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Why does loneliness seem to be on the rise? In part because we’ve made life frictionless and efficient.
The ferry crossing from Chappaquiddick to Edgartown, Mass., is only 527 feet long. But no matter how rich or important you are, you have to wait to get on the boat. Sometimes you wait in your car. Sometimes you get out. Someone complains about the line, the weather, our politics or the UPS driver who goes to the front of the queue. Someone else laughs. A conversation begins.
This isn’t a defense of bad maritime logistics. But spending time around that ferry has made me wonder if modern life has undersold inconvenience. We treat waiting as wasted time. Often it is. But sometimes waiting does something useful: It forces people into the same place, with nothing to do, long enough for conversation to begin.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Wall Street Journal (paywall)
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Roland G. Fryer, Jr., a John A. Paulson Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is Professor of Economics at Harvard University, an entrepreneur, and co-founder of Equal Opportunity Ventures.