In 2008 Switzerland passed a law that made owning one guinea pig illegal.
Today, pet stores in Zurich won’t sell you a single guinea pig unless you can prove you already have at least one at home. It seems guinea pigs are highly social creatures who get depressed when they’re alone. So what if one of your two guinea pigs dies, leaving the other to grieve their mate on their own? You can rent a guinea pig until you’ve had a chance to vet and buy a new mate for your existing one.
Elephants, dolphins and gorillas are even more social than guinea pigs. But few of us keep even one of them as a pet at home. Still, we can learn from the Swiss because the species that suffers most from loneliness is, of course, us. Homo sapiens.
Indeed, humans are suffering through an epidemic of loneliness that afflicts one in six of us, and of those 1.3 billion humans, four in five report being anxious or depressed and three in four say their lives lack meaning or purpose. You may think this is an old people’s problem. Not true. Or rather, not as true. Young people, often surrounded by others, are the loneliest they’ve been in years.
Here in Canada, one in four of us feels lonely “frequently or always.” And we’re feeling the knock-on effects everywhere: disconnection from our families and communities; more trips to the ER; more absenteeism; higher health costs; rising deaths of despair. Indeed, the connection between being lonely and smoking 15 cigarettes a day seems to hold true, although the direct connection between loneliness and early death is a bit iffy.
There’s a raft of new programs to help people feel less lonely, from co-housing communities and home-sharing, to inter-generational co-housing, where aging adults with spare rooms are matched with younger people who need affordable housing, in exchange for companionship and help with daily tasks.
One of these is the Canadian non-profit, Canada HomeShare, that matches Boomers and Seniors with university students or adults 55+. It started in 2018 as the Toronto HomeShare Pilot Project funded by the City of Toronto and it’s a rare example of a pilot project growing to be a national one. Last year, it expanded to seven cities: Peterborough, Kingston, Vancouver, Drumheller, Peel, Toronto, and Fredericton.
But for me, the real benefit of Canada HomeShare is that it addresses not one, but two major social issues: affordable housing for students and social isolation among older adults.
Indeed, its benefits are much like those from chopping wood: it warms you twice.
Meanwhile…
1. Solving murders. Nearly half of America’s murderers get away with it. Which encourages more people to try. As The New York Times noted: “Compared with its peers, America overall does an unusually poor job of solving killings.” That’s for sure. But even worse is America’s clearance rate for other crimes: assault, 46%; robbery, 28%; rape, 27%; and car theft, 8%.
Back on murders, Britain’s clearance rate is 85%, Germany, 90%, Japan, 95% and Finland, 98%. In Canada, the murder clearance rate runs between 70% and 80%. Since 1921,Toronto’s clearance rate has averaged 80% and, in the past 6 years, it’s climbed to 82%.
2. Maximum karma. There’s a nap for that. Plus where to park your phone when you’re on the can. And how to be free as a bird. Plus, inconceivable things. Plus, charting betterbehaviour.
3. Revenge. How it’s best served up. And best eaten too. This new Mercedes belches schadenfreude. And if you read The Salt Path and loved it, your psyche is in for a shock.
Finally, Goldman Sachs says 70 is the new 53.
4. Is there something I can do for you? Tom Hanks shows that yes, there is. What to do when life gives you lemons? Don’t make lemonade: a lesson in today’s marketing.
5. Canadianisms. We’re not talking double-double here. Or even “Eh.” But
An entire new dictionary of Canadianisms. Plus the best golf courses in the land. Plus rich folks, including Canadians, on the move. Plus the jumping lumberjacks of Maine (who are French Canadians). And David Suzuki on the tragic triumph of global warming.
6. Age-old is not old age. First, Ringo Starr reached 85 this week. Plus Stephen Sondheim treated lyrics as puzzles. And serious science is now asking: can shingles vaccine reduce dementia? And in South Korea, it’s clear that workers are punished for getting old.Finally, this Pretty Woman is now this Pretty Older Woman. Plus, old buildings play All Fall Down.
7. Storyselling. Storytelling is hard. But selling your story is infinitely harder. Unless you’re Shonda Rhimes, the writer behind Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and Bridgerton, and the first woman to create three television dramas with more than 100 episodes.
8. Contagion. The link between drug addiction and contagious disease and hate speech proliferation is a straight-line one, as Joel Finkelstein learned when he co-founded theNetwork Contagion Research Institute.
9. Keep calm and read this chart. Instagram is awash with dashboards on subjects dashboards rarely cover: from managing your anger, and body language, to real accountability and leadership styles.
10. Who I’m liking. John Naughton writes a daily blog that touches a lot on technology and society. Here he introduces Neal Stephenson with two essays on AI. Well worth reading, and thinking twice. Writes Naughton: “Many years ago, I came on “In the Beginning was the Command Line”, his wonderful essay on computer operating systems. Recently he was invited to give a talk at a conference organised by the Laude Institute in San Francisco, and afterwards tidied up his script into this thoughtful essay on AI and education.”