BOOKS // The Roots and Branches of our Family Tree
For our Kith & Kin issue, we recommend a host of books that push the boundaries of our understanding and open our minds and hearts to our beautiful, interconnected world: its past, present, and future. // HSB
Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Most Fundamental Bond
by Lydia Denworth
EXCERPT //
A large body of evidence shows that friendships are important not just to our psycho-social health, but to our physical health as well. In her book Friendship, Lydia Denworth writes, “For a long time, loneliness was mostly discussed by philosophers, who tended to celebrate it as a necessary step on the way to making great art or achieving true reflection.” But using the medical term “epidemic” to describe America’s loneliness problem is more appropriate than you might think. (There’s a reason why former Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy issued an advisory on the subject.) Having friends lowers our blood pressure and gives us a host of other benefits. Not having friends is, in terms of health statistics, is as dangerous as smoking cigarettes (really). Where we sit in the social hierarchy—and our diversity of relationships—can even affect our immune system. As one researcher put it, “Quiet suffering may be how people experience loneliness, but at a molecular level it ranks right up there with poverty, trauma, bereavement, and all kinds of other much more vivid, dramatic stuff. … Loneliness is one of the most effective ways we know to make a body feel threatened and insecure.” To explore why friendships are so fundamental, Denworth takes us on a journey to an island of monkeys, to various labs and in-the-field experiments around the world to help us understand why relationships are critical to our health and well-being. //
For full text and images, consider reading RQ in print, on a Sunday afternoon, sun streaming through your window, coffee in hand, and nary a phone alert within sight or in earshot… just fine words, fine design, and the opportunity to make a stitch in time. // Subscribe or buy a single issue today. // Print is dead. Long live print. //