Should more of us be moving to live near friends? • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by grumpy-de-sre » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 8:59 PM UTC

stackghost wrote: post #372

motorest wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 advantage of the Anglo cultures for centuries, eg. moving for opportunity (improved social mobility), ability to connect with outsiders, couple pairing across cultural/geographical boundaries, prerequisite to a high trust society, etc. That line…

>It boils down to "everyone might be miserable, but someone else is getting rich so it's good." Aren't Scandinavian people statistically the happiest? That's not anglo culture.

Admittedly Anglo culture took a lot of influence from the scandinavians (due to Viking conquest etc). I think some of the cultural tenants we are talking about probably did come originally from Scandinavia.

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

#382

Post by the_clarence » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 9:00 PM UTC

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…

Make new friends

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

#383

Post by jimbokun » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 9:03 PM UTC

williamtrask wrote: post #56

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's to be done? Our society would need to re-think its norms around moving away in order to move upward, which runs into some pretty big philosophical ideas around geography, culture, and values. For technologists, this cultural movement is still in a bit of a philosophical stage, but it's starting to make its way into some early experiments. https://www.plurality.net/ is probably the best written work on it so…

Remote work should make this much easier than before.

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

#384

Post by kridsdale1 » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 9:03 PM UTC

lioeters wrote: post #250

ustad wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Though the roads may wind far and wide, And cities gleam with promises bright, The heart will always turn to the soil, Where the roots of our ancestors lie. No matter how distant the dream may be, Home will call, and there we shall be.” – Mariana Ruiz del Valle

We need a poet who sings about having a "dangerous, dirty city" to call home, and the yearning of the heart is to escape to somewhere better and never returning.

Belle from Beauty and the Beast

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

#385

Post by nemo » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 9:04 PM UTC

ericmcer wrote: post #26

paxys wrote: post #17

Weird that the article frames friends as being constant in life and your career/house/neighborhood/kids' schools/community as totally flexible when practically speaking it's the other way around. It is normal to move away from people you formed bonds with in high school and college. If you are lonely the solution isn't to uproot your life and go after them, but to form new bonds with people who are around you right n…

The article frames this issue with an older person looking back on their life and being glad they maintained lifelong friendships. From a practicality standpoint making a new friend can be easier but it won't have the same spiritual and emotional connection as a lifelong one. If you are 80 a friendship of 60+ years will be something that invokes real satisfaction and lends depth to your life. Being friends with someo…

I'm 50-something, lots of the friends I've made in the last one to four years birdwatching are close now. I have old friends from 30 years ago but they're mostly a drain. I've formed new relationships with folks in my Tai Chi class as well. We're very close now, closer than I am with any of my old friends.

It might be that for some old friends add extra richness and depth to relationships, but that has not been my experience at all and I'm glad I've found local friends with common interests - I certainly prefer them to people I happened to go to school with. I know some folks from my job from long ago, and seeing old friends is nice, but still I mostly want to talk to the few that I still have some shared interest in common now.

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

#386

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 9:05 PM UTC

seizethecheese wrote: post #157

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…

80% of Americans live near where they were born. This isn’t the root cause of estrangement.

Living "near" might be a meaningless metric depending on the definition.

I have noticed that if friends move even an hour outside of the city, you are lucky to see them 4x a year.

It's not much different from moving across the country (typically).

Additionally, 20% of a friend group moving away (1 in 5 people) can be enough to breakup what once was a a solid friend group.

Yes, there's other things at play.

But I definitely think this is the major driver.

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

#387

Post by bnlxbnlx » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 9:40 PM UTC

JackMorgan wrote: post #318

bnlxbnlx wrote: post #206

I'm living with my partner and her brother and family and another family who are friends of ours in a house (which has three apartments). We moved there to live together (and continued to work remotely or found work elsewhere). Six adults, six children. It's an absolute treat. I can't imagine going back to a nuclear family setup. Living in a larger web with more support from all sides (both for adults and children) i…

Do you ever get on each other's nerves? Are the apartments separated enough that there's noise issues?

Totally. A conflict engagement rather than conflict avoidance culture is definitely helpful, so that resentment doesn't build up, and information can flow more easily.

And yes, apartments are kind of separate enough to not hear each other too much. But then also everyone has young kids anyway, so we are all used to a certain baseline noise level anyway

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

#388

Post by emchammer » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 9:46 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #375

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…

When Americans are motivated to move out of the small town they were born in, it's often because that "small town" is a dying and depopulated hollow shell full of awful, racist, jobless, drug-addicted idiots who are mostly only surviving off of some kind of long-term disability insurance. Often, with these kinds of places, they aren't a place your family has lived for generations, and nor are they a place you have th…

Nobody likes to be told that they are racist. Once you realize that land value and low airfares are just ways of changing the scenery on different time scales, you can start working the deeper problems.

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

#389

Post by daedrdev » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 9:55 PM UTC

lorax wrote: post #78

daedrdev wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's simply illegal to build housing like Tokyo does in every US city, and often every project over 3 stories needs community input and faces environmental lawsuits over things like shadows

Japan has detailed zoning restrictions, including the shadow a building can cast on a neighbor's lot. Maybe there are fewer lawsuits because the law is clear so it is easy to know if you are following it. https://ranjatai.wordpress.com/2022/02/11/sunlight-on-japane...

Yeah I think that is the big difference. In the US it doesn't matter what the actual rules are, the lawsuits will come regardless and drive up costs massively, and many places allow local councils to reject buildings without reasoning.

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

#390

Post by the_clarence » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 10:01 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #323

paxys wrote: post #17

Weird that the article frames friends as being constant in life and your career/house/neighborhood/kids' schools/community as totally flexible when practically speaking it's the other way around. It is normal to move away from people you formed bonds with in high school and college. If you are lonely the solution isn't to uproot your life and go after them, but to form new bonds with people who are around you right n…

Most people live where they are many jobs. Most people live close to their parents. They were able to find a job close and so choose that. Generally if you look for a job you can find plenty of them in whatever field you are in. Now jobs are the most common reason to move away. However that is still a minority situation, the majority find a place to live and then a job there. Even when looking for a new job people te…

Depends where you live. In the US people move for jobs a lot, we studied that aspect of US life in French schools. In France it's common to move to Paris to work once you finish school.