Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

ourworldindata.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 116 posts

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#31

Post by lucumo »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #17

Whenever I have a family vacation, I can’t help but think how unnatural our present lives are. For thousands of years, we essentially just lived with and around family. Yet now I get to see my entire family for a few days every year. Some cousins I haven’t met in years. The people I spend the most time with everyday are also the people I care the least for - colleagues and acquaintances. I don’t have a solution. But…

> Whenever I have a family vacation, I can’t help but think how unnatural our present lives are.

I feel it is as unnatural as not having cholera roaming around: better than the natural state of affairs.

I love my family, but family vacations make me want to run away screaming. Having to live with family would break me.

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#32

Post by beardyw »

nly wrote: post #19
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #17

Whenever I have a family vacation, I can’t help but think how unnatural our present lives are. For thousands of years, we essentially just lived with and around family. Yet now I get to see my entire family for a few days every year. Some cousins I haven’t met in years. The people I spend the most time with everyday are also the people I care the least for - colleagues and acquaintances. I don’t have a solution. But…

Even a couple of generations ago things were very different. Maybe Americans don't see this so much because it's a country of migrants, but it was common over here in the UK, just a century ago, for people to spend their entire lives within a 10 mile radius of where they were born.

You have hit on an issue which always seems to be overlooked. It is easy to talk about "extended family" as of it was one thing. It isn't and can't be.

When a child marries, as a couple they belong to two families. When their children marry they belong to two families. And so it goes. [1]

An older individual may see all descendents as "their family", but in reality they are all shared. Somebody here mentioned the Kennedys, but despite a powerful image, the same applies to them.

The only way for a real extended family to survive is by all living in close proximity to everyone else so those structures interleave. Like, I assume, the Navajo.

The bicycle was first to blame, then the car, then the plane.

[1] "marry" used in a loose context here, any relationship in reality.

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#33

Post by badpun »

lucumo wrote: post #31
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #17

Whenever I have a family vacation, I can’t help but think how unnatural our present lives are. For thousands of years, we essentially just lived with and around family. Yet now I get to see my entire family for a few days every year. Some cousins I haven’t met in years. The people I spend the most time with everyday are also the people I care the least for - colleagues and acquaintances. I don’t have a solution. But…

> Whenever I have a family vacation, I can’t help but think how unnatural our present lives are. I feel it is as unnatural as not having cholera roaming around: better than the natural state of affairs. I love my family, but family vacations make me want to run away screaming. Having to live with family would break me.

In human's natural state (hunter-gatherer), most of the deadly infectious diseases didn't plague us. They only started jumping to humans when we started doing animal husbandry (new diseases got to us via close living with animals) and when we started living in dense cities. Both conditions were only met circa 10k years ago.

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#34

Post by koonsolo »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #17

Whenever I have a family vacation, I can’t help but think how unnatural our present lives are. For thousands of years, we essentially just lived with and around family. Yet now I get to see my entire family for a few days every year. Some cousins I haven’t met in years. The people I spend the most time with everyday are also the people I care the least for - colleagues and acquaintances. I don’t have a solution. But…

The good news is that you get to pick your colleagues and acquaintances.

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#35

Post by Markoff »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #17

Whenever I have a family vacation, I can’t help but think how unnatural our present lives are. For thousands of years, we essentially just lived with and around family. Yet now I get to see my entire family for a few days every year. Some cousins I haven’t met in years. The people I spend the most time with everyday are also the people I care the least for - colleagues and acquaintances. I don’t have a solution. But…

As they say you can't choose your family, but you can choose friends, so I can see how many/most of the people would choose between age 20-40 to stay away from family, then when you have your own kids you will start seeing your parents in different context as you became parent and see you was maybe more harsh on them than they deserved plus them helping with watching grandkids is also bonus (this doesn't really apply to me, my mother is 4 hours away by train, father 6 hours and inlaws 11 hour flight.

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#36

Post by MediumFalse »

nly wrote: post #30
renewiltord wrote: post #3

The real wisdom of this graph is that for people who aren't friends with their coworkers, they are spending 4x as much time with not friends as friends. For people who are friends with their coworkers they're just cheating on that play, boosting their friend time.

I've always thought not being friends with your coworkers is a defense mechanism. Most of us have to work to survive, so getting emotionally involved and ending up with an uncomfortable or toxic environment (one with conflict and favoritism) is a big risk. I've observed that the more highly paid and "professional" your work environment, the harder it is to make friends through work.

I used to work with a few coworkers in the same team and had a very 'defensive' approach as mentioned. Once we actually moved into completely separate departments we actually became pretty good friends. I think that removes the 'competitiveness' factor somewhat.

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#38

Post by spaceman_2020 »

beardyw wrote: post #32
nly wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a couple of generations ago things were very different. Maybe Americans don't see this so much because it's a country of migrants, but it was common over here in the UK, just a century ago, for people to spend their entire lives within a 10 mile radius of where they were born.

You have hit on an issue which always seems to be overlooked. It is easy to talk about "extended family" as of it was one thing. It isn't and can't be. When a child marries, as a couple they belong to two families. When their children marry they belong to two families. And so it goes. [1] An older individual may see all descendents as "their family", but in reality they are all shared. Somebody here mentioned the Ken…

Maybe its a cultural thing, but I've always been taught that even extended family is family, regardless of how often I see them, and if they come to me for help, I'm obligated to help them.

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#39

Post by wink »

Not sure if I missed it but this only count in-person interactions as spending time?

It's not that I feel 100% like I'm spending time alone if I'm on voice chat with friends, or even chatting or playing games. Maybe it's an edge case of the people who grew up on IRC but... sure I am home alone but I'm still interacting with people for most of my awake time after work (Interestingly I never counted texts as that, maybe because it was too shortened, and not supported with other media like posting links, images, videos, articles). Why would I not count that? (I am not saying this is or isn't a complete replacement for meeting people, I'm just not sure if it would not highly skew my answers for this graph, but I'm not American anyway :P)

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#40

Post by bbarn »

renewiltord wrote: post #3

The real wisdom of this graph is that for people who aren't friends with their coworkers, they are spending 4x as much time with not friends as friends. For people who are friends with their coworkers they're just cheating on that play, boosting their friend time.

I've never lasted long at any position I didn't rapidly make friends. It certainly doesn't apply to everyone's personality but if I can't enjoy the company of people I spend a massive part of my day with it's a no go.

I don't find fulfillment in my work. I hate the question "What do you do for a living?" I am there because I need to be until I have enough not to be, and so while I'm there I can't afford to be miserable too.

Post reply on HN