Socially isolated adults are less likely to survive trauma and disease than those embedded in family and community. We delight in occasions for unified, collective expression, whether in the form of dancing, singing, or chanting for a demagogue. Even our most private thoughts are shaped by the structure of language, which is of course also our usual medium of interaction with others. And as many have argued, we are ever more tightly entangled by the Internet into a single global mind—although in a culture as self-centric as ours, the Internet can also be used as a mirror, or a way to rate
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