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The Loneliness Epidemic

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Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#211

Post by AdrianB1 »

kodz4 wrote: post #16

Ants don't meet at the bar at the end of the day to chill with each other. It isn't necessary. And their society isn't unraveling. The more connected the human ant hill gets the more we will behave like ants. Disconnected because we don't need to be as connected. Connected because that is the only way to survive. Those that can't handle the change...wont. This is a process of societal metamorphosis whose tracks have…

I think the ant brain and the human brain are extremely different. I bet the ants are not capable of feeling loneliness, they don't have enough neurons for that.

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#212

Post by watwut »

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…

Taking care of old or sick relative is not selfish. Staying in the same job is not selfish. No more selfish then changing job because some perk.

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#213

Post by AdrianB1 »

vectorEQ wrote: post #116

A lot of people who feel lonely, are hardly ever alone. imagine how shitty and uninterested we really are to eachother and ourselves... if we can be together and feel alone at the same time. Stop neglecting yourself, and that will make you stop neglecting others. My tips: Actively take time for yourself. to get to know yourself and become more aware of yourself. Even if you do not suffer from such symptoms yet, it wi…

When I go to work there are 500 people in the building, but less than 10 that I consider close enough to care about. That can be zero in different conditions. Having over 7 billion people on the same planet has no impact on loneliness, the discussion is not about physical loneliness.

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#214

Post by intuitionist »

Balero wrote: post #141
arcadeparade wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not thinking on a long enough timescale. Hunter gatherers only worked 10 hours a week :)

They only hunter/gathered for that long. How much time was spent in meetings, how much time preparing food, fixing clothes, patrolling territory, scouting things out, making home improvements etc. If the modern person only worked for food, then I think a few hours a week would suffice.

ah yes, meetings, that famous bane of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#215

Post by mises »

T1glober wrote: post #124
mises wrote: post #40

> "You can see the problem here: A national culture that promotes polite restraint, and which actively fends off and forestalls the forming of relationships between strangers, is one that might as well be inviting loneliness on its population. And at a time when emotional seclusion is increasingly being seen as a crisis in countries around the Western world, perhaps this is what has made English people uniquely sensi…

Not from the South myself, but I noticed a similar trend in parts of the Midwest and anywhere that's not a big city. Similar to the UK would be somewhere like Japan, which is well-known for its culture of restraint and politeness. Loneliness and suicide rates are high, while dating and marriage are suffering. It would appear a result of having a relatively restrained social culture. PS. what is the spotify trick?

That's the thing about a trick... if you reveal it, it's gone. I suspect there are a few Spotify engineers who read this; wouldn't want to give it away.

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#216

Post by LordFast »

cosmodisk wrote: post #198
LordFast wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What you described here is essentially 'survivorship bias'. Also,just because someone married away into a cosy suburb with 2 kids and a nice hubby,it doesn't mean they aren't lonely. There are millions of people out there who would kill for a chance to have someone outside that "perfect" life just to talk openly with... All those "desperate housewives" don't get created without reason.

It's not a perfect life (there isn't one), and there's no argument from me about there being different strokes for different folks. At the end of the day, however, even Einstein had to poop out of his own butt.

What I said should be taken with a grain of salt. I did what I did for more than a decade, savoring both the good and the bad.

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#217

Post by ryanmercer »

calcifer wrote: post #122
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…

> The more I read about it, I’m convinced “loneliness” is an upper middle class problem. Which makes it all the more suitable for a discussion on HN, wouldn't you say?

I'm definitely lower middle class, I make 34k a year...

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#218

Post by rleigh »

Balero wrote: post #131
BurningFrog wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people named themselves after their job, it was often because the whole family did the job, and it was inherited. This is the opposite of loneliness.

It also isn't particularly good for personal freedom, or social mobility. Recently society has been pushing for these two things, at the expense of personal connections. That means many successful people are working jobs that are out of the experience of their parents. They also do not necessarily share a lot of experiences of their formative years with the people they work with. All of this comes from personal freed…

Maybe there's a spectrum here. A family trade is both highly social and highly stable, even if it is confining in terms of personal freedom and social mobility.

Maybe, our current obsession as a society with personal freedom and social mobility is an extreme which is itself the cause of all the loneliness. It's an extreme which reduces the stability and cohesion of our society, because in promoting the freedom of the individual above all else, you've harmed the social connections which make a society work.

Maybe there's a happy medium, but I think we might have passed it by over a century back.

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#219

Post by LordFast »

oposa wrote: post #172
LordFast wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

By definition you wouldn't know many lonely people. The chronically lonely ones are going to be the people who didn't end up getting married when they "should" have, couldn't make it into a proper career or fell out of one at some point. Most upper middle class people won't be lonely since if you can afford a career you can afford a social life or you might even be forced into one. But of course uncertainty and insec…

No denial from me that there's a problem. I wanted to jump in, however, and share some personal journeys. Maybe it will help one person, or not.

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#220

Post by ulisesrmzroche »

zaphod4prez wrote: post #204
aszantu wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not make it a habit to talk to a stranger on the commuting train?

In many parts of the US this is so out of the norm that people would be freaked out by you trying to talk to them (SF, NYC for sure but even in Chicago which is supposed to have that Midwestern friendliness... it'd be weird and often unwelcome)

This is not the case. Y’all just don’t know how to small talk.
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