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The American Dream convinces people loneliness is normal

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Re: The American Dream convinces people loneliness is normal

#71

Post by munk-a »

dang wrote: post #58
munk-a wrote: post #5

The modern version of the American dream is an extremely toxic ideology. It promotes such an extreme version of individualism that it's threatening to tear apart all the social safety nets still existent in the US while also glorifying excessive wealth hoarding. It is absolutely bonkers that we've gotten to the point where cheating on your taxes can be viewed as a virtue.

Can you please not post in the ideological flamewar style? It leads to lower-quality threads and we're trying to avoid that. We want curious conversation here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Ah, my apologies. I'll be more careful in the future.

Re: The American Dream convinces people loneliness is normal

#72

Post by yMPJXgDvj »

tmnstr85 wrote: post #34

I am going through something right now mentally as a middle aged man and being alone every day starting at 8:30am and only coming home to the same 3 people (who i love unconditionally) is kind of driving me mad. My professional life prior to covid had me weaving the halls of an office I knew and many of the people there were very special to me. To have none of that these days leaves my mind to be pre-occupied by thin…

I struggle with this too. Returning to the office and all that involves (commute, schedule inflexibility) isn't ideal, so I hope that I can keep WFH but find the community aspect with more intentional effort there. But I miss the ease of just getting that from the office environment.

Re: The American Dream convinces people loneliness is normal

#73

Post by robotresearcher »

Eumenes wrote: post #32

This has more to do with how vast and rural America is (Europe is 3.5x more densely populated, more homogeneous), in addition to multiculturalism, which isn't inherently bad, but we're seeing discrete populations work themselves into enclaves. Add in the average American spending 5 hours and 24 minutes on their mobile device each day (article says Americans spend 20 mins daily with friends on average ... I think its…

> (Europe is [...] more homogeneous

You might underestimate how different Europeans feel from each other.

Consider neighboring states California, Oregon, Nevada vs. France, Germany, Spain.

Re: The American Dream convinces people loneliness is normal

#74

Post by eggy »

Solitude: A Return to the Self, by Anthony Storr was a good read, but it's been over 15 years, so maybe worth a revisit. I am sociable, but I don't do much socializing. Rollerskating and motorcycles have punctuated my life with social groups and a sense of doing things with a group. I engage with people, but only if it's right there; I don't plan or reach out much. Fortunately, I have older kids, and I have some younger ones too that add all the socialization I could ever want. Family has been the key throughout my life. I do love my solitutude and reading and hiking and looking at stars though. Growing up in Brooklyn in the 60s/70s with street gangs and violence made me stay with my small group of tight friends. I've lived and worked all over the world, but I've never felt compelled to plan, attend, or create anything beyond the day-to-day life and the new MC club I am a member of (and skydiving with my older son for the third time!). Doing stuff.

Re: The American Dream convinces people loneliness is normal

#76

Post by aylmao »

elzbardico wrote: post #12

While I am not a fan of American Exceptionalism, I think this article is more informed by the usual European prejudiced tropes about America than by reality, at least in the parallels between the traditions of rugged individualism from the Old West and the present epidemics of loneliness. The old Cowboy was based on self-reliance, he was not a loner because he couldn't connect with people, but because his adventures…

I disagree; I do think the "old cowboy" trope is closely related to today's loneliness epidemic and disagree with the notion that modern loneliness is rooted on the "lack of concrete agency on one's life".

Source: me. The trope of the hero, the power of will and life as a personal and individual journey is widespread in American culture and its cultural exports (Hollywood, music, etc). Also very widespread, the idea of personal sacrifice to achieve something greater than oneself, and linking masculinity with self-determination, ruggedness, independence and self-made success.

All of these, IMO, are related to the lone cowboy trope. The old lone cowboy is still today considered "sexy". Loneliness is still considered masculine; if you picture a "chad", they're not living with roommates, much less with their parents— they have with their own ability been able to amass economic success to rent a one bedroom and live alone.

I'm from a country where it's not the norm that people move to another city for college, or leave their parent's home at 18. I went to study to the USA, where it was either assumed, or the goal. Of course you're moving out at 18, and trying to land at a college considering as top priority your story of personal challenge and protagonist-style achievement. A last priority tends to be being close to family. Many try to avoid it.

Same work-wise. You go where the best career prospects are, or where you think it'd be "cool" to live. Often, further down the list of priorities is being close to your family, or sticking with your friends.

I'd call this the opposite to "lacking agency on one's life". It's the opposite, you're told you've got complete agency of your life, and if you let others influence it away from maximizing your "success", you're wasting it for the sake of others. I do agree with the idea that this is "extreme subjection of the individual to an all-encompassing social-economic-cultural system" though— one that whose idealization of individualism gave us the lone cowboy trope, and in turn feeds off it.

Re: The American Dream convinces people loneliness is normal

#77

Post by jmyeet »

Every culture seems to mythologize a key part of its history and it becomes core to its culture and identity. For the US, its a combination of the American Revolution but, but importantly (IMHO), the Wild West and homesteading by which the US colonized West. It anti-establishment. The American Revolution spirit is part of that mythology. The article mentions this with the "rugged individualist" but doesn't really capture how pervasive that is.

So many (most?) Americans want a "homestead". It's why it's illegal to build anything but single-family homes ("SFHs") in the vast majority of the country. The automobile was about the worst thing to happen here because it enabled this suburban expansion.

Mixed-use and higher density living fell by the wayside. People live in their SFH bubbles. The car allows you to travel in a bubble, ignorant of, oblivious to and disconnected from the world around you. Living in a city forces you to deal with people in a way most Americans don't have to and don't want to. That interaction leads to empathy and that lack of empathy is such a huge problem today.

While I'm a big fan of remote work wherever possible, I think it'll actually make this worse because a bunch of people who are forced to deal with other people will be able to move to 15 acres in the middle of Tennessee and never have to deal with anyone outside of their family ever again.

We have no so-called "third places" in this environment. Society is utterly car dependent, which is particularly bad for the elderly, poor, disabled and children as being unable to drive is severely limiting.

If that wasn't bad enough, we're making this worse by making housing a commodity. Successive governments seek to make sure housing prices only go up to the point where increasingly more people simply cannot afford a roof over their heads. Thus begins a cycle of living in their cars before finally losing their cars and becoming truly homeless. It is unbelievably shortsighted and cruel.

Re: The American Dream convinces people loneliness is normal

#78

Post by kitsunesoba »

jltsiren wrote: post #66
valianteffort wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greatest decision I ever made was getting a remote gig, leaving the big city, and moving to a small town. There is enough going on here to keep busy, and everyone knows eachother. Would never dream of raising my kids somewhere like SF. If you want community, go somewhere it's valued. Everyone in the big city is a transient, only there to make money and find love before it's time to head for the suburbs.

Cities have traditionally been about two things: opportunities and freedom. For many the freedom is more important of the two. It means the freedom to be anonymous, the freedom to choose your own community, and the freedom to live your own life. Small towns come with a default community, because everyone knows everyone. It's great if you fit in, and terrible if you don't. Many people move to cities primarily to escap…

And to some extent that freedom and opportunity scales with the size of the city.

I don't think I've ever felt as liberated as I did while living in Tokyo, where everybody is a number and if you want to check out for a bit and steer clear of your usual circles, it's easy to do so. At the same time though, for practically anything I could possibly imagine wanting to do, there were people I could seek out to do it with.

Re: The American Dream convinces people loneliness is normal

#79

Post by krapp »

sandworm101 wrote: post #42

The American cowboy-hero isn't about the hero being lonely. It as about heroes leaving . Wandering strangers, be them cowboys or Superman, sweep in to fix problems and then go away. They do not integrate into the societies they help. They do not take anything from the people they help. They are therefore not a sociological threat to those they help. American society is very segmented, particularly in the mythic world…

I would blame that motif mostly on the nature of episodic storytelling - books, comics, radio plays, television,etc, than something fundamental about American culture. It's necessary to move the character from one place to the next to tell fully encapsulated stories that can easily be serialized out of order.

And thematically, it doesn't even apply to Superman or many superhero stories (maybe the Hulk.) Superman lives in Metropolis. Batman lives in Gotham. Spider Man is a quintessentially New York hero, he's a landmark. These heroes are all part of their specific communities.

Re: The American Dream convinces people loneliness is normal

#80

Post by robotresearcher »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #70
munk-a wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US taxes are actually currently extremely low - in the 90's the top marginal tax rate dipped below 50% for the first time in five decades and now it's gotten all the way down to 37%[1]. That's just for income and a lot of wealthy individuals end up paying the majority of their taxes as capital gains but the other change that's harder to quantify is that our tax code has slowly become a swiss cheese mess of loopholes…

US taxes used to be zero most of the existence of US. Compared to most countries, US taxes are high. California has total taxes higher than a few European countries, so when we talk about high taxes this is the context(perspective) for me. As for loneliness, my generation and part of the world (Eastern Europe) does not encounter it. I see it in the newer generations, for example people around 20 years old are extreme…

Then in the US you add health care costs on top of taxes, and the overall burden is pretty high.
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