Body Doubling
There was a thread on Reddit recently asking what leisure time was like for people before radio, TV, and the Internet. Someone mentioned a memoir they'd read from the early 1900s and the part that stuck with them was how social everyone was.After work, people would go to friends houses, putter around town and catch up with neighbors, visit shops where they knew everyone, etc.I can't but think that so many of the malaises that people suffer today, which we ascribe as individual psychological problems, are really just a result of how profoundly lonely and isolating media consumption is. (The irony of posting this on the Internet is not lost on me.)We are a tribal species. We need the company of others in our physical environment in order to feel safe and at home. Obviously, some amount of solitude is important too, but for a communal species like Homo sapiens, being alone or around strangers most of the day is the environmental equivalent of being in a desert with no shade.