Mister Rogers had a point – routinely greeting six neighbors maximizes wellbeing

here’s your counter-point. now the sample size is two.

lived in a diverse, affluent, tech/corpo neighborhood, most neighbors ignored or were passive aggressive - the kind where you know you aren’t being ignored because the behavior is too egregious to not be aware of the impact. you aren’t being ignored, you aren’t worth ignoring.

lived in an older, affluent neighborhood. four neighbors that would likely be described as caucasian regardless of their names or backgrounds were nothing but kind, offering to help the first time we interacted.

lived in an older, rural, poor neighborhood. most folks would stop and talk if you were outside, see how stuff is going. place was shit. some of the folks were gold.

the issue isn’t the skin color, the wallet fullness, the religion, or the race. you can look any which way and be an asshole on the inside. you can have a lot or a lot of nothing, and be an asshole.

affluence just let’s the asshole shine through a bit more. after all, the asshole deserves a lot, and the money is proof.

larger cities develop these little bubbles of halfluence - starter mcmansions for the white collar “elite,” close to their cubicle farms or at least a fat internet pipe and a starbucks within uber. the environment is shit - these aren’t actually elites - so the individuals tend to act up in their burbclaves.

established vs gentrified might be a better distinction. established doesn’t always mean affluent, but it does have a different sort of wealth.

I wonder if perhaps the neighbor might feel the same about you?

My father in law lives in Yorkshire, where people regularly say hello to each other when out and about, particularly in the morning. We live in London, where this is highly unusual.

When visiting he came on our usual morning walk in the park, and said hello, good morning to someone. They were completely flabbergasted and could only muster a garbled reply through the shock.

Not the person you responded to, but I'll bite. I live in an affluent nearly all-white suburban neighborhood. I know everyone within two houses in any direction, and a few that are even farther than that. We have one recluse and one Karen, but everyone else is super laid back. It's delightful.

I've lived in a range of neighborhoods over my life, and I haven't really seen a pattern. My gut instinct is that attitude is contagious, and friendly neighborhoods have (or had) someone who spreads the love. People reflect the way they are treated.

Most of the year, I live in a midwestern suburb: 1/3rd of an acre lots as far as the eye can see. I go on a walk every day, but it's rare that I ever actually see a human being during said walk: Everyone is cooped up in their houses. In practice, in most of this suburban life, every bit of human interaction is planned. We drive to commerce, and there we are met by workers with constantly changing schedules, who have minimal connection to the businesses they work in. It's not impossible to make connections in this environment, but it takes actual effort. This makes work the main form of social interaction for many people around me.

Over the summer, however, I spend time in Spain. A town with a population under 200k, and yet far more dense than San Francisco. Streets are narrower, and most errands are less than 10 minutes away, on foot. The pharmacist, the baker, the workers at the restaurant, don't change very much. Since everyone walks, you really get to pass by every neighbor in the building every couple of weeks. The parks and playing ares with children are never close to empty, and people tend to have routines, so it's far easier to get to know people from random interactions. It's not uncommon to meet people you know, completely by accident, just because you walk the same streets. I might not stop at a certain coffee shop, but it has seating outside, and friends are be sitting there, and therefore I get a chance social encounter, even when I am not visiting the same business. There's benches in random streets, and people meet there, and chat on the street, so you don't even need a business as a "third place", when you have the street. Thus, getting six non-work social interactions a day becomes trivial.

Large parts of America have chosen forms of development that are naturally isolating: It's no surprise so many feel isolated!