No, there is no epidemic of loneliness
andrewgelman.com
andrewgelman.com
2) To a significant extent, it's possible to translate "I'm lonely" into "I'm too disgusted with the ethics, crudity, vile political opinions, manners, dress, accents, musical tastes, spiritual nonsense, etc of the people I meet these days to go out of my way to meet them again, thanks." This may be a downside to diversity (for those too-easily put off), or a reflection of the fact that we're all social climbers, who are too optimistic about our "social value" in the eyes of all the other social climbers, I don't know.
After all, almost all of us have solutions to loneliness handy if we aren't at all picky about our company. And back in the day, you couldn't be - your village was your world.
A hidden factor, IMHO, is the rapidity of cultural change. Last long enough (age 28 in my case) and you are necessarily a time-traveller, in a foreign culture to a large extent, and it hurts mightily to know that your tribe has moved on; but it has (unless you joined an uber-traditional church or cult as a youth.) If you opt to deny this, as many do, your world is gonna shrink and keep shrinking from that point on. You're gonna miss a lot of fun, too.
PS - volunteer.
PPS - I'm not 28, that's just how old I was when I realized I wasn't part of "the younger generation" anymore, and had to decide fast whether my generations' taste in everything was going to be forever supreme in my head, or to start making an effort to see what the real kids were up to, and whether I might like any of that, too. I chose the latter and bless that day.
As I understand it, „loneliness” in the article is understood as the feeling of loneliness, not a measure of how sociable you are. You can be lonely while continually being around people which you have relationships with which look warm on the surface, but don’t give you much of a satisfaction. I think it is the case with a lot of people suffering from depression.
Note that our feelings are influenced greatly by social comparisons. For example, those whose immediate neighbors are all poorer than they feel much happier than those who are richer but the poorest in their immediate neighborhood. As Buddha said, expectations tend to rule feelings.
Modern society, both for dating and friendships, sets up false expectations ("The Illusion of Choice"), that often leave us without partners. Some combination of finding a crowd you like better, and lowering your expectations has to suffice: or nothing will.
Meanwhile men went to work where people have no choice but to communicate with you. You don't have to put effort into relationship, you are guaranteed not to be really lonely. In fact, too much relationship can be detrimental as you all compete for position and salary etc. Being a bit of jerk can pay of and you don't have to care whether people like you - if they don't it is up to them to deal with it. Plus there was influence of past war on expectations on males (be like veterans are).
That leads to two different kind of socializations for boys and girls - where boy socialization leads to loneliness in long term, when you are too old to pick up new habits.
Grandparents generation lived through world war, end of great migration of blacks, were adult through civil rights fights and had TV. American men went over the sea and even Easter European existing close knit village were destroyed by fighting, hunger, repressions, just to be later disrupt by communism.
As it happens, one set of my grandparents lived on a farm with no neighbors within something like four miles; the other, in a few small farming villages with maybe 32 people.
He's been around for decades, dutifully moving the goalposts being the 'reasonable' guy. But now he's just appalled the people he thought he spoke for voted for _that_ guy.
I do like that he's still around for the NYT's commenters. They remember everything.
That's everything what modern marriage today isn't. That's basically a religious view of marriage, which can freely exist, but has no legal binding at all, and whether divorce is ethical or not for one or some religions/"philosophies" is not necessarily universal.
The relevant question is not whether it's legal nor what one's religion has to say on the matter. The question is whether he showed character, and we can evaluate that by whether he lived up to his word and--especially--by how his wife took it.
Regardless, "living up to one's words" means nothing regarding the validity of a statement. I can say 1 + 1 = 1, but then in my private life behave as if it was 2; that does not affect the truth of the former statement.
No, it's not; sexual assault and harassment are part of working life and/or public offenses, not “private life”.
Edit: Not contesting you, btw; just correcting a misinformation.
It's not like some people find age gaps in sexual and romantic relations uncouth, so it's not hard to make the jump as that's what you meant.
Krugman is obviously writing comedy pieces...
While I like a lot of the New York Times content (their investigative journalism is top notch), I question what their vision is if they continue publishing his stories. His gaffes (not citing sources, not vetting sources, not issuing corrections) go against the basis principles of science, social sciences, and journalism. Simply put, he shouldn't be allowed to publish in any paper that takes itself seriously.
I would be fine if they cancelled all opinion pieces and just reported news but I don't think that would sell.
[0] http://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2018/04/all-lonely-pe...
I can see how he has a case for questioning the statistical basis of someone who is arguing there is an epidemic.
But how does that disprove any such epidemic exists?
Two important things that get conflated into "loneliness" is social isolation (the quality/depth of social relationships) and "loneliness" (the quantity of social relationships).
I wonder how many more people would hit the gym or outdoors if they had a companion?
Not a self-help book, but a view on loneliness from both an empirical and philosophical perspective.
I'm not saying loneliness isn't real... all I'm saying is, it is a choice that needs to be recognized as such, even if we keep choosing it over and over and can do no other sometimes.
So if you feel lonely, unless you're in solitary, please at least TELL SOMEONE how you feel... if nothing else. Tell me, I'll listen.
If you're on a purposeful mission you can endure a lot of destitution. The loneliness that is making the news is more of a secular malaise. People without purpose, task, meaningful communities to be part of, and so on. They might not even be literally lonely in a physical sense.
It's really not that easy. You can feel lonely in the company of supportive people or you can feel not lonely while in solitary.
I think getting to a point in life where you are alone and haven't maintained any meaningful relation is very hard. It is not easy to just speak to someone random but also not sure it helps, unless the relation develops.
A layperson might ask, What difference—besides diss’ing social scientists—does it make if these interesting articles about loneliness growing are off a bit? First, they are off a lot. But more important, they are a critical distraction. Chatter about feelings (of mainly affluent folks) distracts us from the many real crises of our time—say, widened inequality, children growing up in criminally and chemically dangerous neighborhoods, the dissolution of job security for middle Americans, drug addiction, housing shortages (where the jobs are), a medical system mess, hyper-partisanship, and so on. That’s what makes the loneliness scare not just annoying but also another drag on serious problem-solving.
Ahh the cruelty of science. I would agree that the claim Brooks, an op-ed writer, made is overblown and sensationalized a bit in order to get readers interested, but that doesn't make those who are indeed lonely, and those who the NY Times article focuses on, any less lonely or visible.
It seems like the post's author is dismissing that there are lonely people out there because Brooks wrote something that overstates their numbers. As any social scientist would tell you, even the best numbers we have on these phenomena are problematic and incomplete.
The problem with that idea, in addition to it being morally repugnant and utterly disdainful of human life, is that there's always a worse problem. Oh, you want to talk about polio? Malaria is a worse problem! Oh, you want to talk about income inequality? Access to abortion is a worse problem by far!
It's a perfect way to shut down any discussion, simply by shouting "HEY, LOOK OVER THERE! WORSE PROBLEMS!" and claiming the moral high ground.
This is mostly confirmation bias since no one individual has the bandwidth or resources to look at every single story produced on every single topic on a single day. I tend to see people complain "this tragedy happened today and I don't see it being reported by the news!", implying that the media has something to hide or they value certain groups of people over others, but this is not a claim worth its salt.
There are many reason, both from the organization's standpoint and from the individual's standpoint, why this claim isn't true. It's a weak argument that only serves the purpose of distracting from topics at hand.
It doesn't change anything though. Media is still not going to focus on important problems. It exists to influence people, not to report on all the right things. And it's worth pointing this out.
Indeed. It should be clear that measuring loneliness is quite difficult given measuring any feeling is hard and given people may define "not lonely" relative to whatever they've experienced as that rather than some absolute criteria.
Certainly, one might attribute the growing epidemic of opioid addiction and suicide to loneliness - or to despair but it seems reasonable to attribute it to something like that.
And there's no reason loneliness, inequality and etc aren't connected problems. Once, one could point to those with lower incomes still having the vibrant social life of "the streets" but the poverty of those in outer suburbs does not necessarily generate that same situation.
90% of the article is about the stats being wrong.
He is specifically attacking the claim that loneliness is a new and quickly accelerating trend.
even the best numbers we have on these phenomena are problematic and incomplete Sure but he does not say this. He says "In the 1980s, 20 percent of Americans said they were often lonely. Now it’s 40 percent. "
Don't think that communication and discussion at a national levels becomes more difficult when people can just make up any numbers they want to support their point, and never have to correct them?