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The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

happiness.hks.harvard.edu

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Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#51

Post by zkmon »

Back in the day, more children meant more wealth and prosperity for the family. More friends meant more support, bigger communities were stronger against others. It was need based, as they have a need to support and survive by themselves.

The nation concept now drains out the need and viability of communities, families and friendships. It's like a whale swallowing animals. Animals can no longer keep their own structure and identity once they are inside the whale. They will be disintegrated into individual molecules and become citizens of the whale. Nations do the same. The existence and strength of a nation requires disintegration of internal structures and autonomous bodies. Communities, families and friendships all go against the individualistic nation concept. The best citizens are individual workers with no connections and no opinions and maybe no gender.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#52

Post by tycho-newman »

BruceEel wrote: post #30
tycho-newman wrote: post #12

It's not lost, just no longer necessary for survival. Also, bad communities fail. They should be allowed to fail. Until recently, individuals needed to be part of some sort of kinship group to get their needs met and to survive. To communicate with anyone in near real time you had to be close by. We have managed to engineer a society where individuals can survive "on their own" - basically outside their kinship group…

> Also, bad communities fail. They should be allowed to fail. Are there circumstances under which nation states could/should be seen as 'communities', I wonder. And, what would be some sensible ways of detecting and handling failure at such scale.

Sure. That said, the nation state is often little more than regional elites legalizing their control over workers and capital.

If your local elites are generally better than the alternative people tend to stick around

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#53

Post by BruceEel »

sameasiteverwas wrote: post #42
BruceEel wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, bad communities fail. They should be allowed to fail. Are there circumstances under which nation states could/should be seen as 'communities', I wonder. And, what would be some sensible ways of detecting and handling failure at such scale.

> sensible ways of detecting and handling failure at such scale War and revolution. 'Burn it down and start from scratch' is an extreme path to fix a failing country. Historically, the people that rebuild are rarely the same people that burned it down.

Grim and plausible.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#54

Post by sameasiteverwas »

bilsbie wrote: post #5

It’s crazy out there for a 40yo. One thing I’m considering is that maybe it’s ok if friends don’t reciprocate. I think some people just have to be the inviters or relationships fall apart.

I struggled with this after a divorce. I relied on my wife to be the inviter. When I lost her, I lost my social group too because I didn't take initiative to maintain friendships.

Now I'm 40, divorced, and have an atrophied social network. Forcing myself to become an inviter is the only path out of loneliness.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#55

Post by torben-friis »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #37
torben-friis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not only lack of dependence, but also lack of idleness. Most of my friend interactions would come from things like having a moment with nothing to do in the bus, realizing I have no particular plans this weekend and reaching out to a couple friends to see if they’re available. Now those moments are instantly drowned by opening instagram before a thought bubbles up. And when the weekend eventually comes and there…

It's not only modern technology taking up time. I foolishly bought a project house and have spent nearly every weekend and some weeknights doing repairs and improvements. My SO also tends toward time consuming hobbies like gardening and aquariums. Add young children and every free moment in between is precious.

That is true, but real hobbies will rarely take up your micropauses - going to the bathroom, coffee break at work, commuting, waiting between sets at the gym, and so on.

You won’t do social stuff in those micropauses anyway, that’s true, but I think those moments are where you’d normally “mentally review”. Wondering how a friend is, feeling like you miss a connection, etc.

Without that, I think we mentally drift away from social connections.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#56

Post by oddthink »

I don't really get where people with kids found these 6.5 hrs / wk to spend on friendships, or even the quoted current averages of 4 hrs / wk.

On a workday, there isn't much time. I roll out of bed at 6:30, get the kids up and fed breakfast and out the door. I finally get actually working at 8:30-9:30, depending on if I exercise or not. Stop work in the 5:30-6 range, switch into making dinner, getting kids to eat dinner, policing screen time and homework. Then bedtimes and such, following up on the zillion school emails, PTA newsletters, scheduling. If I have 45 min of downtime, typically in the 10-11pm range, if I'm lucky.

On weekends, there's all the deferred housework, like cleaning and laundry. Kids have swim and sports. Visits to grandparents, from grandparents. Every now and then we have someone over for a games afternoon, or someone is visiting from out of town, but I really doubt that adds up to 4 hr / wk.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#57

Post by FollowingTheDao »

tycho-newman wrote: post #50
FollowingTheDao wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Also, bad communities fail. They should be allowed to fail." Are you not assuming something is not killing these communities from the outside? Should all people who get an infection be allowed to die? People are being squeezed to death by hypercapitalism and you blame the communities?

Life has a 100 percent fatality rate People fight for communities they want to preserve. There’s no guarantees that fight will be successful. But when they don’t fight? Maybe it’s because they can’t. Or don’t want to. No one should ask them or force them to.

"Life has a 100 percent fatality rate"

So, "no one should ask" a suicidal person to not kill themselves "or force them" not to.

It is when people cannot fight for themselves that those of us who can fight have to fight even harder. I am saying this as someone who has attempted suicide twice.

You are literally arguing in favor for shrugging your shoulders to things like slavery.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#58

Post by barry-cotter »

prhn wrote: post #35

I'm not sure what caused this, but I think the expectations of modern friendship have become unrealistic. Maybe it's movies and TV, where a "close friend" is more or less a non judgemental therapist that will throw down in a fight for you. What is a close friend? Before we can start asking people if they have any we should probably agree on a definition. If you use the Hollywood standard, then probably none of us hav…

> If you use the Hollywood standard, then probably none of us have close friends.

I’m probably bottom quintile for social skills and I have done some extremely unwise things for one of my friends who was there for me when I needed a hand. The Hollywood idea of “close friend” is a great deal nearer to my own life experience than its representation of many other important relationships.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#59

Post by closewith »

tycho-newman wrote: post #12

It's not lost, just no longer necessary for survival. Also, bad communities fail. They should be allowed to fail. Until recently, individuals needed to be part of some sort of kinship group to get their needs met and to survive. To communicate with anyone in near real time you had to be close by. We have managed to engineer a society where individuals can survive "on their own" - basically outside their kinship group…

> Also, bad communities fail. They should be allowed to fail.

This is wishful thinking. The resilience of communities is orthogonal to their moral worth, which is inherently subjective. Many communities which have horrific traits survive and thrive for centuries and even millennia. Many which I'm sure you would consider morally good are perilously close to failure.

Re: The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting

#60

Post by nikhizzle »

oddthink wrote: post #56

I don't really get where people with kids found these 6.5 hrs / wk to spend on friendships, or even the quoted current averages of 4 hrs / wk. On a workday, there isn't much time. I roll out of bed at 6:30, get the kids up and fed breakfast and out the door. I finally get actually working at 8:30-9:30, depending on if I exercise or not. Stop work in the 5:30-6 range, switch into making dinner, getting kids to eat din…

I have a rough idea of my friend’s schedules, and I call them when I’m driving the kids around, or we text. Staying in constant contact with a few very close friends about my mental health has floated me through my mid-40s.

A tip I got from a friend in his 60s was that even when you lose friends, life is great because you constantly have the opportunity to find new ones. I am in a new close friends renaissance in my 40s, just be vulnerable and don’t take rejection personally.

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