An Epidemic of Loneliness in America? | Hacker News Reader

An Epidemic of Loneliness in America?

nytimes.com

109 pointslaurex117 comments

Here's an interesting article: "Why is it hard to make friends over 30?" [1]

"As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other."

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-...

I'd add a fourth...People being able to interact spontaneously and without fear. It's hard to strike up a micro-conversation. People either aren't able or aren't willing.

Long to short, "friends"is two way street. And such things can't happen without communication.

> It's hard to strike up a micro-conversation.

This really varies a lot. In urban areas where few people are "from there", you'll find chatting with strangers happens less often.

In small towns and neighborhoods full of locals, it happens a lot more.

I make new friends of all ages all the time. At church.

It does provide "proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other". And not by coincidence. One of the major goals of church is to help people form healthy and significant relationships (that is, friendships).

Yeah, as an atheist, the weekly unforced meetup you guys have is the one thing I do envy.

I wonder how many of the churchgoers secretly have no real faith and are only there for the company...

At least at my church growing up: a lot. Granted, the church I went to was as much a cultural institution as a religious one, but there were plenty of people who were pretty open about not believing if you directly asked them.

You could go, as someone who's open to the possibility of spiritual enlightenment. And likes company. But if you really are an atheist, you'd probably be most comfortable with a Unitarian church. Or perhaps a Friends meeting.

That's what congregations like the Unitarians are like. I go once a month to the local one, and I've been an atheist my entire life. I'd guess about half the people that there are, too, but no one really seems to mind one way or the other, as long as you're friendly and civil to everyone else. Mostly it's a discussion group, and I quite enjoy it.

The hard thing about (some) interest groups is that sometimes they have people "way out there" in political opinions, "different" view of the world (think the views that include the usage of aluminium headwear) or just maladjusted to normal living.

Why is this so hard, though? It might be a little tedious to sit through their ramblings, but it seems to me a sign of the times that this would be considered hard to do.

Depending on the level, it is really detrimental to the experience.

I mean I can take your average left/right winger rambling on, but depending on how far and away it goes it's really a no for me.

Maybe the reason people are so lonely is that we're at an unprecedented time in history where people can "opt out" of interacting with anyone with whom they disagree?

It seems to me like everyone is opting out of talking to people across the political aisle. It's become so dire that we see articles teaching people how to deal with "that one uncle" at family gatherings [1].

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+to+talk+to+that+uncle+at+Chris...

I know what you mean. But (and I think this is genuinely, deeply important) listening to people's thoughts and opinions when they are far outside how you see things is vital if you want to make sure that your own perceptual bubble isn't vastly out of sync with the rest of society.

I have friends from across the political spectrum, and one of my primary concerns of the modern time is how many of them have incredibly inaccurate strawman conceptions of what 'the other side' is like. The only solution I know of is to actually talk in person.

So what happens at a Unitarian service?

I've imagined it's a non/cross religious service for any religious/spiritual people, but I honestly have no idea.

With the caveat that fellowships vary significantly between one another, most of the ones I've gone to follow the pattern of:

show up, prepare some coffee/light snacks, as soon as a critical mass of folks have arrived, sing a short welcoming hymn,

brief discussion of happenings since the last meeting (ie, which scholarship got the most votes to support last time, so that's the one we'll fund, etc),

main service, usually someone giving a talk about some aspect of what they've done (ie, my father was a diplomat focused on human rights, he would talk about a few select issues, and how things did or did not work out)

discussion following the presentation, with a focus on the morality aspects (it is a church meeting, after all)

passing of the hat to fund stuff like scholarships & pay the minimal expenses that come with meetings

closing hymn, everyone says goodbye with a smile.

So it's a lot like a nominal Christian service you'd find in a lot of churches across the US, with the difference being that the actual God part of the discussion is greatly minimized, and the social aspect emphasized. I genuinely enjoy going.

Thanks!

> ...with the difference being that the actual God part of the discussion is greatly minimized...

With all due respect, the main focus of a Christian worship service is "the actual God part", so removing the content creates an entirely different thing altogether.

It's also worth noting that the Christian content... actual belief in the teachings of the Bible, does reinforce certain aspects of church that might be essential to long-term (millennia) health of that form of spiritualism. Perhaps some of: mandatory evangelism, canonized moral codes, commandments to humility, recognition that humanity is ultimately flawed, belief in perfect justice in eternity (reduces the need to enforce certain norms), and the list goes on.

>With all due respect, the main focus of a Christian worship service is "the actual God part", so removing the content creates an entirely different thing altogether.

99.x% of Christian services are morality instructions, which one is free to ponder regardless of any particular belief one might hold.

The why of it in a traditional Christian service is 'God'. That's where many Unitarians (and myself) veer from older religious institutions. But I'm still happy to talk about morality with a regular Christian, in the the same way I'll talk about it with anyone else who has an interest in such things.

This is awesome. My first thought was "church" and that's the top comment at the moment.

"Yeah but atheist" was expected and my first thought was U-U, and, bam, there it is.

My work is done here. Time for another Manhattan.

(BTW, I suspect urban Methodists (of which I am one) will also be cool, and will discourage the lunatics a bit more.)

Seeing as how my mother was Methodist, my father Unitarian, I am inclined to agree with you. Cheers!

Half, I'd say.

As an atheist, I've been on two Catholic pilgrimages and countless church services.

My first pilgrimage was to Lourdes in the South of France - as a member of the German army. During an introduction course in the first weeks after joining the army we were told we were entitled to certain programs, and getting time off from the army. After basic training and entering regular service I went to the base's priest, told I'm I'm an atheist and that I'm interested in going to Lourdes. No problem. Best party of my life I must say, in a landscape straight from a movie (but I think I was the only one of ~35,000 soldier pilgrims to walk into the hills, even if they started right at the edge of town).

Second pilgrimage was with a Catholic girlfriend, walking from dawn to dusk to a Catholic pilgrimage destination for several days. Very strenuous. I even "spread god's word" in a sense, when towards the end somebody thought I still looked fresh and strong so I got to carry one of the loudspeaker backpacks used to spread the prayers spoken by a priest at the end of the procession along the long line of pilgrims :)

Nobody cares what you are. Just go if you want. There even are priests that are atheists: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/lutherans-in-a-quandary-over...

> Alarm bells started ringing in earnest last June, when the priest in question, Thorkild Grosboel, pastor of Taarbaek, a town near Copenhagen, went on to elaborate his views in an interview. "There is no heavenly God, there is no eternal life, there is no resurrection," he said, with typical Scandinavian matter of factness.

> Grosboel has since refused to step aside and insists that his lack of belief in some of the theological foundations on which the Christian church is built, does not stop him fulfilling the duties for which he is paid.

Your pilgrimage to Lourdes sounds interesting. Do you remember the route, or the at least the origin of your trip? Thanks :)

The route was by train from Germany directly to the city. The annual international military pilgrimage (in May) does not involve having to use ones feet. But it does involve drinking lots and lots of alcohol... it's probably not the same for all nations, but our train had one wagon dedicated to transporting beer for both parts of the trip, there and back, quite officially :)

> Nobody cares what you are. Just go if you want.

Yeah, but I don't belong there. I don't believe in the whole purpose of the organization. So it would feel like a big weird lie to show up to mass each week just to mingle.

Plus I have no idea what one does at a church/synagogue/mosque. How does that social scene work? I suppose on some level that's an argument for going there to see what happens.

And maybe if I get that lonely one day I'll do that.

Fellowship is a thing. Tabletop gaming is the closest thing I can think of to a similar motivation, but for the non-religious.

Humans need chill hangs.

I have strong suspicion my Catholic parents were like this their whole life. We never discussed the spiritual or dogmatic aspects of the religion. It was all about going to the church itself.

Go to concerts and chat with people between sets/afterwards. Pub quizzes are good too, see if a team is a member short and if you can join. Get into pen & paper gaming, your local trad games store probably arranges open nights for new people.

Anywhere there's a shared interest, friendships happen.

Same. It's great. Moreover, I meet people from all walks of life. I'm a software engineer, but my men's group has electricians, video editors, plumbers, therapists, etc. It's a mixed bag.

I wonder how much of the issues we have with increasing social stratification are due to the fact that who you know is basically completely dependent on your job these days.

I grew up in a church and this is basically the only thing I miss.

In fact it just makes me angry when I think back -- here we have a warm community in which that friendship and companionship are available only on the condition that you alter your cognition and beliefs to conform to a very precise code.

Some serious strings-attached.

You can get the same experience in a lot of collegiate environments.

For example literally being in a college, being in a mess in the military, being in a sports team.

I do Brazilian jiujitsu and I find it is great for making friends outside of college and work. There is something about exerting a lot of energy and aggression safely in a safe place against others that is able to forge some strong friendships. Highly recommend for everyone.

> Loneliness, however, is a symptom of large changes in society, many caused by policies that Republicans have pursued over decades.

What neurosis is one suffering that loneliness has to be pinned on the political party one dislikes? I don't understand how Americans can wade through media so thick with political bias. It's exhausting and increasingly permeates everything.

And if Republicans are to blame, as the author insists, then so too are Democratic policies of changing demographics at such a pace as to erode social trust. Not to mention the constant assault for merely belonging to a majority demographic. Tell people in despair that they're too "privileged" to opine, on the one hand, and that their days are numbered, on the other, and they begin to feel strangers in a strange land.

The bias is not in the media in this case. These are letters to the editor.

The NYT still published it, which i think counts as "media." Even if they don't necessarily agree it's an implicit endorsement that this is a well reasonable argument.

I had no desire to make friends until college. I was so content with just hanging out by myself that I didn't even realize that other people were making friends. When I got to college I finally realized that I was so different from everyone else.

I basically had to start from zero social skills and work my way up which is/was extremely painful.

Can anyone relate? I think it has something to do with my parents because they aren't social at all.

I feel ya. For me though, after college I realized that I was still happier mostly alone. I think I might be a bit autistic though (seriously).

My experience is that having friends to hang out with was “easy” through high school, because you’re basically “stuck” around a fairly small number of peers in your neighborhood and school. In college there was still some of that, with dorm mates and classmates in your major. After that, it’s really only coworkers that you are “automatically” going to spend a lot of time with, and it becomes much more important to have the social skills to actively find friends. As everyone says, hobbies and social groups (like religions and clubs) are probably the best way to do this.

“Boring time” or dedicated idleness is excellent for socialization, which is what I think creates the best environment for creating friendships.

That’s precisely my experience. To be honest, after college I’ve found that hobbies are not that great for finding very close friends. Shared interests are certainly great for meeting people, but just because you occasionally make pottery or hike with someone doesn’t mean you’ll connect on a deep level.

This is an insightful observation that I feel is worth unpacking further. I've had similar experience when attending interest-based meetups, which I thought would be an ideal place to make friends (which I've never been any good at), but I found that was not the case at all.

Thinking back, I recall feeling uncomfortable commenting on or diverting the conversation towards anything that was unrelated to the prescribed topic of the meetup. It felt rude to divert time away from the topic that everyone there had specifically chosen to allocate their time to, otherwise they wouldn't be there in the first place.

With places like school, even college, there's still a general feeling that you have to be there, and so diversions from the topic at hand are more welcome.

To put it another way, interest-based groups seem to be about the interest first and the people second. The people there are compartmentalized away as being related to the specific topic, and not generalized friends. In this way the group lacks that crucial idleness factor that others here have mentioned, since everyone is there with a purpose to fulfill that they don't want to distract others from.

That’s precisely my experience. I have “hiking buddies,” but they remain just that unless I make an effort to connect more (which I’m generally not great at). It’s not that we never talk about things other than hiking—we certainly do, but the fact that the group is assembled for the purpose of the particular outdoor adventure still prevents there from being much organic significant friendship building.

It probably doesn’t help that a lot of my hiking and camping trips are a few hours’ drive away from home and thus tend to draw people who live fairly far away from me.

> the fact that the group is assembled for the purpose of the particular outdoor adventure still prevents there from being much organic significant friendship building

I'm of the belief that you don't "create" close friends as much as you "discover" them. So the purpose of going to meetups, events, parties, etc. is to just cast a wider net.

Sure by socializing more you become a better conversationalist and can carry them on better with strangers, but at the core, close friends are like significant others--special just they way they are.

Yes, same experience and timeline. I tried improving my social skills to catch up, and I did, but years later I realized that all I needed were a few (or one) good friend. That's where the value is at, although I suppose having many friends helps you get to that point.

I have a hard time finding people who like to work on old cars. I joined a mopar club for a while, but all they did is talk about meeting minutes and the budget. Never going over to Bob's house and getting his wreck back on the road. I run into people now and then who have a classic in their garage, but they never seem interested in having a group of people helping out. None of my friends in the tech business have the remotest motorhead tendencies. Nobody in college did, either.

I had a group of friends who did this in high school, and have a lot of great memories of it.

Yea, I've recently gotten into working on cars for fun. I've gotten 2 cars I bought at auction from no start/no crank to running in the past few months..

But no one around me is interested in tinkering. Hopefully I can find someone to help me with an engine rebuild (my next major learning goal). Then messing with turbos.

People in tech are especially averse it seems to me to wanting to do manual labor type things like this.

Heck, it's fun to even just go visit the other guy while he works on his car, drink beer, and insult his execrable taste in cars. And vice versa :-)

I'll never feel shame for liking crappy Toyota Tercels. It was my first real car and you can hypermile the shit out of them :)

I finally got my '72 dodge back on the road. It's an unusual concoction of all go and no show parts. It's got a roller valve train in a 340 block, which is highly unusual for a streetable build, with a gear drive too instead of a chain. The fun thing is that imparts an unusual sound to the engine, which is a good conversation starter.

> messing with turbos

Haha, ain't nothing like the sound of a belt-driven supercharger. I didn't stick one in the dodge because:

1. it would stick up through the hood, messing up my all-go-no-show plan

2. it would wind up the body of the car into a pretzel if I didn't add a ton of stiffening

3. without one it dyno'd at 400hp which turned out to be enough to scare the crap out of me

400, nice.

One of the things I'm worried about is all the heat they generate. I was watching a guy on youtube and he had to build a ridiculous heat shield to keep it from melting stuff around his turbo. Seems fun though!

I just want to add a blow off valve and get that sound.

I find myself watching these videos a lot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn-AoxKQB90&t=11s

I don't even like driving fast, I drive like a grandma haha

Start a local Cars & Coffee. Find an empty lot with a nice view, set a time, and do a bit of social media posting. Low-key and BYOC.

For reference: https://instagram.com/lakewashingtoncarsandcoffee

That looks like fun! Thanks for the link.

Past discussion of the Op-Ed this is a response of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18521499

I've been seeing this topic in the media for quite a few years now, and I just wonder why there doesn't seem to have any solution either from the private or public sectors. Is it because loneliness is not huge enough, or it's like poverty that has to be dealt by yourself? Those social media and apps trying to help just make loneliness and anxiety worse as many other articles suggest.

In Japan there are government programs set up to get single people together. Some cities reserve entire bars or areas for singles only. There are government run speed dating services as well: https://www.businessinsider.com/japanese-government-dating-s...

I don't think there's anything in the US for the reasons I mentioned.

Also, this is a very frequent topic here on HN. A lot of people complaining, some suggesting similar things as everywhere on the Internet.

I am really surprised there is this gap here. Maybe it's because anything targeted to fight social isolation is bringing strange people in? It's natural to meet people in college, but meetups are known for bringing creepy people in that only want to hit on women.

I enjoyed the women from Chicago's point. That having that old-time gym feeling is not something that's the best for most people. It's one of those silly ideas that tries to sum up a big problem and give it a small fix. I remember a friend showed me something their aunt or something posted about dirt roads. It was a similar idea to the gym thing. It's absurd.

Yogic view of loneliness (and ways to overcome it) is quite different from our contemporary ideas. http://omswami.com/2018/10/loneliness.html

Interesting, thanks. I will add this to my own article on this (featured already on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17794060) - Looks like loneliness (in the sense of "being alone") is more or less inescapable, the trick is to transform it in Solitude, in the sense of "being content even when alone".

I don't think it'll get better any time soon.

When I was a teenager, I couldn't wait to start driving. That led to hanging out at the town bowling center with a group of like-minded friends.

My kids mostly talk to their friends online. None of them seem to have the same burning desire to drive places-- they like to get together, but they're also fine communicating on the phone. It doesn't seem as closely connected.

When I was a teenager, I had friends who were pretty much accidents of geography and school districting. This is not to say that they weren't real friends, but there was nothing really fundamentally holding us together other than being kids in the same place at the same time. I remember feeling lonely a lot.

After touring a dozen colleges, I picked my eventual alma mater because I met a bunch of computer science students who I recognized as my tribe. It was like an epiphany. I'm still close with many friends from this era (28 years ago), even as I've moved and expanded/changed my tribe. I haven't felt truly lonely since high school.

When you're young you're on fixed rails without a lot of control. The internet makes it possible to find people you really connect with, even if you don't see them in person all the time. Don't prejudge the level of connection.

The only friend from high school that I still keep in regular touch with is someone I met BBSing (ahh, the 80s).

> The internet makes it possible to find people you really connect with

How?

Nowadays teenagers hanging out sit with their phones up their faces. Constantly texting/sending photos on Snapchat, instagram, fb, whatsapp and then picking up the phone every 2 minutes for any updates.

And we thought Generation Y was going to be difficult to manage...

I had trouble making friends untill i came across a movie called "The Social Network".

Before, i was like Zuck (fb founder, the one who blogged about his girlfriend) from the movie, very annoying but always spewing ultimate truth regardless of whether it hurts people or not.

Now i act like Sean Parker (Napster founder, the one who brought Peter Theil on board as an investor) from the movie, either people ignore me or become my friend.

Those of you who go blank at new people. I suggest you pick a character and play it with all honesty, if nothing atleast it will be entertaining.

Are there other movies which teach you how to make friends?

Don't you think this kind of defeats the propose of having a friend ? Sure, you don't want to be an asshole like social network zuck, but that doesnt mean one should suppress themselves just to please others.

I have thought of friendship as a distinctly tiered system. I very carefully reveal parts of me to a lower tier of friends (mostly acquaintances), and use those reactions to gauge of I want to reveal more of myself to them.

Trust and exposing vulnerability are IMO at the Crux of what friendship is. There is a certain irrationality and lack of equal exchange that goes into being a friend. Like sometimes inconveniencing yourself to help a friend, without any clear short term reward in sight.

If I had to always act like someone else in front of my friends, then I would say I don't have friends at all.

For me, the most interesting thing about all these loneliness articles is how often they make it to HN's first page. It says more about HN/tech community then America as a whole.

Maybe it has something to do with the role technology plays in this issue.

I don't know. We can blame technology. Or we can actually go out and join something.

Maybe serve at a local food bank. Worst case, you're still lonely but some hungry people get fed.

Incidentally, how are you going to find a good food bank to help out at? I bet it looks like "technology": search engines, smart phone apps, web pages, email, digital calendars, navigation instructions, and signup forms.

Of course this is great advice for an individual. It's always possible to effect change at the margins. But this sort of advice at a population-level feels meaningless. It's entirely fair to search for root causes to large-scale dysfunction. Otherwise the trend will just grow worse

I like to point out that the English language has a beautiful way to describe it by having two distinct words ("anyone", "everyone") instead of just one, unlike my native German ("jeder"):

If something somebody proposes in response to a population-wide problem works for anyone it should also be tested if it works for everyone. A lot of "how to get ahead and gain wealth" suggestions come to mind too that fail the second test.

Or maybe the way technological or even knowledge work in general is structured runs counter to human biology and chemistry in more than one way, or in compounding ways, more than most other professions where social elements are part of the inevitable toolset?

That or the sort of person who tends to work in tech.

Screen time, including social media, is not human interaction time. Hacker news is about the extent of my social media.

The article says 25% of Americans haven’t discussed any important matters with someone close to them in the last 6 months. Twenty five percent! That’s a huge number, much larger than the number of people in tech.

They still might be over represented among HN readers. Also, being over represented on HN does not necessary imply being over represented in tech.

If 25% of HN readers upvote an article about loneliness, it'll go to the top of front the page.

I almost never discuss anything important with people outside of extremely close and likeminded friends because of the current political climate. I worry about being ostracized/alienated by them for not believing in the same things as them, so it's not at all worth the risk to actually discuss anything meaningful with them if the outcome might be permanently destroying our relationship.

Right, at school, you could say some awful stuff, and someone would tell you "that's awful because <x>", and you'd usually change your mind. Now, even established science is "controversial", and differing opinions aren't exciting, they're somehow personal attacks. What i mean is, opinions seem to have become an important part of their self to people, maybe through social media. I don't mean somebody thinking they're being argumentative/clever/fun when they're just being rude. Some people are socially inept, but that's a too easy cop-out to use in all of these cases, and does nothing to help those people, or show more socially apt people that it's occasionally ok to open up your guard.

Of course, you can't just launch into such topics with new acquaintances, but to a degree the climate makes it hard to go from acquaintance to friend because everything is small talk. At least that's my feeling, which is why a night of drinking seems to be involved at some point when I make new friends.

Every two weeks it hits front page and usually comes from nyt!

It's going to become worse as more and more work becomes remote only

And less physical visits are required for daily life

Offtopic, I followed the link in the last letter to that Senate committee and got:

Sorry, a potential security risk was detected in your submitted request. The Webmaster has been alerted.

Then I tried https://www.senate.gov/ and got the same thing. Is there a reason for this? I'm in the UK browsing on Firefox.

The senate site has had SSL issues for me for years. It's very weird. If you go to: http://www.senate.gov/senators/leadership.htm and try SSL, it redirects to http. Strange. Like it's not set up recursively or something or that directory has it's own .htaccess or w/e that doesn't use SSL?

You literally mean the website of the United States senate just doesn't work, and hasn't for years? I mean, I absolutely cannot find a way to access that site without getting the same "unauthorized" message.

This can't be true...

can it?

If USA, with its outgoing culture has a loneliness epidemic, then Europe (at least the western part) is already long gone.

Those are two different things. Loneliness is more about important relationships with people who matter to you and you matter to them. You don't have to be outgoing and chat with everybody to have that. Outgoing people easy to chat with can still be lonely, deep friendship is not the same as chatting briefly in a bus.

Submissions about loneliness have company at least:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Loneliness%20points%3E10&sort=...

No surprise really. More and more is personalized and self-centric, which is replacing the shared experience. Of cource more and more people are feeling they don't belong, there's less and less to belong to.

Not sure what's the point of these letters, reminds me of the comments section in the NYT which I find politically overcharged and offensive. It was an article that resonated with many people. Does it make people feel better to ridicule loneliness. You can brush off poverty but it still there...

Letters to the editor are internet comments before internet comments were a thing. The intent was to display variety of opinions relating to a topic so you weren't beholden to just the newspaper's stance. Not totally sure why they continue to publish letters, I suppose they're usually higher quality than internet comments because they require more effort.

They're higher quality because they're curated.

It's possible that the average submission is better than the average internet comment due to the level of effort required. Or perhaps some of it is due to the fact that the printed letters are archived for posterity.

But regardless, the average letter is not printed. There is only room for a select few.

I should mention the letter seem to cover a spectrum of opinions, from doubting the problem to bemoaning it.

Finding solid evidence that loneliness is increasing is a problem. I believe that it is but it is something that's simply hard to demonstrate. I think Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone was one of the most convincing arguments for the breakdown of community in the US but even that careful, well documented study had it's significant critics. Equally, one could point to the epidemic of suicides and opioids but again, one could frame doubts.

Anyone know other arguments.

I know it's opinion, but it's hard to take the NYT seriously when the writers always blame Republicans where politics is almost completely irrelevant.

Maybe. A friend who I spoke to for the first time in a long time made a pretty good point to me the other day. Neither of us are liberals, btw. Both of us are into so many of the same things. We just have different careers, and we are approximately equally jealous of eachother’s careers.

We talked about what we have been doing while feeling lonely and we each had different stories of why we were not able to spend time around people we wanted to be around. He couldn’t afford to live in the city anymore and had to move to the Midwest where now he makes a wage that will probably never allow him to move back. I, on the other hand, can never leave the city because there are no jobs for me elsewhere and I would not be able to come back. Neither of us are comfortable investing in homes because we both feel unhappy where we are.

Job wise, we both have problems with our companies we work for, but like our coworkers. We feel very distant from what we are doing and recognize that the inability to change careers or better our situations gives us a lack of hope. His situation is slightly different because he is in a higher management position, but neither of us feel we can talk to anybody nearby about these things or we will be outed as not being this imaginary committed perfectly obsessed careerist type.

Basically, everything we have depends on our entire stories, everything we have ever done. We don’t have the privacy to have a multifaceted life without feeling like some fraud. He relates this to our society being so obsessed with individuals instead of letting us just be ourselves, separate from our jobs and our income and wellbeing. We don’t have the option of dreaming because the risk is just too great. We have seen our friends lose everything by taking risks.

Ultimately, I have to agree. We have let this obsession of making our personalities our lives get the best of both. It’s the core idea behind individualism, which we are taught is a great thing and I always believed it. I still do in most cases, but now i feel stuck inside my individual self, lonely like alll the other individuals.

We are so obsessed with ourselves as individuals, we lose sight of ourselves as parts of greater wholes, like families and neighborhoods.

I am not sure I can separate this from politics.

> We don’t have the privacy to have a multifaceted life without feeling like some fraud.

You hint at the answer, that aside from financial obligations nothing stands in the way of finding who you really are but yourself. Once a person finds confidence in expressing their true desires and aspirations, others take notice and start valuing and admiring the person, like in everything else it's a herd/popular mentality where anyone will appreciate it so long as others do but specially so long as the subject does. The road is of course winding tortuous with self-doubt, (more) loneliness as everyone else is just trying to conform and flak from society until the breakthrough years. But being a trendsetter is not much more than finding what are your particular trends for this existence, so to say. Only I can hold myself back emotionally, ultimately. Though yes, maybe attempts fail with nothing to show for it (even though wisdom may be worth more than a big salary as one ages) but I still think it's worth trying, really putting your heart into those attempts. The focus on people being specialists and not generalists (specially in more than one area of knowledge) makes the situation worse for sure.

This suggests that I want more money or consumption, and that’s wrong. Nor do I want popularity. Quite the opposite. Popularity and attention are really the main problem, if anything. Who we are is defined by what we have done more than any time in history. Every day that passes is further locking ourselves into our cages of individuality. How can popularity and followers, like you mention, be our only hope for change when they are also the ties that are trapping us to our current trajectories?

Specialist vs. generalist gets more at the problem I think we were talking about, but even the fact that it is such a debated concept seems off. Something seems wrong on a bigger level. Sometimes you need a specialist and sometimes a generalist, and we are highly adaptable creatures. It is strange this thing leads to so much anxiety. I think people are just worrying tremendously over which one are they to an unhealthy degree, and because they are scared to death of failure. Who can blame them?

I’m sure some love popularity and never want to do anything else with their life, but that is an unrealistic bar we have created for everybody in our society. So I guess that seems like a thing to look at.

Can you give examples of friends losing “everything” when following their dreams? What happened?

Excellent comment BTW.

I don’t think “following dreams” actually describes what I mean. I just mean doing anything except the safest thing to do, or making any sudden moves that requires a new start. Watching friends try to change careers has been cringeworthy. You have to be willing to lose everything. I think that takes all the fun out of life. It makes you feel absolutely trapped. Maybe i do love my life just how it is, but it’s hard to say when I cannot even visualize working toward anything else. I am just so much more fulfilled when working toward something. I don’t really get much out of just trying to save money so that’s I can risk it all at some point down the road. That feels like a trap. My happiest times have always been when I can be relatively confident I will not lose everything and I am in a place to contribute to something with other people. That is what I mean by “dream” and I currently have one of them, but it’s not a dream. It was once, or, it was at least a goal. I think “goal” is what’s I really mean. I want the ability to have goals in life that are not mere consumption, but that do not require overwhelming risk. The goals can be lame or common everyday things, but more real than a hobby and less deadly than risking homelessness.

I can relate to that. However, you have to realise that you literally want to have everything - both the comfort and safety AND a fullfilling life. This conflict within people has probably been going on from the beginning of time (it's greatly depicted in "The Revolutionary Road", a film by Sam Mendes (director of American Beauty)). I think that in the end, unless you're very lucky, you need to give up one or the other to some extent. Personally, I think I'd be more comfortable living my next 30 years as an at least somewhat free pauper, than spending my days in a comfortable, but depressing gilded cage - but that's a choice that everyone needs to make for themselves.

You can have comfort, safety and fullfilling life. There is absolutely no contradition between the three - unless your value system defines fullfiling as lack of safety. Comfortable does not imply depressing. Pointless and empty and without something to do implies depressing.

Maybe one reason for problems with loneliness and what not are these dichotomies - people believe they have to choose between two extremes and expect others to choose between two extremes - not allowing for harmony between multiple needs and wishes.

For example, the parent feels need to pretend to be obsessive careerist type. Had he did not pretended so, his peers would put him into familly men bracket and he woild be taken less seriously and his work life would suffer. He needs both, but had to choose only one, because we collectively don't allow for those compromises.

In the context of this forum, comfort and safety means a cushy tech job. I don't know how many people feel fulfilled in those, but my guess is that the majority isn't (esp. among people with more than a couple years of experience). The dichotomy seems very real to me.

Regarding your example of a father that needs to pretend he's laser-focused on the job - this is what I was talking about. There are people for whose career is a #1 priority, and these people naturally get the prized positions (managerial, or work on interesting projects etc.) in work environments, at the cost of everything else in their lives. Your example,a a father who secretely does not give a shit, still wants to work on these interesting projects, and thus misrepresents himself as someone who gives a shit. He literally wants to get something that, in a just world, he shouldn't get. He is not accepting the dichotomy.

Of course, the flip side is that there's plenty of other frauds who also misrepresent themselves, to the point of anyone who's open about his real priorities sticks out like a sore thumb - at which point you need to pretend just to maintain a mediocre job, and not to get the prized one. The reason for that is, in the grand scheme of things, even those "mediocre" tech jobs still pay six figures for working on a computer in a climate -controlled office. These are dream jobs for 90% of the population, so the competition for them is intense, hence all the theatrics (like for example people begrudgingly doing personal projects on Github in their spare time to fake passion). I imagine there's much more honesty amongst brick layers or truck drivers, as they don't have people coming for their jobs from all angles.

> In the context of this forum, comfort and safety means a cushy tech job. I don't know how many people feel fulfilled in those, but my guess is that the majority isn't (esp. among people with more than a couple years of experience). The dichotomy seems very real to me.

See, that is false dichotomy I see. You can have technically interesting job that is quite safe and with good management. You can have boring tasks with high subjective stress and disorganized management leading to late nights full of boring tasks and later burn out and leave the industry (looking at you, game industry).

> Regarding your example of a father that needs to pretend he's laser-focused on the job - this is what I was talking about.

I meant parent poster, not father. I have no idea whether he has children and the issue did not seemed to be family oriented one.

> There are people for whose career is a #1 priority, and these people naturally get the prized positions (managerial, or work on interesting projects etc.) in work environments, at the cost of everything else in their lives.

You later again do dichotomy between "career number one" and "does not give a shit". That is not how real world people act or feel. Moreover, real world people often move between the two.

Many many people in tech don't see middle management as desirable position. I know people who work on interesting projects and it did not costed them everything else in their lives. They focused on the kind of tech and positions important to them, but not to exclusion of everything and it worked out great for them. I know people who sacrificed everything and were not rewarded at all - sometimes unfairly and sometimes fairly. Their ego and identity being depended on job ended up hurting that job. People who sacrificed everything and ended up resentfulness and burned out by their own fault.

> Of course, the flip side is that there's plenty of other frauds who also misrepresent themselves, to the point of anyone who's open about his real priorities sticks out like a sore thumb - at which point you need to pretend just to maintain a mediocre job, and not to get the prized one.

Interestingly, there are two kind of jobs for you - mediocre and prized. You don't see different positions suitable for different people nor people possibly unhappy in those prized jobs nor people possibly happy in "mediocre jobs". These is no concept of personality type or aptitudes affecting what kind of job you are effective and happy at. There are loosers at mediocre jobs and those who sacrificed everything for prized jobs, regardless of whether they are actually really effective at that position.

Is it about work itself and meaning of work or rather about what jobs are seen as prized by others?

> The reason for that is, in the grand scheme of things, even those "mediocre" tech jobs still pay six figures for working on a computer in a climate -controlled office. These are dream jobs for 90% of the population, so the competition for them is intense, hence all the theatrics.

Is it that companies have hard time to find people or that competition for mediocre job is intense? Because really, many many low paid jobs are working on a computer in a climate controlled office.

> I imagine there's much more honesty amongst brick layers or truck drivers, as they don't have people coming for their jobs from all angles.

Truck drivers struggle. The competition for jobs and pressures and debts are very real, harder then any position in tech.

Which party is more likely to shame people for asking help? Such as asking for more social security benefits?

I mean it sounds good on paper to say "if you're not successful then that means you're just lazy" but there are several factors preventing people from getting help. There are several layers to the problem from a culture of being too proud to ask, a culture of exceptionalism, a culture of individualism, etc. All of these tendencies which resonates more with being a Republican than not.

Note that I am not saying these are bad traits, just that they would contribute to a result of increased loneliness.

I am not an american. But i have no one in my life. And unlike that 16 years old who feels lonely although she/he is in fact "surrounded by nice people", i am not surrounded by anyone. The funny thing is half an hour ago i wrote about what Ive been already knowing for a good decade: people are small coin. Bargaining chip. They come and go. What a coincidence. I decided to reiterate that because some situation reminded me of it, but I dont talk about it in absolutely most cases. I genuinely think that communication is mostly woethless and not to be spent time on. Had friends, had online friends, many of both types, had more than 200 skype contacts and got rid of them all.

Do I regret? It would be a lie to say yes. I almost dont reject any more connections since 2016, I hardly have any. I saved all the messages Ive been writing to anyone during the last 2 years. Its refresging to read them and see how much time you invested in taljing to someone who you have hard time remembering at all. I think Internet opened my eyes to this fact. Communication is worthless.

You know one other thing Ive benn thinking about last week? AVOID humans. I didnt write that anywhere back then. The essence of the idea is that networking is worthless. Waste of time. Talking to machines may spread your words 100x more than talking to humans. Just make a bot taljing on your behalf.

You may say that I will become self absorbed and self righteous for nothing because no one can correct me. Thats untrue. Occasionaly I can write like i do now, in a completely alien space. If i feel like it, i will return for answers and critique. But I dont want that, I will not return.

I read a lot of what others write and post and make and that keeps my thought going and helps me prevent it from becoming stale. The thing is, they are not writing or posting that TO me. But still I know what they think.

Honestly, I hugely dislike real life talking anymore. What a waste of everything. I wont lie, I can interrupt anyone who approaches me with a talk and say directly "I am not interested". Or "Dont talk to me". I dont care how they feel. Remember, they all are a passing substance, an ephemera, a hallucination. Dont get me wrong, they are real humans. But theres no need in caring about what they feel. There are too many humans. Today these, tomorrow others. Caring for what they think or what they want from you when you dont want anything from them is a waste of capacity.

You know whats funny. When you need something from them in return, you just come to them and ask. That easy. Funny bit is they, been rejected, still often do what you ask for. They are afraid to break the thousand-year-old lie saying "what you give is what you get". No such thing.

does your doctor consider yourself healthy

"Waste" implying you have something to waste. Relax. We are all passing through and no one will even know we existed not too long after we pass. You can go screaming to the grave as you are doing, or you can seek peace and at least try to make the world better around you.

Reading your paragraphs reminded me of Durkheim's Anomie. Are you familiar with it?

Ants think this way. Not much sophisticated communication required to maintain billion member colonies. As we get more hyperconnected like the ants expect more of these kind of posts.

We are moving from hierarchies maintaining social stability to hyperconnection maintaining it. Expect lot of disconnection during the transition.

Just want to say thank you for sharing your thoughts. It is helpful to have different perspectives on this issue.

I have the tendencies to feel and act similar to what you describe, but I think these tendencies can often be harmful and I often try to resist some of them. Feel free to contact me if you ever want to talk about this and other randomness with a kindred spirit. My email is in my HN profile and my Twitter is the same as my HN username.

Heads up, your HN profile is blank.

Thanks! I don’t know why I thought email addresses on HN were public for a minute there. Fixed!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: loneliness isn't the problem; it's our physical dependence on non-loneliness that is the problem.

I think the funny honey badger video is useful in becoming less of a shut in: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg

That, and remembering that life eventually ends: you literally have nothing to lose unless you are doing something totally reckless and/or against the law.

You will find that as you become more like the honey badger, people will find that refreshing and seek you out. Because we all have the same problems and want to be honey badgers internally.

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