[In-person] Curiosity Café: Loneliness (Ticketed Event)

We appear to be in the midst of a loneliness crisis. A survey from 2021 revealed that more than one in 10 people in Canada aged 15 and older “always or often felt lonely,” while three in 10 said they “sometimes felt lonely.” The World Health Organization reports that “[p]eople lacking social connection face a higher risk of early death,” and that “[s]ocial isolation and loneliness are … linked to anxiety, depression, suicide, and dementia and can increase risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke.” Loneliness doesn’t just harm individuals, but also risks harming the well-being of whole societies: according to the WHO, “safety, prosperity, and effective governance depend greatly on the quality of the social connections within … neighbourhoods, workplaces, and schools.” Britain and Japan even went so far as to appoint Ministers of Loneliness in 2018 and 2021, respectively. Adding to these large-scale efforts (😉), the non-profit organization Being and Becoming, now a household name, formed in 2023 with community-building as a central part of their mission in response to the loneliness crisis.

There’s a sense, then, in which loneliness has been part of the background of everything Being and Becoming has done. At our next café, we will bring loneliness to the forefront, examining what it feels like, how we should respond to it, and what it can teach us about ourselves, both as individuals and as members of our species. We’ll grapple with questions like:

• What does it feel like to be lonely?
• What is the difference between loneliness and solitude?
• Is loneliness always a bad thing? Is it something we should always try to mitigate?
• To what extent are we responsible for mitigating our own loneliness? To what extent are broader social changes needed to overcome the loneliness crisis?
• Is the antidote to loneliness simply more social interaction, or a particular kind of social interaction? Or is the antidote sometimes found within, in changes to our attitudes or beliefs?
• What does our capacity to feel lonely say about who we are?

Join moderators Adrian Ma and Sophia Whicher on Tuesday, December 3rd for a collaborative exploration of loneliness and what we can or should do about it. It would be very lonely without you.

Space is limited! Please also obtain a ticket here if you're attending this event.

You can support our organization by implementing optional “Pay-What-You-Can” tickets, in addition to the usual "Free Ticket" option. We ask that you consider making a donation when you RSVP to help us make our work and growth as an organization possible. The ticketing page also has info about accessibility-related concerns at the venue.

__________________________________________________________________________

This event is brought to you by Being and Becoming, a Toronto based non-profit. We aim to create community around exploring everyday concepts and experiences so that we may live more intentional, thoughtful, and meaningful lives. We use philosophy as a tool with which we can come to a richer understanding of the world around us.

By offering activities, spaces, and other opportunities for conversation and co-exploration, we hope to enable the meeting and fusion of individuals and their ideas. Everyone is welcome, regardless of background: indeed, we believe the journey is best undertaken alongside explorers from a variety of disciplines, cultures, backgrounds, and experiences.

Find out more about Being and Becoming here.

About the Curiosity Café Series:

For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to join us at our Curiosity Cafés and are wondering what they’re all about: every two weeks, we invite members of our community to come out to the Madison Avenue Pub to engage in a collaborative exploration of our chosen topic. Through these events, we aim to build our community of people who like to think deeply about life’s big questions, and provide each other with some philosophical tools to dig deeper into whatever it is we are most curious about.