We have to meet people more in real life.
Humans need face to face contact to be fully happy.
Why, as supposedly modern humans, do we have to rediscover this?
Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help
61–70 of 182 posts
Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help
#62Personally, going to Church has helped me suffer less with loneliness. I've made meaningful friendships, and relationships with people from all sorts of backgrounds. It has given more meaning to my life than anything I found at work, or by random socialising. Of course, YMMV. Please take this as a random anecdote, not as evangelism.
I know a few people who have suggested attending a Unitarian Church ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism ) as a way to get the social benefits of church without having to subscribe to a religious belief. Many congregations include atheists and agnostics.
There is also Sunday Assembly: https://www.sundayassembly.com/
"The Sunday Assembly was started by Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans, two comedians who were on the way to a gig in Bath when they discovered they both wanted to do something that was like church but totally secular and inclusive of all—no matter what they believed."
Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help
#63Modern society may have issues, but it as bad as it is usually portrayed. 10,000 years ago, you would live in a tribe. If you were not popular among your tribe, it is likely you would be either exiled and forced to live in solitude and die during winter or be constantly subject to violence. 2,000 years ago, you would live only to work in a farm or be in a state of perpetual war. To make things worse, literacy rate wa…
I wonder what will they say about us in 100 years? Or 1000 years?
Let's continue improving.
Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help
#64For the past year, I've been working on the social isolation problem. Here's the idea we're currently developing. Would love to hear folks' feedback. Would you be excited about using this? "A social app, like Tinder but for hangouts with friends. See what your friends want to do, and swipe right to show you’re interested. You can also join hangouts in the global feed to instantly expand your social circle. Hangouts a…
You might like to read "The Anatomy of Friendship". People are basically hardwired to like people they're physically close to and come into contact with regularly, so try to tick those two boxes. The trouble with an app like this is that if it works and people become friends they'll probably just switch to the lowest common denominator/free platform, e.g. facebook/whatsapp to coordinate, so monetisation could be tric…
One way to way too seed activities would be to let professional organizers advertise on the platform (also solves monetization). E.g. a local sports club could offer a trial training session for small groups through the platform.
Trying something new is usually slightly uncomfortable when you're the only newbie (and everyone else has to accommodate you); and in the clubs I've been a member of, those who stuck around for longer were almost always already friends with another member.
Having whole groups sign up at once gives the club a better chance at retaining them and should also provide a fun experience for everyone even if they don't decide to stay.
Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help
#65Best solution to loneliness is to gain massive debt, become dirt poor, and battle daily with attention deficit issues while you struggle to learn and become productive enough to get a job in the software industry with a pretty horrible work history, an incomplete bachelors, and a near worthless associates. Living one rung lower on Maslow's hierarchy makes you forget about the desire to be around people, or even leave…
Ouch. Hope it gets better. Have you tried subreddits like https://www.reddit.com/r/Anxiety/ , /r/offmychest/, or something like 7 cups of tea? As the story relates, we're more like to offer practical advice here on HN rather than the emotional support you probably need right now. It does, honestly, get better. You're making the right moves, even if it does all look desperate right now.
Very interesting, never knew such a thing existed.
Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might like to read "The Anatomy of Friendship". People are basically hardwired to like people they're physically close to and come into contact with regularly, so try to tick those two boxes. The trouble with an app like this is that if it works and people become friends they'll probably just switch to the lowest common denominator/free platform, e.g. facebook/whatsapp to coordinate, so monetisation could be tric…
One way to way too seed activities would be to let professional organizers advertise on the platform (also solves monetization). E.g. a local sports club could offer a trial training session for small groups through the platform. Trying something new is usually slightly uncomfortable when you're the only newbie (and everyone else has to accommodate you); and in the clubs I've been a member of, those who stuck around…
Then you've just got Meetup again though, where you get a different group of people going each week (that's my experience anyway)
Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've heard some variant of this idea a thousand times and it doesn't work. Also, slightly ironic/depressing to react to an article about systemic loneliness in the tech age with "maybe we can make an app for that".
This is exactly the problem, that can be solved with software, we know it from the past (IRC, ICQ random chat, Livejournal).
Actually met my oldest friend on ICQ random chat. Lost touch with everyone from High School, University but still chat to him most days and visit when we're in the same country.
Maybe there is hope for it.
Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is it not possible for the modern man to accept the drawbacks of modern life, including loneliness, just as stoically as the primitive man was accepting adversity and death? Primitive men weren't stoic. We attribute that quality to them because we now understand how common diseases work and why they were so prominent in that time. That understanding -part of the advantages of modern life- has forever changed our pe…
For primitive men, life was probably terrifying and a constant struggle Yes, but the Stoics weren't "primitive" really. I may be getting the timeline mixed up slightly but they were part of a civilisation that invented steam engines but never bothered to develop them because they had slavery to provide manual labour! They are far closer to us than they were to cavemen in every meaningful way. Update: Epictetus died i…
Off topic, but this stack exchange post convinced me that the Roman's didn't have the metallurgical skills to truly enter the age of steam[0]. They didn't have the ability to mine enough iron nor the ability to cast (and definitely not mill) it precisely enough for proper steam engine parts.
Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help
#69Personally, going to Church has helped me suffer less with loneliness. I've made meaningful friendships, and relationships with people from all sorts of backgrounds. It has given more meaning to my life than anything I found at work, or by random socialising. Of course, YMMV. Please take this as a random anecdote, not as evangelism.
I know a few people who have suggested attending a Unitarian Church ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism ) as a way to get the social benefits of church without having to subscribe to a religious belief. Many congregations include atheists and agnostics.
I've had this on my mind for a few months, but something would push it aside before I could look into it. Your post inspired me to finally look up my local Unitarian Church, and we're going to check it out. Thank you!
Re: Modern life is lonely – We all need someone to help
#70Personally, going to Church has helped me suffer less with loneliness. I've made meaningful friendships, and relationships with people from all sorts of backgrounds. It has given more meaning to my life than anything I found at work, or by random socialising. Of course, YMMV. Please take this as a random anecdote, not as evangelism.
Thank you for mentioning this. Going to church has helped me too.
First in no way is believing in god a requirement to going to church. If you look at Catholicism they even say that they believe the Bible is only metaphorical and that they believe in evolution.
A lot of people also have very negative (and kind of rightly so) views of the church developed from the religious wars of the 90’s and 00’s. I want to say that these cultural battles were in part 1). stoked by church leaders as a means to hold their congregations together [there are a million ways to argue over Christian doctrine otherwise] and increase their bargaining power as church leaders with political leaders and 2). were also stoked by more liberal leaders as a means to rile up their base / present a credible threat.
SOURCE: The Evangelicals and America https://www.amazon.com/dp/1439131333/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_1-ro...