Together Alone
Everyone, at some point, feels alone. We've all endured those pangs of isolation, that unbridgeable social chasm unendingly stretching beyond our reach.
Loneliness is strange. You can be surrounded by people, laughing among peers, engaged in nonstop chatter. And yet nobody really knows you. Not a single other person actually gets what it is to be yourself. Personal experience possesses an immaterial quality - we can never accurately convey the texture of our feelings and thoughts. Usually, that's fine. After all, our unique sense of things is what makes us human. Even so, it is this very same intangibility that renders tough times so painful.
Certainly, a sense of isolation has always pockmarked the human condition. But these days, chronic loneliness infects society like one of history's most devastating diseases. Rather than bubonic plague or yellow fever, we're up against a scourge of the soul. Over two decades ago, Robert D. Putnam published his acclaimed work Bowling Alone. In it, he persuasively chronicled the erosion of social connectedness during the 20th-century United States. If things back then were a car crash, our current situation is more of a gigantic half-dozen-lane pileup. Our formerly festering sense of alienation has morphed into an overwhelming sociological phenomenon. People in spiralling numbers claim to feel alone, and we are witnessing what experts have dubbed a loneliness epidemic.
Many point an accusing finger at social media corporations, branding them as the arch-villains of modern loneliness. Isn't that something? Considering how sparkling 'online communities' were supposed to magically unite us. In 2004, sweatshirt-clad Mark Zuckerberg launched his quasi-messianic vision of 'bringing the world together!' Picture it - humanity frolicking in harmony, bareback riding unicorns and crowdsourcing sourdough recipes. Instead, like a digitised swarm of locusts, the social media onslaught has stripped our communities down to bare bones and bytes. Leaving in its wake a digital graveyard of our own design: sad, pathetic emojis and auto-filled hashtags strewn as far as the eye can see.
Still, isn't it strange that an invention designed to connect people left us more lonely? Various takes have been put forward. When Syndrome, the antagonist of the Incredibles movie, speculates that "when everyone is super, no one will be", he astutely underscores how abolishing scarcity devalues once meaningful distinctions. Likewise, with relationships: If every online contact is labelled a "friend", does the term not lose significance? Perhaps when everyone is your friend, no one is.
As is often the case, there are no simple or single explanations. What I'm offering here is my attempt at crafting a Torah answer to the conundrum. Here goes.
At first glance, the Torah seems to encourage deep social connections. At his finest, man is presented as united, purposeful, and mutually responsible. Adam is given a wife, Chavah, because God decides it is 'not good that he should be alone'. Before the Sinai revelation, the Jewish people were a burgeoning family of Hebrews. Its people are described as 'one man, with one heart', and the sages tell us that 'Kol Yisrael Areivim Zeh Lah Zeh', every Jewish individual is fundamentally interconnected with the broader whole. When the Temple was standing, performing sacrifices on personal altars was prohibited. All offerings had to occur upon the communal Mizbeach.
Nothing I've said so far should be surprising. After all, religious traditions tend to highlight the role of community and familial bonds. Yet something strange is also happening here. Despite articulating a social mindset, the Torah simultaneously threads a parallel ethos of individual and self.
Take Adam, for example. Sure, God deemed it necessary for him to have a partner. But think about it. Couldn't God have created him and Chava as a pair? Why was it necessary for Adam to begin his existence alone? Avraham may have been the progenitor of our Jewish family. Nevertheless, he had to completely separate himself from his home before he could assume this mantle. Although we noted that personal Alters were outlawed during the Temple period, the practice was permitted for centuries before its establishment in Jerusalem. If private alters are undesirable, why allow them in the first place? Following this theme, commentators widely note that Yaakov's victory over Eisav's angel occurs after he is left alone (לבדו), considering this a positive appraisal of his character.
Thus, when reading the Torah, you sense a tension between conflicting motifs. The first pedestals individuality, whilst the second elevates community. To jibe these seemingly contradictory themes, we must understand self and society as existing in conversation with one another. Both are significant. Both need each other. What's critical, however, is the chronology of that dialogue.
Let me explain. In reviewing the examples we've discussed, a striking pattern emerges. While being alone and connecting to something larger than self are both features of the Torah's narrative, isolation almost always precedes community. Adam is both an individual and the father of humanity. Nevertheless, God fashioned him alone before uniting him with Chava. Avraham's life follows a similar arc. First, God instructs him, "Lech Lecha" - go for yourself. Only later does he learn that he will be "Av Hamon Goyim", the wellspring of monotheism. The same pattern is apparent when it comes to regulating private Altars. Initially, such sacrifices are considered praiseworthy, but with time, the Jewish people are compelled to coalesce around a single Altar in Jerusalem. Thus cementing our bond as a united nation before God.
Why must solitude necessarily precede socialisation? Building community is a noble endeavour. More than that, it's an essential component of religious service. But real social bonds require genuine people. A person can breathe, eat, succeed, and still be empty inside. His body is a mere flesh suit for a soulless existence, a cardboard cutout standing in for a complex being. Such an individual may frequent bars and attend work events but have no real social ties. An empty vessel, though occupying space in crowds, remains an empty vessel.
Community requires fully formed individuals to function. Only by establishing an authentic inner life can we coalesce with each other. We'd be wrong to chase connections for connections' sake because without developing ourselves, the bonds we form are nothing. Unless there is internal nourishment, everything remains superficial. And our attempts to keep things alive will wilt like flowers without water.
This Torah framework we have identified can assist us in understanding online connectivity's limitations for fostering genuine relationships. One of social media's stand-out characteristics is its users' tendency to share everything. From the minutia of what they ate for breakfast to the status of their relationships, nothing is truly private. Here's the rub, though - the more you reveal, the less there is left to REVEAL. Soon enough, you've drained all your thoughts and left nothing but a vacuous husk where once a personality dwelt. An actual human colander!
We've become a society of showmen and voyeurs, hollow, pleasing shapes with nothing inside. Don't get me wrong, there is definitely a place for openness. Nonetheless, actual vulnerability and intimacy cannot grow in a climate of exhibitionism or around-the-clock performances for invisible audiences.
In oversharing and allowing rampant encroachment on our inner self, we have, ironically, diminished our capacity for interaction. Social media may offer a world of connectivity, yet it leaves us nothing to connect with. There are now whole universes of digital personalities frolicking on the web. The problem is that the people behind these profiles are empty, yearning for meaningful relationships.
Our society's loneliness runs deeper than social media - it stems from an identity crisis. We have lost touch with who we truly are. And without adequately situating ourselves as complex, multidimensional beings, we have nothing to offer each other. We cannot build a real community by swapping bits of data.
To value solitude does not have to mean subjecting ourselves to literal isolation. I am not suggesting we become hermits. But to escape loneliness, we must paradoxically cultivate our inner lives instead of draining them into the ether. Eventually, we will realise, as God put it, that it is not good for man to be alone.
Keep Pondering, and Have A Wonderful Week!
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as in chassidic thought, one must “run and return” - go out to the community and back onto i self - it is a constant motion.
A baby enters the world a unique individual with certain traits, talents, aptitudes, intelligence, potentials. These are the gifts - the raw materials - we bring with us. A community that doesn't value and support the cultivation of these individual qualities will probably be stagnant. There's no formula for authenticity other than allowing it to flourish - giving it water, good soil and sunlight. That's the community's job.
In the meanwhile, we individuals have to be comfortable with whatever level of solitude is needed for us to flourish and work with the raw materials we were given. That's our job. Being in "hermit mode" is like being a seed in the ground. It's needed for ideas to germinate. Creative individuals and supportive communities are like the seeds and the garden; one doesn't exist without the other.