Pride and Loneliness

Lack of personal pride is an unexplored contributor to the loneliness epidemic

Original unedited image by Karl Hedin on Unplash

I wanted to add something to the loneliness epidemic discussion I haven’t seen anyone mention yet: how a lack of pride plays a role in loneliness. Before I go further though I want to say that I do not believe this somehow THE missing piece of the loneliness epidemic. I think this is only a contributing factor, and it probably isn’t a factor for everyone who is lonely either. But we should explore it because I don’t believe it is a coincidence the loneliness epidemic began just after the Great Recession, and when social media took off where we all began to compare our lives to others through what our friends wanted us to see and what influencers would show.

It begins with asking two questions: Do you feel proud of who you are and what you’ve accomplished? Would you feel proud talking about yourself and what you’ve done to friends and strangers, or do you feel embarrassed by the thought and would rather avoid that talk?

In order to stop being lonely we have to put ourselves out there, and that’s hard to do if you don’t have personal pride. Meeting new people, dating, and interacting with friends as they develop themselves pushes us to be introspective about who we are and what we’ve done with our lives. People generally don’t want to go to a party where they’ll feel humiliated because they feel they don’t have any accomplishments while everyone at the party will. It’s hard to feel like you are in a good place to go dating when you don’t feel proud of yourself and where you are in life.

People who are depressed tend to withdraw into themselves and avoid social contact with friends and family. Depressed people have a narrative of their lives, their abilities, and who they are that is negative. They’ll tell themselves things like, “no one will like me”, “I am pathetic”, “I can’t do anything right”, and “no one wants me as a friend.” This destructive self narrative is wrong. Overcoming it requires you know that it is merely a narrative you have created from your depression, and therefore it is possible to come up with another narrative to replace it. Treat yourself at least as well as you would treat a friend. You wouldn’t tell a friend that he is pathetic and unwanted when he is feeling down, so don’t ever say that to yourself.

Pride is incompatible with that kind of self destructive narrative. With pride comes social success. Pride is what lets you introduce yourself to a stranger, tell them who you are and what you do, and in a way that is genuinely open, friendly, and charismatic. If you lack pride you will be shut in and defensive about yourself and that will stop you from being your social best. At its worst you will be so defensive you will avoid meeting new people and going out with friends.

I’m not going to write too much about the loneliness epidemic itself except to say that it’s a problem that seemed to start about 10 years ago and it’s been getting worse since. There isn’t a clear understanding of what's causing it. The most accepted idea is that it is caused by social media leading people to live increasingly shut in lives where they don’t go out with friends and meet strangers because of their social media addiction.

I do believe social media plays a large part, but consider that we also spent the last decade suffering from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, followed by a global pandemic, and now housing and living expenses spiraling out of control.

Millions of people had their dreams shattered in the last decade, and their sense of who they should have been was destroyed. How does someone feel pride when they haven’t been able to accomplish anything they thought they should accomplish?

According to one survey 25% of American Millennials are living with their parents. High housing costs and the poor job market for most of the 2010s have left deep scars on Millennials and now Gen Z. No wonder so many can’t find the will and energy to assert themselves socially, go to parties, organize parties, join clubs, or go dating.

As an individual you really only have one option to overcome loneliness: be active and assert yourself in the world. Put yourself out there socially even though you don’t feel comfortable. Socializing is a skill and if you’re lonely that skill has probably atrophied. To regain that skill you’ll need to push through the discomfort. Being assertive in the world also means doing things that make you feel proud of yourself.

“The way to happiness is freedom, and the way to freedom is courage.”

Pericles’s Funeral Oration

Ok maybe you don’t have that problem and have lots of pride in yourself but you are still finding it hard to meet with old friends and make new ones. You still feel isolated. Remember that it always takes at least two to socialize. If you feel great but the other person does not and shuts themselves in then you will not socialize either. Every person out there who doesn’t have enough pride to feel good about socializing is one less person for you, someone who is not suffering from this problem, to socialize with.

Overcoming this will require a two pronged approach. The first is personal–how you yourself find pride. The second is communal–how we help each other find pride.

Personal Pride

Your Personal Narrative

I mentioned earlier that you need to have a positive narrative in your life. Your story is the narrative you tell yourself about you, your history and your goals. It's also the story you tell about yourself to others. What you do, why you do it, what your dreams are, and where you are going. Be a good friend to yourself. Don’t be afraid to encourage yourself and tell yourself that you’re ok. Even if you can’t find the energy to actually believe what you’re saying you should do it anyway. It doesn’t hurt.

Remember too that many people are too depressed and lonely to come out and socialize. If the data is right then there is a huge number of very lonely people out there you are lonely with–you’re separated and don’t know each other, but you are together all the same in your loneliness.

Find What You Already Have to Feel Proud About

You are more than a job you do. There is a “you” that is separate from external things. I’m not a fan of the Stoic/Buddhist separation of the self from the external, uncontrollable outside world. I think the self is far more defined by what we do externally than they would be comfortable admitting. But I do think it’s important to find those parts of who you are deep down that act as the foundation of everything you do and, maybe more importantly, have the potential to do. Everyone can find pride in some part of themselves deep down.

You have come out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the worst global epidemic since the Spanish Flu, and all sorts of other major historic events on top of all the normal insanities that life throws at you. You are riding a wave of history and you have made it through it so far. You are ok.

Help People

Helping other people is one of the greatest sources of pride, and reassuring them that they are not alone and that they do have more to be proud of than they think will do wonders for both you and them.

Human beings are communal and we feel good helping each other. I work in education, and I can tell you I feel the most pride in my job during graduation ceremonies. My pride comes from knowing I played a part in helping others achieve.

Take an Achievement Mentality

An achievement mentality is one where you find pride in accomplishing a task rather than treating tasks as something you just have to suffer through. It is the difference between doing the dishes because you have to, and doing the dishes because keeping your place clean and tidy is an achievement. Yes it’s small, but that is fine.

An achievement mentality makes you prioritize finishing what you start. Doing the dishes because you have to leaves you with little positive incentive to finish it. You could do something you like better instead. An achievement mentality changes that so you get a good feeling when you actually finish a task.

An achievement mentality gives you two sources of pride. The first is that achievements will pile up as you gain them. Taking an achievement mentality towards little things like daily chores can be scaled up to the big stuff. I am writing this blog post and taking an achievement mentality makes me want to finish it. I could set it aside, but I want the good feeling that comes from finishing what I’ve started.

The more achievements you pile on big and small, the more you’ll have reason to feel proud of yourself. You’ll feel proud of yourself because you feel like you are achieving things, and you’ll feel proud because of what those achievements are doing for your life. It’s easier to feel proud of yourself when you take care of the little achievements, and you’ll have every reason to feel proud of yourself when the big achievements pile up.

Have Pride in Your Body

Stay healthy. The better you keep your body the more you’ll be proud of the skin you walk around with every day. Every workout is an achievement, and this can help you feel good about yourself and your body. It's an excellent way to cultivate pride in your physical abilities and accomplishments.

Your physical presence in the world is more than just your health though. The way you walk, take up space in the world, and dress all have an effect on your sense of pride as well. These are the ways you assert yourself in the physical world after all, and it’s studied as “embodied cognition.”

So you should dress to embody the kind of person and mentality you want to feel. Dress so that you can feel good when you are at work, when you are walking around town, and yes, you should even dress in a way that makes you feel satisfied with how you look when you’re at home alone. Feeling good about how you look even when you’re alone is good for your pride.

Communal Pride

The best political system is the one that helps the most people reach their potential and become the best version of themselves. That is the starting point for any debate on how communities and legislators should help and it leads to the second vital part of living in a community: we want to feel wanted. When we feel wanted by our friends, community, and country we have reason to feel pride in ourselves. The best communities and countries make as many of their people as possible feel wanted.

Improve and Maintain a Good Labor Market

The better the labor market, the more people can have productive, fulfilling lives where they are able to grow, have purpose, and achieve their dreams. Having a good job is a signifier that you are wanted by your community and it gives you the resources to enjoy the benefits your nation offers. The more citizens have fulfilling work that pays well enough to afford the benefits of society, the more pride each citizen can feel in their own achievement and abilities.

A good labor market does something else than just give people good paying jobs with decent employers. It also gives people the ability to get promotions, grow their career, and switch to a new career. Instead of feeling duty bound to a crappy job people can feel like they are working to achieve something–like they are working towards something. A bad labor market limits this. It’s hard to feel pride when you feel duty bound to do your job only because you need the money to live and you know the chances of getting a promotion and raise and personal growth are slim.

Lower Housing Costs

A nation with high housing costs is a nation that pushes people into bad places to live. They have to live in small, dirty, poorly maintained homes that might be far from where they work and crowded with too many roommates. Anyone pushed by high housing costs into a bad living situation will naturally feel like they are unwanted by society–they are literally being pushed away from what are desirable places to live. The people the nation wants get the resources to live with dignity, the people it doesn’t want get shoved to the peripherals.

There is no reason to let this state continue. Governments should be pushing housing prices down so as many of their citizens as possible feel wanted and can live with dignity. Dignity is a key component of pride. It’s not easy to feel dignity when you can’t earn enough money to leave your parent’s basement.

Pride is crucial in our willingness to be social, and we need to cultivate it to overcome the loneliness epidemic that we are facing today. Pride comes through a positive self narrative about who you are. Remember that you are not alone in this, and that you can find pride through helping others and switching your thinking towards an achievement mentality. Meanwhile we as members of our communities and as political agents should think more about how to help as many people as possible feel wanted by society. Feeling wanted by our fellow human beings is the source of pride in who we are as social beings.