Unsplash/Elisabette Foco. Some rights reserved.Humanity is a group. As Mohandas Gandhi famously said: “All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family.” This is not a sycophantic religious concept, but the fact of our inherent nature. A nature that the current world socio-economic order systematically works against, forcing us to live in unnatural, unhealthy, unfulfilling, and unjust ways.
The negative interrelated consequences of living under such a perverse system are many and varied – painful all: disharmony, depression, anxiety, and loneliness are some of the effects of the resulting disconnect – with ourselves, with others, and with the natural environment.
An epidemic
Shutterstock/Prixel Creative – openDemocracy. All rights reserved.Loneliness, particularly in developed countries, has been growing year on year. John Cacioppo, author of Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection relates that in the 1980s “scholars estimated 20 percent of people in the US felt lonely at any given time, now it’s thought to be over 40 percent”. Worldwide, according to Psychology Today, the numbers suffering from loneliness are at epidemic levels, and, with an aging population throughout the west, are expected to continue to rise.
