Without each other we cannot exist.

As a species, we are instinctively driven to come together and form groups of friends, associations and communities. Without them, we cannot exist.

Connect and Live Longer

When you make new connections in the outside world, you make new connections in the inside world—in your brain. This keeps you young and alert. In the 1979 Alameda County Study by Dr. Lisa Berkman of the Harvard School of Health Sciences, Dr. Berkman and her team carefully looked at 7,000 people, aged 35 to 65, over a period of nine years. Their study concluded that people who lack social and community ties are almost three times more likely to die of medical illness than those who actively have more extensive contacts. And all this is independent of socioeconomic status and health practices such as smoking, alcoholic beverage consumption, obesity or physical activity!

Connect and Get Cooperation

Other people can also help you take care of your needs and desires. Whatever it is you’d like in this life—romance, a dream job, a ticket to the Rose Bowl—the chances are pretty high that you’ll need someone’s help to get it. If people like you, they will be disposed to give you their time and their efforts. And the better the quality of rapport you have with them, the higher the level of their cooperation.

Connect and Feel Safe

We have a basic, physical need for other people; there are shared, mutual benefits in a community, so we look out for each other. A connected community provides its members with strength and safety. When we feel strong and safe, we can put our energy into evolving—socially, culturally and spiritually.

Connect and Feel Love

We use the emotional input of other humans as much as we do the air we breathe and the food we eat.

Deprive us of emotional and physical contact (a hug and a smile can go a long way), and we will wither and die just as surely as if we were deprived of food. That’s why we hear stories of children in orphanages who grow sickly and weak despite being adequately fed and clothed.

Food and shelter aren’t enough. We need each other, and we need love.