Yearning for belonging

In a world where we are more connected than ever, why do so many of us feel increasingly alone?

Loneliness is a universal human experience. But today the World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes it as a global public health crisis, the mortality effects of which are comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. In the US, one in three Americans report feeling lonely at least once a week. The U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, reports that nearly half of American adults were lonely even before the pandemic, and the crisis has only worsened since then. He emphasizes the urgent need to prioritize combating social isolation in ways comparable to our efforts to address public health issues such as obesity and substance use disorders.

My two guests in today's podcast episode offer compelling insights into the causes of this problem and practical ways to address it.

Ron Ivey is a writer, researcher, and strategic advisor to business, governments, and philanthropies with a focus on social trust, belonging, and human flourishing.  Ron is currently the Managing Director of the Humanity 2.0 Institute and a Research Fellow at the Harvard Human Flourishing Program where he co-leads the Trust and Belonging Initiative. Ron also currently serves as a Fellow at the Centre for Public Impact, a global think tank seeking to re-imagine government and restore relationships between governments and those they govern. In 2017, Ron established a consultancy, Rembrandt Collective, to shape business strategies for trust, alignment and social impact. 

Monika Jiang, a second-generation Chinese immigrant, has always walked the line between feeling estranged and belonging. Her journey, marked by oscillations between aloneness, loneliness, and connection, has profoundly influenced her personal and professional life, shaping her into a visionary who senses what wants to emerge as we move closer to ourselves, each other, and the world. Professionally, Monika has made a significant impact at the House of Beautiful Business, where she helped build a global community of 50,000 members dedicated to a life-centered economy. Monika’s deep desire to move from loneliness to oneliness inspired her to found the initiative Sharing Our Loneliness, which aims to raise awareness about the paradoxical power of loneliness to reconnect us with ourselves and others. She is a teacher in training with Humanize, an evidence-based program focused on fostering emotional and social skills. 

In our conversation, Ron and Monika share how their childhood experiences of beauty influenced their understanding of connection and joy. They discuss cultural differences in how loneliness is experienced, and emphasize the importance of creating spaces where people can truly experience belonging. We explore how systemic factors contribute to social isolation, and how a shift towards valuing relationships and community is essential for human flourishing. Ron and Monika also offer practical solutions for combating loneliness. They highlight the importance of deep listening, engaging in shared activities, and building relationships through encounters with beauty. By embracing discomfort and difference, we can foster a sense of belonging and counteract the alienation that so many feel today.

Here are five key take-aways from our conversation:

1. Loneliness can be experienced differently in different cultures and environments, with factors such as individualism and collectivism playing a role.
2. Creating new "third spaces" for connection and belonging is essential in addressing the problem of loneliness.
3. Our pervasive focus on productivity and individual success contribute to our alienation from self, others, nature, and the transcendent.
4. Loneliness is a universal experience that reveals our deeper longings. If we attend to it carefully, rather than fleeing from it, it has much to teach us.
5. To shift towards valuing community and relationships, we need to create spaces for deep listening where we can connecting with people from different backgrounds. Shared experiences of art and nature can help combat loneliness.

You can listen to our conversation below (in two parts) wherever you get your podcasts, or watch the full episode. An unedited transcript follows.

And if you found this episode helpful, consider leaving a tip to help sustain our work.

Unedited transcript:

Brandon: To start, one of the things that I typically like to do is to ask guests to share an example of a profound encounter with beauty from their childhood. So if you could think of something that lingers with you till today, a memory of a profound encounter with beauty that you had at some point in your childhood — we can expand childhood to your teenage years, if you like. But what stays with you? What does that word evoke for you? Maybe, Monika, if you want to start.

Monika: Thank you. Yeah, I'm actually grateful that you sent us this prompt a little bit earlier. Because I have to admit that it was not so easy for me, or it's generally not so easy for me to think of childhood memories somehow. There's lots of whys to that, but I just found I'm really curious. Because I do have a lot of beautiful memories of my childhood, but I don't know if they're just constructed in my brain of photos that I've seen. It's hard for me to actually achieve that. However, what did come to mind of profound beauty — and for me, beauty is always something, I don't know, that is like expansive and that makes me feel connected in a way. It was like the many moments that my sister, who's two years younger, and I played. We played in our room. We shared a room for quite a long time. Actually, we slept in one bed, like a bunk bed. I was always on top, and she was on the bottom. We created our worlds together, and that is something that has stayed with me and probably will stay with me. These very, yeah, very intimate ways of connecting with each other despite our differences. She was always very much more technically like engineering-minded. I was the opposite. I was a very girly girl. So we kind of tried to bring those worlds together and created something for us where everything was kind of possible and joyful. That's something that stayed with me, yeah.

Brandon: What does it look like? What was that world like?

Monika: Well, I brought my Barbies and she brought her, I don't know, her Lego constructions of, like, I don't know, crane or a huge ferris wheel. She builds things. And I was just always like, "Hey, can we create a story about this little figure and that little thing?" Then we kind of played together. That's what we did. I always wanted to create radio shows, so I invited her on my radio shows. We had cassettes, and we recorded those on it. She was always like half into it. Yeah, that and just like these kinds of things. Yeah.

Brandon: Fantastic. Great. That's amazing that that stays with you till today as a source of joy perhaps.

Monika: Mm-hmm.

Brandon: Ron, how about you? What comes to your mind?

Ron: Yeah, similar to Monika, I was glad you sent something ahead of time because it gave me a chance to reflect a little bit. I'd say my kind of earliest memories of beauty, of something that just took my breath away, I grew up in Oklahoma in kind of the plains state. We would go to Colorado every summer with the extended family. Actually, both sides of my family would go to the same location. There was something about driving into the mountains and encountering the mountains. When you're used to being in a flat country, in an environment that's very flat and you can see it forever, it was just so awe inspiring. I didn't know what's sublime in that, but I think now I would be able to categorize that as just this sense that's something so big and so massive that you can't wrap your hands around it. There was also an element of, part of the activity that we were doing as a family was fly fishing. Just getting to see my father out of the river, my grandparents, my great grandfather, actually, I was able to see him and experience him doing that and him passing on some of those techniques and skills. The river, the beauty of the rainbow trout in particular, just when you pull them out of the river, they're absolutely gorgeous.

Well, I guess, the most beautiful thing I saw on those experiences were actually not the mountains or the fish. It was actually these hummingbirds. They were always flying around in that particular part of Colorado. There was something almost mystical about those birds, how fast they flew and the colors. So I was totally enamored by that. Then I spent the rest of my childhood just trying to learn about birds and those ones in particular. I always would kind of go off in the group to try to explore and find other colorful birds in the Colorado mountain forest. So that was a really formative experience for me as a child.

Brandon: Wow. Are you a birder these days? Do you—

Ron: You know, I'm not. It's been one of the things I've been reflecting on lately living in the city, in the middle of the city. I do enjoy — I mean, we've got bird feeders here even in Paris, which is nice. We just had our first bird arrive. We've had our bird feeder out for a couple months, but he finally arrived last week. So that was kind of a big event in our household. But no, I'm not a birder. But I do feel this longing to get more, to get back into nature now as I'm entering my mid 40s. Maybe that's something about midlife or something. But yeah, I'm excited to get back out with nature now.

Brandon: Awesome. Well, listen. I want to ask you both f you could — those are really beautiful stories. If you could maybe trace a little bit more of your backgrounds and how they've shaped the ways in which you're pursuing this problem of loneliness, Monika, with the initiative you have on Sharing Our Loneliness. Then, Ron, if you could say a bit more about the work on belonging that you're doing these days. Then how did your journeys lead you to this? Monika, maybe if you could start again?

Monika: Yeah, I'm happy to. I guess loneliness in the sense of feeling different and almost like alien has been with me all my life, everything about my childhood in particular. My parents immigrated from China to Germany, which at that time was quite, I would say, unusual-ish. The reason is that I had a German great grandmother, and so that was possible after the Cultural Revolution. Both my parents and my grandmother and so forth, they experienced and then they came. So I was brought up in this very small, conservative German town close to the border of Switzerland and France as one of the very, very few visibly foreign people. Even though, I don't have memories of feeling isolated really. I always had friends. I always would connect with people. And children, they don't really mind that. But of course, you grow up with the sense of like,

"Oh, something about me is different. I wish I was like them. I wish I would look like them. Why are we eating weird food like this? Why can't we just have normal food?"

Anyway, I guess I am very familiar with this notion of feeling lonely in that experience and then feeling lonely also to the extent of being different in my family, being always a little bit too feely, too artsy wanting to just do something. Like, let me just do art, and I just want to stand on some kind of theater stage. I would have totally been a theater kid if there would have been a theater program in my school. But there wasn't. My parents are being like, become an engineer or a doctor, that kind of thing. Anyway, so I carried that with me and have carried that with me in a way all my life. Then later, professionally, in my last five years, I was part of the House of Beautiful Business where I really grew, I guess, into this role of being the person that holds and cultivates community and brings people together in spaces that are intimate and deep, yet very expansive and where people can almost reveal their more true selves. That gave me this gift really for getting in touch with people in a way that I noticed, oh, there's a lot of people who are feeling alone. They feel less alone in that space. They feel less alone because they've been actually seen. They feel really hurt. So what is this loneliness, really, if it's not only the social component but almost like an existential level? So anyway, when I left last year, I started to look into this, and I just got really fascinated. I'm in awe, in a way, of this very unique yet shared experience of loneliness that I believe has the power to connect us in ways that maybe seem unexpected.

Brandon: Wow. That's fantastic. I mean, I can relate to the experience of growing up as a foreigner. Because I grew up the Middle East and sort of a lot of moments in my childhood of feeling precisely the kinds of things that you talked about is like, why are my parents eating this weird food? Even though we were growing up in a very diverse setting where everybody was different, but yet there's still you, I think, as a kid who want to fit in, right?

Monika: Yeah.

Brandon: And if you feel like you're sticking out in some way, it's an odd experience. You have to go from there then to desiring to bring people together. Was there anything that sparked, I mean, that — how did you recognize this is something you wanted to do? It's to be able to bring people together and help them feel seen. Was there anything that activated, I suppose, that particular desire? Was that something that you see as a thread even in your childhood?

Monika: Good question. Yeah, I guess it probably comes from this desire about what you said about fitting in versus actually creating a sense of belonging, actually creating a sense of connection. Connection, for me, is always like to yourself but also to others, to something greater. I guess it came very intuitively. I didn't see myself like that. I don't know. Yeah, I think this whole journey was quite serendipitous and intuitive. Now it seems like so clear to me. I'm like, yeah, that's what I always wanted to do. I always wanted to have a big table where everyone can sit, and you don't have to have a reservation or whatever. You just come, and create experiences where people are invited, where they feel welcome. It's kind of that warm feeling. And to create that, I think, is something that comes natural to me. If I think about my 20s and everything when I was starting to, I guess, more consciously developing my sense of self, I always love to bring people together and invite and like be a host in a way without myself in the center but just creating the conditions for being like, you should be talking to that person or, like, let's do something that connects us.

Brandon: Amazing. Yeah, I've always been in awe of people who can make those who feel excluded feel that they belong, right? I think I've been on the receiving end of both that sense of feeling like, wow, in the company of these people, I really feel — even though this is a crowd, I really feel isolated. I don't connect with anybody. There's something about the way in which certain environments are structured where I really felt that. Then the very opposite which is the kind of — yes, especially the kinds of environments you've helped curate, Monika, at the House of Beautiful Business. Those are some of the places where I really felt wow. I don't know what the secret sauce is or what the magic is, but these people know how to help people connect and feel seen. And so there's really something extraordinary about our capacity to do that.

Ron, could you trace your own journey into this sort of problem of loneliness? I'm especially interested in the work you're doing on belonging and trust.

Ron: Yeah, so I had a different experience, I think, growing up. I mean, I connect in one way that I grew up in a culture that was very blue collar. Most of my family was from blue collar livelihoods, which is a great way to grow up. I appreciate all that. But the intellectual interest, the artistic interest, if you weren't really following OU and OSU football intensely, you're kind of an odd duck in that way. So in some ways, I felt a little bit alienated from my local culture. I've always felt that way. But in other ways, I feel like in high school, college, even in college in Oklahoma as well, I was able to find really rich community. It was very formative for me and really helped me develop my sense of self and sense of values and spirituality too. So always in the context of community for me. Especially also too, right after college where I had a year-long internship where the whole focus was on relationships and on community and how relationship and community figure into our leadership capabilities, which I thought was a unique experience. It was done in community with seven other students, three other men and then four women. We were meeting with executives and political leaders and talking about their personal lives and kind of getting to see the inside, their relational experience, sometimes very sad and lonely at the very top. So I think that's where I started to see and be interested in this idea of relationality, connectedness, belonging.

Then I went into politics. I worked in the United States Senate. I worked after that as an advisor to various leaders from the top of the federal government. It was in that period of time that I really encountered the system, our economic and political systems, what they value, what they don't value, what they measure and don't measure. One of the projects I worked on was within the Office of Management and Budget, which is within the White House. It's really where the federal government measures performance and thinks about performance. I had had this kind of formative experience where relationship in community was so important to me, and yet I didn't see it at any of the frameworks, the systems, the measurements. It just deeply bothered me. And so that became a pattern or a thing I kept looking at in my work, in kind of the practical work.

I kind of hit a point in 2014 where I just felt like I needed a complete break from Washington, DC. So after Oklahoma, I went to DC. I worked in politics. I worked in strategy consulting. Then 2014, my wife and I both had this sense that we needed a break from that particular system and that particular culture of DC. Although, I had some great, rich experiences there. I think we just needed a sabbatical. So we took a year to come here to Paris. That's where the kind of deeper reflection started, and meeting with philosophers and various thinkers to kind of ask these questions. I started doing some public writing. I just wrote a blog. I thought, who the heck is reading this? And a now friend in Marcus Corbin, who's a philosopher — I think you know him, Brandon.

Brandon: I just met him last week. It was good to see him.

Ron: Yeah, he's become a dear friend. We ironically found each other, I think, via Twitter. He read some of my writing and said, "Hey, Ron, we're starting a new initiative here within the Harvard Human Flourishing Program that will be focused on trust and belonging, and why social trust is declining but how it's interconnected with this rising loneliness issue. We're wanting to get a synoptic account, a holistic account, of why that's happening. You've got a policy background—" I had done a lot of philanthropy work at that point. He said, "We want more of a practitioner perspective in our team." I said, are you sure? I don't have a master's. I don't have a PhD. He said no, no, it's okay. So I joined the team. Ironically, it was during COVID that started that work. Basically, if you're trying to get a synoptic account of why loneliness is increasing, you can't do it within one discipline. I mean, sociology, psychology are extremely important, but you really need multiple disciplines to look at it.

So part of what we were doing was designing events, symposia, big forums, where we tried to bring the entire system together, both the academic research side but then also people that are actually building community. I think I could talk more about what we were finding in that work, but it was really helpful to get this holistic view of why loneliness was increasing and social isolation, kind of the physical form, and then what the connection was between a larger breakdown of our social life and political life. But on the positive side, I'm starting to see some really exciting things emerge both in intellectual communities but then also in the ground up grassroots movements that were rebuilding civic life as well. So that's really been the last, I guess, four years has been. Trying to really bring people together, trying to get that holistic view, and then look at what are the holistic solutions that all different sectors can be working on together.

Brandon: Yeah. Wow. Thanks, Ron. Could you say a little bit more, going back to that systems piece, about what it was that — you're saying that the system was not really sort of set up to measure or recognize some of these important factors. Then perhaps, could you go into some of the work that you're trying to do now to address those systemic issues? How are systems neglecting these issues that are related to loneliness?

Ron: Yeah, I think for the most part, if you think about big systems like the federal government, the primary metrics for success are things like productivity, GDP, national security, maybe individual things like economic mobility for an individual, decreasing inequality, which is really important and plays into some of these other questions. But in terms of like looking at relationality, relationships, connectedness, belonging, social connection, forward reverse loneliness and social isolation. In the 2000s up until 2017-2018, no one was really even thinking about those things as things we should be even be tracking. They were just not even on the radar screen. There were some people on the fringes that were recommending that, but they were definitely French. It plays out in other things in terms of, like, really, I think the fundamental thrust of it was valuing usefulness, utility, growth, all important things. But they didn't necessarily value community. I don't know if that answers your question. That was kind of seeing the system. That's what I was starting to see. I didn't quite have language around it, but I do now.

Brandon: I mean, my sense a little bit is — I mean, people like Putnam we're talking about the breakdown of associations. But I suppose that is not sort of something that metrics are tracking, right, the association of life and so on.

Ron: Right. You saw some of it. You had the joint committee on economics. There was a committee within the Senate, a subcommittee within the Senate, that was working on these things that had started to track social capital. They framed it around the terminology of social capital, which is important. But again, it kind of looks at social relationships from a utilitarian perspective. How does this social capital help me advance my economic mobility, and how does it help the whole system grow and develop, which is fine and is important? It's kind of the first way in. I think Putnam really got everybody thinking about that. But even the data that he had, the data that was accessible, there was no way to really think coherently across these different data sets. No one was really thinking consistently about, how do we measure these things? I mean, they still aren't to some degree. There are some new efforts there trying to change that, that we've been a part of within the Senate. But yeah, does that answer your question?

Brandon: Yeah, so at what point do you see then this sort of pronounced interest in the loneliness epidemic that we're seeing? I mean, is it the deaths of despair? What is it that suddenly helps us to recognize this as a problem that we've been neglecting all along?

Ron: Well, I mean, I think it starts with Putnam. Then I think the other point that you see is with Julianne Holt-Lunstad. She started to bring out new data about the impact of social isolation on loneliness. It has different effects, loneliness and social isolation's effect on heart health, brain health, life expectancy. She started to share some of that at a national level with some of the Senate Aging committee. So there was more of a starting focus on aging. I think as the Baby Boomer population is starting to age, they were looking at some of these things in more detail. So that was 2017-2018. But of course, the big watershed moment is: we all went through an experiment of loneliness and social isolation at scale. And so that's when we really started to take a look at it. Then as we've had to wrestle with the mental health crisis, especially among teens, I think that has also called a new attention to social connection and belonging.

We're just all feeling it, I think, in a way that was — it was starting to happen. It's a long trend. It's a multi-generational trend, if you look at some of the work that Jean Twenge and some others have done on just the social life of teens. But I think we felt it in these last five years in a more acute way, because all of our patterns have changed in terms of our work patterns. The way we eat now, the way we order, all those things have changed. And so I think it's just hit — among the loneliness research community, we've talked about it as like 'peak loneliness,' like an experience of it but also the zeitgeist that everyone's talking about in the last year and a half.

Brandon: Can you say a bit about peak loneliness? What is that?

Ron: Well, we're just at a point where everyone is talking about it in the news and in research. I'm sure Monika experiences this as well. There were requests for interviews and speaking opportunities. All of that has kind of add this — we feel like we all talk about it. Like, wow, this is an incredible amount of attention to this topic. I don't know that necessarily we've experienced peak loneliness. We might be getting a little here. I hope not. But I think there is something else we're seeing, which is a positive uptick in civic society, civil society, kind of a rebirth of religious community potentially. You see offline clubs, these types of things, where we might be at peak loneliness. We might be actually shifting into a more communitarian phase. I don't know. The jury is still out on that. There are some new developments that are happening that might affect the technological standpoint.

Brandon: Right. Yeah, I know. I'd love to double click on that a little bit in a while. Yes, it also seems that the kind of loneliness may be different across generations, right? I mean, we're seeing some data where people who are, especially like men above 40, they have fewer and fewer friends as they get older, and probably much experiencing a different kind of loneliness than, say, teenagers who are constantly surrounded by peers. Social media causes its own kind of isolation. Monika, I want to shift to you and ask you, what have you seen? Especially in the European context, I wonder whether there's something different about the problem of loneliness, the sort of causes or symptoms that you think might be different from the American context? What has been your experience, especially with the communities that you've been dealing with?

Monika: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of similarities. When I think about loneliness, I think about individualism. I think about the culture that we have created, and the systems, to Ron's point as well, that we have created in order to almost isolate ourselves from each other. The way that we live, the way that we think of a good life as owning a house for ourselves with everything inside of it. Then doing everything in these small units in a way, choosing very, very carefully, choosing our family or the people that we want to surround ourselves with, and so forth and so forth, placing work as the one source of meaning. Your career has to be like the thing that defines you in many ways. I think there's all these ways that we have almost perpetuated, this peak loneliness, I think, in a way, for us individually but then also collectively as a society.

So I've been seeing that. I've been running some events, like community events in Berlin, in Lisbon, in Madrid. For example, just very small scale like Madrid, like Spain, for example. It's much more collectivistic culture. Everything is social, especially in Madrid. It's like everything is social. Everything is done in groups. You're never alone. That was my experience. I was like, I need some alone time now. Where is that loneliness that I came here for? So you can't feel obviously alone and lonely in that, right? This sense of what people told me about, everybody's always in your life, right? Like, I wish I had some sense of loneliness to see what is it that I'm longing for, what is it that I'm maybe lacking, right? Is it something else? But that's hard to be always surrounded by people. So there's a different kind of loneliness even if it's not as of an individualistic culture.

Versus in Berlin, that's like, I would say, a hyper individualistic place where everybody is way too cool to be, like, you have not heard of that party or that place and this new thing that opened in the, I don't know, whatever floor of a building that was abandoned for 20 years. These kinds of things, you know. Everybody is so sophisticated and cool and special on the ground. That it's very inclusive and a diverse place, but you have to cross so, so many lines or so many ways to actually get there, or you'd have to know these kinds of people. So, is it actually so inclusive? I don't know. Is it that accessible? I don't know. So I guess in that, I think loneliness plays out differently for probably everyone respectively. But at the same time, there's a lot of similarities, I would say. What I know about the US and what I'm reading with the public places, this notion of third places, that is also something. Like, how do we design and structure cities where people can actually linger and hang out outdoors? I mean, Paris is a great example because they've invested a lot, I think, since the pandemic, in particular, in creating some spaces or ways to make the city more sustainable. And so this is all a process. But while that might be a little bit more accessible in Europe versus the US, as far as I know, and less designed for cars, more designed for people, there is still a lot of work to be done. It's still very palpable of loneliness.

Brandon: Thanks. I mean, yeah, the distinction you make between the kind of maybe a suffocating environment where everyone's in your business all the time versus a more individualistic environment is really, I think, key. I wonder whether the thing that we might crave or long for in those moments of suffocation is perhaps something like solitude, which is maybe a healthier type of loneliness. I wonder if you might be able to talk about that distinction between solitude and loneliness. Is loneliness — because it has a negative valence, at least the way we talk about it. But you're also pointing to the importance of we need sometimes whether it's downtime, or reflective spaces, or moments, or that ability to be able to get in touch with really matters to us, right? That seems very different from the kind of isolation that we typically associate with loneliness. So I wonder if that's something you can talk about, Monika, whether in your work you try to help people to get in touch with that more positive aspect of of solitude.

Monika: Yeah, I think solitude and loneliness, I think, first of all, it's a language thing. It's quite interesting if you look at the term of loneliness in different languages. Sometimes there are two words for it, and sometimes there's just one word for it. What it reminds me also is, like, I looked into sort of where this word came from, loneliness. Before it was created, like in the 1800s or something, there was just this word called 'oneliness,' which is basically loneliness just without the L. Oneliness, kind of this notion of one is all, or all is one. So it's not so far away from this more positive or even neutral way of how we would view solitude. Like I am one as all, connected. It means like I'm alone, but I'm not necessarily suffering in being alone. So I think it's just interesting what kind of words and language we have created around this more positive sense of, like, solitude is totally fine. You see all of these TikToks and Instagram reels that are like, "I'm totally fine to be with myself and self-care." That's positive, but then nobody talks about loneliness. That has also a lot of baggage and a lot of shame. Nobody wants to talk about that. So I view it more as a spectrum in a way.

I think there is beauty in loneliness. I think there is also a lot of suffering in loneliness. That doesn't mean it's something inherently negative, all right? It's such a human experience, except, of course, if you experience chronic loneliness for a prolonged time. But I think in becoming more comfortable with this discomfort of being with yourself which is being alone, physically alone or being surrounded by people that you do not just connect with, and being okay, almost accepting with those difficult emotions that can come up inside of you, right? You're like, "That's weird. That's awkward. I don't want to be here." Rather not trying to withdraw from that, or escape from that, or numb it with all the ways that we have here, like to scroll on social media, to, I don't know, to drink, to go into — I mean, there are so many compensation mechanisms. Gabor Mate talks a lot about this. It's like the ways that we have become unable to be with that level of discomfort, that is actually very, very small. So I think in becoming more comfortable with all of that in ourself in a way is also very much a way to help us cope or navigate loneliness.

Brandon: Yeah, well, there are a lot of threads there I'd like to pull on. But a couple of things I want to ask, if you could say a bit more about the beauty of loneliness and what that means. Does that have to do with something like wholeness or connection, like in the sense of being with yourself and yet feeling connected? Is that what you mean? Say more about embracing discomfort, because that seems to be something that you focus on in your work as well. It's teaching us how to embrace discomfort. So could you talk about those two, the beauty of loneliness, what that looks like and what it means practically to try to embrace discomfort?

Monika: I think I see the beauty in loneliness as something that — so when we're really experiencing loneliness, I think that always tells us something about what we're deeply longing for. That might be people that I connect with more intimately. That maybe the amount of people that I want to connect with. That might be the way that I want to connect with the city, the country, whatever, the region that I live in. So there's probably multiple levels to that. But I think there's something beautiful about this inquiry that goes a little bit deeper into what is true for you and how you want to be in a relationship with yourself and others and everything around you. So I think those moments of loneliness can help cultivate this very precious space that is not easy to be with. But I think it can offer insight, and it can offer a way that shifts your perspective, again, of yourself and the things that are really meaningful and important to you.

I think everything that is important to life is, in some way or form, relational. So to embracing the discomfort, that part, I think we've become a little bit too obsessed with the idea of comfort and convenience and sameness. That's also on the larger topic, this thing around belonging. Belonging is not sameness. It's not about us being always comfortable with everything that is like us. But in a way, many of us live like this. Like technology and social media has AI now. It's very much contributed to this notion of, let's keep everything in those same, same bubbles. So I think there's something to be said about embracing difference and discomfort and finding beauty in that and connection through difference and what we perceive as difference and what we perceive as other, and through that, create a sense of belonging.

Brandon: Ron, I want to ask you if you could say a bit about some of the new challenges that you're working on that relate to AI and new technologies and how they shape or maybe prey on our, I guess, our needs, our longings for connection. What have you seen in that space? And maybe the other thing I would also like to ask you about, which is in relation to this, is there are forms of belonging that are healthy and forms of belonging that are unhealthy, right? You could look at, I mean, maybe a more extreme example would be the kind of transnational gangs in Central America, MS-13, MS-18, which draw a lot of youth who are isolated and alienated from their communities. They're looking for respect. They're looking for belonging. They find in these gangs a source of belonging. And yet, that's something that maybe at a micro and a meso level, they provide that belonging and then, also, they cause a lot of social damage.

Ron: Yeah.

Brandon: So there are two different things. But I think there's a connection between what you're seeing with some of the ways in which various AI firms are trying to capitalize on this loneliness crisis and the kind of unhealthy modes of belonging they might generate.

Ron: Well, maybe I'll start with kind of the unhealthy, healthy and then go to the AI. I'd say, what's nice about situating the belonging work, the Trust and Belonging work inside the Human Flourishing Program is this larger frame of questions about the good life, questions about how we flourish, questions about well-being. People have different language. Even within the English culture, we have different ways of talking about that concept of the good life. But having that kind of orientation of, okay, what types of belonging and social connection actually moved me in a direction of greater physical health and mental health, my own character development, my own sense of virtue, which people, again, people use different language around that. But most people, it's kind of ubiquitous. People talk about, "I want to be a good person. I want to be a better person." Some people have an aversion to character virtue, which there's a good reason for that. There are some historical reasons for that. But what kind of relationships and community helps me understand truth, understands both the subjective truth about myself and the authenticity of myself but then also the truth about my world? That's one of the things that I was really fascinated by in Marcus Corbin's work. It's this relationship between friendship and truth and how, yes, loneliness is bad for your health. Yes, loneliness is risky for some of these other things. But it's also, if we're really chronically lonely — we see this in solitary confinement — our understanding of the world and our ability to make worlds and make perceived worlds, we really need first our family and then our friends and our community, and our local community, to try to help us understand that. When you have people that are pulled out of that and don't have community, don't have relationship, don't have family, their perception of what is true and also what is good for themselves and for the larger community starts to degrade.

I think you see that in the political context. Right now, in France, I think there's a high degree of social isolation and loneliness here. You see the susceptibility to these political dynamics, both on the far left and far right, where you have very charismatic leaders that are calling people into a bigger collective. I mean, this is not a new phenomenon. We've seen this before. Hannah Arendt wrote about it in the last century. That when people are really isolated, they're very susceptible to charismatic leaders, whether that's a gang leader or a leader of a political party. We see that in United States as well. So I'd say that's a dynamic.

Then you've got the tech industry which has, to some degree, the only cause of the loneliness epidemic, but it's one driving force in terms of smartphones and social media. They both have kind of positive and negative effects. But for a large part of our population, they've had a negative effect in terms of social connectedness. Now you have one of the most lucrative parts of the AI, B2C, where they're selling directly to consumers, the development of these AI companions that are mimicking human language, human faces, et cetera. They'll get more and more sophisticated as the years go by, and are really addressing that need for connection but through the mimicry of a human being in either an AI form, chatbot form. There are other robotic forms that are being developed.

There's a big debate about it. Monica has facilitated a really good discussion about this. We've been part of other conversations about it as well. I think we're so early in the game. That part of the challenge is just trying to understand, what questions should we be asking? How do we know, again, going back to flourishing or the good life, how do we know if the interactions with these things are helping us become better people, improving our mental health or becoming a detriment? We really don't have the best frameworks and ways to understand the impact of these things on our lives. So that's the risk. The speed at which they're being launched and developed and deployed before we really understand the impact, I think there's a worry that we're going to have a round two of what we saw with social media and smartphones when our population is already lonely. And so that has implications for people understanding what's true, what's real, et cetera, even more intensely when they're not engaging with a real thing, a real person. So that's the bigger kind of existential questions that we're going to have to ask.

Brandon: Could you say a little bit about what you think might be ways to address this problem? Because certainly, the market is there. There are going to be a lot of firms that are going to be parasitic on these needs of ours. What kinds of solutions do you see?

Ron: Well, I mean, I think in the early days of the Internet, it was all about user responsibility. I don't think that's the answer. But I do think there is a part of that where individuals are going to have to be intelligent about how to engage with these things. At the next level, I think there's the product designers, the CEOs themselves. I think there's going to be those inside the industry that are going to be a little bit more enlightened about it and try to understand these questions and then others that are already demonstrating they really don't care. Really, the primary objective for them is their shareholder returns. And so for that part of the industry, we need the countervailing force of other institutions — civil society, religious community. Then ultimately, you need regulatory frameworks both at the national and in the global level that address some of the players that are just not interested in human flourishing, good life, well-being. Whatever your category is, they really don't care. Some of them, not as they're always malicious. It's just that they just don't see it, and they don't value it. Back to my earlier experience with the government, it's just not even in the viewfinder for them. I think it's multiple levels of responsibility, that we have to quickly develop muscles that we don't quite have yet.

Brandon: Thanks, Ron. How much of the problem of loneliness do you think is a problem of alienation, whether it's alienation from each other, alienation from ourselves, from that ability to get in touch with what really matters, to even face our existential questions? Alienation from nature, Ron. I mean, you were talking about the beautiful mountains that you encountered. I think it'd be hard to be lonely in this sort of negative sense in which we mean alienated perhaps when we're in deep connection with nature. Then maybe the fourth factor could be something like a transcendent higher power, God, something like that, right? That sense of connection to the universe, as some people might call it. But it seems like at least those four components of self, other, nature, and a transcendent source or power are important for us to connect to. And whether or not we're physically alone, we could be alienated from any of those. I wonder how much that's getting at the heart of the problem here or whether there's something else.

Ron: No, I think that's it. I mean, when you first sent out the questions, that was one of the first words that came to my mind. It was this word of alienation. One of the thinkers that's really formed me of the last years is a psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist. He was a literature professor at Oxford and then became a psychiatrist. He studied the left and right hemispheres. I won't go into all that. But I'd say what I've really learned from him, and then also his reflections on the philosopher Max Scheler, is that our ability to perceive what's valuable in those relationships, our ability to perceive the value of the sacred, the value of the other, the value of the beautiful — which I love your whole framing of everything around beauty — those nature, et cetera, those things are all values that I think have gotten subsumed into utilitarianism and used utility, pleasure, my individual use cases, whatever that is. And so I'd say that, for me, when I'm looking across all of this, I see loneliness as totally interconnected to our alienation from those other things.

I do think one of the things I'd be excited to talk to you all about is that this beauty, what's the role of beauty in addressing loneliness? I think part of what I've struggled with within the loneliness research community — that sounds like an oxymoron — sometimes we get a little bit too focused on the instrumental ways to solve this problem, and it's really how we got here in the first place. So is the transcendent, whether that's beauty or something else, is that really one of the pathways we need to be giving more serious thought to? Yeah, I'm really interested in how those things connect. Because I think just looking at McGilchrist's work, if we're conditioned by beauty to see wholeness, to see harmony, to see uniqueness, which seem to be the patterns in beauty — you're the expert, so I'll turn back to you. But if those are the things we see in beauty and experience in beauty, that also is the way that we develop relationships, we see the whole person. You encounter each other. You encounter some of the dark sides of other people, and you see that that's actually part of their beauty. It's the asymmetry and the symmetry together in one person. So I think being in environments that don't affirm that, whether that's public beauty or not having access to truly beautiful, are I think may be part of why we're so alienated. Because we're not conditioned to see these things and value them and then live based on those values.

Brandon: Monika, what do you think?

Monika: I love what you just said, Ron. I was like so resonant with that. Yeah, it reminds me of awe, like wonder and awe. I know that you had Dacher Keltner on your podcast, Brandon. I co-hosted an event with Laura François, who is the co-founder of the Awe Exchange, and wanted to bridge awe and loneliness. We didn't really prepare much for this event. We got together. We're friends. We became friends. We noticed, wow, there's so many connections between awe and loneliness. And yes, might awe and cultivating moments of wonder and awe. And in that, there's a lot of beauty. I also see beauty in this spectrum, right? Not of just like esthetically beautiful and perfection and this is clean and vanilla, but the darkness and their shadows and symmetry is everything that you just said, Ron. There's so much in that of like cultivating those moments of stillness, of like looking up to the sky, pausing a moment, zooming really in, like doing basically what children are doing, right? It's being like, no, I want to stay here, look at the ground because there's a small, little worm that is gently, slowly, slowly, walking one into another. That's what captures my curiosity right now. Okay. Let's do that. But we as adults, as we grow older, we don't do that because we're so much in the doing all the time. So I think, absolutely, those moments where we can cultivate a different kind of connection to what's around us.

In that, also, I think understanding that we are indeed not separate. We are not separate from anything. We don't have to be alienated because we're not on the other side. It's like what our friend, our mutual friend, Wakanyi Hoffman, is saying, who's bringing the Ubuntu philosophy actually into the context of AI at the New Institute in Hamburg. Anyway, she talks about this. There's no conception of separateness. There's just one all, oneliness. It's like everything that I am is what we are, right? There's just we. There's an interconnectedness. I think we come closer to that sense of viewing and understanding us as humans as small and find some humility in that. I think that could really help in terms of how we cope with those moments of loneliness as well.

Brandon: What questions do you all have for each other? Because you're both working, you're tackling different aspects of this problem and also resonant in many ways. I'd be curious if there are things you want to ask each other.

Ron: Yeah, do you mind if I go first, switch the order a bit?

Brandon: Go ahead.

Ron: Monika, I mean, I think one of the things I've always been excited about our conversations and just getting to know you is, my question is: what's practically working at the community level? And when you see people that you're engaging with that are struggling with loneliness, what are you seeing? How are they finding ways out of loneliness, or staying in that loneliness and finding a way to find peace with it? What are some of those practical pathways you're seeing in your work?

Monika: I guess one thing that I'm seeing in my work, which is more on a different level but I do think it's interesting, that loneliness seems to be like a natural leveler for people to come together. I think we need more of those. It's like beauty. It's like awe. It's like these kinds of human experiences that you connect through on an emotional level, but you could also talk about it on a very intellectual level, of course. And everybody, because it's so universal, everybody knows what it is. And at the same time, there's a whole space of curiosity of what is it for you and how do you — yeah, exactly, how do you deal with it? So I find that quite interesting that very different people feel called to connect through that experience almost. And that because of that, there is more of a sense of being vulnerable. So that's maybe not as practical, but it is effective. Spaces that allow us to be soft and hard at the same time and that, first and foremost, create space for listening rather than talking.

I've seen that people have such a longing to be really heard, because we're so surrounded by lots of messaging and talking and opinions. So to give people an undivided attention for three minutes and really listen to them without interrupting, without wanting to give them advice, just being like, "I'm here for you. I hear you. I care. I'm coming from a sense of care," I think is very, very powerful. Then practicing this skill, right? Then I think doing things together, like activities. So joint activities that feel very light, I guess, and also inviting, inclusive, where people have fun playing almost, like where you're not so much in your mind, where you move, you dance, you sing. Singing together, oh my god. Nobody can sing. It doesn't matter. Nobody can dance. It doesn't matter. Right? Really involving your body, going out into nature, being surrounded by, again, beauty and awe.

Then maybe the last part, again, the sense of differences. So learning from each other. People that you wouldn't normally interact with, much older people, much younger people, people from different class, different part of the city that you would normally not interact with because you are in your bubble. It helps people to be like, "Oh, first of all, I'm not alone in my loneliness." And also, again, I see a little bit less, or I feel a little bit less of that ego self and take myself as something great and whatever. But I see myself as part of, as part of community and something greater.

Ron: Yeah, I mean, even the way you did that at our last event we were together at the House of Beautiful Business with the dance, which is very hard for me to do. But it was great. It was great. It's just created a completely different environment in the room. I think the next event I was at after that, we didn't dance. It was a bit too serious of a group to do that. But incorporating poetry, incorporating nature, we had someone helped lead a song at dinner that night. All those things completely changed the dynamic to where people are more connected to each other. So I'm learning from you, Monika, on how to bring these things into events.

Brandon: That's really amazing. Monika, when you say people listening to each other, what does that practically look like? Because one way I've tried to do it is through something like salon dinners, where you have about 10 people at a table. Each one shares a story for two or three minutes, and everyone listens, which has its strengths and weaknesses as a form. But I'm curious as what the practical form looks like where people are listening to each other that you've built.

Monika: In my events, it really is like a maximum of 15-minute practice. So it's quite efficient, which we like. It's efficient, but it's deep. So you go into pairs. I think one on one, right? One on one is a way that — again, to attention, to that point of attention, giving one person attention — creates a little island of emotional intimacy and safety in a way. Then I usually have people reflect on two questions. The first one would be: tell me about an experience where you felt maybe alienated, alone, lonely, misunderstood, some sense. I'd give them two and a half, three minutes to share. So one person starts, ends. The other person starts, ends. They listen to each other. One person always listens, obviously, and the other speaks. Then I shift basically to the second prompt. Now tell me about an experience where you felt connected, where you felt seen and heard. Then they'd do the same. It's the same practice. Just alone to give this space of self-reflection. You're not having a real dialog. It's not like, "Oh, yeah, tell me more about that." No, it's just like everything that I want to share and can share in those two and a half, three minutes, I will share. You are witnessing me in my self-reflection. You're there for me. You're present for me. That is very powerful. And also, this shift, I guess, from sort of the sense of disconnection and loneliness and then this sense of connection can be, again, quite powerful in the way that you feel after this practice that is quite short.

Brandon: Wow. Amazing. Yeah, thanks. Monika, what question do you have for Ron?

Monika: So many. What have you learned for yourself having — because I listened to you and I'm like, oh, my gosh. There's such a well of experience and knowledge. What have you learned, I guess, for yourself as you around this topic of both loneliness as part of flourishing and having a good life?

Ron: That's a great question. We do kind of have a joke among our fellow researchers of like, how are you doing? Are you lonely? Are you happy? But there's the truth to it too. I think there are some threads of all the people that are involved in it, like, why they are so interested in it. But I'd say, for me, personally, this particular season, I have two kids under two. It is a very physically isolating time period. I'm also an expat. Our community that we had here that was French community, a lot of them left and moved to different cities after COVID. So for me, it's been a real opposite of my experience in DC and then Oklahoma where I had a very, very rich community experience. I have had a much more isolating experience in the last few years.

One of the things I've learned from the research and from people like you is the importance of just being a regular at a coffee shop. There's a temptation to try all the different coffee shops here in the neighborhood, and there's quite a few. But just going to the same one every day or every few days and developing a relationship with the regulars there. Or just being open to my kids. My son is starting school, so getting to know his friends' parents and kind of building relationships intentionally there. There's always the natural friends that I would pick, but there's a rhythm of seeing them at the park same time over and over again and just being intentional about that. So I would say those have been practices that I'm doing in this particular season that I've been learning from others or learning from the research. Maybe when you don't have kind of a natural community like you have in another season, there are different ways you can engage with the community that are not the same, but they help you kind of stay connected and build community.

Brandon: That's great. I wanted to ask you, and this feeds right into the last thing I wanted to ask you, if you could leave our listeners with one tip, one piece of advice when it comes to, I suppose, trying to tackle this sort of loneliness problem that they might be encountering in their own lives. How can we either better get in touch with what we most deeply long for? How can we overcome the kind of alienation we might feel, if there's one practice you might recommend that our listeners could use?

Ron: Yeah, I would go back to the art and nature. One of the things that was kind of fascinating — it wasn't our team that did it; it was another team at Harvard that researched the impact of listening to classical music versus talking to a Harvard grad student on what would the impact be on loneliness. Now, part of it may be that Harvard grad student doesn't need some social skills. But it was interesting that listening to classical music actually decreased the feelings of loneliness. I know decreasing the feeling of loneliness is not the end goal. But connecting with good literature, listening to good music, whatever your musical taste is but really good music, going to the galleries, if you're a spiritual person, having a spiritual practice where you're encountering, if you can, beautiful architecture in a spiritual context, all those things develop that sensibility where you're starting to see the whole and see the other and see the unique, and starts to condition you to just value relationship in the first place.

I think that's probably the first place I would start. It's just that inner development of our hearts and of our spiritual capabilities and our sensibility to see beauty. It's actually, I think, something I really believe will be a pathway for individuals to find. Just be aware of community. Community is often a gift. It's often, relationship, if you force it, or chase it, or try to pursue it, sometimes you don't get it. But if you are kind of developing that awareness, then you see it when it shows up. You see that person one day, that random person you meet at the kid's school, or within your high school, or within your university department or whatever and you're like, "Oh, I'm attracted to having this conversation with this person." If you're fully conditioned to think about everyone as your pathway to success or your next kind of utilitarian pursuit, then you're not going to see the relationship. So I'd start there: doing that soul work.

Brandon: Amazing. Thanks, Ron. Monica?

Monika: What can I add to that? I guess, first, not advice but just it's important to me to say. Nobody is free, I think, of this experience of feeling lonely sometimes. And that's really okay. I think that even though it sounds simple, but accepting that is not easy. But I think this is an important step towards them helping to see things differently and yourself differently. The second I do want to say is like, as you're also sitting with it yourself, do reach out to others. I think there's such a notion around self-sufficiency and like, "Oh, I don't want to be a burden to other people. I don't want to be seen in this way. It's awkward. I don't want to be a burden for others." I think that's so wrong. Yes, we should all be a little bit of a burden too to each other a little bit so that the suffering is shared, and we can connect again through each other's experiences that are tough and challenging. We are all challenged in different ways. So I think having a little bit of faith in others and seeking out and reaching out even if that's bringing discomfort or resistance within you. Being the person who is interested first, being the person who asks like, "Hey, I feel like I would love to continue this conversation," or like, "We should hang out sometime," or initiating something even if it's small and do it a couple times, and taking that as your way to actively pursue and cultivate the relationships that you really need and want.

Brandon: Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, I think if we stay in that illusion that we don't need others, we shouldn't be a burden, it becomes hard for us to belong to anyone, right? I think that the beauty here is when I recognize that you are someone in need and that my presence can be in some way helpful, then I think that can strengthen that connection between us. But also, there's something more beautiful, I think, in recognizing that someone we might think as perfect is actually in some way broken and that I have a role in that relationship. So there's a beauty in that brokenness to know especially that I — so I think, yeah, especially with people who we would consider friends are the people who would value that brokenness and their role in that connection. Yeah, it's amazing. Thank you. Thank you both. This has been such a rich and deep conversation.

Ron: Thank you, both.

Brandon: Yeah, thank you. Well, I wish you well in all of your wonderful endeavors. May your endeavors and your lives flourish. I hope to see you all soon in person.

Ron: Likewise. Thank you, Brandon.

Brandon: Right.

Ron: Good to see you, Monika.

Monika: Yeah, good to see you as well. Thank you so much.

If you found this post valuable, please share it. Also please consider supporting this project as a paid subscriber to support the costs associated with this work. You'll receive early access to content and exclusive perks for members.