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The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult

nytimes.com

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Re: The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult

#291

Post by run4yourlives »

tomjen3 wrote: post #258
run4yourlives wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. I find it fascinating that pretty much every religion has a messiah theme. The big three of course, but also Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and ancient religions like the Mayans and Persians. It's such an out there idea - that of a saviour to return to impart perfection - but so prevalent that I'd love to see a more intellectual exploration of the topic.

I am not familiar with those religions, but aren't they monotheistic? Because I don't recall Old Norse mythology as having any saviors (though the gods were supposed to fight the evils after Ragnarok).

Hinduism is not.

Ragnarok is eerily close to the Armageddon story however, complete with monsters and beasts, darkness and destruction of the planet by fire from the heavens. It's also very similar to the Mayan and Hindu "rebirth following destruction" theories.

I'd posit that the "saviour" component of later religions is perhaps just a development of the darkness in the rebirth narrative.

Re: The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult

#292

Post by [deleted] »

tomjen3 wrote: post #258
run4yourlives wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. I find it fascinating that pretty much every religion has a messiah theme. The big three of course, but also Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and ancient religions like the Mayans and Persians. It's such an out there idea - that of a saviour to return to impart perfection - but so prevalent that I'd love to see a more intellectual exploration of the topic.

I am not familiar with those religions, but aren't they monotheistic? Because I don't recall Old Norse mythology as having any saviors (though the gods were supposed to fight the evils after Ragnarok).

[deleted]

Re: The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult

#293

Post by prawn »

Kliment wrote: post #200
jlgreco wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the value of a good pub is vastly underestimated these days. I suspect a combination of American college drinking culture and abstinence style drinking education in public schools ( "you can have more fun without drinking!" ) are to blame.

Pubs are too damn loud. That's my problem with them. There's very few quiet places to have a drink. Many of the ones that do exist are upper class targeted.

Go to a different pub. There's always that slightly dorkier place that you can adopt which doesn't have live bands every Friday and get overrun with the in-crowd. Might be a bit tragic, but who cares.

Re: The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult

#294

Post by prawn »

pnathan wrote: post #215
prawn wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't quiet pubs/bars for that? Or say you've had a busy week but how about takeaway and some trashy TV in the background? Been meaning to try some local restaurant, you guys want to see if it's any good?

Perhaps I'm odd, but I like hanging with friends at homes - its where we live. It's a lower energy drain for me than to go to a restaurant. Plus, homes stock games, music, wifi, etc, it's set up by one party or the other for their particular comfort. A restaurant doesn't really target specifics, and certainly won't have our favorite (niche) board games. Going out also costs a chunk of change, and snarfing a grocery p…

Sorry, I thought that if you wanted to kick back and relax, you also didn't want to clean up the house and so on (but that might've been the commenter above you). OK, so you can just invite people around for takeaway ("had a busy week; you guys OK if we go with takeaway?") removing the expectation of three courses with matched wine. Easy.

Another option to frame it casually is say "X and I were going to get Thai and play some Fluxx. Seriously, nothing elaborate. You're welcome to join us if you want?"

Re: The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult

#295

Post by reinhardt »

I don't really get much out of friendships. There, I said it. The desire, let alone the need, to initiate and maintain such social rituals is simply not there. The whole concept of connecting for connectedness sake without a tangible goal to go after has always been foreign to me. Thankfully, growing older makes it easier to hide one's lack of social bonds, needs and desires.

Re: The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult

#296

Post by tsotha »

sopooneo wrote: post #236
tsotha wrote: post #39

I knew a guy who made a boatload of money off of the dotcom bubble. He kept doubling down and doubling down, then at right about the peak he told himself "I have as much money as I'll ever need if I cash out now. There's no reason to take any more risks." In other words, he timed it perfectly (based on his own situation - he wasn't genius and he would freely admit that) So here he was, a multimillionaire who'd spent…

The "Rich guy not made happy by wealth after all" story is so old that I am surprised anyone is still surprised by it. Every other novel they made me read in middle/high school had this as its message. I am very reluctant to use the term "smart" for anyone that runs into this problem.

What struck me about the experience wasn't the "Rich guy not made happy by wealth after all" part, but that he was so desperate for friends and just couldn't make them. That's why I thought it was relevant to the topic.

Re: The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult

#297

Post by infectoid »

rubashov wrote: post #82
nhashem wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I read Fight Club too, dude. We could have a much deeper discussion on the evolution of society and how the gradual reduction of physical survival difficulty has eroded a lot of the male bonding development that used to exist. But a lot the OP was about difficulty making friends even when people had a lot of things in common, so I was sharing an anecdote on how a shared activity and commitment, even for a mostl…

Yeah, I wasn't contradicting you, dude. Maybe you'd make more friends if you chilled out.

Best troll ever. Love your work man.

Re: The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult

#298

Post by bdunbar »

Apocryphon wrote: post #281
bdunbar wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some sort of deistic civic faith that is less about faith than it is about ritual, philosophy, and social relationships. You're described the Unitarian church.

What kind of rituals does the UU have?

From the perspective of a former Epsicopal turning Roman Catholic .. they don't have _any_.

Re: The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult

#299

Post by saraid216 »

einhverfr wrote: post #287
saraid216 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're going to be Old English, there'a a damn more about the nature of hospitality and guest-right that's important to know. Back then, these things were evidence that the other guy wasn't going to knife you in your sleep.

This is reasonably true. But there is also some likelihood that the hospitality and guest-right system was not only very old (since it is found across many other Indo-European branches as well) and part of this. Isn't there an episode in one of Homer's poems or something (I don't have my library with me in Indonesia :-( ) where two people are fighting on the battlefield and discover that one of their ancestors gave h…

Oh yes. Hospitality is the central theme of Genesis 19, for instance, which definitely predates The Wanderer. I feel a little bad now, because I can't provide you with a solid set of sources, but every culture all the way back to the earliest stories we have will give references to the obligation of a host, the duties of a guest, and how gift-giving plays into that. The whole point of the Trojan War wasn't precisely that property had been stolen, but more importantly that it had been done by a guest to his host. (As modern readers, we recognize a breach of private property more clearly than we recognize a breach of hospitality.)

It's the earliest form of debt-as-community-glue, really. It only survives today in the habit of bringing a bottle of wine to a dinner party, and in the handshake. We mostly rely on codified laws of hospitality instead (which govern restaurants and hotels).

Re: The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult

#300

Post by pnathan »

fallous wrote: post #217

I've long been of the opinion that the decline in local socializing (in the physical realm) is due to the advent of air condition, radio, and later television. Previously people sat on their porches in the evening to escape the heat of the house and thus saw their neighbors nightly. Now we're all in our climate-controlled cocoons. After moving to this city a few years ago where we had no friends or family, I just sta…

The above comment should be read and thought about a bit.
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