April 15, 2025 • 34 mins
Theoretically, we are more connected than ever, yet loneliness is a growing crisis. Research shows that social isolation can be as harmful to our health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. What’s behind this epidemic of disconnection, and what can we do about it?
In this episode, psychiatrist and theologian Dr. Warren Kinghorn joins hosts Marcus Goodyear and Camille Hall-Ortega to explore the medical and theological roots of loneliness. Drawing on his work with veterans, students, and other communities, Dr. Kinghorn offers a powerful perspective on why we struggle to find belonging—and how embracing vulnerability and deep connection can change our lives.
From the impact of social media to the lessons of faith, from the role of community to the surprising effects of shame, this conversation is a hopeful reflection on what it truly means to belong.
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Episode Notes:
- Echoes Magazine feature on Dr. Kinghorn: Loneliness is killing us: Duke University, the University of Aberdeen, and guests explored solutions at a recent Laity Lodge retreat.
- Dr. Warren Kinghorn’s faculty page at Duke University
- Wayfaring: A Theological Journey by Warren Kinghorn
- Surgeon General’s 2023 Report: Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation
- The New York Times: Why Is the Loneliness Epidemic so Hard to Cure? (paywall)
- Pew Research Center: 2025 Religious Landscape Study
- Gallup: Church Attendance Has Declined in Most U.S. Religious Groups
- From the UK: Loneliness minister: “It’s more important than ever to take action”
- From the World Health Organization: Commission on Social Connection
- The Congregational Collective
- Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown
- Madness and Grace by Matthew S. Stanford
- The Soul of Shame by Curt Thompson
- Josef Pieper, German philosopher and author
- Albert Borgmann, philosopher of technology
- Genesis 2-3 (Biblical account of humanity’s brokenness)
- 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 (The Body of Christ and community)
Production Team:
Written and produced by Marcus Goodyear, Rob Stennett, and Camille Hal
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Marcus Goodyear (00:00):
There's this thing called doomscrolling. I do
(00:02):
it sometimes. Maybe you do too.I dive into my newsfeed and this
or that social media platform.Sometimes it's an actual
newsfeed of headlines.
News Clip (00:10):
Tonight, the worst day for stocks. We are diving
into the world of YouTube.Today's Secretary of State...
Marcus Goodyear (00:14):
But I'm not reading stories. I'm not
engaging in social media. I'mjust scanning the headlines and
thinking to myself, wow, I amvery different from these
people. I mean, why would theybelieve that? Why would they
think it's funny to share that?
It makes me feel disconnected. Ifeel a sense of fragmentation
rather than community. We aren'tcelebrating where we agree and
(00:35):
sometimes it feels like wedisagree more than we agree. And
then I feel lonely. It's strangebecause I'm not alone.
I mean, none of us are. Thereare 8,000,000,000 people on this
planet and yet so many of usfeel alone. We know this is a
problem. According to the WorldHealth Organization, twenty five
percent of older adults aresocially isolated. As many as
(00:57):
fifteen percent of adolescentsare lonely.
And social disconnection isunhealthy. It's just as
unhealthy as smoking 15cigarettes a day. If you're
socially disconnected, your riskof heart disease goes up twenty
nine percent. Your risk of astroke goes up thirty two
percent. This might be why Japanand Great Britain have ministers
of loneliness.
(01:18):
Because loneliness is dangerous.But there is hope.
I'm Marcus Goodyear from theH.E.Butt Foundation. This is the
Echoes Podcast. On today'sepisode, we welcome our guest,
Dr. Warren Kinghorn.Dr. Kinghorn is a clinical
psychiatrist and a theologian.He's the co-director of the
Theology, Medicine, and CultureInitiative at Duke University.
(01:40):
And recently, he was featured inEchoes Magazine where he talked
about the medical andtheological roots of loneliness.
I'm here with my co-host,Camille Hall-Ortega.
Camille Hall-Ortega (01:49):
Hi, Marcus. Warren, we're so glad to have
you.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (01:52):
I'm so glad to be here. Thank you all. Yeah,
thank you.
Marcus Goodyear (01:54):
Yes, welcome. Now you are a psychiatrist, and
so what would you say to apatient who tells you they're
deeply lonely?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (02:02):
I am a psychiatrist. I'm specifically a
psychiatrist who works withveterans in the VA medical
system. So most of my patientsare men because that's the
composition historically of themilitary. Many of them have
served in war. All of them haveserved in the military.
And as you point out, many ofthem are lonely. And I'm also a
teacher and professor at DukeUniversity, I work with students
(02:23):
who are surrounded by otherstudents and yet many of them
also are lonely. In my clinicalwork at the VA, when a patient
tells me that they're lonely,which by the way, happened this
morning when I was in clinic, Iwould first just want to thank
them for telling me that. It'ssometimes hard to admit to
ourselves and also to othersthat we're lonely. We may feel
(02:43):
some shame around that.
So I'd say, thank you fortelling me that. And then I
think I wouldn't try to convincethem otherwise. I wouldn't
immediately jump in and say,"Oh, but there's these people in
your life that you should begrateful for." But rather just
accept that experience. And thenI would tell them that I'm
really happy that they're inconversation with me connected
(03:04):
to me.
So the relationship that I canbuild with a patient is not
everything that a patient needs,but it may be a start that might
be a way to build some trustthat then could extend to other
kinds of relationships in thefuture. And then I would start
to ask like, who is it in yourlife who you have felt connected
to in the past, or who you mightwanna be connected to, or who
you might feel a kind of woundof disconnection from, what
(03:26):
would it might mean to begin totake some risks of reaching out
to them and putting yourselfinto a community, especially.
Camille Hall-Ortega (03:32):
I am thankful for the work that you
do. And I imagine that thecontext is huge. The context has
a lot of effects on what yourconversations look like and what
your recommendations look like.I'm married to a veteran. My
husband is a Marine Corpsveteran. And so I've heard so
many stories, but I imagine youhave lots of them.
(03:55):
Do you find that post COVID orany other factors you've seen
have really played a part in thenumber of folks you're hearing
talking about loneliness orcoming to you with issues of
loneliness?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn: Anecdotally, that has been my (04:09):
undefined
experience. I mean, COVID was sodifficult for all of us and more
difficult for some people insome communities than others.
For many of my patients and foralso many just in the rest of my
networks, I think COVID was atime when we had this enforced
social isolation. And I thinkit's easy to quantify the cost
(04:30):
of virus transmission, and itwas really important that that
be quantified, but it was harderat the time to quantify the
costs of social isolation andnot eating with people and not
being with people and notsinging with people and not
sharing relationship. So peoplewho were already vulnerable to
isolation in the context of thatforced isolation often ended up
(04:51):
even more so in ways that'sfrankly been hard to recover and
get back.
I think people develop habitsand communities develop habits.
Camille Hall-Ortega (04:59):
Yes.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (04:59):
And there's a lot of people out there that
are still suffering.
Marcus Goodyear (05:02):
Yeah, you mentioned earlier that sometimes
when patients say that they arelonely, there's some shame
attached to that. Do you thinkthat as a nation we feel some
shame attached to the lonelinesswe felt during the pandemic?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (05:19):
I think that shame is actually a really
important contributor toloneliness, and loneliness also
produces shame. And so there's atwo way relationship there. And
I follow Brene Brown on this, Ifollow my friend Curt Thompson
when he talks about shame from aChristian perspective, that
(05:40):
shame correlates with this twopart belief. And one belief is
that I am not blank enough,where whatever that blank is, is
whatever we most need to fitinto or to be accepted by a
community to which we need orwant to belong. And then the
other part of that is whenpeople realize that I'm not
blank enough, like I'm gonna beexcluded from this community. I
(06:03):
teach at Duke University, in anelite university, that might be
something like, I'm not smartenough or I'm not well read
enough or I'm not athleticenough or I'm not progressive
enough or I'm not conservativeenough, or whatever it is that
we feel like we need to belong.And then in response to the
emotion of shame draws us intoourself, it actually leads us to
(06:25):
disconnect from others becausewe don't wanna be vulnerable to
being ostracized. And yet thatthen cuts us off from those
relationships that we need. Andso shame produces isolation and
then isolation produces shame.And we find ourselves in this
like toxic cycle that's veryhard to get out of. And I think
I see a lot of students in thatcycle. I see patients in that
(06:48):
cycle. I see myself in thatcycle.
Marcus Goodyear (06:50):
Yeah, can you talk about that?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (06:52):
Because I'm a psychiatrist and a theological
ethicist, I've spent a lot ofyears in school and I know what
it means to be a student as wellas what it means to be a
professor. I think about all ofthose years that I spent in
school and all of those timeswhen I didn't ask the question
that I thought was maybe theuninformed question, because I
(07:12):
didn't want people to look at meand say, "Oh, like you really
don't belong here, do you?"
Marcus Goodyear (07:16):
Yeah, you didn't wanna ask the stupid
question.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (07:20):
And I don't know that I ever sought out the
conversation with either aprofessor or with friends or
with others where I just said,I'm really not sure about these
questions because I didn't wantpeople to say, "Oh yeah, maybe
you actually don't really belonghere." That thing kept me from
having connections, havingrelationships that would have
been really helpful. In mystory, something that played out
(07:41):
over a long period of time, I'veworked on that, but I think that
it's something that I think alot of students feel, lot of
people in workplaces feel, a lotof people at churches feel
sometimes.
Camille Hall-Ortega (07:51):
Some imposter syndrome, right?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (07:53):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Camille Hall-Ortega (07:54):
And your neighbor next to you is going,
Oh, wanna ask this question, butI don't want anyone to think
it's kind of dumb. You'rethinking the same thing. That
connection would come if one ofyou was brave, right?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (08:07):
Yeah. And the problem with imposter
syndrome is we all think thatwe're the only one that has it.
And students think that they'rethe only ones who have it. But
I'm like, well, it's prettycommon. And your professors were
students once and evenprofessors have it.
Marcus Goodyear (08:20):
I'm not sure I really expected this to get so
quickly down the road towardbelonging and thinking about
like belonging as maybe anantidote to loneliness or our
inability to feel belonging asthe source of loneliness? Do you
think about belonging a lot?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (08:37):
I do. And when I think about belonging,
I'm always finding myselfquoting the formulation of my
friend and colleague, JohnSwinton. And John, when he talks
about belonging, he talks aboutthe difference between inclusion
and belonging. And because wetalk a lot in church circles
about how can we be inclusive?We talk in educational circles
(08:58):
about how can we have inclusivecommunities.
And John says, "Inclusion isgood. It's good to want to be
inclusive, but it's a low barand it's not enough." Because
frankly, to be inclusive, allyou have to do is to not turn
away people that come to you. Soanybody that is in a church
sanctuary on a Sunday morningand has gotten in the door is
included because they haven'tbeen turned away.
(09:18):
But John's point is thatinclusion isn't enough because
you can be in a space with50, 100, 200, 1000 other people,
and yet no one is actuallycaring about you, no one is
loving you, no one is evenmaking an effort to connect with
you. Because belonging isdifferent from inclusion because
to belong you have to be missed.Someone needs to long for you
(09:39):
when you're not there and tosay, We need you to be a part of
us. That's a higher threshold,but that's actually what we most
need as human beings.
Camille Hall-Ortega (09:46):
Really good, I think that's just
tapping into some of the things,these universal desires that
connect us, that many of us fearthe vulnerability that it
requires to sort of admit thoseneeds and admit those But we all
know that we all want to be seenand known and loved. And it
(10:07):
takes some risk to put yourselfout there.
Marcus Goodyear (10:11):
So you talked about going through shame with
community. And then we weretalking about these different
forms of community where thesethings we call community but
we're all sitting down facingthe same direction not really
engaging. Nobody's missing me ifI'm not there. I definitely feel
that. Why is community so hard?
I mean sometimes it feels likelike a diet and exercise where
(10:31):
we know what we're supposed tobe doing we're just not doing
it. But maybe it's not even thatsimple. Maybe it actually is
hard. And I'm just curious ifyou could talk a little bit more
about what makes a communitythrive.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (10:43):
That's kind of the Genesis three question,
isn't it? Like, why is our worldnot as we know in some ways that
it could be, and we have basicneeds as human beings to connect
with other people. From the veryearliest parts of our lives.
Like we become who we are inrelationship with those who form
us and those who guide us. Andyet we find ourselves like in
(11:05):
this world, find that thoserelationships always in some
ways let us down.
They hold us and they let usdown. Even in the best case
scenario, that's actually justpart of what it means to live in
the world, that we find thatsometimes when we need other
people, they're not there forus. And that's actually part of
how we develop selves who areable to continue to go in the
(11:27):
world. And though, if we findthat those relationships really
aren't there for us or areabusive or are neglectful, that
becomes really hard, and so webegin to learn, I can only trust
in myself, no one else is gonnabe there for me. And that leads
us to have a sense that theworld is up to me to navigate as
an individual.
(11:47):
And so then you can believe allyou want about the importance of
community, but if your kind ofcore belief is that I can only
trust in myself because no oneelse is gonna really be there
for me when I need it, it'sgonna be really hard to trust.
Camille Hall-Ortega (11:59):
Some disillusionment there?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (12:02):
And just a sense of, like, can we actually
lean into a community to bothcontribute to it and to be
formed in it in a way that weneed as human beings?
Camille Hall-Ortega (12:14):
I can relate with those feelings of
disillusionment where you go,I've tried that. I've tried
that. You know, you join a newchurch, you're in some kind of
new community and folks say, yougotta put yourself out there.
You get to join the small groupand try getting involved. And
you'll have one, two, three, ahandful of experiences that
(12:38):
didn't meet your expectations.
And then you go, I've tried it.And it takes some level of
something, right? Fortitude,resilience, something where
folks are saying, try again. Andyou try again because there's
community there to be had.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (12:59):
That's right. And we don't stop needing
it.
Marcus Goodyear (13:01):
Yeah. You mentioned veterans and students
earlier. I assume the veteranstend to be older, although they
may not be. And your studentstend to be younger, although
they may also not be. Are youseeing loneliness as affecting
different generationsdifferently or is it pretty much
the same no matter whatgeneration or what age you're
(13:22):
in?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (13:22):
I think loneliness affects every
generation, and it affectsveterans as well as students, as
well as all of us. So it's abroader cultural problem. It
does, I think, affect differentgenerations in different ways.
So I would very much recommendthe Surgeon General Vivek
Murthy's 2023 report. So hereports in this compiled report
(13:43):
that American adults spendnearly an hour per day alone
more than we did in 2003.
So that's thirty hours a monththat we would have been around
other people, you know, twentyyears ago that we're not now.
That we spend less time withfriends. So whereas with in 2003
it was sixty minutes a day, in2020, it went down to twenty
(14:05):
minutes a day, partly because ofthe pandemic. But there was a
full 70% decrease in person timeamong youth ages 15 to 24. So we
might think that for variousreasons, older adults would be
more lonely in our culture thanyoung adults, that's not
necessarily the case.
Camille Hall-Ortega (14:24):
I'm interested because you are in a
somewhat unique position in thatyou're trained as a theologian,
but also as a psychiatrist. AndI'm wondering how those two
fields inform your work indifferent ways or in the same
ways and how that plays out inthis context of loneliness.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (14:43):
Well, it's hard for me to disentangle those
because am a psychiatrist, I'malso a theological ethicist. I
actually started this trainingby taking two years out of
medical school and coming todivinity school here at Duke.
But I would say that theblessing in my case of my
training as a psychiatrist isit's just made me so much more
appreciative of how complex andbeautiful human beings are in
(15:05):
our particularity. I have a bookcalled Wayfaring that was just
published last year in which Italk about the tendency of
psychiatry sometimes to justtreat people as collections of
symptoms that need to be reducedin what I call the machine
metaphor of mental healthcare.Like we interpret people's
experience as symptoms, wegather their symptoms and
diagnoses, we apply techniquesto those diagnoses, we try to
(15:27):
reduce the symptoms and we say,"Oh, that's good mental
healthcare."
But all that is, is liketechnical symptom reduction.
Like it's not actually the kindof vision that we need. But I
think psychiatric care at itsbest is not like a practice of
like just applying techniques,whether those are medications or
particular therapies to aparticular problem, they're
practices of walking withpeople. And that's where I think
(15:50):
my theological training helps toreinforce that because
Christians believe that we'renot just machines and we're not
just collections of symptoms andwe're not just collections of
problems, but we are creaturesof God and we are children of
God and we're made in God'simage and God knows us and loves
us. So we come into the world asthese creatures whom God knows
(16:13):
intimately and loves deeply, andthat affects how we relate to
each other.
Camille Hall-Ortega (16:18):
And then we know that God intended for us to
be in community. He told us inhis word, right? So many
references to the body of Christand the corporate worship. From
the very beginning, right? God'stelling Adam, it's not good for
(16:39):
you to be alone.
You need to help me here, right.So God has really designed us to
be in community He made thatvery clear. So there's this
beauty in the knowledge of theway it should be, the way that
God intended it to be.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (16:55):
Yes, throughout scripture, we're
called into this interconnectedrelationship with each other.
Even more than that, the NewTestament has this vision that
we're members of a common body.Now that's pretty connected. And
I think that's one of thereasons why it's important not
to ever think of ourselves asmachines, because you can put a
(17:15):
machine in a warehouse or in afield and it's gonna be what it
is. But creatures are notmachines and creatures are,
we're living creatures who needeach other and who need
nourishment, who need care andwho need love.
So I always try to, how do wenot even use language to
describe ourselves? Like I havea pet peeve about the language
(17:36):
of resilience because it's drawnfrom physics and you could apply
it to a steel bar. It's likebending back where you were
before and stress. In my worldof medicine, language of
burnout, which is something thatrockets do and machines do,
we're not machines that likeburn out and need to be refueled
and recharged. We're creatureswho need to be cared for and
(17:59):
loved.
Marcus Goodyear (17:59):
So we've talked about a whole bunch of things. I
think I wanna go back to theidea of kids. So you're working
with students and we've beentalking mostly about people who
experience loneliness but Iwonder about people in
relationship to them theparents. Like I have kids in
(18:21):
college right now and I worryabout them. I mean they're doing
great but sometimes you getthese calls and you just your
heart breaks you know they wantto see a psychologist or a
psychiatrist or a counselor andthat means that something is
wrong and so I worry as parentsparents of college students or
(18:42):
Camille has younger kids.
Camille Hall-Ortega (18:43):
Yeah I have little kids.
Marcus Goodyear (18:45):
How do we teach our kids to find community?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (18:49):
I'm also a parent. I also worry and think
about like what my own kids whoare in college and high school
and also what their friends areexperiencing. And I do think
it's just a challenging time tobe a kid, to be an adolescent,
to be a young adult, we'vetalked about. I mean, there is
no one size fits all solution toeveryone. So the last thing I
(19:09):
wanna do is to come on and say,this is the easy way to get to
that..
Camille Hall-Ortega (19:14):
Three easy steps to get an answer.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (19:15):
It's never that easy. And again, that's
part of like, we're not machinesthat like just need to pull out
the instruction manual and justkind of make some tweaks.
Camille Hall-Ortega (19:23):
We've got some individual differences
here.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (19:25):
Yeah. And we're on a journey and we're
wayfarers on a journey. So wewalk alongside each other and
sometimes you only know what'sneeded when you're really right
there in the situation. Placingourselves, even to take the risk
of placing ourselves in the wayof community is always something
that's important, I think, foryoung kids and also for kids as
(19:49):
they get older.
And so I think we'll probably betalking some about social media
and technology and other things.But one of the challenges, I
think, of what kids are facingnow is that there's all sorts of
opportunities to find ourselvesconnection in people who are not
actually physically around usand who may not be connected to
us in other ways, but at thecost of connection to those,
(20:11):
like in the places where we liveor maybe even our own homes. I
feel very fortunate that my wifeand I have been part of the same
church here in Durham for twentyone years and so my kids have
grown up And that's a blessingand I recognize that not
everyone for various reasons hasthat privilege and blessing to
have been part of a communityfor so long, but it's a
(20:32):
profoundly important communityfor us and for our kids. They've
known at church that they areknown and that they're loved and
they And to have, I'm gettingemotional because I talk about
it, but the experience as aparent of seeing other adults
come alongside my kids who don'thave to do so and to say, "Hey,
(20:54):
can we have coffee?" Or, "Can wehave conversation?" Or, "I just
wanna say, I really appreciateyou." That means so much. It
means so much to them, and itmeans so much to my wife and me
also. And I realized that noteverybody has that, and I don't
take that for granted.
Camille Hall-Ortega (21:10):
The village.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (21:11):
Yeah, but how can we create those villages
with each other? And so what areopportunities to do that? So if
we're parents, how can we investin the lives of other kids? If
we're in a church congregationor community, may not have kids
of our own, but how can we stillbe part of that village that's
like forming and raising thekids around us? Like, what are
the opportunities there for us?
And for those kids that areisolated, like, what does it
(21:32):
mean to understand the reasonsfor that and to try to find ways
to build those connections withothers?
Camille Hall-Ortega (21:38):
This can start to feel a little gloomy
where we go, okay, describingthis epidemic of loneliness. And
you go, for Christians like us,we can say, okay, our hope is in
Jesus. But in general, whenwe're speaking about this, is
there this feeling that it'sgonna continue to just get worse
(22:01):
or do we have a more positiveoutlook than that?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (22:05):
Yeah, I don't wanna be gloom and doom in
part because I'm a Christian andI wanna have that, I mean, I
believe that the Holy Spirit isat work in the world. I also
don't wanna be Pollyanna-ish andsay that, Oh, there's easy
solutions. We're gonna quicklyget out of this. Think the
fairest thing to say is that welive in a culture where there
are profound barriers andobstacles toward the kind of
(22:27):
human connections that we mostneed, and that may be as much or
more now as it's ever been. Andalso there's a lot of really
amazing connections that arehappening and there's a lot of
communities that are reallyhealthy and there's a lot of
people who are really healthyand a lot of opportunities for
healing and growth and thechallenge of the pandemic and
(22:47):
this enforced, almostuniversally enforced isolation
that we all felt has meant thatafter the pandemic, we actually
value, we feel the need forconnection because we felt what
it means not to have it.
Marcus Goodyear (22:58):
Yeah, and I mean, you mentioned social media
earlier. I think that that isdefinitely, technology is
definitely part of the challengewe're facing. And so for me,
Camille, it's not that it's alldoom and gloom but that we are
in a particular I think worldpivot around technology that is
similar to what happened backwith print. Clay Shirky talked
(23:18):
about this ten, fifteen yearsago in a way that I found
resonant. But as a result we'refaced with these technologies
that are impacting us in ways wecan't anticipate and we're only
learning the effects as theyhappen.
So I'm curious if we just takeit into technology and think
about that for a minute, whatare the ways in which you've
seen people I don't think weneed to talk about how
(23:41):
technology drives us toloneliness. That's pretty
obvious. But what practices haveyou seen people do to use
technology faithfully and usetechnology lovingly and in a way
that brings communitiestogether, but not superficially?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (23:56):
Well, I think you're right. We are in
the midst of a culturalreckoning about technology. I
think you're right that mostpeople recognize that. I see
when looking at data on rates ofdepression and anxiety and other
mental health challenges,including thoughts of suicide
among college students, whichhas been tracked in different
(24:18):
surveys for the last severaldecades. There's an inflection
point about 2012 where you beganto see increasing rates both of
self reported depression andanxiety and also willingness to
engaging in mental healthtreatment on college campuses
that has continued to rise sincethen.
It's been kind of plateaued at ahigh level since the pandemic.
(24:39):
And there's lots of things thatare possible contributors to
that. But one sensible reason isthat about twenty twelve was
around when we had universalsmartphone adoption and
universal social media adoptionamong adolescents and young
adults. All to say, I thinkthere's real benefits of social
media and I have a phone in mypocket right now, so I feel
this, the pull of it too, Butthere's also possible harms that
(25:02):
we have to reckon with. Andthere's very practical things
that one can do.
So one is, you know, a highschooler or a college student
might decide just not to be onparticular social media
platforms. They're not all thesame. Some are frankly more
addictive than others and alsomore like the content varies
among them. So you can justrefuse to be on a platform and
(25:23):
you might miss out some, butthere's benefits to that. You
can choose not to have an app onyour phone and just to access it
on a laptop.
That doesn't keep you off of it,but it may keep the kind of just
from dominating all of ourattention. You can set time
limits. You can choose to onlyfollow a certain number of
people, etcetera. So there'spractical ways that I think kids
are already navigating this andI'm trying to navigate it myself
(25:46):
too, terms of what's healthy andwhat's not.
Camille Hall-Ortega (25:49):
Oh, that's so, so, so, so good. I'm just,
I'm thinking none of us areimmune, you know, because it
starts so young now and it runsthe gamut all the way up, you
know, to older folks. And Ithink of just even my own
children where my husband and Iwere very committed, you know,
we're just not into the screens.We don't want this screen time.
(26:10):
We've got a five year old and athree year old, so they're
young.
And then you very quicklyrealize that is very difficult
to be avoiding screens. And thenyou see, there's so much
importance in not demonizingbecause you'll go, Oh gosh,
there are really great learningtools on this tablet here,
right? There's this tensionbetween these very obvious
(26:36):
dangers and these very obviousadvantages. And it's tough. It's
really tough. Yeah.
Marcus Goodyear (26:44):
Yeah. It makes me think of Albert Borgmann, who
I had the privilege of hearingat Laity Lodge in 2011. And it
was actually a life changingretreat for me. Albert Borgmann
is a philosopher of technology,was, he died recently. And he
talked about the affordances oftechnology and how we just need
(27:07):
to be aware of what they affordus to do, which is a strange way
of talking, he's a philosopher.
But also what they take awayfrom us. And kind of the
simplest example is the hearth.When our main technology is a
hearth in the center of our hometo provide heat and food, We
gather around the hearth forheat. We cook our food there
together and all kinds of thingshappen because of that simple
(27:31):
technology we gather around it.But if we have central heating,
we lose an opportunity togather.
So let's switch to AlbertBorgmann. This is in 2011, the
clip we're gonna hear at theretreat that I was at. He was a
speaker at Laity Lodge. LaityLodge is H.E.Butt Foundation's
adult retreat center. I was atthe retreat.
Borgmann has this profound wayof talking about the cycles of
(27:52):
new technology. He says thattechnology makes a promise to
us, and then it delivers on thatpromise, but it also betrays
that promise at the same time.And so it sends us constantly
looking for new technologies.And we have audio from that
retreat, we're going to listento him now in his own words.
Albert Borgmann (28:11):
The treachery of what seems to be the success
of the dominant culture is thatit promises, it fulfills the
promise, and then betrays thepromise. And so there's the
succession of of hope for thisnew thing, that new thing fueled
by the establishment itselfthrough advertisement and
(28:32):
through all the misty eyedreactions to new things. And and
there is, in fact, this briefhigh of, yes, there it is. There
is the new shiny thing. There'sthe new wonderful opportunity,
and then it ebbs. And there isthis mildly addictive pattern to
it that we get restless. We lookfor the next new thing. We start
(28:54):
looking around, and and thenthere is the next new thing, and
so the pattern continues.
Camille Hall-Ortega (29:01):
What are your thoughts?
Marcus Goodyear (29:02):
Yeah. What do you think when you hear that?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (29:04):
I think there's a few things to say
about that. One is, just fromthe perspective of why that's
happening, our attention is acommodity. Like, people make
money off of it. Corporationsmake a lot of money off of our
attention. And so how we focusour attention is in part a
question of who's making moneyoff of us and off of our bodies
(29:27):
and off of what we do. And so wehave to recognize that this is
an economic reality.
Camille Hall-Ortega (29:33):
Really good. Once I listened to it a
couple of times, I reallyenjoyed the quote and I too was
thinking, Oh, I want to hear therest of that talk. But I thought
about in this context ofloneliness, how this all plays
in. And we of course are in aculture of instant
gratification. And there arethese highs that come with that
(29:53):
instant gratification, but thenthere's the ebb, the feeling of
something's missing, a feelingof lack or emptiness.
And I believe that that alsoties directly into loneliness.
That at its core is a feeling ofsomething missing.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (30:12):
Yeah, that's right. Part of what I
struggle with, and I've noticedI kind of came of age when the
internet was also just coming ofage. And so I noticed my own
attention is less than it usedto be. It's gotten harder for me
to stay focused. One thing tojust acknowledge is that we are
in a very unique cultural age.
(30:33):
Like every other age of humanhistory would have included a
lot of time when there wasnothing other than the people
and the natural world around usto occupy our time and
attention. So for a lot ofpeople that would have been a
farm or the kind of rhythms of avillage or, you know, there's
(30:54):
lots of ways that that couldhappen. And nowadays, I think
just speaking from the firstperson, I think I often don't
know what to do with myself ifI'm sitting in a place and I
don't have anything immediatelyin my hand to either read or
listen to or scroll through orother things. So what does it
mean to actually be able to sitwith ourselves in our solitude
(31:15):
and to have the confidence thatthat space will be filled in
ways that we need for it to befilled.
Camille Hall-Ortega (31:21):
Really good, really good.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (31:22):
I'm speaking this to myself, by the
way.
Camille Hall-Ortega (31:24):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm taking notes, yeah.
Marcus Goodyear (31:28):
Well, we're nearing time, but I just, I have
to ask, why does our culture notallow that, do you think? Or
what would it look like for ourculture to allow that more?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (31:38):
We listened to a clip by Albert Borgmann
before. Another philosopher whoI really love and who I've used
and I think is really profoundlyhelpful lived a few years before
Borgmann, the same as JosefPieper. He lived from about 1910
to late 1990s. He was a Germanphilosopher who was a German
Catholic philosopher who was anopponent of the Third Reich, but
(32:01):
then mainly came into his ownwatching the rebuilding of
Europe after the Second WorldWar. And what he noticed was
that Europe, and I think wecould also say The United States
at that time, was occupied withkind of logics of efficiency and
production and productivity.
And he began to wonder likewhat's lost in that. So even in
our language, even in English,like we talk about the weekend,
(32:24):
which is a term of absence, butnot holiday, which is what the
holy day, which is what theSabbath is for. We talk about
going on vacation, which againis a term of absence, but not
about going on a pilgrimage or afeast, which is a term of
presence. And he basically says,we've oriented all of our
culture around efficiency andproduction. I think in our
(32:46):
modern United States, maybe evenespecially now, we value
ourselves and others value us ashuman beings according to our
ability to produce and toconsume.
And so we're all participatingin this system of like
relentless production,productivity, and consumption.
Actually, point of human life isthe feast and it is worship and
(33:07):
it is play in the sense of beingable to co create with God in
the world and to be able toglimpse the beauty and goodness
that's all around us. And sopart of it's just finding ways
to allow ourselves to glimpsethat broader vision of who we
truly are.
Marcus Goodyear (33:24):
Oh man.
Camille Hall-Ortega (33:25):
So good.
Marcus Goodyear (33:26):
I love that. That's so good. That was
perfect. Yes. I think that's agreat place to end.
Camille Hall-Ortega (33:31):
Yes. Thank you Warren for really helping us
unpack some of the complexitiesof loneliness, but also to
highlight the hope that we allhave. We appreciate it.
Marcus Goodyear (33:42):
All right Warren, Thank you, Doctor. Thank
you so much.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (33:45):
Thank you all so much.
Marcus Goodyear (33:49):
The Echoes Podcast is written and produced
by Camille Hall-Ortega, RobStennett and me, Marcus
Goodyear. It's edited by RobStennett and Kim Stone. Our
executive producers are PattonDodd and David Rogers. Special
thanks to our guests today,Doctor Warren Kinghorn.
Doctor Kinghorn recently spokeat Laity Lodge, and you can read
a story about that retreatonline at echoesmagazine.org.
(34:11):
While you're there, considersubscribing. You'll receive a
beautiful print magazine eachquarter, and it's free. You can
find a link in our show notes.
The Echoes Podcast and EchoesMagazine are both productions
brought to you by the H.E.ButtFoundation. You can learn more
about our vision and mission athebfdn.org.
There's this thing called doomscrolling. I do
(00:02):
it sometimes. Maybe you do too.I dive into my newsfeed and this
or that social media platform.Sometimes it's an actual
newsfeed of headlines.
News Clip (00:10):
Tonight, the worst day for stocks. We are diving
into the world of YouTube.Today's Secretary of State...
Marcus Goodyear (00:14):
But I'm not reading stories. I'm not
engaging in social media. I'mjust scanning the headlines and
thinking to myself, wow, I amvery different from these
people. I mean, why would theybelieve that? Why would they
think it's funny to share that?
It makes me feel disconnected. Ifeel a sense of fragmentation
rather than community. We aren'tcelebrating where we agree and
(00:35):
sometimes it feels like wedisagree more than we agree. And
then I feel lonely. It's strangebecause I'm not alone.
I mean, none of us are. Thereare 8,000,000,000 people on this
planet and yet so many of usfeel alone. We know this is a
problem. According to the WorldHealth Organization, twenty five
percent of older adults aresocially isolated. As many as
(00:57):
fifteen percent of adolescentsare lonely.
And social disconnection isunhealthy. It's just as
unhealthy as smoking 15cigarettes a day. If you're
socially disconnected, your riskof heart disease goes up twenty
nine percent. Your risk of astroke goes up thirty two
percent. This might be why Japanand Great Britain have ministers
of loneliness.
(01:18):
Because loneliness is dangerous.But there is hope.
I'm Marcus Goodyear from theH.E.Butt Foundation. This is the
Echoes Podcast. On today'sepisode, we welcome our guest,
Dr. Warren Kinghorn.Dr. Kinghorn is a clinical
psychiatrist and a theologian.He's the co-director of the
Theology, Medicine, and CultureInitiative at Duke University.
(01:40):
And recently, he was featured inEchoes Magazine where he talked
about the medical andtheological roots of loneliness.
I'm here with my co-host,Camille Hall-Ortega.
Camille Hall-Ortega (01:49):
Hi, Marcus. Warren, we're so glad to have
you.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (01:52):
I'm so glad to be here. Thank you all. Yeah,
thank you.
Marcus Goodyear (01:54):
Yes, welcome. Now you are a psychiatrist, and
so what would you say to apatient who tells you they're
deeply lonely?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (02:02):
I am a psychiatrist. I'm specifically a
psychiatrist who works withveterans in the VA medical
system. So most of my patientsare men because that's the
composition historically of themilitary. Many of them have
served in war. All of them haveserved in the military.
And as you point out, many ofthem are lonely. And I'm also a
teacher and professor at DukeUniversity, I work with students
(02:23):
who are surrounded by otherstudents and yet many of them
also are lonely. In my clinicalwork at the VA, when a patient
tells me that they're lonely,which by the way, happened this
morning when I was in clinic, Iwould first just want to thank
them for telling me that. It'ssometimes hard to admit to
ourselves and also to othersthat we're lonely. We may feel
(02:43):
some shame around that.
So I'd say, thank you fortelling me that. And then I
think I wouldn't try to convincethem otherwise. I wouldn't
immediately jump in and say,"Oh, but there's these people in
your life that you should begrateful for." But rather just
accept that experience. And thenI would tell them that I'm
really happy that they're inconversation with me connected
(03:04):
to me.
So the relationship that I canbuild with a patient is not
everything that a patient needs,but it may be a start that might
be a way to build some trustthat then could extend to other
kinds of relationships in thefuture. And then I would start
to ask like, who is it in yourlife who you have felt connected
to in the past, or who you mightwanna be connected to, or who
you might feel a kind of woundof disconnection from, what
(03:26):
would it might mean to begin totake some risks of reaching out
to them and putting yourselfinto a community, especially.
Camille Hall-Ortega (03:32):
I am thankful for the work that you
do. And I imagine that thecontext is huge. The context has
a lot of effects on what yourconversations look like and what
your recommendations look like.I'm married to a veteran. My
husband is a Marine Corpsveteran. And so I've heard so
many stories, but I imagine youhave lots of them.
(03:55):
Do you find that post COVID orany other factors you've seen
have really played a part in thenumber of folks you're hearing
talking about loneliness orcoming to you with issues of
loneliness?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn: Anecdotally, that has been my (04:09):
undefined
experience. I mean, COVID was sodifficult for all of us and more
difficult for some people insome communities than others.
For many of my patients and foralso many just in the rest of my
networks, I think COVID was atime when we had this enforced
social isolation. And I thinkit's easy to quantify the cost
(04:30):
of virus transmission, and itwas really important that that
be quantified, but it was harderat the time to quantify the
costs of social isolation andnot eating with people and not
being with people and notsinging with people and not
sharing relationship. So peoplewho were already vulnerable to
isolation in the context of thatforced isolation often ended up
(04:51):
even more so in ways that'sfrankly been hard to recover and
get back.
I think people develop habitsand communities develop habits.
Camille Hall-Ortega (04:59):
Yes.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (04:59):
And there's a lot of people out there that
are still suffering.
Marcus Goodyear (05:02):
Yeah, you mentioned earlier that sometimes
when patients say that they arelonely, there's some shame
attached to that. Do you thinkthat as a nation we feel some
shame attached to the lonelinesswe felt during the pandemic?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (05:19):
I think that shame is actually a really
important contributor toloneliness, and loneliness also
produces shame. And so there's atwo way relationship there. And
I follow Brene Brown on this, Ifollow my friend Curt Thompson
when he talks about shame from aChristian perspective, that
(05:40):
shame correlates with this twopart belief. And one belief is
that I am not blank enough,where whatever that blank is, is
whatever we most need to fitinto or to be accepted by a
community to which we need orwant to belong. And then the
other part of that is whenpeople realize that I'm not
blank enough, like I'm gonna beexcluded from this community. I
(06:03):
teach at Duke University, in anelite university, that might be
something like, I'm not smartenough or I'm not well read
enough or I'm not athleticenough or I'm not progressive
enough or I'm not conservativeenough, or whatever it is that
we feel like we need to belong.And then in response to the
emotion of shame draws us intoourself, it actually leads us to
(06:25):
disconnect from others becausewe don't wanna be vulnerable to
being ostracized. And yet thatthen cuts us off from those
relationships that we need. Andso shame produces isolation and
then isolation produces shame.And we find ourselves in this
like toxic cycle that's veryhard to get out of. And I think
I see a lot of students in thatcycle. I see patients in that
(06:48):
cycle. I see myself in thatcycle.
Marcus Goodyear (06:50):
Yeah, can you talk about that?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (06:52):
Because I'm a psychiatrist and a theological
ethicist, I've spent a lot ofyears in school and I know what
it means to be a student as wellas what it means to be a
professor. I think about all ofthose years that I spent in
school and all of those timeswhen I didn't ask the question
that I thought was maybe theuninformed question, because I
(07:12):
didn't want people to look at meand say, "Oh, like you really
don't belong here, do you?"
Marcus Goodyear (07:16):
Yeah, you didn't wanna ask the stupid
question.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (07:20):
And I don't know that I ever sought out the
conversation with either aprofessor or with friends or
with others where I just said,I'm really not sure about these
questions because I didn't wantpeople to say, "Oh yeah, maybe
you actually don't really belonghere." That thing kept me from
having connections, havingrelationships that would have
been really helpful. In mystory, something that played out
(07:41):
over a long period of time, I'veworked on that, but I think that
it's something that I think alot of students feel, lot of
people in workplaces feel, a lotof people at churches feel
sometimes.
Camille Hall-Ortega (07:51):
Some imposter syndrome, right?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (07:53):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Camille Hall-Ortega (07:54):
And your neighbor next to you is going,
Oh, wanna ask this question, butI don't want anyone to think
it's kind of dumb. You'rethinking the same thing. That
connection would come if one ofyou was brave, right?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (08:07):
Yeah. And the problem with imposter
syndrome is we all think thatwe're the only one that has it.
And students think that they'rethe only ones who have it. But
I'm like, well, it's prettycommon. And your professors were
students once and evenprofessors have it.
Marcus Goodyear (08:20):
I'm not sure I really expected this to get so
quickly down the road towardbelonging and thinking about
like belonging as maybe anantidote to loneliness or our
inability to feel belonging asthe source of loneliness? Do you
think about belonging a lot?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (08:37):
I do. And when I think about belonging,
I'm always finding myselfquoting the formulation of my
friend and colleague, JohnSwinton. And John, when he talks
about belonging, he talks aboutthe difference between inclusion
and belonging. And because wetalk a lot in church circles
about how can we be inclusive?We talk in educational circles
(08:58):
about how can we have inclusivecommunities.
And John says, "Inclusion isgood. It's good to want to be
inclusive, but it's a low barand it's not enough." Because
frankly, to be inclusive, allyou have to do is to not turn
away people that come to you. Soanybody that is in a church
sanctuary on a Sunday morningand has gotten in the door is
included because they haven'tbeen turned away.
(09:18):
But John's point is thatinclusion isn't enough because
you can be in a space with50, 100, 200, 1000 other people,
and yet no one is actuallycaring about you, no one is
loving you, no one is evenmaking an effort to connect with
you. Because belonging isdifferent from inclusion because
to belong you have to be missed.Someone needs to long for you
(09:39):
when you're not there and tosay, We need you to be a part of
us. That's a higher threshold,but that's actually what we most
need as human beings.
Camille Hall-Ortega (09:46):
Really good, I think that's just
tapping into some of the things,these universal desires that
connect us, that many of us fearthe vulnerability that it
requires to sort of admit thoseneeds and admit those But we all
know that we all want to be seenand known and loved. And it
(10:07):
takes some risk to put yourselfout there.
Marcus Goodyear (10:11):
So you talked about going through shame with
community. And then we weretalking about these different
forms of community where thesethings we call community but
we're all sitting down facingthe same direction not really
engaging. Nobody's missing me ifI'm not there. I definitely feel
that. Why is community so hard?
I mean sometimes it feels likelike a diet and exercise where
(10:31):
we know what we're supposed tobe doing we're just not doing
it. But maybe it's not even thatsimple. Maybe it actually is
hard. And I'm just curious ifyou could talk a little bit more
about what makes a communitythrive.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (10:43):
That's kind of the Genesis three question,
isn't it? Like, why is our worldnot as we know in some ways that
it could be, and we have basicneeds as human beings to connect
with other people. From the veryearliest parts of our lives.
Like we become who we are inrelationship with those who form
us and those who guide us. Andyet we find ourselves like in
(11:05):
this world, find that thoserelationships always in some
ways let us down.
They hold us and they let usdown. Even in the best case
scenario, that's actually justpart of what it means to live in
the world, that we find thatsometimes when we need other
people, they're not there forus. And that's actually part of
how we develop selves who areable to continue to go in the
(11:27):
world. And though, if we findthat those relationships really
aren't there for us or areabusive or are neglectful, that
becomes really hard, and so webegin to learn, I can only trust
in myself, no one else is gonnabe there for me. And that leads
us to have a sense that theworld is up to me to navigate as
an individual.
(11:47):
And so then you can believe allyou want about the importance of
community, but if your kind ofcore belief is that I can only
trust in myself because no oneelse is gonna really be there
for me when I need it, it'sgonna be really hard to trust.
Camille Hall-Ortega (11:59):
Some disillusionment there?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (12:02):
And just a sense of, like, can we actually
lean into a community to bothcontribute to it and to be
formed in it in a way that weneed as human beings?
Camille Hall-Ortega (12:14):
I can relate with those feelings of
disillusionment where you go,I've tried that. I've tried
that. You know, you join a newchurch, you're in some kind of
new community and folks say, yougotta put yourself out there.
You get to join the small groupand try getting involved. And
you'll have one, two, three, ahandful of experiences that
(12:38):
didn't meet your expectations.
And then you go, I've tried it.And it takes some level of
something, right? Fortitude,resilience, something where
folks are saying, try again. Andyou try again because there's
community there to be had.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (12:59):
That's right. And we don't stop needing
it.
Marcus Goodyear (13:01):
Yeah. You mentioned veterans and students
earlier. I assume the veteranstend to be older, although they
may not be. And your studentstend to be younger, although
they may also not be. Are youseeing loneliness as affecting
different generationsdifferently or is it pretty much
the same no matter whatgeneration or what age you're
(13:22):
in?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (13:22):
I think loneliness affects every
generation, and it affectsveterans as well as students, as
well as all of us. So it's abroader cultural problem. It
does, I think, affect differentgenerations in different ways.
So I would very much recommendthe Surgeon General Vivek
Murthy's 2023 report. So hereports in this compiled report
(13:43):
that American adults spendnearly an hour per day alone
more than we did in 2003.
So that's thirty hours a monththat we would have been around
other people, you know, twentyyears ago that we're not now.
That we spend less time withfriends. So whereas with in 2003
it was sixty minutes a day, in2020, it went down to twenty
(14:05):
minutes a day, partly because ofthe pandemic. But there was a
full 70% decrease in person timeamong youth ages 15 to 24. So we
might think that for variousreasons, older adults would be
more lonely in our culture thanyoung adults, that's not
necessarily the case.
Camille Hall-Ortega (14:24):
I'm interested because you are in a
somewhat unique position in thatyou're trained as a theologian,
but also as a psychiatrist. AndI'm wondering how those two
fields inform your work indifferent ways or in the same
ways and how that plays out inthis context of loneliness.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (14:43):
Well, it's hard for me to disentangle those
because am a psychiatrist, I'malso a theological ethicist. I
actually started this trainingby taking two years out of
medical school and coming todivinity school here at Duke.
But I would say that theblessing in my case of my
training as a psychiatrist isit's just made me so much more
appreciative of how complex andbeautiful human beings are in
(15:05):
our particularity. I have a bookcalled Wayfaring that was just
published last year in which Italk about the tendency of
psychiatry sometimes to justtreat people as collections of
symptoms that need to be reducedin what I call the machine
metaphor of mental healthcare.Like we interpret people's
experience as symptoms, wegather their symptoms and
diagnoses, we apply techniquesto those diagnoses, we try to
(15:27):
reduce the symptoms and we say,"Oh, that's good mental
healthcare."
But all that is, is liketechnical symptom reduction.
Like it's not actually the kindof vision that we need. But I
think psychiatric care at itsbest is not like a practice of
like just applying techniques,whether those are medications or
particular therapies to aparticular problem, they're
practices of walking withpeople. And that's where I think
(15:50):
my theological training helps toreinforce that because
Christians believe that we'renot just machines and we're not
just collections of symptoms andwe're not just collections of
problems, but we are creaturesof God and we are children of
God and we're made in God'simage and God knows us and loves
us. So we come into the world asthese creatures whom God knows
(16:13):
intimately and loves deeply, andthat affects how we relate to
each other.
Camille Hall-Ortega (16:18):
And then we know that God intended for us to
be in community. He told us inhis word, right? So many
references to the body of Christand the corporate worship. From
the very beginning, right? God'stelling Adam, it's not good for
(16:39):
you to be alone.
You need to help me here, right.So God has really designed us to
be in community He made thatvery clear. So there's this
beauty in the knowledge of theway it should be, the way that
God intended it to be.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (16:55):
Yes, throughout scripture, we're
called into this interconnectedrelationship with each other.
Even more than that, the NewTestament has this vision that
we're members of a common body.Now that's pretty connected. And
I think that's one of thereasons why it's important not
to ever think of ourselves asmachines, because you can put a
(17:15):
machine in a warehouse or in afield and it's gonna be what it
is. But creatures are notmachines and creatures are,
we're living creatures who needeach other and who need
nourishment, who need care andwho need love.
So I always try to, how do wenot even use language to
describe ourselves? Like I havea pet peeve about the language
(17:36):
of resilience because it's drawnfrom physics and you could apply
it to a steel bar. It's likebending back where you were
before and stress. In my worldof medicine, language of
burnout, which is something thatrockets do and machines do,
we're not machines that likeburn out and need to be refueled
and recharged. We're creatureswho need to be cared for and
(17:59):
loved.
Marcus Goodyear (17:59):
So we've talked about a whole bunch of things. I
think I wanna go back to theidea of kids. So you're working
with students and we've beentalking mostly about people who
experience loneliness but Iwonder about people in
relationship to them theparents. Like I have kids in
(18:21):
college right now and I worryabout them. I mean they're doing
great but sometimes you getthese calls and you just your
heart breaks you know they wantto see a psychologist or a
psychiatrist or a counselor andthat means that something is
wrong and so I worry as parentsparents of college students or
(18:42):
Camille has younger kids.
Camille Hall-Ortega (18:43):
Yeah I have little kids.
Marcus Goodyear (18:45):
How do we teach our kids to find community?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (18:49):
I'm also a parent. I also worry and think
about like what my own kids whoare in college and high school
and also what their friends areexperiencing. And I do think
it's just a challenging time tobe a kid, to be an adolescent,
to be a young adult, we'vetalked about. I mean, there is
no one size fits all solution toeveryone. So the last thing I
(19:09):
wanna do is to come on and say,this is the easy way to get to
that..
Camille Hall-Ortega (19:14):
Three easy steps to get an answer.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (19:15):
It's never that easy. And again, that's
part of like, we're not machinesthat like just need to pull out
the instruction manual and justkind of make some tweaks.
Camille Hall-Ortega (19:23):
We've got some individual differences
here.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (19:25):
Yeah. And we're on a journey and we're
wayfarers on a journey. So wewalk alongside each other and
sometimes you only know what'sneeded when you're really right
there in the situation. Placingourselves, even to take the risk
of placing ourselves in the wayof community is always something
that's important, I think, foryoung kids and also for kids as
(19:49):
they get older.
And so I think we'll probably betalking some about social media
and technology and other things.But one of the challenges, I
think, of what kids are facingnow is that there's all sorts of
opportunities to find ourselvesconnection in people who are not
actually physically around usand who may not be connected to
us in other ways, but at thecost of connection to those,
(20:11):
like in the places where we liveor maybe even our own homes. I
feel very fortunate that my wifeand I have been part of the same
church here in Durham for twentyone years and so my kids have
grown up And that's a blessingand I recognize that not
everyone for various reasons hasthat privilege and blessing to
have been part of a communityfor so long, but it's a
(20:32):
profoundly important communityfor us and for our kids. They've
known at church that they areknown and that they're loved and
they And to have, I'm gettingemotional because I talk about
it, but the experience as aparent of seeing other adults
come alongside my kids who don'thave to do so and to say, "Hey,
(20:54):
can we have coffee?" Or, "Can wehave conversation?" Or, "I just
wanna say, I really appreciateyou." That means so much. It
means so much to them, and itmeans so much to my wife and me
also. And I realized that noteverybody has that, and I don't
take that for granted.
Camille Hall-Ortega (21:10):
The village.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (21:11):
Yeah, but how can we create those villages
with each other? And so what areopportunities to do that? So if
we're parents, how can we investin the lives of other kids? If
we're in a church congregationor community, may not have kids
of our own, but how can we stillbe part of that village that's
like forming and raising thekids around us? Like, what are
the opportunities there for us?
And for those kids that areisolated, like, what does it
(21:32):
mean to understand the reasonsfor that and to try to find ways
to build those connections withothers?
Camille Hall-Ortega (21:38):
This can start to feel a little gloomy
where we go, okay, describingthis epidemic of loneliness. And
you go, for Christians like us,we can say, okay, our hope is in
Jesus. But in general, whenwe're speaking about this, is
there this feeling that it'sgonna continue to just get worse
(22:01):
or do we have a more positiveoutlook than that?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (22:05):
Yeah, I don't wanna be gloom and doom in
part because I'm a Christian andI wanna have that, I mean, I
believe that the Holy Spirit isat work in the world. I also
don't wanna be Pollyanna-ish andsay that, Oh, there's easy
solutions. We're gonna quicklyget out of this. Think the
fairest thing to say is that welive in a culture where there
are profound barriers andobstacles toward the kind of
(22:27):
human connections that we mostneed, and that may be as much or
more now as it's ever been. Andalso there's a lot of really
amazing connections that arehappening and there's a lot of
communities that are reallyhealthy and there's a lot of
people who are really healthyand a lot of opportunities for
healing and growth and thechallenge of the pandemic and
(22:47):
this enforced, almostuniversally enforced isolation
that we all felt has meant thatafter the pandemic, we actually
value, we feel the need forconnection because we felt what
it means not to have it.
Marcus Goodyear (22:58):
Yeah, and I mean, you mentioned social media
earlier. I think that that isdefinitely, technology is
definitely part of the challengewe're facing. And so for me,
Camille, it's not that it's alldoom and gloom but that we are
in a particular I think worldpivot around technology that is
similar to what happened backwith print. Clay Shirky talked
(23:18):
about this ten, fifteen yearsago in a way that I found
resonant. But as a result we'refaced with these technologies
that are impacting us in ways wecan't anticipate and we're only
learning the effects as theyhappen.
So I'm curious if we just takeit into technology and think
about that for a minute, whatare the ways in which you've
seen people I don't think weneed to talk about how
(23:41):
technology drives us toloneliness. That's pretty
obvious. But what practices haveyou seen people do to use
technology faithfully and usetechnology lovingly and in a way
that brings communitiestogether, but not superficially?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (23:56):
Well, I think you're right. We are in
the midst of a culturalreckoning about technology. I
think you're right that mostpeople recognize that. I see
when looking at data on rates ofdepression and anxiety and other
mental health challenges,including thoughts of suicide
among college students, whichhas been tracked in different
(24:18):
surveys for the last severaldecades. There's an inflection
point about 2012 where you beganto see increasing rates both of
self reported depression andanxiety and also willingness to
engaging in mental healthtreatment on college campuses
that has continued to rise sincethen.
It's been kind of plateaued at ahigh level since the pandemic.
(24:39):
And there's lots of things thatare possible contributors to
that. But one sensible reason isthat about twenty twelve was
around when we had universalsmartphone adoption and
universal social media adoptionamong adolescents and young
adults. All to say, I thinkthere's real benefits of social
media and I have a phone in mypocket right now, so I feel
this, the pull of it too, Butthere's also possible harms that
(25:02):
we have to reckon with. Andthere's very practical things
that one can do.
So one is, you know, a highschooler or a college student
might decide just not to be onparticular social media
platforms. They're not all thesame. Some are frankly more
addictive than others and alsomore like the content varies
among them. So you can justrefuse to be on a platform and
(25:23):
you might miss out some, butthere's benefits to that. You
can choose not to have an app onyour phone and just to access it
on a laptop.
That doesn't keep you off of it,but it may keep the kind of just
from dominating all of ourattention. You can set time
limits. You can choose to onlyfollow a certain number of
people, etcetera. So there'spractical ways that I think kids
are already navigating this andI'm trying to navigate it myself
(25:46):
too, terms of what's healthy andwhat's not.
Camille Hall-Ortega (25:49):
Oh, that's so, so, so, so good. I'm just,
I'm thinking none of us areimmune, you know, because it
starts so young now and it runsthe gamut all the way up, you
know, to older folks. And Ithink of just even my own
children where my husband and Iwere very committed, you know,
we're just not into the screens.We don't want this screen time.
(26:10):
We've got a five year old and athree year old, so they're
young.
And then you very quicklyrealize that is very difficult
to be avoiding screens. And thenyou see, there's so much
importance in not demonizingbecause you'll go, Oh gosh,
there are really great learningtools on this tablet here,
right? There's this tensionbetween these very obvious
(26:36):
dangers and these very obviousadvantages. And it's tough. It's
really tough. Yeah.
Marcus Goodyear (26:44):
Yeah. It makes me think of Albert Borgmann, who
I had the privilege of hearingat Laity Lodge in 2011. And it
was actually a life changingretreat for me. Albert Borgmann
is a philosopher of technology,was, he died recently. And he
talked about the affordances oftechnology and how we just need
(27:07):
to be aware of what they affordus to do, which is a strange way
of talking, he's a philosopher.
But also what they take awayfrom us. And kind of the
simplest example is the hearth.When our main technology is a
hearth in the center of our hometo provide heat and food, We
gather around the hearth forheat. We cook our food there
together and all kinds of thingshappen because of that simple
(27:31):
technology we gather around it.But if we have central heating,
we lose an opportunity togather.
So let's switch to AlbertBorgmann. This is in 2011, the
clip we're gonna hear at theretreat that I was at. He was a
speaker at Laity Lodge. LaityLodge is H.E.Butt Foundation's
adult retreat center. I was atthe retreat.
Borgmann has this profound wayof talking about the cycles of
(27:52):
new technology. He says thattechnology makes a promise to
us, and then it delivers on thatpromise, but it also betrays
that promise at the same time.And so it sends us constantly
looking for new technologies.And we have audio from that
retreat, we're going to listento him now in his own words.
Albert Borgmann (28:11):
The treachery of what seems to be the success
of the dominant culture is thatit promises, it fulfills the
promise, and then betrays thepromise. And so there's the
succession of of hope for thisnew thing, that new thing fueled
by the establishment itselfthrough advertisement and
(28:32):
through all the misty eyedreactions to new things. And and
there is, in fact, this briefhigh of, yes, there it is. There
is the new shiny thing. There'sthe new wonderful opportunity,
and then it ebbs. And there isthis mildly addictive pattern to
it that we get restless. We lookfor the next new thing. We start
(28:54):
looking around, and and thenthere is the next new thing, and
so the pattern continues.
Camille Hall-Ortega (29:01):
What are your thoughts?
Marcus Goodyear (29:02):
Yeah. What do you think when you hear that?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (29:04):
I think there's a few things to say
about that. One is, just fromthe perspective of why that's
happening, our attention is acommodity. Like, people make
money off of it. Corporationsmake a lot of money off of our
attention. And so how we focusour attention is in part a
question of who's making moneyoff of us and off of our bodies
(29:27):
and off of what we do. And so wehave to recognize that this is
an economic reality.
Camille Hall-Ortega (29:33):
Really good. Once I listened to it a
couple of times, I reallyenjoyed the quote and I too was
thinking, Oh, I want to hear therest of that talk. But I thought
about in this context ofloneliness, how this all plays
in. And we of course are in aculture of instant
gratification. And there arethese highs that come with that
(29:53):
instant gratification, but thenthere's the ebb, the feeling of
something's missing, a feelingof lack or emptiness.
And I believe that that alsoties directly into loneliness.
That at its core is a feeling ofsomething missing.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (30:12):
Yeah, that's right. Part of what I
struggle with, and I've noticedI kind of came of age when the
internet was also just coming ofage. And so I noticed my own
attention is less than it usedto be. It's gotten harder for me
to stay focused. One thing tojust acknowledge is that we are
in a very unique cultural age.
(30:33):
Like every other age of humanhistory would have included a
lot of time when there wasnothing other than the people
and the natural world around usto occupy our time and
attention. So for a lot ofpeople that would have been a
farm or the kind of rhythms of avillage or, you know, there's
(30:54):
lots of ways that that couldhappen. And nowadays, I think
just speaking from the firstperson, I think I often don't
know what to do with myself ifI'm sitting in a place and I
don't have anything immediatelyin my hand to either read or
listen to or scroll through orother things. So what does it
mean to actually be able to sitwith ourselves in our solitude
(31:15):
and to have the confidence thatthat space will be filled in
ways that we need for it to befilled.
Camille Hall-Ortega (31:21):
Really good, really good.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (31:22):
I'm speaking this to myself, by the
way.
Camille Hall-Ortega (31:24):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm taking notes, yeah.
Marcus Goodyear (31:28):
Well, we're nearing time, but I just, I have
to ask, why does our culture notallow that, do you think? Or
what would it look like for ourculture to allow that more?
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (31:38):
We listened to a clip by Albert Borgmann
before. Another philosopher whoI really love and who I've used
and I think is really profoundlyhelpful lived a few years before
Borgmann, the same as JosefPieper. He lived from about 1910
to late 1990s. He was a Germanphilosopher who was a German
Catholic philosopher who was anopponent of the Third Reich, but
(32:01):
then mainly came into his ownwatching the rebuilding of
Europe after the Second WorldWar. And what he noticed was
that Europe, and I think wecould also say The United States
at that time, was occupied withkind of logics of efficiency and
production and productivity.
And he began to wonder likewhat's lost in that. So even in
our language, even in English,like we talk about the weekend,
(32:24):
which is a term of absence, butnot holiday, which is what the
holy day, which is what theSabbath is for. We talk about
going on vacation, which againis a term of absence, but not
about going on a pilgrimage or afeast, which is a term of
presence. And he basically says,we've oriented all of our
culture around efficiency andproduction. I think in our
(32:46):
modern United States, maybe evenespecially now, we value
ourselves and others value us ashuman beings according to our
ability to produce and toconsume.
And so we're all participatingin this system of like
relentless production,productivity, and consumption.
Actually, point of human life isthe feast and it is worship and
(33:07):
it is play in the sense of beingable to co create with God in
the world and to be able toglimpse the beauty and goodness
that's all around us. And sopart of it's just finding ways
to allow ourselves to glimpsethat broader vision of who we
truly are.
Marcus Goodyear (33:24):
Oh man.
Camille Hall-Ortega (33:25):
So good.
Marcus Goodyear (33:26):
I love that. That's so good. That was
perfect. Yes. I think that's agreat place to end.
Camille Hall-Ortega (33:31):
Yes. Thank you Warren for really helping us
unpack some of the complexitiesof loneliness, but also to
highlight the hope that we allhave. We appreciate it.
Marcus Goodyear (33:42):
All right Warren, Thank you, Doctor. Thank
you so much.
Dr. Warren Kinghorn (33:45):
Thank you all so much.
Marcus Goodyear (33:49):
The Echoes Podcast is written and produced
by Camille Hall-Ortega, RobStennett and me, Marcus
Goodyear. It's edited by RobStennett and Kim Stone. Our
executive producers are PattonDodd and David Rogers. Special
thanks to our guests today,Doctor Warren Kinghorn.
Doctor Kinghorn recently spokeat Laity Lodge, and you can read
a story about that retreatonline at echoesmagazine.org.
(34:11):
While you're there, considersubscribing. You'll receive a
beautiful print magazine eachquarter, and it's free. You can
find a link in our show notes.
The Echoes Podcast and EchoesMagazine are both productions
brought to you by the H.E.ButtFoundation. You can learn more
about our vision and mission athebfdn.org.
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