Loneliness, by Hans Thoma, 1880 (Wikimedia Commons)
Last month Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released an 81-page advisory called "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation." In it, he makes the case that loneliness and social isolation have caused a major public health crisis. There is no denying that social isolation contributes to health problems both mental and physical. This is well documented. Hence, the advisory urges immediate government action to address the problem. But the devil is in the details.
I recently wrote a three-part series for The Federalist in which I analyze the advisory and what it portends for our lives. I predict the advisory will cause even greater isolation if it is implemented. It provides an open door for the government to intrude on private life. See the following links to my three articles:
Among the many points I make in my essays are the following. First, government policies are in large part responsible for cultivating our crisis of loneliness. But far from easing up on those policies, the government continues full speed ahead to implement agendas that promote family breakdown, abortion, urban blight, addictions, censorship, and more that serve to separate people from one another and to promote social distrust.
Second, after playing such a large role in creating this malady, the federal government is now offering its "cure" in the form of a six pillared strategy that will build an "infrastructure"--both social and physical--to monitor our levels of social connection, from the public library to your volunteer fire department to your church and your family. It will enlist the entire health sector as well as Big Tech to aid in that endeavor. And it expects everyone to participate.
Third, the advisory states that the divisive policy called "diversity, equity, and inclusion" will be a big part of the strategy to promote social-connection policies on every level of government, and everywhere people might gather. It further notes that the benefits of social connection--if you have a strong family and friendships, for example--are not equitably distributed. Those who have strong social connections have access to benefits (read: "privileges") in terms of health, education, employment, finances, and so on.
The big question is how in the world would the government be able to "equalize" those benefits? Well, in some way, it would have to regulate the relationships that provide access to them.
Most Americans don't realize that this advisory is a blueprint to invade the private sphere of life -- the institutions of family, faith, and community--under the guise of bringing us together. This would be a totalitarian's dream-come-true. Needless to say, it would be very dangerous for the survival of civil society. I fear that few understand that strong social connections can only develop in the privacy that allows you to speak in confidence. You need those connections to fall back on in order to speak openly, especially in these days when doing so can lead to major reprisals by the government.
The scope of this advisory is unprecedented. Anyone who is paying attention to current trends--and who loves their family and friends--should find it chilling. More Americans need to wake up and push back against such plans. Because, as psychiatrist Carl Jung noted many years ago: "The mass state has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man. It strives rather for atomization, for the psychic isolation of the individual."