It is so easy to feel lonely here in the USA as things are. If any of you are out there and are truly lonely and miserable about it, please consider these possible remedies:

Go to a religious institution of your choice- Many Salonistas have expressed little regard for organized religion, but please consider that many go for the social interaction and sense of community, in addition to, or not, meeting spiritual needs. Most houses of worship have much to offer to a lonely person.

Not religous?

If you have never set foot in a Unitarian Universalist fellowship, then please open your mind and do so. See all the people who come to be changed, who seek, who truly appreciate a space where they are not force-fed dogma, but who are encouraged to take responsibility for their own spiritual growth. Listen to an inspiring sermon, tune in to the kid's story hour, listen to some lovelyt music (UU's LOVE music!) grab a blue (in many fellowhips, to identify one's self as a newbie) mug at coffee hour and talk to people. UU's are nothing if not gregarious. Look around you. Chances are, you will see others wearing a mask of lonliness, and you may be inexplicably drawn to each other. Go to UU during non-worship events, too. If you can sing, even if you think you can't, join the choir. Volunteer for something. Someone will find something useful for you to do, believe me.

That is how we build intentional community. Take part, and build your own beloved community.

Compared with Cacioppo's evolutionary biological explanation, Thomas Dumm should not be mentioned in the same article.

The only way to get rid of loneliness is to avert your gaze from your own naval. The individualistic society has created a bunch of narcissistic, whiny and spoiled twits.

Stop whining about your neighbors and friends and families for not putting you on a pedastal and agreeing with your every word and sentiment. A tiny emotional scratch on your fragile psyche, like being given a bottle of sparkling wine instead of champagne, would have ya crying "they don't love me" and stop talking "them".

Toughen up and go live in the real world, people. Bake a pie (or buy one) and give it to your neighhor or bring it to work to share. Chat with a stranger in the elevator about the weather. Give, not take.

LOL it is no surprise that salon.com is filled with self-absorbed crybabies.

I think loneliness is a direct result of the "you're on your own" culture. That, plus the birth rate is one city the size of San Francisco every three days; life has become cheap. Once upon a time, the whole culture strove to be the best and do the very best. Now, it's a race to the bottom. The Republican/corporate/privatize culture has depersonalized everything and we relate more to our laptops and Rock Hero than to each other. Another problem is the fallout from our emphasis on industrialization and the god of money which is dishonesty. It has infected all of those areas, professions and institutions that we rely on: Medicine, veterinarian medicine, dentists, lawyers, politicians, the churches. We teach our kids not to lie and to be honest and then they try to take these values into the work place of corporate America where you must get your hands dirty if you are going to survive and succeed. We have traded peace of mind and heart for the golden calf of fascism and are too stupid to give it up and value each other. Another thing is common courtesy and genuine humility. Because we no longer rely on each other for common goods, because we can go to the grocery store or Wal-marts' for our creature needs, we have gotten into the habit of disrespecting each other; we can afford to; our neighbor won't refuse to sell us his vegetables, we can get them at a big box store. Since I moved into the deep south almost four years ago, I have never known so much stealing. It's an everyday part of life and no one gets excited about it. I've stopped reporting it. I even had a fruit tree uprooted and taken from my back yard. The results are that I avoid my neighbors and keep people contact down to a minimum. This coupled with alcoholism and drug use are the flags of a very sick society that needs fundamental change. The question is whether or not we, as a society, are mature enough to knock off the greed and recognize those things that bring us true happiness and start pursuing them. I don't think so. I listen to C-SPAN's Washington Journal and every time I turn it on there is some arch Republican selling us another installment of the Chicago School of Economics (Milton Friedman) and it makes me think of Dickens' Hard Times. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. The answers are right there in front of our faces but we just can't seem to let go of the promise of limitless power and wealth even if it means that the US comes wrapped in degrading corruption. As long as we are not doing the right things we can expect to pay the price in personal loneliness. It's God's way of telling us we are on the wrong path. George W. is a drunk (see this for yourself on YouTubes.) All of his "successes" haven't brought him the true happiness his soul craves and he will remain unhappy as long as he ignores the shoes God is throwing at his head. We are raising a society of sociopaths with our endless greed. Loneliness will be the least price we pay if we don't pull ourselves together.

my condolences on your loss. Many great memories, I'm sure.

I was an early adopter of online communications, and thus I have gone through both the "romance of technology" (a first step, when everything is new and interesting, and you begin to believe that the doodad will change the world) and the estrangement, and now I'm off into the final other side of the experience, when the technology ceases to have any psychological value at all. More to the point, I was at this place, psychologically, when "social networking" took off. As all around me fell into the romance with MyFace.com, I was dusting myself off as a twelve year veteran of newsgroups, listservs, and even bulletin board services.

These activities (and it is right to speak of them as actions rather than things, because Facebook is not a website, but a set of actions) offer touch rather than embrace. They offer presence rather than togetherness. They are like text messaging on a cell phone: a series of one sided and denuded gestures take place, but there is no physicality or depth, no overtone or social negotiation. The analogy I have come up with is that these forms of society offer something, but they do not offer what any lonely person (or any person shedding physical contacts on their behalf) need.

Online society is functional the very way that rice cakes are, that zero calorie steak is, that alcohol-free beer is. It is not useless, and it is not impossible for it to offer more than the shadowplay of society, but it is ultimately empty. A person can starve while gorging on diet food, and the lonely can turn desperate with a thousand "Friendings" a day.