It’s a very curious thing that, in the modern era, we have more ways to communicate with one another than we’ve ever had before in human history. And yet some people are more socially isolated than they’ve ever been.
We have our pick of social media sites we can theoretically use to contact one another, after all. Virtually every single person in society owns a phone – often even homeless people and the poorest among us will not be without a smartphone – and internet access is near-universal.
The literacy rate is essentially 100% (which wasn’t always the case in Ireland, even in the last century). We can all write each other letters and texts and emails to our heart’s content. In addition, there are far more of us due to population growth, and many more of us live in cities and towns, so we’re physically nearer to each other. On paper, we should all be closer than ever.
And yet, we still see sad stories like the following, as reported in the Irish Times:
Now it has to be said upfront: I don’t know anything about these poor people, their neighbours, their relatives, or their situation. I wouldn’t dare to cast aspersions on a community I don’t know anything about. The couple, who were English, were named locally as Nicholas and Hilary Smith and it was mentioned in the piece that they were quite private people who liked to keep to themselves, which of course would naturally make it harder to spot when someone had passed away, and no doubt these types of things could happen in any locality. So I say this without a hint of judgement towards the good people of Cloneen.
But is it not highly regrettable that in the communication and information age of 2022, two people could pass away in their own homes and go unnoticed potentially for over a year?
If the timeline the police have given is correct, it’s possible that these two poor souls gave up the ghost during the Covid lockdown, when everyone was at home and social interaction was at an all-time low, which may have been a contributing factor.
This isn’t an isolated incident, however, or a new phenomenon. Earlier this year, in February, an elderly man was found dead in his Dublin home having potentially died 12 months before.
Pensioner lay dead in Dublin home for 12 months as council workers find his decomposed remainshttps://t.co/yS4sWFB3Zh
— Irish Daily Mirror (@IrishMirror) February 10, 2022
In 2019, an elderly man in Cork was found dead after going undiscovered for 7 months.
Death of pensioner whose body may not have been discovered for up to seven months not being treated as suspicious https://t.co/LGrRYsWoM2 pic.twitter.com/ToeJbg32Xv
— Irish Independent (@Independent_ie) July 22, 2019
In the same year, elderly charity Alone warned that cases of older people going undiscovered after their deaths was likely to increase in coming years as Irish population demographics skewed older, and society became less and less socially connected.
But at this point the question naturally arises: why exactly is society less connected? What is driving this unfortunate trend?
Some would probably scoff at the claim that a loss of religion plays a part, but don’t be so hasty to discount it. Say what you will about the old Ireland, but having a parish where everyone piles into the local church every week had its benefits, if for no other reason than to build community. If someone didn’t show up for Sunday services, you’d worry about them and want to check on them – you’d see the same familiar faces week to week and get to know your neighbours. We don’t have that anymore, and as a result we’re all that much more atomised and separated.
Sure, sports has a role in bringing people together, but what if you’re not into sports, or into a different sport than the lad next door? It’s just not the same quality of social glue.
Years ago, before the internet age, children would play with other kids nearby rather than being engrossed in videogames, and that would force adults to get to know each other and become acquainted with families on their road.
We lived in a society that valued and respected older people, rather than one in which many wanted to bring in “assisted dying” to kill them.
As mentioned previously, policies like the lockdown hardly helped, with remote working becoming all the more common. More and more people can go through a whole work day without speaking to another person face to face. Obviously it has its benefits too, but we’d be lying to ourselves if we said there weren’t drawbacks.
Self-checkout machines at shops mean you don’t have to speak to your local shop staff. Food delivery companies can have meals dropped to your door rather than having to speak to a restaurant waiter. Amazon deliveries wind up on your doorstep rather than having to go to the local hardware shop for gardening tools and talk to the guy behind the counter.
We’re rapidly approaching a world where many of us can and will go through our entire lives without speaking to another human soul. And while that might have its benefits, that world is bound, in some ways, to be a lonelier one.
Today we can discount the old, more simple and religious Ireland as backwards or antiquated. But it’s undeniable that the sense of social closeness and neighbourly love was stronger back then than it is today in our plugged-in digital Matrix world.
Say what you will about the past – there are still some things we could learn from it yet.
The tragic case of an elderly couple whose bodies were only found a year after they died might cause us to do some soul searching about what change has not been for the good.