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Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

theguardian.com

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Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#131

Post by workthrowaway27 »

grondilu wrote: post #4

Lately I've become more and more convinced that indeed, modern society sucks, or at the very least that I, and people like me, am not well equipped to flourish in it. I'm sure some people are though, but I suspect they are becoming the minority. Few days ago I also read Ted Kaczynski's essay[1], and it's hard for me not to acknowledge how right he is on many points. However, I do believe it is possible to survive all…

You're treading close to nihilism here, which is a dangerous way to live. The article has a good quote:

"The great prophylactic against loneliness is feeling that you are part of something bigger than yourself – a family, a friendship group, a community, a benign universe, whatever. Even a community with little in the way of material resources finds some contentment in being in a group of people who are all in it together."

When you're feeling the way you feel you can retreat from the world and try to treat everything with detachment and equanimity, but I think that's a losing proposition. It puts you in a passive role and makes you feel like you don't have much control of your life. It's better to take a more active role in life and find something that you value and work towards that. What it is doesn't really matter as long as you pick something that has a least some significance to you and that involves other people.

Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#132

Post by ficklepickle »

doug1001 wrote: post #83
madaxe_again wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also possible to live differently. I played the stoic for decades until the isolation of being a business owner living in a city pushed me over the brink. I’ve struggled with loneliness my entire life - and adult life has been worse than childhood. I started boarding school at six - and while I was homesick for some time, the camaraderie of other inmates, uh, students, was the only thing that kept me mildly sane…

thanks for sharing; i was a (catholic) boarding school lad from age 6 until university deeply envious envious of the place you've chose to live where i've had so many excellent days out (snowdonia mostly)--bunk at pen-y-pass YHA, snowdon horseshoe, glyders traverse, etc), then finish each day with a litre mug of tea at Pete's in Llanberis

So weird seeing Pete's eats mentioned here. One of my best friends lives in Llanberis.

I once got taken up Crib Goch completely unprepared, thinking I was going on a leisurely walk. I was not impressed.

Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#133

Post by meebs »

monob wrote: post #28
colechristensen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were generally family groups that very much depended on each other constantly for survival. The social dynamics would be very different than what can readily be imagined today. Harassing someone whose existence is necessary for you all to eat tomorrow or to avoid getting eaten by wild animals is going to be quite a different situation. Applying the fad buzzword for children being mean to each other in suburban m…

The only people who long for a large family are the ones that aren't in one. Look at how much constant violence and bullying there is between any siblings when an adult isn't around to stop it.

I have a huge extended family 20+ kids my generation and while we aren't all close and kids will beat each other up sometimes there's no bullying. Blood is blood.

Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#134

Post by gumby »

This is actually why I am so concerned with (as in: working towards) the elimination of all jobs. "But what will people do?" I am often asked, as if the worth of someone is determined by their job. They can write bad poetry or watch TV, but I suspect and hope that a lot of the time will be spent with others. Humans are social animals.

Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#135

Post by Jhsto »

leetcrew wrote: post #111
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet we all know that virtually every programming job advertised requires a computer science degree, I'm not convinced it was good advice given the way most companies hire.

the founder was basically saying that, if he somehow knew before the fact that you were good, he would hire you. he certainly would not just hire an arbitrary college dropout. it's essentially a vacuous conditional that sidesteps the fact that a college degree is widely considered a signifier of some minimal level of skill and will of course be one of the primary ways that applicants are evaluated, unless they someho…

> unless they somehow have substantial work experience at the age of 20

This is going to be very anecdotal, but that merit is even more run by buzzwords than qualitative inspection of one's skills compared to a degree. I had the privilege to be employed as 20-year old in Silicon Valley as a foreigner, but I did not find myself doing more challenging work than I had before. However, namedropping Silicon Valley on my CV had huge implications back in my home country once I returned (because ironically I did not have a degree). The interesting part is that not a single workplace back in my home country has yet conducted a technical review for me, yet I have been given offer letters.

What I am saying is that while some people feel like a BSc is a dumb obligation, the path of having a prestigious CV isn't much better. Instead, if you happen to have one, the chances are that some CV buzzwords are regarded as, as you said about degrees:

> considered a signifier of some minimal level of skill and will of course be one of the primary ways that applicants are evaluated

Yet I find this alarmingly false. This has caused me to stray away of those companies, as I don't really want to be employed somewhere where people are hired like this either.

Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#136

Post by [deleted] »

_pp9c wrote: post #72
badminton1 wrote: post #20

Modern society may have issues, but it as bad as it is usually portrayed. 10,000 years ago, you would live in a tribe. If you were not popular among your tribe, it is likely you would be either exiled and forced to live in solitude and die during winter or be constantly subject to violence. 2,000 years ago, you would live only to work in a farm or be in a state of perpetual war. To make things worse, literacy rate wa…

Wait, do you think that the Tulsa race riot happened because people didn't have radio or TV? Wtf? Race riots occurred in this country because of the acute structural contradiction between the white settler-nation and the other nations; these contradictions have not been resolved by radio and TV in the interim. We will see more of these riots in the future.

[deleted]

Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#137

Post by tinymollusk »

dominotw wrote: post #86
grondilu wrote: post #4

Lately I've become more and more convinced that indeed, modern society sucks, or at the very least that I, and people like me, am not well equipped to flourish in it. I'm sure some people are though, but I suspect they are becoming the minority. Few days ago I also read Ted Kaczynski's essay[1], and it's hard for me not to acknowledge how right he is on many points. However, I do believe it is possible to survive all…

I would say fooling your mind is not easy. Definition of mind is "something that seeks" to want a "mind that doesn't seek" is meaningless and absurd. Its like wanting a nose that doesn't breathe. Sure you can come up with various philosophies like stoicism, Buddhism ect but you are merely trading one loop of seeking for another. Now you are stuck in a 'non-seeking' loop and failure to achieve 'non-seeking'.

You don't have to fully stop seeking to see benefits. I have seen many benefits to my mental health through yoga, where you practice seeing the seeking/avoidance patterns and learn to breathe into them and accept it.

The practice (IMO) isn't to break the loop as much as it is to see the loop. And to see it while it's happening/during triggers.

Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#138

Post by badminton1 »

_pp9c wrote: post #72
badminton1 wrote: post #20

Modern society may have issues, but it as bad as it is usually portrayed. 10,000 years ago, you would live in a tribe. If you were not popular among your tribe, it is likely you would be either exiled and forced to live in solitude and die during winter or be constantly subject to violence. 2,000 years ago, you would live only to work in a farm or be in a state of perpetual war. To make things worse, literacy rate wa…

Wait, do you think that the Tulsa race riot happened because people didn't have radio or TV? Wtf? Race riots occurred in this country because of the acute structural contradiction between the white settler-nation and the other nations; these contradictions have not been resolved by radio and TV in the interim. We will see more of these riots in the future.

I do not think that.

But I think is that more people would not have been OK with that level of violence and destruction if they had a chance to actually see it, rather than presented through words on a newspaper.

Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help

#139

Post by cableshaft »

grondilu wrote: post #4

Lately I've become more and more convinced that indeed, modern society sucks, or at the very least that I, and people like me, am not well equipped to flourish in it. I'm sure some people are though, but I suspect they are becoming the minority. Few days ago I also read Ted Kaczynski's essay[1], and it's hard for me not to acknowledge how right he is on many points. However, I do believe it is possible to survive all…

Viktor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor, would agree with your last point. He wrote Man's Search for Meaning, and one of his main points is that sometimes you can't control what happens in life, only how you choose to act while enduring it.

It's a pretty amazing book. And really brings things into sharp contrast. You might be struggling with work (and I've been in that struggle myself, it's not fun, and hard to escape from), but this man managed to to make it through one of the worst atrocities ever committed against fellow humans, and not fall to pieces as a result of it.

http://benjaminmcevoy.com/7-lessons-learned-mans-search-mean...

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