Full text of John Cacioppo on The Lethality of Loneliness at TEDxDesMoines conference.
Listen to the MP3 Audio here: MP3 – The lethality of loneliness by John Cacioppo at TEDxDesMoines
TRANSCRIPT:
When you look out onto the world, it certainly appears the Earth is flat. The ground beneath you is stable and unmoving, and stars and sun circle the Earth.
Hundreds of years ago, elaborated theories were developed based on these common sense observations to explain and predict the reach of the oceans and the movement of celestial bodies. When science demonstrated that these common-sense observations were illusions, and depicted the Earth and the Universe in a completely different way, people slowly came to accept that the world was not as it seemed.
Scientific measurements and sophisticated calculations have repeatedly demonstrated that what we think is intuitive, obvious and common sense cannot be trusted to be true. For that reason, modern sciences based on the denial of common sense until apparently it comes to ourselves: when science confirms a particular way of thinking about our mind and behavior, or depicts it in an unusual and a new way, we tend to be skeptical that such a science is worthwhile even if possible. And instead, we fall back on intuition, prior beliefs, and yes, common sense.
For instance, if I told you, scientific research has demonstrated that opposites attract, wouldn’t you tell me that we don’t need a science to tell us something we already know?
But what if I told you that birds of a feather flock together according to scientific research, wouldn’t you say, we don’t need a science to tell us something we already know?
Or you may have realized already, of course, that these both may be self-evident truths, but they can’t both be true since they are internally inconsistent.
The science of mind and behavior is full of such examples: self-evident truths that both can’t be true. We know, for instance, that two heads are better than one and we know that too many cooks spoil the broth.
The next time you hear a science report of some obvious result, remember that the opposite result was equally obvious, but it’d just been proven to be wrong. It’s obvious that we’re rugged individualists. True, true, true! We’re born to the most prolonged period of dependency, but in our transition to adulthood, we achieve autonomy, independence, to become kings of the mountain, captains of our universe. It’s easy to think about our brain, how’s deep within a cranial vault separated, isolated, protected from others. When we look out into the social world other individuals certainly look distinct, independent, self vicinities with no forces binding them together.
No wonder that we forget that we are member of a social species, born dependent on our parents, for our species to survive. These infants must instantly engage their parents in protective behavior and the parents must care enough about these offspring to nurture and protect them.
Even once grown, we are not particularly splendid specimens. Other animals can run faster, see and smell better, and fight much more effectively than we can. Our evolutionary advantage is our brain and our ability to communicate, plan and reason and work together. Our survival depends on our collective abilities, not on our individual mind.
We are connected across our lifespan to one another, through a myriad of invisible forces, that, like gravity, are ubiquitous and powerful. After all, social species, by definition, create emergent structures that extend beyond an organism, structures that range from couples and families to schools and nations and cultures. These structures evolved hand in hand with neural, hormonal and genetic mechanisms to support them because the consequent social behavior helped these organisms survive, reproduce and leave a genetic legacy.
To grow into an adulthood for a social species, including humans, is not to become autonomous and solitary, it’s to become the one on whom others can depend. Whether we know it or not, our brain and biology have been shaped to favor this outcome.