Investigator creates defend that Portugal should Secretary of State for Solitude – Current Affairs
Countries like the UK and Japan already have a Ministry of Solitude. In Portugal, that the leader of the Government’s intention, António Costa, that the leader of the intention to constitute, constituted only a smaller account project, the study was thought that would be suitable for a Secretary of State, framed only in the tutelage of Health .
“Of course, a Secretary of State of this type would be stuck somewhere between the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Social Affairs, because it is not just a matter of health in the strict sense”, maintained the retired professor at the University of Porto. , which currently coordinates the Observatory of Solitude at ISCET — Higher Institute of Business and Tourism Sciences.
Loneliness is not accompanied or monitored only from a medical perspective, but also from a “very intense” social perspective.
“The Japanese know that in their population, namely in Tokyo, a very significant proportion of people live in situations of great ministerial loneliness. inventory”, he exemplifies.
For Adalberto Dias de Carvalho, who remains connected to the research center of the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Porto, the situation is complex and has been aggravated by the covid-19 pandemic.
“To deal with these, it is not enough to send them to the hospital, it is not enough to give them a house, give them more food. All this is important, but nothing in itself solves it, given the complexity of the phenomenon of loneliness”, he stressed, suggesting that the tutelage of the Secretariat of State, or similar body, can also go through the Ministry of Labour.
“It was important that the political body that monitored the problem of loneliness had a transversal relationship with the various ministries, given the multidimensionality of the phenomenon”, he defended.
“It would be very important [a Secretaria de Estado], because there are phenomena that tend to be talked about, but then hidden, in some way. Although the truth was affected, the truth is that it did not come to the electoral agenda in the debates. It was not a topic that appeared as such”, lamented Adalberto Dias de Carvalho.
With the pandemic, loneliness is no longer a panage of the elderly or all isolated to be more markedly sectors of society, young people included.
Despite the theme being “very present” and “very lived”, for the professor it has been, at the same time, “very hidden” and “very silenced in the political debate”.
“Loneliness has causes and repercussions not only in terms of individual experience, which in itself is important. Today, there is also the so-called GDP of happiness and countries are ranked in a hierarchy as to the degree of happiness enjoyed by its inhabitants. And loneliness is not happiness. This loneliness we are talking about, negative loneliness”, he specified.
To the executive power, Adalberto Dias de Carvalho left a call for attention in this field as well. “If politicians become aware that, in addition to the economic meaning of GDP, they must also have an experiential meaning that has to do with that GDP, it is essential that the issue of loneliness, for this reason, becomes an issue for politicians , a challenge, a responsibility”.
“I separated the economic from loneliness, but the separation is so clear, even for an economist. Because in situations of loneliness or not, people close to states of loneliness tend to be people who will be less dynamic, less enterprising”, he justified.
According to the academic, even economists should look “very carefully” at a problem that they consider “serious and very important” in today’s societies.
“We, the weight of the church, were in society, who are secularized in religion, who are socialists, in which they have also ceased to be so important for people who work in religion, in community terms and beyond – we seek in retrospective terms – a support that as many and how many times it relieved the feeling of loneliness”, he explained.
“In la Religiosas societies, the weight of religion took on as our religious life, it wants to seek comparison in relation to the separation of the weight it had”, Adalberto Adalberto Dias de Carvalho.
In the researcher’s opinion, if education was no longer “just an activity that was regulated by religion”, the issue of loneliness also ceased to be.
“Solitude is nowadays, in this way, and in the noble sense of the word, a ‘political’ issue. And the ennobling of politics, in a secular society, requires that the Government, which as governmental entities value, in its organic and his activity, the problem of loneliness. Undoubtedly!”, declared.
AH // JMR
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