James Jeffrey
It was once the norm that a good greeting was typically accompanied by a gregarious physical act, such as doffing your hat or kissing the back of a hand. Increasingly, Brits seem only able to muster a feeble nod or grunt.
‘Physical touch is very important for the cohesion of a community,’ the Berlin-based philosopher Byung-Chul Han remarked in his 2023 lecture ‘On Eros’, in which he discussed what love means in modern society: ‘The squeeze of the hand is what creates trust. Despite, or because of, digital interconnectedness and communication there is very little touching in our society.’ Han correctly observes that ‘the pandemic has intensified that lack of touching’, noting that the hormone oxytocin – which ‘belongs to the class of happiness hormones’– is ‘secreted when touching’.
The plight of the UK’s happiness hormones deficit was brought home to me during recent travels in France and Germany. To walk into a French boulangerie or a German bäckerei for your bread without issuing a general ‘bonjour’ or ‘guten morgen’ to the staff and other customers is bad form and rarely occurs. Subsequently, the visit culminates with a formal exchange of pleasantries along the lines of: ‘Thank you and have a good day.’
