It's Time for a 'Conservatism of Connection'

The watchword in American cultural discourse and research is “loneliness.” Over the last decade, research from economists and social psychologists has outlined the magnitude of Americans' social isolation across demographic groups — old and young, rich and poor, and in every ethnic category. The impacts range from declining political participation to increasing suicide rates.

Princeton economists Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner, Angus Deaton, coined the term “deaths of despair” to describe deaths related to this disconnection from others and from civic institutions. As Deaton noted in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, while the initial causes of death may be labeled as “overdose” or “self-inflicted gunshot,” the underlying reason is a “failure of spiritual and social life that drives people to suicide.” Analyzing the work of Deaton, Case, and others on the subject, Dr. Robert Waldinger, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, added, “The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health.”