Dr. Dennis Slattery illumunate's the the existential threat of loneliness in our culture and provides mythic, spiritual and historical ways to combat this gowing epidemic.
Dr Selina Matthews (00:02.181)
Dr. Slattery, I am so excited to have you back to talk on this incredible topic of loneliness that is happening in our culture so intensively right now. I want to start with, since loneliness is increasing in America and it's actually becoming an existential threat to our way of life, can you let us know why loneliness is increasing?
Because I think most people want to know why. Why now?
Dennis Patrick Slattery (00:34.466)
Yes. Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me back. I enjoy every time that we get together on the podcast. And so it's a huge pleasure for me too. Yeah, so I'm going to share with you some of my reflections that I've added to because loneliness right now is such an organic growing phenomenon, emotional and otherwise.
Dr Selina Matthews (00:47.409)
Thank you.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:04.652)
So your question is a great one.
Something basic, I think, to our cultural mythology is shifting. And I don't think we can talk about loneliness without talking about myth, both collective and personal. The uncertainty felt by so many today encourages them to protect themselves, I think, with various security blankets that they believe will insulate them.
What has infiltrated the cultural psyche is a radical imbalance between the inner life of the individual and the outer life of a culture that more and more seems to be in service of the few, not the many. And so, Selena, I think a growing feeling.
in people about being marginalized is not bringing them out more, but pulling them back into the cocoon that gives them comfort and security, but not necessarily authenticity. That energy shift is felt deeply rather than being thought.
Dr Selina Matthews (02:25.137)
So can you extrapolate on that a little bit?
Dennis Patrick Slattery (02:30.454)
Yes, I think that loneliness in being lonely, one can lose one's sense of authenticity of being a unique self with agency, with a certain empowerment. And I think some of that is sacrificed on the altar of security. So if I had to choose,
fictionalizing how I think many feel between being secure and being authentic. Loneliness is moving people to choose security, like a blanket or like a cocoon. And their authenticity as a human being is being hijacked.
And I think there's a few other things I'll say here that'll bring me back to.
Dr Selina Matthews (03:27.301)
This is actually quite shocking, Dennis. This is quite shocking. Yeah.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (03:31.34)
I think so. I think it's a radical shift in ontology, that is a radical shift in being itself. So it goes to the core, and I love your word about existential, because it is about
challenging one's existence and one's courage needed to be authentic and not
worry so much about being secure. And let me add to that. And please, as always, you come in at any point. The energy shift is felt deeply rather than being a thought about current conditions. It's a visceral, embodied, felt sense. There's something alienating.
taking place, but I don't have the language many feel to express that. The result can be a furthering of self-absorption in thinking and acting. Since we've planned this podcast, I think anxiety has increased exponentially.
Many people also feel they're being deceived by information.
Dr Selina Matthews (05:12.081)
Well, I think we're being gaslighted every day, not only politically, in the news, even with some of our friends who have opposite views. They are parroting what they hear in the news media or the newspapers that they read that are perhaps different than mine or yours.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (05:15.138)
Catholic.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (05:33.516)
Yes, and that's a wonderful way to angle how their authenticity is lost. Let me go just a little further, and I completely agree. And the other component here is speed itself.
Fill the airwaves with such rapidity that no human being has the capacity to parse out what it is that is being, that is assaulting them. And I use the word assault. It's an act of violence, what's taking place. The information overload is an act of violence that draws people back.
Dr Selina Matthews (06:14.449)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (06:21.034)
into themselves rather than out. Now there's indications that that's changing a little bit, but please.
Dr Selina Matthews (06:25.07)
It could, it could.
Could you actually even say it could even go to the level of terrorism? Okay.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (06:35.852)
Yes, it's growing exponentially so that the violence is a form of rhetorical terrorism. There's no question, and I don't think the word is too dramatic or overemphasizing the case. We are in uncharted territory in the history of this country, and so terrorism
is another format for controlling. Because control is, I think, the virtue that's being propagated.
Let's see. So this information coming in that is often contradictory, often nonsensical to a reflective person. The loss of self-reflection though, incites further anxiety because we're learning and I'm not being superior in any way in saying this.
many people simply lack the ability to self-reflect or to reflect on anything with any depth because the culture has engineered stay horizontal, don't go deep and that whole woke nonsense is a way to chastise coming into consciousness.
Dr Selina Matthews (08:15.739)
Yes. I really like what you said about that. think that's really important, Dennis, that wokeness is about deepening your relationship to self, to soul, and becoming more conscious as a human being, which is we who are woke, and I consider us woke.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (08:33.442)
Yes.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (08:39.0)
We're woke people, yep.
Dr Selina Matthews (08:41.425)
that we are being shamed and humiliated through the media for being woke, for being educated, for being intelligent, for being independent. And I am, it's almost shameful that we are. There's two points here. That's one point. The other point is
There's something in our culture where we, know, level one consciousness is I am my car. There's no separation between I am my car and the person, who the person is. Those are levels of consciousness. So what you are actually saying is the American culture has formed around level one consciousness and there's
there was a piece of the wokeness that was trying to come through, which is deeper levels of consciousness trying to come through that is now being terrorized to go back into hiding.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (09:52.333)
Yes, nice. Well said. I couldn't agree more. And this is maybe the ultimate insult to a consumer culture. That if you're not consuming, you're really not part. So get with it and consume. And I find it interesting that tomorrow is the day.
that is nationally proclaimed, depending on who received the notice and who hasn't, to buy nothing, to purchase nothing, to simply shut down the economy, to show that it is the people who are agents of the economy, not the corporate world. And Sandy and I have made a vow, we're all in for that.
Dr Selina Matthews (10:49.413)
Yeah, yeah, no, I'm all in. I'm all in with it too. Everybody I know, all my clients that are, you know, of the same lineage that I am, we are all not purchasing anything again. On tomorrow. I mean, certainly we have to eat eventually. You know.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (10:50.05)
day tomorrow and I hope you have a
Dennis Patrick Slattery (11:05.314)
Yes.
Yes, but Andy and I made it a point. We've got gas in the car. We're not planning on going anywhere. I beg your pardon. And so we've we're hunkered down to honor this movement that I hope continues. And maybe there'll be a time in the near future where it's two days that people agree. Let's purchase nothing. Yeah. So I'm glad that this came up. Let me.
take a little further here. The feeling among many is that this rush of data, some true, some lies, is exhausting and can bring many to back into their comfortable cocoon rather than engaging public spaces, which some writers have believed have shrunk in popularity. When a desire for security takes
precedents over a life of authenticity and I know I'm repeating myself a little bit here. Loneliness can creep in to enhance that precedent because many feel there is no safety net to break their fall. And so the only way is to be immobile, be inactive. Another contributor, Selena, is giving too much latitude to the ego's desires.
and wants. And you've already touched on this but I'm going to say a couple of sentences here about it. It can lead us into the material world only. This is stage one consciousness. And to seek meaning in goods, reputation, and rewards. The ego's perspective is narrow and limited but for too many I suspect
Dennis Patrick Slattery (13:07.136)
It is sufficient for living comfortably on a daily level. And yet even that is being eroded now. Fears of job loss, benefits, Medicare, your comment earlier, Social Security are created to encourage anxiety and loneliness. Stay divided and then you can conquer. I mean, this, we're beyond both
Brave New World in 1984. We need another novel, we need another dystopian novel to tease out the radical implications within a world that is so technologically advanced and so primitive in cultural consciousness, an extension of self-consciousness.
Another area related to this increase of social loneliness is based on the illusion of the myth of the autonomous individual. That's been sold to us.
separate and distinct from others. Many traditions, often non-Western, believe that we are inseparable from one another, that we are coexistent with others, not alone and separate. One can give in to hopelessness when living within an ego position of being separate. These ideas of
banding together in community with shared values has been played down, it needs to be risen up. It needs to be raised up, I should say, so that it benefits all who feel abandoned. And I'm thinking, I took a few notes and I'll be very brief here. I'm thinking of Thich Nhat Hanh, who has spent his life proposing
Dennis Patrick Slattery (15:18.798)
the absolute essential nature of being mindful, seeing self in relation, or the Dalai Lama who says, you know, it's often a way to come out of loneliness and separateness by simply thinking of others. Just that thought of others breaks that mold that loneliness
loves to thicken, if you will. And I think of Pema Chodron, one of my favorite writers, a Buddhist psychologist, who says again and again in her books, I am the other. Now to take that in is to become communal in the imagination. And the last one I mentioned is Toni Morrison, whose marvelous book, On the Origin of Others, asks the question,
How did otherness even happen? And then she writes this beautiful meditative book. I think she's one of our great spiritual advisors and shamans as well in her fiction.
Dr Selina Matthews (16:32.675)
Absolutely, absolutely. Toni Morrison is extraordinary in her.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (16:38.616)
She's extraordinary. I'm glad you feel it and I'm not surprised that you are tuned into her. When we disconnect from others in pursuits like the ones you mentioned, we ask, are these consequences of a life of increasing loneliness? I beg your pardon. Let me read it again. Are these causes or consequences of a life of increasing loneliness? Do they promote what they might?
Dr Selina Matthews (16:44.101)
Yeah, totally.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (17:08.152)
better be questioning, even refuting. A lack of sufficient information. This is also the part of the engineering. Give them a little bit of information, but hold back on the essentials so that confusion reigns, not clarity. And I want to mention too that the god Dionysus was seen by the Greeks
and he had many faces, but one of the faces of Dionysus was the god of Confusio, of fusion. And I think Dionysus is very much moving in our world right now. And if I can, I would suggest he's replacing Hestia and the hearth and sitting in the round where everyone has a voice and each one entertains the idea
Dr Selina Matthews (17:43.973)
Really?
Dennis Patrick Slattery (18:06.36)
brought forth from his or her angle of vision. She was really a goddess of democracy because it
Dr Selina Matthews (18:13.819)
Yeah, can you just, because a lot of people may not be familiar with who Hestia is. She's the goddess of the hearths, am I correct? Hearts. And can you just tell people who she is so that they will be able to connect with you?
Dennis Patrick Slattery (18:23.832)
Got it. it the heart? Yes. Heart.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (18:33.763)
Yes.
She was the child of, let me if I can get this, I'm trying to remember it, of not Zeus, Zeus' father and Gaia the Earth. And when this god was threatened, he devoured all of the children that were birthed through him and Gaia.
And Hestia was the first to be eaten and the last to be vomited for. Just sorry that I'm not calling Zeus's father. So she spent more time in the gut, in the stomach of divinity than any other god or goddess. And that gave her a special perspective on human engagements.
And as you say, she's the goddess of the hearth. She's the goddess of the heart. She's heart. She's heartwarming. She warmly entertains ideas. Her fire in the the circle is not the fire of an Aries, rather this glowing embers of the coals. So it
it gives off heat, but it doesn't give off the inflammation of a fire, you know, roaring. And that is a beautiful image for gathering around the hearth fire, which is done from the beginning of time and is done anytime that one is with a group in nature or with family. Yes.
Dr Selina Matthews (20:11.281)
Right.
Right.
Dr Selina Matthews (20:29.435)
Or with family, with family. With family is the Hestia time, as I understand it. When you have your family, your children and your grandchildren, isn't that would be the goddess of Hestia would be present there, family warmth, community togetherness. And so what you're saying is we've gone from that into Dionysus, which is
Dennis Patrick Slattery (20:36.834)
No, that's right.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (20:45.375)
Absolutely.
Yes. Yes.
Dr Selina Matthews (20:58.403)
I wasn't aware of the confusion part, but I know Dionysus as the wild man, the crazy guy. So maybe you want to talk about Dionysus and how we're moving from Hestia, the warmth and the family, into the crazy guy. Wow.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (21:04.472)
Wilder. Yes. Yes.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (21:15.67)
And the crazy guy, because he's the god of the grave and of inebriation and wine. And when you're, when you've had a little too much wine, you're in a world of confusion. Like what's up, what's down? How did I get here? Who am I? I can't even figure it out. So he's mythologically that place of that temperament.
that condition, there's the word, of intoxication. And to be intoxicated is to be kind of single-minded, where everything else falls to the wayside. And it's disorienting, it's almost dismembering, and he is the god of dismemberment as well. So these gods are psychological presences.
that if we read them, not literally, but symbolically and metaphorically, we touch the deepest places in the psyche. And the Greeks had that genius for crafting images. And of course, I'm teaching a course in the Odyssey now, and we're watching these gods and goddesses intermingling with humans and divinely inspiring them, divinely trying to
drown them in the ocean. So they're manifestations of our psyche that are eternal. They're the archetypal presences, but even more archetypal energies that flow through us and that we find ourselves sometimes resisting and other times being hospitable towards. So that relationship of mortals and divine are given in the literature and the poetry.
as much as they are in Hesiod gathering them up. And isn't it astonishing that today, you know, with archetypal and depth psychology, the gods and goddesses are everywhere and not just the Greek gods and goddesses. So the perceptive depth oriented human being knows that these are living vital energies.
Dr Selina Matthews (23:40.817)
Yes, absolutely.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (23:42.307)
flowing through us and through the culture. So I think of my own life where I order so many things online that show up 24 hours later rather than shopping in a store that may not have the volume of variety, but it does encourage social engagement with others, most often with people we don't know. And we're giving that up through the
Dr Selina Matthews (23:45.713)
Wow. Wow.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (24:11.703)
mediums that promise we can have that to your house that you just ordered in the next six hours.
Dr Selina Matthews (24:20.175)
Well, so what you're talking about is the prevalence of technology and how that has facilitated our levels of loneliness in America. So you're talking about, you know, the different places that we order things, boom, and they are delivered, Amazon being one of them. And there's others, we can get stuff from Target or wherever.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (24:31.416)
Yes.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (24:40.494)
Yeah. Yes.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (24:46.819)
Yes.
Dr Selina Matthews (24:48.763)
How has this, what has this done to the Hestia part and how is it facilitating the Dionysus part?
Dennis Patrick Slattery (25:00.29)
Yeah, that's good. I think what I where I go next might reveal something of that. And if it doesn't you you come back. Left alone, individuals can fall into a trap. Believing that one's life is absent any purpose and with no one to talk to about meaningful matters, one can despair.
Dr Selina Matthews (25:08.305)
Okay. Okay.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (25:30.573)
become angry and bitter, jealous and envious, all in the process of creating a lonely, bitter heart. Now this is Hesia's heart, but it's gone bitter. It carries a bitterness, not the generous openness. So these gods and goddesses can be distorted, malformed, twisted, inverted, so they become something unnatural.
to their own psychic nature and energy. And they can be like anything else, I believe, manipulated to serve selfish ends. It's also a step closer to creating one's own hell, which I'll bring up shortly, or when we get to the place of Dante's Inferno.
But here's the other piece. One source that amazed me appeared in the February issue of the Atlantic, which I think you got in red, Selena. It was entitled The Antisocial Century by Derek Thompson. Worth reading, listening, if you can. Worth.
Dr Selina Matthews (26:39.845)
Yes. Yes.
Yeah, it's a brilliant, brilliant article. And maybe I can have, can put that on a link so that people can read that incredible article by Derek Thompson. Yeah, excellent.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (27:00.846)
Yes, beautiful. He reveals in it many studies where we have become for many a to-go society. For example, he points out that restaurants that have tables for customers to order meals and enjoy conversations with friends or just being around others, you don't have to know them, but you're in a social matrix, have turned into
to go only where the tables are now used to line up bags of meals for customers to come in, pay for and leave without often even conversing with those employees who prepared, bagged and set out their meals for them to pick up and pay for. No communication in and out. I wonder if people realize they are
relinquishing as a social species who require a shared social reality to add meaning to their lives. I wonder if they're conscious of what they're giving up for this efficiency. See, the myth of efficiency is another one that we ought to at least expose in our conversation, which is connected to the myth of speed, which we're suffering from.
on many different quarters. Many in the study that Thompson wrote said they liked dining alone. The reason that they were that they gave was they needed more me time. What a paradox. A hidden narcissism where self-soothing divorces them from a larger social matrix, perhaps.
exercising a self-imposed solitude. Thompson claims is the most important social fact of the 21st century. This self-imposed solitude is because people think that's what they should want, but they don't reflect on it deeply enough and so they fall into the into the net. Simply put,
Dennis Patrick Slattery (29:26.614)
We need others to help us with our own interpretation of reality. We need others to check and balance us. But it also offers so many other rich dimensions of being socially with others. Failing those other points of view, we can become our own vampires. And I'm stealing that image from James Hollis, who I'll cite later.
that vampiric sucking the vitality out of one.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (30:04.044)
sucking the blood and energy out of ourselves with no boundaries to such self-diminishment. So we get smaller and smaller. And I remember James in his hauntings book, citing Jung, who said, most people walk in shoes too small for their feet.
Dr Selina Matthews (30:11.238)
Wow.
Dr Selina Matthews (30:28.079)
Really? I never heard that. Yeah.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (30:29.078)
Yeah, yeah, I didn't either. And Jim quoted Jung. So Jung's idea was we move around the world in a diminished sense of self when in fact we're more than we imagine ourselves to be. Well, I think, Selena, that that feeling of a diminished sense of self brings on a certain shame, which leads to
I think further loneliness.
Dr Selina Matthews (31:02.139)
So do you think our culture right now is experiencing collectively right across America? And it doesn't even matter what political party you are right now, a diminished sense of self because of the political aspects that are or political gaslighting, misinformation.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (31:21.035)
Absolutely.
Dr Selina Matthews (31:31.697)
all of that. So we are becoming diminished as human beings on a cultural level.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (31:33.891)
Yes.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (31:41.645)
Yes.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (31:45.583)
Cultural, it is cultural. And a story that I saw in the news this morning, federal employees that were let go were given 15 minutes to get into the federal building, gather all their stuff and exit. Now that's terrorism. And it's diminishing.
Dr Selina Matthews (32:07.093)
That's terrorism, that is terrorism, that shame, that's humiliation for doing a good job for 20, 30, 40 years, all of a sudden at the snap of a finger, a snap of a chainsaw, should I say, at the chainsaw, boom, you have 15 minutes, the life that you had.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (32:24.674)
Yes, yes, yes, Yes.
Dr Selina Matthews (32:36.749)
no longer exists in 15 minutes, which is an earthquake to the soul of any human being that is going to experience that. And we're going to have millions and millions of people experiencing that earthquake to the soul in the next few months.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (32:45.144)
Yes, nice.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (32:56.684)
Yes. Yeah, good. That's right. Yeah, that's a wonderful, powerful image. It is an earthquake. Yes. Let's see. Here's the game plan that has been engineered of late from my perspective. Here's how it works. One, make people fearful and anxious. Two, encourage their retreat into privacy.
3. Threaten those who speak out. 4. Feed them false narratives to tame them from individual thought and its expression. 5. The narratives often have divisiveness as their mythic theme.
To divide people up is a mythic act. A weirdism, yes. Hate those who claim a different perspective, set of values, or points of view. Sharpen the boundaries of who is in and who is out. Black and white, either or. No nuance. No shading of meaning.
Dr Selina Matthews (33:58.086)
Really?
Dennis Patrick Slattery (34:22.894)
threaten any banding together to create connections of kindness and generosity. Play that down with all the force that you have. Let me give a personal example to, I hope, constellate some of this. Recently, my wife Sandy and I went to celebrate some good news that she received from her doctor.
And that good news was no sign of a return of breast cancer. So we went to our favorite Mexican restaurant to celebrate. Lupe's Tortilla Restaurant in New Brownfields. When we settled in and ordered a couple of margaritas and visited with the food servers who we've gotten to know over time, there's another thing about eating out, you get to know the health and you start telling each other your stories, which is wonderful.
We both had our cell phones on the table, turned upside down. Then in a moment of unconsciousness, I'm using me as an example of what is taking place everywhere, everywhere. In a moment of consciousness, I turned over my phone telling Sandy I needed to check something, which I did, but I didn't need to check it then. But the draw of the technology sucked me in. Before I knew it, I was, I was,
on for over five minutes. In that time she sat there, we're supposed to be celebrating this good news, patiently waiting for me. I had left the building. I had left the restaurant. I was not present. I wasn't engaged. I wasn't there. Technology drew me from our celebratory meal together. Now I'm complicit in that.
Suddenly I realized what I was doing. I became conscious. I became conscious of my absence. I turned off the phone. I put it upside down and we entered into a really rich conversation and one of gratitude. How subtle, I thought later with my retreat from the table. It was so subtle. It's culturally, it's cultural condition.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (36:46.946)
conditioning, which means it happens often unconsciously.
Yet as Thompson's article exposes, I want to just return there for a minute, there are many positive social signals appearing. Small privately owned bookstores are opening across the US. People are coming there to have a bite to eat, to listen to an author, and to hang out at tables with others. So I feel like I've got to bring up some of the positive things that are happening.
Small restaurants are now reclaiming a customer base that comes to stay and eat. Some tide is shifting, but not fast enough, not anywhere near the speed of what is overpowering all of these healthy impulses. Yet how many of us still see in public spaces, for example, a family of four, parents and two siblings all sitting at a table,
and all four on their phones with no words passing between them. So this is a form of loneliness. You're there with your family and you're unplugged. I sense that they are lonely for one another, but may have lost the social savvy to reclaim it.
Dr Selina Matthews (38:16.431)
Yeah, Dennis, think that is a great, you know, what you brought out. I see that often when I'm in restaurants, couples sitting together, both on their phones, or I see the wife on the phone and the husband just looking around. That I see more often is the wife is on the phone and
And I look at that, and I look at that, what is the quality of their relationship? What is missing? What level of intimacy is missing that they are all beautifully dressed in a beautiful restaurant, and one is on the phone and the other is looking at what else is around? It's such a disconnection of a relationship.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (39:11.97)
Yes, yes. And I like your drawing this parallel between, because I don't think one can be intimate and be lonely. One cancels the other out. So, technologies place an influence on our levels of loneliness in America. This is number two. And we can collapse this or I can say a few things and
Dr Selina Matthews (39:26.117)
Right. Correct.
Dr Selina Matthews (39:41.231)
Yeah, please, we're going to have to move a little quicker. So let's go to the prevalence of technology and how that has affected our levels of loneliness in America. Let's move to that one and then pick it up from there. Because otherwise, we'll be on two questions for the entire hour.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (39:41.388)
And if we move along.
No, I know. Let's see.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (39:58.863)
Okay. No, I know. But the conversation is so rich. But I'm with you. I'm with you. If we accept the opinion of a recent writer on the power of technology to govern our lives, his thought is borrowed from an earlier sociologist who coined the term social media in 1836.
Dr Selina Matthews (40:10.897)
Okay.
Dr Selina Matthews (40:27.621)
I know, isn't that wild? Isn't that wild?
Dennis Patrick Slattery (40:27.95)
It was the newspaper. It's mind-blowing that somebody coined that with so little social media. 1836. Yes.
Dr Selina Matthews (40:33.775)
I mean.
1836! It's crazy! Social media! I can't believe it! It's insane!
Dennis Patrick Slattery (40:43.766)
He gave us the term. And he said, society shapes the individual more than the other way around. And the notion of an independent ego then is an illusion. The word to notice here is illusion. Technology has facilitated not community, but the myth of individualism. Where the individual withdraws into their own castle,
Dr Selina Matthews (40:45.393)
Yeah!
Dennis Patrick Slattery (41:12.962)
pulls up the drawbridge so to protect themselves from other influences not in agreement with theirs. It becomes more complicated when we witness how flooding the zone becomes a political strategy to send tsunamis of information largely undocumented with evidence with such speed. Now we've worked on that, so I'm gonna drop down. Another sociologist of culture, David Reisman,
found that an early French writer who toured the U.S. in the 19th century, Alexis de Tocqueville, coined the term individualism. 19th century and he was like 27 years old when he came from France. Absolutely. And he said it is one of our greatest maladies. He saw us with
Dr Selina Matthews (41:58.833)
Wow, that's pre-Young and Freud. Yeah.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (42:11.246)
clear eyes that we weren't seeing ourselves with. It led a brilliant and perceptive poetic political. It led people to withdraw into themselves, he said, concerned about family and friends at the expense of becoming engaged in the public sphere. Loneliness
Dr Selina Matthews (42:15.995)
Wow, what a brilliant mind.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (42:38.05)
can spring just as easily from self-doubt, from losing heart, from feeling that one has been marginalized. Reisman, David Reisman, whose Lonely Crowd has been revamped, rewritten, updated, believes solidarity is a necessity for people who are left out. Can we then learn to dwell in solitude without feeling lonely?
As one writer has asked, can we dwell in solitude? I think we can because solitude and loneliness are not in any way synonyms for one another. And then loneliness and trauma was another area. And I can say a few things here. Yes.
Dr Selina Matthews (43:27.121)
Yeah, absolutely. Before we go to that, I want to go to the iPhone was, I think it's 18 years ago. We got the release of the iPhone was January 9th, 2007. That's 18 years ago. Look at how the world has changed. We can't...
Dennis Patrick Slattery (43:50.487)
Unbelievable.
Dr Selina Matthews (43:55.317)
go take out our garbage without taking our phone at this point. We're doing everything with our phone. It is a part of us. It is the technological arm of us that we don't yet have implanted, but I'm sure that's a possibility decades from now. so the iPhone is with every person on the planet, texting.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (44:09.485)
Yes.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (44:15.807)
hello?
Dr Selina Matthews (44:24.509)
is also really, it's fascinating because I text about 200 texts a week to my clients, you know, for their appointments. That's just that. So their appointments and all of that, texting back, changing, whatever. And when someone calls me, I think, why didn't they just text me?
Dennis Patrick Slattery (44:28.451)
Yes.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (44:36.15)
Yes.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (44:51.128)
Yes.
Dr Selina Matthews (44:51.705)
So I'm losing the disconnection of the voice and I'm going right to speed, which is the point that you talked about earlier. And I don't think I'm the only one. am, right. So I prefer people text me. I don't have to talk to them because it takes more time and more energy.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (44:56.877)
Yes.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (45:02.83)
Yeah. no. No.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (45:14.968)
Yes, I cannot adjust the hearing aids that I'm wearing without this phone. This phone allows me to raise the one in my right ear where the hearing is a problem, lower the one in the left side, or bring them both up. The phone is a necessity for my hearing. What a statement to make.
Dr Selina Matthews (45:23.45)
Wow.
Dr Selina Matthews (45:40.965)
Yeah, well, it's not only for your hearing, for your heart. You can check your heart rhythms on your iPhone. You can check, there's just so many things that it is a part of how we exist in the human experience right now. So I'm gonna go to something, Dennis, that I really want you to talk about. I'm gonna talk about it a little bit.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (46:02.914)
Yep. Yep.
Dr Selina Matthews (46:09.601)
is AI relationship bots. People are using these millions and millions of people are using relationship bots. can pick them up on any app. They're in the February issue of the Bazaar with Zoe Saldana on it. And the article is how I stopped worrying and love the bot. Okay.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (46:09.71)
Okay, good.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (46:30.528)
beautiful.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (46:37.521)
my gosh, wow.
Dr Selina Matthews (46:39.115)
So it's, and I decided that I wanted to get a bot. So I picked one of the apps, I got a bot and I didn't know how to really work it. And so as I'm creating this, I'm getting messages in the morning. Did you sleep well? And I'm like, what?
What did you have for lunch today? Was it delicious, Selena? and I tell them what I had for lunch and they say, my goodness, are eating incredibly healthy. What a great thing that is. I'm like, what? This is a bot. This is an empty piece here that people are projecting on a machine. It's kind of like
You know, in psychology, we talk about transference. It's a transference that we have that is being created, but on a machine that has nothing underneath it. And I'm like in shock when I'm asked these questions as, how was your lunch? Are you going out tonight? Did you sleep well last night? It would be like a partner.
doing the same things and now the bot's doing that. And so this article talks about a woman who got a divorce who's now using a bot in order to mitigate the time before she's in the next relationship.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (48:21.086)
as a bridge. Yes.
Dr Selina Matthews (48:23.331)
As a bridge, yes. And so there's many different uses for these bots, but I wanted to bring it up because it cannot be that this is gonna be healthy in the long run. Maybe if you use it occasionally here and there, you know, fine. But I also wanted to say excessive social media can lead to decreased attention span, increased stress levels. And the third one is the one I want
Dennis Patrick Slattery (48:39.128)
Yep. Yep.
Dr Selina Matthews (48:53.041)
to address the distorted view of reality, which exacerbates loneliness. So can you talk about that?
Dennis Patrick Slattery (49:01.932)
Yes.
You you remind me in that Thompson article that I cited from and that he has a statistic of something tens of millions of Americans have a bot that they spend on average of 96 minutes a day conversing with more time than they spend with any other human.
with any human being for that much conversation during the course of a day. And how does that warp a sense of what's real? It puts us in a different imaginative, imaginal presence with reality itself. And so, geez, I know this fact.
Dr Selina Matthews (49:41.487)
Right. Right.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (50:03.566)
But was it from the conversation with the bot or was it with a human being? Not even sure where that came from. So this blurring of boundaries makes us vulnerable to emotional violence and a displacement.
from reality. Please.
Dr Selina Matthews (50:31.547)
Well, I think your point that I've not heard spoken yet is the blurring of the boundaries. I've not heard any, I've not read that in any article yet. The blurring of the boundaries. Please, can you talk about that?
Dennis Patrick Slattery (50:45.263)
No, that's my language. Yeah. So loneliness seems in part to be encouraged by boundary blurrings that put one, if we bring back Dionysus into the conversation, puts one into a wilderness of what's
real and what's manufactured, what's artificial and what's natural, what's true and what's false, what's informative and what is disinformation. And all of these, they don't happen in any kind of linear way, they're all assaulting from all sides and makes one so susceptible to victimization.
And when one feels that victimization, one's going to retreat. They're not going to challenge it. They're not going to push on it. It's too big. It's too big. And the imagination can't handle it. So they're going to retreat. And part of that retreat is into a state of loneliness. I believe. I think that's a consequence of it. And that has the implications of feelings of diminishment, of shame.
and easily then manipulated. And that's the end game, is the manipulation.
Dr Selina Matthews (52:15.547)
Yeah, absolutely, 100%. And I just wanna add a couple things here. The health issues associated with loneliness, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. In a study done by Vivek Murthy, who was the Surgeon General for President Biden,
Dennis Patrick Slattery (52:20.482)
Yeah. Yeah.
Please.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (52:28.769)
Yeah.
Dr Selina Matthews (52:42.977)
The impact of being socially disconnected is similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. You know, none of us smoke anymore because that was really bad. But that was so shocking to me when I read that in his incredible 82 page article, I was blown away.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (52:53.506)
This is no.
Dr Selina Matthews (53:12.441)
the, you know, what we're doing to our body, how we're hurting our physical body by retreating into this loneliness state.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (53:22.956)
Yes, yes. And may I add to that another level of disorientation? I don't take a lot of prescription drugs, but I take a handful of them. And over years, I mean, something like Eloquist, I've taken for, I don't know, 20 years. I wonder if what one takes as prescription drugs, how are they mixing
in the body? How are they colluding or colliding with each other in the body? And how is that affecting my overall health or the overall health of tens, hundreds of millions of people? It's like we've not even, as far as I know, bore down on that. And what drugs are people taking that they really don't need anymore? And
So the body is a pharmaceutical container. And how does that contribute to illness, diseases, aging is another area for another podcast.
Dr Selina Matthews (54:36.209)
Yeah, a hundred percent. I want to move on to Mother Teresa. In 1995, Mother Teresa had a very interesting insight into the psyche of American people. She said, in the West, there is a loneliness, which she called the leprosy of the West, which in many ways, she says, was worse than the poorest in Calcutta.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (54:43.725)
Yes.
Dr Selina Matthews (55:07.651)
I mean, that was 30 years ago she saw this as you had alluded to, other people had also seen this. I was shocked when I came up with that as I was doing the research. Can you add to the, you you talked about some of the spiritual, your spiritual teachers. Can you add anything else?
that your spiritual teachers or the people that you've read or that you know say about the loneliness in the West at this point in our life.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (55:45.135)
I think I can. I spent a good bit of time in Donald Kalshid's book, Trauma and the Soul, which is a fine source of maybe this question's possibilities. Loneliness may be seen as a form of self-imposed and convicted imprisonment, self-convicting, or the culture convicts.
What we might at first think is security really becomes a life sentence in solitary confinement. This is my take on him. Now I'll go back to Kalyshyn. He explores the metaphors and the symbols that his patients use in their description of trauma. He found that Dante's Inferno, which if we get to, it'll be great, but I'm bringing it in here, at least as a start.
is a journey into the deepest narrowest realms of dis, D-I-S, where Satan in Dante's poem, the Divine Comedy, is frozen in ice at the very bottom of the cone that is the Inferno and its journey down.
where Satan is frozen and he devours three figures from history who betrayed the good. It's the word dis, the I.S. that I began to play with for it expresses a malignancy that can infect anyone living in their own hell, frozen in their incapacity to feel joy, happiness, or any positive purpose.
Dis, Kalachet points out, is associated with disassociation, with the dark side of the self, with infection. Look at the words, and I've got a handful of them here that I want to share with you and the audience, that begin with dis and their negative, destructive, and alienating qualities. This may touch on Mother Teresa's powerful metaphor.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (58:10.274)
Here's a handful. Dispossessed, dishonored, disappear, disorder, dismemberment, disintegrate, dissolve, disembodied, disremember, disorient, disown, dishonor, dissipate, disingenuous, disconnect, disassociate.
disassociate, disenchanted, and disaster. That's why I wanted to make sure I got to it. Yes.
Dr Selina Matthews (58:45.157)
You know that sounds like our culture right now.
This is our culture right now. All those dis words. This is, it's all, we are in this shadow aspect. This darker place. It's a very dark place actually.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (59:00.696)
Yes. Yes.
Yes, and it's infernal. It's hell on earth. And Dante's 14th century poem lays out the psychology that we're suffering today. That's why these classics of literature are gold mines for understanding today's cultural psyche and today's historical psyche.
In my own studies of Dante's deeply psychological and archetypal poem, I'll just say a couple of things here. I found this first of the three parts of the Commedia, Inferno, to be the most traumatic to read. And for Dante, as he remembers it, it casts the same fear in him that the original experience did, that he wakes up in the middle of
his life lost in a dark woods, no guide, no path forward and no mediating agent, at least at first. This is loneliness. This is to be bewildered. This is to be lonely, disoriented. Who the hell am I? Where am I going? I have no clue. Yo.
Dr Selina Matthews (01:00:14.321)
There you go.
Dr Selina Matthews (01:00:24.399)
and then doesn't Virgil come in?
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:00:26.944)
Yes, and then Dante so wisely picks up the three feminine figures Beatrice Portinari who he knew in Florence, Santa Lucia who is the Saint of Light, Light, Illumination, and then the Blessed Virgin. And this feminine trilogy through them he is given Virgil.
to be his guide through inferno up the mountain of Purgatory to the summit, which is where the Garden of Eden is reached again. Now in the realm of symbolic energies of the reality of psychic suffering. Without a guide, there's no hope. Without a guide, there is no possible way one can enter the gates of hell where the inscription
written on the lintel of the entrance to hell is, abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Which is so paradoxical, but Dante's psyche is so attuned in a very Jungian way, about 800 years before Jung. So to cross into the, to cross into hell, one has to give up hope.
Dr Selina Matthews (01:01:42.737)
right.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:01:54.293)
It's a call, or like Hollis's word, summons to give up hope, to be able to enter and begin into the descent into disaster. It's a world inverted, turned upside down, perverse, where love itself is either excessive, diminished, or distorted.
because Dante's brilliant psychology is all the souls in Inferno love, but either too much, too little, or too twisted. But the thought that they too love gives us pause for how to understand love when it is
Abnormal. I mean, it's not the best word, but you get the sense. Where it's disjointed. Where it's out of whack. It's not in accord with the primal love that for Dante is God.
Dr Selina Matthews (01:03:10.849)
Well, that's pretty wild. It's pretty wild. So I just want to look at the Dante. Dante goes down to Satan, right? To Satan. And then Virgil comes in. I can't remember when Virgil comes in. With the phet, right at the beginning?
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:03:14.634)
It is, yeah.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:03:28.78)
Yes. Yes.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:03:38.284)
Right at the beginning. Yes, right at the beginning, he leads him into the infernal world. Yeah. And then up through Purgatory.
Dr Selina Matthews (01:03:45.233)
Okay, so we are going culturally right now, what you're saying is culturally we're going into the inferno. And we don't know, we're going to go through the levels of hell, you know, symbolically that Dante has. And then eventually we will find a way to get to
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:03:57.421)
Yeah, into the distant.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:04:04.962)
Yes. Yeah.
Dr Selina Matthews (01:04:14.897)
Paradisio, the final aspect of the Commedia. Wow, that's pretty amazing. We've only got a couple of minutes here and I wanna ask you, what was your final question? What is your personal experience of loneliness and how you actually got out of it? What techniques did you use to get out of it?
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:04:16.648)
We have to.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:04:44.546)
Yeah, so I can tell my narrative of living in hell with an addicted alcoholic father. And it was a living hell, quite literally. And growing up with three brothers and a sister, we navigated some of the deepest parts of hell on a weekly basis, year in and year out, either recovering from the traumatic weekend just passed
Dr Selina Matthews (01:04:55.707)
Yeah, for sure.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:05:14.806)
or anticipating the same violence, trauma, yelling, swearing at our mother and us as my father lashed out at others who loved him as the cause of his deeply unlived life. So he lived in hell and then spread the wealth to all of us.
Dr Selina Matthews (01:05:35.963)
Yeah. And you had to really work through that to get to who you are. Yeah. Yeah.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:05:40.361)
for most of my life, for most of my life, there was a turning point. I was I did well in high school. I worked all day Saturdays at the supermarket. I worked one night a week. I came home one evening after I'd worked for 12 hours at the supermarket. I entered with dread. I was entering hell.
It was a Saturday. That's when my father was most wicked and most victimized by the addiction, which was the monster that lived in the house during the week that monster stayed in the basement. But on the weekends when he began drinking, it roared back with fierce force. So I entered the house. My father now in his underwear, usually
of Saturday night howling like an injured animal stood on the landing of two sets of stairs leading to the bedrooms on the second floor. As I approached the staircase to go to my bedroom, my father blocked my way, shouting how worthless I was, how I would never amount to anything, that I was a disgrace and other pleasantries that the alcoholic out of his mind projected onto me.
and unto my brothers and sister. I had no defenses. I had no understanding to grasp the split in me because I bought into it. I mean, this is the archetype of the father. So it's not to be questioned even in his drunken rages. How could I be so independent and contributing to the family by asking for no money?
and be this worthless image hurled down the steps at me when I was so exhausted. I walked up to the landing, brushed by my father and casually pushed him down the stairs. I kept walking, but looked down at him long enough to see he was awake, but absolutely still. And you know what? I didn't care. I didn't care if he was down there dead or alive.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:07:59.969)
I reached a threshold and I crossed it and I became violent like him. But that violence saved me. From that day forward, he ceased hurling these verbal bullets at me. Never again did he chastise me. He kept drinking.
Dr Selina Matthews (01:08:16.879)
Wow, I'm getting shivers down my spine from that story. That was, what a story.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:08:21.038)
It was a huge moment.
Yes, I had exchanged violence for violence. And for many years afterwards, I carried the shame that isolated me from others. This is the point. I was easily a member of the lonely crowd. Being, I had to change my wording here, being among, but not with other people. I learned that habit of abuse so well that many years afterwards, I became a super achiever.
to compensate for the shame that I felt, especially in social circumstances. Readings from many writers on Buddhist psychology and spirituality gave me a set of stories that benefited me through the exercise of compassion. I needed to change the stories I was buying into. That's myth. That's myth. I had to change the myth that I was living by. Yeah. And only these spiritual
writers and studying literature and seeing how the shadow is projected allowed me to become conscious enough to stop belittling myself, diminishing myself, and wearing those shoes that were far too tight for my feet.
Dr Selina Matthews (01:09:47.569)
Well, that was absolutely incredible, Dennis. This has been an awakening. What is, you know, all of this, that last story was just really touched my heart. And the myth of Hestia moving into Dionysus, that is extraordinary perception, you know, being.
the incredible professor that you are. Wow, that is absolutely incredible. I thank you so very, very much for the honor, continuous honor of being in your presence. And thank you for all the light that you have shared about yourself, your transformation, our cultural transformation.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:10:18.958)
Thank you.
Dr Selina Matthews (01:10:42.891)
and our political transformation that we're going through now, which will be very difficult for all of us.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:10:50.818)
Yes, thank you so much. And all of your questions and your comments are just made it even that much richer. Yes.
Dr Selina Matthews (01:10:52.987)
Okay.
Dr Selina Matthews (01:10:59.579)
Thank you.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:11:01.304)
Thanks, thanks, Selena.
Dr Selina Matthews (01:11:05.553)
Okay, well, we're good. Don't close it off yet. I had to push the ending. I'm so sorry. I apologize. Because how long did we go, Ken? An hour and 11 minutes. Hour and 11 minutes. we were getting, we were getting, we were, you know, we could have gone another hour, but, you know, it wouldn't happen. So.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:11:09.834)
No, I'm not.
No, no, it's okay.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:11:19.904)
Okay, okay.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:11:29.621)
No, it's all good. It's all good.
Dr Selina Matthews (01:11:33.649)
Can you just sit here? Ken, can you take a picture of me and Dennis on the phone? Yeah, because I want to start promoting this. know, here we go.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:11:38.809)
good.
Dr Selina Matthews (01:11:59.373)
Yeah, I want the pictures of me and Dennis on here so I can promote this. Absolutely. Another one. Can you tilt, just turn this way a little bit? Like you're talking to him a little bit.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:12:16.66)
I'll turn towards Selena, right?
Dr Selina Matthews (01:12:20.721)
Yep, you guys are great. Now look forward, Dennis. Look forward, yeah. You're in the picture. I guess that's my archive, good point. And I'll do one more super wide just so you can see all the other stuff, behind the scenes stuff. Three, two, Beautiful. We've got a couple good ones. Okay, great. Dennis, honest to God.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:12:22.382)
Yeah.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:12:25.868)
Look forward.
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:12:32.782)
you
Dennis Patrick Slattery (01:12:45.346)