All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

-- The Beatles

Studies published by the American Sociological Review are not normally grist for the front pages of American newspapers. But last week, one such study made headlines.

The study in question documented the increasing loneliness and isolation of contemporary Americans.

According to the study, social isolation has increased dramatically over the last 20 years. A quarter of today’s Americans say that they have no one with whom they can discuss their personal problems, more than double those who felt that way in 1985. The average American’s circle of intimates has dropped from three to two – usually a spouse and close friend or relative. Rarely is it a neighbor.

With this trend has come the increasing risk that individual Americans will find themselves with no one to turn to in time of trouble. One of the sociologists who conducted the study pointed to the people who ended up on the rooftops after Hurricane Katrina hit because they didn’t know someone who had a car.

Critics of the study argue that it should have taken account of the social connections that people make through the internet, although the authors of the study claim that people rarely share their innermost thoughts in chat rooms.

Opinion was also divided over what has caused this growing isolation. The list of suspects included longer working hours, longer commutes, and the lure of the TV.

But perhaps America’s loss of community was foreordained by the very nature of American dream. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is, arguably, a formula for individual success and satisfaction, rather than for collective well-being and strong social networks.

As early as the 1830s, that perceptive French visitor, Alexis de Tocqueville, could discern that there was a dark side to American individualism. He wrote:

As social conditions become more equal, the number of persons increases who, although they are neither rich nor powerful enough to exercise any great influence over their fellows, have nevertheless acquired or retained sufficient education and fortune to satisfy their own wants. They owe nothing to any man, they expect nothing from any man; they acquire the habit of always considering themselves as standing alone, and they are apt to imagine that their whole destiny is in their own hands.

Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.

Is there a lesson here for speechwriters? I think so. I think it might be useful for us to remember that there are a lot of lonely people in the audiences who will hear the speeches we write. If the circumstances permit us to add a word of consolation in our texts, it might be appreciated by those lonely listeners, and might contribute to the overall success of the speech.

Ah, look at all the lonely people!