America's “Friendscape” Crisis
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I'd always had teachers in grammar and high school telling me directly or indirectly I was wasting my potential trying to be like the other kids but I only recently understand what they meant and what, more importantly, they saw that I didn't, but that's what a childhood of deep ostracizing both within and without one's family will do.
Much of this thought process has only been possible because I enrolled in therapy a few years before the pandemic. Prior to this I meandered around life with a desperate, pathetic cheerfulness that masked how alone I already was. Alone, not just on the basis of deep, meaningful companionship but that I hadn't at all cultivated being a friend and ally to myself, such that I allowed myself to take on friendships that were not good for my growth as person at all, rather caused me to regress to the same old childhood tropes and tactics time and time again, unable to address the real interpersonal complexity that requires a defined and resolved character to decide and navigate; I tried to be these other apparently successful types to have some social life rather saying NO to what I knew wasn't going to get me where I wanted to go and the kind of people I'd probably enjoy beyond inebriation and frat-level jokes.
What sucks though is that you spend so much time in these relationships you develop a sort of Stockholm Syndrome where the sense of "love" and "affinity" are really just "this is all I've ever known".
Rebuilding at a late age like myself is going to be tough, social media can be particular booby trap here I realize, but it seems necessary.
That's a nice list of traits for a friend to have, but since a person will literally go insane if they don't have any human contact, I would advise finding better friends first before dumping the bad ones.
Also the list was me being too literary in describing the majority of these relationships, they answered the questions posed in the negative through and through, read: unhealthy relationships.
Like I have quite a few people I'll get together to play board games with, and I enjoy their company for that, but we don't do a whole lot outside of that (sometimes a dinner or a movie or go to a special event, but not too often).
I didn't spell it out clearly enough and got literary, but most of these relationships were condescending, disrespectful, and somewhat abusive, never mind lacking empathy. What your describing is something I actually should accede to in my local area with COVID restrictions somewhat breaking up and now being vaccinated.
I thought the definition there was people that gave attention to someone that doesn't return it?
The most dystopian thing I've read all week.
Others may get frustrated enough to make an attempt to fix the problem for real, only to re-remember how much harder that is in our current society and re-remember why they reached for this attempted solution in the first place.
Even in interactive context, things are treacherous. Sure, you can have this online community who totally get you, who you can talk to about anything and get back compassion, support and useful advice - but do you have any idea who those people actually are, what their life situations are, what values they have and what views they are basing that advice on?
http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/everyone-was-amazing-...
I held them once-a-month for 3 years before the pandemic, and I just restarted this month. These parties happen at my rooftop terrace at my place on the Upper West Side:
254 W 98th St
New York NY 10025
It's mostly a tech crowd, but also some folks from the theater world, and the publishing world.
Text me if you want to be on the invite list: 434 825 7694
> "We realize the importance of friendship, and we're just not investing the time," he said, adding that it's another way the nation is "vulnerable."
Too many people don't have the resources to invest in friendships. Mostly it's time - working two or more jobs to survive or putting in 60+ hour workweeks plus insane 2 hour commutes doesn't leave much time for anything else than sleep - but also, money in general. There are not many places outside of a home for people to gather that are affordable and accessible to anyone, thanks to gentrification. Shoddy run-down bars that were a place for regular people have been replaced by hipster outfits that charge ten euros for a coffee.
Phones have made personal relationships much harder because now people can talk to other people not even present far more conveniently. It is a double edge sword in it's entirety. It makes communication convenient and effortless, but also makes personal relationships just as difficult to maintain since you can just text instead of meeting up to get to know how someone's life has been going.
>Too many people don't have the resources to invest in friendships.
I don't believe that for a second. The simple fact that social media is alive and well wasting billions of hours of free time is more than enough to refute that point altogether. People in the past had time for friends and now suddenly they don't? I'd argue it's because people are spending more time on their phones texting or using social media than they are actually physically talking. As I've personally witnessed in many bars. I've had great chats with random strangers who were in the Gen-X or higher age group more than I have in the millennial and younger. Do you know why? They weren't staring at their phones the moment the conversation kinda died. Do you know what they did? They also tried to talk and bring something up during the conversation!
He basically boils it down to we're becoming more non-committal because we think something better is going to come, whether its the better brunch, the better gathering, the better toothbrush (he specifically cites this example) so we can all post it on social media. It results in all of us being miserable and unable to foster undivided attention.
The best thing you can do really is to not opt-in.
Yet, they are all stuck in the never ending rat race. The excessive focus on the rat race leads to less energy and time left for friendships. The little time that is left is left only for superficial acquaintances. You know, the kind where people talk to each other like a sitcom.
Every time I go to Asian countries, I am stunned by how much time people (even those with high powered careers) give to family and friends. You know, things like casual hanging out in friends apartments on weekends, street food time in the evenings, experiencing a new restaurant or exploring a new village on a short road trip together.
Americans just don't want to engage in this kind of "unproductive" lifestyle. It's all about work, career, money. The entire cottage industry of self-help is all about spending every living moment improving yourself to more material wealth.
It’s not that we don’t want to, it’s that our society’s design discourages this. For the most part, if you don’t have a GOOD job in the US, you don’t get healthcare or retirement. And even the employers at those good jobs can and do fire employees at any time, for any reason. Given the cost of healthcare without insurance and lack of social safety net, l I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that for most Americans, even upper middle class, holding on to their jobs is a matter of life and death.
Can 100% confirm. I've gone from earning $50 an hour (back when that was a lot of money) to a successful career owning/operating my own businesses to living in constant pain and misery that I can't even afford to visit a doctor for, and thanks to the societal gray area I fall into (not being a homeless drug addict) I don't qualify for free medical help to get healthy enough to go back to being "productive". For the love of all that is holy, DO NOT get sick in the USA! Your value as a human here depends entirely on the value that can be extracted from your wallet.
But you're not mentioning the ACA or any right wing key words/phrases, so I'm confused what your message (what action should be prescribed) and target audience are.
If holding on to your job is totally a matter of life and death today, that seems like a really clear and complete denunciation of what was formerly considered the Obama administration's greatest accomplishment.
It makes me wonder if you all in this subthread were influenced in the last couple of elections towards or away from Democrats for that reason.
Personally, I can't imagine having that many close friends (and how many more non-close friends do you have?). To me it seems like it would require an almost obsessive level of effort to maintain, like to the extent that it's basically the only thing you do outside of work. Which I suppose would have been easier without the internet to distract you, but still.
When I was in high school, I had over 30 friends who I was close with- we had classes together during the day, sports practices together in the evening, and spent our weekends together at the same social gathers.
Then we all scattered for college, and social networks broke down as each of us individually were now nodes on separate, non-connected groups. We had our "college friends" and our "high school friends" who mostly didn't know one another or interact.
Then we all scattered again for jobs after college and our friendships became increasingly strained, difficult and disconnected. Our high school best friend was a thousand miles away and living a very different life now. Our college friends only got together as a group at weddings and bachelor parties. Our new 20-something friend groups were constantly in flux as people got into serious relationships, focused on careers or moved around.
If I'd grown up in the 1950s and stayed in my hometown after high school along with all my friends, I'd have a rich, deep history with 30+ friends. Instead, I have 100 people who I was close to for a few years at a time but who I'm only presently close with a few.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210423122109/https://www.nytim...
https://web.archive.org/web/20210716143848/https://www.nytim...
It may be just a consequence of my circumstances, but work for me has never been the place to “make friends” and actually remote work enables my social life more, even by just a minuscule amount.
In regards to making friends in general. I always find myself the odd one out in every environment. At work particularly, I’m typically substantially younger than my colleagues some of which are old enough to be my parents or grandparents. Not that you cannot develop friendships with an age gap like that, but I don’t think it’s advisable. Majority of these people have there own life, are in the process of settling down or have their own families already. We are simply at different stages of life and it’s unlikely to result in any true friendships.
I don’t really have a social life either, which feels pretty faking at my age, but I do try to go out at least once or twice in the weekends. Over the years, I’ve had a number of acquaintances I’ve met, but no friends really. In most of the groups I hang out in, I find the same issue as work, though on a smaller scale. Still generally to young to develop any sort of bond with the people I’m with, but the gap tends to be smaller so that there’s still some things we can relate on. If I’m not the youngest in the room, it seems in the oldest, which is honestly an even more uneasy feeling as I have a hard time relating to most of my own generation, despite certainly exhibiting some characteristics of it.
Some people in this thread have additionally mentioned the resource of time as an inhibitor to developing friendships. I can understand this. I generally enjoy the occasions I get to go out or sometimes stay home and enjoy myself, but there’s always an uneasy feeling about how afterwards it’ll be another week of mindless wageslaving before I get a chance to to relax again.
Ultimately, I haven’t really made any friends since I was maybe 15 or so. This makes sense though, as since adulthood, I’ve basically been divorced from any sort of environment where young people find themselves. Having never gone to school I was mostly isolated from my peers from 18-24, and while there are many people at that age who do not tend to go to school and do well socially, I believe that at least a small majority of those people tend to choose paths that put them in communities with similar people, whereas I’ve always been out of place, demographically speaking, whether that be in impoverished dumps or next to moderately wealthy professionals/retirees. Though I am now coming around to the age where many of my peers will leave school and enter the “real world” I don’t think much will come of it as I have a bad history of always being in the wrong place at the wrong time (doubly so career wise, ha)
Our policies are mostly geared around creating never-ending strip malls, endless suburban neighborhoods, and omnipresent traffic issues. Because these things most efficiently create tax revenue, happy "what my parents had" families, and income segregated areas.
Similar to college, fixing America starts with deciding that everyone doesn't need a single family home in a popular metro.
And of course, if people need to work longer and harder to achieve what would've been considered fairly modest goals by (recent) previous generations in terms of housing, then they have less time and energy to devote to friendship and community.
When vast sums of institutional money are freed and chasing yield, eventually some of it leaks into residential property.
And when a market that was precariously balanced with only retail buyers (due to density opposition and building economics) now has equal or more investors pile in? Well, prices do what they've done.
The fact of the matter is conventional central banking is a failure, as is widespread private homeownership in metropolitan areas.
In that respect, they've been fairly successful.
The side effects are... less good. But worse than a national depression? Eh.
well start with those side effects: inflation is kept in check by beating back workers whenever they get to powerful. Then take into account how lousy growth has been since the 1970s when they started doing that.
If we could have had depressions but more amortized growth, and not "jobless recoveries" and anemic amortized growth, would that have been worse or better?
Edit:
I read the article and it basically boils down to rich people benefiting from low inflation because it doesn't erode their deposits and makes stocks/housing go up without increasing wages. It's pretty much true but it is also so obvious to be boring. Money from the past is power from the past.
Maintaining the value of money earned 60 years ago is the same as maintaining power obtained 60 years ago. Holding onto money doesn't help workers be more productive so if they spent their 60 year old money it would get eroded by inflation. You therefore need to add some slack in the labor supply that is not used up by anyone, meaning nobody is going to miss that labor if it is paid by 60 year old dollars that would otherwise result in inflation if there were full employment.
The central bank doesn't decide the interest rate, rather it is closer to an autonomous organization whose goal is to let interest rates follow the economy.
Low interest rates are the result of the preference to hold deposits and the preference to not take on debt. If you want higher interest rates you'll have to raise the government debt ceiling or kill deposits with inflation/negative interest rates on deposits. Considering the demand for perpetual savings it only makes sense that governments would issue perpetual bonds.
The reason why perpetual bonds are interesting is that they only have to be paid back when they have to be paid back.
EDIT... atrocious grammar
And no, I don't mean "the pool" or "the weight room." I mean actual lounge areas. Social areas. Hell, even Marriott's Residence Inns do a better job than your average building.
In that "Community spaces" is a subset of "businesses an owner leasing commercial space would rent to."
I don't think we're talking about a Subway sandwich shop on the ground floor being helpful.
Parks, YMCAs, basketball courts, cafes, etc.
That’s not to say I don’t have a few close friends, but certainly not my next-door neighbors.
The lack of close friendships is probably driven more by a lack of community activities than not knowing your neighbors.
I doubt that they are most efficient at generating tax revenue, especially when considering density and infrastructure maintenance.
Mixed housing along with ground level commercial spaces even in the poorest of downtown districts generate more tax revenue.
The problem is when crime and other forms of blight lead to people not living or working in those places anymore.
You mean tax revenue because there are subsidies for new developments? Car based suburban sprawl is a money pit for tax revenue. You need a lot of road per house.
So true. With the political polarization so common now, you can become isolated and then alienated quite easily.
I'd add that being a man, especially if married, as you age your social circle radically declines. Getting divorced radically improved that for me. And I'm not even talking about the opposite sex - I have more guy friends now that 10, 20 years ago. There's a space that NO wife or GF can ever fill...
As someone who believes in the Moral Foundations Theory, I don't think it's an accident that the places that are known for low friendships tend to be culturally liberal places. Since most probably don't know what Moral Foundations Theory is, a quick and dirty version is that all moral judgement can be reduced to the following core values (or moral foundations) which I copied from Wikipedia:
* Care: cherishing and protecting others; opposite of harm
* Fairness or proportionality: rendering justice according to shared rules; opposite of cheating
* Loyalty or ingroup: standing with your group, family, nation; opposite of betrayal
* Authority or respect: submitting to tradition and legitimate authority; opposite of subversion
* Sanctity or purity: abhorrence for disgusting things, foods, actions; opposite of degradation
I'm also a fan of the tentatively accepted liberty vs oppression foundation. I really think it should be renamed to something like agency vs domination. Anyways, it would value being able to make decision on choices deemed important and rejecting those who coerce others.
Anyways, culturally liberal places pick care vs harm as their primary value and in some cases have made it the default choice for answering moral issues. I think this naturally leads to guess culture. You get told as a child, frequently, that saying "no" can hurt the askers feelings. You learn to feel bad for saying "no", since it violates care vs harm. You realize that the person you are about to ask a question to is going to feel bad if they say "no". Making them feel bad would be harm, so asking would be harm... unless you can figure out if they'd say yes. That's how I think a guess culture would develop.
The reason I bring up moral foundations at all is I believe the solution is in the last 3 foundations: loyalty, authority, and purity. Those 3 are characterized as the group-ish ones. They are what separate acquaintances from friends, neighbourhoods from communities, and coworkers from a team.
[0] - https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/05/askers-...