Are you a lonely londoner?

A history of modern living (pt.1)

I was walking around Central London with a friend late one night. I immediately thought of Sam Selvin’s book which I will discuss more below!

You have a solid job. You’re not particularly passionate about it, but it pays the bills. Well some of them, at least. Some days it feels like you’re struggling to keep your head above water.

On your way to this job that pays (some of) the bills, you hop on the tube where nobody makes eye contact. There are now noise-canceling headphones of different sizes, big and small so everyone has them whether you see it or not. What you know for certain is that no one can hear you catching your breath after rushing to hop on the train even though another one is coming in two minutes.

Everyone is looking at a screen, once in a while a physical book, so no one can see that you almost broke a sweat.

You managed to make your morning commute, free of judgment, but absent of connection.

Is this (modern, city) life?

This is what came to mind when I stumbled across a reel this week about the struggles of living in London. Take a look here:

michaelburton_fitness

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I imagine many of the qualms talked about in this reel are not unique to London. In major cities across the world, people are struggling to justify living in physically tight-knit, but emotionally distant cities. I am currently reading How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen by David Brooks and he had this to say about modern living in America:

The percentage of Americans who said they have no close friends quadrupled between 1990 and 2020. In one survey, 54 percent of Americans reported that no one knows them well. The number of American adults without a romantic partner increased by a third. More to the point, 36 percent of Americans reported that they felt lonely frequently or almost all of the time, including 61 percent of young adults and 51 percent of young mothers. People were spending much more time alone. In 2013, Americans spent an average of six and a half hours per week with friends. By 2019, they were spending only four hours per week with friends, a 38 percent drop. By 2021, as the Covid-19 pandemic was easing, they were spending only two hours and forty-five minutes per week with friends, a 58 percent decline.

The pandemic might have “ended”, but multiple crises continue. A cost of living crisis–breathing costs money these days and there’s a service charge depending on whether it’s inside or outside. There is a connection crisis. People are yearning for deeper interpersonal connections, yet are unable to maintain more than surface-level relationships.

All these problems seem new, yet they’re not. So what can a historian tell you about this cost of being a city dweller crisis?

When I first saw the reel, I immediately thought of E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class. This book was named one of the most influential books of the 20th century. For good reason too. It arguably launched an entire discipline of history called “social history” or the “history of the people.” Before Thompson published this behemoth of a book (not just in terms of impact, but also size–it’s almost a 1,000 pages long), historians focused on the “Great Men” of History. It was the Chamberlains, Churchills, and often other White European Men that were often written about and thus venerated.

However, Thompson did something different with his book. He wrote a history from below or a history of the people that make the Chamberlains and the Churchills possible (and wealthy)! He wrote about the development of the English class or worker’s consciousness during the First Industrial Revolution (1780-1832).

And what did he find? While the Industrial Revolution introduced steam engines, cotton technology, and manufacturing at larger and quicker scales, it wore down both workers and society. As workers flocked to major cities to meet the demand for low-wage labour, they often left behind social, cultural, and religious connections. Many were plucked from their home communities and transplanted into a monotone way of life. Everyone kept to themselves and everyone kept at work (this was before work hour weeks were limited).

Fast forward to the late 19th century when new advances in the steel and automobile industry led to an even higher demand for labourers. People were working more and connecting less. In 1893, the French philosopher Émile Durkheim published his book The Division in Labor in Society to attempt to study this issue from a sociological perspective.

In this book, he observed that society was evolving along the lines of two types of solidarities or ways of connecting. There was mechanical solidarity–people you hang out with because you have to (usually because of work). Then there’s organic solidarity–people you form bonds with naturally (outside of work). Industrialization led to an increase in mechanical solidarity, while organic solidarity dwindled.

Now we have to keep in mind that many of these narratives/histories weren’t written with people of color or women in mind. So, I popped into a bookstore earlier this week to pick up the 1956 classic The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvin to get a different perspective. The book is a fictional account of West Indian workers trying to make a new life in post-WWII London. The novel doesn’t have a traditional plot, but instead is one long stream of consciousness of a man confronting the realities of city living. He makes a comment that I think resonates with many modern Londoners. He says :

It’s having people living in London who don’t know what happening in the room next to them, far more the street, or how other people living. London is a place like that. It divide up in little worlds, and you stay in the world you belong to and you don’t know anything about what happening in the other ones except what you read in the papers.

This was written in 1956, but it still sounds familiar right? We’re all nestled into these really small worlds, yet technology has made us the most connected we have ever been in history. The question then becomes what exactly is connection? Is it just connectivity in terms of Wifi, Bluetooth, and Airplay? Or is a connection about being known and recognized by someone other than ourselves?

So there’s London the big C city and then there’s London the small C city. There are small pockets of communities where people can find themselves. More than just people who look like them, they found people who eat like them, pray like them, and love like them.

The reality is that people still found ways to forge communities despite what advances in machinery and technology were doing to people. I’m going to be exploring those connections for the next few issues so stay tuned!

p.s. I wrote about encountering Bob Marley on a bus in Central London a few months ago. Check it out here:

Until next time,

Hi, I’m Shae! I’m a doctoral candidate in History at Harvard University. I am also a writer weaving together storytelling, literature, primary sources, and whatever else catches my attention to bring us all closer to understanding this thing we collectively call life. This is a digital classroom, a TED Talk stage, and sometimes just a spot in a coffee shop where two friends gather. Whatever this space is for you, I’m glad you’re here 🤓.

p.s. there’s now 500 + of you lovely people here–this means the world to me! If you haven’t already introduce yourself by commenting below or responding to this email!!