Why Loneliness Matters in the Social Age • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Loneliness Matters in the Social Age

#51

Post by iterationx » Sun, Feb 16, 2014, 7:23 PM UTC

logangilmour wrote: post #47

iterationx wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link, I will probably read it. Are you familiar with Bjarke Ingels over at BIG, I thought his TED was super interesting, http://www.ted.com/talks/bjarke_ingels_3_warp_speed_architec...

Thanks, that was great! I've only very recently started exploring urban design - I spend my days building software. I have this vague notion that living in a city could be nicer, so I'm trying to familiarize myself with what the people who know what they're doing say about it. I'll look further into Ingels and BIG. Are there any other starting points you'd suggest?

I thought this book was interesting, ReThinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking

I enjoyed this blog post, "Car Kill Cities" about parking lots in Atlanta, http://progressivetransit.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/cars-kill...

I've heard good things about "The High Cost of Free Parking" but I haven't read it.

I lived in Freiburg in Breisgau, Germany for a year, and when I got back everything seemed wrong.

Re: Why Loneliness Matters in the Social Age

#52

Post by sizzle » Sun, Feb 16, 2014, 7:45 PM UTC

firemanx wrote: post #21

noname123 wrote: post #12

Related but an off-shoot question, people who are "settled down," in your late 20's/30's/40's/50's/60's, have families and various obligations, how do you deal with loneliness? As someone who is on the precipice of turning 30 (27 currently), speaking strictly for myself - I've found that loneliness for me and my older peers is different from the angst of adolescence a la Holden. Tbh, younger people tend to think in m…

I'm 31. I was 25 when I got married, which was also the same year the company I co-founded hit the skids and eventually a brick wall. That first year was really rough on us (we started with 1 child and had another in the middle of that year), but we survived and watching that company burn was one of the most valuable life lessons I've ever had. We've had another two kids since then, and I've learned a few other thing…

thank you

Re: Why Loneliness Matters in the Social Age

#53

Post by davidjnelson » Sun, Feb 16, 2014, 8:09 PM UTC

iterationx wrote: post #11

heythereman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you link the article? I spent most of my youth "ruled" under extremely restrictive parents in a suburb that offered nowhere to go without a car, that my parents would never let me use. I was very lonely as a kid and even after I got to college, it took me a while to develop the social skills I needed to make myself happy. I ended up developing a strong hatred for the suburbs in my youth and have embraced the ur…

My suburb used to have an arcade/bowling alley, but my parents didn't want me to go there (I did anyway), but then even that closed down. I guess I was one of the lucky ones. Consider the following, most parents are driving their children to sports, therefore the children are not playing in the neighborhood, therefore if you are a child and not in sports there is no one to socialize with since all your peers are "at…

I fondly remember organizing football, basketball and baseball games with kids from the neighborhood as a child. I'd get 2-4 people together at a time and we'd have a blast! Small, suburban, rural neighborhood.

Re: Why Loneliness Matters in the Social Age

#54

Post by PeterisP » Sun, Feb 16, 2014, 9:44 PM UTC

noname123 wrote: post #12

Related but an off-shoot question, people who are "settled down," in your late 20's/30's/40's/50's/60's, have families and various obligations, how do you deal with loneliness? As someone who is on the precipice of turning 30 (27 currently), speaking strictly for myself - I've found that loneliness for me and my older peers is different from the angst of adolescence a la Holden. Tbh, younger people tend to think in m…

Do make sure to keep a few of the closest relationships current, despite the growing obstacles. Make the time, find the resources, ignore the inconveniences.

Instead of surface-level 'interactions' of liking their picture on facebook, spend a focused afternoon or weekend together even if it now takes, say, 100+miles of driving. If your life or their lives have changed - adapt. If one of you is single and another has a few kids, this will mean a very different focus in everyday life - but if that causes your relations to fade away, you all lose in the end, so ensure that it doesn't happen.

If you can't maintain quality relationships with X people anymore due to changes in your lifestyle and time availability - prioritize. If you let things just go their own way, it will result in shallow relationships with X people (and you'll feel lonely as the orignal article states), but you should rather have deep relations with X/2 people instead, you just have to choose.

Re: Why Loneliness Matters in the Social Age

#55

Post by iterationx » Sun, Feb 16, 2014, 10:13 PM UTC

logangilmour wrote: post #47

iterationx wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link, I will probably read it. Are you familiar with Bjarke Ingels over at BIG, I thought his TED was super interesting, http://www.ted.com/talks/bjarke_ingels_3_warp_speed_architec...

Thanks, that was great! I've only very recently started exploring urban design - I spend my days building software. I have this vague notion that living in a city could be nicer, so I'm trying to familiarize myself with what the people who know what they're doing say about it. I'll look further into Ingels and BIG. Are there any other starting points you'd suggest?

I think the number 1 thing that the US is missing is a pedestrian only square, with cafes and restaurants lining the perimeter. The children can run around the square, while the adults socialize.

Something like these photos: http://www.carfree.com/cft/i056.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Piazza_Navona_Rome.jpg

Re: Why Loneliness Matters in the Social Age

#56

Post by dschiptsov » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 3:51 AM UTC

auvrw wrote: post #43

dschiptsov wrote: post #32

Because nothing could be accomplished without avoiding constant distractions which comes from society. When Sartre said his famous "the hell is other people" he probably meant this too. Others, like Mishima, Rand, Nabokov, Hesse also emphasized if not loneliness but certain safe distance from so-called society. It is perfectly ok to be alone from all that socially constructed reality they created for themselves. Like…

or just view things as a spectrum rather than a two-state decision. even tibetan people who have to live in remote areas in order to farm can still get together with friends and race horses and so on every year. similarly, software development might require extended periods of focused time, but that doesn't mean you ought to be socially isolated all the time.

All generalizations are wrong, this one is no exception. Let's say that it is more correct for "individualism" centered Western cultures and makes less sense for "community" centerd cultures, such as Tibetan's and most of Asian's. I difenitely could survive without a bunch of selfish assholes, maintaining a minimal enough interaction with society, while in Tibet, where they live in clans of relatives and tribes, so you have to be part of your small, isolated community. But in a broad sense the idea to isolate oneself from pop-culture and media and construed by it shared social reality, to see things as they are (to very limited extent, of course) is good one, and all the good writers, like Pamuk or Marques told us how good it is.

Re: Why Loneliness Matters in the Social Age

#57

Post by wmnwmn » Mon, Feb 17, 2014, 5:40 PM UTC

I think we're mainly lonely because we learn to value sex as the primary goal in interpersonal relationships, thereby devaluing everything else. There is a linear relationship in western culture between the rise of emphasis on sex, which at first seemed "liberating", and the decline in feelings of connectedness with other people. Read some of the older literature which seems "repressed" by today's standards, and you will see that people had a better appreciation for life's other blessings, placed a higher value on friendship, and had more substantial friendships with other people. I don't think it has much at all to do with technology or the "pace of life", or even materialism; it's mainly about sex and where it lives in our value system. We don't want to go back to being repressed, but our current value system needs some adjustment, which will be difficult because it is a form of addiction. Like other addictions, it gradually drains meaning from the rest of life. Ironically the epic glut of pornography could help turn the tide, as people just overdose and realize how empty the whole thing really is. The recent rise of mainstream sadistic fantasies like 30 Shades suggests the end of the line for this kind of thing; what would be next?

Re: Why Loneliness Matters in the Social Age

#58

Post by erikpukinskis » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 6:48 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #34

erikpukinskis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expand your hypothesis: the goal of business is to take away all of our abilities to take care of ourselves--whether it's socialization, food, shelter, or anything else--so that they can sell those things back to us. Our culture, increasingly dictated by commercial interests, is taking this strategy to the extreme. The result is a world which appears humane to the wealthy.

the goal of business The goal of some businesses, yes. Not all. And even the ones that do have this as a goal only succeed to the degree that we, as customers, let them.

I was speaking informally. To be more specific, I'm talking about the goal of Capital.

(Capital being not a person or an organization, but a different species in the world that is outside of our control. The emergent effects of the existence of capital. Which itself is the result of widespread enforcement of property laws.)

Re: Why Loneliness Matters in the Social Age

#59

Post by webmaven » Sun, Feb 23, 2014, 9:05 PM UTC

iterationx wrote: post #10

heythereman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you link the article? I spent most of my youth "ruled" under extremely restrictive parents in a suburb that offered nowhere to go without a car, that my parents would never let me use. I was very lonely as a kid and even after I got to college, it took me a while to develop the social skills I needed to make myself happy. I ended up developing a strong hatred for the suburbs in my youth and have embraced the ur…

Don’t Blame Social Media if Your Teen Is Unsocial. It’s Your Fault If kids can’t socialize, who should parents blame? Simple: They should blame themselves. This is the argument advanced in It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, by Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd. Boyd—full disclosure, a friend of mine—has spent a decade interviewing hundreds of teens about their online lives. What she has found, over…

ObNitPick: Her name is 'danah boyd'. All lowercase. As her friend, Clive Thompson shouldn't have allowed that mistake to remain uncorrected.