How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart • Hacker News Board

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#211

Post by Beefin » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 2:16 AM UTC

yourapostasy wrote: post #57

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…

> ...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 stres…

I think you're conflating "common stressor" with the aspiration of being financially stable, which you're right is a zero-sum game. Your argument breaks down because its relative and finite. Money is finite and having more money than my peer is relative. If every single one of us in the country goes through the exact same experience (ex mandatory draft) then there is no relativism.

I agree in the open challenge but i'm bullish on that challenge being pinned to an objective metric and not relative. If there is something truly that every single American experiences at some point in their life that is adverse in its' nature, then that is the common stressor and that is exactly what would bond us all, lowering lonliness, and depression.

VERY small communities do have this, which is also in Tribes. For example very poverty-stricken neighborhoods in say Baltimore all go through similar hardships. They are among the least alone people, mentally because of this shared hardship (but also because they rely on eachother but that's another point).

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#212

Post by Beefin » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 2:19 AM UTC

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…

While I do agree with your thought that transient communities are more lonely because they have no true community. I disagree in that I think diversity has powerful mechanisms that breeds unique experiences, which is arguably the universal joy of life.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#213

Post by npunt » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 2:51 AM UTC

ellius wrote: post #109

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 anno…

Good insight, I agree the workplace is that sort of extended tribe, and as people switch jobs more frequently its replaced with a more vague 'industry' concept that is too diffuse and large to fulfill that smaller tribal association.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#214

Post by dorchadas » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 5:07 AM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #91

This is weird to me because I feel like it's easier than ever to have a social life. Looking on Facebook, Meetup, etc. I can easily find local groups that match my interests. There's a local Ruby group, gaming groups, tennis and other casual sports leagues, and so on. Social media is actually pretty cool for that when used judiciously. My wife and I -- despite not being particularly glamorous or anything -- actually…

I don't think the issue is having a social life, though. It's more that a lot of those interactions are very superficial and often center around one thing. In general, people aren't making very meaningful, long-lasting connections with those people. At least, that's been the experience at the few meetups I went to. Now, I've gotten lucky with a boardgame group which has some great people that I now hang out with outside of the group (after a few months of going), but in general most of the interactions from there just feel so light. Which is fine, if that's what you're looking for (and it often is; I just wanna play games, not necessarily make great friends, though I'm glad I did with this group), but I feel that being lonely often makes people want more.

I do wonder if you being married has anything to do with how you perceieve that? I'd expect that it does, since you two have each other for companionship.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#215

Post by dorchadas » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 5:10 AM UTC

Dowwie wrote: post #157

the article concludes with the point that it ought to have started with -- you have to be the change you wish to see in the world

The only issue with that is when everyone else is still hooked to the reasons for loneliness (culture, phones, etc; there's a lot of them). It's gotten to the point where there's almost nobody for you to interact with anymore, and I fear it's just going to get worse as younger and younger kids get phones and grow up with phones and not having to interact socially.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#216

Post by sgt101 » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 7:52 AM UTC

Probably far too late to comment on this, but it struck me that the relationship between loneliness and privacy is not well explored. Does anyone know where there is any research about this ?

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#217

Post by tomjen3 » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 1:13 PM UTC

tivert wrote: post #161

tnecniv wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But cities provide you with a means to find a community if you really want one. It's a lot harder and/or less convenient to find groups that do what you like to do if you live in a suburb.

> But cities provide you with a means to find a community if you really want one. It's a lot harder and/or less convenient to find groups that do what you like to do if you live in a suburb. I think there's a problem with equating community with "groups that do what you like." That sounds like a definition that's been infected by the "personalization" the npunt was talking about in his first note. Real communities ha…

Sure, that has historically been the case.

I will argue that communities of space is always inferior to communities of interest. We can see that historically when those communities of interest are big enough, they spend most of their time together, buy in their own shops, etc.

With the current state of society, it is a lot easier to create smaller groups, provided you have a big enough base to work with.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#218

Post by tomjen3 » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 1:24 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #63

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…

> An incredible point made was that Israel has the lowest suicide 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. The second part would explain bigger empathy/cohesion (the have a common stressor), not less suicide. I'd say it's rather that the draft can make you see often BS pers…

I could easily make the opposite argument: after being forced to spend so much time with $OUTGROUP and (pretend) to tolerate them, you want nothing whatsoever to do with them again.

Basically good friends makes good neighbors.

Given that both your argument and mine seams reasonable, is there some test we can do to figure out which belief is going to pay rent?

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#219

Post by JohnBooty » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

dorchadas wrote: post #214

JohnBooty wrote: post #91

This is weird to me because I feel like it's easier than ever to have a social life. Looking on Facebook, Meetup, etc. I can easily find local groups that match my interests. There's a local Ruby group, gaming groups, tennis and other casual sports leagues, and so on. Social media is actually pretty cool for that when used judiciously. My wife and I -- despite not being particularly glamorous or anything -- actually…

I don't think the issue is having a social life, though. It's more that a lot of those interactions are very superficial and often center around one thing. In general, people aren't making very meaningful, long-lasting connections with those people. At least, that's been the experience at the few meetups I went to. Now, I've gotten lucky with a boardgame group which has some great people that I now hang out with outs…

    at the few meetups I went to

I feel you, but I think any interaction would be light and superficial the first one or three or ten times, wouldn't it?

But I think what you said does feel really true. If a group meets once a month, it would take ages to form some real bonds, and people are popping in and dropping out all of the time, so it's hard to know which of the people would even be people you'd want to "invest" in, in terms of putting in the effort to get to know them better.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#220

Post by filesystemdude » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 7:23 PM UTC

It's interesting to me that among the HN readership, the majority of the conversation here is either "This is true because it matches my experience." or "I had a different experience and therefore this is false."

Cities and suburbs (and rural places too, for that matter) all fall on a spectrum, and probably a bell curve. People do too. I think too many of us expect happiness to come from the place we're in magically, as if it takes no effort to find it. You still have to work to connect with people no matter where you live, However, this doesn't invalidate the contribution that certain build environments make to loneliness.