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The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

city-journal.org

971–980 of 1001 posts

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#971

Actually one of the things my wife and I often discuss is how with our current society even what we consider our "nuclear family" is at most just a part time family. For most of humanity a family group stayed together for the majority of each day. Children played with siblings, cousins and were usually within earshot of one of their parents or relatives. Certainly they would have found their way back when hungry. As…

Homeschooling gives at least one parent the opportunity to spend large amounts of time with their kids, and also gives the kids lots of time together.

Source: was homeschooled, starting to homeschool my own children (well, mostly my wife is, but I help where I can).

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#972
post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a bout of this about 20 years ago, so I made a rule for myself: I wasn't allowed to decline an invitation. If somebody proposed doing something together and I was able, I had to do it. That made a huge difference in my life. I did a lot of things that were... unexpected. (A few examples: I joined an ultimate frisbee league. I went skydiving. I joined a church group. I went to a strip club. I attended a wedding.…

I started something similar about 12 years ago...inspired by the movie “Yes man” I started saying yes to every opportunity that I came across. Wanna have lunch together? Yes! Wanna go out with us tonight? Yes! Wanna help me move? Yes! It really got me out of my shell and made me realize that the reason I was alone is because I was an asshole. People had been trying to include me all my life, but I had always declined…

"Wanna help me move?" is my favorite. Nothing like getting a free workout with a friend or family. You might even get a dinner out of it too.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#973
post #925

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think the society has (wrongly) evolved towards an individualist model at the expenses of families. that's a wrong dichotomy. There's no fundamental reason why 35 year olds don't socialize, or why our education system stops at 25, why we have no communal institutions, and so on. The alternative isn't just between individualism and the family, what is needed is building out communities in ways that gives people the…

That is an interesting opinion. Can you expound on what you would propose. My experience is that clubs or meetups often don't forge all that close relationships. Another example I could think of which is more positive is co-ops where people lived in a door room type experience with community rules and chore responsibilities (cooking, cleaning, maintenance). But I think many adult American's would think of a co-op as…

Coop living for the elderly I think would be a fairly good start, I'm German and we have some of those communities in the south, it's usually like a small village where older residents take care of each other with the assistance of some company who provides caregivers, but people enjoy much greater autonomy than they do in their homes. It's not only cheaper, but also more dignified and people seem to be happier.

For younger people I think coops are a great thing too. In the US implementing policies that discourages single family housing and promotes closer connection between workspace and living space I think would help. If you live and work in walking distance of your chess club going there is more likely compared to someone living in the suburbs.

For communities there's also time banking which has gotten a little attention in recent years. Essentially paying people in a special currency for reciprocal help in their local communities that can only be exchanged locally, and everyone earns the same based on how long they work. Basically an egalitarian approach to fill in the gap where markets are too anonymous to provide meaning or where they don't exist at all.

And then I think government and companies should do much more to promote education for middle aged and older people. And not just online learning, but physical interaction. In my experience educational institutions are some of the best places to make new social connections.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#974
post #677

I felt loneliness acutely this week. I live alone, spend most evenings alone, and on top, work's coding and research has been slow for 2 weeks. Collaborators are at conferences and on vacation, so I had much less work and much less face-to-face contact than usual. Given that I code on my own, distribute analyses via email, and occasionally meet if people are around, I barely talked to people some days this week. Goin…

I had a bout of this about 20 years ago, so I made a rule for myself: I wasn't allowed to decline an invitation. If somebody proposed doing something together and I was able, I had to do it. That made a huge difference in my life. I did a lot of things that were... unexpected. (A few examples: I joined an ultimate frisbee league. I went skydiving. I joined a church group. I went to a strip club. I attended a wedding.…

Wow, thank you for your advise! This might be interesting to try...

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#975
post #863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a woman, there are definitely times I don't want to deal with a driver hitting on me. It happens annoyingly frequently, and it's this delicate social situation that requires more mental effort to negotiate than I want to give it. Friendly conversation (with men and women both) is fine and I've engaged in plenty. But if a driver is too busy telling me just how beautiful I am and as a result drives me to the cargo p…

> and it's this delicate social situation that requires more mental effort to negotiate than I want to give it I understand what you're saying, and I recognize the blessing/curse that comes with attracting people. However, as I've become an adult with a career and have left essentially all my friends behind, I've realized that making new friends is incredibly difficult. Even worse is trying to find dating partners. L…

One of my complaints is sending what I consider very obvious "I'm not interested" signals - like putting in earbuds - still doesn't stop them. There's something that stops me from just saying "I'm not interested"; for one thing it labels what they're doing as hitting on me and they might argue back with me ("Hey, I'm just giving you a compliment!") and/or get upset. It's usually easier to just nod, mumble, and act much more interested in my phone than them and hope they get the hint.

What do you mean about the dating world being dangerous?

I'm a lesbian anyway, but I think regardless of gender or identity it's tough because people (including myself) are very emotionally guarded. Whether you have trouble finding dates or not, every relationship is at arms length, every plan can be dropped when a better one comes along, you "don't want to catch feelings", etc. Nobody wants to firmly commit to a time for lunch, let alone a relationship (even without monogamy).

That kind of sucks, but in terms of it being dangerous, it usually only feels physically so if you get involved with men. Emotionally though, it does feel dangerous... it sort of feels like a race to the bottom where whoever cares the least wins. I kind of miss really caring about the people I date; but they usually don't care about me, and if I do care about them, often as not that scares them off.

It's certainly a weird dating world these days.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#976

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i'd give up everything i have now to simply enjoy humanity for a change. Everything but security which, unfortunately, is worth giving up a lot of other things to have. I'd move to my wife's home country tomorrow if we could live without fear of our child being kidnapped. My wife's uncle was kidnapped and murdered, another aunt and cousins bound in their home by robbers, and another cousin held for a day by a group…

Brazil?

Not far off. Sadly, there are any number of countries in the region with similar conditions.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#977

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i'd give up everything i have now to simply enjoy humanity for a change. Everything but security which, unfortunately, is worth giving up a lot of other things to have. I'd move to my wife's home country tomorrow if we could live without fear of our child being kidnapped. My wife's uncle was kidnapped and murdered, another aunt and cousins bound in their home by robbers, and another cousin held for a day by a group…

And don't forget health-care ...

Somewhat less of a concern as long as you maintain coverage in your own country (in my case, US) and have the wherewithal to go home if you decide you need to. But yes, a serious accident or onset of a critical and fast-acting illness would have you questioning your choices.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#979
post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why people are so against talking to the people that give them a ride. I'm an ethnic minority where I live, but I'm white. Do I want to be dragged into some racist conversation fuelled by Nigel Farage on talk-radio and by made-up stories in The Sun? Nope. Even if I did, would it change anything? Nope - a 20-min cab ride is not enough time to dispel all the crap accumulated over decades of disinformation. If I had a…

Wow, didn't know casual conversation solely existed to dispel app the crap disinformation. I've been doing it wrong this whole time. Before I just thought it was about giving people respect and finding common ground.

How do you "give respect" to people who, given half the chance, would literally ship you out of the country you've built your life in for the last two decades?

How do you find "common ground" with people who are seriously convinced that your mere existence is robbing them of something they cannot coherently articulate, when all the facts are that you are actually helping their own welfare?

I am afraid you have no idea what being an European (or most other ethnic minorities) is like in 2019 Britain. For us, this is not your standard dinner-party "lib vs con" parlour game, or the occasional shouting match at a family reunion - it's the difference between being a citizen in a modern democracy and being something very close to a Jew in Brüning's Germany.

Re: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

#980
post #912

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans have faced lots of problems over the millenia, but the reality is that our lives continue to improve as a whole That's untrue. Human civilizations tend to go through cycles. They rise, eventually stagnate, and then decline over the span of hundreds of years. The Akkadians, the Mycenaeans, the Romans, and the Maya all collapsed and the lives of people living in those empires got worse, often for a very long t…

I think comparing modern day civilization to the rise and fall of the Roman empire is a mistake, particularly European civilization. We learned our lesson. We’re not building empires, not waging expensive wars, not succumbing to armed revolution. People are for the time being mostly happy and prosperous. That isn’t to say we don’t face challenges, but they’re fundamentally different from those of the empires of old.…

I'm using ancient empires as an example because pretty much everyone agrees on what happened in ancient history. It's not a controversial / political issue to talk about Rome falling because nobody who was involved in those empires is alive today.

> We learned our lesson. We’re not building empires, not waging expensive wars

I don't know where you live, but here in America we've been at war with various Middle-Eastern nations for the last 2 decades. About 90% of the history of our nation has been spent involved in some kind of a war. Those are expensive wars too. We've spent trillions on Afghanistan alone. We have around 800 formal military bases in 80 foreign countries.

I think that we are far more imperialistic than the Romans, even though our culture doesn't acknowledge it.

> global markets, and mutually assured destruction

Yeah, we have better technology too and a very different financial system. However, this hasn't saved us from expressing many of the same symptoms that ancient collapsing empires had... Especially the social issues that this article talks about.

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