191–200 of 572 posts
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Here’s another thing no one talks about because it’s taboo: drink driving. Right up until the mid 70s, it was completely socially acceptable to drink and drive. Now I agree that it was probably a good thing that’s it’s been banned, but having to pay for and organise transportation to go to whatever event it is you want to go to adds another substantial layer of friction to socialising. Not to mention the fact that th…
Uber makes things a lot simpler.
Cause we have an economy that has atomized everyone to where you have to fight for your own survival - constantly. I'd love having some of my friends be my neighbors. But I had to move cross country just to find a partner because living in Silicon Valley was going to leave me an incel. (No surprise - I leave and I've had far more partners than I ever did in SV) I'll move back eventually with a partner in tow but the…
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In addition to what other have said, the definition of "friends" may change with time and context. Like yourself, my family was super "close" to our neighbours when I was growing up. But they weren't even remotely "friends" in the sense that I might use the word today - there were zero common interests; significantly different backgrounds, world perspectives, priorities, lifestyles; they had little to talk about othe…
> less superficially and more importantly, they would not be particularly honest or open or intimate with each other within the parameters of social norms This is more of a product of the time. My parents weren’t that open with close friends either back in the 70s when I was growing up. Fast forward to today and my friends are all quite open about personal things. And the one I know who is friends with his neighbor i…
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Here’s another thing no one talks about because it’s taboo: drink driving. Right up until the mid 70s, it was completely socially acceptable to drink and drive. Now I agree that it was probably a good thing that’s it’s been banned, but having to pay for and organise transportation to go to whatever event it is you want to go to adds another substantial layer of friction to socialising. Not to mention the fact that th…
This is why I love living in a city with a reliable train network. So many times I have left a party completely drunk late at night, and been perfectly able to manage my way back home. Seems like Americans are left with the choice to either risk killing someone/themselves driving home or just not going out.
If only there was a service where you can pay money to be driven somewhere... I heard Americans invented these smartphones with apps, Maybe they can even invent an app-based version of that paid ride service!
Here are a few interesting things to read on the topic of community design that promotes social interaction and cohesion:
The Making of Columbia, MD and Reston, VA (https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus...)
Jane Jacob’s on the importance of neighborhoods (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs) (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-death-and-life-of-great...)
Greenbelt, MD (https://www.greenbeltmuseum.org/greenbelt-history)
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Sure, that’s a defensible argument on the merits against the colloquial usage of the word city as applied to some of these places but you’re running up against the fact that the term “city” has been eroded to near meaninglessness in North America. New England has counties and townships and cities, California and Texas only have counties and cities. Even a place that calls itself a town is still a city as far as their…
And a few places like Virginia, you have Cities and Counties, and you can only be in one or the other. Sort of a Vatican City/Italy situation, except the same country.
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This is why I love living in a city with a reliable train network. So many times I have left a party completely drunk late at night, and been perfectly able to manage my way back home. Seems like Americans are left with the choice to either risk killing someone/themselves driving home or just not going out.
> Seems like Americans are left with the choice to either risk killing someone/themselves driving home or just not going out. If only there was a service where you can pay money to be driven somewhere... I heard Americans invented these smartphones with apps, Maybe they can even invent an app-based version of that paid ride service!
Thankfully with a functioning public transport network, it costs me $4
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I'd say "a dozen or two" is a very high number. Enjoy and value your luck!
reminds me of this saying, in different variations, attributed to Aristotle: "He who has many friends has no friends".
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Americans are friendly but when it comes to the decisions that matter (voting and the votes with our wallets) the preference is for the private over the public. People are scared to depend on each other or to be forced to interact with strangers. So we’ll all try to have our own cars and drive on huge suburban streets and put our kids in private schools and build fences around our yards and vote down zoning laws that…
I think "scared" is the wrong word for it. People in the US tend to have very low levels of contentiousness, and that in turn makes people want to avoid strangers. The most obvious recent example is the push back against masking. In a high population density urban setting, even a few people who aren't adhering to masking raises the general risk level for people substantially. In less population dense areas it doesn't…