Neoliberalism is creating loneliness. That’s what’s wrenching society apart

(Capitalism has favoured humanity with many wonders, while its unbridled variant, neoliberalism, can equally be attributed with many of humanity’s ills, among them a disrupted climate system that has been worsened and accelerated from the "competitive self-interest and extreme individualism” lamented here by George Monbiot – Robert McLean)

 Illustration by Andrzej Krauze

What greater indictment of a system could there be than an epidemic of mental illness? Yet plagues of anxiety, stress, depression, social phobia, eating disorders, self-harm and loneliness now strike people down all over the world.

The latest, catastrophic figures for children’s mental health in England reflect a global crisis.

There are plenty of secondary reasons for this distress, but it seems to me that the underlying cause is everywhere the same: human beings, the ultrasocial mammals, whose brains are wired to respond to other people, are being peeled apart. Economic and technological change play a major role, but so does ideology. Though our wellbeing is inextricably linked to the lives of others, everywhere we are told that we will prosper through competitive self-interest and extreme individualism.

Read the comment piece by George Monbiot on The Guardian - “Neoliberalism is creating loneliness. That’s what’s wrenching society apart.”