American Solitude: Notes Toward a History of Isolation | Hacker News Reader

American Solitude: Notes Toward a History of Isolation

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28 pointsThevet31 comments

Imho, while there are lot of people suffering from anxiety and stress these days, it has a lot more to do with info overload than info deprivation (which is what isolation does to the chimp brain).

I would argue that it's also more likely because it's more easily documented than it was ever before. Personally I feel like this is what happens when you create a culture where people always feel like they're not doing enough and can constantly see what other people are doing that they aren't.

I don't think the pandemic is the same as the other isolations mentionned. It's like the worst of both worlds: you can't see people face to face, but you aren't cut off from the incessant social media and all. You have to take further steps to either achieve a "real isolation", or to ensure that most of the time you spend on the internet/social media/etc is quality time that doesn't just makes you more anxious.

>but you aren't cut off from the incessant social media and all

It is your decision to pay attention to the "news" and social media

Slightly OT but American society seems extremely weird to me.

Most Americans grow up in low density suburbs, move to hyper dense college towns for college, get a job in ultra dense cities then finally get a house in the low density suburbs once they want to start a family at which point the cycle repeats.

I don’t really understand how anyone can go from the dense hubbub of a city back to the routine boredom of a suburb without losing their mind. Just picturing that seems isolating, yet most Middle Class Americans choose this path willingly. I’m not a psychologist but my armchair theory was just that suburbs is what they consider “proper” environment to raise children since that’s how they grew up.

> willingly

It could also be the fact that purchasing a house, large enough for raising kids, in a dense urban centre is unobtainable for the vast majority of people.

That, and the schools can be, on average, better.

Speaking as a Californian, it helps that urban centers are usually absolute hellholes. Between the charming mix of homeless, hoodrats, and junkies that police won't do anything about it's a lot easier to raise a kid with a future if you just move somewhere that isn't terrible like a boring but predictable suburb.

This. What I recall from living in the city was regularly hearing my neighbors stomping and occasionally fighting, asking neighbors to keep their music down so my wife could sleep(she works night shift) and getting in a yelling match, and having to deal with a psychopathic apartment complex who didn't respect privacy at all and exploited every situation they could. I remember going for a jog and a wanna-be gangster on the sidewalk grabbing at his pants(like towards a gun) because he didn't know I was there.

American cities aren't pleasant.

You don't need house to raise kids. I found that what I need with kids the most is proximity of infrastructure and other families with kids of similar age.

One must consider that Americans are the result of generations of people who left behind crowded conditions in the old country for the promise of ample tracts of land to call their own.

Some people do enjoy moving to urban areas, but many others consider it a necessary evil to make enough money that they can go back out with enough of a nest egg to be comfortable. Not unlike old indentured servitude.

Oh this is easy. It's because the suburbs are perceived as having less diversity due to past decades of redlining. As somebody whose parents moved to a 'nice' suburb when I was 14, it wasn't so much nicer as it was almost exclusively white.

This doesn't match my experience at all. I moved because I could afford a house in the suburbs, and the lower population density decreases chances of conflict.

Not everyone is racist like this

I agree overall, just my lived experience in the American South. YMMV. Though, I would push back lightly on your last statement.

Two people happily chimed in to challenge my subjective statement. Statements about how bad cities are and the issues caused by systemic lack of investment in social services rarely face much criticism.

Your subjective statement pushes a narrative that racism from white Americans is the cause of the problem. It's reductive and unproductive, which is why it received comments so quickly. Pushback doesn't imply you're right, it implies a divisive comment or subject.

And yet, just in the parent thread, just look at the comments of people talking about how they don't like cities because of the "hood-rats" and "wanna-be gangsters".

The word choice should make you suspicious. When is the last time you heard a white person called a "hood-rat"?

The wanna-be gangster I spoke of was white. I live in one of the whitest regions of the country, but we still have gangsters, ne'er do wells and generally bad people here too. Everywhere does.

Odd. You're perfectly civil, and relating your own experience, but it's obviously received negatively since it's going against some people's preconceptions.

> that other parents are making racist decisions hiding under a guise of choosing to move for safety

In the context of this thread, which is about whether people leave cities under the guise of doing so for safety to excuse the real underlying reasons of racism, this answer isn't that satisfactory.

It's the reverse of "I have a black friend". It's "I was scared of white people too". Obviously only you can know the true reasons, but please don't think that just because you made a decision for one set of circumstances that no one made the choice for other reasons.

Instead of relying on anecdotes you can look at the data which shows that white people do leave areas in cities with more black people in them. The data is not described by pure economics. The evidence is that some people are making the conscious or unconscious decision to racially segregate.

Afaik, this changed already years ago.

While I do think it's a common desire for parents to want to move to places that are safer for their children, and there are many things that relate to this which can be different for different people / places - I do not think that that universally 'less diversity' is the goal.

It may be that in many parts of the country a move to less crime is a move to 'less diversity' - but I do not think that is the case for all cities / suburbs everywhere in America.

The above comment almost sounds like one is painting their parents as making racist choices, and that other parents are making racist decisions hiding under a guise of choosing to move for safety. I do not think many people in the US are making choices for racial issues.

Moves for better schools, less noise, less crime, more family activities, and other things are generally the priority from what I have seen.

Is that really so for majority of americans?

> By 2018, 25% of the total U.S. population resided in the large suburban counties, up from 23% in 2000. In contrast, the share of the population living in the urban cores remained at 31%. [...] Some 14% of the total U.S. population lived in rural counties in 2018, a decline from 16% in 2000.

I think that you describe as most Americans is typical Silicon Valley tech employee - went to college and then moved to Silicon Valley to work. But it is not the same thing as majority of Americans making that exact moves.

"Most Americans" really? What you describe is not at all most Americans.

Also people want different things at different points in their life. I dont see why it's "weird".

Salmon also don't see living in oceans and then swimming upstream to spawn as weird. Doesn't mean it can't appear weird to outsiders like us humans. And weird doesn't mean bad, just peculiar.

Kids can be real boredom-removers. Exhausting at times, stressful at times, but commonly they don't leave you bored.

I mean, honestly, watching toddler for hours is boring.

> Most Americans grow up in low density suburbs, move to hyper dense college towns for college, get a job in ultra dense cities

Misleading if not factually wrong. [1] Just because some people move away to join cities, does not mean that most people do. If anything, in the last 20 years, that trend is reversing and more 18-24 year olds are living in suburbs than before.

And my humble guess is that this trend is the same in every country that has urban centers with greater economic opportunities than the suburbs. And people move away from the cities to start a family because it's less expensive to do so. No psychology required, it's just economics.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/07/29/prior-t...

That article is showing a less than 5% change due to Covid over a year. I don’t think that’s indicative of any long term trend.

2000-2018. Covid was 2020

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheCityVsTheCoun...

>I don’t really understand how anyone can go from the dense hubbub of a city back to the routine boredom of a suburb without losing their mind.

I don't understand how anybody would willingly stay in a densely populated city. Not everybody is the same.

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