“Going Solo”
By any measure, Going Solo is a significant book, though one with a sombre message. It can be summed in one statistic provided by the author: in the US in 1950, 22 percent of adults were single; today, more than 50 percent are in this position; 31 million people live alone. Eric Klinenberg, professor of sociology at New York University, sets out to analyze this statistic and to draw conclusions from it.
I find the conclusions more disheartening than Klinenberg does. Although at the start he quotes Genesis – “It is not good for man to be alone” – and discusses the long evolution that resulted in the nuclear family, it is clear that he is optimistic about the evolving social future of the human species – even as it moves further away from the traditional family unit.
What is happening to American society when, for the first time in its history, “the majority of all American adults are single”? Is it a problem, a sign of “narcissistic fragmentation”? The author would rather not think so. There is no precedent for the current state of affairs. Although Walt Whitman, Emerson and Thoreau all praised the self-sufficient man, the author shows that they were, in reality, very closely involved in the society around them. He adds that Robinson Crusoe, the classic fictional account of solitude, “before a human footprint on the beach is essentially a horror story.”
He is keen not to enlarge on the possibilities of “horror”, preferring to ascribe the widespread rise in living alone today as, in part, because “more people can afford to do so.” Freedom and personal choice are cherished modern virtues, running alongside the rising status of women, a revolution in communications – and longevity. “Living alone helps us to pursue sacred modern values – individual freedom, personal control, self-realization”. People also live alone because they are divorced or widowed.
Loading ...
