Your comment does get at the core of the issue I think. Many of us through all kinds of circumstances, have found ourselves in adulthood without a robust community.

Perhaps I am wrong about mass telecommuting isolating people. Perhaps instead it would give them more time and opportunity to be part of and support their communities.

This is a problem of having an open liberal culture -- loneliness. In closed conservative cultures, people have he same interests.

In closed conservative cultures, people pretend to have the same interests to fit in and avoid persecution but pursue other interests in secret.

I think philosophical explanations for our loneliness epidemic (found on both right and left) are missing more obvious practical causes: how we build, urban planning, economic systems that incentivize workaholism and anxiety, etc. Not saying other causes don't exist, but we should look at the simple ones first.

Gave you a compensatory upvote though because I am sick of ideological echo chambers. Things one disagrees with nevertheless can provoke productive discussion.

I don't see the link between liberalism and loneliness. Are you implying that liberals can't share interests?

I think the idea is that in a (small c) conservative community, everybody has the same religion and goes to the same church, say, and that fosters community spirit. In a more (small l) liberal society, people are more free to figure out religion for themselves and do their own thing, but that contributes to social atomisation.

This isn’t specific to religion, that’s just an example (but I think a pretty useful one).

I've heard the related argument that cooperation between people with more differences requires more cognitive effort, so you can get a simple economic or second law of thermodynamics explanation for loneliness. More effort equals less of something.