Original article: Vivir más, ¿para qué? Avizorando una longevidad que nos deja huérfanos
By Lisandro Prieto Femenía, educator, writer, and philosopher
“Emotional solitude is a slow poison: it robs life of its meaning and turns years into prolonged insomnia” – Erik H. Erikson, 1982, p. 210.
The modern aspiration to extend life is met with an ethical and existential tension as the networks of companionship that imbue life with meaning unravel.
This is not merely a public health issue nor a startling statistic; rather, it is a fundamental anthropological inquiry: What value does the duration of life hold if devoid of meaningful conversation?
Biomedicine may grant us additional years, but if these years unfold in a landscape of loneliness, the gain becomes a significant anomaly from a human perspective. Life, beyond its extension, requires intersubjective resonance to achieve its fullness.
Empirical evidence linking warm relationships to better health and increased longevity necessitates a reconsideration of certain priorities.
Specifically, the Harvard longitudinal study on adult development, led by George Vaillant and continued by Robert Waldinger, summarizes decades of findings that assert “warm, lasting relationships protect against illness, enhance emotional well-being, and extend lifespan” (Waldinger & Schulz, 2010, p. 143).
This assertion is not rhetorical: the biological mechanisms associated with social isolation—elevated cortisol, systemic inflammation, sleep disturbances—translate into increased mortality and morbidity. Thus, the pursuit of longevity without relational investment is a form of technocratic progress that overlooks the social fabric where human life acquires meaning.
Recent reports highlighting a “friendship recession” delve deeper into this social diagnosis. Research from institutions like Harvard indicates that the proportion of adults reporting no close friends has steadily increased, and behaviors such as eating lunch and dinner alone have rapidly grown in recent years (Fuemmeler & Bruckmann, 2025; Making Caring Common, 2024).
These data point to well-known structural transformations: geographical mobility, job insecurity, a decline in public spaces, and a cultural reconfiguration of leisure that prioritizes work and digital presence over face-to-face interactions.
Research adds nuance to the issue, revealing that beyond the quantity of contacts, the lack of meaningful relationships increases the prevalence of anxiety, depression, and a sense of purposelessness, leading to moral and epidemiological deterioration.
The biological dimension of loneliness further underscores the urgency of transforming priorities. Studies in psychoneuroimmunology show correlations between social isolation and inflammatory markers, chronic cortisol elevation, and worse cardiovascular outcomes.
In comparative terms, loneliness can increase mortality risks comparable to traditional health factors. If medicine targets organs and cells without considering the relational web, it may prolong life but also increase the proportion of years lived in poor health.
For this reason, a care ethic becomes crucial: recognizing interdependence as foundational to the ‘good life’ and orienting public policies accordingly.
Confronted with these biological and social diagnoses, philosophy provides conceptual tools to understand the seriousness of the phenomenon.
For instance, Hannah Arendt posited that human life achieves visibility and shared existence through collective action and public interaction, asserting that “what is human and worthy of remembrance emerges only when individuals present themselves to one another and witness each other’s actions” (Arendt, 1958/2000, p. 52).
If friendship and family dissolve, this space for emergence impoverishes, reducing the possibility of creating common memories and shared judgments. Technology, which promises connection, often delivers substitutes: instant communications that fail to provide the corporeality and deep reciprocity necessary for individuals to fully appear before each other.
Moreover, postmodern culture tends to value autonomy and efficiency, instrumentalizing affection. In societies that exalt productivity and flexibility, relationships are often assessed by their immediate material utility. This perspective induces an affective economy that devalues deep friendships and extended family when these do not yield obvious returns.
However, true friendship is not a mere commodity but an experience that transforms desires, criteria, and resistances. As C. S. Lewis aptly noted about friendship, it is “not the fruit of exchange; it is a gift founded on mutual constancy and acceptance” (Lewis, 1955/1998, p. 78).
Thus, recovering the meaning of relationships involves resisting a culture that commodifies intimate time and instead demands an ethic of presence that recognizes friendship and family ties as ultimate goods, not merely utilitarian ones.
Social pedagogy also plays a role in this context. If universities must offer courses on how to cultivate friendships, it highlights a social deficiency that necessitates institutional intervention.
Yes, it is unfortunately true: there are courses and programs offered by universities or affiliated institutions focused on developing social skills and, specifically, the ability to establish and maintain friendships.
Although perhaps not “core courses” in the traditional sense, many higher education institutions have recognized the importance of emotional well-being and social connection among their students.
However, teaching sociability techniques is insufficient without transforming the structural frameworks that fragment existence: long working hours, geographical dispersion, and economic precariousness. Furthermore, the academic formalization of friendship underscores that acquiring interpersonal skills demands intentional practice and supportive communities.
Recovering friendship, therefore, necessitates both social praxis and public policies that foster conviviality and shared time.
So far, the argument rests on empirical evidence. However, the critique must become more incisive when we observe the postmodern lifestyle that both enhances and normalizes the problem. The significant extension of human life confronts a culture that celebrates fragmentation as a virtue and presents radical autonomy as a moral achievement.
Under this aesthetic, identity is shaped strictly by consumption, networks, and temporary performances, while depth becomes commodified, and relational promiscuity is confused with freedom.
The result of this distasteful cocktail is a life built on shiny surfaces: profiles showcasing achievements, friendships functioning as symbolic capital, and shared times measured in “likes” and fleeting appearances. This facade of life is not innocuous: it produces subjects accustomed to immediate gratification, liquid relationships, and bonds that demand neither continuity nor responsibility.
On this last aspect, Zygmunt Bauman acutely diagnosed this fragility when he described liquid modernity: human connections, he said, “become fragile as society makes relationship a permanent and replaceable choice” (Bauman, 2000/2003, p. 76).
His critique is, therefore, both descriptive and normative: it describes relational volatility and warns about its costs for social cohesion.
Complementarily, Byung-Chul Han denounces how the society of performance and constant exposure erodes the ability to care and wait that is necessary for friendship: the continual optimization of one’s own shine reduces solidarity and suppresses the slowness required to build real interpersonal trust (Han, 2012/2015, p. 34).
Together, these diagnoses explain why deep relationships decline, not only because technology facilitates superficial connections but because productive rationality converts affections into exploitable and disposable resources.
The postmodern critique can be even sharper, as the apologia of absolute individualism serves specific economic and political interests. The uprooted individual is more manageable, less prone to make collective demands, and more available to participate in a market that demands total flexibility. Loneliness, then, is not only a cultural collateral effect but can function as a technique of governance.
Recovering friendship is, therefore, also a political act of resistance, as reinstating mutual obligations, reconstructing spaces of emergence, and sustaining shared narratives of meaning reestablish the sense of human existence. It is no coincidence that Robert Putnam has warned us about the loss of social capital, which erodes community capacity to sustain common goods for all. Today, that erosion accelerates and embeds itself in an attention economy that rewards visibility over fidelity (Putnam, 2000/2003, p. 22).
As recently mentioned, the care ethics of Carol Gilligan and successors emphasize that responsibility for the other is not a secondary trait of morality but its potentially restorative core. Indeed, valuing interdependence does not undermine mature autonomy; rather, it constitutes it.
Therefore, policies for work-life balance, urban design that encourages encounters, investment in public spaces, and provisions that alleviate the burden of care appear as complementary measures to biomedical advancements. Teaching how to cultivate friendships at university can be beneficial, but without structural conditions that allow for sustained relational practices, the lesson will remain a patch.
Additionally, the narrative dimension of the self requires some attention. Erikson emphasized that integrity in old age depends on a biography recognized by others. In other words, without witnesses, old age may devolve into a narrative solitude that denies retrospective meaning (Erikson, 1982, p. 210).
Medicine can intervene on the organism but cannot restore the memory testified by others. Celebrating anniversaries, transmitting intergenerational stories, and being present during decisive moments are practices that confer retrospective meaning and, therefore, must be the subject of policies and cultural practices that sustain them.
Nevertheless, recovering friendship and family requires a practical disposition: relational slowness, fidelity, and a willingness to repair. These attitudes contrast with the postmodern dynamics of performance and appearance; therefore, they will demand changes both personally and institutionally.
On a personal level, this entails prioritizing presence over instrumental time management; on an institutional level, it requires redirecting resources and rethinking public priorities so that prolonged life is also shared life.
The political response must, therefore, be multidimensional: integrating medicine with urban and labor policies, with relational education that does not instrumentalize friendship, and with healthcare systems that address loneliness as a social determinant of health.
In other words, the extension of physical life must intersect with a care policy that makes companionship possible. Failing to do so, the promise of longevity will become a technical conquest that leaves intact the factors that impoverish human existence.
In conclusion, dear readers, if modernity extends our lives but strips us of companionship, we must collectively rethink what human well-being means.
What value does an extended life hold if there are no hands to steady tremors, voices to recall the past, laughter to celebrate achievements, and gazes to confirm our existence? Will we accept the paradox of solitary longevity as inevitable, or will we reframe our institutions to reconstitute networks of care and friendship?
The collective response will involve political decisions prioritizing presence, reimagining public and educational spaces, and treating loneliness as a tangible health determinant.
On a personal note remains the troubling question: What am I willing to sacrifice in the name of longevity, and whom will I seek so that my years count for more than just time? Can we still recover the custom of companionship, or have we naturalized loneliness as the unavoidable price of progress?
Finally, if medicine can heal the body, can it also cure the soul’s loneliness, or is that a remedy we must invent together before reaching old age?
By Lisandro Prieto Femenía
References
-Arendt, H. (2000). The Human Condition (4th ed.). Paidós. (Original work published in 1958).
-Bauman, Z. (2003). Liquid Modernity. Fondo de Cultura Económica. (Original work published in 2000).
-Erikson, E. H. (1982). The Life Cycle Completed. W. W. Norton. (Cited: Erikson, 1982, p. 210).
-Fuemmeler, B., & Bruckmann, C. (2025). The Friendship Recession: The Lost Art of Connecting. Harvard Kennedy School — Evidence for Action. Retrieved from https://happiness.hks.harvard.edu (report, February 28, 2025).
-Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Harvard University Press.
-Han, B.-C. (2015). The Burnout Society. Herder. (Original work published in 2012).
-Lewis, C. S. (1998). The Four Loves. Ediciones B. (Original work published in 1955).
-Making Caring Common (Batanova, M.; Weissbourd, R.; McIntyre, J.) (2024). Loneliness in America. Harvard Graduate School of Education. Retrieved from https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu (report, October 3, 2024).
-Putnam, R. D. (2003). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon & Schuster. (Original work published in 2000).
-Waldinger, R., & Schulz, M. (2010). The Harvard Adult Development Study: Lessons on Health and Relationships. In R. Waldinger (Ed.), Longitudinal Studies and Well-Being: Perspectives on Adult Life (pp. 137-158). Academic Press.
