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Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

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Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#351

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

kidneystereotyp wrote: post #109
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More like I need to be rich to move to where my friends are Like most folks, we live where we can. Being able to pick a spot on a map has never been a possibility. It's been tighter than that tho. In 2021 we beat loooong odds to find any housing and insane odds to score a decent place that fit all of us. People with money in the bank were going homeless.

[dead]

> eugenics, poisoning, dictatorships, genocide, identity theft, torture, blackmail while moving.

No.

> simply wanting to live in a specific area?

Needing to live where existing jobs/clients were, for our multi-income household. Moving anywhere else at all would have stranded us without reasonable prospects.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#352

Post by toasterlovin »

motorest wrote: post #348
themacguffinman wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"anglo cultures" already had quite a lead before WW2, hard to miss that the previous superpower was the British Empire. The outcome of WW2 elevated America, there's no relationship there to broader anglo culture. Quite a stretch to jump to "everyone might be miserable". Immigration from Latin American and other non-anglo countries is on a scale where it shapes American and British domestic politics, difficult to conc…

> "anglo cultures" already had quite a lead before WW2, hard to miss that the previous superpower was the British Empire. I think you're trying too hard to muddy the waters by creating a definition for "anglo" that does not match reality or any use of the term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Americans Even within "European Americans", nearly half has an ethnic origin that is classified as German, not English. An…

A few points:

- German and other NW European cultures share the family atomization characteristic of Anglo-Americans

- Anglo as a term stems from England. England is named for the Angles, a Scandinavian/Germanic tribe that invaded Britain a long time ago. The term Anglo-American reflects the seminal English influence on American culture.

- The English and their descendant culture, America, basically invented the modern economic world and it predates WWII by a long time.

The idea that WWII is why America is on top is a-historical.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#353

Post by ItCouldBeWorse »

dlisboa wrote: post #71

Coming from a Latin American the idea of re-starting your life across the country for college and then again for work (multiple times sometimes) while away from family and friends is very foreign. A lot of the conversation around modern American youth feeling isolated, lacking socialization and not building strong relationships seems that stem from this drive. Another thing that’s really weird and related is another…

Alot of those values make more sense, if you stop to view them as some side effect for individual happiness and more as cooperate digestive tract juices.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#354

Post by vlunkr »

grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #212
dlisboa wrote: post #71

Coming from a Latin American the idea of re-starting your life across the country for college and then again for work (multiple times sometimes) while away from family and friends is very foreign. A lot of the conversation around modern American youth feeling isolated, lacking socialization and not building strong relationships seems that stem from this drive. Another thing that’s really weird and related is another…

In Anglo cultures kids aren't usually moving away from home until they are at least ~18 years old. This is not a factor in teenagers feeling isolated. Suburbia and the decline of third places probably play a far greater role in this demographic. It's a common trope on here to lament on how the Anglo cultures don't value family ties strongly enough. I'd argue not overly valuing family ties has been a big competitive a…

Might teenagers feel less isolated if they had family around though? I grew up with tons of cousins my age and that was always a part of my social life. Doesn’t matter that I wasn’t 18

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#356

Post by karaterobot »

motorest wrote: post #348
themacguffinman wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"anglo cultures" already had quite a lead before WW2, hard to miss that the previous superpower was the British Empire. The outcome of WW2 elevated America, there's no relationship there to broader anglo culture. Quite a stretch to jump to "everyone might be miserable". Immigration from Latin American and other non-anglo countries is on a scale where it shapes American and British domestic politics, difficult to conc…

> "anglo cultures" already had quite a lead before WW2, hard to miss that the previous superpower was the British Empire. I think you're trying too hard to muddy the waters by creating a definition for "anglo" that does not match reality or any use of the term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Americans Even within "European Americans", nearly half has an ethnic origin that is classified as German, not English. An…

The word "anglo" is so fraught that I think it's probably less useful to try to argue about what it means than it would be to just leave it alone.

I'm actually here to point out that the U.S. had the world's largest GDP as early as 1890, or as late as 1913, depending on your source of data and how it's estimated. So, WWII isn't the origin of that. We can now argue about whether GDP is a good indicator, but before doing that I'd ask for a better one (with historical data) to be suggested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Maddison_statistics_of_t...

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#357

Post by the_af »

lazide wrote: post #338
the_af wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Latin American tends to be unsafe (physically) Depending on which country and which city, Latin American cities are not more dangerous than risky US cities. Many of our cities are reasonably safe. There are burglaries, muggings and robbery like in most big cities all over the world -- no more, and no less. There are some "trouble" hot spots that are particularly dangerous, of course. The same can be said of the US.

Risky US cities are pretty risky though. Which is why I said that.

Let me rephrase then: average Latin American cities in many countries are comparable to average US cities.

There are trouble hotspots (and countries) just as there are trouble hotspots in the US.

It's not true that Latin America as a whole is "unsafe". It's not Ciudad Juárez everywhere. I live in Buenos Aires and there's crime comparable to any big city (with better and worse periods, of course).

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#358

Post by steve_adams_86 »

grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #212
dlisboa wrote: post #71

Coming from a Latin American the idea of re-starting your life across the country for college and then again for work (multiple times sometimes) while away from family and friends is very foreign. A lot of the conversation around modern American youth feeling isolated, lacking socialization and not building strong relationships seems that stem from this drive. Another thing that’s really weird and related is another…

In Anglo cultures kids aren't usually moving away from home until they are at least ~18 years old. This is not a factor in teenagers feeling isolated. Suburbia and the decline of third places probably play a far greater role in this demographic. It's a common trope on here to lament on how the Anglo cultures don't value family ties strongly enough. I'd argue not overly valuing family ties has been a big competitive a…

> In Anglo cultures kids aren't usually moving away from home until they are at least ~18 years old. This is not a factor in teenagers feeling isolated.

But it’s more than a single generation thing. If you live for 18 years in a family that has only recently put down roots in a new place, you won’t have family around, unlikely to have as many family friends around, etc. Community will likely be sparse and colder.

You essentially get a generational social debt put onto kids, over and over. It appears that cohesion is lost, pro-social behaviour decreases, focus on less social activity increases, and so on.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#359

Post by extr »

bluGill wrote: post #319
extr wrote: post #46

I go back and forth on this. I still keep in touch with a bunch of high school and college friends. For better or worse those guys know "the real me" and the history and relationships are impossible to replace. They all still live close together but I live far away - I only see them once or twice a year, if that (less right now because we're all in the "very young kids" stage). I miss them. On the other hand, when I…

What is wrong with your situation? Make friends where you are. If you live close to your wife's family make friends with them. If there is something wrong with your current situation, then perhaps you and your wife need to talk this over. Maybe you need to move to get away from whatever is wrong. Are you old friends new hobbies/interests things that you could get into, and their wives someone your wife could become f…

Nothing is wrong. We moved to be closer to family which in retrospect was a great decision and one I'm still happy with. We don't have much of a social circle here outside of that, but we have kids < 2 so it's hard to get out too too much anyway.

Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?

#360

Post by JustExAWS »

It doesn’t matter when I lived near friends and family.

At our ages 40-60, we all have our own immediate families, obligations (kids, grandkids and/or aging parents), we still have to make an effort to get together and we probably wouldn’t get together any more than we do now.

I am 50 married with adult (step)kids and my wife and I are empty nesters. We recently moved from where I lived after graduating from college in 1996 and my wife has lived all of her adult life.

My core group of 5 friends I’ve put together from jobs I’ve had when living there are all married some with adult kids and others with kids still at home. It took a lot of planning and juggling calendars just for us to get together even once per quarter when I lived there.

They all still live there and we have a group chat. But it is still less than once per quarter that we can all get together. It’s a short cheap flight for me to fly in to hang out with them.

There are two other couples that my wife and I are friends with and we all live in different cities now. Similar scenario, they both have family obligations - parents, adult kids, grandkids, etc which make it hard for all six of us to get together. But we usually have planned a trip together at least once a year and we end up in each others city for something at least once a year - Atlanta, Orlando and Los Angeles.

My third group of “friends” are my seven cousins I grew up with (I’m an only child). They are all female and also have aging parents (who are less healthy than mine), children, grand children, etc.

They all live in my former hometown and I’m also in a group chat with them. They say they often only see each other when I come to town and get us all together.

It’s the same with my college crew - we all went to college in our hone town and they either still live there or have family there. We can barely get together for alumni college events

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