Mr Lonely

In the late 70’s, you could hear it on the radio : “Mr Lonely”, “I don’t want to sleep alone, stay with me, don’t go”, “Feelings”

“Never fall in love again” (that’s why!). The Me decade.

End of August,  you will see the topic reintroduced by University of Chicago’s John Cacioppo, with an astounding new discovery: man is inherently “unselfish” (because he would need to band together with other hunters and gatherers to survive).

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0824/opinions-neuroscience-loneliness-ideas-opinions.html

His academic book is entitled: Loneliness: human nature and the need for social connection.

I felt saddened when coming across his findings: a few years earlier, the majority of people had said they

had a few confidants. This time around, the answers have changed to “none”.  What kind of sample was that?

The study must have been conducted in the hospices, where the professor/cyclist spent the majority of his spare time?

(a joke in Florida is that, “my golf partners kept dying”, so I might as well play alone).

May I add that if it were to be conducted in Asia, where the collective mindset still reigns, we would have different results, like, maybe one confidant. (Andrew Weil mentioned that his aging mother lived longer and experienced more respect – interaction- in Asia).

Robert De Niro in Meet the Fockers called this “the circle of trust” (given that he played a X-CIA who is overprotective of his daughter, and trusts no one).

In “the Future arrived yesterday”, Michael Malone proposed a Core team and a more shapeless outer layers for future-oriented organizations.

This seems like a smart way to find a hybrid solution to the innovator’s dilemma (innovate to the point of destroying your core competency).

Sort of semi-leaderless org chart (Management theory 1/2 Z).

I notice this when coming across Wikipedia model: there must be a core team of expert researchers, and millions of articles written (3 million in English thus far) with or without fact-checking. In other words, you have to keep checking back on the same subject because the definition or references are constantly revised, evolved, updated and self-correcting.

This is very unsettling, since we want to pretend that things (knowledge) stays the same, and that we don’t have to

carry the back pack again on campus (or online). (I venture to argue that the more integrative you are, the quicker you pick up patterns and recurrences since history and society tend to reinvent what impressed them when young).

Walter Cronkite used to deliver the news authoritatively (one-to-many). Now, each of us goes online, and looks at the content which many have authored (many-to-one).

Still feel lonely? Lonely girl on YouTube turned out to be a well-crafted production by a team, not too different from Girls Gone Wild’s.

One thing for sure, given current demographic trends, our children are growing up without the benefits of tapping into the intermediary wisdom of older siblings. I have resented this,  growing up in a family of four (parents and a pair of older brother and sister). Felt like having two sets of parents: one really old, and removed , the other, slightly old,

but also removed. As a result, I have received redundant reprimand (double dose) that lasts me a life time (talking about collective living). Yet, I still feel lonely, albeit not alone.

And through this, I learned one thing: we need money to go on living, but we also need other people to share that life,

to watch our back (Simon needs Garfunkel “sailing, right behind”)

It’s unclear whether or not we are inherently selfish or unselfish (like Drink Coffee, or Don’t drink Coffee), but it’s clear that

our lives and legacy (digital or three-dimensional) will always be played out in an imperfect system, western or eastern, bowling alone or as a team.

I reversed to nostalgia when I experienced loss. In selective memory, you can mentally edit out your parents’ flaws, or

your x-girl/boy friend’s shortcomings, or the slum hood you grew up in. That way, besides closures, you essentially create more storage capacity for positive experience. A positive reservoir begets positive responses. Try it sometime, and say “how are you doing, good to see you”. If the person’s O/S is also made of Chrome or Golden (Rule), you will surely get a reciprocity.

If not, something is wrong with he/she.(Crocodile Dundee coming to New York, then).

You can go on, prepare for the next play, (or try it on a Walmart greeter, who gets paid to greet) and save that mental space for others. It’s YourSpace.