How Social Isolation Kills

How Social Isolation Kills
Posted by Socialist WebZine On 9:59 PM

by Billy Wharton

Sitting down to create a life plan is a time for, people, especially young people, to demonstrate their hopes for the future. For the young the possibilities seem endless so you will hear a good sprinkling of pro-basketball player, astronaut and race car driver during these conversations. Few would identify the fate of an elderly couple and their son in the Japanese city of Saitama as desirable. Last week, the emaciated bodies of these three people were found in their apartment. They had died of starvation and no one had even bothered to check. Isolated, despondent and starving may not make into the typical life plan, but it is increasingly becoming a real possibility for people in the advanced capitalist economies all over the world.

Perhaps even more shocking is the fact that the bodies of the three victims remained in the apartment one month after they had starved to death. They were only discovered when the landlord of the apartment complex called the police and went with officers to demand payment of months overdue rent. Newspaper reports indicate that the family was several months behind on the rent and that electric and gas service to the apartment had already been shut off. Neighbors reported that the family had asked at least one neighbor for assistance, but was turned away and told to go to the Social Welfare office.

The fact that the landlord was the only person interested in the fate of the family is a stunning, yet increasingly familiar, example of the social isolation many people experience today. Of course, neither the landlord nor the police were driven by humanistic impulses to check on the family, their visit was motivated purely by money. The relationship between the family and the landlord was a market relationship – the landlord using his property ownership to extract money from the family who might otherwise face homelessness. Nothing unusual here. Most of us are engaged in similar relationships.

What’s new about the situation that led to these deaths by starvation, is that these market relations are now often the only human relationships people participate in. A profound sense of social isolation has been growing inside of capitalist society. As people are forced to spend more time at work, spaces for social interaction collapse and daily life is reduced to a series of market relations arbitrated by money. This is particularly true in Japan, where decades of economic decline have undermined social bonds of solidarity, by introducing casual labor – jobs with no guarantee of future employment, rising homelessness and a generational dislocation that has left the elderly to fend for themselves.

http://socialistwebzine.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-social-isolation-kills.html

I see that all over the place now - even in our own lives. People I know are so overwhelmed with work that there is very little time to see each other. I feel fortunate to even know my neighbors.