No Worries

We're choosing to spend more and more time with ourselves, more and more time, year after year, without feeling that special, important biological cue to be around other people. And that, I think, is something to be quite worried about.
Derek Thompson

I would like to think that this is the evolution of language in action. That "worry" is gradually shifting from, as Merriam-Webster puts it "to feel or experience concern or anxiety" to "work to make a change in a situation." Because worry, in and of itself, doesn't help anything. Taking action does. But maybe we aren't. Perhaps when journalists ask if people should be worried, and someone says "yes," everyone involved thinks that they're doing people a favor by adding just that much more concern or anxiety to the world.

If that's the case, it would be a shame. In Mr. Thompson's case, choosing to spend more time with other people, and less in solitary pursuits, is not particularly difficult to accomplish. It's uncomfortable for some, but most Americans could likely get away with it. It might even lead to some larger, and welcome, changes in the society at large. So why not just say "do it?"

To be sure, I have no idea. Maybe Mr. Thompson doesn't consider himself qualified to tell other people what to do. (Although I suspect that this isn't the case, from what I've heard of his podcast, Plain English.) Perhaps it's more likely that he understands that, isolating or not, people enjoy what they're currently doing. But that's simply speculation on my part, given that I'm not a mind reader. In any event, I do expect that a more active way of speaking about perceived problems would help. Sometimes, there aren't ready solutions to things. (Not that worry helps in those cases, either.) But when there are, having people go for it seems a better course of action than counseling concern.