{"id":41,"date":"2018-10-14T22:34:54","date_gmt":"2018-10-14T22:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pobresearch.uccs.edu\/?p=41"},"modified":"2018-10-24T22:40:12","modified_gmt":"2018-10-24T22:40:12","slug":"a-loneliness-epidemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pobresearch.uccs.edu\/?p=41","title":{"rendered":"A Loneliness Epidemic?"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Will wrote a\u00a0column<\/a>\u00a0in the Sunday, October 14 edition of National Review where he addresses Ben Sasse\u2019s contention that America faces an epidemic of loneliness. Will is writing about Sasse\u2019s new book\u00a0Them: Why We Hate Each Other \u2014 And How to Heal<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>Sasse argues that despite our constant connections via social media, the unprecedented wealth of our nation, and the diminishment of physical distance as a barrier to social interaction \u00a0we are less connected to one another than ever before. We are suffering an epidemic of loneliness.<\/p>\n

Will writes that this epidemic is real, and that we presently don\u2019t know how to solve this problem. Will writes: \u201cThe crumbling of America\u2019s\u00a0social<\/em>infrastructure presents a daunting challenge: We do not know how to develop what Sasse wants, \u201cnew habits of mind and heart . . . new practices of neighborliness.\u201d We do know that more government, which means more saturation of society with politics, is not a sufficient answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the contrary, I contend we do know how to solve the problem. In order to do that, however, we must understand that our educational system is a major factor in the breakdown that Sasse illuminates. Somewhere between the development of the common school movement and modern times we have abandoned educating for common virtues. Thomas Jefferson promoted the common school movement because he thought that a self-governing populace must share a common education in basic civic virtues. Thus, schools of the 19th century focused on civic virtues, in addition to the basic skills of an educated populace (reading, riting, and rithmetic).<\/p>\n

We have strayed from this approach for a variety of reasons. The modern focus on skills, careers, and competency assessment is technical in nature and abjures responsibility for instruction and practice of basic civic virtues. Schools now tend to regard this as a duty for parents, churches, or other social institutions.<\/p>\n

Pity. On my view, we do know how to solve the loneliness epidemic, but it will require a re-thinking of human learning and what it means to acquire a \u2018good education\u2019. I have been writing about virtues in the context of entrepreneurship education. My colleague and I have developed the notion of the \u2018entrepreneurial lifepath\u2019 to highlight that opportunities for venture building come and go intermittently. Further, they are not \u2018planned\u2019, rather they just \u2018happen\u2019\u2013often quite serendipitously.<\/p>\n

My research, and my own experience bear this out. I\u2019ve started 10 ventures in my career, and have not written a business plan prior to starting any of them. I just fumbled and stumbled along\u2013creating value with resources at hand\u2013to build a going concern.<\/p>\n

My research in ecological psychology has led me to identify self-chosen virtues with behavioral constraints. Everyone must choose, each moment, to do\u00a0this<\/em>\u00a0rather than\u00a0that.<\/em>\u00a0It is the cumulative effect of these choices, on a developmental time scale, that determines one\u2019s level of competence. The central virtue of the entrepreneurial lifepath is to \u2018create value for other people\u2019. Doing that\u2013Constantly!\u2013along the lifepath will increase one\u2019s odds of stumbling upon a venture opportunity.<\/p>\n

Similarly, with respect to our loneliness epidemic, people can elect to choose to connect with others and overcome our differences. Honesty, trustworthiness, common courtesy can be guides to behavior moment to moment. One simply has to trust that enacting self chosen virtues every day, choosing to do\u00a0this\u00a0<\/em>rather than\u00a0that,\u00a0<\/em>will someday, somehow, and in unpredictable ways produce results that one will consider good.<\/p>\n

The hard part is in the CHOOSING and DOING.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George Will wrote a\u00a0column\u00a0in the Sunday, October 14 edition of National Review where he addresses Ben Sasse\u2019s contention that America faces an epidemic of loneliness. Will is writing about Sasse\u2019s new book\u00a0Them: Why We Hate Each Other \u2014 And How to Heal.\u00a0Sasse argues that despite our constant connections via social media, the unprecedented wealth of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “A Loneliness Epidemic?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,11,17],"tags":[4,5,6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pobresearch.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pobresearch.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pobresearch.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pobresearch.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pobresearch.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pobresearch.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42,"href":"https:\/\/pobresearch.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/42"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pobresearch.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pobresearch.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pobresearch.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}