I was actually just talking to my wife today about a zenbo. I'm waiting for information (signed up for the developer program), but it seems good from the videos I saw (heh huge grain of salt here, perhaps a whole stack).
I like the idea of a mobile video equipped assistant with voice recognition that can contact us in an emergency, and their pretty happy with tech so I don't think we would have a problem convincing them(especially if I an code an app for them and their grand children to communicate easily).
Why US is different from all the other countries in the charts? If author's hypothesis is right, that it is mainly about declining of economic status, I cannot see why other western countries would not follow a similar pattern.
And from the chart, US's (whites) death rates takes off starting from late 90s, where the economy was doing great, while other countries' death rates keep declining even during great recession.
An article on HN last week discussed the idea of a class of people called the Unnecessariat (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11765581) where a large swatch of people no longer have a place in society thanks to declining manufacturing jobs (and potentially the automation of farming) in the middle of America and as such these people have been left to die by the state as they are surplus to requirements in the modern economy. This is less of a factor in European countries potentially because they are geographically smaller, have a lower population and more left/socialist leaning that the US.
The Unnecessariat also linked to a Washington Post article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2016/04/08/we-dont...) describing the life and death of one of those who died too young, in rural Oklahoma. A good read, while of course so very sad that we can't see a solution to this phenomenon.
Read that one as well from the link. Both those articles combines for a very sad hour of reading. Reminded a little of the The Unexotic Underclass[1] - not totally the same but both areas of society not necessarily benefiting from advances in technology.
I believe people in the US are more mobile, so you can end up living in area where you are 1000 kilometers away from your children or family.
In Europe, people are generally less mobile (geographically) and countries are smaller, so you can still work in the city and still live in the vicinity of your elderly parents (let's say one-two hour drive).
Maybe less obvious, but people in Europe also tend to have more vacation (understatement), so it is much easier to visit your family more frequently.
As a European I am always surprised that people only see their family during Thanksgiving. I don't have data but looking at people I know, you see your family much more frequently there.
Not to mention that the definition of "family" is distinct too. If you ask an American, do you have family in this city, it is same as asking are you married/have kids. While people of other culture might answer, "yeah my mom is here".
Not to mention that the definition of "family" is distinct too. If you ask an American, do you have family in this city, it is same as asking are you married/have kids. While people of other culture might answer, "yeah my mom is here".
All these problems (as the author mentions) are closely related to lower rates of social connectedness. This is obviously a huge problem, probably the biggest problem in the advanced world, yet it seems to be mostly ignored. My company, Krewe (https://www.gokrewe.com), is addressing it by trying to make it really easy for people to make a new group of friends in their neighborhood and become connected with their local community, but I really think other start ups should try to address the issue of loneliness and (real) social connectedness in the world.
I know a popular meme in SV/tech culture is that apps can solve everything but this is a much harder problem than that, requiring a societal and possibly government response. I don't think you can even begin to address it at the scale of one startup, at best you can skim some money off the top.
This is the sort of issue that the term 'wicked problem' was coined for. It's a unique issue, with society-wide consequences, no clear boundaries, and no clear solutions. Solving it with a startup is unimaginably glib.
Sure, some could probably help, but I imagine they'll either be palliatives (like 7 Cups of Tea) or enablers for human actions (like Skype). I normally assume that "startups will solve it all!" is more of an exaggeration than an actual opinion, but this thread has me doubting myself.
Imagine an old depressed person who needs a daily dose of human empathy, just like everyone else, but can't give anything in return. Can your startup help such a person? I'm with the other commenter, this is a societal problem. To make even a small dent, we need an army of volunteers with calliagnosia or Williams syndrome, or something even more drastic...
I don't know for sure if it's possible to use an app to help those kinds of people, but I honestly believe that it doesn't take much more than a comfortable environment and convenient access to people to bring them together. I'm at least giving it a shot.
Bringing depressed people together doesn't help them. They need attention from non-depressed people, who abandoned them for the freedom of modernity. Solving this problem won't be win-win, so a startup won't help. Just like you can't make a startup to redistribute money from rich people to poor people. It's a task for charity or government.
I'm not aiming to bring depressed people together. I'm aiming to bring people together, depressed or not.
I think no matter who you are, going from a situation where you know no or few people who live close to you, to one where you suddenly know and have access to people who are within walking distance would make a huge difference on your life. Will that solve all of a depressed person's problems? I don't know, but I think it could go a long way towards helping them. Access, in my opinion, is the main issue here. That's what I'm working on.
Another thing to consider: Why are they lonely? Maybe they're new in town, maybe they're socially awkward, maybe they've been ostracized from previous groups because they're a sociopath. What happens when you bring a lonely person seeking validation to meet a manipulative sociopath?
If you go about you life refusing to meet people because you're afraid you're going to meet a sociopath, then you're going to be awfully lonely. Fortunately, most mature adults are pretty easy to get along with. Yeah, everyone's had a bad experience meeting people here and there. But that's just part of living.
I agree, but I'm talking about a situation that could be dangerous for a lonely person who doesn't know any better. A mature adult could recognize the danger but an awkward, sheltered person could easily be taken advantage of by a skilled manipulator.
Not the main focus of the article but I've been wondering lately why Japan is considered to have done poorly over the last 30 years economically when a lot of the big multi national brands that are very popular all over the world during that period are Japanese.
I'm not an economist (or Japanese) but from the outside when you can list Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Suburu, Shimano, Nintendo, Hitachi, Yamaha, Sega and Murata among your country's well known brands it seems odd that you would be considered a poorly performing economy for so long.
If you were around in the 1980s, when Japan was at it's economic peak, Japan has slowly been passed by China and continues to tread water (i.e. stay in the same place, as China has passed it.)
Japan is a poorly performing economy in that there's been little to no growth since the bubble burst in the late 80s. Other economies have gone through growth stages and we had the Asian financial crisis and then the '08 global crash, but Japan has just kept the status quo. So from the perspective of economists, who expect growth, Japan does look bad.
In Japan, life is largely as it has been since the 90s. In fact with deflation, prices are largely the same as they have been for more than 2 decades. This is not a good thing mostly- healthy economies should have some small amount of inflation each year.
Growth is next to zero in many first world economies. Most of Europe is basically not growing. Only Germany is. Many economies in Latin America are doing poorly, especially Brasil, Argentina- Venezuela is in free-fall. There is growth in Africa (from a much lower starting point), but it is uneven. There is a little growth in parts of South East Asia (Indonesia is doing ok, as is the Philippines, and Vietnam not bad) but growth is hard to find in most countries. The US and Germany are doing well. China is doing badly in comparison to the 10%+ growth they had in the 2000-2010 decade, but they are still growing.
> Growth is next to zero in many first world economies. Most of Europe is basically not growing. Only Germany is. Many economies in Latin America are doing poorly
Look beyond the 3-year or even 10-year perspective. All of Europe and most of Latin America is doing visibly better than 25 years ago in terms of infrastructure, life expectancy, disposable income etc. Even after three years of a massive economic crisis, Brazil is a better place to live than in 1990.
These companies became household names during a period of incredible economic growth in Japan (60s - 80's). But economic growth at that level is not sustainable (as China is finding out), and the country went into a recession in the 90's. Japan is still one of the wealthiest and most productive nations in the world, but the borrowing to fuel its growth has caught up, and it now has one of the largest debt-to-gdp ratios.
While they may be Japanese brands they aren't Japanese companies, they are multi-nationals. Much like the US they have outsourced all of their manufacturing. A strong Honda that manufactures their motorcycles in Thailand and their cars in North America doesn't translate into robust Japanese employment. Fewer local jobs means less money going into the local economy.
On some level, Japan's story isn't one of high hopes and stagnant results, it's one of amazing growth in face of reality. Even in our tech-rich, service-driven economies, national growth is still largely a function of population, space, and resources. Over a half-century, Japan modernized to near the peak of first world nations on a crowded, resource-poor island. With that played out, they're sustaining their position largely by adding value to the workforces and production capacities of other nations. You're absolutely right that a lot of Japan's corporate strength doesn't translate to GDP growth, but even flat GDP is damned impressive in a lot of ways.
Because for some reason many commentators find it perfectly reasonable to use absolute GDP growth as a metric for comparing Japan to America, ignoring the fact that America's population is growing at around 3% while Japan's population growth is around 0% or negative (which means all things being equal one'd expect America's GDP growth to be around 3% higher). In terms of GDP growth per capita, which is the metric that actually matters when comparing standard of living, Japan hasn't done so badly.
Japanese government debt to GDP ratio is 229%. Japanese government has kept lights on with 15 years of constant deficit.
Fortunately most of this debt is internal and in local currency (no fear of hyperinflation). But Japanese are getting old. In a few years Japanese insurance companies and Japanese savers turn from net buyers of government debt and stocks into net sellers.
US has a good stream of immigrants coming in. Last I heard immigrating to Japan is a lot tougher. I wonder why the Japanese govt isn't opening the gates up to keep the population growth of young people at a steady level
In Japan prostitution is effectively legal. It's not legal to have penis in vagina sex but everything else is legal and you can bet that all of the places that claim they provide everything but that also provide that service as well. There's tons of "red light" districts as well as call up places.
Even if you don't want sex Japan has a culture of hostess clubs and "snack" clubs. A hostess club is a club you pay to have someone flirt and talk with you. A snack club is a club were the owner entertains everyone. Think of bar where the bartender leads everyone in discussion, games, songs, etc...
In other words, Japan has that but is still having these issues.
Do you have some studies that show this to be true or is it just your opinion?
I don't know which way it would go. Since Japan has these and Japan seems to have some of the biggest problems with isolation how do we know these services don't contribute to the isolation?
Note I'm not saying they do. I don't know but it's easy to imagine things like:
* Why make up with my significant other if I can just get some paid for companionship leading to less strong relationships
* Why even try to have a real relationship where I my SO might get angry when I can pay to have a fake one where they'll never get angry and rarely disapprove of me
* Maybe given I know these paid relationships aren't real, that the provider I'm paying really doesn't care about me but is just doing a job makes me more depressed about my life.
Again, I'm not saying any of these are true or not, only pointing out that AFAIK there's no studies that show if paid companionship is a net positive or net negative for social isolation.
Funny you mention that, there was a story a few weeks back (damned if I can find it now) where Japanese people pay someone to hang out with them for a while. Not prostitution, just hanging out at a bar or something!
One thing I found striking, was when they do the customary handshake (which signals a bit more familiarity in Japan than it does in the US), the clients literally sometimes cry as they've not touched another human being for years!
Another part of this I think that people don't really talk about is increased social isolation as a direct cause of Internet addiction and the rise of social media and online gaming. There is a term for this concept in Japan 'hikikomori', but it's just as true in the US.
As someone who recently turned 30, yet has remained single most of my life despite my other successes, I see it very clearly. I grew up along with the Internet as many people in my generation did. Even when around other people in my age group, everyone is disconnected from each other. There's less empathy and relationships in my generation feel more superficial. At any moment, someone will pull out a smartphone and be using social media while literally standing around with a group of supposed friends. I'd say it's the group of people I've hung out with if it weren't for observing the same in the wild many many times.
I think we still haven't figured out what all the unintended consequences from technology are going to be, and I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't end up seeing a sharp decline in the birth rate among whites in the US to go along with the increase in younger deaths. Not just because of the consequences of social isolation on mental health, but because the lack of social connectedness that exists today makes it almost impossible to actually procreate.
>remained single most of my life despite my other successes
I think the media has a role to play here too, the idea that you need romantic love in order to be successful or complete is a toxic one.
Edit: a lot of replies to my comment are misinterpreting what I'm saying as "romance is a new idea invented by the media" when all I said is that it's possible to have a complete and successful life without romance.
Plenty of people would get that idea without the media.
It is sublime how when you feel lonely you look for a lover and then pretty soon you have more people around. It makes heterosex seem almost subversive these days...
Do you mean one does not need romantic love to have a relationship or one does not need a relationship at all? The former seems like an archaic idea (arranged marriages for example) while the later I've seen very questioned by society, mostly by older people.
HN is a young people echo chamber, yet not entirely, and I can assure you from personal experience and observation of peers that a successful twenty year marriage involves remarkably little romance, although keeping a little going is nice. I think there's a lot of young people with soon to be broken expectations who think that marriage means every night is romantic date night. Most life is muddling thru.
From a young person's perspective who has seen older coworkers get divorced and observing remarkable fallout from divorce, why get married then? Please don't take the question as an insult, its a query from a young developer who scarcely has relationships longer than a year.
Mostly to raise kids in a stable manner. And the finances are much more stable. You need someone you can have fun with; little league games are not romantic, but are fun. Ditto doing the laundry or yardwork or cooking dinner or whatever. We have similar outlooks on hobby / life / work balance.
We're also both descended from 40+ yrs of marriage couples, so the risk of divorce seems much lower.
I think that there's certainly some influence from the media on how people perceive how to obtain romantic relationships or how a romantic relationship works. That said, I personally don't consider it a requirement to find romance in order to be or feel successful. I do understand however that society in general somewhat views it that way, and I do feel like I am lacking in that department. For someone who is a bit of a completionist and has managed to do many other things in my life, my lack of romance is definitely somewhat troubling.
Interestingly that's a lot less the case in Japanese media IME. E.g. Honey and Clover concludes (spoilers) with Hagu deciding to pursue her art instead of a romantic relationship, which I can't imagine happening in a western movie or tv show.
I'm pretty sure we've been hardwired to seek sexual/romantic companionship since long, long, before there was such a thing as "media" or even the written word.
I'm really unsure of this. I can completely believe it, but I can also believe it's completely incorrect. Maybe it turns out people checking their phone while they're with you is fine -- doesn't hurt social bonding in any way. Some of my shyer friends tell me it's actually helped them thrive in social situations. Whenever they get overwhelmed, they can take shelter with the phone for a bit.
Before a smartphone, it was a TV. People would turn on the TV and ignore each other just as much as they do now with smartphones, it's just smartphones has made it more portable.
That being said, as an introvert, I also agree that it helps me in social situations not to always have to be communicate with people.
Having seen people try to talk across laptop screens and across smartphones, there are definitely some settings where the rise of smartphones encourages socialization.
It's definitely a tool for introverts, but I hardly ever see phones get in the way of what would otherwise be a fluid, enjoyable conversation. That claim feels more like techphobia than anything, because avoiding awkward, forced conversation is neither novel nor a clear problem.
It's funny - dealing with people who are under 25, most of them seem to be developing pretty good phone 'hygiene'. Smartphones come out all the time when I'm around my friends, but rarely in an antisocial way, and people who are being rude (not on a phone at a party, but on a phone with a couple of friends) are directly called out. The settings where I see the most "bad" phone use are between acquaintances, or with older demographics where smartphone penetration isn't high enough to generate these etiquette rules.
As a result, most of the phone use I see is socially beneficial. People can show an interesting video or look up a fact to keep a conversation rolling, and take shelter in their phones to avoid looking awkward when they have no one to talk to.
One kind of a record in Finland was a man deceased for six years before anyone noticed. He had already mummified in his bed when found. Even the landlord didn't ask after him, as the rent was automatically paid by social services for this whole time.
Having just moved to Finland I'm less believing of the stereotype that Finnish people as a whole are insular and isolated, but I think there are always going to be agoraphobic, depressed, or otherwise very isolated individuals in any country.
I think the stereotype is partly due to the climate. The rainy autumns and long winters simply make one stay inside a lot more. As a small compensation, the summertime in Finland is super bright, lively, and active.
I would hope to have the option of disconnecting like that if I wanted to. I don't know about this man's circumstances, but the story implies a level of privacy that I'd find really valuable.
This has become fairly common in Japan, but it seems to be almost exclusively about anomie and depression, not privacy. There are entire companies that exist to clean up after deceased, family-less shut-ins.
I agree that the ability to withdraw and obtain privacy is crucial, but I'd like to see options for privacy and isolation that don't require absolute disconnection.
I would miss you! I like your Facebook updates and silly jokes and pictures of your family. I always read your stuff there. I know we don't get to see each other in person much, but know that there are people out there who care!
Didn't mean that to sound so gloomy, just wanted to point out that reading text from a person is also a form of isolation for both people.
There are a lot of people that I've interacted with over the years that I haven't heard from in a long time. Our only contact was email or texting. Their text number stopped working a long time ago, and emailing them results in no response at all.
This is not a situation where folks are angry at each other, just slowly drifting apart.
As somebody who's had a dear internet friend die, let me tell you that yes, we'd miss you if you're gone!
I was (and still am) part of a tight community of people on IRC and one day we realized a guy in our group hadn't said anything for almost a month. He'd always been the quiet type of person who sometimes would go for a few days or even a week without saying anything, but it was really weird for us. These are all people I've been interacting with for years every day, we do know a lot about each other (although to varying degrees). We knew about this guy's name and some circumstantial social network presence, so we started to investigate and we eventually found out he had passed.
We all mourned him, and to this day still I regret the fact that it took us a month to realize he wasn't with us anymore (we initially thought he had gone on vacation, since it was summer).
In a few months it's going to be the 2nd anniversary of his death and we plan to write up something within our community to remember him, just like last year.
If you're communicating with somebody on a regular basis in person, and they die? You mourn, you send flowers. Hell, you might even go to the funeral home, even if it was in another town.
If it's online? You can go weeks or months and be clueless. And then when you do find out, you feel like you were robbed of something. Something important.
I had a real life friend die when I was away at college. Apparently everyone else knew even though they were away at college as well. Came back one week too late and found out I had missed the funeral by a few days.
I think the problem isn't whether or not your friendship is online, but whether or not it's advertised sufficiently to the next of kin and other relevant social networks.
For those that are interested in this kind of thing, there was a fantastic radio programme on BBC Radio 4 just the other day on depression in Japan: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07cv0y4
Though I am not as disconnected to modern economic realities but as I approach 40s the thought of nature and purpose of my work worries me. I also do not have much social connections outside work and increasingly at work too. I guess in next 10 years I may find myself in similar predicament.
Not surprising since our society is changing the way we interact. It used to be you went to church or married, without a replacement for those (online gaming doesn't count) you end up alone and invisible to those in your immediate vicinity.
A big part of this that's unpopular to discuss in current culture is people actively avoiding going to a church. Whether you actually donate and believe everything that is said isn't really a factor in whether or not you can show up every week, meet other people in your community, participate in events, be there for each other at during the hard times in life, have fun activities for your kids where you can meet other parents and get involved in the community with those same people. At least in the southeast US where I'm from, churches have filled this multifaceted role of connecting people for years. All ages from newborns to elderly. I don't know of another community structure that even comes close to pulling that off.
The problem with church is that it demands submission in exchange for community. Not only believe this way, but dress this way, eat this way, vote this way, and if you're in any way different you're as cut off as you would be if you stayed home, and if you're having hard times you must have done something to deserve it.
I'm from Ohio so it may be different up here, but that's my experience.
Churches tend to be all shapes and sizes. The traditional ones are usually closer to what you're describing but there are many that are more low key to avoid exactly what you are describing.
Islam is very explicit about this; the name actually means “submission”. In fairness to religion, all social groupings require their members to be bound by some form of commonality. Ideally, the shared beliefs/interests/ideology be as inclusive as possible but there is always some out-group.
I don't think that that is a trait derived or unique to Christianity. I think that happens in all groups be they religious or secular, where people find that they can make a majority of the group happy by instituting common standards of behaviour. It can start with something like a Code of Conduct with good rules like "clothes mandatory", but people don't know when to stop, and 2000 years later you end up with modern church rules.
There are a wide spectrum of beliefs and interpretations across denominations, far beyond Orthodox , liberal, etc. And the quality of the delivery is still up to the people at the pulpit. A bad experience at one church or denomination should not be a generalization of all churches/religions.
If you feel that something is being imposed on you, that particular church may not be the best fit for you. Or you may be hearing something that is at conflict with the ego, or with an area of personal struggle.
Also YMMV depending on if you view church is a consumer good/service, versus a lifelong shared experience of learning and of putting others before self.
The degree to which that is true varies not just regionally but by individual church (not just denomination/tradition/sect, but individual parish/congregation.)
Sadly many have become disillusioned with the church and conflate the "Community" grass roots social aspect with the "Institutional" aspect. It is this latter aspect that has let so many down over the years. I'm not going to get into the whys and wherefores but in a great many social settings people feel betrayed by organisations - erstwhile held in the greatest of esteem and thus - trusted with some of the most sensitive activities of society. It's difficult as an enlightened individual to be lectured to about spirituality by somebody who is standing on a shaky moral platform themselves. Then there's the wilful ignorance of evident truths because they conflict with some (likely well meaning) prescription written by somebody in a far away place and a long time ago ...
I've thought about this a lot, and I agree with you. I'm a pretty devout Atheist (is that the right term?), but I do recognize the social role that churches play and I wish there was some similar secular organization that could fill that role. Or course there are hobby and special interest groups, but I can't think of just a general gathering where everyone is a regular and friendly like my church was growing up.
Religion consists of a set of superstitious beliefs and a set of philosophical beliefs. When setting aside the superstitious part be careful not to lose sight of the philosophical part that makes sense. I think the reason a church provides social cohesion and belonging is because it is literally a group of people trying to become the best human beings they can be, a process that involves feeling their own and being aware of other's emotions every day, and that is a beautiful thing. I suggest finding a philosophy that involves looking into yourself and follow it with a group of people. Personally I am fond of fundamental Taoism. It involves worshipping no deity, but rather to be aware of the inter-connectedness of the universe.
'I point at the stars and the sky ripples.'
I would disrespect people who feel lonely by calling myself lonely - I have a handful of very close friends and am in a relationship. I don't find it easy to connect to other people in meaningful way. What needs to happen is both persons being in a spontaneous state, and that's a rare thing to find because at least one person always has somewhere to go or something to do, or is scared of something or is too attached to something, preventing the two people from enjoying the present moment.
One more word about 'science and atheism': I'm put on notice every time someone mentions those two as axioms to follow. Atheism means to me disregarding spirituality at all costs, and considering only scientific facts means invalidating personal experiences of themselves and people around them.
'A; Today I went X and saw Y and felt Z'
'B; it is scientifically proven when you X you feel Z but it doesn't mean you Z1'
The reliance on facts puts the emotional part of the conversation aside in favour of logic and rationality and reduces the potential of building a connection.
But hey, I'm not an expert at building relationships in the first place, these are just my thoughts and personal experiences, compare them with your own and build your own framework.
Like how atheists complain about fundamentalists, religious folks tend to be more annoyed by the loud atheists. There are plenty of us out there who may even believe in strict materialism, but are graceful enough to not disparage others beliefs when they share them. It's a shame you've met more of the former than the latter.
That's not what I meant - what I meant was sometimes people, me included, and me in particular, in conversations get into a factual mood and lose the opportunity to connect with how the other person feels. More to do with a preference for scientific proof to personal experience than to do with Atheism itself.
> I'm a pretty devout Atheist (is that the right term?), but I do recognize the social role that churches play and I wish there was some similar secular organization that could fill that role.
A number of atheists have felt that, and some have even established groups modeled on the social aspects of churches without the particular theistic views (e.g., Sunday Assembly.)
Churches are definitely a great community resource, but I imagine that many people (myself included) don't want to be preached something we don't believe in every week even if it means losing out on those community benefits. I wonder if something else could be established, or even if such a thing as "athiest/agnostic churches" could be organized.
I've known several atheists/agnostics that go to both locally and the few times I've gone to either the meetings tend to be quite low in dogma. Not my thing, but if you crave that sort of community might be worth taking a look.
I looked into the local Unitarian Universalists, and they are very New Age types. I like their social justice angle but wouldn't be able to sit through their sermons/discussions without making faces.
It's worth seeing if you have any other Unitarian church near you. There's a lot of variance in their practices, from intense New Age spiritualism to simple discussion and silent reflection.
If you're not interested in the woo, you could always try the Secular Humanist Society or other similar rationalist local groups that don't preach religiosity.
There's at least a couple of kinds of Quakers: ones with ministers and ones without. My wife belongs to a Meeting that doesn't have a minister. Instead of having someone preach, the attenders sit silently in a circle. If someone is moved to say something, they stand up and say it. Sometimes one or more people will respond.
Meeting decisions have to be unanimous. It's a real source of frustration at times trying to convince the last holdout.
Instead of a minister, they have a clerk. The clerk is elected and coordinates the church for a year.
Before we were married, we had to meet several times with a clearance committee that had to say that we were ready to marry. I understand many ministers do something similar but this was a great thing. One of the members said it used to be a way that parents could stall a marriage - things were different 200 years ago with teenagers wanting to get married. (My wife and I were 33 and 39.)
I remember reading an article about calling "root" "clerk" as a way to deter your boss from asking for root privileges.
Or just a community space with rooms that people can set things up in. Libraries kind of fill that role today, but you have to reserve the rooms sometimes a year in advance. I mean more a place where you go, say 'this empty room is going to be used to play games for the next two hours' or 'we're going to set up some punch and cookies here for people to socialize for an hour' or whatever, and you're good. Maybe be able to set things up on a weekly basis or something, so you can have a regular, predictable event people can attend.
I know there's plenty of meetup groups, for example, that have a hard time finding spaces that can host 40 or more people at a time, that doesn't cost like $50 to reserve ahead of time or have to be reserved almost a year in advance. I've been wanting to do a meet and greet for my group for months and haven't been able to find a good space for it.
I can agree with your last statement. Unfortunately, due to liability and insurance reasons, "generic venues for doing stuff" are pretty expensive and unavailable. I help organize a local group of game players and by far finding an inexpensive (by this I mean under $120/day) venue willing to unlock their doors for 50-60 people on a weekend is one of our biggest ongoing challenges. There are lots of businesses that don't operate on the weekend and have to maintain their empty office for 2 days a week--you'd think they'd be open to renting a conference room out for some extra $$ but nope--if someone trips and falls, it's suddenly a money loser for them.
Also, as far as I can tell, there's not really a marketplace for these kind of "single-day activity space" rentals, so I mostly trawl through Cragslist and pound pavement looking for HOA clubhouses and cheap hotel conference centers. There's your next start-up idea: AirBNB for temporary office space on the weekend.
My advice is you're seeing competition for business meetings. Yes the executive conference center in the woods costs $800/dy because board meetings are willing to pay $800 but not $801. Thats why in the city there's nothing to do but drink, and if you don't drink there's nothing to do at all.
In the burbs there is an entire division of the govt called "parks and rec" or whatever and I live far from the coasts in an area with a hyperactive parks and rec dept. All you need do is convince one parks and rec functionary that you should run game night and you've got your choice of parks and rec owned rooms for free. If you can't convince them, then you get to pay rent which is of the $100 class you mention and the city self insures.
There are issues, like no dogs or alcohol in the parks and park facilities. And there are first come first serve issues, you are not getting the pavilion on monday nights because thats projection screen movie night, tuesday nights because thats free cover band night, thursdays are free community orchestra concerts, and every friday night the streets are blocked off for a block party. Aside from festivals and holiday events. Of course that's just one busy park, but wednesday nights are open right now.
With respect to "things to do" the problem is defining things to do. If thats defined as drink until 2am and throw up in the street and take some beer googled person home, thats fun but its city only and nothing to do in the burbs. If you want to play a different intermural parks and rec sport every night with the general public in organized games, or have what boils down to club meetings or block/street parties or park concerts or festivals for the heck of it, there's nothing like that to do in the city because corporate has priced the recreation out, yet the burbs are incredibly active, because the burbs are where sober people go for fun. Recreational tree climbing, Adult tae Kwon Do, Learn to Kayak, every sport imaginable...
There's a huge parks scene out here in the suburbs (tons of Forest Preserves), but I don't think there's too many pavilions around (unless you count picnic shelters, and I called about those, and it's $50+ to reserve those, months in advance).
Only pavilion I'm aware of is at the local arboretum, and it's $12 a person just to get inside there.
I will look into it, though. I also tried to get rooms at one of the local libraries, but they kept saying their rooms could only handle about 25 people. Last meet and greet we had, 45 people showed up (it was at a local coffee shop that has since gone out of business).
This is essentially me. My wife and her family are religious and go to church every Sunday, but when I tried going with her earlier in our relationship, I felt like a fraud (as I'm an agnostic). I liked that they did good things for the world. I liked that they helped their community. But I couldn't stand up and sing about Jesus when I really didn't feel the same faith that the other members ostensibly felt.
I've heard good things about Unitarian Universalist churches.
> Churches are definitely a great community resource, but I imagine that many people (myself included) don't want to be preached something we don't believe in every week even if it means losing out on those community benefits.
Participating in a healthy church is way too much work if all you get out of it is the community benefits. Healthy churches:
* feed and clothe people
* take care of the abandoned people in society (foster kids, shut-ins, people with personality disorders, the homeless, people with immigration problems, addicts)
* talk people into apologizing to each other (yeah, like your mom and her sister after all these years)
* educate themselves about local issues (homelessness, drug use, poverty, etc.) with a mind towards helping somehow
* mentor and provide structure for prisoners and ex-prisoners
* are involved in global relief... they've been doing charity-water-style projects for millenia
* do all the normal boring stuff involved in maintaining and funding an organization with facilities
* do intense critical analysis (including studying dead languages) of the Bible and related resources
* provide educational opportunities to underpivileged children
* put on an 90-120 minute A/V production once a week
* provide huge amounts of child care services, including background checks, training, instilling best practices to ensure safety of children, etc.
* provide therapy for people that need it (techniques here vary a lot but every church does it somehow)
* provide mentoring and care for people entering new life stages (newlyweds, new couples, divorcees, recently widowed, etc.)
That is to say it only makes sense to explore if you are interested in God. If you aren't, consider looking for something else and good luck on your journey.
Yes, there are people (many of them) who just show up sometimes for the A/V portion of the weekend, but that's pretty much missing the point. Unsurprisingly, they tend to have a rougher time 'getting' the whole church thing.
It's so difficult to find a church that (a) values community, and (b) hasn't made some kind of big, public decision against LGBTQ people. And that doesn't preach guilt and condemnation in a thousand overt or subtle ways…
We lasted about five minutes in the Episcopal church near us. Our two-and-a-half year old was happily talking about the stained glass windows (months later, he still talks about them), when someone came up to "helpfully" tell us where the nursery was. "People are trying to be prayerful." She was slightly confused when we headed towards the exit rather than the nursery.
I think we're going to give it another try - we've since met some other members who were horrified at our experience. :-/ We'll see. If they want to drive away families with young kids, I figure they'll last another 20 years or so…
There seems to be someone "helpful" like that in every church. Unless your kid is truly disruptive (running around, damaging things), the best thing to do is ignore the "helper" and try to keep your kid focused on something that'll quiet them down, or keep them seated/near you. But kids talk, you can't stop that, and oftentimes don't want to.
I live in the south and even here a ton of the churches are ok with LGBTQ and don't harp on guilt or how we all need to be saved. Unitarians, Episcopalean, Presbyterian (USA), Quakers, etc. It's still hard to sit through a service where you don't believe anything.
I'm honestly not searching, though, so even the Unitarians feel awkward. At least as I understand it, Unitarianism is still at least deistic. The most I could offer would be moral introspection and some meditation work, none of it in real connection to the supernatural. I'm not opposed to religion on principle, but I'm certainly not trying to find something to place my faith in.
If anything, the best I can see aiming for is some equivalent to cultural Judaism, where even non-believing Jews are invited to attend major ceremonies.
Same boat here. I've repeatedly thought about going to UU events, but they're still too New Age for me. I've long been somewhat envious of my Jewish friends for the strong community aspect of the culture, which requires too much religion in other, well, religions. Nothing else seems to really drive as much community though, as far as I've seen at least.
I feel like this is a surprisingly common response (especially since so many people in the tech world meet a lot of practicing-but-nonreligious Jews). I have a lot of respect for UU organizations, but I just don't feel like I fit in with it, and I haven't found a good substitute. Solstice parties and their ilk are A) too rare for community-building and B) sort of a pallid imitation of real organizations.
Hobby groups and community organizations offer a bit of this, but it seems like there's a fairly specific identity/culture gap that's not easily filled with anything else for non-Jewish atheists/agnostics.
> It's so difficult to find a church that (a) values community, and (b) hasn't made some kind of big, public decision against LGBTQ people.
What's a 'big, public decision'? The Bible is very clear that there is such a thing as sexual immorality and that same-sex relationships qualify. I've heard arguments that a long series of translation errors means that certain kinds of same-sex relationships are fine, but even so, the Bible does say there is such a thing as sexual immorality. I haven't seen a church that is fine with homosexual acts that also has a coherent position on those passages of scripture.
The only coherent position that's possible is that the Bible is just a good book with a lot of good ideas, but I'm not sure how to organize a community around that principle.
Let's say I put my foot in my mouth and hurt someone's feelings and need to apologize. There is a Bible verse in which Jesus said that we need to prioritize reconciliation over religious habits. If I thought the Bible was just a pretty good list of suggestions, I could easily ignore that teaching because <insert reasonable excuse here>.
That is to say, I don't really how to remove scriptural authority and still have a clear understanding of who God is and what that means to us.
Yeah. I haven't squared it all myself, and I'm not sure I expect to. I do know that many of the oft-quoted passages are in the Old Testament, and thus explicitly superseded by the New. There are however a few troublesome passages in Paul's writings for sure…
Then again, as Scot McNight makes undeniably clear in the opening chapters of The Blue Parakeet, everybody picks and chooses: it's just a matter of degree.
Not sharing orthodox beliefs may not be an impediment to joining and participating, as you say, but it will be a dividing factor over time, unless you 1) fake it, or 2) go to a liberal church. The problem with liberal churches is they're small and don't grow.
People are attracted to confidence, so when the preacher, members and staff continuously and confidently proclaim their certainty in that which is difficult to believe, attendance and membership swell. People with marginal faith would fit in better at a liberal church, but mostly they're turned off by it.
"The problem with liberal churches is they're small and don't grow."
Hmm I've actually been to Catholic Mass where the congregation is exclusively white haired and the local prosperity gospel rock music church where the average congregation age must have only been 25. You can guess the long term demographic result.
I'll throw out a dissenting opinion to the majority view that only non-mainline churches are possible. I met a very cool Catholic priest who had a long entertaining presentation along the lines of if you can't stand one guy on TV or can't stand one guy at your local Catholic church, that's OK because there's a billion of them and if you can't find one part per billion that offends you, you're not paying enough attention, and if you can't avoid that one part per billion, you're just complaining for fun and are not trying hard enough.
I think in a lot of places churches have served as a defactor "third place" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place) for communities. It seems like the decline in church attendance mirrors the decline in a lot of third place spaces. None of my grandparents ever attended church with any regularity, but I know that they were all involved in various social and community activities with the types of clubs that don't seem to exist anymore. Friends of mine with kids have parenting meetups, and I try to make technical meetups when I can, but the rotating group of people and the fact that they can be difficult to get to make them quasi-substitutes at best.
In a lot of countries - Germany, Britain, France to be sure - the pub is such a third place, especially for men. Their special culture seems to be in decline as well, but not as dramatically as churches.
I'm a member of CAMRA, the campaign for real ale.
Every month they send out a magazine to members.
On the front page is an article on the social benefits of having a regular local.
On the back page are the member obituaries. Sadly, regularly drinking alcohol shortens your life pretty dramatically, unless you are incredibly disciplined with it.
Traditionally there was zero stigma attached to having a beer in the "Kneipe" in Germany, especially for the working class typically living in small flats.
As an Ex-Christian, I miss the "third place" but I do not miss the church. I don't know where to get that same idea for my kids but I also don't want them growing up with a belief in the doctrine I grew up with. I also have strong feelings about what religions my child is exposed to. I don't mind him being exposed to multiple religions, but there are certain religions I would consider secondary and don't want to be his primary exposure.
I'm fairly alone in this, and I say Ex-Christian to indicate I'm not Atheist but I don't know if that's true. Anyway, this is something I've been struggling with a lot. I just spent 3 hours last night talking to a Power salesman, because we had a good time chatting and I don't get that outside my friends and work. There is no forced place for me to talk to acquaintences.
Honestly, if I didn't disagree so strongly with the theology of the LDS (Mormon) church I'd go back to that. They are FANTASTIC for kids, parents, events, etc. They instill great morals (other than homophobia and some other things I disagree with). But they are in general very nice people.
So where do I go for a "third place" without God being involved, but I still get the, "hey man we missed you last week, where were you." and "Have you given your money to God lately?"
Sorry this struck a nerve, and I'm almost ready to go back to the LDS church just so Sam has people he knows but to try to counter the Theology by exposing him to other beliefs as well. IDK.
Do a search for social clubs in your area. They exist and have with a variety of activities to center around that may interest you. Finding a family-based social club may be more difficult, but not impossible. And of course there are the various computer/programming based meet-ups... which are really social clubs as well ;)
I've thought about picking up sports again. A lot of my friends and fond memories as a kid came from my dad's Softball team. That isn't a bad idea at all thanks!
When I was young, my parents brought me to church for a little while just for something to do. They believed, but they didn't really care, so it wasn't anything that was discussed in my household. Looking back on it, I only cared what they said, not anyone else, so I ignored all the church BS and just played or whatever.
I think that if you bring your kids to church, they'll still look to you for what to believe (or not to believe!). Be straight with them, though. Tell them that you're just going there to have something to do. My parents pretty much said that and I didn't have any problem with it. Maybe ask them not to repeat that in front of others though.
This is also really good advice. Thanks, I might end up doing that. I have to work something out with my wife obviously. I grew up going to both the Mormon (dad) and Catholic (mom) churches. So my faith has always been an oddity. Especially after I became an adult and began questioning things.
I have some co-workers who attend a kind of spiritual-social group. It's designed as a kind of third place for those who choose to avoid the Christian tradition.
I haven't been, so maybe I'm wrong about there being any kind of spiritual focus to the group, but I might describe my coworkers as an ex-Christian (who's fairly bitter about it) and...well, the other guy, I'm not sure. Maybe "theist"? My impression was that they're an open-minded and diverse group of people. Maybe you can find something similar in your area.
You could see if there is a local Unitarian Church. The Unitarians are bound by a shared commitment to loving inclusiveness, not religious dogma, and many Unitarians are agnostic or even atheist.
I feel the biggest hole in technical/small social groups vs. church groups is the lack of permanency. With most church organizations there is a built in way to bring fresh people in to associate with the church, and a dedicated place to meet that you can expect to be there with modest assumptions 10 years from now. A technical group is generally completely nomadic, they have to do a lot of work to bring people together. The glue that keeps them together is flimsy as well- a tech group is less likely to keep someone who makes a drastic change in occupation (IT to a brewer) compared to a church.
The major lack of easy association to the group is something that is hard to replicate in the nonsecular space. There is nothing strongly compelling about a group that's focus is too general, and the difficulty to bridge the gap from outsider to inclusion can be too high for a group that is interesting.
I'd love to see a public discussion on this. Intuitively, I think you could be right that church participation brings about happiness and reduces alienation, but it's hard to discuss in a complete void of data. I admit I didn't look very hard, but a quick search only yielded a Pew Research study which showed that weekly church attendance was correlated with happiness, but being in good health had a much stronger correlation.
There are a bunch of related issues I'd like to discuss:
1. Church attendance isn't available to everyone. Specifically, LGBTQ folks are often excluded. In a broader sense, does church attendance still make you happy and reduce alienation if you don't agree with the church's dogma? You claim that "Whether you actually donate and believe everything that is said isn't really a factor" but in my personal experience that was a very large factor.
2. Why do people believe that this is unpopular to discuss? You're not the first person I've heard claim this.
3. Instead of comparing church-attendance to non-church-attendance, is there data which compares church attendance to attendance of other social groups (clubs, activity groups, etc.) which meet weekly?
4. Have there been any attempts to replicate the benefits of church with secular community organizations; i.e. a group that meets weekly and someone gives a talk about some topic (science!)?
Church attendance is available to everyone. For thousands of years, the answer to your dilemma has been obvious. If you are excluded from an existing church, just make a new one. When black people could not attend white churches, do you think they just gave up and decided to be secular?
> Church attendance isn't available to everyone. Specifically, LGBTQ folks are often excluded.
I have been to a lot of churches and I've never seen this happen.
> Why do people believe that this is unpopular to discuss?
The Bible offends people. And it's very strange to discuss church participation without discussing God and the Bible.
For example, I believe creating a godless (or even God agnostic) church will be ultimately a dead end (at least in the long term). I'd be interested to read any research about these things, but I'm skeptical that it's even possible to study these things scientifically. Church dynamics play out over generations. You really need to watch organizations over many changes of leadership to see if they're really successful.
I realize that some people reading this reach for an empirical, practical approach to discovering whether it's possible to recreate the benefits of church without the theism. I'd be interested to hear what happens, but I suspect we'll all be dead before all the implications of the experiment are known. I'm not sure waiting around for a series of definitive studies is a good plan.
In general, Unitarians are nice people trying to be nice. But nice isn't enough.
The Bible teaches that you can't have love without truth (1 Corinthians 13:6). Love without truth isn't really love at all. To take one particular, teaching people to be agnostic about who God is or even whether He exists isn't really loving in the long run, no matter how nice the intentions are.
And there's some real danger of self delusion in editing the Bible. If we are the ultimate judges of what parts of the Bible count, we become the ultimate judges of Truth. In contrast, it's consistent to trust the scriptures and the God of the scriptures. But if you take that objective source of Truth away, what keeps us honest about who God is? When there is no objective source of Truth, people create a false god in our own image. One that's cold and harsh. Or one that thinks love involves money and power. Or one that only hugs and never rights wrongs.
Anyway, I've never heard a good answer from a Unitarian about how they know what parts of the Bible are good. It generally boils down to their own feelings and experience. Typically phrased like, "I can't see how God could...." As if anything we don't understand is automatically false.
Anyway, Unitarians are generally nice people, but the ones who are Christian are heavily editing the commandments of Jesus from the Bible. They're very close to practicing another faith. It makes about as much sense to me as a Christian attending a mosque or synagogue.
I find the forms of church to be fairly meaningless on their own. It might as well be a weekly TED Talk and Sing-A-Long series by another name. Maybe it's enjoyable, but I can't really see it being transformative. To me, the worship services have become the least meaningful part of church life. Higher quality music (even worship music) and sermons can easily be found elsewhere.
The accountability and shared search for applied Truth is where the meaning is. I don't see how UU churches provide either well. In other words, a church needs to be able to fire a pastor for heresy without being hypocritical. Otherwise, the word 'church' has started to become a synonym for the word 'nonprofit' or 'club' or 'fraternity'.
Related to your first bullet-point, but there are also those who can't/won't attend because they refuse to be associated with the goings-on of the larger Church institution.
When these camps were eventually shut down, some within the Church defended them, claiming they had done nothing wrong but had instead provided a service by enslaving these women. Not something many sane people want to be associated with.
Church attendance is much higher in the US compared to other western countries (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_attendance). Looking at the article, the death rate is decreasing in these countries, while it's not for the US whites.
Maybe churches wouldn't be in decline if churches were actually just social clubs that didn't require their members to all think the same way and believe that the people who don't think that way are doomed to eternal fire?
I grew up with a very tight church community. I simultaneously miss it and have claustrophobic nausea every time I think about it.
As someone who's lived in the southeast US my entire life, this is spot on. The Bible Belt gets a lot of flack, most of it deserved, but it is hard to overstate the importance of the church community here. I suspect this, not the religious part, is why churches have continued to thrive here.
The problem for me (as well as many others I know), is that the tradeoff isn't worth it. There is an entire generation of people who are receptive to religion and the church community, but who are completely at odds with the traditional interpretations of religion that preach intolerance and other backward moral positions. The so-called 'contemporary' churches that have been sprouting like weeds have addressed this somewhat, but scant few are actually progressive thinkers, rather than just traditional churches that play religious rock music. I would love to be a part of a church community, but not if it means I'm constantly inundated with a message that runs counter to everything I believe in.
The question is whether the decline of the church in America is a symptom of other things besides the issues mentioned in the article and elsewhere (eg: churches being too connected to money and power, too focused on rules, too intolerant, too judgemental). Most unchurched still believe, so if it's just those things, then America is merely ripe for a disruptive church that would correct the current modern America church sins.
However, from what I've seen with more liberal churches that exist, the crowd is elderly and small. So I think that there's been a bit of a greater societal shift. "Make an atheist church" is not a solution, because that style just does not work for a more connected, global, diverse world where individualism is more valued. Look at this thread; many people in this thread are rejecting church because the pressure to "conform to the norm" is not worth the community gain.
Is it possible to gain the benefits of community, without sacrificing the benefits individualism? (I personally think the sins of the collective tend to be worse than the sins of the individualism, so I personally would not want to see that balance shifted to the sort of conformity many churches seem to demand.)
Japan and the US are also known for workaholism. Idolizing work and career for one's entire adult life can leave someone feeling very lonely upon retirement. Or while still in the workforce for that matter.
A good book called "Counterfeit Gods" by Timothy Keller explores this and other topics from a Christian perspective.
His argument is that work and many other things in life are inherently good and part of our purpose as humans, but not when they consume us. Idolotry is what happens when a "good" thing becomes the "ultimate" and it corrupts who we are at the core.
The problem, as others have said, is the accompanying theology i.e. Magical bullshut.
I believe, however, we would do well as a civilization to study what The Church (capital letters on purpose) has done well in the last 2000 years, strip it of magic and veiled class dynamics, and rebuild it for the social good.
I work as a data analyst for a large social service government agency, and I always joke that we should hire the LDS (Mormon) church to run our social welfare programs. Well, sans God and some nasty sexism and LGBT hatefulness.
People who "actively" avoid churches often do so for reasons other than their personal life challenges.
Also, you're painting a picture as though you can come for the other benefits and not have to deal with their primary purpose of existence; kinda like a time-share salesman who offers $500 and a free lunch provided you listen to the 3 hour brainwashing session. It's a disingenuous statement. I know this from being sold the same free lunch - many times :)
Your argument is dominated by pragmatism, which often obfuscates what religion is all about.
Great communities are a consequence of the chosen lifestyle and morality of religious people. You could gather just as many atheists and the response wouldn't be the same.
EDIT: I'm not saying an atheist community would be WORSE than Christianity.
I'm saying it would be DIFFERENT from the Christian one.
At its core, Christians are defined by fraternity, equality, goodness, etc.
Maybe some atheists also have these, but there's not a guarantee all act this way.
IMO, before founding an "atheist church", I'd at least establish "secular values" and find a community around it.
EDIT: I was called a "delusional idiot" for claiming Christians are defined by fraternity, equality, goodness.
I'm referring to the SYSTEM OF VALUES. Something must be aspired for and desired in social interactions. I'm well aware of "hypocritical Christians", it has nothing to do with them.
If you cannot understand that, I'm not a "delusional idiot"; you are just ignorant.
Maybe some Christians have those, but -- and I say this as a Christian -- it's far from true that all members of Christian faith traditions have those.
So you haven't really pointed to a real difference.
I remember my mother telling stories about her mother putting out her cigarette in the car and spraying perfume on herself and her kids before going to church every sunday so that no one would know she was smoking.
The goalposts have to move within the conversation for a "no true Scotsman" to apply. On the contrary, establishing language that lets us distinguish between groups of people is a healthy way to promote understanding.
The thing is, when adherence to a community is enforced (even if just through social pressure), you'll get a lot of uncommitted people who might even wish they would share the values, but don't.
Atheists as a whole might be less likely to share a system of values, but those who sought and joined such an organization of their own volition (and not because their family dragged them to church every Sunday) are extremely likely to shared its values.
> Religion is not required for morals and community values.
See, I agree, but probably because I understand "religion" differently than you do.
I would say, though, that love of God is required for morals and healthy community (not sure what 'community values' are). There are a lot of difficult things in this life (addiction, betrayal, chronic illness, corruption, oppression) that are difficult to tackle with bald reason, raw force of will, and whatever teamwork we can scrape together.
You are spot on about this , although i can see how your comment may be misinterpreted. The church is a pleasant place because people share similar morals. Atheists may have great morals, but there is little overlap. That is true for any secular group really. Setting up an adversarial type of gathering , from sports to politics will not be the same experience as the one that a church offers.
> I'm not saying an atheist community would be WORSE than Christianity.
I would, at least in the long run. There wouldn't be much point to being a Christian otherwise.
NOTE: That's not to say that a given "Christian" is a "better person" than a given atheist. People, including "Christians" that think that don't really understand Christian philosophy.
Can a startup change the core of human nature? Can it change thousands of years of Philosophy? Can it change our socio-economic background? Can it change history?
If you can, then... dear Lord... this is Apotheosis.
You don't need to change human nature. Not at all. You just need to figure out why organizations like schools, clubs, fraternities, churches, sports teams, etc. are so good at helping people make lasting, meaningful connections and replicate that formula at scale. That's certainly what I'm trying to do with Krewe, but I think there are many other ways to approach it.
People have been forming close-knit communities for all of human history. But modernity has changed things as we now have fewer excuses to interact with each other. People still want and need that sense of community, and I think giving people a way to meet over and over again that's both comfortable and convenient is what is needed.
This doesn't help anyone; it only makes them feel worse. You will only make people have even more superficial relationships - the last thing a depressed alienated individual needs.
Empathetic bonds do not have a "template" - it is based in the individuality of each person in a group. There is not a single statistical model at scale that is able to predict what can take you out of isolation and alienation.
> I think giving people a way to meet over and over again that's both comfortable and convenient is what is needed.
Just confirms what I argued. They crave real emotional bonds, not an easy "fast-food way" to talk to strangers. Long-term relationships are complicated, deep and time-consuming.
The obvious answer is to call this presumptuous, to say that startups are just things made by groups of people and so they can help if people can.
But on a deeper, intuitive level things rings completely true. It's not something I can prove, it's something that can be proved, but I can't shake the feeling that this carries weight.
This is a world where Facebook use averages 50 minutes per day, and we're going to solve the problem with startups? Really? I tried a popular, profitable app that "gamifies" good habits recently, and almost immediately realized that it was just going to make me take another slice of my day to update an app about the stuff I've already done. Great.
At best, startups can grease the wheels. My 'favorite' apps, the ones that improve my life, are the ones that quietly make easier something I was going to do anyway. They help clear out mental clutter and offer simple reminders, making room for the human things that have to emerge from me rather than a product. So yes, better software and better companies can help, but mostly by getting out of the way; by smoothing over the humanity-eroding problems of other systems and products. This is a wicked problem, one that's entrapping whole societies, and change will have to come from equally large alterations.
There was a recent study into the male suicide rate in Northern Ireland. It has boomed since the end of the Troubles. Historically, war has given men a sense of belonging. But it's not a great trade-off.
The church can in theory be a good place to build social cohesion, but in the UK it is mired in cultural politics, so many people choose to avoid it.
The premature death rate (drugs, alcohol, suicide) among white, midwestern women in the US is really interesting to me.
There are a lot of pretty convincing theories about male death rates and how they're tied to conflict, demonstrations of courage, and clear purpose. I'd never heard the Ireland result, but it doesn't shock me. Obviously some of this is gender-agnostic, like sense of community, but some of it doesn't seem to be; there's a reason that young, unemployed men are the largest risk factor for social instability.
Given all that, it's intriguing to see that what's going wrong in the American heartland is affecting women at least as strongly as men. A lot of the easy answers (unemployment, worsened employment, lack of education) are all things that have mostly changed to the detriment of men (they might be better or worse for women, but we care about recent change and that would imply declining results for men). So that drives me into suspicions that this isn't something we can handwave with "construction took a downturn" or "bad warehouse jobs" - there seems to be a broader anomie transcending those simple problems.
I'm quite attractive and analytically intelligent, but lack social and emotional intelligence (always been a loner due to childhood circumstances).
I feel alienated, I can't relate to others in this rat race. The constant dick waving and competition driven by social media, it's just such a turnoff.
Without motivation or passion for games like I used to, life feels empty. Suicide is my wholehearted plan when this company goes under, it just seems like the reasonable, logical end.
This rant is more of an anecdotal story, take from it what you will - in short, I can relate to this article.
All people have value. You have more value than your job, no matter how annoying your colleagues may be sometimes.
If you are considering self-harm or suicide as an option for you, please reach out for advice or help. Many people have been through similar situations and found the advice of others helpful.[1]
I find that there is little wisdom in the world I like to quote, but here is some:
"And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy."[2]
>If you are considering self-harm or suicide as an option for you, please reach out for advice or help. Many people have been through similar situations and found the advice of others helpful.[1]
Otherwise, I sympathise with your thoughts. One thing that has been helpful for me is realising that throughout time, a small percentage of people have felt this way about their society. It should be considered an expected part of any society, it just happens you are in this group.
I feel like if everything gets a bit too much, I will retreat into the countryside and set up a homestead. Nature does wonders for the soul and connects you to the longer thread of life and human experience, above the noise of day-to-day life and perceived trivialities. Please consider the alternatives, even if they are drastic such as above, before suicide. There will be something, a way of life, that resonates with your soul and makes you feel life worth living again, even if it is at odds with what society and family expect of you. I wish the best for you.
There are people you can relate to. You just haven't found them yet.
Working IT, especially for a small IT department, can be isolating. You can find yourself at a company where there's no-one else like you. But that's not because there's no-one else like you in the world; it's because you work IT at a sales firm.
Wow. That sounds similar to how I was, but without the suicide.
I moved into a new neighborhood a few months ago (something I've wanted to do for over 2 years). When the weather started getting nice, I bought a bike and started using it. A lot. I eventually started commuting without a car. I'm not sure if it's the exercise or simply being in sunlight more, but I'm feeling better than I have in 10 years, and I'm much happier. It seems that other feelings are up too, since I'm starting to talk to someone I've had a crush on for years.
Mix things up in your life. Change things. I agree with your thoughts on social media. The way people use it is evil: you only see the good things, but not the everyday boredom and tragedy.
209 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 284 ms ] threadI like the idea of a mobile video equipped assistant with voice recognition that can contact us in an emergency, and their pretty happy with tech so I don't think we would have a problem convincing them(especially if I an code an app for them and their grand children to communicate easily).
https://zenbo.asus.com
And from the chart, US's (whites) death rates takes off starting from late 90s, where the economy was doing great, while other countries' death rates keep declining even during great recession.
According to the article. It's because grandparents no longer stay with family, and divorces.
[1] http://miter.mit.edu/the-unexotic-underclass/
In Europe, people are generally less mobile (geographically) and countries are smaller, so you can still work in the city and still live in the vicinity of your elderly parents (let's say one-two hour drive).
Maybe less obvious, but people in Europe also tend to have more vacation (understatement), so it is much easier to visit your family more frequently.
As a European I am always surprised that people only see their family during Thanksgiving. I don't have data but looking at people I know, you see your family much more frequently there.
Sure, some could probably help, but I imagine they'll either be palliatives (like 7 Cups of Tea) or enablers for human actions (like Skype). I normally assume that "startups will solve it all!" is more of an exaggeration than an actual opinion, but this thread has me doubting myself.
I think no matter who you are, going from a situation where you know no or few people who live close to you, to one where you suddenly know and have access to people who are within walking distance would make a huge difference on your life. Will that solve all of a depressed person's problems? I don't know, but I think it could go a long way towards helping them. Access, in my opinion, is the main issue here. That's what I'm working on.
I'm not an economist (or Japanese) but from the outside when you can list Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Suburu, Shimano, Nintendo, Hitachi, Yamaha, Sega and Murata among your country's well known brands it seems odd that you would be considered a poorly performing economy for so long.
Can anyone share some insight?
If you were around in the 1980s, when Japan was at it's economic peak, Japan has slowly been passed by China and continues to tread water (i.e. stay in the same place, as China has passed it.)
Japan is a poorly performing economy in that there's been little to no growth since the bubble burst in the late 80s. Other economies have gone through growth stages and we had the Asian financial crisis and then the '08 global crash, but Japan has just kept the status quo. So from the perspective of economists, who expect growth, Japan does look bad.
In Japan, life is largely as it has been since the 90s. In fact with deflation, prices are largely the same as they have been for more than 2 decades. This is not a good thing mostly- healthy economies should have some small amount of inflation each year.
Hope this helps? (I am Japanese, fwiw.)
Look beyond the 3-year or even 10-year perspective. All of Europe and most of Latin America is doing visibly better than 25 years ago in terms of infrastructure, life expectancy, disposable income etc. Even after three years of a massive economic crisis, Brazil is a better place to live than in 1990.
While Japan is the same - just older.
From what I've read, the Japanese public debt is mostly domestic, so it wasn't actually foreign money that was fueling the growth.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/09/05/japan-is-...
Fortunately most of this debt is internal and in local currency (no fear of hyperinflation). But Japanese are getting old. In a few years Japanese insurance companies and Japanese savers turn from net buyers of government debt and stocks into net sellers.
It's interesting to see what happens then.
Even if you don't want sex Japan has a culture of hostess clubs and "snack" clubs. A hostess club is a club you pay to have someone flirt and talk with you. A snack club is a club were the owner entertains everyone. Think of bar where the bartender leads everyone in discussion, games, songs, etc...
In other words, Japan has that but is still having these issues.
I don't know which way it would go. Since Japan has these and Japan seems to have some of the biggest problems with isolation how do we know these services don't contribute to the isolation?
Note I'm not saying they do. I don't know but it's easy to imagine things like:
* Why make up with my significant other if I can just get some paid for companionship leading to less strong relationships
* Why even try to have a real relationship where I my SO might get angry when I can pay to have a fake one where they'll never get angry and rarely disapprove of me
* Maybe given I know these paid relationships aren't real, that the provider I'm paying really doesn't care about me but is just doing a job makes me more depressed about my life.
Again, I'm not saying any of these are true or not, only pointing out that AFAIK there's no studies that show if paid companionship is a net positive or net negative for social isolation.
One thing I found striking, was when they do the customary handshake (which signals a bit more familiarity in Japan than it does in the US), the clients literally sometimes cry as they've not touched another human being for years!
As someone who recently turned 30, yet has remained single most of my life despite my other successes, I see it very clearly. I grew up along with the Internet as many people in my generation did. Even when around other people in my age group, everyone is disconnected from each other. There's less empathy and relationships in my generation feel more superficial. At any moment, someone will pull out a smartphone and be using social media while literally standing around with a group of supposed friends. I'd say it's the group of people I've hung out with if it weren't for observing the same in the wild many many times.
I think we still haven't figured out what all the unintended consequences from technology are going to be, and I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't end up seeing a sharp decline in the birth rate among whites in the US to go along with the increase in younger deaths. Not just because of the consequences of social isolation on mental health, but because the lack of social connectedness that exists today makes it almost impossible to actually procreate.
I think the media has a role to play here too, the idea that you need romantic love in order to be successful or complete is a toxic one.
Edit: a lot of replies to my comment are misinterpreting what I'm saying as "romance is a new idea invented by the media" when all I said is that it's possible to have a complete and successful life without romance.
It is sublime how when you feel lonely you look for a lover and then pretty soon you have more people around. It makes heterosex seem almost subversive these days...
We're also both descended from 40+ yrs of marriage couples, so the risk of divorce seems much lower.
That being said, as an introvert, I also agree that it helps me in social situations not to always have to be communicate with people.
It's definitely a tool for introverts, but I hardly ever see phones get in the way of what would otherwise be a fluid, enjoyable conversation. That claim feels more like techphobia than anything, because avoiding awkward, forced conversation is neither novel nor a clear problem.
As a result, most of the phone use I see is socially beneficial. People can show an interesting video or look up a fact to keep a conversation rolling, and take shelter in their phones to avoid looking awkward when they have no one to talk to.
There's also an English Wikipedia page of the case at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunula_mummy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Vincent
Having just moved to Finland I'm less believing of the stereotype that Finnish people as a whole are insular and isolated, but I think there are always going to be agoraphobic, depressed, or otherwise very isolated individuals in any country.
I agree that the ability to withdraw and obtain privacy is crucial, but I'd like to see options for privacy and isolation that don't require absolute disconnection.
On the internet.
You think any of those people are going to miss me if I'm gone.
Kinda sad, really.
Didn't mean that to sound so gloomy, just wanted to point out that reading text from a person is also a form of isolation for both people.
There are a lot of people that I've interacted with over the years that I haven't heard from in a long time. Our only contact was email or texting. Their text number stopped working a long time ago, and emailing them results in no response at all.
This is not a situation where folks are angry at each other, just slowly drifting apart.
Are they alive or dead? Beats me.
I was (and still am) part of a tight community of people on IRC and one day we realized a guy in our group hadn't said anything for almost a month. He'd always been the quiet type of person who sometimes would go for a few days or even a week without saying anything, but it was really weird for us. These are all people I've been interacting with for years every day, we do know a lot about each other (although to varying degrees). We knew about this guy's name and some circumstantial social network presence, so we started to investigate and we eventually found out he had passed.
We all mourned him, and to this day still I regret the fact that it took us a month to realize he wasn't with us anymore (we initially thought he had gone on vacation, since it was summer).
In a few months it's going to be the 2nd anniversary of his death and we plan to write up something within our community to remember him, just like last year.
If you're communicating with somebody on a regular basis in person, and they die? You mourn, you send flowers. Hell, you might even go to the funeral home, even if it was in another town.
If it's online? You can go weeks or months and be clueless. And then when you do find out, you feel like you were robbed of something. Something important.
I think the problem isn't whether or not your friendship is online, but whether or not it's advertised sufficiently to the next of kin and other relevant social networks.
I'm from Ohio so it may be different up here, but that's my experience.
There are a wide spectrum of beliefs and interpretations across denominations, far beyond Orthodox , liberal, etc. And the quality of the delivery is still up to the people at the pulpit. A bad experience at one church or denomination should not be a generalization of all churches/religions.
If you feel that something is being imposed on you, that particular church may not be the best fit for you. Or you may be hearing something that is at conflict with the ego, or with an area of personal struggle.
Also YMMV depending on if you view church is a consumer good/service, versus a lifelong shared experience of learning and of putting others before self.
'I point at the stars and the sky ripples.'
I would disrespect people who feel lonely by calling myself lonely - I have a handful of very close friends and am in a relationship. I don't find it easy to connect to other people in meaningful way. What needs to happen is both persons being in a spontaneous state, and that's a rare thing to find because at least one person always has somewhere to go or something to do, or is scared of something or is too attached to something, preventing the two people from enjoying the present moment.
One more word about 'science and atheism': I'm put on notice every time someone mentions those two as axioms to follow. Atheism means to me disregarding spirituality at all costs, and considering only scientific facts means invalidating personal experiences of themselves and people around them.
'A; Today I went X and saw Y and felt Z'
'B; it is scientifically proven when you X you feel Z but it doesn't mean you Z1'
The reliance on facts puts the emotional part of the conversation aside in favour of logic and rationality and reduces the potential of building a connection.
But hey, I'm not an expert at building relationships in the first place, these are just my thoughts and personal experiences, compare them with your own and build your own framework.
But yes people can sometimes be annoying.
A number of atheists have felt that, and some have even established groups modeled on the social aspects of churches without the particular theistic views (e.g., Sunday Assembly.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers
I've known several atheists/agnostics that go to both locally and the few times I've gone to either the meetings tend to be quite low in dogma. Not my thing, but if you crave that sort of community might be worth taking a look.
https://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/locations/
Meeting decisions have to be unanimous. It's a real source of frustration at times trying to convince the last holdout.
Instead of a minister, they have a clerk. The clerk is elected and coordinates the church for a year.
Before we were married, we had to meet several times with a clearance committee that had to say that we were ready to marry. I understand many ministers do something similar but this was a great thing. One of the members said it used to be a way that parents could stall a marriage - things were different 200 years ago with teenagers wanting to get married. (My wife and I were 33 and 39.)
I remember reading an article about calling "root" "clerk" as a way to deter your boss from asking for root privileges.
I know there's plenty of meetup groups, for example, that have a hard time finding spaces that can host 40 or more people at a time, that doesn't cost like $50 to reserve ahead of time or have to be reserved almost a year in advance. I've been wanting to do a meet and greet for my group for months and haven't been able to find a good space for it.
Also, as far as I can tell, there's not really a marketplace for these kind of "single-day activity space" rentals, so I mostly trawl through Cragslist and pound pavement looking for HOA clubhouses and cheap hotel conference centers. There's your next start-up idea: AirBNB for temporary office space on the weekend.
In the burbs there is an entire division of the govt called "parks and rec" or whatever and I live far from the coasts in an area with a hyperactive parks and rec dept. All you need do is convince one parks and rec functionary that you should run game night and you've got your choice of parks and rec owned rooms for free. If you can't convince them, then you get to pay rent which is of the $100 class you mention and the city self insures.
There are issues, like no dogs or alcohol in the parks and park facilities. And there are first come first serve issues, you are not getting the pavilion on monday nights because thats projection screen movie night, tuesday nights because thats free cover band night, thursdays are free community orchestra concerts, and every friday night the streets are blocked off for a block party. Aside from festivals and holiday events. Of course that's just one busy park, but wednesday nights are open right now.
With respect to "things to do" the problem is defining things to do. If thats defined as drink until 2am and throw up in the street and take some beer googled person home, thats fun but its city only and nothing to do in the burbs. If you want to play a different intermural parks and rec sport every night with the general public in organized games, or have what boils down to club meetings or block/street parties or park concerts or festivals for the heck of it, there's nothing like that to do in the city because corporate has priced the recreation out, yet the burbs are incredibly active, because the burbs are where sober people go for fun. Recreational tree climbing, Adult tae Kwon Do, Learn to Kayak, every sport imaginable...
Only pavilion I'm aware of is at the local arboretum, and it's $12 a person just to get inside there.
I will look into it, though. I also tried to get rooms at one of the local libraries, but they kept saying their rooms could only handle about 25 people. Last meet and greet we had, 45 people showed up (it was at a local coffee shop that has since gone out of business).
I've heard good things about Unitarian Universalist churches.
Participating in a healthy church is way too much work if all you get out of it is the community benefits. Healthy churches:
* feed and clothe people
* take care of the abandoned people in society (foster kids, shut-ins, people with personality disorders, the homeless, people with immigration problems, addicts)
* talk people into apologizing to each other (yeah, like your mom and her sister after all these years)
* educate themselves about local issues (homelessness, drug use, poverty, etc.) with a mind towards helping somehow
* mentor and provide structure for prisoners and ex-prisoners
* are involved in global relief... they've been doing charity-water-style projects for millenia
* do all the normal boring stuff involved in maintaining and funding an organization with facilities
* do intense critical analysis (including studying dead languages) of the Bible and related resources
* provide educational opportunities to underpivileged children
* put on an 90-120 minute A/V production once a week
* provide huge amounts of child care services, including background checks, training, instilling best practices to ensure safety of children, etc.
* provide therapy for people that need it (techniques here vary a lot but every church does it somehow)
* provide mentoring and care for people entering new life stages (newlyweds, new couples, divorcees, recently widowed, etc.)
That is to say it only makes sense to explore if you are interested in God. If you aren't, consider looking for something else and good luck on your journey.
Yes, there are people (many of them) who just show up sometimes for the A/V portion of the weekend, but that's pretty much missing the point. Unsurprisingly, they tend to have a rougher time 'getting' the whole church thing.
I think we're going to give it another try - we've since met some other members who were horrified at our experience. :-/ We'll see. If they want to drive away families with young kids, I figure they'll last another 20 years or so…
If anything, the best I can see aiming for is some equivalent to cultural Judaism, where even non-believing Jews are invited to attend major ceremonies.
Hobby groups and community organizations offer a bit of this, but it seems like there's a fairly specific identity/culture gap that's not easily filled with anything else for non-Jewish atheists/agnostics.
But yeah the demographic of UU members is "High functioning non-contributors"
What's a 'big, public decision'? The Bible is very clear that there is such a thing as sexual immorality and that same-sex relationships qualify. I've heard arguments that a long series of translation errors means that certain kinds of same-sex relationships are fine, but even so, the Bible does say there is such a thing as sexual immorality. I haven't seen a church that is fine with homosexual acts that also has a coherent position on those passages of scripture.
The only coherent position that's possible is that the Bible is just a good book with a lot of good ideas, but I'm not sure how to organize a community around that principle.
Let's say I put my foot in my mouth and hurt someone's feelings and need to apologize. There is a Bible verse in which Jesus said that we need to prioritize reconciliation over religious habits. If I thought the Bible was just a pretty good list of suggestions, I could easily ignore that teaching because <insert reasonable excuse here>.
That is to say, I don't really how to remove scriptural authority and still have a clear understanding of who God is and what that means to us.
Then again, as Scot McNight makes undeniably clear in the opening chapters of The Blue Parakeet, everybody picks and chooses: it's just a matter of degree.
People are attracted to confidence, so when the preacher, members and staff continuously and confidently proclaim their certainty in that which is difficult to believe, attendance and membership swell. People with marginal faith would fit in better at a liberal church, but mostly they're turned off by it.
Hmm I've actually been to Catholic Mass where the congregation is exclusively white haired and the local prosperity gospel rock music church where the average congregation age must have only been 25. You can guess the long term demographic result.
I'll throw out a dissenting opinion to the majority view that only non-mainline churches are possible. I met a very cool Catholic priest who had a long entertaining presentation along the lines of if you can't stand one guy on TV or can't stand one guy at your local Catholic church, that's OK because there's a billion of them and if you can't find one part per billion that offends you, you're not paying enough attention, and if you can't avoid that one part per billion, you're just complaining for fun and are not trying hard enough.
* Not agreeing with the doctrine of Eternal Conscious Suffering
* Not agreeing with Substitutionary Atonement
* Not agreeing with the Exclusivity of Salvation through Christ
And as you say pub attendance is down by a lot too.
I'm fairly alone in this, and I say Ex-Christian to indicate I'm not Atheist but I don't know if that's true. Anyway, this is something I've been struggling with a lot. I just spent 3 hours last night talking to a Power salesman, because we had a good time chatting and I don't get that outside my friends and work. There is no forced place for me to talk to acquaintences.
Honestly, if I didn't disagree so strongly with the theology of the LDS (Mormon) church I'd go back to that. They are FANTASTIC for kids, parents, events, etc. They instill great morals (other than homophobia and some other things I disagree with). But they are in general very nice people.
So where do I go for a "third place" without God being involved, but I still get the, "hey man we missed you last week, where were you." and "Have you given your money to God lately?"
Sorry this struck a nerve, and I'm almost ready to go back to the LDS church just so Sam has people he knows but to try to counter the Theology by exposing him to other beliefs as well. IDK.
I think that if you bring your kids to church, they'll still look to you for what to believe (or not to believe!). Be straight with them, though. Tell them that you're just going there to have something to do. My parents pretty much said that and I didn't have any problem with it. Maybe ask them not to repeat that in front of others though.
I haven't been, so maybe I'm wrong about there being any kind of spiritual focus to the group, but I might describe my coworkers as an ex-Christian (who's fairly bitter about it) and...well, the other guy, I'm not sure. Maybe "theist"? My impression was that they're an open-minded and diverse group of people. Maybe you can find something similar in your area.
The major lack of easy association to the group is something that is hard to replicate in the nonsecular space. There is nothing strongly compelling about a group that's focus is too general, and the difficulty to bridge the gap from outsider to inclusion can be too high for a group that is interesting.
You mean other than the focus on God and morality?
There are a bunch of related issues I'd like to discuss:
1. Church attendance isn't available to everyone. Specifically, LGBTQ folks are often excluded. In a broader sense, does church attendance still make you happy and reduce alienation if you don't agree with the church's dogma? You claim that "Whether you actually donate and believe everything that is said isn't really a factor" but in my personal experience that was a very large factor.
2. Why do people believe that this is unpopular to discuss? You're not the first person I've heard claim this.
3. Instead of comparing church-attendance to non-church-attendance, is there data which compares church attendance to attendance of other social groups (clubs, activity groups, etc.) which meet weekly?
4. Have there been any attempts to replicate the benefits of church with secular community organizations; i.e. a group that meets weekly and someone gives a talk about some topic (science!)?
I have been to a lot of churches and I've never seen this happen.
> Why do people believe that this is unpopular to discuss?
The Bible offends people. And it's very strange to discuss church participation without discussing God and the Bible.
For example, I believe creating a godless (or even God agnostic) church will be ultimately a dead end (at least in the long term). I'd be interested to read any research about these things, but I'm skeptical that it's even possible to study these things scientifically. Church dynamics play out over generations. You really need to watch organizations over many changes of leadership to see if they're really successful.
I realize that some people reading this reach for an empirical, practical approach to discovering whether it's possible to recreate the benefits of church without the theism. I'd be interested to hear what happens, but I suspect we'll all be dead before all the implications of the experiment are known. I'm not sure waiting around for a series of definitive studies is a good plan.
The Bible teaches that you can't have love without truth (1 Corinthians 13:6). Love without truth isn't really love at all. To take one particular, teaching people to be agnostic about who God is or even whether He exists isn't really loving in the long run, no matter how nice the intentions are.
And there's some real danger of self delusion in editing the Bible. If we are the ultimate judges of what parts of the Bible count, we become the ultimate judges of Truth. In contrast, it's consistent to trust the scriptures and the God of the scriptures. But if you take that objective source of Truth away, what keeps us honest about who God is? When there is no objective source of Truth, people create a false god in our own image. One that's cold and harsh. Or one that thinks love involves money and power. Or one that only hugs and never rights wrongs.
Anyway, I've never heard a good answer from a Unitarian about how they know what parts of the Bible are good. It generally boils down to their own feelings and experience. Typically phrased like, "I can't see how God could...." As if anything we don't understand is automatically false.
Anyway, Unitarians are generally nice people, but the ones who are Christian are heavily editing the commandments of Jesus from the Bible. They're very close to practicing another faith. It makes about as much sense to me as a Christian attending a mosque or synagogue.
The accountability and shared search for applied Truth is where the meaning is. I don't see how UU churches provide either well. In other words, a church needs to be able to fire a pastor for heresy without being hypocritical. Otherwise, the word 'church' has started to become a synonym for the word 'nonprofit' or 'club' or 'fraternity'.
because youve never seen a gay person be escorted out of a church doesnt mean the church is welcoming to homosexuals.
For one example, as recently as 1996, the Catholic Church ran slave-labour camps in Ireland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Laundries_in_Ireland
When these camps were eventually shut down, some within the Church defended them, claiming they had done nothing wrong but had instead provided a service by enslaving these women. Not something many sane people want to be associated with.
I grew up with a very tight church community. I simultaneously miss it and have claustrophobic nausea every time I think about it.
The problem for me (as well as many others I know), is that the tradeoff isn't worth it. There is an entire generation of people who are receptive to religion and the church community, but who are completely at odds with the traditional interpretations of religion that preach intolerance and other backward moral positions. The so-called 'contemporary' churches that have been sprouting like weeds have addressed this somewhat, but scant few are actually progressive thinkers, rather than just traditional churches that play religious rock music. I would love to be a part of a church community, but not if it means I'm constantly inundated with a message that runs counter to everything I believe in.
The question is whether the decline of the church in America is a symptom of other things besides the issues mentioned in the article and elsewhere (eg: churches being too connected to money and power, too focused on rules, too intolerant, too judgemental). Most unchurched still believe, so if it's just those things, then America is merely ripe for a disruptive church that would correct the current modern America church sins.
However, from what I've seen with more liberal churches that exist, the crowd is elderly and small. So I think that there's been a bit of a greater societal shift. "Make an atheist church" is not a solution, because that style just does not work for a more connected, global, diverse world where individualism is more valued. Look at this thread; many people in this thread are rejecting church because the pressure to "conform to the norm" is not worth the community gain.
Is it possible to gain the benefits of community, without sacrificing the benefits individualism? (I personally think the sins of the collective tend to be worse than the sins of the individualism, so I personally would not want to see that balance shifted to the sort of conformity many churches seem to demand.)
A good book called "Counterfeit Gods" by Timothy Keller explores this and other topics from a Christian perspective.
His argument is that work and many other things in life are inherently good and part of our purpose as humans, but not when they consume us. Idolotry is what happens when a "good" thing becomes the "ultimate" and it corrupts who we are at the core.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2014/...
I believe, however, we would do well as a civilization to study what The Church (capital letters on purpose) has done well in the last 2000 years, strip it of magic and veiled class dynamics, and rebuild it for the social good.
I work as a data analyst for a large social service government agency, and I always joke that we should hire the LDS (Mormon) church to run our social welfare programs. Well, sans God and some nasty sexism and LGBT hatefulness.
Also, you're painting a picture as though you can come for the other benefits and not have to deal with their primary purpose of existence; kinda like a time-share salesman who offers $500 and a free lunch provided you listen to the 3 hour brainwashing session. It's a disingenuous statement. I know this from being sold the same free lunch - many times :)
Great communities are a consequence of the chosen lifestyle and morality of religious people. You could gather just as many atheists and the response wouldn't be the same.
EDIT: I'm not saying an atheist community would be WORSE than Christianity.
I'm saying it would be DIFFERENT from the Christian one.
You don't give athiests and agnostics enough credit. Religion is not required for morals and community values.
Maybe some atheists also have these, but there's not a guarantee all act this way.
IMO, before founding an "atheist church", I'd at least establish "secular values" and find a community around it.
EDIT: I was called a "delusional idiot" for claiming Christians are defined by fraternity, equality, goodness.
I'm referring to the SYSTEM OF VALUES. Something must be aspired for and desired in social interactions. I'm well aware of "hypocritical Christians", it has nothing to do with them.
If you cannot understand that, I'm not a "delusional idiot"; you are just ignorant.
So you haven't really pointed to a real difference.
christians have no problem being exclusionary assholes who punish people for existing.
IMO maybe christians should get their shit together before they start tying to convince people they are the only way to have good values.
Also, please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11816578.
No true Scotsman!
I didn't use it to refer to "true Christians", but as an ontological description of Christianity.
Atheists as a whole might be less likely to share a system of values, but those who sought and joined such an organization of their own volition (and not because their family dragged them to church every Sunday) are extremely likely to shared its values.
Also, your second argument is ridiculous.
Say you and me go to a party. We both decided this on our own. That doesn't mean we share A SINGLE value.
I don't want to be rude, so instead of replying I'll just bow out of this conversation. Farewell.
You probably value a good party, right?
See, I agree, but probably because I understand "religion" differently than you do.
I would say, though, that love of God is required for morals and healthy community (not sure what 'community values' are). There are a lot of difficult things in this life (addiction, betrayal, chronic illness, corruption, oppression) that are difficult to tackle with bald reason, raw force of will, and whatever teamwork we can scrape together.
I would, at least in the long run. There wouldn't be much point to being a Christian otherwise.
NOTE: That's not to say that a given "Christian" is a "better person" than a given atheist. People, including "Christians" that think that don't really understand Christian philosophy.
Startups cannot change the fact people abandon their elderly parents. They'll just make it worse.
Startups cannot make people less egotistical or make them think about the other. They'll just make it worse.
Startups cannot take the existential anxiety and anger from you. They'll just make it worse.
Can a startup change the core of human nature? Can it change thousands of years of Philosophy? Can it change our socio-economic background? Can it change history?
If you can, then... dear Lord... this is Apotheosis.
People have been forming close-knit communities for all of human history. But modernity has changed things as we now have fewer excuses to interact with each other. People still want and need that sense of community, and I think giving people a way to meet over and over again that's both comfortable and convenient is what is needed.
This doesn't help anyone; it only makes them feel worse. You will only make people have even more superficial relationships - the last thing a depressed alienated individual needs.
Empathetic bonds do not have a "template" - it is based in the individuality of each person in a group. There is not a single statistical model at scale that is able to predict what can take you out of isolation and alienation.
> I think giving people a way to meet over and over again that's both comfortable and convenient is what is needed.
Just confirms what I argued. They crave real emotional bonds, not an easy "fast-food way" to talk to strangers. Long-term relationships are complicated, deep and time-consuming.
In no way do I think startups are a panacea for the ailments of society, but you do realize that they are made up of people?
People can do all the things that you list and more.
Overfunded startups cannot change that.
Overfunded startups can only provide another pill to ignore the problem (making it even worse).
Comments like this break the HN guidelines. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
But on a deeper, intuitive level things rings completely true. It's not something I can prove, it's something that can be proved, but I can't shake the feeling that this carries weight.
This is a world where Facebook use averages 50 minutes per day, and we're going to solve the problem with startups? Really? I tried a popular, profitable app that "gamifies" good habits recently, and almost immediately realized that it was just going to make me take another slice of my day to update an app about the stuff I've already done. Great.
At best, startups can grease the wheels. My 'favorite' apps, the ones that improve my life, are the ones that quietly make easier something I was going to do anyway. They help clear out mental clutter and offer simple reminders, making room for the human things that have to emerge from me rather than a product. So yes, better software and better companies can help, but mostly by getting out of the way; by smoothing over the humanity-eroding problems of other systems and products. This is a wicked problem, one that's entrapping whole societies, and change will have to come from equally large alterations.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11813571 and marked it off-topic.
There are a lot of pretty convincing theories about male death rates and how they're tied to conflict, demonstrations of courage, and clear purpose. I'd never heard the Ireland result, but it doesn't shock me. Obviously some of this is gender-agnostic, like sense of community, but some of it doesn't seem to be; there's a reason that young, unemployed men are the largest risk factor for social instability.
Given all that, it's intriguing to see that what's going wrong in the American heartland is affecting women at least as strongly as men. A lot of the easy answers (unemployment, worsened employment, lack of education) are all things that have mostly changed to the detriment of men (they might be better or worse for women, but we care about recent change and that would imply declining results for men). So that drives me into suspicions that this isn't something we can handwave with "construction took a downturn" or "bad warehouse jobs" - there seems to be a broader anomie transcending those simple problems.
I'm quite attractive and analytically intelligent, but lack social and emotional intelligence (always been a loner due to childhood circumstances).
I feel alienated, I can't relate to others in this rat race. The constant dick waving and competition driven by social media, it's just such a turnoff.
Without motivation or passion for games like I used to, life feels empty. Suicide is my wholehearted plan when this company goes under, it just seems like the reasonable, logical end.
This rant is more of an anecdotal story, take from it what you will - in short, I can relate to this article.
If you are considering self-harm or suicide as an option for you, please reach out for advice or help. Many people have been through similar situations and found the advice of others helpful.[1]
I find that there is little wisdom in the world I like to quote, but here is some:
"And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy."[2]
[1]1-800-273-8255
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata
>If you are considering self-harm or suicide as an option for you, please reach out for advice or help. Many people have been through similar situations and found the advice of others helpful.[1]
Otherwise, I sympathise with your thoughts. One thing that has been helpful for me is realising that throughout time, a small percentage of people have felt this way about their society. It should be considered an expected part of any society, it just happens you are in this group.
I feel like if everything gets a bit too much, I will retreat into the countryside and set up a homestead. Nature does wonders for the soul and connects you to the longer thread of life and human experience, above the noise of day-to-day life and perceived trivialities. Please consider the alternatives, even if they are drastic such as above, before suicide. There will be something, a way of life, that resonates with your soul and makes you feel life worth living again, even if it is at odds with what society and family expect of you. I wish the best for you.
Working IT, especially for a small IT department, can be isolating. You can find yourself at a company where there's no-one else like you. But that's not because there's no-one else like you in the world; it's because you work IT at a sales firm.
I moved into a new neighborhood a few months ago (something I've wanted to do for over 2 years). When the weather started getting nice, I bought a bike and started using it. A lot. I eventually started commuting without a car. I'm not sure if it's the exercise or simply being in sunlight more, but I'm feeling better than I have in 10 years, and I'm much happier. It seems that other feelings are up too, since I'm starting to talk to someone I've had a crush on for years.
Mix things up in your life. Change things. I agree with your thoughts on social media. The way people use it is evil: you only see the good things, but not the everyday boredom and tragedy.
Read books on the subject! I am the same as you. Very logical but not emotional at all and I struggle with empathy.
I recently started reading some of Daniel Goleman's books and learning about emotions in a logical way opened my mind to new ways to think.