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How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

nytimes.com

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Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#221
post #106

I used to be lonely, I used to want to belong to a group, I used to want an identity. Then I realize these desires are causing suffering. Through meditation and medical marijuana, I've been able to free myself and realize, these are the artifacts of our Tribalistic nature. But we live in a modern world, access to everything except the ones our ancestors used to value. I've come to enjoy solitary more and more.

I think ignoring or suppressing our tribal nature en masse is part of the problem. We evolved in an environment of small, closely related communities, and develop in groups and out groups. Without a sharply defined in group, everyone becomes part of the out group, meaning we default to distrust until proven otherwise. It's sad.

It's a dire state of affairs. Some people on HN will go on never marrying, having kids, or ever being in an intimate relationship. Race and culture also plays a big factor but society tends to only look for whatever elevates them, gloss over the uncomfortable truths, almost a collective ego which it shields itself the true side of human nature: The race towards monopolization of violence in the tribe through which the actors and directors of this selected group are able to exploit the mass and writing the rules of reality. One set of rules for us, the other for the rest.

I just don't find this human world exciting or interesting. I've come to loathe it. I am bound by karmic law so it's not like I can do whatever the fuck. I almost feel like my religion binds me to a life of a eunuch. Unable to indulge in one of basic human needs, unable to connect, because I've been trying to numb out this world since I was a kid. It's no wonder I am alone and others like me find themselves all alone. Our inability to bond, communicate, express is conditionally instilled through environmental circumstances you can't change. So I guess that's how Karma dictates who gets born to a nice loving rich family to everything that isn't. But society blames people like me, it's my fucking fault, there's something wrong with me, that if I just said the right things or meet the expectations in some quantitative manner. No more. The will to fight disappears and a sense of calm and wellness from submission to the present offers a warm refuge powered by the extra serotonin floating around due to medically induced state of inhibiting the reuptake process.

The present is the only Truth. The past and the future lives only in our memory and imagination.

Re: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

#222
Personally I don't think it's the work/life balance that is different from 60 and 70 years ago the reason of loneliness.

I think it's the combination of the world getting smaller, via technology, and the rise of individualism the increased standard of living gives us.

From one hand, the too small world frightens us, it makes us want to shell ourselves from the big nasty world.

On the other hand, we think we are special and the others around us not worthy of us.

Greece has the exact same problem (which was made worse by the recent crisis), perhaps in different numbers, since family ties are strong here and people don't usually relocate to find work, but it's still a problem.

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