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How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

nytimes.com

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Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#71

Post by watwut »

My impression is that many people sneer at the things that are necessary for building relationships or consider them lazy/stupid/etc. Things like doing or not doing thing just because others like it. Things like going home to familly instead of staying late. Coordinating with friends to help each other - you are supposed to be individual. Or just socializing without networking or other practical gain.

You are supposed to work 70 hours a week and change job every two years and be aggressive in pursuing own goals. It makes for a good economy, but also for loneliness as there is no space for trust and relationships building.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#72

Post by Invictus0 »

I'm curious to see if there are any statistics on loneliness and race. I often see the black people in my city sitting on porches and benches in the evening and chatting with each other; it seems like a very nice community and something I wish I could have been a part of growing up. Same thing with the Latino community: in my mom's country, people still practice an open door policy among friends, still gather around the TV and scream at the sports players for hours. There is no white community so to speak: people today would probably say that's racist. But I think a lot of white people remember the "it takes a village" days, the days before we decided to demonize anyone that let their kids out of their sight, when television was just becoming affordable.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#73

Post by softwaredoug »

coldtea wrote: post #69
softwaredoug wrote: post #61

I’m highly skeptical. There’s only one piece of data cited in the article. In that data, the only mention of a possible trend is this > shows that loneliness is worse in each successive generation. Basically if you read the linked to report, the data show older people are less lonely than younger people right now. That’s not the same as showing loneliness increasing over time. There are many plausible reasons for you…

> Couldn’t it be that younger people are always lonelier than older generations? The article doesn't merely say that "younger people are lonelier than older generations", but that successive generations are lonelier than those previously...

If you click through to the underlying report, it shows loneliness rates by generation groupings as of right now. So what is a Gen Zer experiencing with loneliness now. What is a baby boomer experiencing.

It doesn’t show what age groups reported 10 or 20 years ago with with same survey.

So the data shows at this instant younger people are lonelier. But that may have always been true.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#74

Post by igravious »

shawn wrote: post #20
igravious wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's bull, political anger is being caused by ever growing income and wealth disparity – only an oblivious moron or someone who is happy with the status quo would be blind to that. edit: to all those flagging and downvoting: my comment wasn't at @nabla9 it was directed at the assumptions in the NY Times article. It's very convenient for writers at the so-called newspaper of record to ignore the huge transfer in wea…

only an oblivious moron or someone who is happy with the status quo would be blind to that. You’ve been here eight years. Do not talk like that on HN. You know this. Take a chill pill and a walk.

As you said, I've been here eight years. Ergo, I don't need a lecture from you about HN etiquette.

I politely decline your offer of a medicinal coolant and a perambulation. I shall express myself howsoever I see fit. Good day sir!

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#75

Post by [deleted] »

cylinder wrote: post #26

I blame this on the built environment of the US. Nothing is human scale or people oriented. It's commerce and cost oriented. Very few independent shops in most cities. No concept of a high street or village of shops, no public square, nothing. I'm referring to the post WW2 America. Obviously, you'll find these things in the old core of New England and parts of the South.

[deleted]

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#76

Post by rubidium »

solatic wrote: post #29
npunt wrote: post #17

Suburbs are structurally lonely (your own castle with as little reliance on others as possible), and only ‘work’ when paired with other sources of community. Those sources are disappearing for a variety of reasons but the transfer from physical -> digital, communal [1] -> personalized, eating out -> eating in [2], public space -> private space, friend time —> media time all add up. We also don’t have strong culture a…

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…

I live in a Christian community focused on in-common living.

Community requires commitment to stick things through. Having a common vision is important. More important is having the commitment to sticking with it, and relationship tools to help keep friendships intact in tough times.

Some key tools:

-right speech: no gossip, slander, or negative humor

-forgiveness: saying I’m sorry when offending or harming someone, and having real forgiveness

-making agreements: specific commitments that, when times are tough or good, the group can rally around.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#77

Post by robinsloan »

rdl wrote: post #50

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…

Internal migration in the U.S. has fallen consistently since the 1980s; more people today live closer to where they were born than they did in previous decades. And in most places in the U.S. -- certainly, the places captured by this loneliness survey -- the number of brand-new migrants is tiny relative to that population of people who were born there.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#78

Post by rdl »

carbocation wrote: post #56
rdl wrote: post #50

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…

> 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…

Transience and migration are probably a separate issue from immigration-from-lots-of-diverse-backgrounds, but you often get both together.

The coastal/successful/etc. cities have these problems leading to lack of community; there are other parts of the US (and world, presumably) where it's just despair due to economic and social collapse. Not knowing/caring who my neighbors are in a big city, but we're all doing economically OK, is probably preferable to a town where everyone has been together for a long time but half of the people are unemployed, half are opiate addicts, and no one really has much hope for the future.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#79

Post by chrisseaton »

bragh wrote: post #9

There is a good reason why people are escaping small towns. If you are even a little bit outside of the mold, such as being into reading instead of cars as a guy, you will be ostracized by a huge part of the community. And may God have mercy on you if you are into the really weird stuff, such as liking programming, tinkering with electronics or anime.

Do people on HN really believe that people in smaller towns don’t read?

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#80

Post by GavinMcG »

tezka wrote: post #40
clarry wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is just mine, and I am European. I believe it is informative to spell it out in a discussion that points fingers at the (American) suburb.

your statement sounds like this is a point of view taken by the majority of people who live in Europe. Simple facts about the number and density of cities through out the history of the continent point to the exact opposite.

And they already told you they didn't mean it that way. Maybe listen to them, adjust your expectations, and move on?
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