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Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

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Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#361

Post by dangus »

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #244
dangus wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key to avoiding distrust is by systemically avoiding segregation. There's nothing wrong with diversity itself.

I believe this is in line with "contact theory", the naive version of which Putnam's statistics seem to refute. Unsegregated areas usually have lower trust, at least in the short term. But. Categorizations change over time, and many lines that used to be important no longer are. So he holds out hope that the same blurring can occur to the lines that matter today. He suggests that the formation of higher identity -- p…

As a generality, I'm wary of leaning too heavily on a single author's philosophy, especially in social sciences. In that regard, I don't agree with everything Putnam puts forward.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#362

Post by HDThoreaun »

NaOH wrote: post #138
UweSchmidt wrote: post #125

The fundamental force behind this is individualism. Every single technological innovation has made it easier for the individual to function better alone. Every societal change has emphasized the individual right over the (real or perceived) benefit of the collective. This trend seems to accelerate and absolutely nothing that is happening in western society even remotely suggests a possible turnaround. You can take ac…

>The fundamental force behind this is individualism. Every single technological innovation has made it easier for the individual to function better alone. Every societal change has emphasized the individual right over the (real or perceived) benefit of the collective. This trend seems to accelerate and absolutely nothing that is happening in western society even remotely suggests a possible turnaround. I've long capt…

Individualism and collectivism are not mutually exclusive

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#363

Post by bradlys »

mmkos wrote: post #333
bradlys wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s definitely grim out there for most young men these days. I’m 32 and make the money those girls are looking for but I can’t get a date to save my life cause I don’t have the looks. (Average in almost all aspects) I’ve made offers to my friends that I’d pay them anywhere from $10k-$1m if they found me someone I ended up marrying. No one has taken it up - they know how bad the dating market is and that there’s zero…

Jesus. Don't you think that you're creating a perverse incentive for your friends to hook you up with just about anybody with no regard for whether they're a good fit/decent human being?

They’d like to but they can’t find anyone who’d do it anyway. Moot point about incentives if no one is willing to date you at all.

Physical attraction is everything these days.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#364

Post by bogomipz »

ryandrake wrote: post #232
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am posting this as a person born and raised in a rather small community. I personally do not yearn for the good old days when 'everyone knew everyone' and there were things to do together. We did things together, because of geographical convenience and random chance. We had no other options so we did kids things. Granted, I was lucky to be included in that particular group, because they all were much, much smarter…

It's not just leave-me-alone individualism. It's this new, belligerent "Toxic Individualism" that's taken hold, supported by recent technological change (such as social media) and recent political/cultural change (many examples). A regular individualist simply prefers to operate on their own, outside of society and ignore collective activities. This new breed of individualism is more focused on attacking society and…

>"It's this new, belligerent "Toxic Individualism" that's taken hold, supported by recent technological change (such as social media) and recent political/cultural change (many examples)."

I feel like this started with reality-tv which predates social media by a few years. I think reality-tv took poorly-behaved and uninteresting people and elevated them. I think this not only normalized bad behavior but even celebrated these people as special. It seems like this just primed the pump for what came after with social media. TikTok/FB/Instagram et al, seem to enable and encourage everyone to star in their own reality-tv shows where the mundane, banal and uncivil are treated as interesting and worthy of attention.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#365

Post by kodah »

dangus wrote: post #356
_ktx2 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In short, equity. In longer form, a lot of people don't have the chance to leave their towns and that is in part due to opportunity, another way of looking at it is that extracting people out of their communities and consolidating them in cities isn't very equitable. Historically we've relied on colleges to give people a ticket out of where they come from. In the long term that does real damage to those communities.…

I think you misunderstand. Their families are already in cities. (And "cities" includes suburban areas) This isn't 1800's America where most families are on rural subsistence farms. People can choose to stay wherever they want, but the networks that make up the economy have to physically exist. Factories, warehouses, etc...look at a satellite view of the Chicago River from Goose Island down to Midway airport. It's a…

My family is not in a city, I do not misunderstand. A lot more than farmers live in rural areas.

The kind of take you have isn't unusual for HN though. Most people from HN have spent their entire lives in cities or suburbs, so their empathy is short.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#366

Post by nicbou »

EE84M3i wrote: post #92

I live in a big city, but I'm terribly lonely. - I live alone. - I work hybrid, but when I go into the office, it's more or less empty and I spend all my time on zoom calls. - My family lives far away. - I'm single. Most weeks, my only social interaction is at the local bar, where I'm a regular, or various dates from apps. Excesses of both of these is unhealthy in different ways. I've been pushing myself to go to mee…

This is very common with the immigrants where I live. So many friends struggled with that in their first 3 years or so. They all end up making friends over time, and then the process becomes easier as they meet friends of friends.

There is not a specific method to it. You just hack at it until you find yourself surrounded by friends.

I made friends by connecting with people who worked on similar things. We invited each other for a drink and ended up hanging out. I've also met a lot of friends through other friends. Our groups just merged over time. It helps to be the one organising things and inviting others. I don't remember making many friends in meetups, but perhaps that's just me.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#367

Post by AnthonyMouse »

z3phyr wrote: post #315
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it's the opposite. This was caused by the destruction of individualism. When people are individuals, you know the name of your butcher and which farm your wheat came from. Now it all comes from the collective and you can't participate in the process without being a drone. Working for Walmart is not the same as operating your own farm stand. You lack autonomy because decisions are made collectively by corp…

That's not individualism, that's absence of scale.

Individuals didn't have problems achieving viable scale before collectives started imposing more fixed costs on everything than individual-scale operations could sustain.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#368

Post by AnthonyMouse »

adrianN wrote: post #294
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Artisanal products are so expensive because we make them so. By default if you buy something in a store, add 5% to the value by improving it and want to sell it on eBay, they'll charge sales tax on the full sale price even though you already paid sales tax on 95% of that. To avoid the double taxation you have to file paperwork, which most people don't know how to do, and pay filing fees, which eat into your already-m…

Artisanal products are expensive because human work is expensive. You can either have a machine that produces a million bland identical tea cups a day for a cost of a dollar per cup or you can have an expert potter produce two dozen artisanal tea cups a day. Even if the potter works for minimum wage and materials are free it's several times more expensive.

If human labor is so expensive then why do unskilled laborers have such trouble making a living?

You're ignoring the middle ground, because that's the thing that was destroyed. The expert potter is still in business selling bespoke products to millionaires.

It's the one who might have done it for 15% more than the mass produced product who is gone, because we added on top of that so much bureaucratic overhead that the final price ends up being 100%+ more instead of 15% more and that exceeds what ordinary customers are willing to pay.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#369

Post by AnthonyMouse »

tartoran wrote: post #284
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it's the opposite. This was caused by the destruction of individualism. When people are individuals, you know the name of your butcher and which farm your wheat came from. Now it all comes from the collective and you can't participate in the process without being a drone. Working for Walmart is not the same as operating your own farm stand. You lack autonomy because decisions are made collectively by corp…

You’re talking about a different type of effect where corporations killed all the small players and that’s very true but has nothing to do with the ideological individualism, at least not directly but could as well indirectly but let’s be clear what we’re discussing and if they’re intertwined let’s make that explicit. Individualism discussed here leads people to lonelinese and communities to vanish around them..

The issue with the comment I replied to is that it takes individualism to mean something like isolation, which is a straw man when that position has no advocates.

Individualism is something more like individual autonomy, which is in no way incompatible with individuals entering into voluntary associations with other members of the community -- as long as no one is forcing them to. But that's the thing we've destroyed through regulatory overhead and vertically integrated monopolies which force people into associations with entities they'd prefer not to be associated with and deprive them of their autonomy.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#370

Post by snoot »

tartoran wrote: post #284
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it's the opposite. This was caused by the destruction of individualism. When people are individuals, you know the name of your butcher and which farm your wheat came from. Now it all comes from the collective and you can't participate in the process without being a drone. Working for Walmart is not the same as operating your own farm stand. You lack autonomy because decisions are made collectively by corp…

You’re talking about a different type of effect where corporations killed all the small players and that’s very true but has nothing to do with the ideological individualism, at least not directly but could as well indirectly but let’s be clear what we’re discussing and if they’re intertwined let’s make that explicit. Individualism discussed here leads people to lonelinese and communities to vanish around them..

I keep hearing about this ideological individualism, but I never see it explained except as a cause for bad things. Can someone give me an example?
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