How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart • Hacker News Board

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#101

Post by forrestthewoods » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 3:16 PM UTC

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…

In my experience cities are vastly more lonely and isolating than suburbs and rural communities.

In rural communities everyone knows everyone. People talk to each other. People help each other.

This is especially true in Seattle. The Seattle Freeze is very real.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#102

Post by yhoneycomb » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 3:18 PM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #32

clarry wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not believe people are leaving small towns because they can't watch anime or whatever. They're leaving small towns because small towns are not the place to look for education and work. Idk what constitutes small in your book. I grew up in towns of around 10k to 23k people. Had no trouble being a nerd, playing video games, reading, watching anime, coding. Now I'm in a city an order of magnitude larger, and more l…

I grew up near a town of 1200 that was 30km from a city of 20k. I was considered odd for enjoying reading but luckily went to a feeder high school of 1500 kids so met up with fellow geeks. 10k is not a small town.

The oneupmanship going on here is ridiculous. Both towns are incredibly small to me.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#103

Post by wenc » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 3:20 PM UTC

davidlee1435 wrote: post #64

Beefin wrote: post #38

The 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…

It's interesting that Junger points to a mandatory draft as an example. Two counterpoints to that would be South Korea and Lithuania, which also have mandatory drafts and high rates of suicide per capita.

It seems to me that both you and the OP are correct.

SK has a high level of social cohesion because of the threats it is under (militarily: NK, economically: China, Japan). Military service also creates a temporarily high degree of social cohesion among conscripts.

Yet, it also has a high rate of suicide due to it being a competitive, high-pressure society.

I'm guessing high social cohesion does not in itself lead to lower suicide rates.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#104

Post by ido » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 3:20 PM UTC

tokyodude wrote: post #93

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…

Interesting that the my image is the exact opposite. Downtown no one talks to each other. They live in fancy apartment buildings and go out to their events. In the Suburbs, neighbors have BBQs, block parties. I knew all the people around the house when I lived in the suburbs. The Garys next door with their bull dog and their daughter Diane living in a detached apartment above the garage. The Alberas with a farm in th…

I think you may be confusing being a child/adult (or having kids/childless) vs suburb/urban. We live in an apartment in an urban but not central part of Berlin and we know plenty of neighbours, especially since having kids.

How many childless adults do you remember taking part of these suburban activities/communities?

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#105

Post by yhoneycomb » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 3:21 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #44

nroets wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starbucks is not locked up by money. On my recent trip to the US, I encountered quite a few (homeless) people in there who came to charge their phones and they got ice water for free.

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…

>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.

Could you elaborate more on why you believe this? Seems a little out there to me.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#106

Post by ziont » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 3:21 PM UTC

I used to be lonely, I used to want to belong to a group, I used to want an identity.

Then I realize these desires are causing suffering.

Through meditation and medical marijuana, I've been able to free myself and realize, these are the artifacts of our Tribalistic nature.

But we live in a modern world, access to everything except the ones our ancestors used to value. I've come to enjoy solitary more and more.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#107

Post by baursak » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 3:21 PM UTC

Beefin wrote: post #38

The 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…

Did he account for a religious population which thinks that suicide is a major sin?

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#108

Post by wolco » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 3:23 PM UTC

No one talks about the irrational fear of talking to strangers. We are lonier because we have been taught to not trust.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#109

Post by ellius » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 3:25 PM UTC

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…

My armchair opinion is that the middle ground / something missing is characterized by a few things that used to be somewhat fulfilled by the workplace:

1. Tribal feel: 100-200 individuals not your immediate family.

2. Pursuit of some shared goal. When we were still nomadic hunter-gatherers, this was probably as simple as shared survival.

3. Forced interaction and cooperation. If you can flee at the first sign of annoyance, you're never required to develop deeper bonds with the people from #1 if they are even remotely irritating to you and can just opt out of getting to know them.

Work probably fulfilled a lot of these requirements when people stayed at one place for decades. Even if people came and went, there was some stable group of people that you were stuck with in pursuit of a common goal. I suspect this held even in the face of industrialization and the formation of massive corporations. Now, though, people move around so much that the workplace feels extremely impermanent and fleeting. In some ways I think that may be a good thing. The "community" you get from work has probably always been false. But I believe it did serve a psychological need, and as that's degraded I think you're seeing a lot of unhappiness result.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#110

Post by sgt101 » Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

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…

The need for and convenience of cars. Public transport promotes community, but cars isolate - in particular children. I daren't let my daughter ride down the lane on her bike, so she's trapped.