Is Urban Loneliness a Myth?
nymag.com
nymag.com
It's nice to have that sort of confirmed by this study. Because of that impression, it's always made sense to me that this is true; cities are interconnected systems, and every member is dependent in some way on every other, no matter how solitary that person may think she or he is. I think we've built up a lot of mechanisms today whereby it's easy to tell ourselves that we're very lonely; all that's needed to remove that sensation of being alone is a simple observation of the basic fact that we're constantly and continuously interacting with the people around us, even if it seems like we're not.
For example, in a cafe or a in a park, a lot people who are by themselves fiddle with their cell phone, read a book or pretend to do something else. In other words, they perform an activity that they could be performing at home without having all these people around. Yet, they chose to go out and be among others. They don't talk to others, they don't even look at others in an obvious way, they seem to be pre-occupied and ignoring everyone, but on a certain level I think they are there more to be with others and whatever else they are doing is just a random activity they do so as not to look too weird staring at strangers.
(That probably means that I am the weird one staring at everyone...)
I sometimes do that just to avoid distractions at home - internet, cats, housework ... it's much easier for me to concentrate when I'm not home.
An environment that’s alive at all hours, populated by all types, and is, most of the time, pretty safe. What he was saying, really, was that New York had become the Web. Or perhaps more, even: that New York was the Web before the Web was the Web, characterized by the same free-flowing interaction, 24/7 rhythms, subgroups, and demimondes.
Hampton says he views the Internet as the ultimate city, the last stop on the continuum of human connectedness. I’d argue that New York and the Internet are about the same, in the way that a large bookstore feels like it offers just as many possibilities as Amazon.com—maybe slightly less inventory, but more opportunities to stumble on things you might not have otherwise. Whichever the case, what the Internet and New York have in common is that each environment facilitates interaction between individuals like no other, and both would be positively useless—would literally lose their raison d’être—if solitary individuals didn’t furiously interact in each.
Life gets more complicated as you move from elementary school to middle, high, undergrad school and the real world as you are forced to make more choices about the people that you choose to hang out with. That's why people go to grad school, participate in a hobby, or join a sub-culture to make their world smaller again and limit their choices to make themselves happier.
I don't think people do those things to limit their choices to make themselves happier.
I think they do those things because the act of being at grad school, or enjoying a hobby or sub-culture makes them happy.
In other words, people don't do those things to socialize with fewer people; they do those things because they enjoy doing them. Socializing with people who enjoy the same things they do is a pleasant side-effect.
And when you do, you indeed meet people who only do these things because they enjoy them, already have enough friends and no time for new ones.
Or maybe it just looks that way to me when I'm in a bad mood like now.
Hell, people in the club probably think you are the one with so many friends that you don't want to talk to them because you are just there for the hobby.
People go to grad school, join a hobby or sub-culture for validation and then later, they rationalize it later. "Screw those Wall St. guys, I'm making a difference with my research!/I may not be as rich as those corporate drones, but I'm an artist with an interesting life!/At least I'm rich and money can truly buy anything!"
Most people (including myself) will never make a choice based on their intrinsic values. Not even CS nerds that go to CS grad school - publishing and presenting a well-cited paper to your peers or launching your startup based on that paper is flaunting your status in academia/Silicon Valley.
Grigori Perelman/J.D Salinger is probably the closest well-known people who only do things because they enjoy doing them. But even they are big phonies by making a big ruckus about how they are not phonies.
Basically. So if or when that goes sour, what do you do? In a small town you're up the creek.
> That's why people go to grad school, participate in a hobby, or join a sub-culture to make their world smaller again and limit their choices to make themselves happier.
And in a small town you have less choices about which schools to attend, clubs to join, sub-cultures, etc. You started out with "Nah, bro." and then supported my argument. Unless I'm missing something.
So you say, "man I hate all those green-shirts wearing bro's, I'm gonna move out to San Francisco/Portland/NYC/Seattle/Boston where red shirts are not only welcomed but celebrated!" So you move out to the big city to the soundtrack of Journey's "Don't Stop Believing..."
At first everything goes well, you see all of these symbols/paraphernalia/newspaper articles in your adopted city supporting the red shirts and you go to all of the red shirts social gathering or whatever, thinking "wow, everyone here is really into supporting the red-shirts clause." But then you slowly realize that not all red shirts are equal, there are skinny red shirts, fat red shirts, conservative and liberal redshirts, redshirts that sometimes like to mix it up and wear green-shirts and even "redshirts-wearing bros"!
It's human nature to discriminate and to stratify people into hierarchy. More people in one place leads to more structure, hierarchy and discrimination.
Some of it is innocent, some can interfere with other's lives where they would want to run away.
The linked story talks of death in isolation in Japan where it is a much more widespread problem due to two things: firstly, the work culture there does not incite interpersonal relationships so often people will only associate with their family, and secondly, people try to stay unintrusive in their old age, being ashamed to contact their children and other family.
The above is made even worse by relocation projects that took place moving couples into the suburbs out of the major cities, inorganicly forming "communities" overnight of people who have never met and never will leading to initiatives such as the Center for the Prevention of Death in Isolation.
I couldn't help but to laugh at the mental picture.