Loneliness reshapes the brain
quantamagazine.org
quantamagazine.org
So, the only way out is to live through that slump and figure out who you are in this world, because it doesn't matter if you have 100 or 0 people around you - when life comes knocking, it will only ever knock on your door.
Having said that, I'd imagine that most people who are lonely do eventually come to the realization that they're confusing their emotions with reality. No medication will ever fine-tune your minds frequency to be able to hear your own voice that lives in your head.
And I think most crafty people in this world do eventually figure out that this life's short, and that spending your time worrying about bullshit (or worse yet, kicking yourself down deliberately) isn't worth it.
But I digress... If you haven't gotten to the Existential Loneliness stage yet, I suppose you're afforded some luxuries to carry on for a while still...
I moved to the US (Bay Area) about 10 years ago after having spent much of my youth elsewhere, and to this day, I haven't been able adjust to the lack of informal social interactions compared to where I'm from. I really tried as well to see if it's me who is not able to fit in. However, after a while I realized it's just a cultural difference. It's a way of life that has existed for several decades, which has its own benefits.
To me, US seems like an amazing place when you're in the apprentice/work phase of your life (20 - 45?). However, as I grow older, there are other things I have begun to value more, and one of the top ones is authentic human connection. I hope as US becomes more and more diverse, people from other cultures can add the good things they bring, instead of just trying to fit in to the default cultural model.
I could literally turn up at my friends house uninvited and make myself breakfast in the morning or grab some things I need for a long trip. I'd regularly get invited to all kinds of events, weddings, gatherings, and it all culminates in such a flowing state that you really get to enjoy being you as a person. I miss it.
I never had to look for anyone, because from the moment I entered a village to rent a house/apartment, I became part of that community.
I think this depends on ages of friends. I am Pakistani who grew up in Saudi Arabia. This was certainly true, I could go to most of my friends homes unannounced. They would be glad that I came and vice versa. Moms will cook fresh meals no matter what time it was.
But it was same in the US, at least, until my late twenties. I could visit my friends unannounced, crash at their place, and vice versa. And it wasn't only immigrant friends. Our group of friends was pretty diverse with all different cultures and backgrounds. Plenty of Americans and Europeans.
It stopped only when we started to get married or got into super serious relationships.
> I'd regularly get invited to all kinds of events, weddings, gatherings
And this can be very tiring. I am really glad that this practice is not common here in the US.
Many times people invite large group of people because it is matter of prestige, not really that they care about their guests. This especially true for weddings and other formal events. Good for wedding industry though.
I grew up in Saudi Arabia, lived in US for over 13 years, and now back in Saudi.
As for China I already see it changing with increasing development. Families are't as big anymore, younger folks all move to the cities for work. The old ones stay behind and are increasingly lonelier. Kids are lonelier too than they used to be. They become less social which increases loneliness of course. It's a vicious cycle.
My idea without having done too much research into it would be encouraging and incentivizing people to return to the villages. It's possible for anyone who can work remotely and those jobs are increasing so it's increasingly viable. Maybe without understanding it, I think many of the lonely people are uprooted. They have nowhere they belong. They just exist but they aren't part of any community.
Btw, this loneliness is also dangerous in another sense because those are the exact targets terror groups and other extremists look for to radicalize online. It's hard to do that with someone with a happy life and good friends they see on a daily basis.
But as someone already mentioned, what is happening here in the West is definitely making its way in the East towards the new generation. It's phones, it's flashy clothing, materialism. I definitely saw a lot of that too, and many parents I spoke to (which was quite a few over the years) - everyone said the same thing, they're frustrated that the children are going in a direction that bears no fruit for the mind.
Just requires a shared belief and value system of some sort compatible with building communities.
I came to the same conclusions you did, and I'm glad you were able to condense it in such a way.
It frustrated me though, to see that their youth were losing their old ways though. Of course it came with some benefits, but I saw them everywhere staring at their phone screens and could only feel nostalgic.
Part of it at least - not sure if I'm qualified to fully analyze it (I'm not) - is how equal we really were. Yes that includes the "rulers". If you look at the house the head of the GDR lived in for decades in the closed-off area for the ruling elites, called Wandlitz, it was nothing special at all. The first journalist who when the wall fell got to report from Wandlitz, a regular GDR citizen, was unimpressed and "not jealous", in his own words. Any craftsman could do better, even in the GDR (I know because my grandfather was one and our house looked better than that of Honecker).
House of Erich Honecker: https://bmg-images.forward-publishing.io/2021/12/04/58cb9e33...
(Yes I know they shot people at the border. That has nothing to do with my point though. - The last time I pointed out that GDR elite at least did not behave like e.g. Ceaușescu in Romania or Putin now and did not try to get rich but actually believed in their mission, somebody complained, but that they used deadly force of arms and surveillance to achieve it does not negate that.)
When the wall came down I was in the middle of the three-year education after the initial mandatory ten years, preparation to study, and we found a partner class of equal level in Bavaria and visited one another even before official reunification. We saw a completely different culture there. Some kids drove a BMW they got for birthday, others had little, there was very little cohesion in their class while ours was a wonderful group. Mind you - my class had an extreme variety of people from all over the GDR because we learned a very popular profession. We had a classmate whose parents were diplomats who lived in Western Europe and all over the world and could travel freely, we had children of workers, and of people high or low in some hierarchy, a grand mix. It did not matter! We were all as one and material differences just did not matter at all, they were tiny to begin with, compared to the vast differences (from our PoV) even among the middle class in the West.
For us too visiting others without any preparations was daily normality. Of course, in the GDR we didn't even have phones at home for many people. My own mother had the chance to get a phone because she was important enough in her job, but she didn't want one to avoid getting called at home... so yeah, you just showed up at someone's home and it was normal.
We also didn't have significant existential pressures. Sure, what education and job exactly you wanted took some effort, but it wasn't even remotely as big a deal to get and to keep one, and to find a home, as it is now.
Yes quality and diversity of stuff you can buy and do is many levels above what we could do now, we wanted the wall gone and reunification for a reason. Also, our environment was in a terrible state, West German did a gigantic and remarkable job cleaning it all up. So, when I say what I did above, I certainly don't vote for reinstating that system, but maybe there is something to learn. It's much more stressful now, and it's hard to say why that is and why we couldn't have at least a look at that part of living in the East.
I also remember quite a few community projects. Lots of people simply got together and did stuff. For example, building a wonderful, amazing and today impossible (too unsafe!) playground, two small valleys with a hundred meters each of various wooden forts and many installations like wooden trains. Or they build several hundred garages together, my father went there too. Or, my grandfather simply spontaneously built a stone wall to support some sandstone wall - on a public stretch of the mountain road. No money was ever involved, nobody got paid. Companies/factories in the area donated machines and materials (I mean, they were people-owned and not private anyway) - serving the people was part of their mission to begin with. All the big companies had to produce some consumer goods too in addition to their normal portfolio, because the GDR was severely lacking those. So, much was born of necessity, but it still had some good parts, the cooperation for example.
It also was much easier to make friends when you went somewhere. I know my parents - certainly not especially gifted in how-to-connect but quite ordinary - easily made friends and even met them later and invited them to visit us at home, and they did, in various vacations. Not just in the GDR, even in Hungary, another East Bloc country, where we went on vacation a few times. It wasn't just once, it was quite a regular occurrence, be it neighbors old and new, or people you just met. For the children it was so easy I don't even need to bother to describe it.
Can you elaborate on how Hinduism makes it better?
"Loneliness without God is sheer madness. At least our ravings end in him, and thus we cure our mind and soul. God is a sort of lightning rod. For God is a good conductor of sorrows and disillusions" (Emil Cioran, Tears and Saints).
America in earlier times was much more community oriented while still being capitalist. But maybe that was tempered by having stronger labor organizations, civic clubs, churches, etc.
Note that interestingly this does not affect the elites and mega wealthy as much as regular folks whose more traditional and social lifestyles are disrupted by all the development. The standard pattern would be moving from their rural places where everyone knows each other to a bigger city - in search of riches. Work an office job, live in a concrete box, have fewer spare time, don't really know the neighbors. Work more to pay off the mortgage, because those city properties are expensive. Work more to catch up with rising inflation and prices. Work, work, work...
In the end, yes they might be able to afford a car and iphones and a giant TV and holidays abroad. But all at a cost.
It's made worse by the fact most households cannot afford expenses without both parents working, so children are naturally being left alone more than previous generations.
It used to be normal for 6 years old or younger to go to school, Shor or play outside unsupervised. And in poor families both parents frequently needed to work while kids were without adult supervision. Middle and upper class women were stay at home, but their kids could roam around without parents. The helicopter parenting as expectation came in only lately.
> And in poor families both parents frequently needed to work while kids were without adult supervision.
There may be less strictly "poor" families now than there were before, but there are way less families that can afford hiring a nanny or similar.
The concept of play date is new. Parents were not organizing kids social lives. The need to drive somewhere to even have a chance on meeting someone is new. They used to bike to meet friends or do what they want. There and many changes like that. I am not saying everything is bad. Kids commit less crimes, gets into serious trouble less often. They get pregnant less, they drink less, they smoke and take drugs less. They are safer and are involved in less accidents. They finish the school more often.
All that is good. But it is simply not true that parents would actively engage with kids less all in all.
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My point here is that kids and teenagers are not lonely because parents don't engage with them. They are lonely because peers don't engage with them. Fairly often they just don't live nearby. Or it is not accepted for kids to go visit them without adult having to tag along. Then they become teenagers and people act shocked they ... continue existing the way they have been raised.
> The concept of play date
and
> expectations on parent actively playing with kids, actively teaching them or doing enriching activities are higher
are the result of the erosion of such 'villages'. As you imply the way kids hung out in the past was way more ad-hoc and unrestricted by things like travel time. I think ultimately that was because there was a mindset that people didn't have back then, namely one of perfect planning of all outcomes in regards to raising a kid. I think that too is a symptom of not having villages - how do you plan around 20 different near/family members interacting with your kid? You just kind of accepted that "grandma knows best", "auntie knows words", "Jack will be a good influence", etc.
Basically I'd agree that parents might interact more with their kids, with the caveat that it's due to a decrease in engagement overall.
Absolutely not.
Further, it feels like the only basis of a shared culture, our basic political ideals, is now up for question. So if it isn't faith, ethnicity, etc, then what is actually binding us together?
Not enirely true, many immigrants came for better or better perceived economic opportunities and many continue to have strong but closed communities. Their children, the second generation immigrants allign themselves closer with US culture and values leaving behind communities for more individual values.
I disagree with that statement, despite agreeing with the following:
> The individualism lives in the deepest roots of our culture.
There's a plethora of reasons people come here: freedom to express themselves, security, financial opportunity because they're literally living in squalor elsewhere, etc. I don't think a majority of people came because they _wanted_ individualism. They wanted to improve their situation and came to a country that had a pretty good marketing spiel.
Also if you look at immigrant communities in the US, they tend to be much closer than ones that have been here for generations (with exceptions). They create the community you claim is rejected when they come to the USA. The most active communities I've witnessed here are the Asian, Hispanic, and African social circles built around the culture that they left behind in their home countries. So I don't think your argument about immigrants leaving = individualism holds.
All these reasons are examples of valuing the individual over the community.
I can think the community is more important than the individual, but still leave to protect my children from starvation. Reducing human behavior to any single statement like you have done leaves many factors out, which is why solving these social issues is so insanely difficult.
You can think that, but your actions demonstrate otherwise. In that scenario, you valued your children's health over remaining within your community. What is special about those specific children? They are yours towards whom you feel a duty you must fulfill as their parent. And yet, there are others who would choose to stay. I'm not passing judgement on either.
Ostensibly, they're part of the community. I'd argue it's not impossible, but even necessary, for the needs of a community to align with the needs of an individual. Reducing it to a "You benefit the community xor yourself" binary is engaging with black and white thinking.
I really miss this. I have lived in the US my whole life but my father and much of my family is from the UK. We would always go over other people's houses unannounced when I was young and they always were excited to see us and never inconvenienced. Compare this to my mother's family (born and raised in the US but by Italian immigrants) and it was another story: you had to call ahead and were typically given a time to be in and out.
Fast forward to today, and people think I'm the weird one when I say, let's just "pop in" instead of calling or texting. Except for my parents and sisters, it is completely unheard of to ust pop in or have someone pop in unannounced. My wife gets loads of laughs and shocked expressions when she tells friends and coworkers that me and my family don't call each other ahead of time to visit.
It's a much different society today, but i think (hope?) the more people realize lonliness can (in some ways) be avoided by just visiting each other, I think this trend will reverse itself.
So whatever culture you are from, give it a decade or two and it will likely catch up with the US over this. To see even further into the future, look at Japan.
Japan is also a complex case. While there are the well-known issues with loneliness, suicide, overwork, etc., it also beats the US in most quality of life metrics. It has very high social trust, low inequality, very low crime, affordable housing, universal healthcare, and so on.
I wonder how long these metrics will last. Social trust is definitely a new one that's been added after mid 2010s
These conversations are happening around the world, many people are unhappy living their lives in technological bubbles and many want things to change.
This is especially good for my Dad, who due to health issues has very restricted mobility. I know his mental health would be much worse without this dynamic.
But in the city where I live, that’s not really possible. Friendly with neighbors and enjoy talking to them, but inviting myself for a tea or coffee isn’t really a thing.
I do have friend groups and support, especially through my church. But it’s not the same as what you describe or what my parents still have.
Crazy to think either 1. Things have changed significantly back home or 2. Moving changes our social networks/relationships. My parents informal community in Santa Cruz was non-existent (we moved there in the late 70s). Mine having grown up there were huge
In Santa Cruz I left my garage unlocked so friends could drop off/pick up their surfboards at all hours (the tide cares nothing about the construct of time). Friends literally coming into our house in the early A.M. unannounced while we slept to get/leave their boards.
The book "Bowling Alone" [1] make the case that diversity actually increases atomization, rather than increases it. This lines up with casual observation too. As the US has become an increasingly pluralistic country, social capital has diminished remarkably.
[1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Bowling_Alone_Revised_a...
Before the smart phone I think it was less odd to pop in if you were in the area, but with phones, I feel like anywhere I lived people would at the very least send a message.
I think the mobile phone (original, not just smart phone) killed it to some extent as you would arrange things on the phone and not pop in.
With the ability and expectation that you can contact anyone at any time and make or change plans, doing anything unannounced has become unexpected. It used to be much more normal.
This sometimes still happened within the past decade in rural Virginia (my family owned a farm there). Neighbor farmers would stop by once a week or so and just chat, usually still sitting in their truck. Seemed like they were on their way somewhere and saw us outside so they'd pull over to talk.
In the same boat. In HS and college, would have somewhat frequent get togethers and then COVID came and ruined it
Idk if the bay area is just like this or if I'm just going through a phase. It's probably just me
While I agree on the broader point, there is a bias here that I think is worth noting. There is no inherently good or bad cultural practice in this context. It's just a relative difference that of course if you're not used to it, feels uncomfortable. I think it's not hard to see how the flip scenario is also true, people who grow up with more formal and structured social interactions would feel uncomfortable in a culture that has a different social dynamic.
I primarily blame the Internet (or more generally, online interaction). Aside from little bits of oasis like HN (which, of course, still has no shortage of its own problems), the Internet is a big toxic brew of hate. Sometimes old school hate (racism, etc), but hate over everything else. Hate for people who like Teslas, or iPhones, or pickup trucks, or cars in general, or single family houses, etc. It feels like everyone believes the rest of the world wants to hear them bitch. (yes, here I am, bitching)
No wonder everyone feels lonely, it is hard to get any connection in such an environment.
Sometimes I think it endangers my own sanity, the more I am exposed to it, and I kinda want to /dev/null everything but wikipedia. LOL.
I have some teenage year family members, and the amount of loneliness symptoms and behaviours I see in 16-18 years olds is staggering. I myself am suffering from it in my 30s, but I grew up in the middle of nowhere and I had more real-life interactions than most teenagers.
Online communication carries a lot of downsides, but the primary one is that is just does not activate the part of the brain that makes you feel like you're hanging out with a human. You know you're talking to a human even behind a screen, but it's just a high-level abstraction that often breaks down and is the reason even the best of people sometimes are total jerkwads online.
I grew up on the net, it gave me my first friends, and now it's making me so bloody lonely I am literally convinced I would feel more socially nourished if I lived in a shed in the woods and went to the city for shopping once a month. And there's just so many people everywhere. It's either your small Discord with the same friends, or social media at large where everyone is a stranger, just an avatar that has little to no impact whatsoever on your life.
One of the reasons why I absolutely hate QR code menus at restaurants. They make the default state of the table as "phones out." Even in an in-person interaction, the Internet is still necessarily right there.
That said, meat space interactions are filled with implicit hierarchies, activates power posturing that only manifests online with specific triggers, social and xenophobic anxieties, etc. Just for example, as long as I type in a certain register, you wouldn't be able to premise your response on a set of learned and intuitive behaviors, which not only frees both of us from ourselves in a certain sense, but the conversation as well.
In real life, people implicitly respond to the fact that they're talking to a physically unable person, a Black person, a Trans person, a cis woman, a person they're attracted to, an ESL speaker, etc, and this changes the course of things.
Not to suggest you're advocating for abolition and severe restriction, I take it you're advocating for finding some balance or other. But maybe just to attenuate that search, there's something of value to exclusively online discoursing that is enabling of things that're more difficult to access than in real-life. Obviously the downsides here are trolls/committal toxic behavior.
That is the painfully learned lesson of the mobile phone and social media. It has led to a catastrophic increase in mental health issues, especially for young people.
This doesn't change things, this is how it's supposed to work and how we have evolved to thrive with.
I understand that some marginalised groups find it freeing to discuss with someone without having to show their physical presence, but let me stress that that is a change, and a huge one, on how we evolved to communicate and socialise.
There is a non-zero number of terrible people online abusing members of these groups that would be able to feel empathy if they could see that the person in they're talking to is Black, queer or disabled. In fact, I reckon that number of people that would be "nicer" in real life is much larger than you'd expect.
Which is part of the problem, people would rather sit idle and do nothing except dream of the ideal isolated state, than to bake some cupcakes and give them to a neighbor, join a book club, participate in more sports, the list goes on and on it's truly endless.
I've found that the loneliness epidemic is not one of loneliness, but of comfort. People do not want to experience discomfort and the inconveniences that are a natural part of social life. It's so much easier to open HN than to message one of your friends from the net and hang out. Why join a class to learn to cook when you can just download an app to order? These conveniences are the source of your loneliness.
Side note, the best people being jerkwads online only stems from two roots: misunderstanding (as text is difficult to grasp), or people wanting to hurt. Yes it's true, even the best of people can want to hurt others, but it's not due to them truly being evil or not knowing the person they're replying to is a real person - it's because they want to share their pain (in unhealthy ways :P). Bullies IRL operate the exact same way.
Also I would like to push back on the idea that online communication does not activate "that part of the brain". There are numerous studies regarding the positive impact of elderly people utilizing the internet, this being used to prevent age related cognitive decline. Games too, widely demonized, have the same positive effect. Switching to a negative light, younger people are drastically more likely to be suicidal the more they use the internet (5+ hours/day). Sources for all of these found here [1].
How can the above paragraph be true if the brain "knows" it's just talking to pixels on a screen? The answer is, our brain doesn't (to some degree, rituals play a big role in why we understand watching a movie = fiction, but hanging out with a friend in a video call = good feelings). This is why it feels good to talk to friends online, but we're missing the externalities involved with in person talk - mobile activity, deeply sharing your interest, gossiping, etc. None of these things have been replicated online beyond superficial methods through VR. These things, while uncomfortable, are crucial to actually reaping the benefits of community.
So get a little uncomfortable!
But let me push back against something implied in your comment: yes, comfort is the cause of many of our social problems, but it's not because we are weak and in the olden days people were willingly choosing pain over comfort.
It is completely natural to choose the easy path. The point is that there was no easy path for most of human history. There was no grocery stores nor free healthcare. There was war, famine and wild beasts. More recently, there was no instantaneous world-wide connection with everybody nor Tinder. Our only choice was discomfort, so we as a species slowly made that better.
So it is easy to create a "get a little uncomfortable" slogan, it would sell a lot of books and self-help classes, but it is not the simple trick no one has thought about before that you think it is.
We are not weak, we have just created a comfortable world, and that has made us weak. We gotta lose one or the other, but in any case we are always missing something. Such is the human condition.
Every single aspect of human interaction has been designed to minimize this discomfort which unsurprisingly breeds cynicism, narcissism and distrust. Unfortunately this perspective is firmly embedded in the DNA of the U.S. so its tough to have an honest conversation about it without ethnocentrism / bias coming into the picture.
It is a human and social problem. Disappointment and criticism of the American way is merely another manifestation of American exceptionalism.
It was much more of an extravert's world back then, and those who were introverted or otherwise out of beat with society at large had a more difficult time trying to find somewhere to belong. The more socially-charged nature of life could sometimes be overwhelming even for introvert-leaning ambiverts. You didn't hear much about it though, because this group of people by their own nature didn't have a voice, and this was exacerbated by introvert/nerd stereotypes being used for laughs in pop culture.
But things have now clearly swung too far in the other direction. Everybody has a voice (or at least thinks they do) and takes their own opinions as universal fact. I wonder what it'll take to arrive at a happy medium.
So the joke was, while we as kids used to do that stuff for real, kids nowadays do it all from their phone...
They're of course mimicking adults. We're spending tremendous amounts in front of (multiple)screens, and kids tend to get the message.
People take it as a wake-up call to reverse the trend, but I'd argue what the vast majority of otherwise intelligent people happen to be doing should be first taken at face value as a natural evolution, and not the butt of a joke.
I'm saying that as a kid who saw adults on their computers all day long and kinda fault them for blocking me to use one for so long. I definitely see it as a dumb "kids these days" knee jerk reaction on their part that only built more frustration on both sides over the years.
I'll disengage from Twitter when it's too negative and when I return its better, either because the russian trollfarm is sleeping, or Twitter notice I disengaged and works to 'do better'.
Like I said, HN ;-). DanG is a treasure. One need look no farther than Reddit to truly appreciate how valuable a skilled, patient moderator is. But as you say, culture plays a role as well. Probably nothing DanG could do would be enough if the general culture amongst HN users was unwilling to go along.
Your second point is also a good one, I think. Perhaps the toxic nature of the Internet can be mitigated effectively by remembering to take a break and disconnect the feedback loop.
I would ask that in the future you get to know me a little better before you call me a dipshit. I have only been doing the online thing since the 80s, so there are plenty of things I have yet to learn. Thankfully I have finally forgotten how to configure UUCP, though.
I did think wikipedia might be a controversial choice in my original post, but decided to run with it -- I was trying to convey a thought, not necessarily a literal plan. I understand wikipedia is edited by humans, and not all of them are acting in good faith. But at the same time, I like to think of deep diving into wikipedia reading articles on science, or animals, or other generally non-controversial topics is perhaps one of the most rewarding uses of the Internet. It's that little remnant of the original dream of putting knowledge in the hands of everyone.
I accidentally texted a coworker (who I have never hung out with socially) who has the same name as one of my friends if she wanted to go to a music festival with me (like 5 days close quarters camping) and she said yes without hesitation. I met another girl at a party -- I knew of her because she was a friend's friend's ex but never actually talked to her. I just declared that we were best friends, we got drunk, and skipped out at the party to hang out/meet her other friends. She's my maid of honor. Met a guy during a charity scavenger hunt where the theme was to do mildly embarrassing things in public we hit it off after I had him take a picture of me licking a bronze statue's butt. I'm now in his softball league. I met a woman on a cruise after rescuing her son from the on-deck ropes course when a huge storm hit, we live super far away but play animal crossing together.
I went from "oh no without school it's gonna be impossible to make friends" to "no actually this is a million times easier." All the stuff that makes you uncool as a teenager makes you interesting as an adult.
The messages I absorbed when young roughly said that if you code on Christmas instead of socializing with family, then you are true programmer. A lot of the gatekeeping of hobbies against newbies is all bout checking who is "true fan". And true fans are not social. Are you here cause friends invited you to be with them? That is wrong. Did you came with open mind, zero knowledge and intention to socialize? That is wrong too. Did you became interested because of friends? That is wrong too. You should not be interested in things because anything social. It is not pure enough.
But among people IRL who socialize a lot, including males, they get interested in what others do. They change activities to where people are. They engage in a lot of give and take "I accompany you to your thing and you go to mine".
I started developing really bad paranoia, and began hearing voices in my dreams. Like random fabricated female/male voices having unintelligible conversations. So yeah I was going literally crazy. I’m not surprised at all that my brain was probably physically decaying.
Can sort of understand how that might happen, seems similar to being marooned on an island. I had something like that happen to me as well but only for two days where it was touch and go, perhaps that prepared me for covid.
Worth considering what kind of mentality is necessary to survive in such situations and whether you can adopt it when you notice the start of the spiral.
This is written with empathy. In case of any future lockdowns or life curveballs.
In solitary in prison it would get to the point I could look at the paint texture on the walls and see everything from a simple face to whole landscapes. The one thing I never saw was words or even letters.
Guess the next chance to really connect with people will be, when we all meet at the server farm to burn this nightmare down.
I feel this. It's incredibly painful to make that kind of realization and it's hard not to be resentful about it
This happened to me and I was bitter about it for about 2 years, should've been in counseling but didn't even realize I was bitter
Another thing you can do in parallel is reaching out to other friends/acquaintances you might have lost touch with. Tell them honestly what you appreciate about them and that you'd like to revive the friendship.
In both cases you'll feel awkward and uncertain. It's normal. Also, don't expect any single relationship to fulfill your unmet needs. But making yourself vulnerable to others is the beginning of "working through it yourself".
How did you do it? Have you created an Excel spreadsheet and questioned them about their degree of effort, which you then compared to your level of effort? You added everything up and your column was higher than their column?
I went through this approximately a year before you. Loneliness in this period is caused by your slow response to external change, as well as life telling you to make a life for yourself.
It doesn't: "Social isolation, a related condition, is different — it’s an objective measure of how few relationships a person has. The experience of loneliness has to be self-reported"
It states that yes; ironically, it also uses them interchangeably multiple times throughout the article.
But I also know people who do silly things when facing the fear of being alone. For them, perhaps being alone equals to loneliness. For sure, it makes them suffer.
Most psychologists will tell you "we're very social creatures" but I was VERY social for so long that now it just feels like a waste of my time. People are quick to throw their problems on everyone around them, I get tired of the neediness, the games people play, the ego trips, all of it. It's sort of like a been there, done that, not interested anymore.
Having a social network of people to constantly talk to is not needed unless we go back a few thousand years in time... which, to be fair, could happen with some global catastrophe, however if civilization keeps going, I think socializing will be about sharing thoughts, and not so much about physical proximity.
Deep, in person social connection is a must and I truly question whether the GP is as well off without it as they think they are.
> Of course, the chicken-and-egg question about all these findings is: Do differences in the brain predispose us to loneliness, or does loneliness rewire and shrink the brain? According to Bzdok, it’s not currently possible to solve this puzzle. He believes, however, that the causality may point both ways.
And yet, no alternatives have been offered.
Religion is a mythic lens through which to view reality, a framework of archetypes to superimpose on a chaotic world, to make it feel more comprehensible, and thus safer. For many they can reach a sense of safety by communing with others about the recognizable values and behaviors of their favorite fictional characters.
Now you don't even have to know the people you're talking to, because you can assemble in pseudonymous fanbase forums to find that community. You see it in everything from K-pop Twitter to Star Wars reddit.
To me, the difference between the two is analogous to the difference between fluorescent light and sunlight.
This is a thread about social sickness, and I think the conflation here identified is close to the root of our problems, likely compounded by the sedentarity and lack of sunlight that comes with the consumption-based lifestyle.
That being said, what alternatives does anyone have nowadays? If you're a mile deep into a subdivision and you haven't yet earned your driver's license, good luck getting any meaningful socialization outside of video games, chat servers, and comments sections. This creates patterns of behavior in early life and adolescence that ossify into your default lifestyle habits into your old age. By now enough longitudinal studies have been done to know "your personality develops when you're a teenager" is a reasonable heuristic for understanding the inertia of the problem.
... And the people bowed and prayed To the neon god they made And the sign flashed out its warning In the words that it was forming And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls In tenement halls" And whispered in the sounds of silence
https://books.google.com/books/about/Bowling_Alone.html?id=r...
The thesis of the book is that modern entertainments just make it easier to be alone.
https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-maga...
Between masking --especially promoting masking with inadequate masks--, lockdowns, and anything else tried, they were met with 50% resistance which nullified any potential, positive effect.
So not just loneliness, but boredom in general.
I've read all kinds of things about California and how shallow it is, and especially in Los Angeles. I think the people who say this must be meeting different people than I do, or trying to meet different people. They want to meet high-end celebrities and just get pushed off or whatever.
I know auto mechanics, plumbers, financial planners, accountants, programmers, retail clerks, manufacturing plant managers, teachers. All of them are exactly like they would be in any other state. They don't sit around trying to sell a script to Hollywood studios, or try to get into acting. Plumbers are plumbers.
I had a GREAT group of hikers I used to hike with - friendly and down-to-earth and real.
But, I have to go out and FORCE myself to meet people. It's not like high school or university where you are surrounded by everyone your own age, and all you have to do is show up and there's a group there for at schools.
I've gone to computer groups meetings, business group meetings, and all kinds of groups. But I have to get my ass out and go. It kinda sucks to get off my ass and motivated, but what else can ya do?
Some groups did suck, I must say, but I just got out of them and go to other ones that turns out great.
Loneliness is a choice.
I guess if you lived on a farm and the nearest neighbor was 30 miles away, that would be different, but that's the exception rather than the rule.
The headline is a stretch ... there are millions of less-privileged people living in Siberia and northern Canada who survive endless harsh winters 'living off the land' in a natural environment with only a few people near them ... how 'reshaped' are their brains?
Depression smells like a significant confounding factor here. Indeed, the article may be re-written "depression reshapes the brain", which, like, yeah, ok.
On HN we are normally not even "online friends" with specific other users. The users are identifiable just as some little grey nickname. Who even is this "GalenErso" guy? Or "cubefox"? What are they up to? We might as well all post anonymously, the outcome would basically be the same.
That's not a natural way to interact, no wonder the brain breaks a little if it does not much else.
But we indeed do need more than this for a fulfilling life. Lonelinese could as well be temporary and one could feel less alone in different ways.
>lonely people tend to focus excessively on unpleasant social cues, such as being ignored by others
take mushrooms help fight the epidemic of victim mentality ;)
And yet in the name of "safety" and "protection" our betters forced isolation on everyone, and we are reaping the results.