How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

I was going to make an example out of these interactions..

My experience is that in smaller towns you see the same store clerks, mailmen, and other service people again and again and they will recognize you. Some will have a little chat with you, and you get to talk about your life every once in a while, even if just a little. That kind of daily interaction is a heck of a lot more than one might have living in the isolation of a big city where the same service people are too busy serving too many faces to really recognize or chat with you. For a total loner, it could mean a lot.

Starbucks is a very interesting part of this.

It’s success in the 90’s and early 2000’s was largely due to it being a “third place” — the place where people would gather outside of home or the office. It was very social. Very much like the way the corner bar used to serve the same function in decades past.

But then Starbucks decided it didn’t want people hanging around in the stores so much, in order to make room for more merchandise and to increase churn. They were reconfigured to make people go in, spend their money, and then just go. Or worse — use the drive-thru.

I actually met the person responsible for the furniture at Starbucks stores. This was right about when the stores got rid of comfy, squishy chairs and went to those tall, spindly metal backless stools. I asked her how anyone was supposed to sit comfortably on those things for a long period of time. She didn’t have an answer, and then the corporate PR guy stepped in.

She was a small person of Asian descent and, IMO, had designed Starbucks’ furniture for herself and her circle, which fit nicely into Starbucks’ density goals. To me, it seemed like it never occurred to her that people of statistically average size, or even fat people, should be made comfortable in the stores.

If you were a frequent visitor of Starbucks in the 00’s, you’ll remember it was right about then that the coffee chain went from being a neighborhood fixture to just another corporate outpost.

When you sculpt your country as a dog-eat-dog community go cry on someone else's shoulder. If you feel that social structures like in Europe are too socialist of communist for your taste you lost the discussion before you started it.

That sounds like a old, outdated stereotype from a 1990’s cartoon.

Many (most?) American cities of any size have spent the last 20-25 years trying hard to make their cities more pedestrian friendly. Some even require that any new building over xx floors have street-level retail or other gathering places in order to make urban life more vibrant.

Unfortunately, success is scattered. It’s a chicken-and-egg problem. But as more people move to cities, things seem to be improving.

The non-PC argument here is that diversity directly opposed to community, and I think there's some truth to it. If everyone in an area has lived there for their entire lives, it doesn't really matter if it's apartment buildings, a small high-density European-style town, or suburbs. If the rate of migration in/out is low enough, newcomers assimilate, assuming the society is welcoming and they interact.

There are lots of places where immigration (both within the US and internationally) is very high, and where people often only intend to live for a while for work, so there's not much in the way of community, and people don't make much of an investment in building institutions (beyond their immediate household and workplace).

It's ok in technology or other well-connected professions (because I probably care more about my interactions online and at conferences with the ~200 or so security people from around the world that I closely follow, vs. anyone from my home town or where I've ever physically lived), but for anyone else, it probably sucks a lot. The only culture I've ever seen which seems to deal with that level of constant migration in anything approaching a functional way is the military, and there it's due to an overarching identity, lots of highly artificial forms of identity (the "unit", rivalries, etc.), and lots of traditions and institutions actively encouraged.