each other, ”he says.

And he does not hesitate to remember, as he does in his book, that all scientific research agrees that social networks, although they can also be “very helpful”, are “a real cause of loneliness” at all ages.