A few weeks ago, the sermon delivered at the church was on the topic of loneliness. “Why,” the vicar asked, “do people feel lonely in a city like London?”
The question, I think, takes some motivation, because it doesn’t seem all that surprising to me that people in big cities feel lonely. The argument, I suppose, is that there are so many people in this city, so many things to do and explore, that one surely doesn’t have the space, physical and metaphorical, to feel lonely. But there are some telling statistics, he suggested: that some half of Londoners find the city to be lonely and that people living in cities tend to feel more lonely than those living outside them.
I don’t necessarily have a good answer to the vicar’s question, but I thought I would write about two potential answers. First, I think loneliness might be thought of primarily in terms of purpose. London is a place with purpose. It is bustling, its people hustling and hurrying. People walk and act with purpose, for they know what they are here to do. And I think for those who don’t have that purpose, the sense that others have found their mission can be alienating.
We might think of purpose as tying to another aspect of London’s liveliness. It is a noisy city. It’s hard to find a second, even out in Greenwich, of silence. I think silence is instinctually lonely, but it seems to me equally true that constant noise can also induce a kind of loneliness. The noise in London is directed: it’s the drilling of jackhammers, the rush of cars and busses, the chatter of people video-calling while riding a bike. Again, it’s people whose efforts are directed. You feel trapped in your own head as you see others drawn into the world.
A second possibility: loneliness is actually about freedom. That is, what separates loneliness from the state of being alone is its sentimentality, possible only in moments of reflection. The precondition of loneliness is time spent alone doing little of substantive value. In that sense, then, loneliness is what’s left when we have genuine freedom and are unable to use it in a way that seems to us fulfilling; it’s a byproduct of failing to decide how to use your time when you’re left undirected by some external force. The psychoanalytic writer, Adam Phillips, writes,
If I'm not invited to the party, I may have to consider what else I want: the risk is that being invited to the party does my wanting for me, that I might delegate my desire to other people's invitations. Already knowing, or thinking we know, what we want is the way we manage our fear of freedom.
To fully believe this view would lead one to think that loneliness is entirely manufactured by our mindset — that we can internally “think” our way, so to speak, out of feeling lonely. In contrast, the idea that loneliness is tied to purpose is linked to an external stimulus — it’s about how others are perceived to be.
That said, these two explanations converge in a sense that loneliness is about counterfactual scenarios. To be lonely, when thinking of loneliness in terms of purpose, is to be left out of others’ experiences of purposeful life. To be lonely, when thinking about loneliness in terms of freedom, is to be left out of all the potential experiences one might have if one were to use their time differently. And those counterfactuals, it should be clear, are imaginations. In that sense, loneliness is conjured by our wistful understanding of the world.
I don’t want this argument to be taken too far, for there is a danger in interpreting loneliness as exclusively a function of the mind. Certainly how society is organized and how people interact shape one’s feelings of loneliness. Loneliness is a sociological problem — or perhaps even an economic one — as well as a psychological one. But if either of the models noted earlier are right, then an implication is that one should feel less lonely in a place like London when one feels (1) a sense of purpose, or calling, to one’s life; and (2) a sense of intention when exercising their freedom. (One might respond to this conclusion, though, with Vapnik’s Razor: to solve a problem, do not solve a more difficult problem as an intermediate step.)
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Rose: I’ve been reading a book on London’s history, and it’s helped me be more conscientious when exploring London. I went to visit the Guildhall, the City of London’s traditional mercantile and assembly space, where there are also the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre. The Guildhall's art gallery also had an original copy of Magna Carta (1297 issuance).
I used to live in a community called Clerkenwell, and I ended up visiting the well (Clerk’s Well) that the area is named after; it’s an ancient well, but it blends right into the road unless you look for it. As I’ve spent the last year learning, you can find a lot in London if you just know where to look. I also ran into Friday Street, where the fishmongers used to do business (the Friday Fast meant that many didn’t eat meat on Fridays), and I spent a decent amount of time exploring the Inns of Court, the historic lawyers guilds (there are four: the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, Gray’s Inn, and Lincoln’s Inn; they are all basically adjacent to LSE).
On the other hand, there are places where I was surprised to see so much history erased. The book discussed the area of St. Giles, which is in the West End (think of the most touristy, high culture areas of London). But historically, it was an extremely impoverished area; for centuries, it was one of England’s most notorious slums. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the city plowed through the community to create New Oxford Street, a street that I routinely used to get to Chinatown from where I used to live. So I went around the area to look for signs of St. Giles’s history — and I couldn’t find anything. It was surprising, because I feel like this is a city that usually does a very good job of preserving its history with monuments, plaques, and so on.
Last week, I went to my first pub quiz, which was kind of fun, although I was quite bad at it. Most of the questions had to do with 1990s culture — music, movies, and so on. But it was nice to spend time with good people.
I’ve also recently had the opportunity to meet lots of interesting people. I’ve become friends with a guy in my program from Wales, and he’s given me a lot of interesting perspectives. I met a master’s student in the sibling program to mine (the Department of Methodology has two master’s programs: applied social data science, which is what I’m in, and social research methods) who is from Manchester and lives in a warehouse; she was fascinating to talk to. Another person in my program is from Spain, and we spent half an hour at the gym talking about Catalonian independence. Like I noted in my last post, there’s a kind of vibrancy at this school, just like a Pomona, that feels so much more fulfilling than last year, when I didn’t really get to meet anyone.
Bud: I’m going to Oxford this weekend, and I’m excited to see the university. Also, in a true sign of my nerdery, I’m going to a legal history lecture on John Selden next Tuesday, which will be quite fun. My friend from church is delivering the sermon this Sunday; we spent our last two lunches talking about what he’s going to say, so I’m eager to see him finally preach it. Also, I’m going to start reading Gilgamesh with a friend, which I’m really excited for. She’s very thoughtful and insightful, plus I remember really being moved by Gilgamesh back in ninth grade (eight years ago at this point!).
Thorn: I don’t have much to complain about right now, to be honest. One thing that I have started noticing, though, is supply chain problems. Thankfully, it hasn’t really affected me, in the sense that I have not had to modify my buying habits due to shortages. But my local grocery store looked like this the other day:
Gratitude: A friend made me a “Taylor adjacent songs” playlist to try to get me to branch out in terms of my music. I am very grateful for the kind gesture.
Future Topic: corporate rights!