I find it interesting how many posts here bemoan the lack of community in their lives when so many people live in isolated areas. For some reason the solution that comes to mind is more church instead of rethinking our housing priorities.
Isolated areas, or at least small towns, tend to have much stronger communities than I've found in cities. Anytime I've lived in a city most "communities" that evolve tend to revolve around work.
Live in a small town for a few years and you'll likely be part of multiple small communities interested in different things. I used to live in a pretty isolated smallish city and knew almost all of the owners of every restaurant I ate at and store I visited. I was active in a range of different communities with many different interests.
If you live in some extremely isolated area, like out in rural Maine, you'll likely be at least acquaintances with literally every person in town. The grocery store clerk and the owner of the town lumber yard will know something about you, at see you as part of their community. When you go grocery shopping it's rare to see only strangers.
Every apartment I've lived in in cities I've only vaguely known my neighbors, but in my first move to the suburbs I was instantly greeted by everyone around me, we exchanged numbers and had a small party.
My experience is that, generally speaking, community increases with the distance from the city center. One particular exception would be a dead zone in certain mass produced suburbs (the ring of death around Denver CO. being a good example).
My experience has been the opposite. Moreover, in a large city, I get to choose my community as opposed to being forced into being in one due to mere proximity.
This is a key, in a city you need to be proactive about it, or if not interested you can fully avoid any interaction and no one cares. In small places, you have to interact at least a little with people around you, or you'll be labeled as a weirdo. And also you're more often in need of someone helping you with something, as not everything is around the corner and readily available like in big cities.
In general, American suburbs infrastructure-wise were built more for cars than people or other transit mechanisms.
Austin seems to care about this a bit less, but I think it might be due to terrain. In general a fence increases home value usually in most Texas cities.
When it comes to relationships, cities just work on a pull model, where small towns worked on a push model.
BTW, I was just about to agree with you. But I just realized that we’ve been social distancing for almost a year. It felt like centuries ago since I had more than a 5 minute conversation with my neighbors.
It's not that I don't think that religion provides community or a decent ethical foundation. I just don't believe in the supernatural or any belief system that requires the breaking of the Second Law of Thermodynamics without any explanation of how.
Still the social aspects of religion are interesting. What does "more church" look like if you're an atheist? More participatory sports clubs maybe? Or, more things you can walk to and do regularly with the same people in general?
EDIT: I see the confusion now, it is actually ambiguous, maybe you read it right
Church is foremost for worship and social second, third, etc...
Some people are not particularly social at church and thats ok. What makes them happy is fulfilling a spiritual need.
It wasn't a total failure, but humanism never reached the mainstream.
Growing up in Manchester, I found it was football that fulfilled the emotional and tribal needs of many of my peers.
Many people assume Britain and USA are the same. In many respects, that is true. But as to church and religion, they are poles apart. At least that was true in the nineties when I lived in USA.
There are the Unitarian Universalists where many -- including atheists -- are not only welcome but also find worship.
unitarians simply take the parts they like from every religion to form another.
Sports, craft, games, etc... it hosted scheduled activities like workouts, helped organize event like trips, there was a room with a piano where lessons were held but was otherwise freely accessible, a small library, a bunch of chessboards from the chess club, again, freely accessible, etc... A lot of activities were aimed at kids but it spanned all age groups, including elderly.
Of course, it created a strong, unreligious community. Unfortunately, as it is often the case with these organizations, the few key players lost interest and no one took over, so while it still exists, not much remains.
Even the unorganized religions rely on this trichotomy without any explanation or coherence
I would be open to any outcome, just quantify the rules and mechanisms
Otherwise as you mentioned, some hobbies are my church. Local coworking is my church too.
Plenty of secular NGOs. User groups (Linux, BSD). If you're into photography: photo walks.
WFM. YMMV.
Like the spontaneous generation of life that continuously grows more and more complex?
“Here’s a cosmological model that might be true given our current data”
Vs
“Here’s a magical anthropocentric religious explanation for anything I can’t immediately explain”
Whether you're in a city or a suburb, there's plenty of community to be found or made if you put the effort in. The problem is our culture is being eroded away with each minute spent using the internet.
I struggle with this problem daily - as a web developer, my job is to fight for people's attention. I strive to build as good of a UX as possible and serve interesting content to users in the name of getting more clicks, more ad impressions, and more revenue. This is happening at a global scale, with ever more companies fighting over the individual's attention span to make a buck. Attention is a finite resource. If we capture 2 hours of your day, then you lose 2 hours you could have spent making friends at a local volunteer group while improving your community. I feel like we're cannibalizing society.
All that being said, I think online communities are a wonderful thing, but psychologically, they lack something important. People feel lonelier than ever while having more access to new communities of like-minded people than ever before.
I'm hoping VR/AR helps bridge this gap, but this in-between phase we're in is just kind of depressing.
1) I don't know how young people meet each other in real life when both men and women self-isolate with earbuds now.
Unless taking your earbuds out is a signal you're interested?
Maybe somebody can fill me in.
2) I knew a young IT graduate who wore earbuds at work. He had the chance to listen and discuss many topics with world-class software and IT engineers, except he couldn't hear them.
Your IT graduate made their own choices - maybe they wanted to do their job and go home rather than discuss with world-class people. Or maybe they had problems with concentration or noise.
Some people are introverts, or have busy life you're not a part of and never see, or just have different priorities. It's ok.
Companies often pay for their employees to attend professional and technical development workshops or go to conferences, because part of your job is to improve your skills. Casual water cooler talks do the same thing; they improve your skills, and help initiate creative ideas that ultimately help build better things.
In my own PhD, I saw supervisors demand their students attend department get together, bar hangouts at conferences, and even casually talk to other people in the dept. If I was a manager of creative types, I would absolutely rate someone who didn't "waste their time" at work lower, because if your job description is to create, you need to do reasonable things to improve your creative skills and outputs.
Several of my employers issue staff with noise cancelling headphones on day one on the job. The employee is supposed to make the suitable judgement call on when they're suitable (needing a few hours of uninterrupted concentration) and when they're not.
The alternative is giving people offices so they can actually isolate, or understanding that people who operate on 'maker time' will not be productive with regular interruptions.
AirPods Pro are often used as hearing aids in “transparency” mode. Do not make the (lazy) assumption that someone wearing them cannot hear every word you say.
Furthermore, I think if I had to listen to self-proclaimed “world-class” engineers all day, I’d wear earphones too. And not on “transparency” mode.
I mean this 100% seriously: when you have community outside of work you spend less time chatting at work.
No idea how much it holds but it fits my experience.
The stereotype is meant as something positive, but I associate something negative with it. I grew up suburban and I just can't imagine ever moving back. It's so boring, dull and while there's more proximity, you are so bound to you environment. If you don't fit in the you have a problem. I didn't fit in later in school, I didn't get bullied or anything, but I just lacked people with the same interest. I found them in the city in the 10th grade, so I started to commute by train into the city every wednesday after school and on the weekends. They were weird, looked weird and interested in music, art and protecting the environment. I regularly feel asleep saturday night on the central station because I missed my train and had to wait hours. I understand the positive association but the only thing I associate with it is being locked in in an environment you have no control over because it is not by choice but by geographic proximity. I don't want parties with people on my block, I want parties with my friends. Preferably every weekend until the sun starts to rise again and I am exhausted but happy.
Writing this was very interesting for me, I never really tried to reflect why I so strongly despise the idea of moving again into something suburban.
I would rather like to see more enjoyable activities such hackathons, festivals, contests etc. Church/religions are outdated and most of them(i.e the major ones) just exploit your fears.
If “God” is the label we place on the force/spirit of creation/life in this world, then “fearing God” means to respect and subject yourself to the truth about this creation rather than considering yourself above it. The most concrete example is understanding that attempting to break the laws of physics by “flying” off a cliff is unwise. Among Christians it’s also common to interpret it as recognising that going against the “will” of this force that created us (concretely natural selection as well as however the universe and life of earth came to be) will bite you in the arse, such as rejecting family (life) for vanity for example.
If one instead fears judgement from fellow men in church, you should disregard the fear and forgive those who judge you - because standing above a fellow man is the sin of thinking you’re of a higher intrinsic value which also is not fearing God.
It’s not expressed in precise scientific language but rather colourful, poetic, narrative, and philosophical language, because it is ideas older than Newton, but it does not require supernatural claims, not is it about fearing other people.
Not trying to change your mind or person - but encourage you to continue discovering philosophy and religion
Science calls for the use of data, and constantly modifying and updating knowledge based on data.
Religion, or at least all the implementations of it that I know, are not about throwing out the old if new, conflicting data is discovered.
As far as I can tell, religion is a relic from tribal days, and still serves much of the same purpose today. It can assist in societies without formed legal systems and can help foster higher trust within its members.
Humans have insufficient time to evaluate all of the motivations and priorities of others, and religion provides a nice framework with all the various social events and traditions for the tribe to coalesce around.
Growing up, I learned that plausible deniability is very important for humans. For the same reasons that flirting is a thing, it’s not beneficial for someone to walk around with an explicit list of people/tribes they value over others, in push comes to shove scenarios. But it is beneficial to signal it implicitly, and going along this line of thought gets into politics.
But it's full of supernatural mumbo-jumbo. Of course that would not be an issue if it wouldn't claim to be the undisputable truth. Science calls for verification. Religion does the opposite.
It means to believe and do absurd things due fear such Abraham offering his son as a sacrifice/killing him. Most important it means to fear questioning "god's will" or the authenticity of religion.
>> The most concrete example is understanding that attempting to break the laws of physics by “flying” off a cliff is unwise.
Religions like very much to enact "laws"/opinions on things they don't understand or don't fit their model. The history is full of this. Usually people get hurt. Just look at what poor Isaac was about to get. The old book is full of such crap. Hate, war, and discrimination seem to get a respectable place as well. To make your example more religious you should put a punishment on that: i.e if you try to fly you will rot in hell and even if you escape the fall the good people of the church will burn you at the stake.
>> Not trying to change your mind or person
You can't. I went full circle on it. Once you get rid of the fear you see the religions for what they truly are: a mix of old politics and some cheap philosophy.
>> but encourage you to continue discovering philosophy and religion
Philisophy: maybe
Religion: my stomach can't handle it anymore.
Hehe this was me younger discovering pre Christian philosophy and r/atheism. I especially considered myself Epicurean. Good times :-). Take care and keep on reasoning!
This is just one of the possible interpretations. If you are a Christian then you believe the New Testament has a priority over the Old one, and you know that someone already asked Jesus the question what is most important, and the reply was, briefly, "love". So, logically, if you follow love (not fear!) in your life, trying to be kind to others and helping them within your means, this should be understood as living perfectly within the spirit of the teaching of Christ, even if you have nothing to do with any Church.
The character/person Christ is described as “logos” made flesh. That means the ideal man embodies in this world the ideas of universal ethics and as you say love for their fellow brother and sisters the children of creation.
I like you interpret it as a personal philosophical/spiritual thing, and the church being a physical place to remind yourself of and celebrate this. Thank you for your insightful comment :)
I was raised without religion but as Bangladeshis we have a pretty rigid culture apart from religion. This is the “what do you teach your kids about stuff.” Here in the United States it seems like most of that is just whatever is transmitted through the Disney Channel and movies. And frankly a lot of that is pretty garbage culture. It teaches people to be self-centered assholes.
Obviously there are many moral people who aren’t religious (and many religious people who aren’t moral). But you can take away religion but you still need some moral framework in its place. And in the US that seems really hard. We don’t have ready-made frameworks for “here’s what you should teach your kids.” Many parents do a fine job improvising, but it’s a lot of work to do it on your own from scratch.
While many tout the Judeo-Christian foundations of the US, most of that is just a thin veneer. Kind of like the Horatio Alger myth that you can simply pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you really really just try hard enough.
Scripture definitely teaches a traditional view of marriage and gender roles. You might consider that “repulsive” but I think there’s a lot of room for debate on that. Less than half of Americans believe that “changing gender roles have made it easier for women to live more satisfying lives.” https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/10/18/wide-partisan-gap.... That includes less than 60% of Democrats.
Scripture also teaches the centrality of procreation to marriage and society. I happen to agree with the Obergefell approach, which relied on relatively recent research (based on the 2010 census) showing the astounding number of same-sex couples raising children together. I think it’s no surprise that views on same-sex relationships have shifted quickly as people came to understand that it’s compatible with traditional understandings of marriage’s societal function. (That research, by the way, was not available 5 decades ago. The scientific research on homosexuality being an immutable characteristic really got going in the 1990s, and became widely acknowledge among the public only around 2010.)
I will point out that the western world is almost entirely dependent on immigrants from societies that have traditional religious views on these issues for their population stability. Western social liberalism has many positive attributes, but it hasn’t proven to be self-perpetuating. Maybe it’s adherents should be a little circumspect before calling other attitudes “repulsive.”
"the cultural values transmitted are often not only at odds with scripture, but just repulsive in general."
>Maybe it’s adherents should be a little circumspect before calling other attitudes “repulsive.”
Which of the values I criticized as repulsive do you think I should be more circumspect about? Racism? Homophobia? Misogyny?
>I will point out that the western world is almost entirely dependent on immigrants from societies that have traditional religious views on these issues for their population stability. Western social liberalism has many positive attributes, but it hasn’t proven to be self-perpetuating.
I think the Western world will do just fine without embracing the repulsive values I've listed.
The abandonment of religion and culture more generally has been a giant exercise in ignoring Chersterton's fence.
Culture is a basically "here is how we act so we don't die." People grow up in it, and they realize that some of it is perhaps outdated or inaccurate. That isn't by itself much of an issue.
The trouble comes when those people have children and grandchildren who were never immersed in the culture and so didn't have the backing of "here are our mutual stories" to know what to keep and what the get rid of.
It's basically burning down a library because, "Well I only read three or four of those books anyway"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton's_fence
Those are all just commerce that you commute to, though. As someone who worked in the service industry for years, 99% of the people I met at work (the "regulars", the overly chatty parents who haven't seen an adult this month, etc) I would never consider part of my community.
How many conversations do you have with members of your community that you're not buying something from?
Just because I wouldn't call him if I needed a kidney doesn't mean he's not a part of my (the) community.
That said, most relationships in a community of people are going to be at least somewhat superficial, because nobody can maintain deep personal relationships with hundreds of people.
The idea that the whole thing is just a cynical commercial racket is silly though. Building a real relationship with your community is the whole point of small local business. A lot of those relationships are genuine friendships. The owner of my local coffee shop invites my wife and I over for dinner every so often, and vice versa. I had my local butcher over a couple of weeks ago because he wanted me to teach him how to make beef rendang.
Even if commerce underlies the relationship, it can still be entirely community based.
What I am saying is that you should have connections with the other people in your community at the shop, not the person hired to interact with you. The relationship with the store owner has nothing to do with whether you drive a car or not.
The relationship you have with others, the other folks at the store shopping, etc are much harder in a suburban geography literally because of the lack of interactions. Drivethu's are the extreme of this.
It's my hypothesis that having a relationship with your local butcher or coffee maker has little to nothing to do with your car, but the relationships you have with others merely due to their proximity to you is the beauty of community. Digital or physical.
I don’t think this is an essential element of community at all, but as I said “ a majority of [the other community members I interact with] would be other people who go to the same places I go”
> It's my hypothesis that having a relationship with your local butcher or coffee maker has little to nothing to do with your car
I’d say you’re right. But I’d also say that the comment “cities are made for cars not people” is equally as insightful as the comment “footpaths are made for shoes not people”, “cycle lanes are made for bicycles not people” or “rail lines are made for trains not people”. Because at the end of the day, shoes, bicycles, cars, buses, trains... are all made for people. I would suggest that a persons perception of their local community has much more to do with how they interact with it than it does the form of transport they use. I’m also certain that there would be a large number of people who live in the same community as I do, which I find to be particularly vibrant, who spend their time not socializing with anybody, and then go home at the end of the day to take out their phone and complain about lack of community.
Only one of those literally puts a glass and metal wall between every single person, and I think it's a significant difference in how social you can realistically be, as all time spent traveling is no longer occurring within a social context, but a private one.
There is literally no city in the world where people are interested in the social experience of public transport.
What connections do you find in your grocery store?
But it's just a reply about the car making your interaction with your community almost exclusively commercial. I've met far more friends at the park, usually when I'm walking through with my dog.
This feels like a commercial transaction to me.
Any human behaviour examined from the correct perspective can be attributed to an egoist motive.
I just don't consider it a real friendship, and I think this is potentially dangerous thinking. Your counterpart is being paid to form that connection with you, and you are in a specific position of power over them in that situation.
It's nice, in the moment, to be given service - by someone working in a service industry (this is certainly not unique to the suburbs) - but I find it odd that you seem to describe this as a satisfying personal relationship. You will likely never see that person again, whenever they stop doing that job. Your connection and their connection is to the transaction, which includes a personal element at your behest.
If you had said: and I often see them outside of work, then I would consider that slightly differently.
That said, I do have “real friendships” with a number of people that I’ve meet in these settings. Because, perhaps unsurprisingly, a nice local community can be a good place to find new friends.
Everything has to be "Real friendship" What does that even mean? You're just talking to others to be a decent human being. Not everyone has to be your wife/husband/BFF for ever.
I've seen plenty of people after commercial transactions. In fact, many times I remember people and they remember me for pleasant interactions - they aren't my best man but it's still really satisfying to me.
This is not a benefit of living in the suburbs. You can have a pleasant commercial transaction anywhere in the world - you pay for that.
It just goes back to the common theme these days - everything is something or someone else's fault. No one ever just says " man I'm feeling lonely, maybe I should join this club, or start going to this coffee shop and just strike up conversation."
No we have to "blame the suburbs" and "blame cars." No one wants to just take responsibility for themselves, they just want to complain about everything else causing their problems online.
Obviously there are many other benefits of regular friendly small interactions with people, but this one has stood out in my mind over the last couple polarizing years.
Along with social skills I think it's the lack of other hobbies or interests. I have friends from local bars but I also have ones from various sports clubs and other activities. Whether it's churches, the local chess club or sports a city will provide a lot more of these niches for community.
Community doesn't just happen, you have to go out and get involved in them, then you have to talk to people instead of sitting on your phone.
I lived in Singapore for a while and there was a very strong demand for cars. This is despite a world class public transport system and very high fees/taxes on owning a car. The point is, having a car is a luxury that many people desire. Even with public transport alternatives.
There are nice string of parks along the lake, but the loop area as a whole constantly sacrifices nice outdoor space in exchange for a bit more driving room. That’s starting to change but we’re still a long way away from a European style city center.
I’ve been to Europe and seen the mass of cars in the down town core and shit parking situation.
I’d say chicago doing is pretty good compared to Europe.
My overall point is despite good mass transit and dense housing, when people can afford it it, many people prefer cars.
You're likely being downvoted for the ignorance.
(NB: I didn't downvote you because you are right that too often this fairy-tale European style appears here. But still...)
That said I loved Singapore and I love it's awesome public transportation and its abundant taxies that were easily reservable long before Uber existed.
Agreed. It's a meaningless lazy insult. Like saying, "hospitals are built for diseases, not people".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainline_Protestant
These days, they're losing members to a growing irreligion, people who can find everything they need without joining any religious faith and, perhaps more importantly, can remain irreligious without suffering a serious social disability. (There are still places where the first icebreaker question is "What church do you go to?" and not having a good answer is not really an option if you wish to get along.) Therefore, expecting the old standbys to pick up the slack isn't going to work.
https://religionunplugged.com/news/2019/8/30/as-nones-increa...
The above has some great quotes:
> "People are either being intentionally and intensely religious – like really active evangelicals, or conservative Catholics, or yada yada – or they're leaving the more moderate churches that we've always seen as holding down the middle of religious life in this country," he said. "We've ended up with two trends that appear to be related. We're losing moderation in the political space in American life and we're losing moderation in the religious space, as well."
> The political implications of these trends are complex, he said. But there does seem to be a Big Idea at the heart of it all: Millions of Americans, especially young adults, have decided that "religious" equals "Republican."
> Burge put it this way on Twitter, describing how doctrines can affect public life: "There is no religious group in the U.S. that places itself halfway between the political parties. Instead, every religious tradition has a 'baked-in' political preference now. Nones favor Democrats. Christians (by and large) favor the GOP."