Sarah Carey

Actually, the statistics are unbelievable.

Loneliness kills loneliness.

Loneliness kills in far greater numbers than cardiac disease.

It's just extraordinary, the correlations.

And that Adam Phillips book that I mentioned, he talks about wealthy people and then they might retire and then they might start a charity, volunteer.

And they go, oh, my God, I can't believe it.

This is the happiest I've ever felt in my life.

When you start doing things for other people, that is what gives you the biggest boost and the biggest meaning in your life.

And I think in terms of the trajectory of society, and maybe this is linked to the religion piece as well, it's the concept of individuality.

And I think the more money you get, the more people expect you to be able to conduct and manage your own life by yourself.

And that you just come into society for happy lunches and going to matches and things like that.

And I think that sense that actually we're not rocks, we're not islands.

You actually really still are dependent on your village.

However, that village may be constructed.

It may not be the geographic village.

You know, it could be, you know, your wider circle of friends, no matter where they are in the world.

But absolutely.

And there are two things we keep quoting other philosophers and experts, but of course, that's because they've been thinking about this more deeply than we have.

Tom Inglis, the UCD sociologist, I remember him being on my news talk show years and years ago and talking about religion.

He said that in the 1960s, as, you know, the reverence for institutional religion began to break down, you had a kind of spiritualism where people wanted to believe without belonging.