A book called "Loneliness as a Way of Life" might seem like an odd title from a political science professor at Amherst College, but Thomas Dumm has come up with an intriguing volume whose slimness belies its often-scholarly tone and wide range.

Begun as his wife was dying of cancer, Dumm set out to investigate the subject of loneliness as a way of understanding the world around him.

This modern world might be the "way of loneliness," but readers should not shy away from the state. In fact, Dumm asserts that loneliness is the impetus that gives us autonomy, the ability to make decisions on our own terms.

Although the feeling might be painful, it is only through loneliness that we become true individuals able to make rational decisions and able to interact with others as rational beings. And, in an odd twist, it is this true sense of self-awareness that leads us to seek the community of others.

There is, however, a flip side to all this freedom. Dumm contends that the modern world's confusion and fragmentation can lead to loneliness because they can block our relations with others. Although we might find solace in many -- some would say too many -- distractions, these distractions obscure, but don't obliterate, the separation that we have from others. What Dumm really is seeking, it sounds like, is that we embark on a deep self-examination, a meditation of sorts, a consideration of who we truly are in our souls.

In the end, though, this is a deeply personal book. Dumm is on a quest, and he finds that it is through his use of language, his ability to write, that he has "come to realize that as alone as we are, we are not only alone." It's a beautiful sentiment when you think about it. We must embrace what is not here to truly experience what is here. It is a journey that we all must take, each in our own way. Some would call it spirituality. Some would call it religion.

Return to Top

A book called Loneliness as a Way of Life might seem like an odd title from a political science professor at Amherst College, but Thomas Dumm has come up with an intriguing volume whose slimness belies its often-scholarly tone and wide range. Beginning as his wife was dying of cancer, Dumm set out to investigate the subject of loneliness as a way of understanding the world around him.

This modern world might be the "way of loneliness," but readers should not shy away from the state. In fact, Dumm asserts that loneliness is the impetus that gives us autonomy, the ability to make decisions on our own terms.

Although the feeling might be painful, it is only through loneliness that we become true individuals able to make rational decisions and able to interact with others as rational beings. And, in an odd twist, it is this true sense of self-awareness that leads us to seek the community of others:

"Our lonely way of being connects the innermost to the outermost, the personal to the political, and the trauma of individuals to the formation of the state in strange and attenuated ways."

There is, however, a flip side to all this freedom. Dumm contends that the modern world's confusion and fragmentation can lead to loneliness because they can block our relations with others. Although we might find solace in many -- some would say too many -- distractions, which our lives throw at us seemingly at every minute of every day, these distractions obscure but don't obliterate the separation that we have from others. What Dumm really wants, or so it sounds, is that we embark on a deep self-examination, a meditation of sorts, a consideration of who we truly are in our souls.

Using a range of literary texts and essays, he suggests that loneliness is a creation of the modern age. In fact, he calls King Lear's daughter Cordelia the first truly modern person because of the decisions she makes.

In the end, though, this is a deeply personal book. Dumm is on a quest, and he finds that it is through his use of language, his ability to write, that he has "come to realize that as alone as we are, we are not only alone."

It's a beautiful sentiment when you think about it. We must embrace what is not here to truly experience what is here. It is a journey that we all must take, each in our own way. Some would call it spirituality. Some would call it religion.

Dumm has a simpler explanation. Check out where you are. Acknowledge what you have and what is missing: " … being present at the place of our absence is what it means to experience loneliness."

Return to Top

A book called "Loneliness as a Way of Life" might seem like an odd title from a political-science professor at Amherst College, but Thomas Dumm has come up with an intriguing volume whose slimness belies its often-scholarly tone and wide range.

Begun as his wife was dying of cancer, Dumm set out to investigate the subject of loneliness as a way of understanding the world around him.

This modern world might be the "way of loneliness," but readers should not shy away from the state. In fact, Dumm asserts that loneliness is the impetus that gives us autonomy, the ability to make decisions on our own terms.

Although the feeling might be painful, it is only through loneliness that we become true individuals able to make rational decisions and able to interact with others as rational beings. And, in an odd twist, it is this true sense of self-awareness that leads us to seek the community of others: "Our lonely way of being connects the innermost to the outermost, the personal to the political, and the trauma of individuals to the formation of the state in strange and attenuated ways."

There is, however, a flip side to all this freedom. Dumm contends that the modern world's confusion and fragmentation can lead to loneliness because they can block our relations with others.

Although we might find solace in many -- some would say too many -- distractions, which our lives throw at us seemingly at every minute of every day, these distractions obscure but don't obliterate the separation that we have from others.

What Dumm really is seeking, it sounds like, is that we embark on a deep self-examination, a meditation of sorts, a consideration of who we truly are in our souls.

Loneliness as a Way of Life by Thomas Dumm Harvard University Press, $23.95

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"Loneliness as a Way of Life"

by Thomas Dunn

Harvard University Press, 194 pp., $23.95

A book called "Loneliness as a Way of Life" might seem like an odd title from a political-science professor at Amherst College, but Thomas Dumm has come up with an intriguing volume whose slimness belies its often-scholarly tone and wide range. Begun as his wife was dying of cancer, Dumm set out to investigate the subject of loneliness as a way of understanding the world around him.

This modern world might be the "way of loneliness," but readers should not shy away from the state. In fact, Dumm asserts that loneliness is the impetus that gives us autonomy, the ability to make decisions on our own terms.

Although the feeling might be painful, it is only through loneliness that we become true individuals able to make rational decisions and able to interact with others as rational beings.

And, in an odd twist, it is this true sense of self-awareness that leads us to seek the community of others: "Our lonely way of being connects the innermost to the outermost, the personal to the political, and the trauma of individuals to the formation of the state in strange and attenuated ways."

There is, however, a flip side to all this freedom. Dumm contends that the modern world's confusion and fragmentation can lead to loneliness because they can block our relations with others. Although we might find solace in many distractions, which our lives throw at us seemingly at every minute of every day, these distractions obscure but don't obliterate the separation that we have from others.

What Dumm really is seeking, is that we embark on a deep self-examination, a meditation of sorts, a consideration of who we truly are in our souls.

Using a range of literary texts and essays, he suggests that loneliness is a creation of the modern age. In fact, he calls King Lear's daughter Cordelia the first truly modern person because of the decisions she makes.

In the end, though, this is a deeply personal book. Dumm is on a quest, and he finds that it is through his use of language, his ability to write, that he has "come to realize that as alone as we are, we are not only alone." We must embrace what is not here to truly experience what is here.

It is a journey that we all must take, each in our own way. Some would call it spirituality. Some would call it religion.

Dumm has a simpler explanation. Check out where you are. Acknowledge what you have and what is missing: "(B)eing present at the place of our absence is what it means to experience loneliness."

Return to Top

A book called "Loneliness as a Way of Life" (Harvard University Press, 194 pps., $23.95) might seem like an odd title from a political science professor at Amherst College, but Thomas Dumm has come up with an intriguing volume whose slimness belies its often-scholarly tone and wide range. Begun as his wife was dying of cancer, Dumm set out to investigate the subject of loneliness as a way of understanding the world around him.

This modern world might be the "way of loneliness," but readers should not shy away from the state. In fact, Dumm asserts that loneliness is the impetus that gives us autonomy, the ability to make decisions on our own terms.

Although the feeling might be painful, it is only through loneliness that we become true individuals able to make rational decisions and able to interact with others as rational beings. And, in an odd twist, it is this true sense of self-awareness that leads us to seek the community of others: "Our lonely way of being connects the innermost to the outermost, the personal to the political, and the trauma of individuals to the formation of the state in strange and attenuated ways."

There is, however, a flip side to all this freedom. Dumm contends that the modern world's confusion and fragmentation can lead to loneliness because they can block our relations with others. Although we might find solace in many - some would say too many - distractions, which our lives throw at us seemingly at every minute of every day, these distractions obscure but don't obliterate the separation that we have from others. What Dumm really is seeking, it sounds like, is that we embark on a deep self-examination, a meditation of sorts, a consideration of who we truly are in our souls.

Using a range of literary texts and essays, he suggests that loneliness is a creation of the modern age. In fact, he calls King Lear's daughter Cordelia the first truly modern person because of the decisions she makes.

In the end, though, this is a deeply personal book. Dumm is on a quest, and he finds that it is through his use of language, his ability to write, that he has "come to realize that as alone as we are, we are not only alone."

Return to Top

A book called “Loneliness as a Way of Life” (University Press, $23.95) might seem like an odd title from a political science professor at Amherst College, but Thomas Dumm has come up with an intriguing volume whose slimness belies its often-scholarly tone and wide range. Begun as his wife was dying of cancer, Dumm set out to investigate the subject of loneliness as a way of understanding the world around him.

This modern world might be the “way of loneliness,” but readers should not shy away from the state. In fact, Dumm asserts that loneliness is the impetus that gives us autonomy, the ability to make decisions on our own terms.

Although the feeling might be painful, it is only through loneliness that we become true individuals able to make rational decisions and able to interact with others as rational beings. And, in an odd twist, it is this true sense of self-awareness that leads us to seek the community of others: “Our lonely way of being connects the innermost to the outermost, the personal to the political, and the trauma of individuals to the formation of the state in strange and attenuated ways.”

There is, however, a flip side to all this freedom. Dumm contends that the modern world's confusion and fragmentation can lead to loneliness because they can block our relations with others. Although we might find solace in many — some would say too many — distractions, which our lives throw at us seemingly at every minute of every day, these distractions obscure but don't obliterate the separation that we have from others. What Dumm really is seeking, it sounds like, is that we embark on a deep self-examination, a meditation of sorts, a consideration of who we truly are in our souls.

Using a range of literary texts and essays, he suggests that loneliness is a creation of the modern age. In fact, he calls King Lear's daughter Cordelia the first truly modern person because of the decisions she makes.

In the end, though, this is a deeply personal book. Dumm is on a quest, and he finds that it is through his use of language, his ability to write, that he has “come to realize that as alone as we are, we are not only alone.” It's a beautiful sentiment when you think about it. We must embrace what is not here to truly experience what is here. It is a journey that we all must take, each in our own way. Some would call it spirituality. Some would call it religion.

Dumm has a simpler explanation. Check out where you are. Acknowledge what you have and what is missing: “(B)eing present at the place of our absence is what it means to experience loneliness.”

Return to Top

A book called "Loneliness as a Way of Life" might seem like an odd title from a political science professor at Amherst College, but Thomas Dumm has come up with an intriguing volume whose slimness belies its often scholarly tone and wide range. Begun as his wife was dying of cancer, Dumm set out to investigate the subject of loneliness as a way of understanding the world around him.

This modern world might be the "way of loneliness," but readers should not shy away from the state. In fact, Dumm asserts that loneliness is the impetus that gives us autonomy, the ability to make decisions on our own terms.

Although the feeling might be painful, it is only through loneliness that we become true individuals able to make rational decisions and able to interact with others as rational beings. And, in an odd twist, it is this true sense of self-awareness that leads us to seek the community of others: "Our lonely way of being connects the innermost to the outermost, the personal to the political, and the trauma of individuals to the formation of the state in strange and attenuated ways."

There is, however, a flip side to all this freedom. Dumm contends that the modern world's confusion and fragmentation can lead to loneliness because they can block our relations with others. Although we might find solace in many — some would say too many — distractions, which our lives throw at us seemingly at every minute of every day, these distractions obscure but don't obliterate the separation that we have from others. What Dumm really is seeking, it sounds like, is that we embark on a deep self-examination, a meditation of sorts, a consideration of who we truly are in our souls.

Using a range of literary texts and essays, he suggests that loneliness is a creation of the modern age. In fact, he calls King Lear's daughter Cordelia the first truly modern person because of the decisions she makes.

In the end, though, this is a deeply personal book. Dumm is on a quest, and he finds that it is through his use of language, his ability to write, that he has "come to realize that as alone as we are, we are not only alone."

It's a beautiful sentiment when you think about it. We must embrace what is not here to truly experience what is here. It is a journey that we all must take, each in our own way. Some would call it spirituality. Some would call it religion.

Dumm has a simpler explanation. Check out where you are. Acknowledge what you have and what is missing: "Being present at the place of our absence is what it means to experience loneliness."

Return to Top

A book called "Loneliness as a Way of Life" might seem like an odd title from a political science professor at Amherst College, but Thomas Dumm has come up with an intriguing volume whose slimness belies its often-scholarly tone and wide range. Begun as his wife was dying of cancer, Dumm set out to investigate the subject of loneliness as a way of understanding the world around him.

This modern world might be the "way of loneliness," but readers should not shy away from the state. In fact, Dumm asserts that loneliness is the impetus that gives us autonomy, the ability to make decisions on our own terms.

Although the feeling might be painful, it is only through loneliness that we become true individuals able to make rational decisions and able to interact with others as rational beings. And, in an odd twist, it is this true sense of self-awareness that leads us to seek the community of others: "Our lonely way of being connects the innermost to the outermost, the personal to the political, and the trauma of individuals to the formation of the state in strange and attenuated ways."

There is, however, a flip side to all this freedom. Dumm contends that the modern world's confusion and fragmentation can lead to loneliness because they can block our relations with others. Although we might find solace in many -- some would say too many -- distractions, which our lives throw at us seemingly at every minute of every day, these distractions obscure but don't obliterate the separation that we have from others. What Dumm really is seeking, it sounds like, is that we embark on a deep self-examination, a meditation of sorts, a consideration of who we truly are in our souls.

Using a range of literary texts and essays, he suggests that loneliness is a creation of the modern age. In fact, he calls King Lear's daughter Cordelia the first truly modern person because of the decisions she makes.

In the end, though, this is a deeply personal book. Dumm is on a quest, and he finds that it is through his use of language, his ability to write, that he has "come to realize that as alone as we are, we are not only alone." It's a beautiful sentiment when you think about it. We must embrace what is not here to truly experience what is here. It is a journey that we all must take, each in our own way. Some would call it spirituality. Some would call it religion.

Dumm has a simpler explanation. Check out where you are. Acknowledge what you have and what is missing: "[B]eing present at the place of our absence is what it means to experience loneliness."

Return to Top

A book called “Loneliness as a Way of Life” might seem like an odd title from a political science professor at Amherst College, but Thomas Dumm has come up with an intriguing volume whose slimness belies its often-scholarly tone and wide range. Begun as his wife was dying of cancer, Dumm set out to investigate the subject of loneliness as a way of understanding the world around him.

This modern world might be the “way of loneliness,” but readers should not shy away from the state. In fact, Dumm asserts that loneliness is the impetus that gives us autonomy, the ability to make decisions on our own terms.

Although the feeling might be painful, it is only through loneliness that we become true individuals able to make rational decisions and able to interact with others as rational beings. And, in an odd twist, it is this true sense of self-awareness that leads us to seek the community of others: “Our lonely way of being connects the innermost to the outermost, the personal to the political, and the trauma of individuals to the formation of the state in strange and attenuated ways.”

There is, however, a flip side to all this freedom. Dumm contends that the modern world's confusion and fragmentation can lead to loneliness because they can block our relations with others. Although we might find solace in many - some would say too many - distractions, which our lives throw at us seemingly at every minute of every day, these distractions obscure but don't obliterate the separation that we have from others. What Dumm really is seeking, it sounds like, is that we embark on a deep self-examination, a meditation of sorts, a consideration of who we truly are in our souls.

Using a range of literary texts and essays, he suggests that loneliness is a creation of the modern age. In fact, he calls King Lear's daughter Cordelia the first truly modern person because of the decisions she makes.

In the end, though, this is a deeply personal book. Dumm is on a quest, and he finds that it is through his use of language, his ability to write, that he has “ to realize that as alone as we are, we are not only alone.” It's a beautiful sentiment when you think about it. We must embrace what is not here to truly experience what is here. It is a journey that we all must take, each in our own way. Some would call it spirituality. Some would call it religion.

Dumm has a simpler explanation. Check out where you are. Acknowledge what you have and what is missing: “(B)eing present at the place of our absence is what it means to experience loneliness.”

Return to Top

A book called “Loneliness as a Way of Life” might seem like an odd title from a political science professor at Amherst College, but Thomas Dumm has come up with an intriguing volume whose slimness belies its oftenscholarly tone and wide range. Begun as his wife was dying of cancer, Dumm set out to investigate the subject of loneliness as a way of understanding the world around him.

This modern world might be the “way of loneliness,” but readers should not shy away from the state. In fact, Dumm asserts that loneliness is the impetus that gives us autonomy, the ability to make decisions on our own terms.

Although the feeling might be painful, it is only through loneliness that we become true individuals able to make rational decisions and able to interact with others as rational beings. And, in an odd twist, it is this true sense of selfawareness that leads us to seek the community of others: “Our lonely way of being connects the innermost to the outermost, the personal to the political, and the trauma of individuals to the formation of the state in strange and attenuated ways.”

There is, however, a flip side to all this freedom. Dumm contends that the modern world's confusion and fragmentation can lead to loneliness because they can block our relations with others. Although we might find solace in many -- some would say too many—distractions, which our lives throw at us seemingly at every minute of every day, these distractions obscure but don't obliterate the separation that we have from others. What Dumm really is seeking, it sounds like, is that we embark on a deep selfexamination, a meditation of sorts, a consideration of who we truly are in our souls.

Using a range of literary texts and essays, he suggests that loneliness is a creation of the modern age. In fact, he calls King Lear's daughter Cordelia the first truly modern person because of the decisions she makes.

In the end, though, this is a deeply personal book. Dumm is on a quest, and he finds that it is through his use of language, his ability to write, that he has “come to realize that as alone as we are, we are not only alone.” It's a beautiful sentiment when you think about it. We must embrace what is not here to truly experience what is here. It is a journey that we all must take, each in our own way. Some would call it spirituality. Some would call it religion.

Dumm has a simpler explanation. Check out where you are. Acknowledge what you have and what is missing: “[B]eing present at the place of our absence is what it means to experience loneliness.”

“Loneliness as a Way of Life,” by Thomas Dumm, published by Harvard University Press, $23.95 in hardcover, ISBN: 978-0674031135© Los Angeles Times, 2009

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Are we always either lonely or not? Or does loneliness ebb and flow, increasing sharply -- at least for the bereaved -- around Christmastime?

Loneliness is certainly worth thinking about at this time of year.

For Thomas Dumm, who teaches politics at Amherst College, the topic is no abstraction: He lost his wife and mother in recent years, and his daughter has moved out.

Yet his Loneliness as a Way of Life arrives as a bizarre, fascinating book -- more a document than a coherent study.

In this inadvertent portrait of its tortured-soul author -- an angry writer imprisoned in the hot air of academic discourse -- it makes the point Dumm thinks he's making overtly: that our greatest loneliness is a failure to connect to our true selves.

At the outset, Dumm declares himself most interested in the "political dimension" of loneliness. For the first two-thirds of the book, he operates as a typical expositor of high-toned cultural material, including Moby Dick and the film Paris, Texas.

Only on Page 95, when Dumm surprisingly leaps into discussion of his marital wars with his wife before lung cancer claimed her, does the book come almost frighteningly alive as Dumm's theoretical vocabulary disappears.

The seventh of nine children, he acknowledges having been "a difficult child, prone to screaming fits, angry, bored, sharp-tongued, sometimes mean."

He writes that his mother, "who could not love me and whom I learned not to love in return," would lock him "in a cubbyhole closet under the staircase in the dining room."

From his mother, he writes, "I first gained my sense of loneliness as a way of life."

Next he recounts his wife's struggle with cancer and treatments that extended her life for more than four years.

Suddenly, Dumm's writing takes on incantatory concreteness and power:

"In every home with a seriously sick person we find the debris of sickness -- the clotted tissues, the bedpans, the medicine bottles, heating pads, pillows and reclining chairs, the oxygen machines and nasal tubes . . . The house becomes a strangely comfortable jumble of life and death."

Then the window into Dumm's life closes in a flash, as he takes us back to the lifeless seminar.

The anger, though, remains.

It must be terribly lonely to be Dumm, entitled to his grief and rage, and have to disguise and encase both in the falseness of artificial academic rhetoric.

What he really wants -- understandably -- is to strike out at someone or something.

At book's end, Dumm informs us, in dispassionate voice, that loneliness is an "elemental part" of ourselves.

For sure.

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Loneliness as a Way of Life
By Thomas Dumm

Harvard University Press. 193 pp. $23.95

Are we always either lonely or not lonely? Or does loneliness ebb and flow, increasing sharply at times like this - at least for the bereaved - just before Christmas?

It's confusing how we use the word and its cognates.

"One man alone" can suggest something positive - intrepid independence, an Ayn Rand hero. "Loner" can go either way, depending on whether it describes a beguilingly romantic rock star or a neighborhood creep.

"Lonesome" makes you feel like comforting the unfortunate party. "Solitude" sounds inviting, but "solitary" - especially when you add a capital "S" - does not.

To be sure, loneliness is worth thinking about at holiday time. For Thomas Dumm, who teaches politics at Amherst College, it's no abstraction. A widower, he lost both his wife and mother in recent years, and his daughter has moved out. He seems an ideal guide to the topic.

Yet Loneliness as a Way of Life arrives as a bizarre, fascinating book, more a document than a coherent study. In its inadvertent portrait of its tortured-soul author, an angry writer imprisoned in the hot air of academic discourse, it makes the point Dumm thinks he's making overtly: that our greatest loneliness is a failure to connect to our true selves.

At the outset of Loneliness, Dumm declares himself most interested in the "political dimension" of loneliness. For the first two-thirds of the book he operates as a typical expositor of high-toned cultural material. He expatiates on King Lear. He ponders Hannah Arendt's claim that totalitarianism seeks loneliness among citizens as a way of controlling them. He interminably annotates Death of a Salesman, Moby Dick, and the film Paris, Texas - not much of that commentary illuminates loneliness.

Meanwhile, an unacademic anger shoots from the book's pages at odd points: blunt contempt for salesmen in general and their "complete insubstantiality," vituperative hatred for George W. Bush, "his sovereign madness, his stupidity."

Only on Page 95, when Dumm surprisingly leaps into discussion of his marital wars with his wife, Brenda, before lung cancer struck her down, does the book come almost frighteningly alive as Dumm's bland, theoretical vocabulary disappears. Indeed, he plunges us into his upbringing with a speed that induces vertigo. The seventh of nine children of - yes - an insurance salesman, Dumm admits to having been "a difficult child, prone to screaming fits, angry, bored, sharp-tongued, sometimes mean." He writes that his mother, "who could not love me and whom I learned not to love in return," would lock him away "in a cubbyhole closet under the staircase in the dining room." From his mother, writes Dumm, "I first gained my sense of loneliness as a way of life."

Next he recounts how pleural mesothelioma took Brenda after "experimental surgery that removed more of her insides than we thought possible" and "the most brutal and intensive chemotherapy and radiation treatment available extended her life for four and a half years."

Suddenly, Dumm's writing takes on incantatory concreteness and power:

"In every home with a seriously sick person we find the debris of sickness - the clotted tissues, the bedpans, the medicine bottles, heating pads, pillows and reclining chairs, the oxygen machines and nasal tubes - residues of the technologies brought to bear against the foreign agent, the failing part. . . . These ordinary objects commingle with the newspapers and magazines, the food in the refrigerator, the calendars of the children's events. . . . The house becomes a strangely comfortable jumble of life and death."

And then the window into Dumm's life closes. In a flash, he delivers us back to the lifeless seminar. More attacks on the "nihilism of capital" he's mentioned earlier. Attempts to explain the opaque thinker Judith Butler on "relationality." Exposition of Freud on narcissism.

Only the anger remains. And the title of this book takes on greater meaning. It must be terribly lonely to be Thomas Dumm, entitled to his grief and rage, and have to disguise and encase them in the falseness of artificial academic rhetoric. Plainly, what he really wants - understandably - is to curse the darkness and strike out at someone or something.

At the end, Dumm informs us, in dispassionate voice, that loneliness is an "elemental part" of ourselves. For sure.

In other words, enjoy the holidays. But don't be fooled by those crowds around you. They're just hordes of lonely people, getting together.

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In "Four Christmases," the hit holiday movie, Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn star as a happy young San Francisco couple, Kate and Brad, who navigate the merry minefield of four Christmas visits to their respective parents' homes in one single day.

Amid the gags about puking infants and do-it-yourself satellite-dish installations, "Four Christmases" mocks the storied holiday rituals designed to bring us together in cozy celebration. One by one the traditions -- sometimes literally -- go down in flames. The gift exchanges by the Christmas tree, the special holiday food and the pageantry of the Christmas story acted out at church fail to cement fractured family ties.

As the frantic couple comically race from one Christmas celebration to the next, Kate complains to Brad: "I feel like we're not really connecting. I feel like you're not really present."

"Four Christmases" invites us to laugh at how the holidays can make us feel lonely and isolated, even when we're surrounded by our loved ones and family members. It is small wonder this comedy is a hit as the holidays cause an awful lot of people to feel lonely in a crowd.

Our profound need to feel connected is hardly a modern discovery. Yet science is now bringing us closer to the biological roots of loneliness, revealing how it affects our mental and physical health.

In very different ways, two recent books on loneliness argue that feeling chronically alone is a powerful sign to examine and strive to change our lives. And now is the season to start.

"The holidays can put us into such a harried state that we're not actually able to connect with friends and family, to relax and enjoy their company," says John Cacioppo, a neuroscientist and psychologist at the University of Chicago, and co-author of Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection.

Worse, all those holiday rituals of togetherness can serve to highlight just how far apart from each other we really feel.

Loneliness is unhealthy

"Events that throw into relief the possibility of overcoming our loneliness are sometimes those that leave us most wrung out," says Thomas Dumm, a political scientist at Amherst College, and author of Loneliness as a Way of Life.

While most of us can successfully weather a few hours -- or days -- of the holiday blues, about 20 percent of people -- roughly 60 million Americans -- feel sufficiently socially isolated for it to be a major source of unhappiness in their lives. In fact, many lonely people are surrounded by friends and family, yet don't feel close to any of them. Such intimate isolation -- the feeling that no one understands who you are -- appears to be on the rise. A study by sociologists at Duke University and the University of Arizona found that between 1985 and 2004 the average number of friends with whom Americans felt they could "discuss important matters" had dropped from three to two.

For decades, scientists have known that social isolation impacts our health in ways comparable to the effects of high blood pressure, lack of exercise, obesity and smoking. In short, being lonely is bad for you. But what Cacioppo and his colleagues have found is that it's not literally being alone, but the subjective experience known as loneliness that causes harm.

"Whether you're at home with your family, working in an office crowded with bright and attractive young people, touring Disneyland or sitting alone in a fleabag hotel on the wrong side of town, chronic feelings of loneliness can drive a cascade of physiological events that actually accelerates the aging process," he writes.

While brief periods of loneliness, such as your first semester away at college, don't appear to cause grave harm, chronic loneliness does. The long-term lonely are likely to suffer more diseases at an earlier age and die younger. By middle age, the lonely drink more alcohol, eat more fat and exercise less than their more social fellows. The experience of feeling lonely affects stress hormones, immune function and heart health.

One popular theory for why loneliness is linked to disease and early death is known as the "social control hypothesis." As Cacioppo explains, "We thought that the explanation was if you didn't have a spouse, if you didn't have friends, there was no one to kind of badger you to take care of yourself." But research has found that such loving nagging alone cannot account for all of the health impacts associated with loneliness.

Why do our bodies go haywire over being lonely? Cacioppo believes that loneliness developed in humans at a time when social isolation very literally meant death.

"If we're standing with a stick by ourselves, trying to fend off wild beasts," he said, "we're not going to live long."

How to end loneliness

Cacioppo believes that people can overcome loneliness, even chronic loneliness. After all, our biology is telling us to do just that. Knowing that your lonely state is a defensive one, he says, is the first step to recovery. To begin the process, Cacioppo councils taking on low-risk social encounters -- like feeding the hungry at a soup kitchen -- before venturing into more challenging social milieu.

"If you're feeding other people, you'll find that those people are very grateful and very positive in return, and then you end up having this warm glow of human interaction," he said.

Not everyone who thinks seriously about loneliness believes that comfort can begin to be found in such small gestures. Dumm sees loneliness as a condition of our modern era, rather than a biological holdover from our wild-beast-fending-off past. "The idea that by going out and volunteering in a soup kitchen, you're going to alleviate a deep and fundamental sense of aloneness, is to try to put a Band-Aid on a gaping wound," he says.

Dumm views loneliness as a part of the human condition, which has become more pervasive in our post-industrial society, where family ties have weakened and entertainment serves as a ready substitute for social interaction.

"The very texture of modern life is inflected by loneliness," writes Dumm. Movingly, he reckons his own grief at the death of his wife, as well as his own mother's loneliness amid the tumult of bearing and bringing up nine children.

"After her childbearing years had ended," he writes, "my mother used to say that she missed being pregnant because that meant she would have a few days off in the hospital when it came time for delivery, a little postpartum vacation, where she could stay in bed all day while the nurses served her meals."

For Dumm, loneliness is really about loss. He argues that we have to be willing to reflect on the tragic dimensions of human existence, including the inevitability of our own deaths, to face and ameliorate our loneliness: "That we are death-bound is not news, and yet perhaps it is the most important news, the only news that matters," he writes.

Only through a willingness to examine how we live our lives can the ache of loneliness be transformed into its less painful companion: solitude.

"Solitude is a healthy way of being alone with oneself. One engages in an inner dialogue," Dumm says. "One of the things that our culture really tries to discourage is thinking, reflection, seriousness. I think that we have to have more confidence in our ability to be thoughtful people. We spend an enormous amount of time worrying about ourselves, but not an awful lot of time caring for ourselves. Caring for ourselves means thinking very seriously and carefully about the conditions under which we're living our lives, and how others are living theirs, and taking instruction from the way that others have lived their lives."

That might not make for a good punch line in a holiday blockbuster, but when all the presents are unwrapped and the relatives have gone home, it could make the New Year a little brighter.

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"Loneliness as a Way of Life" by Thomas Dumm (Harvard University Press, $23.95)

Are we always either lonely or not lonely? Or does loneliness ebb and flow?

It's confusing how we use the word and its cognates.

"One man alone" can suggest something positive -- intrepid independence, an Ayn Rand hero. "Loner" can go either way, depending on whether it describes a beguilingly romantic rock star or a neighborhood creep.

"Lonesome" makes you feel like comforting the unfortunate party. "Solitude" sounds inviting, but "solitary" -- especially when you add a capital "S" -- does not.

To be sure, loneliness is worth thinking about. For Thomas Dumm, who teaches politics at Amherst College, it's no abstraction. A widower, he lost both his wife and mother in recent years, and his daughter has moved out. He seems an ideal guide to the topic.

Yet "Loneliness as a Way of Life" arrives as a bizarre, fascinating book, more a document than a coherent study. In its inadvertent portrait of its tortured-soul author, an angry writer imprisoned in the hot air of academic discourse, it makes the point Dumm thinks he's making overtly: that our greatest loneliness is a failure to connect to our true selves.

At the outset of "Loneliness," Dumm declares himself most interested in the "political dimension" of loneliness. For the first two-thirds of the book he operates as a typical expositor of high-toned cultural material. He expatiates on "King Lear." He ponders Hannah Arendt's claim that totalitarianism seeks loneliness among citizens as a way of controlling them. He interminably annotates "Death of a Salesman," "Moby Dick," and the film "Paris, Texas" -- not much of that commentary illuminates loneliness.

Meanwhile, an unacademic anger shoots from the book's pages at odd points: blunt contempt for salesmen in general and their "complete insubstantiality," vituperative hatred for George W. Bush, "his sovereign madness, his stupidity."

Only on Page 95, when Dumm surprisingly leaps into discussion of his marital wars with his wife, Brenda, before lung cancer struck her down, does the book come almost frighteningly alive as Dumm's bland, theoretical vocabulary disappears. Indeed, he plunges us into his upbringing with a speed that induces vertigo.

The seventh of nine children of -- yes -- an insurance salesman, Dumm admits to having been "a difficult child, prone to screaming fits." From his mother, writes Dumm, "I first gained my sense of loneliness as a way of life."

Next he recounts how pleural mesothelioma took Brenda, and suddenly, Dumm's writing takes on incantatory concreteness and power:

And then the window into Dumm's life closes. In a flash, he delivers us back to the lifeless seminar. More attacks on the "nihilism of capital" he's mentioned earlier. Attempts to explain the opaque thinker Judith Butler on "relationality." Exposition of Freud on narcissism.

Only the anger remains. And the title of this book takes on greater meaning. It must be terribly lonely to be Thomas Dumm, entitled to his grief and rage, and have to disguise and encase them in the falseness of artificial academic rhetoric. Plainly, what he really wants -- understandably -- is to strike out.

At the end, Dumm informs us, in dispassionate voice, that loneliness is an "elemental part" of ourselves. For sure.

Copyright © 2009 The Wichita Eagle

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