The Loneliness Epidemic • Hacker News Board

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#151

Post by zwkrt » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

LordFast wrote: post #133

rayiner wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The average person has to consider all options in the light of both the current employer and the specter of tomorrow’s. Moving across the country for a high paying job? Great! Moving to be closer to friends? That’s a career killer. The median person lives just 18 miles away from their mom. 57% of Americans have never lived outside their home state. A third have never lived outside their hometown. The more I read ab…

Interesting. Anecdotally, this checks out. All of my middle/lower-middle class friends from high school have long been married and raising families, almost in all cases raising them with their extended families. Most of my professional tech friends are barely getting started in their late 30s, and everyone who's started had basically put their career into a slower gear first. I made a similar choice a couple of years…

You have assumed the role of the loser, as per https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

It feels nice down here, join us!

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#152

Post by buboard » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 4:15 PM UTC

dexwiz wrote: post #34

The Screen and the Job have displaced almost everything else is our lives. Loneliness is just a primary symptom. The Screen, whether it’s TV, computer, or phone, has supplanted almost all social interactions. This manifests itself in things like SitComs on TV (just a bunch of friends or family hanging out) or Social Media on phones. It’s very easy to fill the social needs of right now with a Screen. But under even a…

> The Screen and the Job have displaced

The screen and the Job have no volition of their own. It's humans themselves that choose to spend more time with them instead of interacting with nearby humans. And this is happening despite the fact that we 're no longer in the industrial age, and people don't need to live near the factory where they work. The Job provides people with enough money to frequently escape from nearby people (travel, or "experiences"), money to move in upscale tiny apartments where they can be alone in a crowd, or to move in comfy suburbs where they can be alone physically. It seems highly-paid people choose those, and it is lower class people that keep socializing with their neighbours.

I presume many of those people do not idolize their relationships with other humans as the most precious thing in the world. They weigh them against the freedoms afforded by money and technology and act accordingly.

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#153

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 4:17 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #152

dexwiz wrote: post #34

The Screen and the Job have displaced almost everything else is our lives. Loneliness is just a primary symptom. The Screen, whether it’s TV, computer, or phone, has supplanted almost all social interactions. This manifests itself in things like SitComs on TV (just a bunch of friends or family hanging out) or Social Media on phones. It’s very easy to fill the social needs of right now with a Screen. But under even a…

> The Screen and the Job have displaced The screen and the Job have no volition of their own. It's humans themselves that choose to spend more time with them instead of interacting with nearby humans. And this is happening despite the fact that we 're no longer in the industrial age, and people don't need to live near the factory where they work. The Job provides people with enough money to frequently escape from nea…

I think many people value being disentangled from other peoples' problems. They move to the suburbs so that they don't have to have roommates or people in the next door apartment - so that they have some space. Then they find out that they have no community - they're isolated and lonely. As you say, we're doing it to ourselves.

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#154

Post by HelloNurse » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 4:20 PM UTC

yters wrote: post #4

The good thing is we can walk next door and meet our neighbor. It is strange this is an epidemic when it is a problem that seems so easy to solve. UPDATE: based on responses to my comment it seems the core problem may be closer to home than we like to admit. CS Lewis' book The Great Divorce details this misanthropy, where hell is a product of the residents' own making because they choose to live on their own because…

I can meet my neighbour, but what if my neighbour doesn't want to meet me? What if my neighbour is more of a problem than a solution? What if attempts to be friendly are counterproductive (usually because some bad motive is assumed) and dangerous (because you make yourself vulnerable, e.g. to sexual predators)?

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#155

Post by peckrob » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

gordaco wrote: post #106

dexwiz wrote: post #34

The Screen and the Job have displaced almost everything else is our lives. Loneliness is just a primary symptom. The Screen, whether it’s TV, computer, or phone, has supplanted almost all social interactions. This manifests itself in things like SitComs on TV (just a bunch of friends or family hanging out) or Social Media on phones. It’s very easy to fill the social needs of right now with a Screen. But under even a…

All of this is 100% correct. In particular: the amount of choices that have become "career killers" and therefore unacceptable is terrifying. Choose a degree that appeals to you, where you will learn what you like, instead of one which acts as a stepping stone for a higher paying job? Even in countries with sane tuition prices (read: not the US) plenty of people will blame you, and that decision in particular, for an…

> Stay in your job for 15 years because you like the people, the work itself or some particular perk? When you finally leave, your next job will pay less than if you had hopped around each 2 years. That's if someone wants to hire you.

This is so true, and the weirdest thing in the world to me. Especially in tech, you get really heavily punished for staying at a job more than a few years. To the point where, in interviews, you are asked why you stayed so long. Why would you penalize someone who might make a long-term commitment to your company? You're basically flushing all the training and institutional knowledge they hold down the drain.

I've been at my current job 13 years (although I have advanced through multiple titles in that time). I may be slightly underpaid, though last time I looked a few years ago it was about average for the area. I've considered leaving occasionally, but I like the people I work with and the work most days is interesting and engaging.

Moreover, I'm content. Maybe I could get more money if I job-hopped or moved to a place like the Bay Area. But why? I'm comfortable now, all my needs are met, I have plenty of disposable income, and my family is happy. We never want for anything.

We have this weird aversion to people being content. There's a lot to be said for stability.

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#156

Post by solidsnack9000 » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 4:22 PM UTC

billconan wrote: post #55

rofo1 wrote: post #3

It only makes sense for this epidemic to take place in the society we've developed. We are tearing apart the fabric and the bond that kept everyone feeling as a part of community; namely, religion. Religion was never designed for people to fear the man upstairs; it was always about the values and the bond it created between each member of that religion. Individualism and decadence are being more or less encouraged, o…

> I am not aware of any society that lasted without religion and had strong communal ties. Take China for example, I don't think it is a country of religion, and on the other hand, I don't think the society lacks communal ties either. Traditionally, the Chinese society is organized or bonded by ancestry roots. According to [1], people sharing the same ancestry root first formed tribes, tribes then grouped together to…

Take China for example, I don't think it is a country of religion...

You say this, but then go on to describe what is generally understood as a system of ancestor worship.

Religion isn’t mostly — or even necessarily — about theology or beliefs. One of the first realizations of comparative religion scholars was that codified beliefs are a relative rarity.

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#157

Post by tempsy » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

dexwiz wrote: post #34

The Screen and the Job have displaced almost everything else is our lives. Loneliness is just a primary symptom. The Screen, whether it’s TV, computer, or phone, has supplanted almost all social interactions. This manifests itself in things like SitComs on TV (just a bunch of friends or family hanging out) or Social Media on phones. It’s very easy to fill the social needs of right now with a Screen. But under even a…

At least in SF it feels like there is a grey area between work and friend relationships. I don't necessarily think relationships that start at work can't be meaningful, though there's certainly a much greater chance a work relationship is transactional even if you fool yourself into thinking they could be a friend.

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#158

Post by gordaco » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 4:24 PM UTC

fromthestart wrote: post #145

gordaco wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this is 100% correct. In particular: the amount of choices that have become "career killers" and therefore unacceptable is terrifying. Choose a degree that appeals to you, where you will learn what you like, instead of one which acts as a stepping stone for a higher paying job? Even in countries with sane tuition prices (read: not the US) plenty of people will blame you, and that decision in particular, for an…

>Choose a degree that appeals to you, where you will learn what you like, instead of one which acts as a stepping stone for a higher paying job? >Become pregnant, and/or plan to work fewer hours for some time to take care of your kids or any older relative? >Stay in your job for 15 years because you like the people, the work itself or some particular perk? >However, lately the tension between those two is so high tha…

I'm expecting the penalty not to be so disproportionate as to persist 15+ years after the choice. Also, most of these "choices" are not so selfish.

In the case of the degree choices, I know plenty of people who have jobs with a much higher social utility than mine, yet make much less and suffer long periods of unemployment (I'm thinking about, for example, people whose job is to educate people from marginalized communities).

In the case of taking care of other people, I just can't fathom how would you find selfisness in stepping out of a job in order to take care of other people.

And about staying a lot of time in a job, it can definitely make you incredibly productive, and in all cases I know in tech it forces people to have a "big picture" idea of some problem domain which is damn useful when trying to move to a company working within the same domain; it's very different from hopping companies and having to learn a slightly different tech stack and/or company structure each time. Sadly, this doesn't translate at all into a better salary, because as an industry we seem to have collectively decided that staying too long in a job is anathema.

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#159

Post by buboard » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 4:29 PM UTC

badpun wrote: post #23

Tade0 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in a highly conservative and (according to statistics) religious society (Poland) and my observation is that it's not correlated. People who sought company in church were often disappointed, because most of the others who went there had lives of their own and weren't that invested in the whole thing. Hell, the loneliest people I know are consistently religious.

Polish society was very heavily wounded by 50 years of hardcore socialism combined with the police state (at the hands of the Soviets). The levels of trust people have towards each other are still abysmally low. I wouldn't use Poland as an example, because it is (like other post-Soviet block states) still very much not normal.

And who would you use?

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#160

Post by chowells » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 4:29 PM UTC

fromthestart wrote: post #145

gordaco wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this is 100% correct. In particular: the amount of choices that have become "career killers" and therefore unacceptable is terrifying. Choose a degree that appeals to you, where you will learn what you like, instead of one which acts as a stepping stone for a higher paying job? Even in countries with sane tuition prices (read: not the US) plenty of people will blame you, and that decision in particular, for an…

>Choose a degree that appeals to you, where you will learn what you like, instead of one which acts as a stepping stone for a higher paying job? >Become pregnant, and/or plan to work fewer hours for some time to take care of your kids or any older relative? >Stay in your job for 15 years because you like the people, the work itself or some particular perk? >However, lately the tension between those two is so high tha…

Selfish? All of those things make society better. Business is the party with selfish demands.

Yes, society should absolutely tell business that it isn't as important as it thinks.