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The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

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Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#621

Post by lotsofpulp »

globular-toast wrote: post #596
fergonco wrote: post #57

Just a data point: In Valencia, Spain, in the 80s, children played in the street with no much supervision from parents. Occasionally we would stop the football match to let a car drive by. Forgetting your keys at home was no issue, you could get a glass of milk in ten different places while you wait for other (more attentive) members of your family. Nowadays there is hardly a place to park your car. Parents don't all…

I think you're on to something. Everyone always talks about social media but I honestly think cars are the most harmful technology of our time. Not least because it's not even recognised by the vast majority of people yet. Social media is at least given lip service. Everyone working all the time sucks for many reasons. It's a trap that people have fallen for and the only ones laughing are the billionaire oligarchs. W…

> Women in particular used to work for themselves

Women only recently got the right to manage their own assets, and in some societies it is still in the process of happening.

>and their families,

Yes, they used to work for their families.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#622

Post by clarity20 »

lovethevoid wrote: post #450
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the following: 1. The chief unit and source of community is the family. The married couple, the family, have been deteriorating for some time. It shouldn't be surprising that the consequences would spread outward. Societies are a manner of extended family organized according to the principle of subsidiary. 2. American culture especially is hyperindividualistic. It conceives of people not as persons, but as i…

> The chief unit and source of community is the family. This view stems from Judeo-Christian beliefs. The very invention of marriage was a separation of community, where men wanted ownership of women and their children. I also wonder if you're fully aware of how much you've attempted to repackage the original sin in your comment.

Marriage goes way beyond the Jewish and Christian spheres. It's a far-reaching anthropological value. Strictly speaking it's a natural state, which means it isn't an invention. What we're missing most of all in contemporary times is an appreciation and acceptance of our contingency as beings. For want of this restful appreciation of what we really are, we have a tendency to become angst-ridden, semi-nihilistic types trying to find our bearings through acts of will and experiencing misery because we can never get there from here by traveling that path.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#623

Post by fragmede »

HideousKojima wrote: post #350
nradov wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most communities there's no longer much social stigma against going to a bar/pub and ordering non-alcoholic beverages. The latest non-alcoholic beers are actually pretty good. (I do understand that the environment itself can be difficult for recovering alcoholics.)

I used to go out not-drinking with my coworkers (I've been a teetotaler my entire life). The place we went to had free refills for sodas so I downed half a dozen glasses of Fanta while my coworkers were paying $3-$5 a beer. Seems ridiculous to me how much people pay for alcohol.

while there are clearly cash grabs by the industry, the money for drinks goes towards the bar's rent/staff, so going there and not spending any money doesn't help the establishment's continued existence. depending on the establishment, that may or may not be a concern.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#624

Post by lotsofpulp »

brightball wrote: post #300
hot_gril wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently moved. Most of my new friends aren't from here, they came here for work, but they consider it their own city now and are part of the community. It's different in a "commuter city" like San Francisco. That means the majority of people don't even live there during the day, and even their job might be temporary. Unfortunately most are there to make money, not friends.

Yep, exactly. And if your families aren't around, that will have an impact the moment you decide to have kids. Available grandparents make everything about raising children easier, especially for working parents. And then the grandparents will connect the kids with their friends, their friends families and grand kids too. And so on.

I see more and more old grandparents that can’t handle little kids and are liabilities themselves, which is just an unavoidable fact of moving childbearing ages from 20s to 30s.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#625

Post by ryan93 »

cooolbear wrote: post #177

I'm surprised that the definition of 'community' he uses here so strongly revolves around a shared identity and activity, and that what is shared is what defines a community. For one, I don't really think communities where people share the same interests or ritual really does the trick, otherwise so-called YouTube 'communities' or Twitch stream 'communities' or even strangers you play games with online would be all t…

Actually kids are much happier in homogenous communities. Being the lone white kid in a black/Hispanic community would cause nonstop low level stress

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#626

Post by [deleted] »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #82

Well, yes, we've doubled down on mediating social interactions through economic relationships. Most of the interactions adults have in their lives are with or in the framing of economic relations. Homes, are being invaded with tablets and mobile devices which bring along with them framing interactions as economic relations through ad and consumer frames. Workplaces are inherently settings of economic relations, and t…

[deleted]

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#627

Post by southernplaces7 »

Or, conversely, there's a reporting and over-reporting bias at work today that previously didn't exist due to much smaller exposure to notions of perceived and real mental health disorders among (admittedly often suggestible) young people. "Community" is not only a generic term, it's also a somewhat ambiguously dangerous one that captures many very biased notions of a supposedly ideal community that have little to do with a healthy reality. Many people complain about a lack of community specifically because their own preferred idea of how it should be isn't what's popular. This hardly makes them reliable sources for arguments about its lack.

Few things about today's world of easier communication and more easily than ever being able to find others who share your interests makes it especially hard for any given person of any age to find what they're comfortable calling a community for themselves. It's certainly easier than it was decades ago when you either had to physically go somewhere or make a serious effort of some kind to find wider communities you might like. Either that or settle for whatever sort of fit the bill in your home town. These things are much easier to avoid today.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#628

Post by goda90 »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #627

Or, conversely, there's a reporting and over-reporting bias at work today that previously didn't exist due to much smaller exposure to notions of perceived and real mental health disorders among (admittedly often suggestible) young people. "Community" is not only a generic term, it's also a somewhat ambiguously dangerous one that captures many very biased notions of a supposedly ideal community that have little to do…

> Many people complain about a lack of community specifically because their own preferred idea of how it should be isn't what's popular.

If someone has little positive face to face interaction with people outside their immediate family, I don't see how you could argue that's not a lack of community.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#629

Post by tyleo »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #627

Or, conversely, there's a reporting and over-reporting bias at work today that previously didn't exist due to much smaller exposure to notions of perceived and real mental health disorders among (admittedly often suggestible) young people. "Community" is not only a generic term, it's also a somewhat ambiguously dangerous one that captures many very biased notions of a supposedly ideal community that have little to do…

IDK. Do you have data supporting this hypothesis?

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#630

Post by trealira »

globular-toast wrote: post #596
fergonco wrote: post #57

Just a data point: In Valencia, Spain, in the 80s, children played in the street with no much supervision from parents. Occasionally we would stop the football match to let a car drive by. Forgetting your keys at home was no issue, you could get a glass of milk in ten different places while you wait for other (more attentive) members of your family. Nowadays there is hardly a place to park your car. Parents don't all…

I think you're on to something. Everyone always talks about social media but I honestly think cars are the most harmful technology of our time. Not least because it's not even recognised by the vast majority of people yet. Social media is at least given lip service. Everyone working all the time sucks for many reasons. It's a trap that people have fallen for and the only ones laughing are the billionaire oligarchs. W…

> Women in particular used to work for themselves and their families, building their own assets and their own relationships. Almost like that "founder" status everyone wants. Now they work for the same few men as their partners building wealth for those men and the closest the family has to a home cooked meal is a favourite takeaway.

I'd caution you not to conflate home-cooked meals and family dinners with restrictive gender roles. It's possible to have them without a stay-at-home wife. For example, I grew up with two moms working full-time and had home-cooked meals (or leftovers thereof) for dinner almost every day. It's of course harder to make time to cook when both parents are working, but not impossible.

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