The Bond That Comes Undone

The world has never communicated so much. It has never been so poor at remaining present. This first part begins where anyone can verify the diagnosis without leaving their own street: the loneliness that kills, the friendship that fades, the trust that erodes, the neighbour one no longer knows. Before geopolitics, before resources, before institutions, We-ism begins with the everyday bond.

I. Loneliness as a social fact

1. A global epidemic of loneliness

On 15 November 2023, the World Health Organization created a Commission on Social Connection in order to make loneliness an international public health priority.¹ The gesture marks a shift: loneliness is no longer treated as a personal weakness, but as a social and health phenomenon.

Loneliness does not mean living alone. It can strike someone surrounded by others, employed, connected. It appears when a lasting gap opens between the relationships a person has and those they need.

The We-ism response. Useful-Existence reverses the question that feeds isolation. No longer « what can I obtain from others? », but « where can my presence become useful? » This question is not an injunction addressed to isolated people: it commits the community first. A society that lets people vanish into anonymity must question its own structures before commenting on the fragility of its members. Active and Useful Presence invites every Companion to become a suture point wherever the bond comes undone.

2. Nearly one hundred deaths an hour

The Commission's report, published in June 2025, associates loneliness with roughly 871,000 deaths each year.¹ None of these deaths has a single cause: the estimate indicates that the lasting absence of quality relationships significantly increases several risks — depression, anxiety, cardiovascular disease, stroke, premature mortality.

Isolation acts silently. A person stops asking for help, gives up on seeing a doctor, goes out less, and ends up being identified by no one as being in danger.

The We-ism response. Active Presence cannot remain a moral intention. It must become an organised practice: neighbourhood visits, regular calls to those made vulnerable, intergenerational networks, support in reaching social services, local spaces for conversation, activities accessible to people with reduced mobility. The aim is not to keep watch over people, but to make the community attentive enough that a social disappearance does not go unnoticed.

3. One person in six

Around 16% of the world's population reports feeling lonely.¹ Adolescents and young adults are particularly affected, and low-income countries also show high levels — a reminder that loneliness is not solely the product of individualist comfort. Poverty, migration, precarity, job loss and distance from family feed it too.

It is often described as an inner problem. It is largely produced by outward conditions: impersonal housing, permanent professional mobility, urban segregation, the absence of places to meet.

The We-ism response. The Economy of Elevated Sharing aims to rebuild the material conditions of the bond. Cooperatives, solidarity funds, community houses, shared workshops and collective gardens are not merely economic devices: they are relational infrastructure. Where isolation settles in, concrete occasions for interdependence have to be recreated.

4. A risk compared to fifteen cigarettes a day

In 2023, the Surgeon General of the United States compared the health effects of chronic isolation to certain risks associated with smoking up to fifteen cigarettes a day.² The comparison does not establish a mechanical equivalence: it makes visible the scale of an underestimated phenomenon.

Loneliness does not only wound the mood. It alters behaviour, affects sleep, raises stress, and weakens the motivation to take care of oneself.

The We-ism response. The Heart/Conscience designates the inner hearth where intelligence, will and sensitive affectivity are articulated. It is not enough to understand that a person is suffering: one must accept that this knowledge obliges. Checking in, going along to an appointment, preparing a meal, listening without haste are modest acts. They nonetheless constitute a policy of relational health.

5. The 2003 heatwave: the Solitary Death made literal

The heatwave of summer 2003 caused between 15,000 and 19,000 deaths in France depending on the counting method.³ Older, frail and isolated people were the most exposed. Some were found several days after their death.

Vulnerability was not a matter of age or illness alone. It was a matter of the presence — or absence — of a network able to raise the alarm.

The We-ism response. The Solitary Death is not a metaphor: it is a concrete social danger. Active Presence presupposes an organised local vigilance during heatwaves, extreme cold and health crises. It is not a matter of replacing public services, but of building continuity between daily life and institutional intervention: the community notices, the institution acts.

6. Severe isolation among older people

In France, the Fondation de France has been warning for several years about the scale of isolation among the over-sixties: several million people in severe isolation, of whom several hundred thousand have very little regular contact.⁴

A longer life does not guarantee the quality of existence. One can live longer while being progressively deprived of conversation, of movement, of shared decisions and of recognition.

The We-ism response. Deferred reciprocity is decisive here. Watching over an older person is not an act without return: contribution changes form over the course of a life. The elder who no longer carries the same burdens passes on a memory, an experience, an orientation. Intergenerational solidarity does not separate those who give from those who receive.

II. When performance replaces worth

7. South Korea: competition turned into distress

South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the OECD, with 29.1 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in 2024 according to national data.⁵ No single cultural explanation suffices. The phenomenon is set in an environment where academic, professional and social success is experienced as permanent competition, and where the person is assessed by their rank.

The We-ism response. Useful-Existence proposes another criterion of worth. It does not measure dignity by ranking, and does not confuse human value with output, qualifications or visibility. A society that recognises only the winners mechanically manufactures the invisible. A life can be profoundly useful without being spectacular or profitable.

8. Japan and karōshi

The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare recognised more than a thousand cases of work-related disorders during the 2024 fiscal year, a majority of them psychological.⁶ Administrative figures cover only part of the reality: legal recognition depends on complex procedures.

Overwork reveals a contradiction. Work, which ought to make living possible, becomes an organisation of exhaustion.

The We-ism response. The Economy of Elevated Sharing does not content itself with redistributing after exhaustion: it questions the structures that produce it. No success is legitimate if it rests on the destruction of those who carry it. We-ism does not replace labour law; it adds to it a requirement of purpose — producing is not enough, one must produce without destroying.

III. Friendship, trust, neighbourhood

9. The collapse of men's friendships

In the United States, the share of men reporting no close friends is said to have risen from around 3% in 1990 to 15% in 2021.⁷ The shift particularly concerns men who learned to regard vulnerability as weakness. Friendship is then reduced to a functional coexistence: proximity remains, deep trust disappears.

The We-ism response. The Weaving Word does not consist in talking more, but in creating spaces where one can speak without being immediately humiliated, classified or corrected. The Companion must be able to ask « how are you really? » and accept an answer that goes beyond polite formulas.

10. Time for friendship in decline

Reported time devoted to friendships fell by about 37% in the United States between 2014 and 2023.⁸ It is not the desire for friendship that disappears: it is the available time, absorbed by work, commuting, family obligations and mental fatigue.

The We-ism response. It is not enough to urge citizens towards solidarity if cities, companies and institutions organise the disappearance of shared time. The Weaving Word begins with the rehabilitation of simple moments: shared meals, neighbourhood gatherings, intergenerational activities, practical mutual aid, encounters with no commercial purpose. We-ism does not abolish private life; it refuses to let it become the only form of social existence.

11. The loss of social trust

American surveys show a lasting erosion of trust in others: depending on the period and the wording, only a minority — around a third — consider that most people can be trusted.⁷

Trust is not naivety, it is a collective resource. When it disappears, every interaction becomes costly: checking, protecting oneself, suspecting, anticipating betrayal.

The We-ism response. Trust cannot be decreed. It is produced through repeated experiences of reliability: keeping one's word, doing a favour, meeting a deadline, admitting a mistake, protecting a confidence, repairing a wrong. It is not born of a discourse on unity, but of daily proof that the other is a partner capable of holding their place.

12. The unknown neighbourhood

Pew Research Center surveys indicate that only a minority of Americans report knowing most of their neighbours.⁹ The observation holds for many urban societies where hundreds of people share a building without knowing one another — even though the neighbourhood is the first circle of solidarity in the event of illness, fire or a heatwave.

The We-ism response. Rebuilding the bond begins with the Circle. Before speaking of global concord, one must know who lives in the house next door. Proximity is not a narrowing of the horizon: it is the first place where the horizon becomes verifiable.

13. Loneliness among adolescents

In Finland, a national study covering more than 450,000 pupils showed a rise in reported loneliness between 2017 and 2021, while the proportion of young people with at least three close friends declined.¹⁰ The absence of stable relationships at that age affects self-confidence, academic success and mental health.

The We-ism response. Young people are not an audience to be supervised, but partners in a shared destiny. Awakened Service must offer them real opportunities to contribute: local projects, peer mediation, creation, environmental commitment, participation in decisions. One does not emerge from isolation because one is asked to « fit in ». One emerges when a place is waiting.

14. Friendship precedes civic engagement

Around 60% of people with at least six close friends take part in the life of their local community, compared with around 33% of those who report none.⁷ Personal relationship often precedes participation: one commits more readily where one knows someone and feels expected.

The We-ism response. Democracy does not rest on formal institutions alone; it depends on a relational fabric. Anonymous people cannot be mobilised for long. Bonds are built, stories are shared, contributions are recognised, and the spectating individual becomes an active member of a Circle.

Fourteen findings, one same mechanism: a person's worth measured by what they produce, the time of the bond absorbed by everything else, and attention withdrawn from whoever is fading away.

We-ism does not ask us to love humanity in general. It asks us to notice the one who is disappearing, and to accept that this observation obliges. The next part examines what happens when belonging, instead of connecting, begins to exclude.