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How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

nytimes.com

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Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#151

Post by grawprog »

wenc wrote: post #129
grawprog wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eq…

> If only because most people would say hi or smile even if you didn't know them as they walk past you. Ooh, this is highly dependent on the city you live in, and the neighborhood you're in. I've visited many/lived in a few cities in the U.S. and Canada, and hi/smiles are actually not that uncommon, especially in the midwest, the south and in Canada. It depends on the context of course. No one will greet you on a bus…

I'll agree it depends on location. I'm comparing vancouver to other small towns in bc where i've lived.

And after thinking a little more on things i'm not too sure how I really feel now. Before I moved to the city I had a decent group of friends I was close with and I.knew enough people I could usually find someone to talk to or hang out with.

In the city i've met lots of different people, some i've gotten fairly close with then drifted apart from, others that I still feel close with nut don't see or talk to very often but never really friends like I had before or that feeling of knowing the people around.

But, after you mention the stuff about talking to cashiers or other people I started to think about all the people I do actually know and talk to on a regular basis, who's lives I know a fair bit about and there's lots of them. Just about every store or coffee shop or similar place I go regularly there's people I know fairly well and have conversations with. There's people on the bus I see most days i'll sit and talk with, and I even end up talking with random strangers a fair bit.

But they still just come and go, they're not really friends i've never really felt since i've lived out here that there were people I could just call up or that I knew would just be around.

I'm sorry I'm not sure where i'm going with this. This all has just made me think a lot about different things and people from over the years.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#152

Post by Baeocystin »

black-tea wrote: post #111

It's possible that what we're witnessing is behavioural sink[0]. It's been observed in other mammals that overcrowding leads to social degradation and eventual total failure of the population. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink

I used to live in Montana, on the outskirts of a small town. There were few enough people around that it was trivially easy to take 10 minutes getting even further out of town and find yourself at a trailhead that hadn't been used in months.

My point is that if you did wind up seeing someone else, it made you happy in a way that just doesn't happen when you live in a more densely-populated area. And this coming from someone who is in general a rather reclusive introvert. But it was a good feeling to live at such a density that seeing other folks was essentially always a positive.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#153

Post by WaltPurvis »

baursak wrote: post #123
WaltPurvis wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel is one of the least religious countries on earth. A much smaller percentage of Israelis are religious than are Americans or the populace of Muslim nations, and Christianity and Islam also generally consider suicide a sin.

> Israel is one of the least religious countries on earth Not according to this Gallup poll: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_coun...

Huh… well, according to this Gallup poll Israel is indeed "Among the Least Religious Countries in the World":

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-china-among-least-religious-n...

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#154

Post by danso »

clarry wrote: post #135
JackFr wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I think I'd rather get to know the neighbors over at the adjoining castle than the scum in these neighboring flats. Don’t worry — I’m sure the scum feel pretty much the same about you.

> Don’t worry — I’m sure the scum feel pretty much the same about you. Quite possible, and that's part of the point I'm making. There's no communality, everyone just wants to have as little to do with their neighbor as possible. Even if it turns out that quite a few of these neighbors (me included) do not throw parties, do not smoke inside, do not drink and fool around, do not have loud kids or animals, do not throw…

YMMV. I got to know my neighbors in my 5-unit building in NYC, as well as the owners/managers of the restaurants and shops next door. The advantage the city has over suburbia is the density. I don’t have to get in a car to see any of my neighbors, we’re more or less forced to see each other on any given walk.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#155

Post by tnecniv »

sethammons wrote: post #82
booleandilemma wrote: post #51

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.

I think it is the type of people in your circles. Social elite, east coast, etc is where I hear that sentiment. I grew up poor. The only one-upsmanship I recall was in story telling or joking. Now as a well off adult, my social circle is much smaller, and since I just moved, it is about zero, but I've not seen this competition from my cohorts at work.

This is the same thing I experienced and I grew up in a wealthy east coast neighborhood. The parents were more competitive than their kids. Since high school, all of my close friends have come from wildly different economic positions.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#156

Post by AnimalMuppet »

rubidium wrote: post #76
solatic wrote: post #29

Earlier 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…

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,…

I second someguydave's comment. More broadly, could you tell us a bit about your community? What principles is it based on? What is the lifestyle there? How is it organized? What do people do there? Is it open to newcomers?

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#158

Post by tnecniv »

tekla wrote: post #130
astura wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most "friendships" with people you work with feel like this. Try spending time with people you don't work with.

I have friends by the sheer fact that we went to HS together and ended up in the city. If I didn't have that, I would have no friends at all. How the hell do people make them?

Find some way to engage with your hobbies publicly. Hell, even go to a (preferably small) bar you like alone and talk to people.

All my friends moved out of the city I was in and that's how I supplemented my social life until it was time for me to move on as well.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#159

Post by closeparen »

harrumph wrote: post #121
black-tea wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The language might seem harsh to you, but you'd understand it if you'd ever lived with or near such people.

>The language might seem harsh to you, but you'd understand it if you'd ever lived with or near such people. I understand it perfectly well, I've lived in densely populated cities my whole life. It's a naked display of something called misanthropy and it's a core tenet of an ethos of self-obsession plus empathy absence that persons in technology AND lifelong US suburbanites far, far too often are afflicted with. Zero…

Yeah, you’ve clearly never had bad neighbors. Be grateful for that, but it doesn’t give you the right to tell others that the real problem is their frustration.
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