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The Loneliness Epidemic

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Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#221

Post by alexashka »

It's more of a journalist epidemic - they keep reaching for straw-men to justify their existence.

Talking about loneliness is slightly more interesting than what dress celebrity X wore at event Y. It's just bullshit - at least the dress talk doesn't pretend otherwise, for the most part.

We're living in the greatest time ever. I understand that when you make no money and you're writing articles, it may seem like there is a loneliness epidemic. There isn't - we're doing better than ever. More people are having first world problems than ever. It's great to have those, just talk to someone with a little perspective that you respect for it to rub off on you and go on about your day :)

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#222

Post by rayiner »

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.

Again, I think this is more a problem with upper middle class suburbs. I grew up in the DC suburbs, where nobody knew each other because nobody was from there. They had moved there for careers; often it was a government position and they’d move back to Michigan or wherever after the political appointee they worked for left office. That was distinctly different from my wife’s experience. (Most of her extended family lives within a couple of hours of the homestead her family had when they came over in the wagon trains, and her parents went to the same high school.)

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#223

Post by realbarack »

astura wrote: post #135
major505 wrote: post #73

Really. I think the big problem here is social networks. Nobody interact face to face.I used to go to bars , look for a pretty girl and pay her a drink to start a conversation. Nowdays this is considered creep. They expect that I download an app, wait for a match ans just goeet for a quick chat and maybe some action. Just turn of your computers and go to a bar. Interact to people. Start conversations with stranger pe…

I met my husband less than a decade ago in a bar. I still talk to strangers in bars now too. Its not any more creepy to socialize with strangers in bars now than it was in the past, as long as you respect boundaries and aren't a creep about it. The vast majority of people still meet their partners through "traditional" means, very, very few meet through sites and apps. And when I say "very, very few" I'm talking less…

I saw an article recently[0] based on a Stanford study[1] that found 40% (!) of relationships that began in 2017 originated online.

[0] https://qz.com/1546677/around-40-of-us-couples-now-first-mee...

[1] https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_et_al_Disinterm...

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#224

Post by ci5er »

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…

I think I am sympathetic to your point-of-view, but I'm not sure, because it seems (to me) that you are maybe conflating a couple of different costs.

Let's start at the numerator - you appear to be calculating life "happiness" (according to some internal metric) vs ... cost. You appear to be calculating costs as being:

  - Not making more money because the degree did not lend it to making more money

  - Social approbation for not making more money 

  - Missed revenue (income) because time spent with family/childcare

  - Social approbation for not taking the higher-ranked (and labeled as such) gig

  - Missed economic opportunity (income) for work-social reasons or work-enjoyment reasons
Is that right? I'm not sure what social approbation (or that of your SO) means to you, but this seems (generally) to be a pretty clear trade-off of doing what you want vs. making more money by doing what society is willing to pay you for?

I mean - I'm a fan of doing what you like - but surely you don't expect society to pay you to watch Jerry Springer and smoke week all day at home munching down on pizza, right? How is this different?

Am I missing something?

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#225

Post by Dylan16807 »

brighter2morrow wrote: post #193
jdietrich wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's particularly helpful to compare the present day to the late 19th century. The fact that things used to be worse does not excuse the fact that things also used to be better; living standards for the average American have regressed in many ways since the 1970s, which should be a cause of urgent concern.

>living standards for the average American have regressed in many ways since the 1970s, With women's entry into the workforce plus the 1964 Hart-Cellar Act's lifting of immigration quotas the workforce more than doubled in the 70s. At that rate how was work compensation ever supposed to keep up? I'm not saying the trade-off wasn't worth it, but you can't 2-3x the labor pool and then pretend we don't know why wages de…

If we ignore the flaws of capitalism for a second, we could have shortened the work week.

Knowing a reason for wages to drop is not the same as it being acceptable.

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#226

Post by fromthestart »

watwut wrote: post #212
fromthestart wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Quitting a job to take care of a sick loved one does not benefit the people you worked with toward a common goal, nor society at large.

>No more selfish then changing job because some perk.

The point here is that GP was complaining that there were no career benefits to making such a decision - why should there be, exactly? Such a career move benefits oneself and ones family. No one else.

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#227

Post by sylk »

GuiA wrote: post #140
devtul wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to be more a problem of expectations than anything else, people are too focused on being successful than being happy, on having it all. I would gleefully take a pay cut to have a 35h work week _if my wage still allows me to eat out once 3x a week_, but I will work 40h + commute and feel always exhausted until I get there. See how easy is to fall on that trap.

A lot of people take whatever jobs they can get, and their pay barely covers their housing/food/childcare/medical expenses. The caricature you are offering only really works for overpaid tech workers.

Ah yeah, I'm definitely overpaid because I don't go home and choose to work instead of spending time with my friends or skip weekends out to work more contracts.

Yeah, that's right I'm over paid. Eat a bag of biscuits you assuming flesh bag.

I'm giving up parts of my life to make money, and you expect me to want less than what I'm making?

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#228

Post by izzydata »

major505 wrote: post #73

Really. I think the big problem here is social networks. Nobody interact face to face.I used to go to bars , look for a pretty girl and pay her a drink to start a conversation. Nowdays this is considered creep. They expect that I download an app, wait for a match ans just goeet for a quick chat and maybe some action. Just turn of your computers and go to a bar. Interact to people. Start conversations with stranger pe…

I appreciate the sentiment of this, but I don't like how associated dating is with drinking alcohol. I don't drink and I would never go to a bar. If there were other types of social spaces not associated with drinking that would be great.

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#229

Post by fromthestart »

chowells wrote: post #160
fromthestart wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

>All of those things make society better

There is no intrinsic benefit to society at large in pursuing a degree - only those degrees which enable one to contribute in some form, and even then the benefit only occurs if one uses the knowledge obtained to conduct useful work.

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

Businesses have the goal of generating some sort of value. Yes, that means that employees must make certain sacrifices with their time and future plans - that's why they get paid. But this conflict between the goals of a business and the goals of an employee exist regardless of whether we organize into business-employee relationships or not, because fundamentally any significant, communal goal requires these same sacrifices to be achieved. We won't have any engineers or doctors or programmers if everyone majors in English Literature out of a fundamentally selfish desire to learn something with significantly less benefit to society.

The same goes for the other listed pursuits. I'm not saying that one should dedicate themselves to their work - but the detriment to one's career that comes with pursuing these, again, selfish goals (from the perspective of society) is generally just, because it isn't fair to force others to allocate their resources to activities which do not benefit them.

Re: The Loneliness Epidemic

#230

Post by oeoeo00 »

rayiner wrote: post #115
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 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…

I agree with the idea its an upper middle class problem, but I’m not convinced it’s a problem per se.

Part of what I’m wondering is if people are agreeing they spend more time alone than in the past, social norms say that means we’re lonely, so they agree with the idea.

I grew up in the country with a lot of alone time. I loved it. I don’t consider myself a depressed person. I can imagine anything I want, write the story down, plan projects, do the deep work of being me.

Being more social just feels like a series of shallow experiences relative. Drinks, coffees, some emotionally exciting event... all fleeting to me.

My own head is forever.

I think we want to believe loneliness is bad because of social pressure to connect, get a job with people we don’t know but we need a job, etc

Personally, I find that all incredibly stifling and stressful for little personal gain (the aristocracy of course loves a population that’s normalized to a small set of behaviors but that’s a diff topic).

Upper middle class types seem to have engagement in social structures forced on them. It’s bizarre to me

Edit: this article and digging into the idea is what underlie my take here https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/17/peopl...

Racism and such aside, I feel there’s a lot for urban grind types to learn from rural life

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