Tea at Trianon: Strong Social Connections Can Improve Your Health

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, February 7, 2023

Strong Social Connections Can Improve Your Health

I have found this to be so true. From Neuroscience News:

The time people spent with family over the festive period could have improved their health, according to new research which examined how social bonds with close social circles and extended groups relate to health and psychological well-being.
The study, led by researchers at the University of Kent, Nottingham Trent University (NTU) and Coventry University, used self-reported data from more than 13,000 people across 122 countries, gathered during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Surveys assessed people’s strength of bonding with close social circles, such as family and friends, as well as with extended groups, such as country, government and humanity. People’s pandemic-related health behaviors and mental health and well-being were also measured.
Results show that only bonding with family, rather than other groups, is linked to engaging positively with behavior which can improve health; in this case, examples included washing hands, wearing a mask and social distancing.
For example, 46% of people who had strong family bonds washed hands at least “a lot,” compared to 32% who were not strongly bonded with their family. Moreover, 54% of people not bonded with their family reported they never wore a mask.
Bonded people were vastly over-represented among those who engaged in health behaviors. Despite people with strong family bonds constituting only 27% of the entire sample, they constituted 73% of those who engaged in social distancing, 35% of those who washed hands, and 36% of those who wore a mask “a lot” or more. (Read more.)