The transformation of individualism and loneliness in times of pandemics

Abstract

The characterisation of mass society in a society without God, as a mere mimetic, hypnotic and unstable phenomenon is clearly insufficient. For its rise, social, psychological and relational changes had to take place, both among people and between people and their environment. Many scholars in recent times who have tried to explain the phenomenon of mass society have undoubtedly linked it to individualism, especially to one of its characteristics that could be considered specifically modern: loneliness. The study entitled “The Spiral of Silence” is well known, in which Noelle-Neumann, taking up Tocqueville's classic thesis, highlights the tremendous negative force – as a psychosocial agent – of individual behaviour in the face of social forces. As Erich Fromm forcefully points out: “Feeling completely isolated and lonely leads to mental disintegration, just as starvation leads to death”. The phenomenon of a worldwide pandemic has forced a rethinking of the concept of isolation and loneliness, theoretically displaced by virtual and telematic forms of communication. However, mimetic effects and mass behaviours have not disappeared with isolation, but have been transmuted into new psychological, behavioural and cognitive attitudes.