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An Epidemic of Loneliness in America?

nytimes.com

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Re: An Epidemic of Loneliness in America?

#61

Post by goldfeld »

yellowbuilding wrote: post #56
tootahe45 wrote: post #48

I know it's opinion, but it's hard to take the NYT seriously when the writers always blame Republicans where politics is almost completely irrelevant.

Maybe. A friend who I spoke to for the first time in a long time made a pretty good point to me the other day. Neither of us are liberals, btw. Both of us are into so many of the same things. We just have different careers, and we are approximately equally jealous of eachother’s careers. We talked about what we have been doing while feeling lonely and we each had different stories of why we were not able to spend tim…

> We don’t have the privacy to have a multifaceted life without feeling like some fraud.

You hint at the answer, that aside from financial obligations nothing stands in the way of finding who you really are but yourself. Once a person finds confidence in expressing their true desires and aspirations, others take notice and start valuing and admiring the person, like in everything else it's a herd/popular mentality where anyone will appreciate it so long as others do but specially so long as the subject does. The road is of course winding tortuous with self-doubt, (more) loneliness as everyone else is just trying to conform and flak from society until the breakthrough years. But being a trendsetter is not much more than finding what are your particular trends for this existence, so to say. Only I can hold myself back emotionally, ultimately. Though yes, maybe attempts fail with nothing to show for it (even though wisdom may be worth more than a big salary as one ages) but I still think it's worth trying, really putting your heart into those attempts. The focus on people being specialists and not generalists (specially in more than one area of knowledge) makes the situation worse for sure.

Re: An Epidemic of Loneliness in America?

#62

Post by Pamar »

kr4 wrote: post #7

Yogic view of loneliness (and ways to overcome it) is quite different from our contemporary ideas. http://omswami.com/2018/10/loneliness.html

Interesting, thanks. I will add this to my own article on this (featured already on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17794060) - Looks like loneliness (in the sense of "being alone") is more or less inescapable, the trick is to transform it in Solitude, in the sense of "being content even when alone".

Re: An Epidemic of Loneliness in America?

#63

Post by austincheney »

ausbah wrote: post #17
smnrchrds wrote: post #10

For me, the most interesting thing about all these loneliness articles is how often they make it to HN's first page. It says more about HN/tech community then America as a whole.

Maybe it has something to do with the role technology plays in this issue.

Screen time, including social media, is not human interaction time. Hacker news is about the extent of my social media.

Re: An Epidemic of Loneliness in America?

#64

Post by factsaresacred »

> Loneliness, however, is a symptom of large changes in society, many caused by policies that Republicans have pursued over decades.

What neurosis is one suffering that loneliness has to be pinned on the political party one dislikes? I don't understand how Americans can wade through media so thick with political bias. It's exhausting and increasingly permeates everything.

And if Republicans are to blame, as the author insists, then so too are Democratic policies of changing demographics at such a pace as to erode social trust. Not to mention the constant assault for merely belonging to a majority demographic. Tell people in despair that they're too "privileged" to opine, on the one hand, and that their days are numbered, on the other, and they begin to feel strangers in a strange land.

Re: An Epidemic of Loneliness in America?

#65

Post by taway_1212 »

yellowbuilding wrote: post #56
tootahe45 wrote: post #48

I know it's opinion, but it's hard to take the NYT seriously when the writers always blame Republicans where politics is almost completely irrelevant.

Maybe. A friend who I spoke to for the first time in a long time made a pretty good point to me the other day. Neither of us are liberals, btw. Both of us are into so many of the same things. We just have different careers, and we are approximately equally jealous of eachother’s careers. We talked about what we have been doing while feeling lonely and we each had different stories of why we were not able to spend tim…

Can you give examples of friends losing “everything” when following their dreams? What happened?

Excellent comment BTW.

Re: An Epidemic of Loneliness in America?

#66

Post by dang »

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #42
jackthrow1 wrote: post #6

I am not an american. But i have no one in my life. And unlike that 16 years old who feels lonely although she/he is in fact "surrounded by nice people", i am not surrounded by anyone. The funny thing is half an hour ago i wrote about what Ive been already knowing for a good decade: people are small coin. Bargaining chip. They come and go. What a coincidence. I decided to reiterate that because some situation reminde…

I would bet money that you are all talk and no game. I know people who talk like this and think like this but when it comes to actually doing, they cower. Proof or bs.

Personal attacks are not ok on HN, regardless of how wrong or annoying another comment is. Please don't make the threads worse by posting like this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: An Epidemic of Loneliness in America?

#67

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

baddox wrote: post #46
jackthrow1 wrote: post #6

I am not an american. But i have no one in my life. And unlike that 16 years old who feels lonely although she/he is in fact "surrounded by nice people", i am not surrounded by anyone. The funny thing is half an hour ago i wrote about what Ive been already knowing for a good decade: people are small coin. Bargaining chip. They come and go. What a coincidence. I decided to reiterate that because some situation reminde…

I have the tendencies to feel and act similar to what you describe, but I think these tendencies can often be harmful and I often try to resist some of them. Feel free to contact me if you ever want to talk about this and other randomness with a kindred spirit. My email is in my HN profile and my Twitter is the same as my HN username.

Heads up, your HN profile is blank.

Re: An Epidemic of Loneliness in America?

#68

Post by Zelmor »

BurningFrog wrote: post #32
humanrebar wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make new friends of all ages all the time. At church. It does provide "proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other". And not by coincidence. One of the major goals of church is to help people form healthy and significant relationships (that is, friendships).

Yeah, as an atheist, the weekly unforced meetup you guys have is the one thing I do envy. I wonder how many of the churchgoers secretly have no real faith and are only there for the company...

Half, I'd say.

Re: An Epidemic of Loneliness in America?

#69

Post by clarry »

stickfigure wrote: post #24
RickJWagner wrote: post #16

I don't think it'll get better any time soon. When I was a teenager, I couldn't wait to start driving. That led to hanging out at the town bowling center with a group of like-minded friends. My kids mostly talk to their friends online. None of them seem to have the same burning desire to drive places-- they like to get together, but they're also fine communicating on the phone. It doesn't seem as closely connected.

When I was a teenager, I had friends who were pretty much accidents of geography and school districting. This is not to say that they weren't real friends, but there was nothing really fundamentally holding us together other than being kids in the same place at the same time. I remember feeling lonely a lot. After touring a dozen colleges, I picked my eventual alma mater because I met a bunch of computer science stud…

> The internet makes it possible to find people you really connect with

How?

Re: An Epidemic of Loneliness in America?

#70

Post by raverbashing »

Baeocystin wrote: post #51
BurningFrog wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as an atheist, the weekly unforced meetup you guys have is the one thing I do envy. I wonder how many of the churchgoers secretly have no real faith and are only there for the company...

That's what congregations like the Unitarians are like. I go once a month to the local one, and I've been an atheist my entire life. I'd guess about half the people that there are, too, but no one really seems to mind one way or the other, as long as you're friendly and civil to everyone else. Mostly it's a discussion group, and I quite enjoy it.

The hard thing about (some) interest groups is that sometimes they have people "way out there" in political opinions, "different" view of the world (think the views that include the usage of aluminium headwear) or just maladjusted to normal living.
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