The Screen and the Job have displaced almost everything else is our lives. Loneliness is just a primary symptom.
The Screen, whether it’s TV, computer, or phone, has supplanted almost all social interactions. This manifests itself in things like SitComs on TV (just a bunch of friends or family hanging out) or Social Media on phones. It’s very easy to fill the social needs of right now with a Screen. But under even a minuscule amount of self reflection these are revealed as hollow substitutes for real human interaction.
The Job has completely taken over as a driving force in evaluating choices. The average person has to consider all options in the light of both the current employer and the specter of tomorrow’s. Moving across the country for a high paying job? Great! Moving to be closer to friends? That’s a career killer.
No wonder we are lonely. We make choices in the short term that optimize happiness, often at the expense of our relationships. Ghosting is not just for dates now. Then turn around and make choices in the long term that optimize employability at the expense of all else.
> The average person has to consider all options in the light of both the current employer and the specter of tomorrow’s. Moving across the country for a high paying job? Great! Moving to be closer to friends? That’s a career killer.
The median person lives just 18 miles away from their mom. 57% of Americans have never lived outside their home state. A third have never lived outside their hometown.
The more I read about it, I’m convinced “loneliness” is an upper middle class problem.
Interesting. Anecdotally, this checks out. All of my middle/lower-middle class friends from high school have long been married and raising families, almost in all cases raising them with their extended families. Most of my professional tech friends are barely getting started in their late 30s, and everyone who's started had basically put their career into a slower gear first.
I made a similar choice a couple of years ago to downgrade my career into a slower-paced, less stressful scenario with less money, and again personally for me the results have spoken for themselves.
Unless I'm Elon Musk, the whole business of business isn't really designed in my favor, so it's logical for me to partake but only just so.
By definition you wouldn't know many lonely people. The chronically lonely ones are going to be the people who didn't end up getting married when they "should" have, couldn't make it into a proper career or fell out of one at some point. Most upper middle class people won't be lonely since if you can afford a career you can afford a social life or you might even be forced into one. But of course uncertainty and insecurity can make one feel lonely, so I guess that would count. Still that isn't going to be your epidemic. That is going to be those left behind.
> Most upper middle class people won't be lonely since if you can afford a career you can afford a social life or you might even be forced into one.
Social life is not about having money (well unless you're really poor) - it's about having time and people to spend it with. You can be in top 5-10% of income and a total loner - plenty such people in tech.
This makes me think of a good friend from college that I lost touch with, who recently committed suicide. I felt a significant amount of guilt, thinking about the fact that I could have very easily stayed in touch with him, despite not living anywhere close. Really made me think about people that I've had friendships with in the past that I may be able to reach out to and make a difference in their lives just by being the one person (or one of a few) that they talk to on a semi-frequent basis.
It just does not work like that. Many people with stable jobs are lonely. Long hours means that you don't have connection with family even if you have it. You live separate life from partner and your children are not close to you.
One partner working long hours is enough for both partners to be lonely in marriage. Partner having time consuming hobby is enough for you to be lonely in marriage.
People in work are not friends, they are competitors, allies, enemies, whatever. They are not people you can talk with openly. Moreover, there are plenty of jobs where you work mostly alone or have only temporary relationships.
No way man, I bet if we found out the specifics we’d both deem him “clueless” on the GP hierarchy.
Unless he literally works in a warehouse or in a position that is pure “worker bee,” $100 says if we knew the actual job title this guy held we’d deem him “clueless.” (Not that he actually IS clueless, who knows, I’m just using that word in the gervais principle sense of it).
“I made a similar choice a couple of years ago to downgrade my career into a slower-paced, less stressful scenario with less money” is quintessential “clueless” reasoning.
Prioritizing things like a slow pace and a lack of stress is something that “clueless” people tend to do, not “losers.” Darryl (& co) in the warehouse are stressed, dude, and they don’t have the time or inclination to prioritize things like lowering stress. They’re too busy living paycheck-to-paycheck. Toby in the office is less stressed, and I bet if you talked to the character Toby he’d say almost exactly what the guy wrote above.
I mean look what he’s doing here — sharing his emotional reasoning with the group. That’s something “clueless” people do, not “losers,” who tend to merely act on emotions rather than reflect on them and THEN act.
If this guy ACTUALLY became a “loser” and started working in an Amazon warehouse and it wasn’t part of a larger “clueless” meta-scheme to get a tax break or something, I would be literally shocked.
I agree that many worker bees are “clueless” but that breaks the GP heuristics.
My reading seems similar but different to yours. I agree that it has nothing to do with social status outside of work: to me it’s about emotional processing.
I can’t recall the specific passage but I remember Venkat talking about how clueless people seek absolution in collective emotional processing. That’s what leads me to believe the dude you’re replying to is clueless.
I completely disagree that Stanley is a loser, to me he is a quintessential clueless. He’s working in the office, not the warehouse: he’s in middle management, so IMO he’s clueless by definition because he is part of the padding between the masters/sociopaths/bosses and the slaves/worker bees/losers.
I think your perspective is interesting but I feel like I am adhering slightly more strictly to the heuristics laid out in GP.
Wanted to chime in that I think you are conflating working in the office as being higher on the ladder than working in the warehouse. They are two different departments. The warehouse is definitely blue-collar, and the office white-collar, but that doesn't mean the warehouse workers are inferior to the office workers.
Further I checked and Stanley is a sales rep, not middle management.
I really enjoyed reading through that article series last year when I first came across it. I spent a good amount of time wondering where I fit in the hierarchy relative to my coworkers. Ended up deciding that like all models, it's useful but incomplete. Still an interesting thing to know about.
Sort of similar to learning about personality types like Myers-Briggs or Enneagram.
Agree that like all models, it’s useful but incomplete.
Stanley is a sales rep and that is absolutely a part of the clueless layer. He provides buffer between the masters and the slaves in the warehouse dude: he is clueless. Not a loser like Darryl in the warehouse, not a sociopath like Robert California or Ryan the Temp, but clueless.
I am a clueless loser sociopath so take from that what u will :)
He states clearly that middle managers provide the buffer between the sociopaths and losers. Thus, Stanley is clueless.
Venkat’s description of Stanley as a “loser” completely destroys his own heuristics that only clueless are in middle management.
So congratulations, you’ve found a flaw in Venkat’s logic. He contradicts himself. However, I still think the general heuristics he lays out are valuable (as you seem to).
Thanks for the quote man — you made me realize the issue isn’t quite as cut-and-dry as I thought it was. I see your point now. Thank you.
The people in the warehouse don't report to Stanley. His job is to get sales from customers. He has no one reporting to him.
Michael is the chief clueless person in the show. Dwight and Andy are aspiring clueless.
The losers are the people who do the day-to-day work that keeps the company in business. The sociopaths are the people at the top who view the company as a board game with pawns that can be moved around or sacrificed at will.
The purpose of the clueless is to put a buffer between the sociopaths and the losers so that the sociopaths don't have to consider that their pawns are real people with real feelings and real families to take care of.
There are three classes of losers according to his system:
1. Over-performing losers, who are prime candidates for promotion to the clueless ranks
2. Average losers, who know they have a raw deal but don't have the ambition or coldness to do anything about it.
3. Under-performing losers, who are prime sociopath candidates because they have a lack of "give a damn" about what they do and are willing to push the boundaries because they know the deal is not in their favor.
Note that the over-under here is relative to ability. Jim is an under-performing loser, while still being very good at his job, because he doesn't put in his best effort.
Kevin is an average loser because even though he's not that good at his job, he's giving a good-faith effort to what he does.
Dwight is over-performing because he's always attempting to go above and beyond, even when it is inconvenient to him.
Whoa, you just convinced me
Stanley is a loser. I was totally wrong because I forgot Stanley’s job title. You’re right. No one reports to him. He’s a loser.
I was right and you were wrong. Learned something new today. Thank you!
> I completely disagree that Stanley is a loser, to me he is a quintessential clueless. He’s working in the office, not the warehouse: he’s in middle management, so IMO he’s clueless by definition because he is part of the padding between the masters/sociopaths/bosses and the slaves/worker bees/losers.
Stanley isn't middle management, he's an aging sales guy who is too old to justify switching jobs; he's close to retirement, and the "run out the clock" quote in the article is spot on about it being his whole life at this point -- he's killing time until he retires.
He's a loser because he doesn't have the willingness or ability to be a ruthless sociopath -- why bother, he's out in 2 years or less -- and has no illusions about how the company feels about its employees.
He is clueless because he provides the buffer between the masters/sociopaths/bosses and the slaves/worker bees/losers in the warehouse.
He is clueless because he doesn’t have the willingness or ability to be a ruthless sociopath , but he still doesn’t want to be a loser in the warehouse with Darryl.
Stanley is a low-status clueless, not a high-status loser. (IMO).
These are interesting perspectives all
around and I welcome further friendly debate. Thanks for sharing your thoughts guys. :)
No, that's entirely what a "checked out" Loser person would say. The step before upper management until you add enough egoism and sociopathy in. ;)
Clueless, these are the people who believe in so called company values, think they can change things or try to achieve something. Relatively rare nowadays in most places, but these do happen.
Both of the middle managers were this.
Losers are people who indeed care more about social aspects than getting things done. While the top sees this as a distraction it really is, but does not care about the day to day operations, just power.
The 3 layer hierarchy which seems to be a cornerstone for that piece's thesis is just a restatement of the structure of The Party from Orwell's 1984, applied to companies rather than all of society.
It is an interesting way to look at organizations though.
What you described here is essentially 'survivorship bias'. Also,just because someone married away into a cosy suburb with 2 kids and a nice hubby,it doesn't mean they aren't lonely. There are millions of people out there who would kill for a chance to have someone outside that "perfect" life just to talk openly with... All those "desperate housewives" don't get created without reason.
Again, I think this is more a problem with upper middle class suburbs. I grew up in the DC suburbs, where nobody knew each other because nobody was from there. They had moved there for careers; often it was a government position and they’d move back to Michigan or wherever after the political appointee they worked for left office. That was distinctly different from my wife’s experience. (Most of her extended family lives within a couple of hours of the homestead her family had when they came over in the wagon trains, and her parents went to the same high school.)
I agree that for someone that had a very active social life before having kids and moving to the suburbs would likely see a drop in that activity when suddenly having to take care of small kids in a suburban situation.
However, for someone that before having kids they already don't have any friends/family close by (imagine a fresh middle-aged, childless, immigrant couple moving in an area where there are very few other people from their own country), having kids would force a lot more opportunities to interact with other people (doctors, caretakers, teachers, other parents, etc) and ultimately speed up integration. Sure, none of those relationships may become a deep friendship connection but it's a lot better than having no human interaction.
It's not a perfect life (there isn't one), and there's no argument from me about there being different strokes for different folks. At the end of the day, however, even Einstein had to poop out of his own butt.
What I said should be taken with a grain of salt. I did what I did for more than a decade, savoring both the good and the bad.
Not sure how accurate this [1] is, but 34k USD puts you in the top ~0.88% richest people on the planet. If that's true, you are not "lower" anything...
Everything is relative in the context, so your global stats aren't especially helpful. 34k USD a year can lend you either an extremely comfy king-like life in Thailand or poverty level existence in San Francisco. Saying to someone from the latter situation that they are in ~0.88% richest people on the planet is neither helpful nor relevant.
That "comfy existence" in Thailand is also relative, you get to live in a house with air conditioning and indoor plumbing, just like in the west. Wages are lower so you can hire people to do things for you but an iPhone costs the same.
People seem to actually believe that 5 thousand a year gives you a middle class lifestyle in the third world. The cost of eating only rice and beans and living in a tin shack with dirt floors is pretty much the same everywhere.
I am not saying $5k, I am saying $35k. With that amount of money, you can certainly afford to live a super comfy life in Thailand not in a shack AND afford an iPhone.
I agree with your premise in general though, because given a similar lifestyle and similar percentage of savings (let's say 10%) from your salary you get in a high COL place vs. low COL place, high COL place would be more preferable, as that 10% will be higher in absolute dollar value, and a lot of goods are priced the same everywhere.
I haven't downed your post but wanted to reply to explain why I think it's not helpful to the discussion: You're moving the goalposts.
By your definition no American is a member of the global lower class, as defined purely on an income basis. That's a fine point to make if the discussion was about global poverty, but that's clearly not what this discussion is about. In effect, your comment amounts to whataboutism.
>The more I read about it, I’m convinced “loneliness” is an upper middle class problem.
Yeah, exactly. You trade a social life for financial stability accompanied by loneliness. I've had one or the other, but not yet been able to find a balance. It's, very, very hard to do except for the few among us who have a highly desired technical skills (check) and excellent marketing skills (uh, nope). Those folks can run successful freelance/consulting businesses, work reasonable hours, and still make good money.
That just sounds like an upper middle class way of brushing off a problem that can affect everyone. You can be alienated and isolated no matter if you live with your mom, in your home town, in your home state.
Yes, the problem is that people are incapable of "making enough money"
- Enough for buying satisfied house and land AND a nice secondary room in the middle of city. So they support two main life styles. Need a peaceful time, go to house surrounding by nature. Need a party, city life, back in town.
- Enough money for commuting between places as you want
- Enough money for buying whatever objects. Get bored, go shopping
- Enough money for not worrying about it so you can do things that improve your contentment.
Well, this is not new, money solves maybe 90% of whatever problems you have right now.
Also usually the richer you get, the richer your social circle gets. I remember reading once that almost nobody on facebook has more friends than any of their friends (meaning, each user on facebook with n friends has at least one friend with >n friends). The same is almost certainly true for wealth, or income.
A mid-career software engineer at FAANG might have a greater income than every single person they grew up with. But they probably know middle managers making even more, as well as ex-colleagues who hit it big with a startup. Those middle managers know many people making more than them, all the way up the food chain. Those colleagues at the startups probably know people who had more equity, VCs, etc. with even more money. And this continues on and on.
but similarily as OP mentioned, the screen encompasses all classes. Even the lower classes around the world, while taking advantage of this connectivity to the rest of the world, will experience similar symptoms perhaps. I'm thinking of cab, rikshaw drivers in India who now all have phones which is great in improving their lives but may result in disconnectedness from their communities families maybe not as much as first world countries.
Doesn't that support the original comment? Given increasing income inequality, wage stagnation, and the "desirable" jobs being clustered amongst the upper-middle and upper classes, and your suggestion that the loneliness epidemic is concentrated to said groups, then it would seem to imply that it is increasingly a binary choice between career prospects and living near family/friends.
I agree with the idea its an upper middle class problem, but I’m not convinced it’s a problem per se.
Part of what I’m wondering is if people are agreeing they spend more time alone than in the past, social norms say that means we’re lonely, so they agree with the idea.
I grew up in the country with a lot of alone time. I loved it. I don’t consider myself a depressed person. I can imagine anything I want, write the story down, plan projects, do the deep work of being me.
Being more social just feels like a series of shallow experiences relative. Drinks, coffees, some emotionally exciting event... all fleeting to me.
My own head is forever.
I think we want to believe loneliness is bad because of social pressure to connect, get a job with people we don’t know but we need a job, etc
Personally, I find that all incredibly stifling and stressful for little personal gain (the aristocracy of course loves a population that’s normalized to a small set of behaviors but that’s a diff topic).
Upper middle class types seem to have engagement in social structures forced on them. It’s bizarre to me
Seems people don't like this comment. Let me elaborate: In poorer countries, or in historically poorer countries, there is often a culture of group interaction: food sold in the streets, social events in the streets, greeting people and getting to know those around you. A lot of this is based on mutual struggle or mutual need towards each other.
This is quite stark in some poorer countries (e.g.: some African, South American or Asian countries). You don't see that much in the US, but you do see it in some European countries and the ones with more of this are the ones that I find have less inertial loneliness. Thus: "first world problems" occur when you need the person next to you less. Maybe this is the same phenomenon that makes a country like Iceland famous for helpfulness towards others?
Why are you trying to counterargue a growing recognition of widespread loneliness by citing figures about people moving? Do you think loneliness doesn't happen if people live close to mom, or that people who never leave their home town or their home state aren't lonely?
I'd expect those to be the loneliest of people. At least people who travel often learn how to meet and make new friends and rarely find themselves stuck in social isolation.
I would suspect that, on average people who live near extended family and childhood friends will be less lonely than people who don’t have families and move around a lot.
My mom grew up in a family of 11 siblings in Bangladesh, most of whom lived with their families in the same city when I was a kid. It’s hard to express rich and full life was back there.
This may be a cultural difference, or it may just be a difference of personal experiences, but I wouldn't make the leap to inferring much of any correlation between loneliness and living near extended family or childhood friends.
For one, as the article pointed out, there are differences between social interaction and loneliness. For another, there are many broken families out there today, especially with the rise of opioid and other brutal addictions.
Anecdotally, I've seen hispanic families tend to be closer-knit, while a lot of other families tend to have some pretty serious problems. As one data point, my parents now live only a few miles away from me but I see them only very occasionally. Likewise, former close-knit groups of friends who all never left their home town -- and in at least one case, ended up buying homes only a couple blocks away from each other -- ended up squabbling and fighting and stopped talking to each other at all.
So whereas your experiences have led you to suppose that being close to childhood friends and family makes someone less lonely, my own -- and those of the various other nomads I've gotten to know over the years -- lead me to suppose that getting away from childhood friends and family helps to stave off the loneliness.
All of this is 100% correct. In particular: the amount of choices that have become "career killers" and therefore unacceptable is terrifying.
Choose a degree that appeals to you, where you will learn what you like, instead of one which acts as a stepping stone for a higher paying job? Even in countries with sane tuition prices (read: not the US) plenty of people will blame you, and that decision in particular, for any financial problem for all your life.
Become pregnant, and/or plan to work fewer hours for some time to take care of your kids or any older relative? How brave of you. Here's your prize in the form of reduced pay for the next 10 years or so.
Decline that managing position because you like your current job better and you know you won't enjoy being a manager? Cue the disapproval stares from people close to you.
Stay in your job for 15 years because you like the people, the work itself or some particular perk? When you finally leave, your next job will pay less than if you had hopped around each 2 years. That's if someone wants to hire you.
Sure, every decision counts and very often there is a tradeoff between trying to find happiness and trying to find a job that sustains you. However, lately the tension between those two is so high that any small decision towards living the life you want to live may very well end in financial misery for the rest of your life. This is not hyperbole; I know people who fucked up mildly once, fifteen years ago, and are still paying the price. And I'm one of the lucky ones... I haven't fallen through the cracks. Yet.
> Stay in your job for 15 years because you like the people, the work itself or some particular perk? When you finally leave, your next job will pay less than if you had hopped around each 2 years. That's if someone wants to hire you.
This is so true, and the weirdest thing in the world to me. Especially in tech, you get really heavily punished for staying at a job more than a few years. To the point where, in interviews, you are asked why you stayed so long. Why would you penalize someone who might make a long-term commitment to your company? You're basically flushing all the training and institutional knowledge they hold down the drain.
I've been at my current job 13 years (although I have advanced through multiple titles in that time). I may be slightly underpaid, though last time I looked a few years ago it was about average for the area. I've considered leaving occasionally, but I like the people I work with and the work most days is interesting and engaging.
Moreover, I'm content. Maybe I could get more money if I job-hopped or moved to a place like the Bay Area. But why? I'm comfortable now, all my needs are met, I have plenty of disposable income, and my family is happy. We never want for anything.
We have this weird aversion to people being content. There's a lot to be said for stability.
>
> Stay in your job for 15 years because you like the people, the work itself or some particular perk? When you finally leave, your next job will pay less than if you had hopped around each 2 years. That's if someone wants to hire you.
> This is so true, and the weirdest thing in the world to me. Especially in tech, you get really heavily punished for staying at a job more than a few years. To the point where, in interviews, you are asked why you stayed so long. Why would you penalize someone who might make a long-term commitment to your company? You're basically flushing all the training and institutional knowledge they hold down the drain.
In Germany, the mentality is different. If you switch jobs after few years, you have to give very good reasons - for exactly the outlined reasons.
> We have this weird aversion to people being content.
As an immigrant I feel this is quite an American thing - there's always talk of your _career_, your _pursuits_, your _goals_, interesting things you did over the weekend...
I’m American and I consider much of this attitude to be deranged and frankly a form of mental illness. Unfortunately pretty much everyone has it (including me at times) so I don’t talk about this opinion that much.
Maybe the ability to be content is not that common and people who just cannot do it are secretly envious of and angry at those who can? For example, I've never been content in any job (barring some honeymoon periods or particularly interesting short episodes). It's pretty much always a grind to get that paycheck at the end of the month. At this point, I don't think I could be content with any job. It's possible that I've chosen a wrong career and have broken myself over years of working in it - hard to tell.
Seems to be more a problem of expectations than anything else, people are too focused on being successful than being happy, on having it all.
I would gleefully take a pay cut to have a 35h work week _if my wage still allows me to eat out once 3x a week_, but I will work 40h + commute and feel always exhausted until I get there. See how easy is to fall on that trap.
In many parts of the US this is so out of the norm that people would be freaked out by you trying to talk to them (SF, NYC for sure but even in Chicago which is supposed to have that Midwestern friendliness... it'd be weird and often unwelcome)
Ah yeah, I'm definitely overpaid because I don't go home and choose to work instead of spending time with my friends or skip weekends out to work more contracts.
Yeah, that's right I'm over paid. Eat a bag of biscuits you assuming flesh bag.
I'm giving up parts of my life to make money, and you expect me to want less than what I'm making?
Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how provocative another comment is? We're trying for something better than internet default here.
I think I am sympathetic to your point-of-view, but I'm not sure, because it seems (to me) that you are maybe conflating a couple of different costs.
Let's start at the numerator - you appear to be calculating life "happiness" (according to some internal metric) vs ... cost. You appear to be calculating costs as being:
- Not making more money because the degree did not lend it to making more money
- Social approbation for not making more money
- Missed revenue (income) because time spent with family/childcare
- Social approbation for not taking the higher-ranked (and labeled as such) gig
- Missed economic opportunity (income) for work-social reasons or work-enjoyment reasons
Is that right? I'm not sure what social approbation (or that of your SO) means to you, but this seems (generally) to be a pretty clear trade-off of doing what you want vs. making more money by doing what society is willing to pay you for?
I mean - I'm a fan of doing what you like - but surely you don't expect society to pay you to watch Jerry Springer and smoke week all day at home munching down on pizza, right? How is this different?
The society does not pay you. The company does, and many bigger corporations have a ton of impossible b.s. projects that are essentially a waste if time for anyone who is not a boss counting the number of employees.
I just found something very indicative of the current times: in Ask A Manager (a blog about work where the owner answers questions from her readers) someone is afraid that not working during the evenings or the weekends is going to hurt their job prospects. The article has been published today.
> However, lately the tension between those two is so high that any small decision towards living the life you want to live may very well end in financial misery for the rest of your life.
This is definitely an uncomfortable truth that isn't talked about very often, and the information age seems to exacerbate it.
>Choose a degree that appeals to you, where you will learn what you like, instead of one which acts as a stepping stone for a higher paying job?
>Become pregnant, and/or plan to work fewer hours for some time to take care of your kids or any older relative?
>Stay in your job for 15 years because you like the people, the work itself or some particular perk?
>However, lately the tension between those two is so high that any small decision towards living the life you want to live may very well end in financial misery for the rest of your life.
Are you expecting society to reward you for making ultimately selfish choices aimed at maximizing only your own personal happiness?
I'm expecting the penalty not to be so disproportionate as to persist 15+ years after the choice. Also, most of these "choices" are not so selfish.
In the case of the degree choices, I know plenty of people who have jobs with a much higher social utility than mine, yet make much less and suffer long periods of unemployment (I'm thinking about, for example, people whose job is to educate people from marginalized communities).
In the case of taking care of other people, I just can't fathom how would you find selfisness in stepping out of a job in order to take care of other people.
And about staying a lot of time in a job, it can definitely make you incredibly productive, and in all cases I know in tech it forces people to have a "big picture" idea of some problem domain which is damn useful when trying to move to a company working within the same domain; it's very different from hopping companies and having to learn a slightly different tech stack and/or company structure each time. Sadly, this doesn't translate at all into a better salary, because as an industry we seem to have collectively decided that staying too long in a job is anathema.
>I'm expecting the penalty not to be so disproportionate as to persist 15+ years after the choice
The penalty persists because the years spent pursuing goals other than those that confer useful skills and experience cannot be regained. Are you suggesting that we reward all people equally, regardless of whether they are able to demonstrate the same degree of utility?
>In the case of taking care of other people, I just can't fathom how would you find selfisness in stepping out of a job in order to take care of other people.
Selfish from the perspective that taking care of a sick loved one does not necessarily provide a benefit to society at large. More importantly, that time spent not working or learning is effectively a pause in ones growth as a professional - what is the alternative, making hiring and salary decisions by age rather than experience?
>I know plenty of people who have jobs with a much higher social utility than mine, yet make much less and suffer long periods of unemployment
This is a bit of a conflation. I am arguing over choices which do not benefit society, in which case it is reasonable that one's career value is lower. This particular problem is one of misplaced valuation in our society, as there are tangible benefits to the degrees your acquaintances pursued.
There is no intrinsic benefit to society at large in pursuing a degree - only those degrees which enable one to contribute in some form, and even then the benefit only occurs if one uses the knowledge obtained to conduct useful work.
>Yes, society should absolutely tell business that it isn't as important as it thinks.
Businesses have the goal of generating some sort of value. Yes, that means that employees must make certain sacrifices with their time and future plans - that's why they get paid. But this conflict between the goals of a business and the goals of an employee exist regardless of whether we organize into business-employee relationships or not, because fundamentally any significant, communal goal requires these same sacrifices to be achieved. We won't have any engineers or doctors or programmers if everyone majors in English Literature out of a fundamentally selfish desire to learn something with significantly less benefit to society.
The same goes for the other listed pursuits. I'm not saying that one should dedicate themselves to their work - but the detriment to one's career that comes with pursuing these, again, selfish goals (from the perspective of society) is generally just, because it isn't fair to force others to allocate their resources to activities which do not benefit them.
Businesses have the goal of generating money for their owners. That's what capitalism is. Capital puts up money to start a business expecting a return on that money. Businesses are formed when the expected (in the probability sense) return on the business is considered a good deal.
There are some theories that this magically coincides with creating value in an ideal model, but no period in history has actually worked that way. There are many proposed explanations for why it doesn't, but I'm not much interested in why. All I care about is that those models don't describe reality.
So businesses are all about generating income for their owners. But society is about all people in it, not just those who control the capital. It is necessarily true that there will be cases where the best thing for society is not the best thing for businesses.
Business has pushed the public narrative too far towards blind support of "business is a good thing." Your post even seems to just assume that as a given. You claim that a goal is "selfish (from the perspective of society)" when the only thing you can criticize about it is that it isn't maximizing business value.
Business isn't everything. Sure, a society needs a functioning economy in order to survive. But that's a far cry from assuming "good for business" is the same as "good for society".
The latter is certainly more nebulous, though, and I can understand why you might wish they were the same thing. It would allow you to optimize society with simple quantitative measures instead of complex qualitative discussions about which sets of opposing goals have the better overall outcome. But the real world doesn't cooperate with such things. There are always going to be conflicts over goals, priorities, and even values. Resist the temptation to believe in an easy answer. Reality isn't easy.
Quitting a job to take care of a sick loved one does not benefit the people you worked with toward a common goal, nor society at large.
>No more selfish then changing job because some perk.
The point here is that GP was complaining that there were no career benefits to making such a decision - why should there be, exactly? Such a career move benefits oneself and ones family. No one else.
> The point here is that GP was complaining that there were no career benefits to making such a decision - why should there be, exactly? Such a career move benefits oneself and ones family. No one else.
Same as leaving the job and changing. Benefits no one but you.
When all possible actions are framed as selfish, that whole argument is nonsense.
>The Screen, whether it’s TV, computer, or phone, has supplanted almost all social interactions.
I think social (cooperative) gaming might be an exception to this. I'm not about to argue that it's _better_ than real-life social interaction, but hanging out and communicating with the same individuals every evening while working on shared goals as your avatars inhabit the screen can combat loneliness for many individuals without (and with!) alternatives[0].
These interactions can even lead to real-life communities and relationships. So again, not a perfect substitute, but certainly not as much a detractor as sitcoms or (I would argue) social media.
I moved to a city where I'm pretty much alone so I could go to college. My favorite time of the day is when I play Counter-Strike with my old buddies at night. Not so much because of the game but just because I get to voice chat and have a good laugh for a while.
> The Job has completely taken over as a driving force in evaluating choices. The average person has to consider all options in the light of both the current employer and the specter of tomorrow’s.
How is this different than what the majority of civilization had to do throughout history? People have always clung to their profession as their identity. Hell, people used to name themselves after their profession.
If that is the problem, then push for fewer hours worked per week.
Back in the days when people named themselves after their job, there was no difference between career and personal life. You didn’t work 8-5 and then completely disconnect, you worked whenever the job needed done as many hours as it took.
Loneliness only sets in when you have nothing else to do and you’re all alone. If you’re swinging a hammer at a hot forge for 16 hours a day loneliness is a secondary concern.
It also isn't particularly good for personal freedom, or social mobility.
Recently society has been pushing for these two things, at the expense of personal connections. That means many successful people are working jobs that are out of the experience of their parents. They also do not necessarily share a lot of experiences of their formative years with the people they work with. All of this comes from personal freedom, but at the expense of being close to the people you spend your time with. I suppose you could also put it that its at the expense of spending time with the people you are close to.
Maybe there's a spectrum here. A family trade is both highly social and highly stable, even if it is confining in terms of personal freedom and social mobility.
Maybe, our current obsession as a society with personal freedom and social mobility is an extreme which is itself the cause of all the loneliness. It's an extreme which reduces the stability and cohesion of our society, because in promoting the freedom of the individual above all else, you've harmed the social connections which make a society work.
Maybe there's a happy medium, but I think we might have passed it by over a century back.
It's also interesting that nowadays when people lose their jobs, it triggers an almost existential crisis in them. It's kind of sad to watch.
I wish people could understand that they are more than their job. It's so ingrained in us though. One of the first things people asks each other is, "What do you do?" It encourages a definition of self that is centered on one's job.
If it weren't real life, I'd think I was watching a dystopian film at most social gatherings. :(
I'm pretty certain that existential crisis isn't because of who they'd be without their job, except in status obsessed high-income brackets.
For most folks that existential crisis is driven 100% by the realization that they have little in the way of a safety-net, and all it takes is several turns of bad luck to end up in a poverty trap that isn't easy to climb out of. Remember, most Americans make what, 65k or so as a household? And are in massive debt to all of the things they needed to even be able to make that money (college education, car, house, etc).
> For most folks that existential crisis is driven 100% by the realization that they have little in the way of a safety-net, and all it takes is several turns of bad luck to end up in a poverty trap that isn't easy to climb out of.
High debt loads are a lot more common than most people think. Even those who live in expensive neighborhoods can be one or two missed paychecks away from foreclosure or eviction. Defining yourself as more than your job is a lot easier when you could go six months without it. Not to get too high on my soapbox, but the other side of the fact that low interest rates encourage economic growth is that high debt loads make people desperate to work.
Modern culture has stripped life of intrinsic meaning. The values promoted by the culture are that we are hedonic production/consumption machines, and that our value comes from either what we are able to produce, or what we are able to consume.
Bingo, this hits the nail on the head. We live in a capitalist, market oriented society and we've allowed marketers to run the show by letting them define and influence our sense of self. The eventual outcome of this has been a self-image entirely based on the specific goods and services we consume.
It took a lot of introspection for me to realize that my core essence and sense of self couldn't really be distilled down to much more than what I did for a living and my consumption patterns. It's quite scary and I've been searching for ways to balance myself out and get more meaning out of life.
Cheap and readily available credit makes people dependent on their jobs. Its totally normal to think of affordability on a monthly payment basis. That means we have people who have very little savings after all their monthly payments. When you lose your job you can't make all those monthly payments anymore its a crisis.
The screen and the Job have no volition of their own. It's humans themselves that choose to spend more time with them instead of interacting with nearby humans. And this is happening despite the fact that we 're no longer in the industrial age, and people don't need to live near the factory where they work. The Job provides people with enough money to frequently escape from nearby people (travel, or "experiences"), money to move in upscale tiny apartments where they can be alone in a crowd, or to move in comfy suburbs where they can be alone physically. It seems highly-paid people choose those, and it is lower class people that keep socializing with their neighbours.
I presume many of those people do not idolize their relationships with other humans as the most precious thing in the world. They weigh them against the freedoms afforded by money and technology and act accordingly.
As a software engineer who comes from the lower class (the West side ghetto of Chicago, in fact), let me tell you right now that lower class people socializing with their neighbors doesn't mean those interactions are at all inclusive of different approaches to life. Yeah, you get more socializing and connections, but those interactions tend to be constrained by forces like homophobia, racism, etc. Just because they're socializing doesn't mean they are also re-enforcing a world where everyone can feel accepted. It strikes me as naive to think the working class are this miasma of authentic relations, they socialize better because the set of considered opinions is virtually uncontested.
A known phenomenon is that being homeless can work wonders for one's social skills.
Being poorly presented and inarticulate is a form of privilege - it's traditionally associated with academia, but with the rise of the "computer nerd" stereotype, it has increasingly slipped into other venues. What comes to mind is Tfue, the world's top Fortnite player, whose Twitch streams largely consist of him grunting "uuggggghn" and complaining about "stream snipers" with coarse language. He gets millions of viewers.
1 - Of course not, but its a requisite to strong social bonds isn't it? The point is that that the discussion around fulfilling bonds is fairly underspecified to the point that it isn't practically useful from my perspective.
I think many people value being disentangled from other peoples' problems. They move to the suburbs so that they don't have to have roommates or people in the next door apartment - so that they have some space. Then they find out that they have no community - they're isolated and lonely. As you say, we're doing it to ourselves.
> People nowadays spend far more time at work than ever.
A few generations ago kids worked at 10, there were no weekly limit, no weekends, no vacations, no security, no form of compensation if you get injured/die while working, no pension, no sick leave &c.
In first world countries we never worked so little for so much comfort.
> By the act of 1892 one day in the week, not necessarily Sunday, had to be given for entire absence from work, in addition to eight recognized annual holidays
> Children may not be employed in industrial work before 12 years, and then only 8 hours a day at work
> The first attempt to secure legislation regulating factory employment related to the hours of labour, which were very long - from twelve to thirteen hours a day.
> Boys of 13 may be employed in certain work underground, but under 16 may not be employed more than 8 hours in the 24 from bank to bank. A law of 1905 provided for miners a 9 hours' day and in 1907 an 8 hours' day from the foot of the entrance gallery back to the same point.
I don't think it's particularly helpful to compare the present day to the late 19th century. The fact that things used to be worse does not excuse the fact that things also used to be better; living standards for the average American have regressed in many ways since the 1970s, which should be a cause of urgent concern.
>living standards for the average American have regressed in many ways since the 1970s,
With women's entry into the workforce plus the 1964 Hart-Cellar Act's lifting of immigration quotas the workforce more than doubled in the 70s. At that rate how was work compensation ever supposed to keep up? I'm not saying the trade-off wasn't worth it, but you can't 2-3x the labor pool and then pretend we don't know why wages decreased while competition for scare resources increased.
This is an extremely simplistic reading of a complex real-world issue. There multiple other factors that almost definitely dominated the changes you cite. Including population growth, other massive changes in the regulatory, political, economic, and technical environment... Point being, mentioning one shift in the labor supply is really not a useful frame for "the state of labor in the US."
Physically you are right. Mentally, maybe not. If you are in an information based job like writing or programming, then it’s very easy to carry your job around in your head. I may only program for a few hours a day, but the problems definitely come home with me. It takes a considerable amount of self awareness to both realize this and stop it.
This is definitely true. "Open-world" jobs are par for the course in the Western world, where deciding what you have to do is part of the job, along with predicting, strategizing, and reflecting. It is a lot more cognitively engaging and also heavy. Farming and mining certainly have aspects of this, but a majority of the work was drone work -- exactly the type of work to go first in automatization. What's left is necessarily cognitively difficult work.
How much time was spent in meetings, how much time preparing food, fixing clothes, patrolling territory, scouting things out, making home improvements etc.
If the modern person only worked for food, then I think a few hours a week would suffice.
The situation in the late 19th century was a historical aberration and workers neither since nor previously worked that many hours. Note also that in that period, Western society was full of day laborers, hobos and other chronically underemployed people. That is how capitalists could force workers into working insane hours at low pay. Because if they didn't want to do it, then there were thousands of others that were willing to. And importantly, most women were not employed which they are now. Given these factors it is not certain that the average person worked harder in the 19th century than the average person does today. The average factory worker certainly did, but that is different.
I don't get what is with these snarky replies all over Hacker News these days. His point was that people work a lot. Quarreling over whether some people some time during history has worked even more is missing it.
Even 'unemployed' women worked really hard back then. Without electricity, all the washing, managing the home heater, cooking, cleaning tasks have to be done on muscle power alone.
Doing a load of laundry on a hand washer and scrubbing board takes forever and is pretty brutal. So is getting up super early to put coal in the furnace (and then keeping it going all day every day). Running a stove you have to load with wood means starting really early. Churning butter by hand. Possibly grinding flour by hand. Making everyone's clothes by hand - when the sewing machine came out it made Singer incredibly rich because it saved so many women so many hours sewing their family's clothes by hand.
Nearest extant comparison would probably be Amish women.
Yes, that is why I wrote that women of that time were "not employed" not "not working". Household chores can be considered work, but that brings into question what is work and what is leisure? Raising kids is certainly a lot of work but it is also entirely optional so why isn't it leisure? arvinism however wrote "more time at work than ever" which can't mean anything other than hours in employment.
The average farmer definitely worked less than 40 hours. During harvest season it was more than that no doubt but overall the time spent on work was less and more diverse. It was only with industrialization and capitalism that work took over such an enormous amount of our time. At the beginning of the 20th century, people fought back hard to get the amenities like 40h week and sick leave that make work bearable today. It certainly wasn't Henry Ford who introduced the 5 day work week. It was the workers who protested for it while people like Henry Ford sent strike breakers and police with machine guns to mow them down.
> People nowadays spend far more time at work than ever.
Average hours worked has gone down steadily over the last two centuries:
> 1830 69.1 hours per week
> 1880 60.7
> 1929 50.6
> 1988 42.4
> As the twentieth century ended there was nothing resembling a shorter hours “movement.” The length of the workweek continues to fall for most groups — but at a glacial pace. Some Americans complain about a lack of free time but the vast majority seem content with an average workweek of roughly forty hours — channeling almost all of their growing wages into higher incomes rather than increased leisure time.
I find it pretty concerning whenever I see someone's github page with tons of green squares on the bottom and top row. Why do people work so much on the weekends?
TV when it was a single screen in house could still serve as social gathering time.
As a kid, having my own TV meant countless hours of video games and my own movies too. I enjoyed it more than I abused it.
Are smarphone/tablet TVs worse or the same ?
One difference, the kind of entertainment you had on TV wasn't that much thinking or discussing. It has different effects I suppose. Also TV had a different ethos (if I may).
One last thing, about my first point. Having a single TV meant disagreements about who decides what to watch. This led to having more TVs.. and now more screens too. Technology is the mirror of our own social bonds.. we need it but we also need to deal with the issues. It gives a weird form of peace of mind not to have to deal with others.
>As a kid, having my own TV meant countless hours of video games and my own movies too. I enjoyed it more than I abused it.
For me int he early 90s was "Hey Aaron/Jimmy/Dani it's raining outside so we can't go ride bikes, wanna play a game?" and then either taking turns or playing a two player game and talking the entire time. Then early 95 when more than one or two of us had computers in the homes it was similar, if it was nice out we were outside, if not we were on IRC and/or a MUD and moving into the later 90s bla-dinging each other on AIM while in a MUD or in Ultima or Everquest with each other if it was too late to go out or bad weather.
Now it's 3 people sitting in a room with a tv going, and all three have their phones out, occasionally sending each other memes and not talking.
I agree that it's weirder nowadays. But maybe we just enjoyed cultural inertia because we were born just before 24/7 multi screen entertainment became the norm. I too find that it just takes too much space in our daily lives. Back in the days tech was one part of our life, and it was small scope entertainment, now it's the centralized hub for everything and it sucks your mind.
Playing evil's advocate a bit just to poke my own bias.
I am the type to rejoice in cynicism. But, I have to say that I don't see the screen phenomenon as necessarily a bad thing—time spent in contemplation is time spent alone. I am a person too that likes to spend time outdoors, so maybe what I am saying is that there is a fine line between lonely and alone.
You can only be anti-social in the presence of other people. Otherwise you are simply alone.
At least in SF it feels like there is a grey area between work and friend relationships. I don't necessarily think relationships that start at work can't be meaningful, though there's certainly a much greater chance a work relationship is transactional even if you fool yourself into thinking they could be a friend.
Whether the relationship is transactional (or tainted by money or some such) doesn't bother me as much as the fact that my putting time and effort into friendships in the workplace gives someone who already has a lot of power over me even more power over me: namely, my getting fired would suddenly make it very difficult for me to continue most of those friendships.
I don't think that can explain everything. As far as I understand, cultures where family is highly valued (Latin America, some parts Asia) say they are happier despite being relatively less well off than richer countries.
We evolved living in relatively small groups where everyone knew each other and exclusion from the group meant likely death. Now we are part of a global social web where at any time, any of our people may be occupied by other parts of their network that do not involve us. This risk of being abandoned instinctively feels like an existential threat, so we live with a constant underlying anxiety that we do not truly belong and are not really safe. It will be interesting to see whether this reality selects for individuals better equipped to cope with it, or whether we develop better systems to allow everyone to cope better... I'd guess a bit of both.
I will quote a previous comment on a similar thread[1] I made verbatim here. It is from Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now, where he reviews data on loneliness in the US students (among two dozen other graphs in the first twenty chapters).
Pinker implies social critics abuse the words "epidemic" and "crisis" (both words used in the article of this thread).
After reviewing the downwards-sloping graph (plotted from 1978-2011) and more data, Pinker writes:
Modern life, then, has not crushed our minds and bodies, turned us into atomized machines suffering from toxic levels of emptiness and isolation, or set us drifting apart without human contact or emotion. How did this misconception arise? Partly it came out of the social critic's standard formula for sowing panic: Here's an anecdote, therefore it's a trend, therefore it's a crisis. But partly came from genuine changes in how people interact. People see each other less in traditional venues like clubs, churches, unions, fraternal organizations, and dinner parties, and more in informal gatherings via digital media. They confide in fewer distant cousins but more in co-workers. They are less likely to have large numbers of friends but also less likely to want a large number of friends. But just because social life looks different today from the way it looked in the 1950s, it does not mean that humans, that quintessentially social species, have become any less social.
I'm not suggesting that everything is hunky-dory, just that we bear in mind the proportions of the problem. Also Pinker may well be off the mark here, as others have pointed out in[1].
> I'm not suggesting that everything is hunky-dory, just that we bear in mind the proportions of the problem. Also Pinker may well be off the mark here, as others have pointed out in[1].
The data seems unrepresentative, though. While data on suicide rates is fairly clear, it might be more interesting to look at revealed preferences instead of self-reported ones. To this end, indicators for "lives of despair" (drug OD deaths, hospitalisation for drug/alcohol abuse etc) might be more appropriate.
"Crisis" may not be the correct word, whereas the sex ratio imbalance in China is definitely a crisis, the loneliness issue is at least a valid social ill because of the additional stress, anxiety, missing joy/opportunities and shortening of lives it creates.
I just hope people don't think the working class somehow has this all down pat and that this is merely a case of bourgeois overconsumption. As someone who comes from a ghetto and became a software engineer, I can tell you now that a lot of people I grew up with engage in combinations of racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. The working class are only this candyland of authentic relations if you also accept all the socio-political tenets that go with that particular community. That's no better than being alone.
They say in the article there's no clear rising trend and self reported loneliness as an "issue" was at a similar level going back to the 1940s as today. I figure it's mainly up to two things, which the article touches on briefly.
One, family sizes are down. My parents who emigrated to the US had tons of siblings. My mom had like 8 or 9 (including a few kids who died early) and were closely knit until they emigrated the US separately as adults. My dad had 3 or 4 as well iirc.
Two, the transitions, especially the changing of jobs, and especially if it necessitates a move away from your prior group. People tend to like fixed roles and fixed communities in my experience, changing that is a big risk and a big source of anxiety. I've moved around a lot in the US and I've noticed that a vast majority of people I knew were born and raised in the states they still lived in, sometimes in the same towns, although college and the first "career" job tended to be the biggest changes and the transitions slow down after that unless forced. This even holds true for a lot of the emigrated workers I've known. As soon as externalities like job security and immigration status are stable they build families and start looking to settle down and hope to find a career long employer.
I would imagine that based on what I've seen people would be less lonely with fixed jobs, in fixed locations, with large, stable families. And people hopping jobs, company layoffs, long lived local businesses failing, and families having fewer kids are big causes of "loneliness". Although, like the article says there's not exactly a strong rising trend going back as far as the last century anyway...
Really. I think the big problem here is social networks. Nobody interact face to face.I used to go to bars , look for a pretty girl and pay her a drink to start a conversation. Nowdays this is considered creep. They expect that I download an app, wait for a match ans just goeet for a quick chat and maybe some action. Just turn of your computers and go to a bar. Interact to people. Start conversations with stranger people. You may meet weird people. But also will meet amazing people.
I met my husband less than a decade ago in a bar. I still talk to strangers in bars now too. Its not any more creepy to socialize with strangers in bars now than it was in the past, as long as you respect boundaries and aren't a creep about it.
The vast majority of people still meet their partners through "traditional" means, very, very few meet through sites and apps. And when I say "very, very few" I'm talking less than 10%.
You can claim anything with a survey these days. This one says 40% of couples meet online, and 60% of same-sex couples. And that is from 2017. Anecdotally I think you are out of touch, probably because you've been out of the dating game for a decade. Less than 10%? No way. Everyone has migrated to dating apps.
I think he meant buying the drink is creepy. I go to bars on occasion and meet women my age and younger, but I've never bought them a drink because I feel the same way (although I don't think they expect it either.)
Starting the conversation is hard and it can be very difficult to tell if they really want to talk before they do, I guess that's part of why you want a good bartender because they'll usually start conversations with everyone.
Welll you just dont walk straing in. You first exchange glances, see if shes alone, whatt shes drinking (soft drinks, hard licor, beer, some fancy cocktail) and judge something about her personality, if you think you have a chance, then you pay for a drink, or just straigth hit her with something, in my case somthing dumb like "Hey, how much a polar bear weigths? Enougth to break the ice!".
What I think is creep is some stranger who straigup knows your name, your face, and can just as easy starting to virtual stalking your life and find out where you live.
Fucking hating online dating solutions like tinder.... really not good talker on line, without seeing the person face to face.
Acctually what I meant is, young people usually think talking and interacting to strangers is creepy. Like. Ok you can be creep, and is easy to look creep when you talking to a beatfull woman an is an insecure nerd. Been there, done that.
Offering strangers liquid drugs in hopes of "some action" was probably creepy back in the day too. Alcohol and hookup culture are not mutually exclusive to loneliness.
Offering a drink in a bar was never creepy when I was younger. Offering a home-made drink that nobody but you knows what's in it, that is creepy. Calling a gin tonic "liquid drugs" is grotesque in the context.
Yeah.... thas weird.... but I sure could go for a gin tonica...
here in brasil people usually don't drink fancy stuff, like pink blueberry, or things like that.
Usually beer, straith licor or things like vodka/cachaça with fruits.
I just drink fancy girly stuff like Daiquiris when I in the mood to learn a new drink, and can drink in peace without other people to judge my frail masculinity.
I appreciate the sentiment of this, but I don't like how associated dating is with drinking alcohol. I don't drink and I would never go to a bar. If there were other types of social spaces not associated with drinking that would be great.
I totally agree. I do drink but would prefer to do it less and frequently end up using it as a bit of a social crutch. Coffee shops are fine during the day but I really wish there were more booze-free places to hang out at night.
Is a way of saying. You can change a bar for a coffe shop or something like that. What I'm saying get out your home and do things you apreciate. You will eventually make friands with people with the same interest.
You care about art? Go to museuns. Like italian food? Go to a cantina once in a while, even alone you will eat great food, make friends with the owners and waiters, etc.
You don't go in a bar for a deep conversation, you have the library and local groups of interests for that. A bar is just for relaxing and socialization, you can talk anything you want as long as you find someone to listen (or ignore) you.
Well, it dependends... last week I was drinkign a beer alone in my usual water shit hole, smoking a cigar... a guy came and ask for my ligther. In half a hour we where discussing the root causes of WWI. So... you can't have... but usually not with a girl you trying to impress.
Relaxing and Socialization != Sexualizing a public place and solely trying to pick up women. Women want to go to a bar to relax too. Do you think they can relax when men are constantly trying to buy them drinks and calling them "pretty girls"?
Genuine connection != deep conversation.
I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here, beyond being an advocate for harassment.
I am not advocating harassment; I consider harassment if you offer someone a drink, she is refusing and you insist. Not the case.
There are some unwritten rules in bars: if a woman is sitting at the bar alone, she may want a drink from some guys, not from anyone. If a woman is with some guy, she probably will not be interested and it is not a good idea to try. Showing some availability is inviting - not crying out loud "I want to be offered a drink by a tall dark stranger", but the meaning is the same. Not harassment. Females don't contact directly guys, they want to be asked and to be allowed to choose. Basic human psychology, no big deal.
Libraries, at least in the US, are mostly silence zones apart from information/checkout areas. There are still a few independent bookstores left, and those are good. College is still the preferred and most popular setting to meet a quality spouse. Online should be considered one of many tools as an adjunct to IRL, but not the primary source.
I guess... if you looking for more common people... personally I'm looking for a striper named Stacy with a tatto in the lower back, dad Issues and in sometway will fuck my life... But hey.... wherether rocks your boat.
I miss the social aspects of living in Italy. It just felt easier to connect with people there. People are kind of weird and standoffish here in the US, and in some cases feel a bit fake. If you ask if someone wants to grab a beer (or spritz/wine/whatever) in Italy, and they respond enthusiastically, it seems there's a good chance they'll try and make it happen.
Lived in Austria for a couple years... it was hard to say though. I didn't speak the language there, so people were friendly, but obviously it kind of limited my interactions to anglophones or locals with the desire to have English speaking friends.
Americans are non-confrontational to a fault, sometimes they'll feign excitement about future plans to avoid "being negative" while you're asking. all the while having no intention to go through (and the defensive body language that goes with). It takes a bit to get used to
Used to have an Italian neighbor and we talked about exactly this - about how in Italy you'd just invite folks you encounter in for dinner regardless of whatever one-dish thing your family was having at that time, whereas here in America you'd never dream of inviting people in for dinner without some souped-up lavish planned meal
> People are kind of weird and standoffish here in the US, and in some cases feel a bit fake.
Supposition: It's because of all the marketing. Most of the time someone trying to talk to you is trying to sell you something, and you build up a defensive behavior to combat it.
at one point a friend of mine was lamenting how all these volunteer activities kept her from having a social life, to which i responded that these activities were my social life, and i would not have it any other way. it's all a matter of perspective.
Ants don't meet at the bar at the end of the day to chill with each other. It isn't necessary. And their society isn't unraveling.
The more connected the human ant hill gets the more we will behave like ants. Disconnected because we don't need to be as connected. Connected because that is the only way to survive. Those that can't handle the change...wont. This is a process of societal metamorphosis whose tracks have already been laid.
I don't disagree with you that there are meaningful analogies between humans and animals. But we are much closer evolutionarily to dogs, and dogs definitely need to wrestle in the den at the end of the day. I don't believe there are panaceas for societal evolution to be found in synthetic technological networks. Though I'll be interested to see where neuralink has gotten in 20 years.
Yeah but Ants cannot drink out of glasses. ;) I think never in history it has been possible to act as individually while still being embedded in an ant hill.
You have shown me the light. From now on I will commit to the healthier lifestyle of absolute loyalty to the Queen, communicating primarily through chemical signals and lifting many times my body weight.
I think the ant brain and the human brain are extremely different. I bet the ants are not capable of feeling loneliness, they don't have enough neurons for that.
I think I'll be a little buried, but a thought- where can you go to hang out and not spend any money? Seems like historical gathering places all now cost money, or you're not allowed to be there.
there are places left where you can hang out for free, public parks are a good example. the "problem" is that they attract the type of people who can't or don't want to pay for a space to hang out.
most people aren't interested in a place where they can go and meet anyone; they want a place where they can meet others who share some vaguely defined set of similarities. this is the part you have to pay for.
Both of those involve doing something. I'm not talking about meeting new people or starting a new hobby, I mean just... going to sit and gab with your friends.
> "You can see the problem here: A national culture that promotes polite restraint, and which actively fends off and forestalls the forming of relationships between strangers, is one that might as well be inviting loneliness on its population. And at a time when emotional seclusion is increasingly being seen as a crisis in countries around the Western world, perhaps this is what has made English people uniquely sensitive to loneliness as a major health concern."
This is evidently written from the perspective of an englishman, but I find the contrast with the American South (where I was born and raised) evident: here, it is very common to strike up a pleasant conversation with strangers. If you are left in each other's company for a few minutes, it's almost rude not to. I find that there's something of a cultural difference which might help here, as you can get a little bit of socialization from unexpected places. I regularly chat with the doorman at my office, and know he has another job as a music promoter. He also figured out a particularly clever way to game Spotify. Same with lots of other random people.
I'm not positioning this as a perfect solution, but as one more change which might help. Half of me wonders if this is because the South was always so spread-out that we took company where we could get it. But I certainly am not qualified to trace the roots of cultural stuff like this. Anyway, just something to think on.
Not from the South myself, but I noticed a similar trend in parts of the Midwest and anywhere that's not a big city.
Similar to the UK would be somewhere like Japan, which is well-known for its culture of restraint and politeness. Loneliness and suicide rates are high, while dating and marriage are suffering. It would appear a result of having a relatively restrained social culture.
That's the thing about a trick... if you reveal it, it's gone. I suspect there are a few Spotify engineers who read this; wouldn't want to give it away.
I'm no psychologist or some sort of an expert,so this is just my own life experience:
I grew up with quite a variety of people: some were pure criminals(drugs,roberry, extortion,theft),while others ended up being lawyers, mathematicians, businessman, doctors or civil servants. Some lacked brains while others lacked courage. Ultimately,if you feel lonely,drop FB, Instagram, WhatsApp and other crap.Just fucking delete that crap. There are always people who are interested in the way you think and are absolutely excited to listen and just talk to you till the sun rises... Feeling outspoken and like going to places? Go to those night clubs, restaurants or parties.Feel like being quiet persona in the corner? Well,join like-minded people, play Warhammer, build a train set and so on. Whatever you do,drop that Instagram/Facebook/LinkedIn bullshit,where everyone seems to be conquering the world.Just drop it. Go to the bloody library,local reading club, whatever. Also,learn how to listen. Actually hear what people are saying,how they feel. All this stuff turns into conversations, follow-up meetings and ultimately friendship or something more. there's plenty of space for everyone, despite of looks, character or anything else. It's not as hard as you make it!
It only makes sense for this epidemic to take place in the society we've developed. We are tearing apart the fabric and the bond that kept everyone feeling as a part of community; namely, religion.
Religion was never designed for people to fear the man upstairs; it was always about the values and the bond it created between each member of that religion.
Individualism and decadence are being more or less encouraged, or at any rate tolerated; families are shrinking and relationships are treated just like another object. The concept of friendship lost value as a result of the tolerance towards vices (envy being the leading cause).
I believe that the Christian religion was in part developed to address these problems. I am not aware of any society that lasted without religion and had strong communal ties.
I don't understand how anyone can be surprised at this result.
Stop for a moment and think: what bonds me with the people living in my vicinity? Since in 2019, you can't say: religion, race, nationality and nation without being labeled one way or another. And historically, nothing else worked.
Excerpt from the article:
"It turns out there’s also not much evidence to support a popular theory that the increasing secularization of Western societies — where religion is seen as a traditional route for people to regularly come together — is a major factor driving modern loneliness. Counterintuitively, says Hewings, “It would seem on a number of different surveys that levels of loneliness are lower in Northern and Western Europe than they are in Southern and Eastern Europe, which are generally a bit more religious.” Turning up at your local synagogue, church, mosque or temple of choice might well help by offering a ready-made network of social connections, if worship is where you find meaning — as highlighted in a recent report from the U.K.’s Parliamentary Group on Faith and Society — but at the level of society, religion itself, it seems, is no panacea."
A relative difference between two regions in terms of loneliness and religiousness doesn't really signal anything quite frankly. There can be a negative relationship between the two with other things affecting them. Or there might not be, but that evidence is rather thin.
I grew up in a highly conservative and (according to statistics) religious society (Poland) and my observation is that it's not correlated.
People who sought company in church were often disappointed, because most of the others who went there had lives of their own and weren't that invested in the whole thing.
Hell, the loneliest people I know are consistently religious.
Polish society was very heavily wounded by 50 years of hardcore socialism combined with the police state (at the hands of the Soviets). The levels of trust people have towards each other are still abysmally low. I wouldn't use Poland as an example, because it is (like other post-Soviet block states) still very much not normal.
I don't know about that. My parents both knew their neighbors very well(which made a lot of sense in times where you'd need a network of people to find some of the more rare goods), while I have no little to no relationship with mine - and I was born just before the previous system collapsed.
I don't deny that people are more lonely now in Poland that they were in socialism. In my opinion, it's the combination of convenience (like you said, people used to need each other for simple things, and now they can just buy everything), alienating electronics entertainment and capitalism, where everyone needs to paddle very hard to get ahead or merely stay afloat. It seemed to me that my parents were happier under socialism than they are now, even though now their material standard of living is greater by like a magnitude.
Regarding trust, I would say there was very little trust in the socialist times as well. You don't need a lot of trust to borrow some salt from a neighbor or even trade a favors (ex. you get me ahead in the queue to buy a car and in exchange I get you access to buying foreign holidays), which is what people mainly were doing in the socialism. You do however need a lot of trust to start a business together. Since in socialism all people were just cogs in the giant socialist machine, they never needed to develop trust towards each other. Now, in capitalism, it's backfiring.
Countries that didn't have any major plights in the past couple of centuries? Like maybe Switzerland, Scandinavian countries, maybe the US (if we exclude the black population).
This is being down voted but I think there is merit to what you are saying. Personally, I have a strong sense of community being a member of my church. I really consider it an extension of my family. People in the church care (the best they are able) for the needs of the elderly and those in need. There is a big loneliness problem with the elderly. Churches can certainly be a type of safety net.
Of course this isn't the only issue. Modern technology allows people to exist without interacting with another humans physically. This certainly is part of the problem.
> I am not aware of any society that lasted without religion and had strong communal ties.
Take China for example, I don't think it is a country of religion, and on the other hand, I don't think the society lacks communal ties either.
Traditionally, the Chinese society is organized or bonded by ancestry roots. According to [1], people sharing the same ancestry root first formed tribes, tribes then grouped together to form states.
My last name, for example, came from a southern village in China. The village is also named by my last name. The majority people in the village share the same last name as mine, the rest are outside people who married to the village. The entire village can be traced back to a guy who settled there 1000 years ago. Not only they have a temple (or community center) to worship ancestors, they keep a Genealogy book to document the history. And this is just one example, there are many many villages like this.
It’s a bit like the houses in Game of Thrones.
Although, as modernization continues, this organization form is disappearing.
Take China for example, I don't think it is a country of religion...
You say this, but then go on to describe what is generally understood as a system of ancestor worship.
Religion isn’t mostly — or even necessarily — about theology or beliefs. One of the first realizations of comparative religion scholars was that codified beliefs are a relative rarity.
Religion was created as a tool to control people and explain natural disasters. It's no coincidence early hierarchies were headed by whatever the priest class was in that particular society, even going back to the first civilizations.
Modern religions (not even all) may be about the bond between practitioners, but that's only because we can explain weather patterns, and the governments of most states don't rely on things like the "mandate of heaven" to function.
>Religion was created as a tool to control people and explain natural disasters.
Mythology and religion also orignally served the role of upholding a unified value system and conception of reality which is critical for social cohesion and survival.
"Since in 2019, you can't say: religion, race, nationality and nation without being labeled one way or another."
I think this implies this has not always been the case, which I don't think is true, at least in my country in USA. People came to America partially to avoid religious persecution. And of course, slaves were also brought to America and a whole field of pseudoscience was created to explore how black people deserved their enslavement.
>think this implies this has not always been the case,
This was the case at least through most of the 20th century. Even in the 50s and 60s when "white flight" was cleaning out the predominantly ethnic urban neighborhoods those people were moving to suburbs where they had a lot in common with most of the people there and the people left in the city had a lot in common with each other.
>People came to America partially to avoid religious persecution
It's worth noting that a lot of those groups were being persecuted for being too hard-line and once in the new world they formed their own little groups and kicked out or hanged anyone who didn't agree perfectly with them. While I think we'd all be better off had certain ships sank, members of fundamentalist cults tend to get to know each other, especially when they're trying to not starve and not get scalped by the natives they started a war with.
>And of course, slaves were also brought to America and a whole field of pseudoscience was created to explore how black people deserved their enslavement.
Shared adversity is arguably the best way to bring people together. Now, before anyone misrepresents me as saying slaves anywhere at any time had it good, I'm not. I'm just saying that chronic loneliness was not a problem they had.
To conclude, having stuff in common brings people together and because of the way society tended to work in the past race, religion, nationality, nation, and other things we pretend don't matter today were strong indicators as to how much you had in common with someone and commonality tends to lead to meaningful interaction and/or friendship which solves loneliness.
Please note explicitly what I had highlighted- in fact, this point validates my claim that it has always been the case that people put each other in buckets and segregated based on identity politics.
Very true. People think of verses like Leviticus 20:13 (homosexuals condemned to death) but forget verses like John 8:7, "Let he who is without sin throw the first stone."
Perhaps one of the most relevant teachings of Jesus is from his Discourse on the Church when he says: "For where two or three gather together in My name, there am I with them." (Matthew 18:20)
I've got to be honest here, it's infuriating to see the extremely basic moral/social principles from the Bible held up on some kind of pedestal like they're a unique or difficult to come by idea. As an atheist I try to be a good person because it is something I innately want to do, not because it was a revelation I had in Bible study. The Bible did not invent "being nice to other people"
You're conflating your viewpoint and choice to be nice to people with atheistic philosophy in general. Imagine the following scenario: alien visitors show up and show the human race that they can cure malaria, cancer, heart disease, and addiction, and that all we have to do in return is sacrifice 100 people worldwide to supply the aliens with subjects for (lethal) medical experimentation to enable this to happen. Atheist philosophy would naturally have to consider the offer, whereas Christian philosophy would immediately reject it.
I think if you really sat down and thought about it you would come up with other moral/ethical scenarios that would land in your personal gray area that would be soundly rejected by Christianity.
Churches have sacrificed people for much less. Given up their principles for not much in return. This is true in the present day. This has been true for the past 2000 years.
In your hypothetical, the Christians would be just as eager for the benefits as anyone else. Let's not pretend Christians, as a group, are somehow more moral than atheists or anyone else. History does not support that contention.
Judeo-Christian values are the basis of the west's moral code. It's so ingrained you may think it's innate. But it's not hard to impress a different set of values if you preach them from birth. People years ago who believed in racial prejudice were not born bad. They believe what they were taught by society. Some were able to overcome this teaching but for the vast majority they just considered these beliefs as facts. That's why its ridiculous to judge a historic figure based on our current moral code.
> The Bible did not invent "being nice to other people"
Yes, it kinda did, at least in Europe. But honestly, as someone coming from a Christian family from India, and seeing that christianity in India plays an outsized role (as in Indian Christians, not foreigners) in social services despite its status as a minority religion, I think it's safe to say that Christianity is uniquely into helping others. A few of our relatives were even jailed for 'marxism' for daring to think the poor ought to be treated with dignity.
Your idea of what's a good person is based on what the world tells you is a good person. I, too, am tempted to think of myself as being inherently good, but if I were born hundreds of years ago, would I really have been so inherently good as to realize how wrong it is to (say) suppress women, when the culture all around me normalized doing so? My temptation is to think "I'm better than that, I wouldn't suppress women", but statistically speaking, almost no-one actually was better-than-that! Trying to be a good person without the guidance of the Holy Spirit is futile. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23)
I was raised Catholic though I have intentionally distanced myself from the church as an adult. There are active aspects to the church’s teachings that our larger society would likely see as negative, if not outright wrong. Your suggestion of female suppression is a good example.
Are you suggesting I should do a better job of cherry-picking things? I'm not trying to "trick" people with fake cherry-picked Christianity, we're all smarter than that here. It was an example that what's deemed "good" by the world changes from decade to decade.
"Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the torrents raged, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because its foundation was on the rock." (Matthew 7:24-25)
while you could not have changed the social order, you could have treated women with more respect than was the norm, especially your own wife. allowed your daughters to learn what they were interested in instead of forcing them into their assigned roles. these exceptions existed, and you could have been one of them.
Yeah, as someone who was raised in the church but never considered myself very religious, it's a little sad to see people misunderstand that there are two types of churchgoers: those who are dogmatic and superficially faithful and those who take scripture as a dialogue on how to live a good life.
In the 1950's my dad, and his brothers, were constantly assaulted by classmates because they were protestant living in a Catholic town. World War II had just ended, a horrific edifice to nationalism and the Cold War was ramping up. Blacks in the US couldn't even eat at many restauants. How is even close to being more of a problem in 2019?
Maybe being part of a religious organisation helps to ward off loneliness, and maybe being religious helps instill values that help people trust and communicate.
But you still have to believe in some magical being(s), and so do all your mates.
Religion has nothing to do with the loneliness epidemic.
All my young friends are burdened by inflation that has never been addressed by increasing wages to match it.
People cannot see themselves saving for homes and specifically if they have a huge debt from student loans; being conditioned to go to university before the brain has developed. People are under a lot of stress as a result of these problems and loneliness is becoming the product.
Even my Christian friends that go to church are feeling the loneliness epidemic.
Monotheism was popularized to transcend kinship, in order to raise large armies. Prior, people were fragmented into close-knit tribes up from 100-200 people. They had their own lore and beliefs. Loneliness was not the issue they had, and not what monotheism addressed.
In order to wage warfare and conquer a region with large numbers, you have to convince others to fight for you. This was difficult. It led to the agricultural revolution and bureaucracy through centralization (to pump out more bodies), thus civilization, and the use of religion as a means to bring a larger society together under one banner.
All of which to say, loneliness as the epidemic we understand today is a modern problem. On one hand, the family unit has been decimated, and on the other we're more disconnected from larger society. The nature of work has changed, the way we operate in society has changed. More than just the Church has slipped away.
> Monotheism was popularized to transcend kinship, in order to raise large armies.
When you say that, what are you thinking of? Rome wasn't monotheistic, before it Judaism wasn't really a military powerhouse, and Christianity only really came of power due to it's growing popularity in the Roman Empire. I can't think of an example of an ancient monotheistic empire, and post-classical it's really only Islam and Christianity, and for Christianity at least, that seems to be largely secondary, based upon institutions of a polytheistic past.
I'm jumping ahead on the timeline, yes. Early Roman Empire had a polytheistic religions in common. It expanded its power after monotheism.
Obviously it's possible to have a large, shared polytheistic religion. We still have those today. The religion being a common denominator is more in the spirit of the point I was trying to make. Using a single God as a means to unite people was more palpable to some leaders. Muhammad understood this. The Arabs hadn't scriptures, nor institutions, and he saw the unifying power of Judaism and Christianity. When you have pagans worshiping separate sets of gods, it's less effective to try to politicize "all these are valid", "some of these are valid" and have them follow along.
From the wikipedia entry on religion in ancient Rome - "Even the most skeptical among Rome's intellectual elite such as Cicero, who was an augur, saw religion as a source of social order. As the Roman Empire expanded, migrants to the capital brought their local cults, many of which became popular among Italians. Christianity was in the end the most successful of these, and in 380 became the official state religion. "
> Early Roman Empire had a polytheistic religions in common. It expanded its power after monotheism.
No, it didn’t “expand its power after monotheism”. The Roman Empire didn’t even begin its official flirtation with Christianity until well into the 4th century CE. However, most historians consider the Roman Empire to have been in its waning days then, as it never fully recovered from all the shocks of the 3rd century. The full extent of Rome’s power happened under paganism and well before Christianity was anything more than a small, persecuted sect.
I suppose you could possibly argue for the Eastern Empire? Maybe? But then that's still built upon the core of the original polytheistic structure, and I don't think it's a strong argument that Christianity played into it.
If anything Christianity seems to cause a problem for organized military - after Rome we don't see an organized, professional military for another thousand years. People may think of "the crusades", but let's be honest, the majority of that was really more a rag-tag rabble causing trouble, rather than any sort of organized and united fighting force.
Why do we need to "run away" from loneliness? Maybe we all need to spend more time alone AND off the phone to discover what really "makes us tick"? Find yourself, find a mission, find a purpose. Go do something. There is SOOOO much to be done... I mean it.. Like RIGHT NOW. If you don't have a mission.. Bruh... Go get one. Loneliness is simply childish. Children sit around and wish someone would talk to them. Adults go join other adults to make something happen; or they learn to be with themselves. If you can't find happiness within; it's not going to come from you visiting your parents, or seeing your grandchildren, or insert whatever Hallmark phrase you like. Sure being surrounded by people you love when you die will feel nice. But you can truly "rest in peace" if you know you tried your hardest to make a difference (and you actually do!.. Because you actually can...)
Choosing to be alone (isolation) is not the same as loneliness. Honestly, the world has changed a lot, and that might end up not being a big problem in the future; maybe having isolation become more socially accepted wouldn't be that bad.
The problem we are seeing right now is that it looks like everything is moving towards a kind of social-contact-unfriendliness. Too much stress, connection (the expectation of being always reachable, and therefore available for work), busy streets, dominated by cars, big and impersonal chain stores, etc. Many of these are not necessarily bad by themselves, but they also had an important role in social interaction that has shifted now, and we might need time to find new spaces and solutions for that interaction.
This may seem somewhat out there, very uninformed or misanthropic, but I've been thinking about basic human needs(emotion,ego,the desire for companionship - both spiritual and otherwise) as vestigial evolutionary artifacts. Evolution and the survival of the human race required collaboration, those who did not died and failed to pass on their genes.
In the modern age though, I could argue that close collaboration is not a necessity for survival or even success, and as such why cant a portion of humanity thrive without the need for extensive social contact?
Some portion of humanity can undoubtedly thrive with limited/no social contract, but for the majority of us these "evolutionary artifacts" are still very real and consequently still exert a very real force on our lives.
Until the day comes that we are able to (if we are able to) remove these drives, neglecting them will continue to have deleterious effects.
You can see the problem here: A national culture that promotes polite restraint, and which actively fends off and forestalls the forming of relationships between strangers, is one that might as well be inviting loneliness on its population.
Let's not forget there are two hazards here. Loneliness is one; the other is the suffocating tyranny of constantly attending to others' ideas and feelings, because attending to your own would be unacceptably disruptive of precious social connectedness. In "A Room of One's Own" Virginia Woolf diagnosed the injustice of a society that reserves the privilege of aloneness to men, and particularly upper class men, while denying it to women (who are supposed to be "selfless") and to a lesser extent the lower classes (who are supposed to be too mindless and animalistic to make anything of solitude.)
Being reluctant to intrude on another's social space is a good thing. It should be joined with skill at inviting others in, and a readiness to respond to that invitation. Let's not shit on people who have solved one half of the problem as if they were inferior to people who have only solved the other half.
Is this problem more an urban or rural thing? Is it related to any certain age groups? Is the problem stratified by education or occupational categories?
anecdotally (and not GP), most of the women I am friends with have several good friends in the area where they live and easily make new ones if they ever move to a new place. for many of my male friends, I am the only friend they have in the area.
I don't think I can generalize to entire genders from my experience though. it could simply be that it's easier for introverts to make same-gender friendships, so I only have a set of relatively outgoing women to select friends from.
"Likes" and reading narcissistic postings probably are not a good substitute for real human contact, and the more people become addicted to social media the less real human contact they are likely to seek. Of course companies like Facebook and Google (YouTube) purposely design their offerings to be addictive and as we know additions can be detrimental to one's mental and physical health.
No. Did you read the OP's article? I'll excerpt a relevant section for you:
Although the current focus on isolation is often described in the media as “the loneliness epidemic,” Robin Hewings, Director of Campaigns, Policy and Research for the U.K.’s Campaign to End Loneliness, warns that for a subjective, self-reported experience like loneliness, “it’s not very easy to make comparisons across time, and it’s not obvious that it’s getting worse.”
While he acknowledges that aging populations mean that there are likely to be a greater number of elderly people around who are suffering from isolation than in previous decades, he also points out that when you look at the percentages of those affected, the trends are harder to discern. “There was some work done in the late 1940s, which would seem to suggest a not dissimilar level to today. This is right at the speculative end,”
It's more of a journalist epidemic - they keep reaching for straw-men to justify their existence.
Talking about loneliness is slightly more interesting than what dress celebrity X wore at event Y. It's just bullshit - at least the dress talk doesn't pretend otherwise, for the most part.
We're living in the greatest time ever. I understand that when you make no money and you're writing articles, it may seem like there is a loneliness epidemic. There isn't - we're doing better than ever. More people are having first world problems than ever. It's great to have those, just talk to someone with a little perspective that you respect for it to rub off on you and go on about your day :)
> We're living in the greatest time ever. I understand that when you make no money and you're writing articles, it may seem like there is a loneliness epidemic. There isn't - we're doing better than ever.
I don't understand how you can claim that with a straight face. Did you read the article?
14% of the UK population say they experience loneliness "often" or "always". 46% of a 20,000 people study in the US reported "sometimes" or "often".
Hundreds of thousands of people in Japan can be classified as hikikomori, living a lifestyle of extreme social isolation. There are similar numbers in most industrialized nations.
Downplaying or ignoring these facts is a terrible disservice to mental health, just as we did for decades with depression. This is indeed a global epidemic and I applaud the UK for introducing health programs to tackle it.
On the contrary, many of the people I've met who most definitely do not have first world problems -- people living in Africa, Southeast Asia, and other destitute parts of the world -- often seem to lead genuinely happier lives than the stressed out existence that is the norm in the US.
Being able to have a cheeseburger delivered on demand does not make up for systematic loneliness and dehumanization. The more I travel, the more perspective I get, the more I think that things have gone deeply wrong here.
Solitude is beneficial for an individual and dangerous for society. Loneliness is dangerous for individual but beneficial for economy. My guess is that "solitude" is the one sounding alarm, not loneliness.
A lot of people who feel lonely, are hardly ever alone. imagine how shitty and uninterested we really are to eachother and ourselves... if we can be together and feel alone at the same time. Stop neglecting yourself, and that will make you stop neglecting others.
My tips: Actively take time for yourself. to get to know yourself and become more aware of yourself. Even if you do not suffer from such symptoms yet, it will be one of the most valuable things you can do for yourself in whatever position or situation you find yourself.
When I go to work there are 500 people in the building, but less than 10 that I consider close enough to care about. That can be zero in different conditions. Having over 7 billion people on the same planet has no impact on loneliness, the discussion is not about physical loneliness.
Like all things in life, loneliness is not absolute in origin. Depending on your circumstances, combined with external levers, loneliness is not easy to pinpoint, but there are a few common externalities.
For the blue collar worker you have your typical financial concerns that make you overwork or worry about not having enough work to provide for yourself and or family. Spending time on people is a luxury most people with financial concerns simply cannot afford. If you are lucky you’ll be working too much to be lonely and it’ll only hit you when you have time to catch a breath.
Screen time is certainly a factor but not a cause. It’s a symptom of a sick society with failed systems, infrastructure, architecture, family structures and communities.
Depending where you are in the world, design of your community or should I say the lack of, will play a large role. If it takes a 30 min drive to see a friend be say a 5 minute walk, it becomes easier to remove yourself from face to face interactions.
The constant rise in cost of living puts financial stress on families, which in turn translates to personal stress, health problems, obesity and so on. This fuels a feedback loop that ultimately leaves little to no room for interaction with anyone. The easiest way to medicate that issue is you guessed it, with a screen.
Then you have your constant exposure to media and the team effect of polarization. People are brainwashed by nonstop streaming of irrelevant crap which makes them feel like crap and further remove themselves from society. Add in social media which amplifies all of these effects. The grass is always greener on the other side and this seems especially true through social media lens. Down the depression hole we go which further removes us from interaction.
We make deliberate effort to improve “mobility” and “accessibility” through roads and infrastructure which alienated public transportation projects. If you are lucky to live in a small walkable community, you might stand a chance at running into someone you know to strike up a conversation, but otherwise good luck talking to everyone speeding down a road. Even small rural communities in walkable cities are getting less friendly to foot traffic in certain parts of the world due to vehicle congestion.
Let’s not forget the convenience of online shopping. As awesome as it is, we simply don’t get as much stimulation as we would going outside and seeing people face to face, whether we talk or not is irrelevant.
For kids there are video games. Can’t play? No problem, watch others play. Society norms have changed. In countries like US, depending on where you live, talking to others outside comes across as odd and unwelcoming. We are so concerned about everyone’s need to be left alone that we ignore their silent plea to have anyone take any interest in their life.
Consumer choices have been negatively shaping people to feel more individual. When everything is customized to your liking, it’s hard to think as a group, for the benefit of the collective. This in turn leads to more consumerism, heightened expectations and disappointments when those expectations are not met.
Information has a large role to play in spread of loneliness. Having to choose from thousands of products online vs just getting one or two choices, shapes our expectations. Before, I’d you wanted to buy some nice bed sheets, you’d go to a store and maybe make a day out of it. Go to the mall, eat out, do things with others, relatives, friends. Now you click a button and spend days or hours looking at thousands of search optimized product titles which may or may not have anything to do with what you searched for. All the consumer choices and information like reviews, while seemingly great, just cause more mental fatigue, stress and ultimately contribute to a host of factors, some of which are tied to loneliness.
This is just scratching the surface. My point being, we are brining this onto ourselves in many different shapes and forms.
For me it is a rather paradoxical situation. On the one hand I am a very lonely person and on the other hand I like being alone. When I am alone I tend towards depression and crave social interaction but not all social interaction works. For instance, if I spend a day with my family it is usually great for about 2 or 3 hours and then all I can think about is getting home so I can be by myself again.
For me it is not enough to just be with people. For instance, when I was in HS I would never have characterized myself as a lonely person. I believe that is because those relationships, long forgotten, had serious depth. I also had more confidence when I was younger making my intimate life easier to progress.
However, now a days I have neither and I have lost the confidence to strike up the band. I honestly find it hard to even look a women in the eyes much less ask her for her name and tell her mine. Tbh, even if I was going to force myself to make a new friend I wouldn't know where to start.
Luckily for me I have pretty damn thick skin and have learned to deal with my loneliness, depression and anxiety. That being said, at 32, I find myself feeling as though dying young and alone is a probability. However, I take heart in knowing that it could be worse, for many people are simply dying of starvation and so, on the whole, I am a pretty lucky guy.
If loneliness is a problem that someone else can solve I just don't see how. From my perspective, this is a problem that, like a snowball rolling down a hill, builds up over time and eventually takes on a life of its own.
not paradoxical at all. i went through a similar experience. i found that for me the solution was to have very few but very close friends, including my wife. those then were the only people that i could socialize with without being exhausted. but even then i need a few hours to myself every day.
the hardest part was how long it took to understand the problem. you seem to understand the problem already, and that puts you into the position to do something about it.
you don't need to strike up the band. find activities that you are interested in. a hobby, or volunteer somewhere. the nice thing about both is that you are not expected to do it for the sake of meeting people, so you don't need to push yourself to talk to anyone, and noone will mind if you just focus on the work. the socialization will come eventually. by the time you get to look a woman into the eyes, you may already have shared your activities for a few months or more. i met my wife that way.
At the risk of sounding like a crazy hippy, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that some kind of subsistence-based neighborhoods would be a great option for dealing with this problem.
Not only would it provide some relief from the feeling of being shackled to bullshit jobs for life if you don't want to starve to death, it would also help foster much stronger communities.
Some friends of mine from college and I, while considering our impending matriculation into the housing and job market of LA, conceived of the idea of 'failure house'; a place where we could all live when we failed at life. We still talk about it ten years on, and it has evolved into the idea of 'failure commune'. One of these friends became a lawyer and bought a house in Orange County recently. Traitor.
I just graduated college and am having similar thoughts (but think Bay Area instead of LA). It seems like a great idea but I know of few examples besides full-on communes. Do you know of any examples of living communities or living styles that fall somewhere between living on your own and living on a commune?
Look up online communities dedicated to Homesteading. There also seems to be a movement around "backyard chickens" (i.e. raising small amounts of livestock at an average suburban house).
So far I haven't come across any information on physical communities of homesteaders, although a local community seems like a necessity if you ever want to take a vacation again. Can't really leave crops on their own for very long without them dying, let alone livestock...
Check out co-ops. There was one near Uchicago, my friend lived there with 20 others, mostly not students. They had group dinners every night, cooked by housemates, and always had someone around to chat with. We used to hang there playing games and partying. The vibe was pretty hippie but if you dont mind that, I'd recommend it. The rent was equivalent to sharing a 3 or 4 bedroom but you got a lot more shared amenities and dinners to boot.
My old college roommates and I are purchasing a 4 acre lot. A few of us are ready to put down houses now. I feel like this kind of thing is becoming more common? I know we weren't the first people with this idea. Land and housing is so expensive that we can't all individually own homes, but if we pool money on land this becomes possible. And doesn't everyone want their friends to be their neighbors? We have to develop alternative strategies to make it through the future.
Or maybe something that's just a little more like a college dorm than an apartment building or a suburb -- neighbors in close proximity that you're forced to attend social events with and get to know.
I feel like we consistently choose the short-term risk aversion of walling ourselves off from neighbors, blind to the long-term damage it does to our society.
When politicians are staging national interventions to force us to connect with each other — and actually spending real money on the problem — you know it’s a genuine crisis
No. Politicians throwing money at something is not evidence of a crisis.
Can you see that this is an extremely dogmatic view? If society has seemingly agreed that society needs government, part of society needs to actually administer that government.
> Can you see that this is an extremely dogmatic view?
Snuck premise much? I doubt he'd agree that it's dogmatic, nor would I. Governments are certainly needed for certain things, but politicians tend to come up with problems to solve, or try to solve problems which they are not equipped to solve. They aren't really supposed to create a social order so much as a legal one, anyway. Even if the could, I'd see that as disturbingly close to brain-washing...
> Governments are certainly needed for certain things, but politicians tend to come up with problems to solve, or try to solve problems which they are not equipped to solve.
This is why it's dogmatic. You can't agree that there are use cases and then in the same sentence denigrate all the use cases. Or... I guess you can, but...
> They aren't really supposed to create a social order so much as a legal one, anyway.
At the risk of being overly ontological, the legal order arises from the social order, since the law is simply a construct of beliefs that society nominally agrees on.
> Even if the could, I'd see that as disturbingly close to brain-washing...
...And there it is. It's ok to disagree with some things that politicians do. That doesn't mean there aren't good politicians.
> At the risk of being overly ontological, the legal order arises from the social order, since the law is simply a construct of beliefs that society nominally agrees on.
That is a big leap to call those two ontological. Laws represent the beliefs of those that right them, nothing more. I am sure most politicians believe they know the will of their constituents, which is simply another belief. And yes, if a law is egregiously beyond social norms, it is possible that it will be rejected by soceity, but I would argue that is a distinct veto function.
It's women, not technology, not anything else. I know this might be downvoted to oblivion, but I have to say it, so at least the truth is where it needs to be.
The good thing is we can walk next door and meet our neighbor.
It is strange this is an epidemic when it is a problem that seems so easy to solve.
UPDATE: based on responses to my comment it seems the core problem may be closer to home than we like to admit. CS Lewis' book The Great Divorce details this misanthropy, where hell is a product of the residents' own making because they choose to live on their own because they do not like anyone else.
Experience has taught me, that nothing good comes from opening the door for unexpected guests. Though, I also neither know the names nor the faces of my neighbors living in the same house as me.
I’m quite good friends with 4/5 of my neighbors. It’d still be rude of me to just knock on their door when I could easily text first to make sure they’re dressed/in the mood for company.
If it matters I’m 40 and they run from 50-70 in age.
I can meet my neighbour, but what if my neighbour doesn't want to meet me? What if my neighbour is more of a problem than a solution? What if attempts to be friendly are counterproductive (usually because some bad motive is assumed) and dangerous (because you make yourself vulnerable, e.g. to sexual predators)?
It is actually just that easy. It is your own hand takes a glass or bottle and puts it into your own mouth, no one else's. The problem is you are not conscious about it, the same thing about not being willing to make contact with others.
I live in a place where the neighbors are likely to talk about their religion, their football team, their other football team, their kids, their kid's football team, something implicitly racist, something explicitly racist, their job/boss/business (or lack thereof), or their vehicle. I'd only want to hear about two of those things.
I'd prefer to talk about events or ideas, or activities that interest me. It's far easier to join an online discussion already in progress to feel less isolated in South Bumblefart, USA.
I have found that familiarity does sometimes breed contempt, but absence does not always make the heart grow fonder.
im In the same position a lot of the time when meeting new people. It’s not because I feel superior, I just lack interest and any knowledge of sports and cars and most topics that a lot of other people use for small talk.
Now, if they want to talk about that time their fighter gutted an orc with an awesome double crit, I’m all ears, but Cowboys losing to some other team in sportsball, not so much.
Exactly this. Superiority has nothing to do with it.
Some people have uncommon interests or opinions, and may be reticent about sharing them in the absence of some enabling signal, as one can be punished socially just for having them.
It doesn't help that my employer has a mainstream dress code. If I saw an exact copy of myself before or after work, I wouldn't want to talk to it, unless we were in a nerd haven.
I've had too many conversations that bring in early "so what church y'all go to?" or "what's your football team?". The wrong answers can get you a "bless your heart," which seems to be Southern for "fuck off, asshole". Wearing a Chicago Cubs tee-shirt sometimes invites conversation, but my spouse is the fan that live-streams every MLB broadcast that isn't regionally blacked out, and for me it's really more a signal for "I'm from the Midwest." The Chicago skyline on my usual payment card has sometimes unintentionally served the same purpose from restaurant servers and cashiers who are also ex-Chicago-residents.
It's why I'm considering a nerd tattoo, like "e^pi*i=-1" or the Fano plane mnemonic for octonion multiplication, or a space-filling model of my favorite molecule, benzaldehyde.
I can't think of a single friendship that didn't start with small talk. I never expect a leap into deep philosophical quandaries with a stranger. Willingness to chitchat about mundane things creates a foundation of trust and familiarity that has led to many deep and meaningful relationships over the years.
I agree with you, and never suggested that it is all that is sufficient. It is a foundation from which deeper friendships and community will occur. Knowing someone starts with meeting someone
The Screen and the Job have displaced almost everything else is our lives. Loneliness is just a primary symptom.
The Screen, whether it’s TV, computer, or phone, has supplanted almost all social interactions. This manifests itself in things like SitComs on TV (just a bunch of friends or family hanging out) or Social Media on phones. It’s very easy to fill the social needs of right now with a Screen. But under even a minuscule amount of self reflection these are revealed as hollow substitutes for real human interaction.
The Job has completely taken over as a driving force in evaluating choices. The average person has to consider all options in the light of both the current employer and the specter of tomorrow’s. Moving across the country for a high paying job? Great! Moving to be closer to friends? That’s a career killer.
No wonder we are lonely. We make choices in the short term that optimize happiness, often at the expense of our relationships. Ghosting is not just for dates now. Then turn around and make choices in the long term that optimize employability at the expense of all else.
> The average person has to consider all options in the light of both the current employer and the specter of tomorrow’s. Moving across the country for a high paying job? Great! Moving to be closer to friends? That’s a career killer.
The median person lives just 18 miles away from their mom. 57% of Americans have never lived outside their home state. A third have never lived outside their hometown.
The more I read about it, I’m convinced “loneliness” is an upper middle class problem.
Interesting. Anecdotally, this checks out. All of my middle/lower-middle class friends from high school have long been married and raising families, almost in all cases raising them with their extended families. Most of my professional tech friends are barely getting started in their late 30s, and everyone who's started had basically put their career into a slower gear first.
I made a similar choice a couple of years ago to downgrade my career into a slower-paced, less stressful scenario with less money, and again personally for me the results have spoken for themselves.
Unless I'm Elon Musk, the whole business of business isn't really designed in my favor, so it's logical for me to partake but only just so.
By definition you wouldn't know many lonely people. The chronically lonely ones are going to be the people who didn't end up getting married when they "should" have, couldn't make it into a proper career or fell out of one at some point. Most upper middle class people won't be lonely since if you can afford a career you can afford a social life or you might even be forced into one. But of course uncertainty and insecurity can make one feel lonely, so I guess that would count. Still that isn't going to be your epidemic. That is going to be those left behind.
> Most upper middle class people won't be lonely since if you can afford a career you can afford a social life or you might even be forced into one.
Social life is not about having money (well unless you're really poor) - it's about having time and people to spend it with. You can be in top 5-10% of income and a total loner - plenty such people in tech.
This makes me think of a good friend from college that I lost touch with, who recently committed suicide. I felt a significant amount of guilt, thinking about the fact that I could have very easily stayed in touch with him, despite not living anywhere close. Really made me think about people that I've had friendships with in the past that I may be able to reach out to and make a difference in their lives just by being the one person (or one of a few) that they talk to on a semi-frequent basis.
It just does not work like that. Many people with stable jobs are lonely. Long hours means that you don't have connection with family even if you have it. You live separate life from partner and your children are not close to you.
One partner working long hours is enough for both partners to be lonely in marriage. Partner having time consuming hobby is enough for you to be lonely in marriage.
People in work are not friends, they are competitors, allies, enemies, whatever. They are not people you can talk with openly. Moreover, there are plenty of jobs where you work mostly alone or have only temporary relationships.
End result is loneliness.
No denial from me that there's a problem. I wanted to jump in, however, and share some personal journeys. Maybe it will help one person, or not.
You have assumed the role of the loser, as per https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
It feels nice down here, join us!
No way man, I bet if we found out the specifics we’d both deem him “clueless” on the GP hierarchy.
Unless he literally works in a warehouse or in a position that is pure “worker bee,” $100 says if we knew the actual job title this guy held we’d deem him “clueless.” (Not that he actually IS clueless, who knows, I’m just using that word in the gervais principle sense of it).
“I made a similar choice a couple of years ago to downgrade my career into a slower-paced, less stressful scenario with less money” is quintessential “clueless” reasoning.
Prioritizing things like a slow pace and a lack of stress is something that “clueless” people tend to do, not “losers.” Darryl (& co) in the warehouse are stressed, dude, and they don’t have the time or inclination to prioritize things like lowering stress. They’re too busy living paycheck-to-paycheck. Toby in the office is less stressed, and I bet if you talked to the character Toby he’d say almost exactly what the guy wrote above.
I mean look what he’s doing here — sharing his emotional reasoning with the group. That’s something “clueless” people do, not “losers,” who tend to merely act on emotions rather than reflect on them and THEN act.
If this guy ACTUALLY became a “loser” and started working in an Amazon warehouse and it wasn’t part of a larger “clueless” meta-scheme to get a tax break or something, I would be literally shocked.
Your reading of that hierarchy is different from what I got out of it.
Clueless are people buy into the "Arbeit makt frei" idea.
In the linked article, the majority of people in the office (not even considering the warehouse) are losers.
Stanley is the quintessential "loser", and he precisely optimizes for "slower-paced, less stressful".
In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's the "worker bees" that are clueless. Dwight, for example, is as "worker bee" as they come. He jumps on command.
From my reading, this hierarchy has nothing to do with social status outside of work. It is precisely how you behave on the job.
I agree that many worker bees are “clueless” but that breaks the GP heuristics.
My reading seems similar but different to yours. I agree that it has nothing to do with social status outside of work: to me it’s about emotional processing.
I can’t recall the specific passage but I remember Venkat talking about how clueless people seek absolution in collective emotional processing. That’s what leads me to believe the dude you’re replying to is clueless.
I completely disagree that Stanley is a loser, to me he is a quintessential clueless. He’s working in the office, not the warehouse: he’s in middle management, so IMO he’s clueless by definition because he is part of the padding between the masters/sociopaths/bosses and the slaves/worker bees/losers.
I think your perspective is interesting but I feel like I am adhering slightly more strictly to the heuristics laid out in GP.
Wanted to chime in that I think you are conflating working in the office as being higher on the ladder than working in the warehouse. They are two different departments. The warehouse is definitely blue-collar, and the office white-collar, but that doesn't mean the warehouse workers are inferior to the office workers.
Further I checked and Stanley is a sales rep, not middle management.
I really enjoyed reading through that article series last year when I first came across it. I spent a good amount of time wondering where I fit in the hierarchy relative to my coworkers. Ended up deciding that like all models, it's useful but incomplete. Still an interesting thing to know about.
Sort of similar to learning about personality types like Myers-Briggs or Enneagram.
Agree that like all models, it’s useful but incomplete.
Stanley is a sales rep and that is absolutely a part of the clueless layer. He provides buffer between the masters and the slaves in the warehouse dude: he is clueless. Not a loser like Darryl in the warehouse, not a sociopath like Robert California or Ryan the Temp, but clueless.
I am a clueless loser sociopath so take from that what u will :)
Thanks for the interesting discussion. :)
Directly from the article:
"""
The minimum-effort Loser Stanley tells him coldly, "this here is a run-out-the-clock situation." The line could apply to Stanley’s entire life.
"""
So either you are pulling your info from some more-original source than I am, or you're mis-remembering what the article says.
Then venkat’s own model is self-contradictory.
He states clearly that middle managers provide the buffer between the sociopaths and losers. Thus, Stanley is clueless.
Venkat’s description of Stanley as a “loser” completely destroys his own heuristics that only clueless are in middle management.
So congratulations, you’ve found a flaw in Venkat’s logic. He contradicts himself. However, I still think the general heuristics he lays out are valuable (as you seem to).
Thanks for the quote man — you made me realize the issue isn’t quite as cut-and-dry as I thought it was. I see your point now. Thank you.
A sales rep is not middle management.
The people in the warehouse don't report to Stanley. His job is to get sales from customers. He has no one reporting to him.
Michael is the chief clueless person in the show. Dwight and Andy are aspiring clueless.
The losers are the people who do the day-to-day work that keeps the company in business. The sociopaths are the people at the top who view the company as a board game with pawns that can be moved around or sacrificed at will.
The purpose of the clueless is to put a buffer between the sociopaths and the losers so that the sociopaths don't have to consider that their pawns are real people with real feelings and real families to take care of.
There are three classes of losers according to his system:
1. Over-performing losers, who are prime candidates for promotion to the clueless ranks
2. Average losers, who know they have a raw deal but don't have the ambition or coldness to do anything about it.
3. Under-performing losers, who are prime sociopath candidates because they have a lack of "give a damn" about what they do and are willing to push the boundaries because they know the deal is not in their favor.
Note that the over-under here is relative to ability. Jim is an under-performing loser, while still being very good at his job, because he doesn't put in his best effort.
Kevin is an average loser because even though he's not that good at his job, he's giving a good-faith effort to what he does.
Dwight is over-performing because he's always attempting to go above and beyond, even when it is inconvenient to him.
Whoa, you just convinced me Stanley is a loser. I was totally wrong because I forgot Stanley’s job title. You’re right. No one reports to him. He’s a loser.
I was right and you were wrong. Learned something new today. Thank you!
> I completely disagree that Stanley is a loser, to me he is a quintessential clueless. He’s working in the office, not the warehouse: he’s in middle management, so IMO he’s clueless by definition because he is part of the padding between the masters/sociopaths/bosses and the slaves/worker bees/losers.
Stanley isn't middle management, he's an aging sales guy who is too old to justify switching jobs; he's close to retirement, and the "run out the clock" quote in the article is spot on about it being his whole life at this point -- he's killing time until he retires.
He's a loser because he doesn't have the willingness or ability to be a ruthless sociopath -- why bother, he's out in 2 years or less -- and has no illusions about how the company feels about its employees.
He is clueless because he provides the buffer between the masters/sociopaths/bosses and the slaves/worker bees/losers in the warehouse.
He is clueless because he doesn’t have the willingness or ability to be a ruthless sociopath , but he still doesn’t want to be a loser in the warehouse with Darryl.
Stanley is a low-status clueless, not a high-status loser. (IMO).
These are interesting perspectives all around and I welcome further friendly debate. Thanks for sharing your thoughts guys. :)
No, that's entirely what a "checked out" Loser person would say. The step before upper management until you add enough egoism and sociopathy in. ;)
Clueless, these are the people who believe in so called company values, think they can change things or try to achieve something. Relatively rare nowadays in most places, but these do happen. Both of the middle managers were this.
Losers are people who indeed care more about social aspects than getting things done. While the top sees this as a distraction it really is, but does not care about the day to day operations, just power.
Love it! https://206hwf3fj4w52u3br03fi242-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-...
The 3 layer hierarchy which seems to be a cornerstone for that piece's thesis is just a restatement of the structure of The Party from Orwell's 1984, applied to companies rather than all of society.
It is an interesting way to look at organizations though.
What you described here is essentially 'survivorship bias'. Also,just because someone married away into a cosy suburb with 2 kids and a nice hubby,it doesn't mean they aren't lonely. There are millions of people out there who would kill for a chance to have someone outside that "perfect" life just to talk openly with... All those "desperate housewives" don't get created without reason.
Again, I think this is more a problem with upper middle class suburbs. I grew up in the DC suburbs, where nobody knew each other because nobody was from there. They had moved there for careers; often it was a government position and they’d move back to Michigan or wherever after the political appointee they worked for left office. That was distinctly different from my wife’s experience. (Most of her extended family lives within a couple of hours of the homestead her family had when they came over in the wagon trains, and her parents went to the same high school.)
Suburbs and 2 kids are both isolating. Especially when kids are small.
It depends on where you coming from.
I agree that for someone that had a very active social life before having kids and moving to the suburbs would likely see a drop in that activity when suddenly having to take care of small kids in a suburban situation.
However, for someone that before having kids they already don't have any friends/family close by (imagine a fresh middle-aged, childless, immigrant couple moving in an area where there are very few other people from their own country), having kids would force a lot more opportunities to interact with other people (doctors, caretakers, teachers, other parents, etc) and ultimately speed up integration. Sure, none of those relationships may become a deep friendship connection but it's a lot better than having no human interaction.
Kids don't have to be isolating. You just have to adjust your life to do things that are if not kid-friendly, kid-accepting.
Also have to get over the fear that people will judge you for taking your kids with you out into the world.
It's not a perfect life (there isn't one), and there's no argument from me about there being different strokes for different folks. At the end of the day, however, even Einstein had to poop out of his own butt.
What I said should be taken with a grain of salt. I did what I did for more than a decade, savoring both the good and the bad.
> The more I read about it, I’m convinced “loneliness” is an upper middle class problem.
Which makes it all the more suitable for a discussion on HN, wouldn't you say?
I'm definitely lower middle class, I make 34k a year...
Not sure how accurate this [1] is, but 34k USD puts you in the top ~0.88% richest people on the planet. If that's true, you are not "lower" anything...
[1] http://www.globalrichlist.com/
Everything is relative in the context, so your global stats aren't especially helpful. 34k USD a year can lend you either an extremely comfy king-like life in Thailand or poverty level existence in San Francisco. Saying to someone from the latter situation that they are in ~0.88% richest people on the planet is neither helpful nor relevant.
That "comfy existence" in Thailand is also relative, you get to live in a house with air conditioning and indoor plumbing, just like in the west. Wages are lower so you can hire people to do things for you but an iPhone costs the same.
People seem to actually believe that 5 thousand a year gives you a middle class lifestyle in the third world. The cost of eating only rice and beans and living in a tin shack with dirt floors is pretty much the same everywhere.
I am not saying $5k, I am saying $35k. With that amount of money, you can certainly afford to live a super comfy life in Thailand not in a shack AND afford an iPhone.
I agree with your premise in general though, because given a similar lifestyle and similar percentage of savings (let's say 10%) from your salary you get in a high COL place vs. low COL place, high COL place would be more preferable, as that 10% will be higher in absolute dollar value, and a lot of goods are priced the same everywhere.
I haven't downed your post but wanted to reply to explain why I think it's not helpful to the discussion: You're moving the goalposts.
By your definition no American is a member of the global lower class, as defined purely on an income basis. That's a fine point to make if the discussion was about global poverty, but that's clearly not what this discussion is about. In effect, your comment amounts to whataboutism.
>The more I read about it, I’m convinced “loneliness” is an upper middle class problem.
Yeah, exactly. You trade a social life for financial stability accompanied by loneliness. I've had one or the other, but not yet been able to find a balance. It's, very, very hard to do except for the few among us who have a highly desired technical skills (check) and excellent marketing skills (uh, nope). Those folks can run successful freelance/consulting businesses, work reasonable hours, and still make good money.
That just sounds like an upper middle class way of brushing off a problem that can affect everyone. You can be alienated and isolated no matter if you live with your mom, in your home town, in your home state.
Make more money -> buy bigger house with more land = more physical separation from others.
Make more money -> spend more time at work -> buy more "things" -> attach happiness to those things = set up for discontentment.
Yes, the problem is that people are incapable of "making enough money"
- Enough for buying satisfied house and land AND a nice secondary room in the middle of city. So they support two main life styles. Need a peaceful time, go to house surrounding by nature. Need a party, city life, back in town.
- Enough money for commuting between places as you want
- Enough money for buying whatever objects. Get bored, go shopping
- Enough money for not worrying about it so you can do things that improve your contentment.
Well, this is not new, money solves maybe 90% of whatever problems you have right now.
Also usually the richer you get, the richer your social circle gets. I remember reading once that almost nobody on facebook has more friends than any of their friends (meaning, each user on facebook with n friends has at least one friend with >n friends). The same is almost certainly true for wealth, or income.
A mid-career software engineer at FAANG might have a greater income than every single person they grew up with. But they probably know middle managers making even more, as well as ex-colleagues who hit it big with a startup. Those middle managers know many people making more than them, all the way up the food chain. Those colleagues at the startups probably know people who had more equity, VCs, etc. with even more money. And this continues on and on.
but similarily as OP mentioned, the screen encompasses all classes. Even the lower classes around the world, while taking advantage of this connectivity to the rest of the world, will experience similar symptoms perhaps. I'm thinking of cab, rikshaw drivers in India who now all have phones which is great in improving their lives but may result in disconnectedness from their communities families maybe not as much as first world countries.
Doesn't that support the original comment? Given increasing income inequality, wage stagnation, and the "desirable" jobs being clustered amongst the upper-middle and upper classes, and your suggestion that the loneliness epidemic is concentrated to said groups, then it would seem to imply that it is increasingly a binary choice between career prospects and living near family/friends.
The world keeps constantly getting richer and richer, which means more and more of us move in to the upper middle class!
That doesn't make it a non-issue.
I agree with the idea its an upper middle class problem, but I’m not convinced it’s a problem per se.
Part of what I’m wondering is if people are agreeing they spend more time alone than in the past, social norms say that means we’re lonely, so they agree with the idea.
I grew up in the country with a lot of alone time. I loved it. I don’t consider myself a depressed person. I can imagine anything I want, write the story down, plan projects, do the deep work of being me.
Being more social just feels like a series of shallow experiences relative. Drinks, coffees, some emotionally exciting event... all fleeting to me.
My own head is forever.
I think we want to believe loneliness is bad because of social pressure to connect, get a job with people we don’t know but we need a job, etc
Personally, I find that all incredibly stifling and stressful for little personal gain (the aristocracy of course loves a population that’s normalized to a small set of behaviors but that’s a diff topic).
Upper middle class types seem to have engagement in social structures forced on them. It’s bizarre to me
Edit: this article and digging into the idea is what underlie my take here https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/17/peopl...
Racism and such aside, I feel there’s a lot for urban grind types to learn from rural life
Or: first world problems.
Seems people don't like this comment. Let me elaborate: In poorer countries, or in historically poorer countries, there is often a culture of group interaction: food sold in the streets, social events in the streets, greeting people and getting to know those around you. A lot of this is based on mutual struggle or mutual need towards each other.
This is quite stark in some poorer countries (e.g.: some African, South American or Asian countries). You don't see that much in the US, but you do see it in some European countries and the ones with more of this are the ones that I find have less inertial loneliness. Thus: "first world problems" occur when you need the person next to you less. Maybe this is the same phenomenon that makes a country like Iceland famous for helpfulness towards others?
>The median person lives just 18 miles away from their mom.
Oh God, I wish I did. She's not even 18ft away until she dies, and she'll probably outlive me.
Why are you trying to counterargue a growing recognition of widespread loneliness by citing figures about people moving? Do you think loneliness doesn't happen if people live close to mom, or that people who never leave their home town or their home state aren't lonely?
I'd expect those to be the loneliest of people. At least people who travel often learn how to meet and make new friends and rarely find themselves stuck in social isolation.
I would suspect that, on average people who live near extended family and childhood friends will be less lonely than people who don’t have families and move around a lot.
My mom grew up in a family of 11 siblings in Bangladesh, most of whom lived with their families in the same city when I was a kid. It’s hard to express rich and full life was back there.
This may be a cultural difference, or it may just be a difference of personal experiences, but I wouldn't make the leap to inferring much of any correlation between loneliness and living near extended family or childhood friends.
For one, as the article pointed out, there are differences between social interaction and loneliness. For another, there are many broken families out there today, especially with the rise of opioid and other brutal addictions.
Anecdotally, I've seen hispanic families tend to be closer-knit, while a lot of other families tend to have some pretty serious problems. As one data point, my parents now live only a few miles away from me but I see them only very occasionally. Likewise, former close-knit groups of friends who all never left their home town -- and in at least one case, ended up buying homes only a couple blocks away from each other -- ended up squabbling and fighting and stopped talking to each other at all.
So whereas your experiences have led you to suppose that being close to childhood friends and family makes someone less lonely, my own -- and those of the various other nomads I've gotten to know over the years -- lead me to suppose that getting away from childhood friends and family helps to stave off the loneliness.
All of this is 100% correct. In particular: the amount of choices that have become "career killers" and therefore unacceptable is terrifying.
Choose a degree that appeals to you, where you will learn what you like, instead of one which acts as a stepping stone for a higher paying job? Even in countries with sane tuition prices (read: not the US) plenty of people will blame you, and that decision in particular, for any financial problem for all your life.
Become pregnant, and/or plan to work fewer hours for some time to take care of your kids or any older relative? How brave of you. Here's your prize in the form of reduced pay for the next 10 years or so.
Decline that managing position because you like your current job better and you know you won't enjoy being a manager? Cue the disapproval stares from people close to you.
Stay in your job for 15 years because you like the people, the work itself or some particular perk? When you finally leave, your next job will pay less than if you had hopped around each 2 years. That's if someone wants to hire you.
Sure, every decision counts and very often there is a tradeoff between trying to find happiness and trying to find a job that sustains you. However, lately the tension between those two is so high that any small decision towards living the life you want to live may very well end in financial misery for the rest of your life. This is not hyperbole; I know people who fucked up mildly once, fifteen years ago, and are still paying the price. And I'm one of the lucky ones... I haven't fallen through the cracks. Yet.
> Stay in your job for 15 years because you like the people, the work itself or some particular perk? When you finally leave, your next job will pay less than if you had hopped around each 2 years. That's if someone wants to hire you.
This is so true, and the weirdest thing in the world to me. Especially in tech, you get really heavily punished for staying at a job more than a few years. To the point where, in interviews, you are asked why you stayed so long. Why would you penalize someone who might make a long-term commitment to your company? You're basically flushing all the training and institutional knowledge they hold down the drain.
I've been at my current job 13 years (although I have advanced through multiple titles in that time). I may be slightly underpaid, though last time I looked a few years ago it was about average for the area. I've considered leaving occasionally, but I like the people I work with and the work most days is interesting and engaging.
Moreover, I'm content. Maybe I could get more money if I job-hopped or moved to a place like the Bay Area. But why? I'm comfortable now, all my needs are met, I have plenty of disposable income, and my family is happy. We never want for anything.
We have this weird aversion to people being content. There's a lot to be said for stability.
> > Stay in your job for 15 years because you like the people, the work itself or some particular perk? When you finally leave, your next job will pay less than if you had hopped around each 2 years. That's if someone wants to hire you.
> This is so true, and the weirdest thing in the world to me. Especially in tech, you get really heavily punished for staying at a job more than a few years. To the point where, in interviews, you are asked why you stayed so long. Why would you penalize someone who might make a long-term commitment to your company? You're basically flushing all the training and institutional knowledge they hold down the drain.
In Germany, the mentality is different. If you switch jobs after few years, you have to give very good reasons - for exactly the outlined reasons.
> We have this weird aversion to people being content.
As an immigrant I feel this is quite an American thing - there's always talk of your _career_, your _pursuits_, your _goals_, interesting things you did over the weekend...
I’m American and I consider much of this attitude to be deranged and frankly a form of mental illness. Unfortunately pretty much everyone has it (including me at times) so I don’t talk about this opinion that much.
Maybe the ability to be content is not that common and people who just cannot do it are secretly envious of and angry at those who can? For example, I've never been content in any job (barring some honeymoon periods or particularly interesting short episodes). It's pretty much always a grind to get that paycheck at the end of the month. At this point, I don't think I could be content with any job. It's possible that I've chosen a wrong career and have broken myself over years of working in it - hard to tell.
Seems to be more a problem of expectations than anything else, people are too focused on being successful than being happy, on having it all.
I would gleefully take a pay cut to have a 35h work week _if my wage still allows me to eat out once 3x a week_, but I will work 40h + commute and feel always exhausted until I get there. See how easy is to fall on that trap.
why not make it a habit to talk to a stranger on the commuting train?
In many parts of the US this is so out of the norm that people would be freaked out by you trying to talk to them (SF, NYC for sure but even in Chicago which is supposed to have that Midwestern friendliness... it'd be weird and often unwelcome)
This is not the case. Y’all just don’t know how to small talk.
Because that can be a terrifying prospect for some.
A lot of people take whatever jobs they can get, and their pay barely covers their housing/food/childcare/medical expenses.
The caricature you are offering only really works for overpaid tech workers.
Ah yeah, I'm definitely overpaid because I don't go home and choose to work instead of spending time with my friends or skip weekends out to work more contracts.
Yeah, that's right I'm over paid. Eat a bag of biscuits you assuming flesh bag.
I'm giving up parts of my life to make money, and you expect me to want less than what I'm making?
Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how provocative another comment is? We're trying for something better than internet default here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I think I am sympathetic to your point-of-view, but I'm not sure, because it seems (to me) that you are maybe conflating a couple of different costs.
Let's start at the numerator - you appear to be calculating life "happiness" (according to some internal metric) vs ... cost. You appear to be calculating costs as being:
Is that right? I'm not sure what social approbation (or that of your SO) means to you, but this seems (generally) to be a pretty clear trade-off of doing what you want vs. making more money by doing what society is willing to pay you for?I mean - I'm a fan of doing what you like - but surely you don't expect society to pay you to watch Jerry Springer and smoke week all day at home munching down on pizza, right? How is this different?
Am I missing something?
The society does not pay you. The company does, and many bigger corporations have a ton of impossible b.s. projects that are essentially a waste if time for anyone who is not a boss counting the number of employees.
I just found something very indicative of the current times: in Ask A Manager (a blog about work where the owner answers questions from her readers) someone is afraid that not working during the evenings or the weekends is going to hurt their job prospects. The article has been published today.
https://www.askamanager.org/2019/07/can-you-advance-professi...
> However, lately the tension between those two is so high that any small decision towards living the life you want to live may very well end in financial misery for the rest of your life.
This is definitely an uncomfortable truth that isn't talked about very often, and the information age seems to exacerbate it.
>Choose a degree that appeals to you, where you will learn what you like, instead of one which acts as a stepping stone for a higher paying job?
>Become pregnant, and/or plan to work fewer hours for some time to take care of your kids or any older relative?
>Stay in your job for 15 years because you like the people, the work itself or some particular perk?
>However, lately the tension between those two is so high that any small decision towards living the life you want to live may very well end in financial misery for the rest of your life.
Are you expecting society to reward you for making ultimately selfish choices aimed at maximizing only your own personal happiness?
I'm expecting the penalty not to be so disproportionate as to persist 15+ years after the choice. Also, most of these "choices" are not so selfish.
In the case of the degree choices, I know plenty of people who have jobs with a much higher social utility than mine, yet make much less and suffer long periods of unemployment (I'm thinking about, for example, people whose job is to educate people from marginalized communities).
In the case of taking care of other people, I just can't fathom how would you find selfisness in stepping out of a job in order to take care of other people.
And about staying a lot of time in a job, it can definitely make you incredibly productive, and in all cases I know in tech it forces people to have a "big picture" idea of some problem domain which is damn useful when trying to move to a company working within the same domain; it's very different from hopping companies and having to learn a slightly different tech stack and/or company structure each time. Sadly, this doesn't translate at all into a better salary, because as an industry we seem to have collectively decided that staying too long in a job is anathema.
>I'm expecting the penalty not to be so disproportionate as to persist 15+ years after the choice
The penalty persists because the years spent pursuing goals other than those that confer useful skills and experience cannot be regained. Are you suggesting that we reward all people equally, regardless of whether they are able to demonstrate the same degree of utility?
>In the case of taking care of other people, I just can't fathom how would you find selfisness in stepping out of a job in order to take care of other people.
Selfish from the perspective that taking care of a sick loved one does not necessarily provide a benefit to society at large. More importantly, that time spent not working or learning is effectively a pause in ones growth as a professional - what is the alternative, making hiring and salary decisions by age rather than experience?
>I know plenty of people who have jobs with a much higher social utility than mine, yet make much less and suffer long periods of unemployment
This is a bit of a conflation. I am arguing over choices which do not benefit society, in which case it is reasonable that one's career value is lower. This particular problem is one of misplaced valuation in our society, as there are tangible benefits to the degrees your acquaintances pursued.
Selfish? All of those things make society better. Business is the party with selfish demands.
Yes, society should absolutely tell business that it isn't as important as it thinks.
>All of those things make society better
There is no intrinsic benefit to society at large in pursuing a degree - only those degrees which enable one to contribute in some form, and even then the benefit only occurs if one uses the knowledge obtained to conduct useful work.
>Yes, society should absolutely tell business that it isn't as important as it thinks.
Businesses have the goal of generating some sort of value. Yes, that means that employees must make certain sacrifices with their time and future plans - that's why they get paid. But this conflict between the goals of a business and the goals of an employee exist regardless of whether we organize into business-employee relationships or not, because fundamentally any significant, communal goal requires these same sacrifices to be achieved. We won't have any engineers or doctors or programmers if everyone majors in English Literature out of a fundamentally selfish desire to learn something with significantly less benefit to society.
The same goes for the other listed pursuits. I'm not saying that one should dedicate themselves to their work - but the detriment to one's career that comes with pursuing these, again, selfish goals (from the perspective of society) is generally just, because it isn't fair to force others to allocate their resources to activities which do not benefit them.
Businesses have the goal of generating money for their owners. That's what capitalism is. Capital puts up money to start a business expecting a return on that money. Businesses are formed when the expected (in the probability sense) return on the business is considered a good deal.
There are some theories that this magically coincides with creating value in an ideal model, but no period in history has actually worked that way. There are many proposed explanations for why it doesn't, but I'm not much interested in why. All I care about is that those models don't describe reality.
So businesses are all about generating income for their owners. But society is about all people in it, not just those who control the capital. It is necessarily true that there will be cases where the best thing for society is not the best thing for businesses.
Business has pushed the public narrative too far towards blind support of "business is a good thing." Your post even seems to just assume that as a given. You claim that a goal is "selfish (from the perspective of society)" when the only thing you can criticize about it is that it isn't maximizing business value.
Business isn't everything. Sure, a society needs a functioning economy in order to survive. But that's a far cry from assuming "good for business" is the same as "good for society".
The latter is certainly more nebulous, though, and I can understand why you might wish they were the same thing. It would allow you to optimize society with simple quantitative measures instead of complex qualitative discussions about which sets of opposing goals have the better overall outcome. But the real world doesn't cooperate with such things. There are always going to be conflicts over goals, priorities, and even values. Resist the temptation to believe in an easy answer. Reality isn't easy.
Taking care of old or sick relative is not selfish. Staying in the same job is not selfish. No more selfish then changing job because some perk.
Quitting a job to take care of a sick loved one does not benefit the people you worked with toward a common goal, nor society at large.
>No more selfish then changing job because some perk.
The point here is that GP was complaining that there were no career benefits to making such a decision - why should there be, exactly? Such a career move benefits oneself and ones family. No one else.
> The point here is that GP was complaining that there were no career benefits to making such a decision - why should there be, exactly? Such a career move benefits oneself and ones family. No one else.
Same as leaving the job and changing. Benefits no one but you.
When all possible actions are framed as selfish, that whole argument is nonsense.
> why should there be, exactly? Such a career move benefits oneself and ones family. No one else.
Because it proves they are decent people I guess?
>The Screen, whether it’s TV, computer, or phone, has supplanted almost all social interactions.
I think social (cooperative) gaming might be an exception to this. I'm not about to argue that it's _better_ than real-life social interaction, but hanging out and communicating with the same individuals every evening while working on shared goals as your avatars inhabit the screen can combat loneliness for many individuals without (and with!) alternatives[0].
These interactions can even lead to real-life communities and relationships. So again, not a perfect substitute, but certainly not as much a detractor as sitcoms or (I would argue) social media.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/disability-47064773
A bunch of my college/highschool friends will still hop on the ps4 a couple nights each week.
I live 100 kms away from most of them, however we can still catch up and have fun playing games.
Its definitely not the same as real life interactions, but it allows me to interact with people that I normally wouldn't see without visiting them.
I moved to a city where I'm pretty much alone so I could go to college. My favorite time of the day is when I play Counter-Strike with my old buddies at night. Not so much because of the game but just because I get to voice chat and have a good laugh for a while.
> The Job has completely taken over as a driving force in evaluating choices. The average person has to consider all options in the light of both the current employer and the specter of tomorrow’s.
How is this different than what the majority of civilization had to do throughout history? People have always clung to their profession as their identity. Hell, people used to name themselves after their profession.
If that is the problem, then push for fewer hours worked per week.
Back in the days when people named themselves after their job, there was no difference between career and personal life. You didn’t work 8-5 and then completely disconnect, you worked whenever the job needed done as many hours as it took.
Loneliness only sets in when you have nothing else to do and you’re all alone. If you’re swinging a hammer at a hot forge for 16 hours a day loneliness is a secondary concern.
Back when people had up to 6 months of time off a year?[1]
[1] https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...
If modern people had half the year they could consider free time, no one would be lonely.
Retirees and the unemployed report high levels of loneliness.
Well yeah, all their friends and family are working.
Back when people dropped dead around age 50...
When people named themselves after their job, it was often because the whole family did the job, and it was inherited.
This is the opposite of loneliness.
It also isn't particularly good for personal freedom, or social mobility.
Recently society has been pushing for these two things, at the expense of personal connections. That means many successful people are working jobs that are out of the experience of their parents. They also do not necessarily share a lot of experiences of their formative years with the people they work with. All of this comes from personal freedom, but at the expense of being close to the people you spend your time with. I suppose you could also put it that its at the expense of spending time with the people you are close to.
Maybe there's a spectrum here. A family trade is both highly social and highly stable, even if it is confining in terms of personal freedom and social mobility.
Maybe, our current obsession as a society with personal freedom and social mobility is an extreme which is itself the cause of all the loneliness. It's an extreme which reduces the stability and cohesion of our society, because in promoting the freedom of the individual above all else, you've harmed the social connections which make a society work.
Maybe there's a happy medium, but I think we might have passed it by over a century back.
It's also interesting that nowadays when people lose their jobs, it triggers an almost existential crisis in them. It's kind of sad to watch.
I wish people could understand that they are more than their job. It's so ingrained in us though. One of the first things people asks each other is, "What do you do?" It encourages a definition of self that is centered on one's job.
If it weren't real life, I'd think I was watching a dystopian film at most social gatherings. :(
I'm pretty certain that existential crisis isn't because of who they'd be without their job, except in status obsessed high-income brackets.
For most folks that existential crisis is driven 100% by the realization that they have little in the way of a safety-net, and all it takes is several turns of bad luck to end up in a poverty trap that isn't easy to climb out of. Remember, most Americans make what, 65k or so as a household? And are in massive debt to all of the things they needed to even be able to make that money (college education, car, house, etc).
> For most folks that existential crisis is driven 100% by the realization that they have little in the way of a safety-net, and all it takes is several turns of bad luck to end up in a poverty trap that isn't easy to climb out of.
I think that's more US specific.
High debt loads are a lot more common than most people think. Even those who live in expensive neighborhoods can be one or two missed paychecks away from foreclosure or eviction. Defining yourself as more than your job is a lot easier when you could go six months without it. Not to get too high on my soapbox, but the other side of the fact that low interest rates encourage economic growth is that high debt loads make people desperate to work.
Modern culture has stripped life of intrinsic meaning. The values promoted by the culture are that we are hedonic production/consumption machines, and that our value comes from either what we are able to produce, or what we are able to consume.
Bingo, this hits the nail on the head. We live in a capitalist, market oriented society and we've allowed marketers to run the show by letting them define and influence our sense of self. The eventual outcome of this has been a self-image entirely based on the specific goods and services we consume.
It took a lot of introspection for me to realize that my core essence and sense of self couldn't really be distilled down to much more than what I did for a living and my consumption patterns. It's quite scary and I've been searching for ways to balance myself out and get more meaning out of life.
Cheap and readily available credit makes people dependent on their jobs. Its totally normal to think of affordability on a monthly payment basis. That means we have people who have very little savings after all their monthly payments. When you lose your job you can't make all those monthly payments anymore its a crisis.
I feel you brotha.
he said via a social network
"it triggers an almost existential crisis in them. It's kind of sad to watch."
Said the person (probably) working in an industry that's blooming, without a hint of irony.
> The Screen and the Job have displaced
The screen and the Job have no volition of their own. It's humans themselves that choose to spend more time with them instead of interacting with nearby humans. And this is happening despite the fact that we 're no longer in the industrial age, and people don't need to live near the factory where they work. The Job provides people with enough money to frequently escape from nearby people (travel, or "experiences"), money to move in upscale tiny apartments where they can be alone in a crowd, or to move in comfy suburbs where they can be alone physically. It seems highly-paid people choose those, and it is lower class people that keep socializing with their neighbours.
I presume many of those people do not idolize their relationships with other humans as the most precious thing in the world. They weigh them against the freedoms afforded by money and technology and act accordingly.
As a software engineer who comes from the lower class (the West side ghetto of Chicago, in fact), let me tell you right now that lower class people socializing with their neighbors doesn't mean those interactions are at all inclusive of different approaches to life. Yeah, you get more socializing and connections, but those interactions tend to be constrained by forces like homophobia, racism, etc. Just because they're socializing doesn't mean they are also re-enforcing a world where everyone can feel accepted. It strikes me as naive to think the working class are this miasma of authentic relations, they socialize better because the set of considered opinions is virtually uncontested.
1. nobody said the do or that they should "be inclusive"
2. miasma is a negative word (means repulsive)
I agree however, it is actually one of the reasons that more well-off people tend to socialize less: other people are not always "wonderful"
A known phenomenon is that being homeless can work wonders for one's social skills.
Being poorly presented and inarticulate is a form of privilege - it's traditionally associated with academia, but with the rise of the "computer nerd" stereotype, it has increasingly slipped into other venues. What comes to mind is Tfue, the world's top Fortnite player, whose Twitch streams largely consist of him grunting "uuggggghn" and complaining about "stream snipers" with coarse language. He gets millions of viewers.
1 - Of course not, but its a requisite to strong social bonds isn't it? The point is that that the discussion around fulfilling bonds is fairly underspecified to the point that it isn't practically useful from my perspective.
2 - Apologies, I was misusing the word
> Of course not, but its a requisite to strong social bonds isn't it?
A requisite, it isn't. But, for people living in cosmopolitan cities, or people who have an open mind about the world, of course it is.
I think many people value being disentangled from other peoples' problems. They move to the suburbs so that they don't have to have roommates or people in the next door apartment - so that they have some space. Then they find out that they have no community - they're isolated and lonely. As you say, we're doing it to ourselves.
> The Job has completely taken over as a driving force in evaluating choices.
Not to mention most of our time. People nowadays spend far more time at work than ever.
> People nowadays spend far more time at work than ever.
A few generations ago kids worked at 10, there were no weekly limit, no weekends, no vacations, no security, no form of compensation if you get injured/die while working, no pension, no sick leave &c.
In first world countries we never worked so little for so much comfort.
> By the act of 1892 one day in the week, not necessarily Sunday, had to be given for entire absence from work, in addition to eight recognized annual holidays
> Children may not be employed in industrial work before 12 years, and then only 8 hours a day at work
> The first attempt to secure legislation regulating factory employment related to the hours of labour, which were very long - from twelve to thirteen hours a day.
> Boys of 13 may be employed in certain work underground, but under 16 may not be employed more than 8 hours in the 24 from bank to bank. A law of 1905 provided for miners a 9 hours' day and in 1907 an 8 hours' day from the foot of the entrance gallery back to the same point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_labour_law
I don't think it's particularly helpful to compare the present day to the late 19th century. The fact that things used to be worse does not excuse the fact that things also used to be better; living standards for the average American have regressed in many ways since the 1970s, which should be a cause of urgent concern.
>living standards for the average American have regressed in many ways since the 1970s,
With women's entry into the workforce plus the 1964 Hart-Cellar Act's lifting of immigration quotas the workforce more than doubled in the 70s. At that rate how was work compensation ever supposed to keep up? I'm not saying the trade-off wasn't worth it, but you can't 2-3x the labor pool and then pretend we don't know why wages decreased while competition for scare resources increased.
This is an extremely simplistic reading of a complex real-world issue. There multiple other factors that almost definitely dominated the changes you cite. Including population growth, other massive changes in the regulatory, political, economic, and technical environment... Point being, mentioning one shift in the labor supply is really not a useful frame for "the state of labor in the US."
If we ignore the flaws of capitalism for a second, we could have shortened the work week.
Knowing a reason for wages to drop is not the same as it being acceptable.
lm28469 was responding to the previous poster's specific claim that we now work longer hours "than ever".
You think that today in 2019, we spend more time at "work" than at any other time in history? That's just false.
Over the 20th century here, work hours have slashed in half. Henry Ford introduced the 5 day work week in 1926, prior to that it was 6.
You think the average farmer in the late 1800's worked 40-50 hours? What about the average coal miner, or factory worker?
Physically you are right. Mentally, maybe not. If you are in an information based job like writing or programming, then it’s very easy to carry your job around in your head. I may only program for a few hours a day, but the problems definitely come home with me. It takes a considerable amount of self awareness to both realize this and stop it.
This is definitely true. "Open-world" jobs are par for the course in the Western world, where deciding what you have to do is part of the job, along with predicting, strategizing, and reflecting. It is a lot more cognitively engaging and also heavy. Farming and mining certainly have aspects of this, but a majority of the work was drone work -- exactly the type of work to go first in automatization. What's left is necessarily cognitively difficult work.
You're not thinking on a long enough timescale. Hunter gatherers only worked 10 hours a week :)
They only hunter/gathered for that long.
How much time was spent in meetings, how much time preparing food, fixing clothes, patrolling territory, scouting things out, making home improvements etc.
If the modern person only worked for food, then I think a few hours a week would suffice.
ah yes, meetings, that famous bane of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle
I wonder if they have a scrum master, who tells everyone what to do, but no one has ever seen him hunting.
Halve the working time of today by 50% and we would reach levels that could be called "not insane".
The situation in the late 19th century was a historical aberration and workers neither since nor previously worked that many hours. Note also that in that period, Western society was full of day laborers, hobos and other chronically underemployed people. That is how capitalists could force workers into working insane hours at low pay. Because if they didn't want to do it, then there were thousands of others that were willing to. And importantly, most women were not employed which they are now. Given these factors it is not certain that the average person worked harder in the 19th century than the average person does today. The average factory worker certainly did, but that is different.
I don't get what is with these snarky replies all over Hacker News these days. His point was that people work a lot. Quarreling over whether some people some time during history has worked even more is missing it.
Even 'unemployed' women worked really hard back then. Without electricity, all the washing, managing the home heater, cooking, cleaning tasks have to be done on muscle power alone.
Doing a load of laundry on a hand washer and scrubbing board takes forever and is pretty brutal. So is getting up super early to put coal in the furnace (and then keeping it going all day every day). Running a stove you have to load with wood means starting really early. Churning butter by hand. Possibly grinding flour by hand. Making everyone's clothes by hand - when the sewing machine came out it made Singer incredibly rich because it saved so many women so many hours sewing their family's clothes by hand.
Nearest extant comparison would probably be Amish women.
Yes, that is why I wrote that women of that time were "not employed" not "not working". Household chores can be considered work, but that brings into question what is work and what is leisure? Raising kids is certainly a lot of work but it is also entirely optional so why isn't it leisure? arvinism however wrote "more time at work than ever" which can't mean anything other than hours in employment.
There's no snark in that comment.
And less of our time at work is spent actually working.
This might sound good in theory, but time spent at work not working can be soul destroying.
The average farmer definitely worked less than 40 hours. During harvest season it was more than that no doubt but overall the time spent on work was less and more diverse. It was only with industrialization and capitalism that work took over such an enormous amount of our time. At the beginning of the 20th century, people fought back hard to get the amenities like 40h week and sick leave that make work bearable today. It certainly wasn't Henry Ford who introduced the 5 day work week. It was the workers who protested for it while people like Henry Ford sent strike breakers and police with machine guns to mow them down.
> People nowadays spend far more time at work than ever.
Average hours worked has gone down steadily over the last two centuries:
> 1830 69.1 hours per week
> 1880 60.7
> 1929 50.6
> 1988 42.4
> As the twentieth century ended there was nothing resembling a shorter hours “movement.” The length of the workweek continues to fall for most groups — but at a glacial pace. Some Americans complain about a lack of free time but the vast majority seem content with an average workweek of roughly forty hours — channeling almost all of their growing wages into higher incomes rather than increased leisure time.
https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/
> People nowadays spend far more time at work than ever.
Do you have anything supporting this claim? The facts say otherwise: https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours
It's easy and fun to be pessimistic, but to claim that people today work more than ever is ludicrous.
Than ever? Surely Americans in the industrial revolution worked longer.
I find it pretty concerning whenever I see someone's github page with tons of green squares on the bottom and top row. Why do people work so much on the weekends?
Don't we spend less time at work than ever? Makes more sense to me that loneliness would be caused by too much free time rather than not enough.
People nowadays know less about history than ever.
TV when it was a single screen in house could still serve as social gathering time.
As a kid, having my own TV meant countless hours of video games and my own movies too. I enjoyed it more than I abused it.
Are smarphone/tablet TVs worse or the same ?
One difference, the kind of entertainment you had on TV wasn't that much thinking or discussing. It has different effects I suppose. Also TV had a different ethos (if I may).
One last thing, about my first point. Having a single TV meant disagreements about who decides what to watch. This led to having more TVs.. and now more screens too. Technology is the mirror of our own social bonds.. we need it but we also need to deal with the issues. It gives a weird form of peace of mind not to have to deal with others.
>As a kid, having my own TV meant countless hours of video games and my own movies too. I enjoyed it more than I abused it.
For me int he early 90s was "Hey Aaron/Jimmy/Dani it's raining outside so we can't go ride bikes, wanna play a game?" and then either taking turns or playing a two player game and talking the entire time. Then early 95 when more than one or two of us had computers in the homes it was similar, if it was nice out we were outside, if not we were on IRC and/or a MUD and moving into the later 90s bla-dinging each other on AIM while in a MUD or in Ultima or Everquest with each other if it was too late to go out or bad weather.
Now it's 3 people sitting in a room with a tv going, and all three have their phones out, occasionally sending each other memes and not talking.
I agree that it's weirder nowadays. But maybe we just enjoyed cultural inertia because we were born just before 24/7 multi screen entertainment became the norm. I too find that it just takes too much space in our daily lives. Back in the days tech was one part of our life, and it was small scope entertainment, now it's the centralized hub for everything and it sucks your mind.
Playing evil's advocate a bit just to poke my own bias.
I am the type to rejoice in cynicism. But, I have to say that I don't see the screen phenomenon as necessarily a bad thing—time spent in contemplation is time spent alone. I am a person too that likes to spend time outdoors, so maybe what I am saying is that there is a fine line between lonely and alone.
You can only be anti-social in the presence of other people. Otherwise you are simply alone.
At least in SF it feels like there is a grey area between work and friend relationships. I don't necessarily think relationships that start at work can't be meaningful, though there's certainly a much greater chance a work relationship is transactional even if you fool yourself into thinking they could be a friend.
Whether the relationship is transactional (or tainted by money or some such) doesn't bother me as much as the fact that my putting time and effort into friendships in the workplace gives someone who already has a lot of power over me even more power over me: namely, my getting fired would suddenly make it very difficult for me to continue most of those friendships.
I don't think that can explain everything. As far as I understand, cultures where family is highly valued (Latin America, some parts Asia) say they are happier despite being relatively less well off than richer countries.
We evolved living in relatively small groups where everyone knew each other and exclusion from the group meant likely death. Now we are part of a global social web where at any time, any of our people may be occupied by other parts of their network that do not involve us. This risk of being abandoned instinctively feels like an existential threat, so we live with a constant underlying anxiety that we do not truly belong and are not really safe. It will be interesting to see whether this reality selects for individuals better equipped to cope with it, or whether we develop better systems to allow everyone to cope better... I'd guess a bit of both.
I will quote a previous comment on a similar thread[1] I made verbatim here. It is from Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now, where he reviews data on loneliness in the US students (among two dozen other graphs in the first twenty chapters).
Pinker implies social critics abuse the words "epidemic" and "crisis" (both words used in the article of this thread).
After reviewing the downwards-sloping graph (plotted from 1978-2011) and more data, Pinker writes:
Modern life, then, has not crushed our minds and bodies, turned us into atomized machines suffering from toxic levels of emptiness and isolation, or set us drifting apart without human contact or emotion. How did this misconception arise? Partly it came out of the social critic's standard formula for sowing panic: Here's an anecdote, therefore it's a trend, therefore it's a crisis. But partly came from genuine changes in how people interact. People see each other less in traditional venues like clubs, churches, unions, fraternal organizations, and dinner parties, and more in informal gatherings via digital media. They confide in fewer distant cousins but more in co-workers. They are less likely to have large numbers of friends but also less likely to want a large number of friends. But just because social life looks different today from the way it looked in the 1950s, it does not mean that humans, that quintessentially social species, have become any less social.
I'm not suggesting that everything is hunky-dory, just that we bear in mind the proportions of the problem. Also Pinker may well be off the mark here, as others have pointed out in[1].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19914075
> I'm not suggesting that everything is hunky-dory, just that we bear in mind the proportions of the problem. Also Pinker may well be off the mark here, as others have pointed out in[1].
Tried to find more data on this, which seems to confirm Pinker's hypothesis - https://ourworldindata.org/global-mental-health
The data seems unrepresentative, though. While data on suicide rates is fairly clear, it might be more interesting to look at revealed preferences instead of self-reported ones. To this end, indicators for "lives of despair" (drug OD deaths, hospitalisation for drug/alcohol abuse etc) might be more appropriate.
"Crisis" may not be the correct word, whereas the sex ratio imbalance in China is definitely a crisis, the loneliness issue is at least a valid social ill because of the additional stress, anxiety, missing joy/opportunities and shortening of lives it creates.
I just hope people don't think the working class somehow has this all down pat and that this is merely a case of bourgeois overconsumption. As someone who comes from a ghetto and became a software engineer, I can tell you now that a lot of people I grew up with engage in combinations of racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. The working class are only this candyland of authentic relations if you also accept all the socio-political tenets that go with that particular community. That's no better than being alone.
Edit - Removed some emotional language
It cuts both ways. SF PCness and SJWness can be downright stifling
Removed some emotional language
The part where you condemned the people you grew up with? Oh, you left that in. What on earth did you remove--something about kicking dogs?
There's nothing wrong with having issues with the community where you came from. I also come from a place with many bigots
I also grew up with racists and homophobes. Actually my mom is the most racist person I know. Should I be happy with it?
should the people you grew up with be somehow protected from criticism?
Why?
They say in the article there's no clear rising trend and self reported loneliness as an "issue" was at a similar level going back to the 1940s as today. I figure it's mainly up to two things, which the article touches on briefly.
One, family sizes are down. My parents who emigrated to the US had tons of siblings. My mom had like 8 or 9 (including a few kids who died early) and were closely knit until they emigrated the US separately as adults. My dad had 3 or 4 as well iirc.
Two, the transitions, especially the changing of jobs, and especially if it necessitates a move away from your prior group. People tend to like fixed roles and fixed communities in my experience, changing that is a big risk and a big source of anxiety. I've moved around a lot in the US and I've noticed that a vast majority of people I knew were born and raised in the states they still lived in, sometimes in the same towns, although college and the first "career" job tended to be the biggest changes and the transitions slow down after that unless forced. This even holds true for a lot of the emigrated workers I've known. As soon as externalities like job security and immigration status are stable they build families and start looking to settle down and hope to find a career long employer.
I would imagine that based on what I've seen people would be less lonely with fixed jobs, in fixed locations, with large, stable families. And people hopping jobs, company layoffs, long lived local businesses failing, and families having fewer kids are big causes of "loneliness". Although, like the article says there's not exactly a strong rising trend going back as far as the last century anyway...
Really. I think the big problem here is social networks. Nobody interact face to face.I used to go to bars , look for a pretty girl and pay her a drink to start a conversation. Nowdays this is considered creep. They expect that I download an app, wait for a match ans just goeet for a quick chat and maybe some action. Just turn of your computers and go to a bar. Interact to people. Start conversations with stranger people. You may meet weird people. But also will meet amazing people.
I met my husband less than a decade ago in a bar. I still talk to strangers in bars now too. Its not any more creepy to socialize with strangers in bars now than it was in the past, as long as you respect boundaries and aren't a creep about it.
The vast majority of people still meet their partners through "traditional" means, very, very few meet through sites and apps. And when I say "very, very few" I'm talking less than 10%.
https://www.mic.com/articles/112062/the-way-most-people-meet...
https://www.bustle.com/p/the-most-popular-ways-people-are-me...
I saw an article recently[0] based on a Stanford study[1] that found 40% (!) of relationships that began in 2017 originated online.
[0] https://qz.com/1546677/around-40-of-us-couples-now-first-mee...
[1] https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_et_al_Disinterm...
You can claim anything with a survey these days. This one says 40% of couples meet online, and 60% of same-sex couples. And that is from 2017. Anecdotally I think you are out of touch, probably because you've been out of the dating game for a decade. Less than 10%? No way. Everyone has migrated to dating apps.
https://qz.com/1546677/around-40-of-us-couples-now-first-mee...
I think he meant buying the drink is creepy. I go to bars on occasion and meet women my age and younger, but I've never bought them a drink because I feel the same way (although I don't think they expect it either.)
Starting the conversation is hard and it can be very difficult to tell if they really want to talk before they do, I guess that's part of why you want a good bartender because they'll usually start conversations with everyone.
Welll you just dont walk straing in. You first exchange glances, see if shes alone, whatt shes drinking (soft drinks, hard licor, beer, some fancy cocktail) and judge something about her personality, if you think you have a chance, then you pay for a drink, or just straigth hit her with something, in my case somthing dumb like "Hey, how much a polar bear weigths? Enougth to break the ice!".
What I think is creep is some stranger who straigup knows your name, your face, and can just as easy starting to virtual stalking your life and find out where you live.
Fucking hating online dating solutions like tinder.... really not good talker on line, without seeing the person face to face.
Acctually what I meant is, young people usually think talking and interacting to strangers is creepy. Like. Ok you can be creep, and is easy to look creep when you talking to a beatfull woman an is an insecure nerd. Been there, done that.
Offering strangers liquid drugs in hopes of "some action" was probably creepy back in the day too. Alcohol and hookup culture are not mutually exclusive to loneliness.
Offering a drink in a bar was never creepy when I was younger. Offering a home-made drink that nobody but you knows what's in it, that is creepy. Calling a gin tonic "liquid drugs" is grotesque in the context.
Yeah.... thas weird.... but I sure could go for a gin tonica...
here in brasil people usually don't drink fancy stuff, like pink blueberry, or things like that.
Usually beer, straith licor or things like vodka/cachaça with fruits.
I just drink fancy girly stuff like Daiquiris when I in the mood to learn a new drink, and can drink in peace without other people to judge my frail masculinity.
You sure need some drugs to loose a little.
I appreciate the sentiment of this, but I don't like how associated dating is with drinking alcohol. I don't drink and I would never go to a bar. If there were other types of social spaces not associated with drinking that would be great.
I totally agree. I do drink but would prefer to do it less and frequently end up using it as a bit of a social crutch. Coffee shops are fine during the day but I really wish there were more booze-free places to hang out at night.
Is a way of saying. You can change a bar for a coffe shop or something like that. What I'm saying get out your home and do things you apreciate. You will eventually make friands with people with the same interest.
You care about art? Go to museuns. Like italian food? Go to a cantina once in a while, even alone you will eat great food, make friends with the owners and waiters, etc.
Theres always something to do outside facebook.
Brave New World with such people in it.
the creepy part is going to a public place and sexualizing it by explicitly seeking out "pretty girl"s and buying them drinks.
Going out and seek genuine connections with people instead of buying "pretty girl"s drinks is not creepy.
You don't go in a bar for a deep conversation, you have the library and local groups of interests for that. A bar is just for relaxing and socialization, you can talk anything you want as long as you find someone to listen (or ignore) you.
Well, it dependends... last week I was drinkign a beer alone in my usual water shit hole, smoking a cigar... a guy came and ask for my ligther. In half a hour we where discussing the root causes of WWI. So... you can't have... but usually not with a girl you trying to impress.
Relaxing and Socialization != Sexualizing a public place and solely trying to pick up women. Women want to go to a bar to relax too. Do you think they can relax when men are constantly trying to buy them drinks and calling them "pretty girls"?
Genuine connection != deep conversation.
I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here, beyond being an advocate for harassment.
Well, I would be happy if anyone would buy me drinks. Because uually I'm broke af.
I am not advocating harassment; I consider harassment if you offer someone a drink, she is refusing and you insist. Not the case. There are some unwritten rules in bars: if a woman is sitting at the bar alone, she may want a drink from some guys, not from anyone. If a woman is with some guy, she probably will not be interested and it is not a good idea to try. Showing some availability is inviting - not crying out loud "I want to be offered a drink by a tall dark stranger", but the meaning is the same. Not harassment. Females don't contact directly guys, they want to be asked and to be allowed to choose. Basic human psychology, no big deal.
Libraries, at least in the US, are mostly silence zones apart from information/checkout areas. There are still a few independent bookstores left, and those are good. College is still the preferred and most popular setting to meet a quality spouse. Online should be considered one of many tools as an adjunct to IRL, but not the primary source.
I guess... if you looking for more common people... personally I'm looking for a striper named Stacy with a tatto in the lower back, dad Issues and in sometway will fuck my life... But hey.... wherether rocks your boat.
I've had deep conversations in bars and pubs more times than I can remember.
Philosophy, religion, music, software, politics etc.
Maybe the lack of depth you are finding is down to the people you are with, or yourself.
I miss the social aspects of living in Italy. It just felt easier to connect with people there. People are kind of weird and standoffish here in the US, and in some cases feel a bit fake. If you ask if someone wants to grab a beer (or spritz/wine/whatever) in Italy, and they respond enthusiastically, it seems there's a good chance they'll try and make it happen.
Try Germany or Switzerland for a year, you'd be super happy to get back to US ;-)
Lived in Austria for a couple years... it was hard to say though. I didn't speak the language there, so people were friendly, but obviously it kind of limited my interactions to anglophones or locals with the desire to have English speaking friends.
Americans are non-confrontational to a fault, sometimes they'll feign excitement about future plans to avoid "being negative" while you're asking. all the while having no intention to go through (and the defensive body language that goes with). It takes a bit to get used to
Used to have an Italian neighbor and we talked about exactly this - about how in Italy you'd just invite folks you encounter in for dinner regardless of whatever one-dish thing your family was having at that time, whereas here in America you'd never dream of inviting people in for dinner without some souped-up lavish planned meal
> People are kind of weird and standoffish here in the US, and in some cases feel a bit fake.
Supposition: It's because of all the marketing. Most of the time someone trying to talk to you is trying to sell you something, and you build up a defensive behavior to combat it.
There was a story here a few months ago that seems pertinent.
> A Solution for Loneliness: Get out and volunteer, research suggests
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19971294
at one point a friend of mine was lamenting how all these volunteer activities kept her from having a social life, to which i responded that these activities were my social life, and i would not have it any other way. it's all a matter of perspective.
Ants don't meet at the bar at the end of the day to chill with each other. It isn't necessary. And their society isn't unraveling.
The more connected the human ant hill gets the more we will behave like ants. Disconnected because we don't need to be as connected. Connected because that is the only way to survive. Those that can't handle the change...wont. This is a process of societal metamorphosis whose tracks have already been laid.
I don't disagree with you that there are meaningful analogies between humans and animals. But we are much closer evolutionarily to dogs, and dogs definitely need to wrestle in the den at the end of the day. I don't believe there are panaceas for societal evolution to be found in synthetic technological networks. Though I'll be interested to see where neuralink has gotten in 20 years.
Yeah but Ants cannot drink out of glasses. ;) I think never in history it has been possible to act as individually while still being embedded in an ant hill.
Edgy, but humans are social creatures. Civilization was built upon tight knit communities. Tight knit communities were built upon the family unit.
You have shown me the light. From now on I will commit to the healthier lifestyle of absolute loyalty to the Queen, communicating primarily through chemical signals and lifting many times my body weight.
Two ants walk into a bar...
Maybe they do and we just don't know it? (anthropocentrism)
I think the ant brain and the human brain are extremely different. I bet the ants are not capable of feeling loneliness, they don't have enough neurons for that.
That's true. Maybe we are going through a transition where we shed some :) There is lots of evidence for it.
Ants are not social in the same way ants are. The two species could not be further apart.
Humans will never be a 'hive' in that way. It's not in our biological makeup.
I think I'll be a little buried, but a thought- where can you go to hang out and not spend any money? Seems like historical gathering places all now cost money, or you're not allowed to be there.
there are places left where you can hang out for free, public parks are a good example. the "problem" is that they attract the type of people who can't or don't want to pay for a space to hang out.
most people aren't interested in a place where they can go and meet anyone; they want a place where they can meet others who share some vaguely defined set of similarities. this is the part you have to pay for.
Agreed! Try not drinking alcohol or caffeine and your places to meetup disappear.
Tech meetups.
Volunteering.
Both of those involve doing something. I'm not talking about meeting new people or starting a new hobby, I mean just... going to sit and gab with your friends.
> "You can see the problem here: A national culture that promotes polite restraint, and which actively fends off and forestalls the forming of relationships between strangers, is one that might as well be inviting loneliness on its population. And at a time when emotional seclusion is increasingly being seen as a crisis in countries around the Western world, perhaps this is what has made English people uniquely sensitive to loneliness as a major health concern."
This is evidently written from the perspective of an englishman, but I find the contrast with the American South (where I was born and raised) evident: here, it is very common to strike up a pleasant conversation with strangers. If you are left in each other's company for a few minutes, it's almost rude not to. I find that there's something of a cultural difference which might help here, as you can get a little bit of socialization from unexpected places. I regularly chat with the doorman at my office, and know he has another job as a music promoter. He also figured out a particularly clever way to game Spotify. Same with lots of other random people.
I'm not positioning this as a perfect solution, but as one more change which might help. Half of me wonders if this is because the South was always so spread-out that we took company where we could get it. But I certainly am not qualified to trace the roots of cultural stuff like this. Anyway, just something to think on.
Not from the South myself, but I noticed a similar trend in parts of the Midwest and anywhere that's not a big city.
Similar to the UK would be somewhere like Japan, which is well-known for its culture of restraint and politeness. Loneliness and suicide rates are high, while dating and marriage are suffering. It would appear a result of having a relatively restrained social culture.
PS. what is the spotify trick?
That's the thing about a trick... if you reveal it, it's gone. I suspect there are a few Spotify engineers who read this; wouldn't want to give it away.
I'm no psychologist or some sort of an expert,so this is just my own life experience: I grew up with quite a variety of people: some were pure criminals(drugs,roberry, extortion,theft),while others ended up being lawyers, mathematicians, businessman, doctors or civil servants. Some lacked brains while others lacked courage. Ultimately,if you feel lonely,drop FB, Instagram, WhatsApp and other crap.Just fucking delete that crap. There are always people who are interested in the way you think and are absolutely excited to listen and just talk to you till the sun rises... Feeling outspoken and like going to places? Go to those night clubs, restaurants or parties.Feel like being quiet persona in the corner? Well,join like-minded people, play Warhammer, build a train set and so on. Whatever you do,drop that Instagram/Facebook/LinkedIn bullshit,where everyone seems to be conquering the world.Just drop it. Go to the bloody library,local reading club, whatever. Also,learn how to listen. Actually hear what people are saying,how they feel. All this stuff turns into conversations, follow-up meetings and ultimately friendship or something more. there's plenty of space for everyone, despite of looks, character or anything else. It's not as hard as you make it!
It only makes sense for this epidemic to take place in the society we've developed. We are tearing apart the fabric and the bond that kept everyone feeling as a part of community; namely, religion. Religion was never designed for people to fear the man upstairs; it was always about the values and the bond it created between each member of that religion.
Individualism and decadence are being more or less encouraged, or at any rate tolerated; families are shrinking and relationships are treated just like another object. The concept of friendship lost value as a result of the tolerance towards vices (envy being the leading cause).
I believe that the Christian religion was in part developed to address these problems. I am not aware of any society that lasted without religion and had strong communal ties.
I don't understand how anyone can be surprised at this result.
Stop for a moment and think: what bonds me with the people living in my vicinity? Since in 2019, you can't say: religion, race, nationality and nation without being labeled one way or another. And historically, nothing else worked.
Excerpt from the article: "It turns out there’s also not much evidence to support a popular theory that the increasing secularization of Western societies — where religion is seen as a traditional route for people to regularly come together — is a major factor driving modern loneliness. Counterintuitively, says Hewings, “It would seem on a number of different surveys that levels of loneliness are lower in Northern and Western Europe than they are in Southern and Eastern Europe, which are generally a bit more religious.” Turning up at your local synagogue, church, mosque or temple of choice might well help by offering a ready-made network of social connections, if worship is where you find meaning — as highlighted in a recent report from the U.K.’s Parliamentary Group on Faith and Society — but at the level of society, religion itself, it seems, is no panacea."
A relative difference between two regions in terms of loneliness and religiousness doesn't really signal anything quite frankly. There can be a negative relationship between the two with other things affecting them. Or there might not be, but that evidence is rather thin.
I grew up in a highly conservative and (according to statistics) religious society (Poland) and my observation is that it's not correlated.
People who sought company in church were often disappointed, because most of the others who went there had lives of their own and weren't that invested in the whole thing.
Hell, the loneliest people I know are consistently religious.
So, there's a difference between being superficially and wholeheartedly invested in the whole thing? Yeah, that makes sense.
From what I've experienced there are levels to it and apparently you only click with somebody who's into it on the same level.
I guess this is not restricted to religion.
Polish society was very heavily wounded by 50 years of hardcore socialism combined with the police state (at the hands of the Soviets). The levels of trust people have towards each other are still abysmally low. I wouldn't use Poland as an example, because it is (like other post-Soviet block states) still very much not normal.
I don't know about that. My parents both knew their neighbors very well(which made a lot of sense in times where you'd need a network of people to find some of the more rare goods), while I have no little to no relationship with mine - and I was born just before the previous system collapsed.
I don't deny that people are more lonely now in Poland that they were in socialism. In my opinion, it's the combination of convenience (like you said, people used to need each other for simple things, and now they can just buy everything), alienating electronics entertainment and capitalism, where everyone needs to paddle very hard to get ahead or merely stay afloat. It seemed to me that my parents were happier under socialism than they are now, even though now their material standard of living is greater by like a magnitude.
Regarding trust, I would say there was very little trust in the socialist times as well. You don't need a lot of trust to borrow some salt from a neighbor or even trade a favors (ex. you get me ahead in the queue to buy a car and in exchange I get you access to buying foreign holidays), which is what people mainly were doing in the socialism. You do however need a lot of trust to start a business together. Since in socialism all people were just cogs in the giant socialist machine, they never needed to develop trust towards each other. Now, in capitalism, it's backfiring.
And who would you use?
Countries that didn't have any major plights in the past couple of centuries? Like maybe Switzerland, Scandinavian countries, maybe the US (if we exclude the black population).
> Hell, the loneliest people I know are consistently religious.
I mean I know the exact opposite so I guess our anecdata are at an impass.
This is being down voted but I think there is merit to what you are saying. Personally, I have a strong sense of community being a member of my church. I really consider it an extension of my family. People in the church care (the best they are able) for the needs of the elderly and those in need. There is a big loneliness problem with the elderly. Churches can certainly be a type of safety net.
Of course this isn't the only issue. Modern technology allows people to exist without interacting with another humans physically. This certainly is part of the problem.
> I am not aware of any society that lasted without religion and had strong communal ties.
Take China for example, I don't think it is a country of religion, and on the other hand, I don't think the society lacks communal ties either.
Traditionally, the Chinese society is organized or bonded by ancestry roots. According to [1], people sharing the same ancestry root first formed tribes, tribes then grouped together to form states.
My last name, for example, came from a southern village in China. The village is also named by my last name. The majority people in the village share the same last name as mine, the rest are outside people who married to the village. The entire village can be traced back to a guy who settled there 1000 years ago. Not only they have a temple (or community center) to worship ancestors, they keep a Genealogy book to document the history. And this is just one example, there are many many villages like this.
It’s a bit like the houses in Game of Thrones.
Although, as modernization continues, this organization form is disappearing.
[1] https://yixi.tv/wanxiang/3/8
Take China for example, I don't think it is a country of religion...
You say this, but then go on to describe what is generally understood as a system of ancestor worship.
Religion isn’t mostly — or even necessarily — about theology or beliefs. One of the first realizations of comparative religion scholars was that codified beliefs are a relative rarity.
Just because Chinese folk religion does not line up with American ideals of monotheistic religion does not mean it is not a religion.
Religion was created as a tool to control people and explain natural disasters. It's no coincidence early hierarchies were headed by whatever the priest class was in that particular society, even going back to the first civilizations.
Modern religions (not even all) may be about the bond between practitioners, but that's only because we can explain weather patterns, and the governments of most states don't rely on things like the "mandate of heaven" to function.
>Religion was created as a tool to control people and explain natural disasters.
Mythology and religion also orignally served the role of upholding a unified value system and conception of reality which is critical for social cohesion and survival.
"Since in 2019, you can't say: religion, race, nationality and nation without being labeled one way or another."
I think this implies this has not always been the case, which I don't think is true, at least in my country in USA. People came to America partially to avoid religious persecution. And of course, slaves were also brought to America and a whole field of pseudoscience was created to explore how black people deserved their enslavement.
>think this implies this has not always been the case,
This was the case at least through most of the 20th century. Even in the 50s and 60s when "white flight" was cleaning out the predominantly ethnic urban neighborhoods those people were moving to suburbs where they had a lot in common with most of the people there and the people left in the city had a lot in common with each other.
>People came to America partially to avoid religious persecution
It's worth noting that a lot of those groups were being persecuted for being too hard-line and once in the new world they formed their own little groups and kicked out or hanged anyone who didn't agree perfectly with them. While I think we'd all be better off had certain ships sank, members of fundamentalist cults tend to get to know each other, especially when they're trying to not starve and not get scalped by the natives they started a war with.
>And of course, slaves were also brought to America and a whole field of pseudoscience was created to explore how black people deserved their enslavement.
Shared adversity is arguably the best way to bring people together. Now, before anyone misrepresents me as saying slaves anywhere at any time had it good, I'm not. I'm just saying that chronic loneliness was not a problem they had.
To conclude, having stuff in common brings people together and because of the way society tended to work in the past race, religion, nationality, nation, and other things we pretend don't matter today were strong indicators as to how much you had in common with someone and commonality tends to lead to meaningful interaction and/or friendship which solves loneliness.
Please note explicitly what I had highlighted- in fact, this point validates my claim that it has always been the case that people put each other in buckets and segregated based on identity politics.
Very true. People think of verses like Leviticus 20:13 (homosexuals condemned to death) but forget verses like John 8:7, "Let he who is without sin throw the first stone."
Perhaps one of the most relevant teachings of Jesus is from his Discourse on the Church when he says: "For where two or three gather together in My name, there am I with them." (Matthew 18:20)
I've got to be honest here, it's infuriating to see the extremely basic moral/social principles from the Bible held up on some kind of pedestal like they're a unique or difficult to come by idea. As an atheist I try to be a good person because it is something I innately want to do, not because it was a revelation I had in Bible study. The Bible did not invent "being nice to other people"
You're conflating your viewpoint and choice to be nice to people with atheistic philosophy in general. Imagine the following scenario: alien visitors show up and show the human race that they can cure malaria, cancer, heart disease, and addiction, and that all we have to do in return is sacrifice 100 people worldwide to supply the aliens with subjects for (lethal) medical experimentation to enable this to happen. Atheist philosophy would naturally have to consider the offer, whereas Christian philosophy would immediately reject it.
I think if you really sat down and thought about it you would come up with other moral/ethical scenarios that would land in your personal gray area that would be soundly rejected by Christianity.
Churches have sacrificed people for much less. Given up their principles for not much in return. This is true in the present day. This has been true for the past 2000 years.
In your hypothetical, the Christians would be just as eager for the benefits as anyone else. Let's not pretend Christians, as a group, are somehow more moral than atheists or anyone else. History does not support that contention.
Judeo-Christian values are the basis of the west's moral code. It's so ingrained you may think it's innate. But it's not hard to impress a different set of values if you preach them from birth. People years ago who believed in racial prejudice were not born bad. They believe what they were taught by society. Some were able to overcome this teaching but for the vast majority they just considered these beliefs as facts. That's why its ridiculous to judge a historic figure based on our current moral code.
> The Bible did not invent "being nice to other people"
Yes, it kinda did, at least in Europe. But honestly, as someone coming from a Christian family from India, and seeing that christianity in India plays an outsized role (as in Indian Christians, not foreigners) in social services despite its status as a minority religion, I think it's safe to say that Christianity is uniquely into helping others. A few of our relatives were even jailed for 'marxism' for daring to think the poor ought to be treated with dignity.
Your idea of what's a good person is based on what the world tells you is a good person. I, too, am tempted to think of myself as being inherently good, but if I were born hundreds of years ago, would I really have been so inherently good as to realize how wrong it is to (say) suppress women, when the culture all around me normalized doing so? My temptation is to think "I'm better than that, I wouldn't suppress women", but statistically speaking, almost no-one actually was better-than-that! Trying to be a good person without the guidance of the Holy Spirit is futile. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23)
I was raised Catholic though I have intentionally distanced myself from the church as an adult. There are active aspects to the church’s teachings that our larger society would likely see as negative, if not outright wrong. Your suggestion of female suppression is a good example.
"Not suppressing women" is a really odd issue to bring into the conversation when Christianity is involved.
Are you suggesting I should do a better job of cherry-picking things? I'm not trying to "trick" people with fake cherry-picked Christianity, we're all smarter than that here. It was an example that what's deemed "good" by the world changes from decade to decade.
"Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the torrents raged, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because its foundation was on the rock." (Matthew 7:24-25)
while you could not have changed the social order, you could have treated women with more respect than was the norm, especially your own wife. allowed your daughters to learn what they were interested in instead of forcing them into their assigned roles. these exceptions existed, and you could have been one of them.
Yeah, as someone who was raised in the church but never considered myself very religious, it's a little sad to see people misunderstand that there are two types of churchgoers: those who are dogmatic and superficially faithful and those who take scripture as a dialogue on how to live a good life.
In the 1950's my dad, and his brothers, were constantly assaulted by classmates because they were protestant living in a Catholic town. World War II had just ended, a horrific edifice to nationalism and the Cold War was ramping up. Blacks in the US couldn't even eat at many restauants. How is even close to being more of a problem in 2019?
Maybe being part of a religious organisation helps to ward off loneliness, and maybe being religious helps instill values that help people trust and communicate.
But you still have to believe in some magical being(s), and so do all your mates.
Religion has nothing to do with the loneliness epidemic.
All my young friends are burdened by inflation that has never been addressed by increasing wages to match it.
People cannot see themselves saving for homes and specifically if they have a huge debt from student loans; being conditioned to go to university before the brain has developed. People are under a lot of stress as a result of these problems and loneliness is becoming the product.
Even my Christian friends that go to church are feeling the loneliness epidemic.
People in poverty have had robust social structures and communities since the dawn of civilization
Monotheism was popularized to transcend kinship, in order to raise large armies. Prior, people were fragmented into close-knit tribes up from 100-200 people. They had their own lore and beliefs. Loneliness was not the issue they had, and not what monotheism addressed.
In order to wage warfare and conquer a region with large numbers, you have to convince others to fight for you. This was difficult. It led to the agricultural revolution and bureaucracy through centralization (to pump out more bodies), thus civilization, and the use of religion as a means to bring a larger society together under one banner.
All of which to say, loneliness as the epidemic we understand today is a modern problem. On one hand, the family unit has been decimated, and on the other we're more disconnected from larger society. The nature of work has changed, the way we operate in society has changed. More than just the Church has slipped away.
> Monotheism was popularized to transcend kinship, in order to raise large armies.
When you say that, what are you thinking of? Rome wasn't monotheistic, before it Judaism wasn't really a military powerhouse, and Christianity only really came of power due to it's growing popularity in the Roman Empire. I can't think of an example of an ancient monotheistic empire, and post-classical it's really only Islam and Christianity, and for Christianity at least, that seems to be largely secondary, based upon institutions of a polytheistic past.
I'm jumping ahead on the timeline, yes. Early Roman Empire had a polytheistic religions in common. It expanded its power after monotheism.
Obviously it's possible to have a large, shared polytheistic religion. We still have those today. The religion being a common denominator is more in the spirit of the point I was trying to make. Using a single God as a means to unite people was more palpable to some leaders. Muhammad understood this. The Arabs hadn't scriptures, nor institutions, and he saw the unifying power of Judaism and Christianity. When you have pagans worshiping separate sets of gods, it's less effective to try to politicize "all these are valid", "some of these are valid" and have them follow along.
From the wikipedia entry on religion in ancient Rome - "Even the most skeptical among Rome's intellectual elite such as Cicero, who was an augur, saw religion as a source of social order. As the Roman Empire expanded, migrants to the capital brought their local cults, many of which became popular among Italians. Christianity was in the end the most successful of these, and in 380 became the official state religion. "
> Early Roman Empire had a polytheistic religions in common. It expanded its power after monotheism.
No, it didn’t “expand its power after monotheism”. The Roman Empire didn’t even begin its official flirtation with Christianity until well into the 4th century CE. However, most historians consider the Roman Empire to have been in its waning days then, as it never fully recovered from all the shocks of the 3rd century. The full extent of Rome’s power happened under paganism and well before Christianity was anything more than a small, persecuted sect.
I suppose you could possibly argue for the Eastern Empire? Maybe? But then that's still built upon the core of the original polytheistic structure, and I don't think it's a strong argument that Christianity played into it.
If anything Christianity seems to cause a problem for organized military - after Rome we don't see an organized, professional military for another thousand years. People may think of "the crusades", but let's be honest, the majority of that was really more a rag-tag rabble causing trouble, rather than any sort of organized and united fighting force.
For the Eastern it was arguably 1000 AD. I guess I misspoke. It's religion and not monotheism.
The Origins of Political Order does a better job of conveying what I was attempting to convey.
>it was always about the values and the bond it created between each member of that religion.
Sometimes people formed bonds they shouldn't have and then the religion starts a crusade or two
Are you saying that the modern loneliness epidemic has been deliberately created to prevent this?
Why do we need to "run away" from loneliness? Maybe we all need to spend more time alone AND off the phone to discover what really "makes us tick"? Find yourself, find a mission, find a purpose. Go do something. There is SOOOO much to be done... I mean it.. Like RIGHT NOW. If you don't have a mission.. Bruh... Go get one. Loneliness is simply childish. Children sit around and wish someone would talk to them. Adults go join other adults to make something happen; or they learn to be with themselves. If you can't find happiness within; it's not going to come from you visiting your parents, or seeing your grandchildren, or insert whatever Hallmark phrase you like. Sure being surrounded by people you love when you die will feel nice. But you can truly "rest in peace" if you know you tried your hardest to make a difference (and you actually do!.. Because you actually can...)
Choosing to be alone (isolation) is not the same as loneliness. Honestly, the world has changed a lot, and that might end up not being a big problem in the future; maybe having isolation become more socially accepted wouldn't be that bad.
The problem we are seeing right now is that it looks like everything is moving towards a kind of social-contact-unfriendliness. Too much stress, connection (the expectation of being always reachable, and therefore available for work), busy streets, dominated by cars, big and impersonal chain stores, etc. Many of these are not necessarily bad by themselves, but they also had an important role in social interaction that has shifted now, and we might need time to find new spaces and solutions for that interaction.
> you know you tried your hardest to make a difference
Did you actually do that? For how long?
Have you done this yourself and if so, how successful have you been?
The mind atrophies without enough actual social contact, and also a proven link to more stress and shorter lifespans.
This may seem somewhat out there, very uninformed or misanthropic, but I've been thinking about basic human needs(emotion,ego,the desire for companionship - both spiritual and otherwise) as vestigial evolutionary artifacts. Evolution and the survival of the human race required collaboration, those who did not died and failed to pass on their genes.
In the modern age though, I could argue that close collaboration is not a necessity for survival or even success, and as such why cant a portion of humanity thrive without the need for extensive social contact?
Some portion of humanity can undoubtedly thrive with limited/no social contract, but for the majority of us these "evolutionary artifacts" are still very real and consequently still exert a very real force on our lives.
Until the day comes that we are able to (if we are able to) remove these drives, neglecting them will continue to have deleterious effects.
Because our bio chemistry dictates close human connection, though as always in biology there are exceptions.
You can see the problem here: A national culture that promotes polite restraint, and which actively fends off and forestalls the forming of relationships between strangers, is one that might as well be inviting loneliness on its population.
Let's not forget there are two hazards here. Loneliness is one; the other is the suffocating tyranny of constantly attending to others' ideas and feelings, because attending to your own would be unacceptably disruptive of precious social connectedness. In "A Room of One's Own" Virginia Woolf diagnosed the injustice of a society that reserves the privilege of aloneness to men, and particularly upper class men, while denying it to women (who are supposed to be "selfless") and to a lesser extent the lower classes (who are supposed to be too mindless and animalistic to make anything of solitude.)
Being reluctant to intrude on another's social space is a good thing. It should be joined with skill at inviting others in, and a readiness to respond to that invitation. Let's not shit on people who have solved one half of the problem as if they were inferior to people who have only solved the other half.
Freedoms of being alone:
- no one asking favors
- no obligations
- no emotional BS dumped on you
- no judgements
- no going along with what you don't want to do or opting-out
- no one invading/pushing your boundaries
- no meetings to keep
- fewer liabilities
- no disappointments
- no hierarchy
- more projects and work done
Disadvantages to being alone:
- more stress
- more anxiety
- less potential fun
- less sex
- less humor
- less mental stimulation
- fewer opportunities
- less productivity for big projects
To each, their own; there are many trade-offs and no simple answers. Key question "better together?"
Is this problem more an urban or rural thing? Is it related to any certain age groups? Is the problem stratified by education or occupational categories?
These articles rarely if ever mention the breakdown between men and women. I do believe loneliness is largely something men deal with.
Why?
anecdotally (and not GP), most of the women I am friends with have several good friends in the area where they live and easily make new ones if they ever move to a new place. for many of my male friends, I am the only friend they have in the area.
I don't think I can generalize to entire genders from my experience though. it could simply be that it's easier for introverts to make same-gender friendships, so I only have a set of relatively outgoing women to select friends from.
Could it be that Facebook and social media in general are the cause?
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-face...
"Likes" and reading narcissistic postings probably are not a good substitute for real human contact, and the more people become addicted to social media the less real human contact they are likely to seek. Of course companies like Facebook and Google (YouTube) purposely design their offerings to be addictive and as we know additions can be detrimental to one's mental and physical health.
No. Did you read the OP's article? I'll excerpt a relevant section for you:
Although the current focus on isolation is often described in the media as “the loneliness epidemic,” Robin Hewings, Director of Campaigns, Policy and Research for the U.K.’s Campaign to End Loneliness, warns that for a subjective, self-reported experience like loneliness, “it’s not very easy to make comparisons across time, and it’s not obvious that it’s getting worse.”
While he acknowledges that aging populations mean that there are likely to be a greater number of elderly people around who are suffering from isolation than in previous decades, he also points out that when you look at the percentages of those affected, the trends are harder to discern. “There was some work done in the late 1940s, which would seem to suggest a not dissimilar level to today. This is right at the speculative end,”
It's more of a journalist epidemic - they keep reaching for straw-men to justify their existence.
Talking about loneliness is slightly more interesting than what dress celebrity X wore at event Y. It's just bullshit - at least the dress talk doesn't pretend otherwise, for the most part.
We're living in the greatest time ever. I understand that when you make no money and you're writing articles, it may seem like there is a loneliness epidemic. There isn't - we're doing better than ever. More people are having first world problems than ever. It's great to have those, just talk to someone with a little perspective that you respect for it to rub off on you and go on about your day :)
> We're living in the greatest time ever. I understand that when you make no money and you're writing articles, it may seem like there is a loneliness epidemic. There isn't - we're doing better than ever.
I don't understand how you can claim that with a straight face. Did you read the article?
14% of the UK population say they experience loneliness "often" or "always". 46% of a 20,000 people study in the US reported "sometimes" or "often".
Hundreds of thousands of people in Japan can be classified as hikikomori, living a lifestyle of extreme social isolation. There are similar numbers in most industrialized nations.
Downplaying or ignoring these facts is a terrible disservice to mental health, just as we did for decades with depression. This is indeed a global epidemic and I applaud the UK for introducing health programs to tackle it.
On the contrary, many of the people I've met who most definitely do not have first world problems -- people living in Africa, Southeast Asia, and other destitute parts of the world -- often seem to lead genuinely happier lives than the stressed out existence that is the norm in the US.
Being able to have a cheeseburger delivered on demand does not make up for systematic loneliness and dehumanization. The more I travel, the more perspective I get, the more I think that things have gone deeply wrong here.
Solitude is beneficial for an individual and dangerous for society. Loneliness is dangerous for individual but beneficial for economy. My guess is that "solitude" is the one sounding alarm, not loneliness.
A lot of people who feel lonely, are hardly ever alone. imagine how shitty and uninterested we really are to eachother and ourselves... if we can be together and feel alone at the same time. Stop neglecting yourself, and that will make you stop neglecting others.
My tips: Actively take time for yourself. to get to know yourself and become more aware of yourself. Even if you do not suffer from such symptoms yet, it will be one of the most valuable things you can do for yourself in whatever position or situation you find yourself.
When I go to work there are 500 people in the building, but less than 10 that I consider close enough to care about. That can be zero in different conditions. Having over 7 billion people on the same planet has no impact on loneliness, the discussion is not about physical loneliness.
- Decline of organized religion
- Rise of hyper-mobility
- Rise of the portable screen
- Rise of inequality necessitating more workaholism
- Increase of monopolized corporate media
- Heightened nationalism, xenophobia and politically-polarized, separate realities
are factors which atomize people from each other.
Great list. Can you explain the impact of "Increase of monopolized corporate media" ?
My contribution to the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17794060
I thought the puns in the section titles were quite clever, especially "Lonely Hearts Club: Banned"
.loneliness { position: relative; }
Like all things in life, loneliness is not absolute in origin. Depending on your circumstances, combined with external levers, loneliness is not easy to pinpoint, but there are a few common externalities.
For the blue collar worker you have your typical financial concerns that make you overwork or worry about not having enough work to provide for yourself and or family. Spending time on people is a luxury most people with financial concerns simply cannot afford. If you are lucky you’ll be working too much to be lonely and it’ll only hit you when you have time to catch a breath.
Screen time is certainly a factor but not a cause. It’s a symptom of a sick society with failed systems, infrastructure, architecture, family structures and communities.
Depending where you are in the world, design of your community or should I say the lack of, will play a large role. If it takes a 30 min drive to see a friend be say a 5 minute walk, it becomes easier to remove yourself from face to face interactions.
The constant rise in cost of living puts financial stress on families, which in turn translates to personal stress, health problems, obesity and so on. This fuels a feedback loop that ultimately leaves little to no room for interaction with anyone. The easiest way to medicate that issue is you guessed it, with a screen.
Then you have your constant exposure to media and the team effect of polarization. People are brainwashed by nonstop streaming of irrelevant crap which makes them feel like crap and further remove themselves from society. Add in social media which amplifies all of these effects. The grass is always greener on the other side and this seems especially true through social media lens. Down the depression hole we go which further removes us from interaction.
We make deliberate effort to improve “mobility” and “accessibility” through roads and infrastructure which alienated public transportation projects. If you are lucky to live in a small walkable community, you might stand a chance at running into someone you know to strike up a conversation, but otherwise good luck talking to everyone speeding down a road. Even small rural communities in walkable cities are getting less friendly to foot traffic in certain parts of the world due to vehicle congestion.
Let’s not forget the convenience of online shopping. As awesome as it is, we simply don’t get as much stimulation as we would going outside and seeing people face to face, whether we talk or not is irrelevant.
For kids there are video games. Can’t play? No problem, watch others play. Society norms have changed. In countries like US, depending on where you live, talking to others outside comes across as odd and unwelcoming. We are so concerned about everyone’s need to be left alone that we ignore their silent plea to have anyone take any interest in their life.
Consumer choices have been negatively shaping people to feel more individual. When everything is customized to your liking, it’s hard to think as a group, for the benefit of the collective. This in turn leads to more consumerism, heightened expectations and disappointments when those expectations are not met.
Information has a large role to play in spread of loneliness. Having to choose from thousands of products online vs just getting one or two choices, shapes our expectations. Before, I’d you wanted to buy some nice bed sheets, you’d go to a store and maybe make a day out of it. Go to the mall, eat out, do things with others, relatives, friends. Now you click a button and spend days or hours looking at thousands of search optimized product titles which may or may not have anything to do with what you searched for. All the consumer choices and information like reviews, while seemingly great, just cause more mental fatigue, stress and ultimately contribute to a host of factors, some of which are tied to loneliness.
This is just scratching the surface. My point being, we are brining this onto ourselves in many different shapes and forms.
For me it is a rather paradoxical situation. On the one hand I am a very lonely person and on the other hand I like being alone. When I am alone I tend towards depression and crave social interaction but not all social interaction works. For instance, if I spend a day with my family it is usually great for about 2 or 3 hours and then all I can think about is getting home so I can be by myself again.
For me it is not enough to just be with people. For instance, when I was in HS I would never have characterized myself as a lonely person. I believe that is because those relationships, long forgotten, had serious depth. I also had more confidence when I was younger making my intimate life easier to progress.
However, now a days I have neither and I have lost the confidence to strike up the band. I honestly find it hard to even look a women in the eyes much less ask her for her name and tell her mine. Tbh, even if I was going to force myself to make a new friend I wouldn't know where to start.
Luckily for me I have pretty damn thick skin and have learned to deal with my loneliness, depression and anxiety. That being said, at 32, I find myself feeling as though dying young and alone is a probability. However, I take heart in knowing that it could be worse, for many people are simply dying of starvation and so, on the whole, I am a pretty lucky guy.
If loneliness is a problem that someone else can solve I just don't see how. From my perspective, this is a problem that, like a snowball rolling down a hill, builds up over time and eventually takes on a life of its own.
not paradoxical at all. i went through a similar experience. i found that for me the solution was to have very few but very close friends, including my wife. those then were the only people that i could socialize with without being exhausted. but even then i need a few hours to myself every day.
the hardest part was how long it took to understand the problem. you seem to understand the problem already, and that puts you into the position to do something about it.
you don't need to strike up the band. find activities that you are interested in. a hobby, or volunteer somewhere. the nice thing about both is that you are not expected to do it for the sake of meeting people, so you don't need to push yourself to talk to anyone, and noone will mind if you just focus on the work. the socialization will come eventually. by the time you get to look a woman into the eyes, you may already have shared your activities for a few months or more. i met my wife that way.
At the risk of sounding like a crazy hippy, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that some kind of subsistence-based neighborhoods would be a great option for dealing with this problem.
Not only would it provide some relief from the feeling of being shackled to bullshit jobs for life if you don't want to starve to death, it would also help foster much stronger communities.
Some friends of mine from college and I, while considering our impending matriculation into the housing and job market of LA, conceived of the idea of 'failure house'; a place where we could all live when we failed at life. We still talk about it ten years on, and it has evolved into the idea of 'failure commune'. One of these friends became a lawyer and bought a house in Orange County recently. Traitor.
I just graduated college and am having similar thoughts (but think Bay Area instead of LA). It seems like a great idea but I know of few examples besides full-on communes. Do you know of any examples of living communities or living styles that fall somewhere between living on your own and living on a commune?
Look up online communities dedicated to Homesteading. There also seems to be a movement around "backyard chickens" (i.e. raising small amounts of livestock at an average suburban house).
So far I haven't come across any information on physical communities of homesteaders, although a local community seems like a necessity if you ever want to take a vacation again. Can't really leave crops on their own for very long without them dying, let alone livestock...
Check out co-ops. There was one near Uchicago, my friend lived there with 20 others, mostly not students. They had group dinners every night, cooked by housemates, and always had someone around to chat with. We used to hang there playing games and partying. The vibe was pretty hippie but if you dont mind that, I'd recommend it. The rent was equivalent to sharing a 3 or 4 bedroom but you got a lot more shared amenities and dinners to boot.
My old college roommates and I are purchasing a 4 acre lot. A few of us are ready to put down houses now. I feel like this kind of thing is becoming more common? I know we weren't the first people with this idea. Land and housing is so expensive that we can't all individually own homes, but if we pool money on land this becomes possible. And doesn't everyone want their friends to be their neighbors? We have to develop alternative strategies to make it through the future.
Let him know you're so happy that he bought the first house for the failure commune and tell him when you can move in.
Can't stay Peter Pan forever. Must choose our sacrifices and become Captain Hook.
In many ways universal basic housing makes more sense than universal basic income.
Of course the devil is in the details, how do you avoid it becoming a ghetto. Probably not by putting it in its own neighbourhood.
Or maybe something that's just a little more like a college dorm than an apartment building or a suburb -- neighbors in close proximity that you're forced to attend social events with and get to know.
I feel like we consistently choose the short-term risk aversion of walling ourselves off from neighbors, blind to the long-term damage it does to our society.
I would legitimately rather kill myself than ever live in a dorm.
That's one way to reduce the housing shortage.
That would be a slight over-reaction don't you think?
go back to your farm you dirty hippie
Please don't do this here.
When politicians are staging national interventions to force us to connect with each other — and actually spending real money on the problem — you know it’s a genuine crisis
No. Politicians throwing money at something is not evidence of a crisis.
Can you see that this is an extremely dogmatic view? If society has seemingly agreed that society needs government, part of society needs to actually administer that government.
> Can you see that this is an extremely dogmatic view?
Snuck premise much? I doubt he'd agree that it's dogmatic, nor would I. Governments are certainly needed for certain things, but politicians tend to come up with problems to solve, or try to solve problems which they are not equipped to solve. They aren't really supposed to create a social order so much as a legal one, anyway. Even if the could, I'd see that as disturbingly close to brain-washing...
> Governments are certainly needed for certain things, but politicians tend to come up with problems to solve, or try to solve problems which they are not equipped to solve.
This is why it's dogmatic. You can't agree that there are use cases and then in the same sentence denigrate all the use cases. Or... I guess you can, but...
> They aren't really supposed to create a social order so much as a legal one, anyway.
At the risk of being overly ontological, the legal order arises from the social order, since the law is simply a construct of beliefs that society nominally agrees on.
> Even if the could, I'd see that as disturbingly close to brain-washing...
...And there it is. It's ok to disagree with some things that politicians do. That doesn't mean there aren't good politicians.
> At the risk of being overly ontological, the legal order arises from the social order, since the law is simply a construct of beliefs that society nominally agrees on.
That is a big leap to call those two ontological. Laws represent the beliefs of those that right them, nothing more. I am sure most politicians believe they know the will of their constituents, which is simply another belief. And yes, if a law is egregiously beyond social norms, it is possible that it will be rejected by soceity, but I would argue that is a distinct veto function.
It’s really pretty simple. Politicians have one tool: the hammer that is your tax dollars. So everything they see looks like a nail.
It is if the something genuinely helps people.
It's women, not technology, not anything else. I know this might be downvoted to oblivion, but I have to say it, so at least the truth is where it needs to be.
get a hobby.
The good thing is we can walk next door and meet our neighbor.
It is strange this is an epidemic when it is a problem that seems so easy to solve.
UPDATE: based on responses to my comment it seems the core problem may be closer to home than we like to admit. CS Lewis' book The Great Divorce details this misanthropy, where hell is a product of the residents' own making because they choose to live on their own because they do not like anyone else.
It takes two to tango. If people are not willing to meet people, then what can the one who initiates do?
Find another person. or get a dog.
People occasionally ring my doorbell. I always pretend to not be at home. Clearly, there's a flaw in your solution.
How sad.
Experience has taught me, that nothing good comes from opening the door for unexpected guests. Though, I also neither know the names nor the faces of my neighbors living in the same house as me.
I’m quite good friends with 4/5 of my neighbors. It’d still be rude of me to just knock on their door when I could easily text first to make sure they’re dressed/in the mood for company.
If it matters I’m 40 and they run from 50-70 in age.
I can meet my neighbour, but what if my neighbour doesn't want to meet me? What if my neighbour is more of a problem than a solution? What if attempts to be friendly are counterproductive (usually because some bad motive is assumed) and dangerous (because you make yourself vulnerable, e.g. to sexual predators)?
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic.
This is like saying alcoholism is an easy problem to solve because all they have to do is stop drinking.
Or if you're depressed just think positive thoughts.
It is actually just that easy. It is your own hand takes a glass or bottle and puts it into your own mouth, no one else's. The problem is you are not conscious about it, the same thing about not being willing to make contact with others.
It's simple, not necessarily easy.
I'm amazed at the responses and downvotes to this comment. Is everyone terrified of small talk with their neighbors?
I live in a place where the neighbors are likely to talk about their religion, their football team, their other football team, their kids, their kid's football team, something implicitly racist, something explicitly racist, their job/boss/business (or lack thereof), or their vehicle. I'd only want to hear about two of those things.
I'd prefer to talk about events or ideas, or activities that interest me. It's far easier to join an online discussion already in progress to feel less isolated in South Bumblefart, USA.
I have found that familiarity does sometimes breed contempt, but absence does not always make the heart grow fonder.
It's hard to make friends when you assume you're superior to everyone
im In the same position a lot of the time when meeting new people. It’s not because I feel superior, I just lack interest and any knowledge of sports and cars and most topics that a lot of other people use for small talk.
Now, if they want to talk about that time their fighter gutted an orc with an awesome double crit, I’m all ears, but Cowboys losing to some other team in sportsball, not so much.
Exactly this. Superiority has nothing to do with it.
Some people have uncommon interests or opinions, and may be reticent about sharing them in the absence of some enabling signal, as one can be punished socially just for having them.
It doesn't help that my employer has a mainstream dress code. If I saw an exact copy of myself before or after work, I wouldn't want to talk to it, unless we were in a nerd haven.
I've had too many conversations that bring in early "so what church y'all go to?" or "what's your football team?". The wrong answers can get you a "bless your heart," which seems to be Southern for "fuck off, asshole". Wearing a Chicago Cubs tee-shirt sometimes invites conversation, but my spouse is the fan that live-streams every MLB broadcast that isn't regionally blacked out, and for me it's really more a signal for "I'm from the Midwest." The Chicago skyline on my usual payment card has sometimes unintentionally served the same purpose from restaurant servers and cashiers who are also ex-Chicago-residents.
It's why I'm considering a nerd tattoo, like "e^pi*i=-1" or the Fano plane mnemonic for octonion multiplication, or a space-filling model of my favorite molecule, benzaldehyde.
I live in a big city in the Northeast and 90% of my neighbors barely speak English. I really don't see the point.
You could learn another language yourself. They say it's good for the brain anyway.
No, they feel it's so simplistic it borders on insensitive. This isn't about small talk.
I can't think of a single friendship that didn't start with small talk. I never expect a leap into deep philosophical quandaries with a stranger. Willingness to chitchat about mundane things creates a foundation of trust and familiarity that has led to many deep and meaningful relationships over the years.
It may be the start, but it's facetious to suggest that it is all that is sufficient to form friendships and community.
I agree with you, and never suggested that it is all that is sufficient. It is a foundation from which deeper friendships and community will occur. Knowing someone starts with meeting someone
I think saying "so easy to solve" is a gross over-simplification and insensitive.