101–110 of 469 posts
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This reminds me of a tweet I saw in 2023, during the height of the Floyd Riots, that has since unfortunately been deleted, that said approximately that suburbanisation was a long term bet on the inability of the US State to keep order in urban areas. Basically, once a generation (last one before the Floyd riots were the Rodney King riots) the US has massive riots, everyone learns of remembers that if you don’t live i…
It's not lost, just no longer necessary for survival. Also, bad communities fail. They should be allowed to fail. Until recently, individuals needed to be part of some sort of kinship group to get their needs met and to survive. To communicate with anyone in near real time you had to be close by. We have managed to engineer a society where individuals can survive "on their own" - basically outside their kinship group…
> It's not lost, just no longer necessary for survival. The psychological argument is that it is necessary for survival — that a society that has long taken underlying healthy behaviours for granted is discovering that it's losing what defines society itself. Trust, cooperation, sustainable development, sound policy-making, education, child-care...
Heck, cooperation is a survival strategy that came out of evolution. It exists outside of humans. It doesn’t need to come from human intent.
It feels weird to me that people think they can intelligently design cooperative societies and groups. You can try, but there’s always going to be trade offs between individuals and the group.
In this moment, individuals are in a place where they can avoid many of those trade offs and costs. I think this is generally positive considering my own experience of costly kinship groups. But I can see why others disagree.
I don't really get where people with kids found these 6.5 hrs / wk to spend on friendships, or even the quoted current averages of 4 hrs / wk. On a workday, there isn't much time. I roll out of bed at 6:30, get the kids up and fed breakfast and out the door. I finally get actually working at 8:30-9:30, depending on if I exercise or not. Stop work in the 5:30-6 range, switch into making dinner, getting kids to eat din…
Imagine the time we would have if.... Instead of doom scrolling on social media we called a friend. Instead of binge watching another meh show, we had friends over to play cards or a board game. Instead of over scheduling kids with constant activities, parents had a regular night out with friends while kids spent quality time at home with the other parent. The time is there. It was in the past. We just have a finite…
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/09/school-dr...
I recently moved back from Asia to Northern Europe, famous for being a place hard to make friends. I made a new friend, when I one day went to the local swimming pool and just started to talk with an old, pensioner guy.
He reached out to me later, we set up a coffe chat and now it's a biweekly routine.
It was a fun story so I told it to friend & partner/families. All of my women friends first reaction was caution. "what does he want? Be careful with your drink!". My guy friends were more perplexed on why I'd even bother befriending someone almost 50+ year older than me. What's there to be gained.
I realized a few years back that meeting people with absolute zero expectations is the most fun way. It even worked good on online dating. As long as I enjoy taking to the person (a low bar) it's not time wasted.
Time is not to be wasted. Everything needs a goal/reason. Most people cultivate this mindset and the added expectations on new connections, to me seems like a cultural shift that happened as a result of what the article describes. One can remove that sentiment even with the work/nuclear family stuff. (not sure about the physical constraints)
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> Also, bad communities fail. They should be allowed to fail. Are there circumstances under which nation states could/should be seen as 'communities', I wonder. And, what would be some sensible ways of detecting and handling failure at such scale.
Yes, when the nation is ethnically homogenous you can have that. But it's not a guarantee. "I against my brother. I and my brother against my cousin. I, my brother, and my cousin against the world" -Arab Proverb
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> Also, bad communities fail. They should be allowed to fail. Are there circumstances under which nation states could/should be seen as 'communities', I wonder. And, what would be some sensible ways of detecting and handling failure at such scale.
Yes, when the nation is ethnically homogenous you can have that. But it's not a guarantee. "I against my brother. I and my brother against my cousin. I, my brother, and my cousin against the world" -Arab Proverb
I wonder how much the polarization of politics contributes to this. I have friends on opposite sides of the political spectrum than me, but were able to basically segment off that area of discussion to enjoy each others company in other areas. It may be because we go back 20+ years with many shared experiences. I would guess many friendships do not have that level of bedrock to ground them, so developments like the r…
I have a friend who on one hand believes all of the anti-vax, evil illegal immigrate stuff and might even believe that Trump’s tariffs are okay. But on the other hand, I have never heard him say anything negative about other people, cultures, sexualities etc.
I consider him a good friend. On the other hand, there was this other guy I was friends with for awhile. He became full MAGA. It got to the point where I just couldn’t deal with him anymore.
I guess the people I won’t deal with or Trump conservatives (ie populists). I’m good with traditional conservatives we can usually even have polite intellectual conversations about politics.
I don't really get where people with kids found these 6.5 hrs / wk to spend on friendships, or even the quoted current averages of 4 hrs / wk. On a workday, there isn't much time. I roll out of bed at 6:30, get the kids up and fed breakfast and out the door. I finally get actually working at 8:30-9:30, depending on if I exercise or not. Stop work in the 5:30-6 range, switch into making dinner, getting kids to eat din…
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"Life has a 100 percent fatality rate" So, "no one should ask" a suicidal person to not kill themselves "or force them" not to. It is when people cannot fight for themselves that those of us who can fight have to fight even harder. I am saying this as someone who has attempted suicide twice. You are literally arguing in favor for shrugging your shoulders to things like slavery.
No one should ask a suicidal person not to kill themselves. If you believe in autonomy, every human has the right to decide when and how to end their lives. Slavery denies human autonomy by taking all control away. Even when you think their decision is a bad one, it’s their life and their decision.
But in my experience, friendship quality is much more important than quantity.
I’m only truly friends with people I admire and am interested in, and grow to care about. Some of these friendships happen fast and others are slow burners - they aren’t all alike. But they are definitely hard to come across, particularly in middle age.
I believe those friendships give me the kind of benefits that experts suggests we lose in isolation. These are the kinds of friendships you carry with you wherever you are - often wondering what those friends would or do think about the things you are experiencing.
On the other hand, I have many acquaintances, some quite longstanding, where the friendship switch never got flipped. Perhaps I am viewed as a bit stand-offish. I am never not gracious but I just don’t have the small talk gene.