All the lonely people
ucobserver.org
All the lonely people
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Re: All the lonely people
#2Again, something my grandfather taught me, was that it was important to walk around your neighborhood and say "hi" to the people who lived there. He called it "Being neighborly."
We also, periodically but not on a particular schedule, put together a block BBQ where people can bring food, or not, and share a moment together to talk about what is going in or what they are worried about etc. Generally people respond well to the outreach, and as a consequence I know all of my neighbors on sight, and have shared experiences with many of them creating perhaps not a deep bond, but one which certainly gives anyone permission to approach and talk without an invitation.
It pays benefits in surprising ways, when our dog was terrified of a pile of beeping smoke detectors and ran off without us looking, one of our neighbors both recognized him, and knew us, so called us to tell us they had brought him in and we could pick him up when ever we wanted.
One of the families on our street has their grandmother living with them now. She is suffering some dementia like the woman in the article but everyone on the street knows her and I think keeps an eye out for her.
All from being neighborly and just walking around and talking to people.
Re: All the lonely people
#3I don't know Canada well enough yet, but I can tell you what life used to be like in the UK in my mum's time as a kid, around 55 years back in the North East of England. All families lived near each other and you lived near your school. You'd walk home past your nan's house and stop in there or at your uncles. Maybe when you got home your mum was out at the shops - ok go to your nan's a few yards away. Or just go to your neighbour, she knows you and should your mum be delayed long will feed you.
Then people decided that housing was an asset, an investment. The people that decided this were in finance, they made the credit available which sets the price. Access to local housing was limited. You had to go and get the best paying job you could just to compete in the "market". This meant moving away.
There were other reasons too like the destruction of local industry (forced out in part as land prices rose making them uncompetitive vs countries without efficient rent extraction). Plus brain drain into rentier activity in the capital. But for me land prices are at the heart of destroying communities.
I don't see community returning until we expel the usurers from the temple. Why is living on a piece of land so damn expensive? We don't have time for each other any more as we work insane hours. Both husband and wife have to work, leaving no time for other work in the community like stopping in to see a neighbour. All these tasks that were unpaid are now "on the clock" and the banks get a cut via renting money via debt creation for land.
My mum didn't have loads of libraries or "urban design" somehow coaxing people to interact. What that street did have is that they were not living in a time where ever single person was giving a big wedge of their wages to the banks thereby forcing them all to work all the time.
Re: All the lonely people
#4One institution not mention (and given the publication, I find it a bit odd) is the local churches. It is one of the large connection points that have started to fade. The amount of social welfare the churches supported has not been replaced.
Re: All the lonely people
#5HN is all about technology, but I think many people here don't realize that technology is about access. Aluminum is the third most common element on Earth, but up until fairly recently, it was prized above gold and other precious metals because it was seemingly so rare. People just didn't have the technology to access it in large quantities.
And just as someone stranded at sea can die of thirst, so too is it paradoxical that one can find themselves brutally alone in a city with millions of other people. The problem is that they don't have access.
My company, Krewe (https://www.gokrewe.com) aims to be that technology that will give people access to each other and help them form meaningful connections. It places people who all live in the same neighborhood into small groups, and encourages them to meet often. The pernicious scourge of loneliness must end, and I hope I can provide a solution.
Re: All the lonely people
#6One institution not mention (and given the publication, I find it a bit odd) is the local churches. It is one of the large connection points that have started to fade. The amount of social welfare the churches supported has not been replaced.
This is something that needs to be addressed. We are becoming more secular over time, but we aren't replacing the communities that churches create with secular equivalents, at least not on the same scale. Feeling connected is important, we really need to work on that.
Re: All the lonely people
#7HN is all about technology, but I think many people here don't realize that technology is about access . Aluminum is the third most common element on Earth, but up until fairly recently, it was prized above gold and other precious metals because it was seemingly so rare. People just didn't have the technology to access it in large quantities. And just as someone stranded at sea can die of thirst, so too is it paradox…
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Re: All the lonely people
#8One institution not mention (and given the publication, I find it a bit odd) is the local churches. It is one of the large connection points that have started to fade. The amount of social welfare the churches supported has not been replaced.
This is something that needs to be addressed. We are becoming more secular over time, but we aren't replacing the communities that churches create with secular equivalents, at least not on the same scale. Feeling connected is important, we really need to work on that.
I doubt we will since it would take a common belief that emphasizes charity and group togetherness. The most interesting secular meeting place is McDonalds for a lot of older people. Its cheap and you can often sit there a while, but McDonalds doesn't really have an equivalent of the local preacher.
Re: All the lonely people
#9[deleted]
Re: All the lonely people
#10I grew up in Canada and now in the US and after reading this, the first thing I thought of after reading this is - there are vastly fewer neighborhood bars in Canada. Strict drunk driving laws (obviously more important) and cold winters seemed to lead to the only viable bars being large clubs or in downtown cores where there's tourists.