I’ve lived in the US my entire life, and I’ve come to feel like American society is one big competition to be more well-off than everyone else. Does anyone else feel this way?
I think this is why I have difficulty making friends.
How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart
51–60 of 222 posts
Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart
#52The 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…
If this is true, I’d expect loneliness to be higher in diverse urban centers and lower in rural areas. Is this the case? Anecdotally I’ve notice the opposite... that diverse urban areas are less lonely and isolating.
Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me play devil's advocate for a moment: Is there any hard data that proves that people are becoming increasingly tribal? Perhaps the number of radicals is the same like it was 20 years ago, but the internet and social media now give those radicals a voice. Because of this it feels like we are becoming increasingly tribal, when in reality we're not. Similar to how the crime rates are going down, but most folks thin…
The number of radicals might be the same, but the internet gives these existing radicals a much easier way to establish communities than before. As far as I know it's an accepted fact within social psychology that groupthink causes radicals to become more radical, which could suggest that even if the number of radicals is the same, these same radicals might become more extreme.
In the past without electronics there were multiple large groups radical enought to be violent, organize loud disturbing marches, attacked those organizing marches and so on.
I am not sure things were calmer back then.
Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I lived on a kibbutz after college. It has its own set of problems. The closer you live to people, the more politics enters the picture. The less money there is to go around, the more that politics revolves around the relatively financially trivial. You can't force people to like each other just because they live in close proximity. The problem isn't finding people with shared interests and values, it's in building r…
The kibbutz (or kibbutz inspired) idea my friends and I have discussed is more about finding people you like and then forming it. I can definitely see it having downsides if you’re not actively involved in its formation.
That’s great, but then you’ll start backsliding on the “diversity and inclusion” scale. I think it’s a constant trade off. As individuals with preferences, humans can’t help but form in groups and out groups.
Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart
#55America is being torn apart and loneliness is a side effect.
The culture wars. The gender wars. The importing of people from third world cultures. The inbalanced economy. The stagnant wages. The drug epidemic.
The US is in a long slow decline into a low trust society. I can now buy my way into nice places and largely myself from the effects. But I grew up poor and old my friends and the rest of my family are not so lucky. I’ve seen what happens to the poor and middle class in America and I only see it getting worse for the foreseeable future.
Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart
#56The 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…
> 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
What you're describing doesn't really fit with the broader concept of immigration, which has more of a long-duration/permanent settlement aspect to it. But, I can certainly imagine that any place which is just a temporary destination for people would have a hard time becoming a real community.
Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart
#57The thesis from Sebastian Junger’s book Tribes esplains it best: when a community has a common stressor, that strengthens the social cohesion. An incredible point made was that Israel has the lowest sucide rate of all the third world countries, and guess what he attributes it to? Mandatory draft. The common stressor that every single countryman can empathasize with each other about is war. While it sounds depressing…
> ...do we as a nation, state, city or even neighborhood have a common stressor with each other?
I think "common stressor" might be too broad a term. We certainly do have a common stressor: make more money (leaving aside Banks' adage "Money is a sign of poverty"). Except we've evolved narratives around money that tend towards zero sum outlooks, and that doesn't bind us together, so that isn't the kind of common stressor you are describing.
The factor that appears to set apart the kind of common stressor you describe is an empathic quality experiencing the stressor together imbues upon the group. This is why external stressors are so quickly seized upon by politicians of all stripes (not just formal politicians, but also managers). Why the group cannot bond over overcoming common human frailties and insecurities ("will I be liked" type insecurities), is an open challenge.
Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart
#58The atomisation of society goes back a long way, however, I believe that the era of atomised society we now know was ushered in by Reagan and Thatcher. What changed then was stranger danger. With schemes such as 'Neighbourhood Watch' (in the UK) people saw strangers as potential threats, just there wanting to break in, steal the VHS player and sell it for heroin. Strangers were not welcomed as visitors, that was not…
Thatcher, a despicable witch, once said: "they [the homeless etc] are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first"[0]
A Selfish Gene, atomistic, self-centered worldview, one which precludes all prediction, modelling and appreciation of collective behaviour of the kind that emerges in complex networks like society.
It's a simplistic, neat, well-partitioned model that's easy to communicate and understand, and it totally fails to model real life.
Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart
#59The 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…
If this is true, I’d expect loneliness to be higher in diverse urban centers and lower in rural areas. Is this the case? Anecdotally I’ve notice the opposite... that diverse urban areas are less lonely and isolating.
Yes. The stereotype of a big city is that it’s cold and impersonal (and it can be).
On the other hand, it affords you more opportunity to meet people of like-mind.
Loneliness can be pretty bad in rural areas if you don’t fit into the community.
Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart
#60The 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…
If this is true, I’d expect loneliness to be higher in diverse urban centers and lower in rural areas. Is this the case? Anecdotally I’ve notice the opposite... that diverse urban areas are less lonely and isolating.
Personally, I find life in my culturally diverse city lonelier than when I lived in a small rural town. If only because most people would say hi or smile even if you didn't know them as they walk past you. In the city you tend get glared at or even have people act open hostile as they walk by. People seem to be less open to random conversation or just meeting strangers in general. More people around doesn't always equal less loneliness.