Despite increasing urbanization in the modern world, society is more isolated than ever. In my own country of residence (Japan), the statistics are disheartening. Government estimates indicate over one million hikikomori, a Japanese word which refers to social recluses who very rarely have contact with other humans face-to-face. Meanwhile, more elderly people are dying alone than ever before. In Tokyo, one of the most populated cities in the entire world, nearly 5,000 people over 65 years old were found dead alone in their homes in 2022 . One might blame that on the pandemic, but in just the first few months of 2024, nearly 22,000 individuals had died at home alone across the country, the vast majority over 65 years of age. The “loneliness epidemic” is certainly not unique to Japan, even if it has a unique shape here. Similar statistics can be reproduced all over the world.
Of course this is not new information, but it came to mind recently after my wife shared an interesting tidbit following a hair appointment. When making her appointment, the website offered her a rather innovative option: to request the staff not to make conversation with her. Talk about a sign of the times! This is just anecdotal of course, but I think we would see the same trend across the cultural landscape: in many cases isolation is not imposed but chosen. People want the right to be totally left alone, and likewise the right to ignore others.
Some people will read that last line and say, “yes, of course!” And look, I get it. Especially living in the city, sometimes I feel overwhelmed by how many people there are. Sometimes I want to pretend that I’m not surrounded by people. But what kind of world does this attitude present when it is embraced?
I’ve written before about Joseph Minich’s book, Bulwarks of Unbelief, but I’d like to revisit it here. One of the key takeaways from the book is that humans have become alienated from each other in ways that fundamentally shape our view of reality as devoid of agency. Put simply, the modern social order is ready-made for a sense that God is not there.
Central to this order is our engagement, or lack thereof, with other humans. The more we demand the right to absolute personal autonomy and radical levels of privacy, and the more our own hands are tied by those demands from others, the more we will find ourselves in a world where we feel utterly alone. Here, I want to highlight something which Minich says in his book, a line which has come back to me again and again since I read it:
“Particularly difficult in our own context, is the commitment to a generous hospitality – a difficult-to-achieve lifestyle that leaves space for others to interfere and that contains the boldness to interfere in the lives of others. These sorts of encounters are artificially replaced in our era by work relationships, social media, and so on. But these cannot truly achieve the dimensions in intra-human relation that are achieved in the free response of persons in unchosen proximity to oneself.” [emphasis mine]1
When I wrote on this line previously, my focus was on the hospitality function, but here I’d like to focus on that last line in italics. There is a kind of relational dynamic in human affairs that can only be achieved when we are imposed upon by and are free to impose ourselves upon others at some level. Yet this has become one of the cardinal sins of modern society. We may allow for some degree of imposition from others, but often this is only in the context of a relationship we have directly chosen. When we are in “unchosen proximity” to someone – that is to say, when faced with relational engagement that is primarily incidental and beyond our control – we generally want to be imposed upon as little as humanly possible. The option to ask staff to not even talk to you while they do your hair is, I think, a great example of this.
Minich’s point in his book is that this social matrix does a lot more than make us feel isolated from each other; it makes us feel isolated from the world itself, from any sense of our place within it, and from any sense of overriding agency beyond ourselves. We tend to blame the modern feeling of divine absence on advances in technology and science, and of course these may play a role. But what if the biggest issue is in fact cultural and societal dynamics that came along simultaneously with these advances? And what if our dealings with other humans is a central aspect of that? That’s what I understand Minich to be arguing, and I believe he is right and that it is something Christians in particular must take seriously.
As Christians, we must reject isolation. The simple act of choosing not to tell the hairstylist to keep quiet while they do your hair is an example of what this looks like in practice. Clicking a box on a screen is so effortless that we may brush it off as nothing, but the way such an act shapes our social dynamics (and through that our sense of reality) is significant and far-reaching. Christians must be people who are willing to be imposed upon. We should be people who invite imposition at some level. That doesn’t mean we don’t need to have boundaries, but our boundaries need to be broader and more flexible than what the modern social order might naturally create. Do people know they can talk to me? Am I willing to lose some time to allow a seemingly unimportant conversation? Am I willing to deal with the discomfort of forced engagement? Conversely, am I willing to respectfully impose upon others? These are questions we need to be asking ourselves. Of course the willingness to be imposed upon is an act of love, but it goes beyond that. The rejection of isolation is one way we create space for the Divine in the modern social order.
[1] Joseph Minich, Bulwarks of Unbelief; pp.209-210
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