America Is in Its Insecure-Attachment Era
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Many Americans are achieving a level of wealth and income relative to their demands that allows them to block out experiences and people they find fault with, or avoid some of the stress of interacting with others. This has short term benefits and long term pain.
I was reading about the decrease in the population of Ireland in the 19th century and there were some interesting similarities (disregarding the potato famine):
The Vanishing Irish: https://www.historyireland.com/the-vanishing-irish-irelands-...
A part that stuck out to me:
>Changes in the rural economy in the post-Famine decades made it easier for country people to run their farms and to provide for their comforts in old age without marrying or having their own children. People became not poorer, as the Malthusian view would suggest, or afraid of the opposite sex, as psychological theories imply, but simply less willing to accept the burdens of marriage and a family because it was less important to satisfying the economic goals marriage had once served.
Replace marriage with having to maintain a relationship with the grocery store worker, or the milkman, or even your workout instructor - all professions gig'd and virtualized into cough-syrup-sweet anonymity. When was the last time you were lost and had to ask for directions, or had to meet up with someone to catch up vs a phone call/text, or go to a cafe to get good coffee because you lacked the equipment at your house to make it yourself? How far do you live away from others now to protect your peace and quiet? In my opinion, these are the acts of a wealthy society sleepwalking into isolation.
Interacting with other people is varying levels of scary and stressful. With economic pushes towards forming relationships with others removed, it should be no surprise many are drifting away into their own worlds.