Loneliness and Our Craving for Community We are, a lot of us, a great deal sadder, more anxious, more incomplete and more restless than we really need to be because of something very large that’s missing from our lives. What’s worse, we don’t even know what this thing is and how much we crave it, because we don’t have the right concepts, experiences or encouragement to help us locate it. What we long for and are slowly dying without is: community. They tell us that we are suffering for all sorts of other reasons: because we’re afraid of intimacy, or are low on serotonin, are beset by anxiety or trauma, or are chronically dysfunctional around attachment or trust. These may be accurate enough descriptions of our symptoms, but they arguably leave the real causes of our miseries untouched. To come to the point, it’s worth holding on to a basic historical insight: for most of our time on this planet (by which one really means, for 99% of homo sapiens’ evolutionary existence), we lived in communities. That is, groups of 20 or 30 people who worked together, cooked communal meals, and lived and died around each other. For most of history, we’d watch the sun going down with the same people we knew deeply, trusted, sometimes bickered with but overall felt overwhelmingly connected to. We’d shoot the breeze, we’d comfort each other when we were sad, we’d drop in unannounced on one another’s quarters, we’d chat over our pains and stresses and at special moments, we’d dance together and occasionally fall into ritual ecstatic states where the normal barriers between egos would dissolve.It’s only very late on in history that we’ve started living in condominiums, commuting to work in offices with people whose values we don’t share and eating for one in cities of ten million strangers. Of course, arguments from evolutionary history aren’t always useful. For most of history, we’ve suffered from chronic toothache and didn’t have access to hot baths – but no one would argue against our abandonment of our natural state in these areas. Nevertheless, holding on to the idea that we were once tribal and now most definitely are not can help us to put a finger on something that we may legitimately miss and urgently need to recover a semblance of. What happens to us outside of life in a tight-knit community? Well, firstly, we get very concerned – far too concerned – with falling in love, in love with one special person who – we’re told – will end our customary sadness and provide an answer to all our social needs. Unsurprisingly, this enormous pressure on what a relationship should be is the single greatest contributor to the collapse of unions that might, with more manageable expectations and a more close-knit friendship circle, be entirely viable. We end up having to throw a lot of people away when we want them to be that most cruel of things: everything. Secondly, the very pressure to be in a couple means we bolt into relationships that should never have started and stick far too long inside toxic situations out of terror of singlehood. Thirdly, in our alienated condition, the desire for connection can morph into a longing for extreme success, fame and renown: we grow materially wildly and insatiably ambitious out of an unquenched emotional need for nothing more esoteric than some good friends. Even if we do have some, they’re liable to be scattered around the world, cocooned in their own relationships or unavailable to us most of the time: we’ve let our terror of intruding on one another scupper a yet more precious need – one for an atmosphere of mutual assistance. Finally, our picture of what that nebulous category ‘other people’ is like grows very sombre because we meet one another not in person, but via the media, something which constantly gives us cause to believe that other people are fundamentally extreme, dangerous and cruel. Even though we collectively pride ourselves on living in highly innovative times, we remain absurdly traditional in thinking about our social setups. We have a million new apps a year, but no one ever seems to seek to reinvent how people might live together. Sadly, but understandably, communes don’t have a good reputation: one thinks of religious extremists, weird fanatics and messianic leaders. None of the genuine advantages of bourgeois life or simply of reasoned existence seem compatible with communal living. Furthermore, everything legal and commercial seems setup to frustrate any wish to live together: land costs a fortune, building is only for the very brave or the naive, and how would one work, who would do the laundry, what would the neighbours think…? Nevertheless, it’s worth pushing the imagination a little, and sidestepping some of the practical hurdles for long enough to get the mind working (the material questions can always be solved once an idea properly takes root). So imagine for a moment what it would be like to live in an ideal kind of community. It might be an elegant set of buildings in a desert or on the edge of a forest. Everyone would have a room, twenty or thirty in all, modest but dignified, laid out amidst an array of charming communal areas. Breakfast, lunch and dinner (simple and nutritious) would be eaten in company at long tables. There would be a commitment to look after one another, and fellowship based around shared ideals and values. The craving to ‘get ahead’ would subside; it would be enough just to be accepted by this kind group. This would be one’s tribe – to whom one would open one’s heart and entrust a substantial part of one’s life. We’d have a joint sense of what meaningful work was and some of the most important work would be offering one another reassurance. We might have partners, but we wouldn’t expect them to be everything; a chance to share thoughts and emotions with other people would take a lot of the pressure off couples. We’d have a daily impression of mattering to others. Our impulses to addiction, power and paranoia would lessen. We’d rarely go online. The point isn’t, right now, to have an exact blueprint for a commune, but to wake ourselves up to our desire for one; after which anything can flow. Our ancestors were unfortunate in a thousand ways, but they may well have had something we’re unknowingly dying for: their own tribe. 截止英国时间3月3日，英国官方宣布新冠肺炎确诊病例再增12例，共计达到51例。 昨日上午，英国首相鲍里斯·约翰逊（Boris Johnson）携同英格兰首席医疗官克里斯·惠蒂和英国首席科学顾问帕特里克·瓦伦斯爵士，在首相府内举行新闻发布会，正式发布英国针对新冠疫情的防疫计划。 该计划显示根据最坏情况的推演，英国或将有五分之一的劳动力被感染。 约翰逊表示，新冠疫情未来极有可能会在英国广泛蔓延，因此英国政府需要尽一切可能为之做准备。 英国首席科学顾问瓦伦斯表示，2-3个月后疫情会到达顶峰，而后再需要2-3个月的时间才能扑灭疫情。 约翰逊在演讲中反复强调呼吁——勤洗手，还亲自传授抗疫小贴士：热水洗手的时候，要唱两遍生日快乐歌！ 中英全文 Good morning and thank you for coming along, and I am very glad to be joined this morning by the government's Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Advisor. Today we have published the Coronavirus Action Plan setting out how all four parts of the UK will take all necessary and reasonable steps to prepare for and to tackle this outbreak.大家早上好，非常感谢各位到来。十分高兴今早在此，携同英格兰首席医疗官及 英国政府首席医疗顾问，今日正式发布针对新冠疫情的抗疫作战计划，该计划阐述了英国境内四大地区将如何采取一切必要且合理的措施，以应对此次新冠疫情的爆发。 The plan has four strands. Containing the virus, delaying its spread, researching its origins and cure, and finally mitigating the impact should the virus become more widespread. That is, contain, delay, research, mitigate. And let me be absolutely clear that for the overwhelming majority of people who contract the virus, this will be a mild disease from which they will speedily and fully recover as we've already seen. But I fully understand public concern, your concern, about the global spread of this virus. 该计划分为四个阶段：控制病毒，延缓传播，研究病毒源头与治疗方法，最后是减轻疫情更大范围蔓延造成的影响，即: 控制、延缓、研究、缓疫。我要明确指出的是，绝大多数新冠病毒的感染者都是轻症，并会很快完全康复，正如我们所见到的病例。但我完全理解公众对这种病毒在全球范围内蔓延传播的担忧。 And it is highly likely that we will see a growing number of UK cases. And that's why keeping the country safe is the government's overriding priority. And our plan means we're committed to doing everything possible based on the advice of our world leading scientific experts to prepare for all eventualities. Let's not forget – we already have a fantastic NHS, fantastic testing systems and fantastic surveillance of the spread of disease.我们极有可能看到英国出现更多确诊病例。这就是为何保持英国安全是政府的首要任务。该计划意味着，我们将会根据世界领先的科学专家的建议，竭尽所能为一切可能发生的情况做好准备。可别忘了，我们拥有完善的国民医疗保健系统，完善的检测系统，及完善的疫情防控监测系统。 We will make sure the NHS gets all the support it needs to continue their brilliant response to the virus so far. The plan does not set out what the government will do, it sets out the steps we could take at the right time along the basis of the scientific advice. Our country remains extremely well prepared, as it has been since the outbreak began in Wuhan several months ago.我们将确保医疗保健系统获得所需的一切支持，以继续有效应对新冠疫情。该计划并未规定政府将会采取哪些措施，而是根据科学专家的建议，规定了我们在不同阶段，需要采取的不同步骤。自几个月前疫情在武汉爆发以来，我们一直在积极做着充分准备。 Finally, crucially, we must not forget what we can all do to fight this virus, which is to wash our hands, you knew I was going to say this, but wash our hands with soap and water. And forgive me for repeating this but there will be people who will be tuning into this for the first time: wash your hands with soap and hot water for the length of time it takes to sing Happy Birthday twice. It's simple advice but it's the single most important thing we can do, as I think our experts would attest.最后至关重要的是，我们必须谨记所有民众都能做到的病毒防护措施，那就是勤洗手，你们知道我会反复强调用肥皂和温水认真洗手。抱歉我要再次强调，可能有观众刚刚打开电视看到这一幕，请用肥皂和温水认真洗手，且洗手时长要足够唱两遍《生日快乐歌》。这条简单的建议，是我们当下能够做到的最重要的防护措施，相信专家们对此也非常认同。 But at this stage, and with the exception of all of the points I have just mentioned, I want to stress that for the vast majority of the people of this country, we should be going about our business as usual.但在现阶段，除了以上提及的几点，我还要强调的是，对英国绝大多数人而言，我们应该照常工作，维持一切正常运转。
