I felt loneliness acutely this week. I live alone, spend most evenings alone, and on top, work's coding and research has been slow for 2 weeks. Collaborators are at conferences and on vacation, so I had much less work and much less face-to-face contact than usual. Given that I code on my own, distribute analyses via email, and occasionally meet if people are around, I barely talked to people some days this week.
Going home feels so meh... I can watch more Sherlock Holmes videos (Jeremy Brett!), rewatch Parks and Rec or The Office, or work on music or art, but there is no one to share with, no one to quip with, no one to engage with on my passions. I just kinda laze about without more contact and stimulus.
And I do have a better social circle now than I have since I left home at age 18...minus the daily familial, non-work interaction. I can't wait to hit the phase of life with a partner and/or family living with me.
If anyone in Providence, RI wants to hang, let me know!
It's like saying attend local evangelical church. The people you meet will be potential friends for some types of people. For other types, not so much.
Good point. Although maybe a good percentage of people can imagine finding a social group at one or the other, noting that not all churches are evangelical in either theology or culture. Meaningful shared group experiences are important.
Virtually all churches have some sort of theology that they preach, and if you think it's a bunch of BS, it's not going to go well for you there. You can keep your mouth shut about it, but eventually the fact that you're living a lie will get to you.
My anecdote: I went to yoga the same night at the same small studio for years. Mostly the same people showed up every week but I didn't find it to be an atmosphere good for socialization at all. I don't know at what point in a yoga class you'd have time for conversation.
Maybe afterwards when people are gathering up their stuff and heading out. There is always something to talk about, i.e. how you liked the class, was it hard or easy, etc.
This may vary a lot depending on ages, genders and past class experiences. If you're male and the class is largely not, trying to strike up conversations may get you quickly labeled 'creepy pickup artist.'
Some might think that but it doesn't really matter. You can meet tons of people who'll just want to chat and hang out. I do it and I see other males do it.
I get you, not every studio has that kind of vibe. I go to a few different ones, and I've made tons of friend at one of them, while talking to people at other ones hasn't been as fruitful.
A good longer play to bust out of that is to start working out of an independent cafe. Find one with a lower rate of laptop jockeys but that still has a couple.
Bounce around until you find one that feels right: a good amount of regulars, people doodling, and bullshitting with baristas.
Show up a couple times a week, drop into the odd conversation. And be ready to say “anyone want to grab a beer” come quitting time.
This is just about the fastest (week to a month) way to find yourself a new in person social circle.
It's a good idea, but I don't don't know about the fastest. I'd recommend your idea and a series of neutral/specific hobbies/sports that give you a wider breadth
No doubt that you’ll have people to chum around with at a meetup. None whatsoever. And it’s a great thing to do both socially and professionally.
I’d say though that the people you meet while shooting the shit at a cafe are more likely to be “general friends” that are based more on shared personalities and humor than a shared interest. As such, these types of friendships feel/are less utilitarian
Do you mean like going to lots of cafes literally full-time (~8 hours a day) or something? Otherwise how do you possibly bounce around lots of cafes and figure out who the regulars are within just a week?
A cafe or a bar is nothing but a "third space". Something outside of home and work. So don't take it literally. It can be the gym/dance/music/sports clubs/gardening/church/volunteering/fishing/libraries etc etc. Look for that "third space" which aligns with your interests, needs and values and keep visiting.
This is great advice! (I also agree with OP's sad lack of connection in America. It is there but it is work to find it sometimes)
Also great:
Volunteering. You're guaranteed to meet some good people because these are other people that are interested in (1) working together (2) helping people (3) donating their time. The very worst-case scenario is that you don't make friends, but have helped somebody in need. =)
Sports. Grown-up recreational sports are nothing like the (often hostile) world of sports you might remember as a kid. Generally very supportive places. Co-ed leagues tend to be more easygoing. If you're a beginner, pay for some lessons. For example... lots of tennis coaches out there. If you are healthy enough to move around you can learn to play a pretty decent game of tennis in not much time and with less $$$ than you'd spend on a new Xbox. Obvious direct and indirect benefits as well.
I am allergic to cigarette smoke. Whatever gathering/party it is, some always light up cigarettes and that party literally ends right there for me. So, I have given up on conventional social gatherings. Even people I play sports with (I am a regular at badminton and football/soccer) smoke when we hangout.
I have always loved travelling so that's what I do every weekend - to some town or hills or a beach or trekking somewhere. Treks are where I meet quite some people and they don't smoke, at least not there.
Yeah, wow. Can't remember the last time I had to deal with unwanted cigarette smoke.
Plus all the smokers I know (not many left!) smoke outside like considerate, normal human beings so there's no way anybody would be forced to really encounter their smoke.
When I wasn't working in the office, I did my work in coffee shops during grad school. I still try not to work at home now, and walk to a local coffee shop if I need to work on a weekend. Working in a public place made grad school more tolerable. Even though I was doing my work, I felt like part of my community and I was able to interact with other people. I even did make some friends doing it.
It sounded to me like WhompingWindows is a grad student, so I heartily endorse they try this approach. Just be in public spaces more. It helps.
I'm also single (again), almost 40, do sport twice a week (with people) and usually go outonce a week with somebody. I because I wanna see other people than just the guys on work an friends, I use for example public transportation for going to work.
I had the same situation. A non sustainable life. With her all changed. I go to the gym so she does not have a skinny boyfriend. When I find something good at netflix I wait until she is home and we can watch it together. When I find a nice place, I remmember it so I can show her the nice bench under that tree in my hometown.
I always have flashback about the time I moved to another city without family bondings. Then I smiley because it's over.
No, dependency breeds contempt. If he values the relationship he needs to remain independent, i.e. have his own mission in life and not just live for his partner.
Yeah, I think the term is really "integrate". While I'm not dependent on my wife, there are things that I trust her to do and things she trust me to do, and we don't even think about them anymore because my partner is handling them. You give up stuff because your partner has got them. You sort of sag into each-other as people.
A life with your significant other shouldn’t be about “dependence” once you start basing your self worth and happiness on your SO, it gets a lot harder when you are upset with each other (it will happen) or even when you want to do something that they don’t
- or vice versa.
Either one of you can also start feeling rejected when the other person just wants some alone time.
My wife and I have our own lives that we happen to share with each other, but at least from my perspective, if she were to somehow vanish one day, my life would be immeasurably worse for it.
I really don’t want to imagine coming home to a big empty house.
I agree completely. But, it is too easy to lose yourself in your relationship and forget who you are. Lately, I’ve had to make a concerted effort to increase my social circle from basically zero since I got married.
It just “happens”. I moved across town (metro area - across town is literally over an hour away with traffic), my friends and I all became busy with our own lives and i woke up one morning and realize that my family had become my whole life (not in a good way). Between that and my career I had no friendship circle and I stopped just doing things by myself to recharge. It didn’t help that most of friends were female. Of course that doesn’t work out too well when you’re married.
I had to actually start purposefully keeping in touch with friends and former coworkers as I changed jobs every couple of years and when I saw an old high school classmate (from over 20 years ago) that I was “friends” with on Facebook, I made an effort to reach out to him and another classmate to meet for drinks.
You’re quibbling about language I think. It sounds like to you, depenence means an incessant need. Like a chemical dependency.
But that’s not implied by dependence. It just means you depend on that person for that thing sometimes. It means life would be tough if they stopped providing it. It doesn’t mean you would fall apart or become unable to function.
Certainly there are things people want to depend on their partner for and things they don’t. But none of it is universal. It’s totally individual. Someone might want to be financially self sufficient. Another person would feel totally safe bringing $0 to the relationship. Neither is a bad choice, it depends on whether that’s something you’re comfortable depending on your partner for, and whether they’re comfortable dependably providing it.
That was my mistake in my last relationship. Everything I did alone and loved it absolutely - sometimes even more, I started doing pretty much "only with her" and after we parted ways that has been the most difficult part - I kind of forgot how I was happy, active, engaged with just being myself and not with anyone else necessarily.
Excellent advice. Also, you have to do it for yourself, because you want to be the best version of yourself possible, not because you think it's what someone else wants.
not because you think it's what someone else wants.
But you appreciate the work you went through to attain those heights that much more when you have someone to see the view with, who appreciates it as much as you do.
Which IMO is the best part of "working on yourself", and "improving yourself". Doing it for yourself is absolutely great and can make for a wonderful lived experience. But having someone to share it delivers great sense of validation--as creatures who like to procreate, we're always going to desire that.
100% agree. And sharing that view with someone who has walked (much of) the path with you is infinitely more fulfilling. It makes it real. Otherwise it's just a tree falling in the woods.
Having that kind of deep relationship is so rare these days, to anyone who has the pleasure of experiencing it.. cherish it forever!
Based on my own experience of being with someone for 10+ years, I can attest it takes a lot of patience, compromise, trust and hard work (from both parties).
Chances are good that people will become dependent on each other at some point in their lives anyway, especially with those you plan to grow old with. And that is completely fine. Doesn't mean that you need to identify yourself through your partner or friends. I do think this get interpreted wrongly too often, since a fundamental part of a relationship or friendship is having someone you can depend on in times of need.
Of course you're right. Nevertheless I think it's healthy to pursue interests that don't necessarily involve your partner and, perhaps more importantly, not to neglect other friends - otherwise a potentially failing relationship might feel like losing everything, because it actually is.
Then when she develops more serious health or mental problems, and you have nobody to help look after your children, relationship therapy has burned through a couple therapists, and you're telling each other how lonely you each are but avoid real conversations because they inevitably lead to more loneliness, then you will again have a new perspective. Good luck.
Please don't do this here. You're welcome to share your own experience, if that's what you're alluding to here, but not to rhetorically put it onto someone else.
I guess I am going to be the only person to defend this statement. I see where you are coming from and I’m willing to give you the benefit of a doubt that you meant the “hypothetical you”.
But to use the old cliché- it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
Having the childcare load shift due to a partner's health issue is something that will happen. I have been there and it isn't easy. But personally I was happy to step up and am proud of how I acted in that moment. Sorry to hear about what sounds like your more negative experience.
PSA: People happily burbling about what works for them and their partner in their relationship are not judging nor body policing anyone else and should not be treated like they are.
My read on that comment:
"I can't be arsed to go to the gym regularly for my own benefit, but I'm happy to do so to please her and I'm all the healthier for it. win-win!"
There's no need to read aggression in my comment or to reply like that. I was simply stating this for readers who might feel self-conscious about being skinny, as I did when I read the comment. Western culture very much shames skinny, healthy men so I thought it was a useful reminder.
There's no need to read aggression in my comment or to reply like that.
I mirrored the framing of your comment. If it feels ugly to you for me to reply in that manner, maybe think about that. Because that's the crux of my point.
There are good ways to promote body positivity. Making comments that look like a personal attack on someone else for simply being happy about their current choices isn't really one of them.
American culture very much shames thin, healthy men because they're not fat like everyone else. I've been told many times "you need to eat more!" (and they weren't talking about healthy food either), even though my weight is right where it should be. As you might expect, the people saying this are all overweight.
Being fat is normal now in American society, and anyone who isn't is seen as a deviant.
When we met I was skinny AF. I started gym and now I no more feel awkward when I see pictures with me and her. But the main profit of gym is in my mind. I'm more tolerant about everything. When people do shit I can act with a clear mind and without mental agression.
It can be surprising what exercise can do for your head. It seems to be something purely physical, but it has certainly made me more active in other ways. It's easier to say "yes" to activities when you have more energy, and that's what exercise does to you.
I think of skinny and fat as opposites, backed up by word uses like the "Fattypuffs and Thinifers" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fattypuffs_and_Thinifers - it's amusing that people go to the gym because they don't want to be fat, and people go to the gym because they don't want to be thin.
Are there other things in life where people go to the same place for, at a glance, opposite reasons?
Technically they’re both at the gym, but they’re probably doing mostly non-overlapping activities in separate spaces. (Which is a shame because building muscle mass is an often overlooked way to lose weight)
There are different things you can do at the gym, but more than that, with many things, the best/healthiest place to be is between two extremes rather than on either end.
Not just with weight, but with nearly everything in life: try to find a balance. Between time for yourself and spending time with others, between socialism and capitalism, almost every -ism, belief or drive taken to extremes becomes harmful, but can be a useful contribution to a balance between different concerns.
In any case, I used to hate working out, and always had terrible posture. I've been doing crossfit for half a year now and improvements are visible to a lot of people around me. I don't want to bulk up, but better posture is good for anyone.
I don't know what the music scene is like in your area, but there is a vast plethora of people who want to compose/improvise with others. You can turn your coding/art-fu into a social asset if you see how to use it.
libcinder, openframeworks, pure data, faust, three.js, tone.js, there are a multitude of things regular musicians could use but don't know about.
>Going home feels so meh... I can go work through more Sherlock Holmes videos or Netflix series or work on music or art, but there is no one to share with, no one to talk to throughout the day, no one to engage with on my passions. I just kinda laze about without more contact.
Invite someone over!
>If anyone in Providence, RI wants to hang, let me know!
I actually live in Cranston, lol. You like biking? Cryptocurrency? Music production?
Hecks yeah! I bike around East Bay Path, Blackstone River Path, I also love to ride around the Boulevard on the East Side.
What kind of music are you into? I play piano, a buddy of mine is into guitar and Linnstrument. We may be having a board game night tonight actually, been looking forward to it, LMK if you want to stop by.
I'm a lot like you - work from home, spend most of my time interacting with people through non-physical mediums, get very lonely often.
I've found biking to be an exceptional way to meet new people and break out of the lonliness funk I fell into after moving to a new city where I knew no one. Most shops organize group rides at all skill levels, and most cities have bike groups. It's a wildly social sport, and most rides end at cafes or breweries. It gets me out of the house and there's an instant camaraderie that comes with sweating with a group of people for a couple hours on a long ride.
I can relate to every sentence you wrote, minus certain details.
I like and enjoy my coworkers but our respective interests are too dissimilar. The interactions at work never go deeper than the current objective or niceties. This is completely fine (for now) but in the future I would love to be on a true team.
Going home is indeed meh. As much as it feels nice to unwind, I'd much rather unwind with my gang.
I used to be on a sports team and lived morning, day, and night with my boys. Even though life was chaotic, it was incredible to have a gang. One thing I know for certain is that I could do more to gain that back. Short-term I plan on (1) joining an adult sports league and (2) hit up the super interesting people I've met since moving.
But long-term I believe lifestyle redesign is the only solution to our highly atomized world. I look to the past for ideas.
There are different kinds of loneliness. I suppose the worst is when all apply.
You lack family, you have coworkers, you have random humans in the area, you didn't mention any sort of buddy. So have 2 or 3 out of those 4.
I'm bummed about spending the last quarter century without a buddy. Family and coworkers and random humans do not substitute. Maybe I have no time for it, but I also think it takes a certain kind of environment. The shared environment of an Internet-free childhood neighborhood and school created the right conditions.
I find that if I'm going to the gym to work out, I don't much talk to people - when I'm lifting or on the treadmill or whatever, I'm focused on what I'm doing, and everybody else seems to be in the same boat. However, if it's something like a pickup basketball or soccer game, there's always time when you are waiting around between games that there is time for people to interact and chit-chat. Even more so with something like softball, where half the game you have down-time sitting in the dugout waiting to get up to bat.
Pickup Ultimate Frisbee is one of my suggestions, as you're right on about this. There is pickup Ultimate everywhere and people are mellow and friendly. You can use pickupultimate.com to look up local games (it's not complete, but a good start). People will happily teach you how to play -- just stand on the sideline & ask questions. Bring a white shirt and a dark shirt and you're ready to go.
Depends on the gym. If it's just a place where you spend 15 bucks a month and there's a bunch of machines you can use, probably not a meeting place. Would perhaps even be creepy and/or rude to talk to others.
But when you're taking classes with people, or it's a crossfit kinda gym that's totally built around a team concept, great place to meet people.
To me, it seems like gym isn't the place. I've been taking group class for over 4 months. I've not made a single friend in this time. People come on time, do the class, pack up their shit quickly and leave.
It is in bay area, and I go-to my company gym which is fairly busy and big.
I cannot think of anything worse than someone trying to talk to me while I'm at the gym. I'm very regimented, I've got specific exercises (sets and reps) and I'm watching my rest intervals to the second and mentally preparing for the next set. Just thinking about someone interrupting me between sets is giving me anxiety.
I guess it comes down to how you operate at the gym, is it a class, lifting, cardio? For me it would be really frustrating.
When I worked out at 8 am, there were a lot of retired and semi retired people that LOVED to chat.
When I switched to lunch time, hardly any of that, people were in a rush to get in and out.
At 5:30AM I met a lot of regulars and also meet a lot of my wife's gym friends as she had been going at that time for years. But I couldn't do the 5:30am thing, really messed with my sleep. Too worried about getting to sleep early enough.
> I can't wait to hit the phase of life with a partner and/or family living with me.
You're in a phase of life where you could live with others, although there's no guarantee of there actually being a good opportunity near by.
I spent a chunk of my 20s living in a student housing cooperative in Ann Arbor, MI, and for the most part it was a great experience. It was big enough, and enough of the population was grad students, that it was easy to be left alone when that's what you wanted. But it was also plenty easy to find someone up for a game of chess or whatnot at pretty much any time of day.
It was also inexpensive, I still had some space of my own, and while some work was owed to keep the house running it was in practice substantially less than I spend on my own apartment with typically better results.
As someone in the same area, I'm curious if you did this post-grad-school? I can't imagine the co-ops in e.g. Kerrytown are very welcoming of non-students, but I don't know.
Being a non-student, I needed approval from the house. Being student age and working on campus, it was easy to get - but it's sometimes granted to people for whom neither of those is the case.
I lived next door to the co-op at State and Catherine, and there were a few people who lived there who were in their late thirties and definitely not students. I don't know about _all_ of them, but some definitely don't care if you are a student or not.
Unless things have changed in ways that seem very unlikely, every ICC house "cares" in that non-students need house approval and students (generally?) don't. But houses will certainly vary in terms of how easy it is to get that approval. They will also vary along many, many other axes.
There are some good ideas in this thread. I spent a lot of lonely time in my 20s living alone and working from home. One thing is to live in a shared house. That is a way to have people to live with. It worked for me to not be as lonely at times in my adulthood.
The other thing is to get involved with social physical activity, clubs, or volunteering. I played hockey and went to a group fitness gym. I made long term friends there. I am into ham radio and the club where I live is pretty good. I used to volunteer at a kids camp and that was great for making friends with the staff members and doing social things outside of camp.
To me, find where your interests align with social/community activity. Currently, I am trying to get the ham radio club to be more out in the community. We are doing radio communications for a running race this weekend. It is exciting.
I used to live in an area with lots of apartment buildings and had to babysit a friends dog for a couple of weeks. I met a couple of people when I took the dog out at 6:30am because they were doing the same thing. Ran into the same people every day. Plus you always let the dogs visit (sniff each other) so starting a conversation is almost automatic.
Now I have my own dogs. Easy to meet people if you go to obedience, agility, or other dog classes.
With a dog you get all of the above, plus the affection from the dog, plus the additional exercise.
I've had the same experience. There are regulars that I get to talk to most days, and many of them have interesting stories. I'm friends with a retired college professor, lawyer, political activist, journalist, nurse, wedding planner and restaurant manager, fitness instructor. All from hanging out at the same dog park almost every day for a few years now. It only takes 30 minutes a day and makes me feel less lonely.
Dogs are a pain in the ass. They smell bad, and make your home smell bad. They require constant attention. Leaving them at home, locked up, all day long while you're at work working long hours is cruel. Your apartment/condo will require you to pay a big fee to get their poop DNA tested, and when you don't pick up their poop, you'll be slapped with a huge fine. Honestly, it's easier having a child: at least children can go to the bathroom by themselves after a few years, and eventually can feed themselves too.
Do you know how to ride a bike? It's summer and I am sure there are a ton of casual (i.e. non-racing/fitness groups) bike groups that ride around regularly.
Unlike sports or gyms there's a lot more hanging around and chatting, plus you can end up with new destinations. Meanwhile the exercise gives you endorphins.
In my similar sized city there's enough cyclists that there are many different "scenes" depending on what you are looking for, but many overlap so that you'll almost always have a familiar face at one.
Riding a bike for transportation also lets you feel a little more human getting around your city. You may run into people you know.
This is some good advice. Riding a bike gives you a much better sense of community because you see the people and recognise they are the same people you see all the time rather than just another generic car you will never recognise again.
A fiendishly clever brand of meta-level genius propels The Cabin in the Woods, a pulpy, deceivingly insightful send-up of horror movies that elicits just as many knowing chuckles as horrified gasps. [It] comes not only to praise the slasher-, zombie- and gore-fests of yore but to critique them, elaborating on their grammatical elements and archetypal figures even while searching for ways to put them to novel use. The danger in such a loftily ironic approach is that everything in the film appears with ready-made quotation marks around it... But by then, the audience will have picked up on the infectiously goofy vibe of an enterprise that, from its first sprightly moments, clearly has no intention of taking itself too seriously."
I recommend social hobbies. Mine are BJJ and Magic the Gathering. BJJ is great because it can be highly technical but you will meet people way outside of nerd circles. My kids do it and love it as well. It is a hard thing, too, so it keeps the ego in check. You have no choice but to be extremely, intimately close with other humans. The friends I am making are great. There are plenty of other hobbies, but start there.
Brazilian jiu jitsu is correct. It’s a wrestling style.
Compared to many martial arts, BJJ is very interactive in that you learn something new and then immediately put it into practice against training partners. BJJ gyms don’t really do katas (lining up the class to practice poses/moves individually).
This is nice because you get immediate feedback on what works. I’m a small guy. In a real fight I would probably get smashed by any average sized dude, but my experience diving into jiu jitsu has been fun and interesting. It’s a very technique based and strategic game, so my size isn’t as much of a factor as it would be in other sports.
Most gyms do a free trial period. You won’t have any idea what you’re doing for the first month or two, but I think it’s healthy to get humbled once in a while.
California (specifically So Cal) is kind of the Mecca of BJJ in the US, so a gym should be easy to find. Give it a try everyone.
SoCal is not just the Mecca of BJJ in the US, I think it has become the Mecca of BJJ in the world. IBJJF Worlds has been held in Long Beach, CA since 2007. (And was last weekend!)
But, I also submit that the NY area is the central place for jiu jitsu on the US east coast.
Seconded. I've been training Brazilian jiu jitsu for 15 years. For most of that time, friends from jiu jitsu has been half of my social life. When I graduated and moved to a new area by myself for a job, jiu jitsu is how I met people.
Human nature is really weird. I can totally relate to everything you've written, and at the same time, I, as a father and husband, would love to experience a week like that really badly every now and then.
It shows that what people think they want is a silly, shifting goalpost and that "happiness" is an untenable, fictional concept the mind uses to distract itself on its meaningless quest to stay alive.
Insofar as it's possible, not taking your feelings or life seriously is the best tactic I've come to use. But I'm relatively young, so I might be wrong.
And it's pretty vacuous: so, what, don't act on chasing happiness? Feel lonely but act like it doesn't matter and do nothing? Try to exist in a psychologically-inert routine until you die? Yes. xDD Or, you know, do small things to improve things, but don't try too hard because it doesn't seem worth it.
(My exception to this would be superego, rather than id, shit like revolutionary action which has the potential to take you and everybody else into new maxima of well-being IN WHICH you otherwise try to exist in psychologically-inert routines until death -- because that's at least more meaningful than neurotically ping-ponging around for personal maxima of well-being. More return on stress investment.)
Thanks for this comment. I had once reached this conclusion (everything is meaningless anyway, stop worrying about being single&lonely), but had forgotten it.
I don't know that I disagree with everything you've stated, but speaking from experience I do think if you half-ass your attempt at happiness, the grass will definitely be greener on the other side later in life.
Don't make exceptions about the things that make you happy, even if you know the things that make you happy might change down the road.
I think its really important to have your own time in a family. I think its a bit weird to go on holiday by yourself but that is maybe the best way. My wife goes home with the children for a while in the Summer and I'm left by myself and its really great - even when you just learn that you miss them.
Hey man. I'm in Westerly! Occasionally make it into the city. And I'm very much into cycling. Always down to get beers, ride, check out live music, etc.
You make music? Go to meetup.com or craigslist to find other musicians with similar skill levels and ambitions. I'm in my mid 50s and my kids are off at college and I finally have free time, and no friends.
A couple years ago I bought a used bass and amp (again, craigslist) for cheap, dusted off my old skills, then found some other people on meetup.com who want to play music socially for fun and improvement, but don't have the ambition to actually be in a performing group. It is nice to socialize for couple hours every couple of weeks with new people on a non-programming activity. One of the guys is especially compatible with me, and we've met up a couple of times outside of the band.
Anecdotal, of course, but I've found the meetup scene to be terrible in a some places. Most I've seen are inactive, aimed at a specific demographic, or are fronts for scams / MLM's.
The flip side of this is that when you do actively seek out opportunities to share, you can instantly meet a lot of people in one go if you're the one sharing, instead of a spectator.
It does take effort, but opportunities are out there. I went to a "bring your own art" event in SF a couple weeks ago that was a public event on Facebook. I took a photography work I had made. I took a robot I had built to Maker Faire. For tech projects, email event organizers, meetup organizers and ask if you can present at their next event. For art projects consider sharing a unique or interesting story or journey, not just a single piece of art. If you actually do make something cool or you have a good story, you'll be surprised how easy it is to get a few yeses.
When you are the creator/presenter/speaker, you meet people quickly because it's not awkward for others to approach you and ask questions. It's a lot harder to meet people as a mere participant.
Seeking out events you can present or exhibit at is not that easy for everyone. But since you're in Providence, you should be able to find plenty of events an hour away in Boston.
Also, if you have a hard time finding events but you have a critical mass of a few friends in the area, consider hosting an event. It can be as simple as a potluck, which means you basically have to do no work except maybe make 1 dish yourself and clean up afterwards. Let your friends know it's okay to bring +1 or +2. Many times they will. You'll meet a lot of new people that way too.
Makes me wonder - is the abundance of choice that makes us lonely? True, deep relationships take time. Your social circle is larger, but you haven't gotten the chance to develop any deep bond because neither you nor they have enough time for each other - because there's so much else to do.
>Makes me wonder - is the abundance of choice that makes us lonely?
While this would explain loneliness in cities, I doubt it. I believe it's unrealistic expectations from TV, social media, newspapers, both positive and negative, about relationships and people in general. Just like pornographic movies affect one's love life, seeing unrealistic depictions of social life destroy natural curiosity about other people, lead to doubts and suspicions etc. ... The availability of the option to avoid other people does its part.
What you describe sounds more like FOMO. I don't think that's the same. One can be perfectly detached from social media and television and still experience loneliness. It's more a reflection of unmet biological needs. We're physically detached from one another, on the social spectrum.
I know this is a bit out of the blue; but going to improv classes, and book clubs, were really good ways to get out and meet interesting people. I wish you the best of luck in your socialization endeavors.
A friend of a friend told me that people, such as diplomat families who have to quickly settle but often relocate, will deliberately but routinely eat at the same restaurant, say, every Thursday evening. After a couple of weeks they'll find staff or other regular diners will engage with them and build relationships.
Being killed is probably a bit hyperbolic for most countries, but I would imagine it means that keeping such a predictable routine in a country where you are inherently a target (read: white people in many third world countries with high rates of robbery/violence) can make it easy for you to be targeted for robbery. Or, in limited places, terrorist acts. If the dishwasher's cousin is a small time local criminal and mentions the white family arrives and leaves at a super predictable time, his group of friends may get drunk one night and decide it's an easy payday.
It's a bit easier as an expat because there are lots of other expats also looking to meet people. Very freshman year of college type vibe in my experience. Your problem becomes less making friends, and instead ensuring you make the right friends. There are a lot of dodgy characters in expat communities.
I felt very similar but at the age of 20 I shut myself indoors and it's been like that ever since. Everyone has long forgot about me. I turned 31 an hour ago.
I think I just got used to it. I was lucky that I inherented a small flat, although in bad condition and location. I score some freelance gigs time to time to keep myself alive. I have tried online communities or friends so to speak but I don't really get it how it's done. I didn't have a problem in real life.
I read HN always every night before I fall asleep. In 2008 or so my show HN made it to first page. I was very happy that say. Genuine happiness. I might have lacked being a human now.
Hopefully you're using a redshift/flux type app when you read HN immediately before bed, otherwise the blue light from the screen will prevent your body from secreting melatonin, compounding any other issues you might be dealing with.
Take up an “extreme” sport. Skiing, SCUBA diving, mountaineering, surfing, windsurfing, paragliding. Become a de facto member of your chosen activity’s local scene.
Or just find a girl, ???, propagate your bloodline into the future.
Like, whatever, man. It’s over when they’re packing the dirt in your grave.
Also, if I may be so presumptuous as to offer a suggestion: try contacting someone from earlier in your life. Many times, people are lost in their own world, their worries and problems and life just happens as it always does. However, they are very likely to be happy to suddenly hear from an old friend. I have been on both sides of this and it was ultimately a good experience. In one case, I also happened to have contacted someone at an opportune moment and saved them from self harm.
Again, a very happy birthday to you and I hope that, this year, you find joy in life.
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I had a bout of this about 20 years ago, so I made a rule for myself: I wasn't allowed to decline an invitation. If somebody proposed doing something together and I was able, I had to do it. That made a huge difference in my life. I did a lot of things that were... unexpected. (A few examples: I joined an ultimate frisbee league. I went skydiving. I joined a church group. I went to a strip club. I attended a wedding.) It wasn't all fun or even pleasant, but I wasn't lonely anymore.
The internet was just getting started then, so that experiment might work out differently now, but it's worth considering how much of our modern isolation is just a matter of choices.
I think it lasted about 6 months before I completely abandoned it, but I had started to cheat even before then. The main reason I quit was "mission accomplished". I had made new friends, discovered some social activities I enjoyed and was generally happier. But also I noticed some downsides.
One was that people will exploit that rule, even if they don't know about it. That church group would have cheerfully turned me into one of their most dedicated and active members just by inviting me to all the things. They meant well, but I was sending mixed signals by accepting all their invitations even though I wasn't interested in their faith. Once I had been to a few events I had to start saying no.
Another was that once I had a bit of a social life going, I didn't want to let happenstance push me around so much. The choice was no longer between do this thing or stay home and mope; I started to have other options and I didn't want to just end up doing the first thing that presented itself.
All in all, it was a great way to change my habits, but not a good way to live life indefinitely.
I was going to specifically ask how the "joined a church group" went because that seemed to be the example that had the most potential for being a slippery slope to a more complete change of life than you may have been looking for.
I have a family member that pretty much went all-in on came-to-it-later-in-life religion. It really felt like their susceptibility to loneliness was successfully exploited.
As much as I'd like to follow the rule, I think I have an actual, varied social life now, and this would be... Risky.
I've been invited to a violent sounding orgy of the many male, one female kind (always been a dream of the girl's, but I do have someone I'm seeing). In the last few months, also been invited to an open Satanic book reading sessions. Beginner friendly, I had been told.
The second one does not really violate moral or ethical codes, IMO? The first one I know some people might be able to justify, but I brought it up with my girlfriend jokingly, she said I was a dead man if I even thought about it, and that was that :)
It just becomes a slippery slope though, because rules like this are meant to push you towards doing things you don't really want to. Once you start making exceptions, you will find reasons to say no to everything.
Like, I made myself a rule to not buy anything on the first day I see it. All well and good, but yesterday I bought a guitar for about $1500. I had technically seen it in the store before, but this was a different one of the same model, with a much nicer finish, and felt better to play.
Seems like an innocuous exception, but internally I know that I'm going to start impulse spending again. At least now I can (better) afford random bouts of stupidity!
I didn't get into anything that extreme, but I did do some things that made me uncomfortable. That was sort of the point. I stopped when it didn't seem to be serving me well anymore.
I have a similar rule with my wife, that she doesn't know about.
If she wants to do something with me, then I say yes, as long as I don't have a prior commitment, or, you know, am not sick or physically unable. I started this rule with her from the moment we met. I think it is part of why we stayed together all these years, and why we worked out well when so many of my previous relationships didn't.
I love a lot of solitary activities, like reading, writing, single-player games, drawing and painting, learning new things, working on projects that she isn't interested in, etc. Without my self-imposed rule, I would likely decline to do a lot of other activities, especially outside my own interests.
But if she wants to do something or go somewhere or just sit and talk, then I say yes.
My kids are young enough that I don't quite have the same rule with them, and partly because they just want me to do stuff with them and be with them literally all the time, so we are still in boundary-setting phase, but I assume that I will eventually adopt the "as you wish" rule with them as well.
That's not what it's about. It's about doing things. Together. Marriage isn't just about signing your names on a piece of paper; it's a (supposedly) life-long commitment to a team of two people where you are one of the team members. My wife and I do the same thing (and yes, it goes both ways), and we both agree that's the one reason we're such an awesome team.
I don't think "as you wish" is meant to be in resignation but as a wholly committed and happy gesture of love. I'm assuming it's in reference to The Princess Bride, where the character Westley says it as an expression of love for a girl who first takes it as wry compliance.
My last girlfriend was largely the opposite, especially after the relationship had aged some and she seemed to assume we'd be staying together. She was very independent, and didn't really like doing a lot of things I wanted to do, and kept her own friends separate from me and did things with them on the weekend if I was doing something she didn't want to bother with (such as packing up to move in with her).
I ended up backing out of moving in with her because I didn't feel very close to her and that we didn't do enough together. Shortly after, she dumped me by text and ghosted me.
I think this is great advice. I'm not particularly lonely, being married and having two kids, but sometimes my wife and I don't do enough together. We instituted a regular babysitter night every two weeks, and we are required to find something and go out that evening.
But only passively saying yes to everything is not enough. I need to take action and organise something to do with her. And also take initiative to organise things with other friends. Sadly, those friends don't seem to follow this "as you wish" rule.
Great advice and in regards to kids I ended up sitting on the floor with our 18 month old today for over an hour, just blowing bubbles. Watching him learn to blow the bubbles himself and seeing the joy on his face was pretty special.
>I had a bout of this about 20 years ago, so I made a rule for myself: I wasn't allowed to decline an invitation.
That approach works great as long as you are currently getting invited to things. If it's been a year since the last time you were invited to anything, that's not going to solve your loneliness problem.
This is true, but trivial. If nobody ever asks you to spend time with them, you are doing something extraordinary to prevent it: never leaving your house, violent aggression, being drunk all the time, etc. You should definitely deal with that situation first.
But if you have normal interactions with people on a regular basis, you'll get invitations. They might be tiny or tentative or impersonal, but if engage with questions like "Can I talk to you for a second?" or "Would you like a sample of our new Teriyaki Chicken?" or even "Do you have the time?" you'll gradually open yourself up to more possibilities.
I absolutely disagree. Just taking the workplace as an example, I've been at companies where I would hang out with at least one coworker per week and there were companies where I did nothing at all with coworkers outside office hours except maybe the christmas party.
And I do think if you're not in any club (for sports or hobbies or whatever) it gets harder and harder to make friends the older you get (spoken like a true mid-30s person ;). I don't have kids or a dog, so the workplace is next to the best venue to meet new people.
TLDR: I don't think it's in any way rare or weird to not receive invitations if you don't already have a network of friends. This is a catch-22.
Unless you're in solitary confinement, people will invite you to connect with them. It may not take the form of "Hey, let's have a beer after work." It might not be directed specifically at you. But the opportunities are there.
I'm not saying "you must do this, it is the only way." It worked for me at a specific place and time in my life, and that isn't a universal condition. But I don't think we are helpless. Modern urban life may be alienating, but it's not inescapable. If you find that you value human connection more than likes or RSUs or Game of Thrones, you can find a way to have more of it.
Thanks, I was just about to comment something along those lines. It is relatively easy to get back into society if all you need to do is stop declining offers. It is a completely different game if offers happen very rarely. In my case, I've got yet another challenge: I have a disability. And people tend to treat you like sfrm another star. It is really quite a challenge to stay connected if society treats you like an outcast.
I started something similar about 12 years ago...inspired by the movie “Yes man” I started saying yes to every opportunity that I came across.
Wanna have lunch together? Yes!
Wanna go out with us tonight? Yes!
Wanna help me move? Yes!
It really got me out of my shell and made me realize that the reason I was alone is because I was an asshole. People had been trying to include me all my life, but I had always declined :(
For me it's more the opposite, in the last 2-3 years I said no for the first time in 15-20 years because I was more in the mood to do something on my own or just chill and do nothing.
I'm just saying this because in retrospect I think I've never been lonely because I was going out and meeting people at every opportunity that came up and I could never understand people who said "I'd rather stay at home today.". But because I've not got dozens of friends this was still a manageable level and I'd still often would've gone out more.
> "Wanna help me move?" is my favorite. Nothing like getting a free workout with a friend or family. You might even get a dinner out of it too.
Oh cool, nothing like giving up an entire day for the possibility of a permanent back injury or accidentally damaging someone's furniture all because they're too cheap to drop a few hundred dollars on some professional movers.
I've made the exact same rule, as well. I've spent more money because of it, but my life has been much better. Sometimes, a trade-off is necessary. It also makes life much more interesting, and it's really made me grow as a person.
I had a career change away from tech about two years ago, which happens to be the same time I moved to Providence! If you want to grab a drink sometime in the next couple days and chat about parks and rec, let me know!
Here's an idea: stay at a hostel. It's the easiest time you'll have making new friends. They won't last long and they will be young and poor but they'll be very friendly almost immediately. It won't give you true fulfilment but it'll make you not feel lonely for a while.
Another idea: be an expat. Move to a foreign country that speaks a different language and take language classes. First, it'll be a big valuable change, and it'll provide plenty of adventure, and expats are quick to make new friends given the shared isolation. I would recommend China or Taiwan.
Oooooh, thanks for sharing that. I've never heard of Roatan. Heard Honduras is pretty sketchy, but an island like that must be totally different and I'm now adding it on my list of places to visit. It'll help with my travel goals (have to visit another 40 or so countries in 2 years!)
Some other things you can do (which worked for me during a time of loneliness) are:
* be resourceful. For example, reach out to old co-workers or people you enjoyed being with and ask them to lunch or coffee
* go to coffee shops just to be around people
* go out to a movie
* use a dating site or app, if for nothing else but to meet and talk with another person
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a fantastic way to make a ton of friends and feel like you are part of something bigger than yourself. It’s a very “intimate” sport to begin with so forming close relationships is quite natural. The only negative is that serious injuries can and do happen that can take you out of the game for long periods of time (or permanently)
Check out https://www.meetup.com/. There are usually a lot of activities happening there where you can meet new people. I used to go to some photography meetups in south bay and tech meetups too, it was a nice low pressure way to meet new people.
As crazy as this sounds smoking weed can help if you are feeling lonely. It will help you disconnect from outside stimulus but too much and you'll find social interactions not as desirable as they are now.
We are the most connected society in the history but still the most depressed and loneliest one. We have lost the significance of physical presence of someone. Over the years we have evolved to live in tribes, that is why depression was quite rare in Joint families.
Hey, you got a bunch of great people giving you suggestions for what to do. Just wanted to add - hang in there. I'm sure you'll get to a place in your life where you'll feel more connected with someone/less lonely in general.
Yeah the people pushing all these different ideologies basically engineered a culture to be like this. With various ideologies replacing religion (which are themselves really modern religions) that don't really work out the implications of their ideas in any sort of consistent system... instead down with this and down with that, and sure individually those things might be bad but they form some sort of coherent system and when you get rid of a part of that system the whole thing falls apart.
My experience was that established religions got hungry for tithing and thus optimized their messages with new ideas that ignore tolerance and abuse pluralism. Former adherents are more than excused to dissociate with groups that lack transparency, foster cultures of abuse, or otherwise require rigid in-/out-group splits.
The new world views you refer to that former religious adherents adopt aren't usually terribly radical, and it's a thought-terminating pitfall to call them religions or even spirituality. Much improvement over the new cults of the 1970s.
> My experience was that established religions got hungry for tithing and thus optimized their messages with new ideas that ignore tolerance and abuse pluralism.
Monotheism is against pluralism where polytheism was not. That was there from the monotheist revolution.
> it's a thought-terminating pitfall to call them religions
No it's not. Just go listen to what Harari says in his book Sapiens. Ideologies like Feminism, Liberalism, Conservatism, Humanism, etc, are all parts of a modern syncretic religion and their adherents are syncretic believers that mix and match different ideologies to fit their tastes. It's just a bald faced lie that these things are so much different from the stuff they replaced. Buddhism has no necessary Gods as don't some forms of Hinduism.
Respectfully, I disagree with Harari's broad classification(s). As one who has left a high-demand religion in adulthood, I'm keenly aware what the exercise of dogma as a worldview looks and feels like.
A high-demand religion I would guess would be some sort of fringe cult? If so within every one of the modern religions/ideologies there are similar fringe cults that are hate-filled with dogma for everyone else not in line with their ideology. Some feminists hate all men, some communists hate all Capitalists and everything must be done according to Communist dogma even when it's clear that it does not work... etc. The mainstream is usually not what the experience of a fringe cult within that ideology is.
> high-demand religion I would guess would be some sort of fringe cult?
Typically less fringe than you may think. Quoting "Visualizing the Transition Out of High-Demand Religions":
> Subjects include disaffiliated Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Fundamentalist Protestants
Typically these groups express many of the same characteristics as "mainstream" religions due to their age, and share the same elements driving religious decline.
Humans, not thinking abut the ramifications of their actions since, well, forever. Could these changes and fractures be compared to past religious reformation movements? Reformers always like denouncing things.
Luckily for future generations humans are fairly adaptable and I'm sure the rich will be just fine.
I don't think it's a very good analogy. Martin Luther didn't blame early Christians that medieval Catholicism failed to look sufficiently like early Christianity; however, that's roughly what we see today--third-wave feminism wants something that looks very alike chivalry (esp with regard to sexual purity, women as inherently moral and men as inherently immoral, deference to women, etc) and blames traditionalists (not first-wave feminists) that we live in a less chivalrous world. I'm sure this observation will be unpopular; hopefully it at least sparks some interesting debate.
Analogies are never that great and I think it only works as a reminder that we have and, are continuing to evolve and change in many facets as a global cooperative group of individuals.
The observation does nothing to further the debate because it assumes a broad unified opinion about a group of individuals. Do third wave lesbians want chivalry?
'we live in a less chivalrous world'
chivalrous - adjective - (of a man or his behavior) courteous and gallant, especially toward women
Could just live in a more courteous and gallant world and leave out the gendered nonsense?
Also the idea that a specific gender is inherently moral / immoral is also ridiculous generalization and shouldn't be made my anyone.
> The observation does nothing to further the debate because it assumes a broad unified opinion about a group of individuals
These objections are exhausting. Yes, there are exceptions to every generalization. Generalizations are the only way we can reasonably describe large groups of people. In this case, the individuals in question are more or less defined by this shared opinion, so it's definitely a fair, constructive observation.
> Do third wave lesbians want chivalry?
I don't know what a "third wave lesbian" is. Also, to be clear, I doubt any third-wave feminist would say they want chivalry; but when you look at the things they advocate for ("believe all women", etc) and how they treat each gender, it looks like chivalry taken to extremes.
> Could just live in a more courteous and gallant world and leave out the gendered nonsense?
Sure we can, but it's not consistent with a traditional or third-wave-feminist worldview. Note that this isn't a criticism of any particular worldview.
> Also the idea that a specific gender is inherently moral / immoral is also ridiculous generalization and shouldn't be made my anyone.
Sure. I'm only making observations about different worldviews, not prescribing any particular worldview.
It is exhausting, but isn't not an objection, it is fact. You have to meet people where they are if you ever hope to know them. Using a single label, in this case 'third-wave', to describe someone is so incomplete and I would disabuse you of thinking about people this way.
"believe all women" is a slogan. Slogans are handy because they save time. They are easy to chant. They build unity. If you were to ask 100 'feminists' what does believe all women mean to you, there would be many answers.
> Sure we can, but it's not consistent with a traditional or third-wave-feminist worldview.
I never said I wanted a traditional or a third wave world, just kinder; there are other options.
> It is exhausting, but isn't not an objection, it is fact. You have to meet people where they are if you ever hope to know them. Using a single label, in this case 'third-wave', to describe someone is so incomplete and I would disabuse you of thinking about people this way.
"Generalization" doesn't mean that you believe the observation is true for exactly every individual in the group. That a generalization doesn't hold for every individual in the group doesn't imply that generalization isn't useful. Now can we be done errantly nitpicking well-established semantics?
> If you were to ask 100 'feminists' what does believe all women mean to you, there would be many answers.
Many variations of the same theme.
> I never said I wanted a traditional or a third wave world, just kinder; there are other options.
You're agreeing with me rather aggressively. I didn't claim or imply that you wanted any particular kind of world.
> Now can we be done errantly nitpicking well-established semantics?
These semantics are mental shortcuts that are harmful in this case to actually solving the problems we face. They frame the issue narrowly, which leads to a single viewpoint coloring the entire population.
> Many variations of the same theme.
Do you agree/disagree with all of them?
> You're agreeing with me rather aggressively. I didn't claim or imply that you wanted any particular kind of world.
I thought you were suggesting that only one or the other could exist, or that I needed to choose one.
> These semantics are mental shortcuts that are harmful in this case to actually solving the problems we face. They frame the issue narrowly, which leads to a single viewpoint coloring the entire population.
The population is largely defined by that fairly narrow viewpoint. Generalizing isn’t harmful for people who understand the term, and I won’t pander to those who don’t.
> Do you agree/disagree with all of them?
I disagree with the central theme—that gender is useful and perhaps even primary for establishing credibility and/or guilt. Theoretically some women may have used the slogan to mean “pizza is delicious”, in which case I would have to agree, but this falls well outside of the normal parameters of communication and sentiment (which have regrettably been challenged too often already over the course of this conversation).
Multigenerational housing is all fun and games until you're somehow nonconforming enough for it to be palpable. I feel like people aching for multigenerational housing really don't know the downsides of those arrangements.
I would argue that the decline of the family is directly linked to feminism, or better stated, the liberation of women from the home and from conservative sexual values. The two forces behind that are birth control and women entering the work force. These two are magnified by online dating and social media. I am not saying at all that these are bad things, just that we have yet to see the true effects of feminism on society. Again, I am not asserting that feminism is a bad thing, just that when modes and patterns of societal interaction break down after hundreds of years (or more) of existence, we should take a step back and think about what is really happening.
It's too early to tell how this will play out, but we as a society have underestimated the effects and consequences of rapid change. It may be another one hundred years before we can look back and understand what we are currently going through.
I have heard this argument before, and think it is extremely overstated. Our current version of feminism has expanded across almost all of the west. Technologies like birth control and economies/technologies that allow for women to be in the workforce at mass scale were simply impossible in the past. It's really an apples to oranges comparison, and is an intellectually dishonest one at that.
Can you please provide examples. Birth control has only been available for a short period of history, so its not obvious to most of us what societies you are talking about and how their liberation of women actually affected the society.
>Birth control has only been available for a short period of history,
If you are talking about the pill sure, but there are forms of birth control that date to ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, And China. Not to say these methods were effective and the book of Genesis did regress things a little with God slaying Onan for practicing the old pull out method, teaching that procreation is for reproduction only.
Notable mention for flat/declining wages since the average cost of raising kids probably doesn't get cheaper as time goes on.
Imaging paying your you and your spouse's student loans, then having two kids and paying their student loans or putting that debt on their shoulders. Much easier before tuition skyrocketed.
Real wages, wages adjusted for inflation, have been flat. So people arent exactly getting poorer (on average) in the US. You're right to point some stuff out, medical care and housing have inflated at disproportionately high rates. Higher education as well, but that's elective. Problem is even in countries, like several European states, that offer state incentives or support or regulation to take the load off parents, birthrates are still low among the educated and well to do natives. In fact I'm pretty sure that's a general trend across the world, the poor and less educated are typically more likely to have kids than people who should be financial more capable of supporting kid, at least up to a certain level.
So economics is probably a weak explanation. Personal freedoms, especially for women, is probably the root cause of low birthrates.
Not feminism, the establishment of the discrete nuclear family as a social and labor unit divorced from kinship groups. When you've already pared down the web of fundamental relations to 2-5 person cells, your already only a step away from complete individual social collapse.
That doesn't even touch on the breakdown of community organizations (churches, fraternal orders, what have you).
Arguably this all comes down to economics/capitalism.
Unpaid favors to family aren't measured in GDP and can't be taxed. Breaking down extended family into individual workers is good for the economy. Having stay-at-home moms work while sending their kids to group childcare is also more economically efficient.
Surprised you were downvoted. This is a very good point: unpaid labor still exists, it's just not counted, either for taxation or economic statistics purposes. That means that everyone who has an incentive to optimize these metrics (meaning most people within the for-pay, capitalistic economy) has an incentive to favor policies that replace unpaid labor with paid labor that makes the transfer of value explicit.
You see this trend in other areas as well: the gift economy of the early Internet became the advertising economy of today, the open-source economy of the early 90s now has Github etc. offering rewards for creators, the karma economy of early social media contributors is replaced by the Patreon model today, the idea of driving a drunk friend home is replaced by calling them an Uber, the practice of quietly giving a family in need money is replaced by GoFundMe, and so on.
There are pluses and minuses to this: it's certainly been good for the economy, and generates liquidity where previously there was none, but it's done a lot to destroy social relationships and trust.
I think you're right that it comes down to economics/capitalism. But I doubt it's a conspiracy to boost GDP and tax revenue, as you allude by saying "is good for the economy". I think you're closer to the mark with "economically efficient" -- what seems a more likely explanation to me is comparative advantage:
Sure, grandpa might be a great primary caregiver while mom and dad are at work, but he might also not be. Chances are low he has any training in early childhood education, though he may have raised his own kids -- but he's tautologically not as young as he used to be. But he might have training in law, or medicine, and might plausibly be very valuable as a consultant for the hours that he's instead watching little Ephra.
The licensed daycare in the neighborhood, by contrast, is set up to care for children, and -- depending on grandpa's hourly rate -- might do so at a lower cost. The folks there are (maybe?) trained in early childhood education, and have years of experience handling 1-2 year olds, or 2-3 year olds, or 3-4 year olds, at least compared with grandpa who might only have a year or two of experience with each.
> the establishment of the discrete nuclear family as a social and labor unit divorced from kinship groups.
Where has the nuclear family ever been divorced from kinship groups. A nuclear family is by definition part of an extended network, because mom and dad are both parents of one nuclear family as well as children of two others. Without a strong nuclear family there is no kinship, and all nuclear families imply extended kin groups, by definition. I will never understand where this nonsense dichotomy of nuclear family v 'kin' has come from.
Many societies and cultures have large extended families living together. That is definitely not the norm in the U.S. and Canada, nor is it the case in most of Northern Europe (from what I understand).
It is not the norm today, but it certainly was in the heyday of 'nuclear' family, in the sense that grandparents, aunts and uncles, would be living nearby.
When people talk about the nuclear family, they're talking about the setup post-industrialization and particularly post-war spurred by the birth of modern civil engineering and the simultaneous spread of the highway system - where the term nuclear family came from.
I would surmise that we can solve the loneliness problem without going back to having larger families which would only place more stress on the environment hastening our eventual extinction. The crux of the matter is having opportunities for meaningful social interactions daily. While this may have been provided by family in the past, there is no reason this has to be so as far as I can tell. If we can't solve the problem I would still rather have people able to choose their own paths in the world rather than have some arbitrary and oppressive system imposed upon them.
Could you be reversing the roles? It could just as well be the case that it's the "liberation of men from the home and from conservative sexual values" that is the explanation. There's not a lot of real data on what people actually want in terms of relationships. But some attitudes have been quite stable over the last 50 years. For example, women's ideal number of kids has been stable at about 2.5 since the 1970s: https://ifstudies.org/blog/how-many-kids-do-women-want. Anecdotally, it seems like it's usually men that are less interested in settling down, not women.
This is a really good point, and may also tie back to the role of American capitalism (to differentiate how it's done here from pure capitalism as an economic system). The "decline of the family" in the US has a lot to do with people not getting married or delaying marriage, and a lot of that has to do with how men see their role in a marriage. Men are delaying marriage in part because they want to be "economically settled" first -- they want to be able to provide for a family -- but changes in our economy have really impacted that ability.
Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I'm agreeing with you or not :) The paradox is that people have the ideals of the past but react in a way that produces the opposite result ("I want to be conservative, but I can't do it so I'll enjoy myself in the meantime").
> the liberation of women from the home and from conservative sexual values.
Everyone is unhappy, married people on average are happier than unmarried, religious people are on average happier than unreligious people.
The sexual and feminist revolution got some 'splainin to do.
Of course, my view, the answer isn't "liberating women from the bonds of motherhood and family" but empowering women and supporting them in arguably the most powerful and most important thing one human can actually do in this world: bring new life into it.
Seems a bit circular to me. If the most important thing a human can do is bring life, then that life also has as its most important mission to bring some more life into the mix and so on. You end up with an endless chain of causation and no real answer as to what makes the entire thing worthwhile.
"An endless chain of causation" isn't circular, that's more or less the definition of life. What's the alternative, a task that a species must complete so that it can then go extinct?
Perhaps a chain of loop-de-loops would be a better mental image: a series of circles rather than just the one. If the importance of any life is justified by its relation to other lives that are themselves justified by other lives, you end up with no core importance. There's no meat inside the loops.
I don't have a definite answer to your question but looking at most of what has happened in history I do wonder if developing opposable thumbs and a frontal cortex was worth it.
I'm pretty sure reproduction/biological success is considered the prime biological directive of any species. There's no romantic explanation for it be worthwhile.
I'd say the idea of a directive is also a romantic explanation, since it implies a some sort of planning. The reality is more tautological. The current crop of beings is there... because they made it to this point. There is no deeper reason or value to be assigned to their survival.
A being doesn't want to reproduce in itself, it wants to fulfill needs that compel it to reproduce. A desire for sex, for companionship, for a social role, etc. It's possible to be highly attracted to someone who is infertile because we chase the signs of procreation rather than its actual occurrence. We can rationally plan to make procreation happen but even in this case it is an illusion, we are still chasing some state of mind that leads to procreation.
On the contrary, I am trying to dispel the romanticism here and the hidden additional romantic layer that anthropomorphizes the process of evolution itself by giving it some sort of direction.
Is bringing another being into the world the most important thing one can actually do? I'm not sure if you've noticed but we're getting pretty full. And we're living longer. Feels to me like the bus is getting full.
Well procreation is essential for all self reproducing organisms. If you don't prioritize it, then congrats, people like you won't influence future too much.
Also bus isn't getting full. The issue is two fold: chain smokers in first rows and overcrowding in back rows.
Not saying that it's the most important thing one can do, but it's at least as important as making money for other people as some career schmuck. Which is what most work outside the home boils down to.
Feminism was motivated by the minority of women that wanted a job in 1950, and their legitimate frustration with how the system was trying to stop them from doing that. Somehow that got switched around into a society where almost every woman is required to have an income. It's like we went from oppressing half of all women to oppressing the other half of all women.
It's a form of prisoners dilemma. "Cooperating" with traditional society meant being a single-income couple. "Defecting" is being a dual-income couple. Once enough couples start defecting, they're so much more competitive that other couples have to defect to survive.
There's an opposite political argument that the decline of the family, especially among the poor, was due to government benefits replacing the need to maintain social networks and interdependent families. In the 1800s and early 1900s, at the height of the industrial revolution and in the absence of any welfare state, poor Americans of every ethnicity had incredibly close-knit communities and extended families.
Life was harder, but you could lean on friends, family, and congregation. That's where the classic trope of rich people being lonely and surrounded by fake acquaintances while poor people have authentic community comes from. Maybe now that every level of society is relatively richer we're all that much lonelier.
I always felt that my mother, as a traditional housewife, seemed rather lonely, and that she blossomed once she started working outside the home. But the social support she provided for my dad and us kids took a hit. I would argue the net effect was still a positive one for the family.
These are all anecdotes though. My mother -- who wanted to be a traditional housewife -- but, as a migrant to this country, was forced to work to support our family seemed incredibly depressed that she couldn't be at home. Once she started staying at home (by becoming a teacher, and thus getting some months off with us), she became so much happier and it was a net positive for my family. Once she retired early, it became even better, and she was just a much happier person.
Granted, my father also took a job that let him stay home most of the day, because he hated working too, so I guess we're one of the few families which seems unaffected by marketing, and instead seek what we actually want. Why in the world would literally anyone want to work a job? I feel only someone who's never worked could want to do it
> Why in the world would literally anyone want to work a job?
I'm a big proponent of financial independence & early retirement. It's mind-boggling to me how many people I've talked to about this that thing it's "unnatural" to stop working so early. Some have reasonable questions/concerns about meeting financial needs later in life, and others give an envious/sarcastic "must be nice" sort of response, but by far the majority of negative reactions I get are from people who can't even fathom the concept of not going to work every day.
And then there's always the "won't you get bored?" argument, which... honestly, if I ever get chronically bored in this amazing, rich world we have, simply because I don't have a job, I will consider that a huge personal failing.
> I've talked to about this that thing it's "unnatural" to stop working so early. Some have reasonable questions/concerns about meeting financial needs later in life, and others give an envious/sarcastic "must be nice" sort of response, but by far the majority of negative reactions I get are from people who can't even fathom the concept of not going to work every day.
Right. Literally, every one of my family members in the United States retired early. They came to this country with nothing -- at the time they emigrated, their country did not allow migrants to take currency over the border. The oldest one to come was almost 45-50, and they retired before most Americans, and have just made do with less, but are otherwise happy.
I cannot fathom the obsession some people have. Even my mother-in-law had a lot of consternation when she decided to quit the job she hated (they have more than enough money to retire). Luckily, that's over now. I do actually get working until you die if you love your job. Most of us are not so lucky though.
At the end of the day, most people (not all though -- some people truly have difficult circumstances) choose to not be wealthy (in the sense of being able to live off their savings), not because circumstance forces them to, but because they are afraid to, for some reason.
There's a recent review essay of Houellebecq's work by a Dutch populist that goes into this topic a little bit. Well worth a read IMO, even if his conclusions are quite extreme.[0]
I would say it's important to look beyond simple labels of "good" and "bad" and think of the situation in terms of trade offs. Feminism has greatly helped some portions of the population and cost others greatly as well. Just like with any other culture or ideology, there really is no free lunch.
At the risk of wading into deeply controversal territory, I'll add some personal observations. One of the harsh realities I have seen is that it's very difficult for women to "have it all" meaning a fulfilling personal, family, and professional life, especially in the most competitive fields. Yet for many years this idea has persisted in a mythical sense as broadly achievable. I am now in my late 30s. I've watched my female friends and classmates have productive and inspiring careers, but often at the cost of their personal lives. The writing is on the wall that many of these women will likely never end up having biological children due to declining fertility. It makes me sad because while they are awesome entrepreneurs, physicians, lawyers and so on, they would have been awesome mothers as well. And at the societal level, from a selection standpoint, these are the type of genes we should want to pass on. I'm not sure what the answer is, but we should at least be honest about discussing the reality of what people wrestle with and why and how.
> It makes me sad because while they have awesome professional accomplishments, they would have been awesome mothers and parents as well.
I just wanted to point out politely how strange this language reads to me. It's ultimately the decision of each person whether to have kids or not. This being "sad" for them is an overreach, morally, IMO--and part of the fight feminism led was to carve out a space for women in society not to be mothers, if that is their choice.
I didn't reference sadness as a moral projection but rather out of empathy as some of these friends will share fears, doubts, and regrets from time to time. If a woman (or man) doesn't want to be a parent, then more power to them and we should all support that.
I have many female friends in their mid-30s and early 40s, and the ones without kids are almost always sad/regretful about it themselves. Some won't admit it, but some will, especially in more intimate settings. I've had one cry on my shoulder - she is very successful professionally, but feels she missed out on the opportunity for motherhood.
Whether it was her "choice" is hard to say. Very few people get the chance to engineer their lives the way they want. Most people instead play the cards they are dealt. And now that there are many more different types of possible cards in the deck for women, they are coming to the understanding that it is possible to be dealt a bad hand, and not realize it until it is too late.
The issue is that there's no objectivity here. Are these women actually sad because they truly wanted to experience motherhood, or is it more because of pressure (even unconscious pressure) from family and friends to have kids? Or just the built-in feelings due to upbringing that having kids is "just what you're supposed to do".
I wonder, though, if these same women did have kids, and sacrificed their career for it, would they look back and have regrets in that regard, too.
So maybe it's just... given a multitude of options where we can't choose them all, perhaps humans will just naturally have some regrets around the path(s) not taken?
As counterpoint, I know women in their 40s and older who are very pleased with their decision to not have kids.
Making a choice properly requires having knowledge about the particular options. Fertility education particularly in regard to age is not part of the sexual education curriculum in the UK [1] nor in international guidance documents [2,3] (just Ctrl-F "fertility"). And a recent poll in the US showed that 77% of women did not properly understand the relationship between age and fertility [4]. At some point this stops being choices made with appropriate knowledge and starts being a massive and tragic policy failure.
The statement you reference is "77% of women do not know that when a woman is 35+, her age is a better indicator of her fertility than her overall health." As a women in her 30s, I'll say that every damn woman in America has heard of a biological clock by her 20s, and is quite aware, and many are getting calls from Auntie every two weeks about whether she's getting on it yet.
Except now it's gone totally extreme the other direction. Young ladies now days have told me they feel guilty for having thoughts about having a family. That the idea of getting married and having children young is a slap in the face to women and wrong and stupid.
If you think I'm being facetious you obviously haven't spoken to enough women that are in their low 20's. Older women have literally convinced younger women it is shameful to not be a career driven, family last type of power CEO woman.
I think the idea of sadness is that choice were not made with relatively few externally imposed restrictions from a place of independence. Rather the decisions were taken from a set of choices made in a context of a society that imposes restrictions than necessary based on somewhat arbitrary traditions, or genderism, or biased, or at least questionable economic restrictions.
1. If you're a working mother, you're currently assumed to either be a bad worker, or a bad mother. (Sad corollary: If you're a working father, most people don't assume this about you.)
2. If you're a professional man, and you want children, your wife is expected to compromise her career, to raise them.
I wasn't criticizing feminism in my comment; I also wasn't saying there was anything expressly wrong with the status quo (men trading off on work so women could have more family time)--I'm sure it works well for many families. I was only pointing out that there's nothing inherently female about "not having it all" with the exception of the notion that women should be able to have it all--there has never been a broad movement that lamented that men can't have it all, after all.
I have a serious question for you, curious on your answer.
Can men “have it all”? Is “having it all” different for men than women?
My experience is that men are able to “have it all” often at the cost of their spouse making sacrifices to stay at home, with the implicit idea that this is the way things are meant to be.
If both people in a relationship try to “have it all”, some sacrifices do have to be made (speaking from experience), but I am not sad about these choices since trade offs are an inevitable part of life :)
I mentioned women since I was replying to a specific observation in the parent comment. It's difficult for men to "have it all" also. An advantage men generally have is more time to reproduce. They can spend a couple decades checking off the "professional career" box and then settle down in their 40s and have a family, and scale back work (or leverage prior accomplishments and position for forward autonomy and flexibility) at the same time to accommodate this new life. Although society is much more supportive of male parents than female parents in the workforce, when it comes down to it a man is no more capable of working (some obscene number of) hours/week professionally and "having it all" than a woman is. Workaholic men with stay at home spouses may appear to have more than they do, when in reality they may be guests in their own homes. You always have to sacrifice something.
Not the parent, and I don't have sources handy, but just from some things I've read:
When hiring decisions are made, hiring managers will often prefer men with families, because they will generally stick with the company longer because it's riskier to change jobs with a family to support. This doesn't work for women; hiring managers will be less likely to want to hire a woman of child-bearing age because they're afraid she'll get pregnant and suffer productivity losses as well as take maternity leave. They also assume that a woman with children will be less attentive to work due to child care duties. They assume that men will be less affected by this because, while things are indeed changing, the default assumption is that men will prioritize career over child-rearing, while women will choose the opposite.
I guess, as a man, I feel the expectation is quite the opposite. Namely, that a female in my position would be excused more often to take care of child duties, while my employer would think I'm just being lazy if I told them I wanted to take extra time to care for my child.
In my mental model (note: this is not what I would do, but what I imagine others would do), a woman saying she needs to go home because her baby needs her would be seen as a responsible woman, because a baby needs breastmilk and its mother provides that, whereas, if a man said he needed to go home consistently, the boss would think he's irresponsible, because -- as a man -- his baby doesn't strictly need him, and thus he is better serving his family at work.
But I understand your viewpoint; it just didn't occur to me. It seemed obvious to me that men, due to male biology, were more likely to be forced to work longer hours in order to be seen as being as responsible as an otherwise equivalent woman. Although, I guess today, formula is quite popular. Well regardless, I'm not always the best at understanding how others would react to things.
Why do people want so much? I love minimalism, owning hardly nothing, saving, having no friends or acquaintances. After reading this thread I feel like everybody else is greedy.
I sometimes wonder, too. I'm not quite in your boat: I have quite a few close friends, and many acquaintances, and find they all enrich my life in many ways. But I never understood the "keeping up the joneses" mentality. I have my well-worn furniture, a practical amount of kitchen stuff, some plants, a small amount of art, some tech gadgets, and a 15 year old car, and I just don't feel the need to own more than that, or to constantly "upgrade" all my existing stuff to things that are more expensive but don't actually make me any happier.
>At the risk of wading into deeply controversal territory, I'll add some personal observations. One of the harsh realities I have seen is that it's very difficult for women to "have it all" meaning a fulfilling personal, family, and professional life, especially in the most competitive fields.
This is perfectly possible. Imagine your stereotypical 1950s head of household. Fulfilling job, family is provided for, hangs out with friends on the weekend, etc. Now imagine them being female.
The fact of the matter is that this life doesn't exist for just about anyone anymore. It just never existed at all for women because back when it was possible for large numbers of people to do this they weren't part of the well paid workforce. (It didn't exist for non-whites for similar reasons but I digress)
Part of the problem is that our definition of "having it all" comes from times when circumstances were different. Now, I don't think just giving up and saying we'll never have it that good again and people have to choose between family, work and friends is a good solution but it sure seems more tractable in the short term than recreating that level of prosperity.
I completely agree with everything you said and would like to add, that I, as a man, hold no animosity toward women for the current situation.
I believe women have been screwed over just as badly as men from all this change that occurred. Young women are being told by older women they can have it all, and that is just plain wrong and hurts other women more than it helps them.
I like to look at this from the perspective of "how are we going to organize society given further technological advancement in the far future" and how do we get there.
Ignoring the endgames that come after the cessation of traditional human existence - either robotics replacing organics completely or mastery of genetics leading to the engineering of super-intelligent custom lifeforms to replace us - we are almost always either going to go extinct or refine our genetics to optimized templates. Eventually, we will be manufacturing humans with mathematically weighed balances between genetic diversity for disease resistance and optimized traits and features to make people live longer, stronger, and smarter. Probably going to be codified to be obedient to authority and not deviate from the social order as well, because that just honestly seems borderline unavoidable.
These humans will eventually be manufactured in artificial wombs in automated facilities meant to produce the population because in practice its severely debilitating and economically inefficient to take the females out of operation for so long to reproduce with such high biological risks associated. Cloned gametes from engineered templates grown in factories. The children would probably be mentally implanted with knowledge via brain-computer interfaces and taught everything virtually. Their biology would accelerate their development as much as is possible within our genetic profile. Years of research would have gone into optimizing their environments, interactions (if necessary, organic ones), and development to yield the most potential.
When you start stepping back from there, the closest bridge to that reality is going to be the institutionalization of child rearing. Before we have automated facilities breeding engineered templates we will almost certainly have public institutions dedicated to population replacement - in the optimistic scenario, women would simply "major" in parenting and live their careers as mothers. We will probably already be using engineered gametes by then because the technology is already mostly available, so these women would just have children and raise them as their full time career. Given current understanding of developmental psychology there would probably also be men assigned to play paternal roles in upbringing in full employment at such facilities as well.
I don't think at all this evolution in child rearing would ever happen overnight and its very likely in the same way you can still ride a horse today over owning a car or in the future how some will still drive manual cars in the age of autonomous vehicles some couples will do it "the old fashioned way" because they can. But it will probably, almost certainly, happen a lot less often.
And honestly from my perspective its for the best. Historically raising children is an absolutely full time job. Living on a farm, despite "working" in the fields at all hours of the day, still lets you keep the children at hand and raise them. You are never separated and the family is always together. That seems to be, barring abusive relationships, the optimal way human children develop. We have constructed employment institutions that make that impossible and try to both put pressure on laborers to reproduce but then also to somehow "do the job" of parenting at their own expense and economic disadvantage. It costs tremendous amounts of time to raise children, even more to actually do it well, and its never priced into the economy.
For now, this isn't a problem, and it likely won't be for a long time. We just get the collateral damage of mentally and physically harmed children from parental negligence that society pushes them towards. Eventually the economic pressure not to reproduce drives enough people not to that replacement becomes impossible and then such professional parenting institutions need to start being taken seriously. When it happens, its likely to be a very good thing - children raised by people pai...
I don’t see a reason to be sad because I think it’s a wonderful thing more people have a choice now. Whether I end up making perfect decisions or not I wouldn’t trade anything for that.
What a condescending comment... My wife and I are childfree. Should I tell her that her accomplishments in the workplace or even getting a good education and graduating from university mean nothing because having kids should be her top priority?
This is the problem with people who think they know better.
You think people should have more kids, what do you propose? Are you going to pay for the diapers, the education, the bigger house, the bigger car, the childcare? Do you want to become our live-in nanny?
After all, you seem so eager for people to have kids, surely you must be volunteering every night to help kids from low socio-economic areas get better grades and break the cycle of poverty or maybe you have adopted 5 unwanted kids already?
My wife and I don't need your sadness and your condescension. Thank you.
Feminism has brought about a lot of changes, but I don't think we can lay this one at the feet of women trying to escape their compulsory reliance on unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate men.
Most people are alone because they don't prioritize the families they already have (parents, siblings, grandparents, cousins, etc). They graduate high school, attend college in another state, move to another city far away for work, etc. Those are choices and they carry consequences. It's not good by default to follow your dreams if the only way to follow your dreams is to be alone and isolated in a strange place. Career is only a portion of our lives and it is far from the best way to draw meaning and purpose for ourselves. It's much better to draw meaning from something that is more permanent and guaranteed, like your identity and your home, not the job you just so happen to be doing at that moment.
There are exceptions to every rule, but it should be understood that when people graduate from high school, they should pick a trade school or university that is close by, not far away. When they choose a focus/major, they should ask what jobs exist in their area, not what kinds of jobs exist in the whole world. When they graduate college, they should be looking for work near their home, not on the other side of the country. Work and career is unreliable and people fail a lot. It's not the thing you should rely on to make you happy or satisfied.
It's better to have less of a career and more of a family than less of a family and more of a career. Your career accomplishments are not as important or valuable as they seem. If you didn't do them, someone else very probably would, and you will also very probably be forgotten quickly after you retire or quit or die. But more humane pursuits like family, home, faith, and community will always be there if you invest in them.
I don't think we can lay this one at the feet of women trying to escape their compulsory reliance on unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate men
That's begging the question. Of course, one cannot, "blame the victims of villains," to paraphrase. The vast majority of people are just imperfect, normal people trying to get by. It's the aggregate actions of everyday people we should be looking at, not such outliers.
Most people are alone because they don't prioritize the families they already have
It's like the "Thanksgiving arguments" are engineered precisely to create a rift between generations.
> It's like the "Thanksgiving arguments" are engineered precisely to create a rift between generations.
Isolation is a self-perpetuating thing. People hate going home for Thanksgiving and arguing with their relatives because they don't actually know their relatives (their own fault) and they don't belong at home anymore (also their own fault). They isolate themselves, then become indignant when the result is disconnection and conflict. It's absurd.
They're all brainwashed by capital into thinking there should be no negative consequences from following the path that maximizes career success. The idea that we can leave our homes, chase money, and live separate lives without destroying our relationships is the greatest enemy of the traditional family.
A lot of people aren't leaving home to "follow their dreams", they're leaving home because there just aren't any jobs there anymore. Jobs of any sort are scarce outside urban areas.
A lot of people are, though. I realize there are people who have no choice because life sucks and work is hard to find, but I'm not criticizing them. I'm criticizing the ones that choose to leave when they don't need to. We are all uprooted sometimes, but the goal should be to place those roots back in the ground and rebuild what was lost, not float around from place to place with no sense of identity or home.
I'm sure feminism plays a role. As the article said, women can now more freely leave abusive husbands. That's one example of how it would increase divorce rates.
However, I don't think it is the sole reason. For example, why then are wealthy people more likely to have families, as the article describes? The fact that wealthier people have families more seems to support the idea that it is at least partially caused by neoliberalism.
Wealthy 'people' are more likely to have families because women are more likely to marry wealthy men, and are more likely to remain with wealthy men. It's hypergamy, which was unleashed by feminism.
Sad times we live in that you have to say it twice that you don't oppose feminism, otherwise you know your comment will get flagged, which means your opinion will simply be hidden away. That is the state of the debate, if we can even call it a debate.
Yeah, to be honest, I would like to elaborate more but I don't want my account banned. Best we can do is hint at our opinions and hope that it fosters some thought and debate
we as a society have underestimated the effects and consequences of rapid change
That's the fundamental bias of human beings. Alvin Toeffler and other authors have been banging on about that since the 60's and 70's. Vernor Vinge used to talk about this. (He helped popularize the "Singularity.")
we should take a step back and think about what is really happening
Do this, if you want to grab hold of a piece of intelligence which is invisible to the general public. This is something of a corollary to, "What you can't say."
If one has tried to talk about evolution to an anti-evolutionist, one is familiar with the depth and surprising strength of mental defenses working against evidence. If one wants to have an awareness beyond the ordinary, one has to do self analysis at this level. (While not succumbing even more to one's deeply held biases.)
There's imo a stronger argument that economic/financial factors are far more significant than "feminism." The closing in the employment gap in the 1980s was driven by hyperinflation and consumer debt - everyone had to work to pay the bills.
Similarly, contraceptives aren't the reason people have fewer children. It's the fact we can't afford childcare and housing for a family.
These are big factors. I'm also struck, though, by the short historical view most of these comments have. Back in the day, many people "stayed at home", where that means tending the gardens and fields, tending the cows and pigs, hunting for additional protein, gathering for additional carbs and sugars, doing the washing and getting the water. Pre-Industrial Revolution, this whole "men go to work and earn a wage while women stay home" thing did not exist the way it does now. Servants lived in the houses of the people they served, merchants operated as families, and rural people all devoted significant amounts of time to food production. And there was no real choice "not to work" unless you were rich.
I mean I don't think you're wrong, I just think talking about pre industrial society isn't particularly helpful when trying to understand factors behind trends in our current lifestyles.
In other words, yes current state is a function of all past states, but recent history has a far higher influence on next state than the far past. At a certain point you have to assume its influence to be close to zero.
In terms of influence, I agree. But in terms of imagining alternatives, I think it's useful to look at history. In finance people often do stress testing for portfolios by looking at periods of historical downturn. I'm proposing doing that for ideas here.
In my own family, the American half reproduced earlier and had many more children than the "old country" half, due to economic distress and war. People in my father's generation were not directly affected by World War II, but the economic contractions that gripped Europe in the 1970s really show when you look at the reproductive choices my "old country" family made compared to my US family (which supports your previous post).
It's just weird that this longer conversation posits either idealized 1950s suburban America or an individualist society. Especially as employment configurations evolve, we should be aware that those are not the only options.
Social media and not feminism is the likely root cause of the decline in families. Families are declining world wide including in repressive societies. Social media itself is likely the root cause.
Before social media people had to meet face-to-face in order to date and they had to break up face-to-face in order to end a relationship. This forced people to develop social skills at a young age that are required to form a family.
Now people can date someone they never met and break up by ghosting. They can get to a preliminary relationship without acquiring social skills. There are also online equivalents of a mate that seem good enough if you don't understand the benefits of family.
I try to avoid social media and it makes my life much more sane. It forces me to go out and socialize with people.
It seems a stretch to blame feminism when economics has thinned most workers wages to the point that multi income households are a requirement to eke out a life.
Feminism can't avoid taking some of the blame for the economics.
If some households are multi-income, then they can pay more for housing.
This bids up the cost of housing. More households decide to become multi-income in order to pay for housing. This of course makes the housing price go up even more.
So why has the cost of televisions gone down, with more households being able to afford one ? Surely Samsung can gouge those foolish couples that have dollars oozing out of their pockets!
While there was feminism involved there, I think one should question how independent the political movement was from economic pulls at the same time. You can't for example, take large amounts of single women into factories as workers in the industrial age, without some form of practical feminist changes in how women were treated.
You see similar modern pulls today in nations like China and India. It's really difficult to separate which came first - the economic pull or feminism. I lean to the economics of factory owners wanting low cost labor being a leading phenomenon of the cycle, and that induces the question of the rights of women who now have income, and practical freedoms going to work and working, and that independence inducing a desire for wider rights.
Once industry gets access to that labor though, they'll pay the minimum amount possible, and that practical acceptable minimum lowers if there are multiple people in the household making income.
I agree, economics, politics and philosophy are all intertwined. I think now that we have a surplus of labor, automation and globalization that we’re due for another shift in all of the above. The loneliness discussed in the OP seems like a symptom of larger societal and technological change.
My theory is that we have a labor surplus because the rules of capitalism were formed when we had a shortage of capital, now that we have basically enough capital, we’re still constraint managing capital, causing underuse of human labor.
Perhaps the more interesting question is whether the traditional nuclear family is the "optimal" mode of human society?
Is the unhappiness that we may be observing with the decline of family a product of this transition period from traditional family structure to individualism? Is our current society just not well equipped yet to handle this mode of living? Maybe in 50 years, this will become the norm and people who choose to live alone will have alternative sources of happiness.
I really doubt the traditional nuclear family is natural and hence "optimal" although I guess that depends on your goal. I think as an extension or outcome, perhaps the purpose of civilization, nuclear families provide safety and security rather than producing the best offspring for the species as a whole. What's better, people of every level of fitness and intelligence pairing off to produce God knows what sort of mutants that will be protected on some level by society, or a handful of males who are naturally predisposed to good health, fitness, and intelligence, turbo Chads if you will, seeding large groups of females.
I'm not saying one is better for than the other overall, but one is surely better than the other for certain outcomes. Do we want an equitable society where low status individuals, but particularly males, have a better shot at reproduction and may contribute more to building a society that propagates that "culture" of safety and equity? Or do we go with what is probably more natural? I mean i can guess why and how religions of old and civilizations formed and why they were patriarchal
I don’t know if it’s optimal, but it sure is intimate and stable.
Your spouse will never move to another city for a new job w/o you. Your kids won’t leave the nucleus, at least not until they’re college ready.
Unlike family, different kinds of arrangements between people result in relationships that are less committed and less durable.
So maybe if you take stability and intimacy into account, it might as well be optimal.
I guess it begs the question, what are we optimizing for? And on what time scale?
What might seem optimal for the time being, could unleash a series of unforeseen circumstances in the future.
But I guess we can keep an open mind, allow people to choose for themselves and then report back after 2-3 generations the consequences of different paths taken.
I'd say it is a natural way of living, but maybe you have been unlucky in not experiencing it for yourself. This debate is pretty old, Plato's Republic hinting at the disappearance of the family echoes much of the current western culture. He figured out you could not impose a totalitarian state while having people's allegiance lie on their family.
It's interesting that you consider the nuclear family as "traditional", while it's actually a fairly recent phenomenon. And in many places in the world it's still common for a family to consist of multiple generations and often aunts/uncles/cousins/etc. living in the same household.
Feminism is surely related, but I’m not sure if it is a cause or a consequence (or maybe both?) to the decline of family.
An important factor to consider is the nature and place of work: Men used to inherit their families business or work in the same town. Big families and relatives lived close to each other, so women could use help from other women in the family for child rearing and house chores. Nowadays you have to move to capitals/big cities to find work which deprived women from the assistance they found in extended families. I think this had an impact on gender roles and the increase of feminism and nuclear families.
> Men used to inherit their families business or work in the same town.
Few men got to inherit a business but if your father worked a trade then you would probably find going into that trade to be a natural path. The latter part is still very true today.
Feminism is a symptom rather than the cause. The cause is the commoditization of humans into productivity and consumption units in a post-industrial environment where the state and corporations dominate. Corporations want to extract every bit of production and consumption out of individuals. A woman taking time off for pregnancy or deciding to become a stay-at-home mom is a drain on corporate productivity. And every state has to some degree tried to diminish the role of parents and family in order to sap every ounce of allegiance from an individual to the state. In totalitarian states, the head of the state becomes the father of the people and the state becomes its family. It's easier to control and manipulate individuals with weak family ties. And it's easier for entities to inject themselves into a controlling family role with individuals with weak family ties. It's why pimps and madams target runaways and make themselves into paternal or maternal figures.
Society and culture doesn't grow organically. They are created and manufactured by the people with wealth and power. For the time being, those with wealth and power have decided that the breakdown of the family is in their interest. But it could shift quickly if the people in charge want it to. An extreme example is china where they encouraged women to have lots of children in order to strengthen their country. And not too long after that, they had a change of heart and encouraged the complete opposite - one child policy. Now it seems like they are backing off of it after a few decades of one child policy.
Agreed. A large part of american culture has been engineered consciously or unconsciously to be some sort of productivity/materialistic porno. It is completely unbalanced. The american values nowadays all go towards trying to create an "Übermensch".
> Society and culture doesn't grow organically. They are created and manufactured by the people with wealth and power.
BS. You give them way too much credit. The world is too complex and dynamic for a queen ant to "create and manufacture" the efficiency of the ant hill.
I didn't credit them with creating the world. I credited them with creating society, culture, etc. It isn't really a matter of debate. It's well understood the elites create societies and the institutions underlying them. The masses didn't create the US government or any of the systematically important institutions. A handful of elites did. This is pretty much true of every country/society on earth throughout history.
I feel you've said more or less the same thing the article is saying, just in more casually dismissive and incendiary terms. TFA refers to many of these factors as being driven by the second demographic transformation. Yes, feminism is a very important part of the SDT, but one needs to be careful with cause and effect. Did feminism cause the SDT? Unlikely. Did the SDT cause feminist ideas to become attractive to more people? That seems far more likely. If that's the case then I wouldn't necessarily lay this (more old people living/dying alone) at feminism's feet. Feminism may provide an ideological argument in favor of certain relationships, but we are the ones choosing to live and die alone, and when we choose we do so for myriad reasons.
Also, women haven't been liberated from the home [1].
I believe it's not really feminism so much as a societally pernicious type of individualism.
Certainly liberated women may be part of the cause, but there are also no shortage of boy-men who are incapable of sacrifice, hard work and the drudgery of responsibility.
The social structures that enforced all that appear to have broken down. And that's not all together a bad thing but certainly it causes societal problems in the short term until things adjust (hopefully better than what they were before).
I am curious how do you and your LTR define feminism. Nobody is forcing anyone to choose career over family. That would be anti-feminist.
I never viewed feminism as mutually exclusive of having a family or a career. I might just be more mellow than everyone else. Feminism just means that men and women deserve equal opportunity and respect. Why is this the worst thing?
I might have an advantage over everyone else since my parents grew up in the great depression. All of the women in my family worked often because of hardship. One grandmother married a very bad man and ended up becoming a hairdresser and opening a salon to support my mother. Another grandmother had a sick husband and had to take over his business. My father also had an illness and although he continued to work they both agreed that my mother needed to finish her education and go back to work. Nobody made such a big deal about it since the women were also supporting the family. In fact, in most societies the women support the family working or not. This is the norm.
When my husband and I got married we I was still in school so our whole life was ahead of us. We agreed that I would finish school first only because I was only a year from graduation. Then he finished school. We both agreed that having a family was important so we both prioritized children. We both had awesome careers, but I never let go of the fact that family is more important than career. My husband and I are still feminists.
In my daughters case she decided to stay at home with her three boys. Her awesome husband is still very much involved with his boys. They are both still feminists.
I think the shift to eschew "traditional" gender roles plays a part, certainly, but I don't think it's the dominating factor.
I'd say the strongest factors, at least in the US:
1. Work/career is #1 priority. Career has always been a big deal in the US, but I feel like it's become more extreme in my generation (nearing 40) than it was for my parents or their parents. For them, it was more about putting food on the table and providing a better life for their children than what they had. For us it seems more about intangible things like "being successful".
2. Geographic barriers have broken down a lot. In the mid-/late-1900s, you'd likely grow up in the same place, and more often than not would find a job or go to college nearby, and stick around as an adult. You'd probably meet your future partner through family, local, or church events, and after marriage would probably still live in or near your original hometown. Nowadays, it's much more likely to move hundreds or even thousands of miles from your hometown, often to chase job opportunities (see #1). New adults going to college far from home also makes them realize that living near your hometown isn't the only option.
3. And yes, changing gender norms fit into this: women have caught the bug of #1, and we are still struggling with the "having it all" mentality of women having a strong, ambitious career, but also raising children. I personally don't think there's a universal solution to this; there are only so many hours in a day and so much energy to go around. Child care is expensive and a stretch or out of reach for many couples, even with dual incomes (and the jury's still out as to whether or not pervasive third-party child care is a detriment to early childhood development). In heterosexual couples, many men still resist taking an equal part in child-rearing duties, but I'm not convinced that would completely solve the problem anyway (again, only so many hours in a day); it would just make it more equitable as to bearing the responsibility.
Definitely agree that it may be another few generations before we fully understand the effects of all these societal changes. Some of it may be bad, even if the overall changes are good.
In my experience & observation feminism and women working has nothing to do with the inability to sustain a rich family or romantic life. My grandmothers worked, my mom worked, the women I’ve dated have great careers.
It is absolutely possible to have a career and be a phenomenal wife and mother with a happy family. If a person’s priority is family, it may limit career opportunities but that is true of both men’s and women’s careers (for example rejecting a promotion that requires a geographic move to keep kids in the same school or live near relatives will impact both partners).
Whatever it is today, I fear the future will be much worse. The most devastating existential consequences of loneliness can take decades to manifest. You feel a little lonely in your day to day life now, but wake up twenty years from now and realize you're socially isolated with no meaningful relationships or community and it's "too late" to make up the lost time. Most dangerous of all may be that online social networks provide participants with the feeling of deep social and community engagement that turns out to be a surface-level mirage beneath which we were just each staring at ourselves in the mirror the entire time.
I agree with your first point — like other structural problems, loneliness adds up over time.
But on the second point, I'm really not sure that online social networks are just a "surface-level mirage." I met my spouse online, and many of my closest friendships have developed online, by instant message, etc. I don't think the alternative to "online communication" is necessarily that we will all socialize in person. If we got rid of the internet and instead (just for a random example) we were all alone in our houses reading books by ourselves, I think that would be a step back.
Yes on the second point, I think there's likely a distribution - perhaps 20% of participants use it as a helpful tool and 80% use it as a harmful crutch. I don't know what the actual ratio would be, but anecdotally I know quite a few young people in the latter group for whom many casual relationships seem to have replaced fewer serious ones.
The opposite over here. Met less than a dozen at most of people exclusively through various online interactions. Use various online media and platforms only to sustain existing relationships and even this not always works. Dating and social networking applications from the FB platform are so full of attention absorbing people, inflencers, and similar that I have quit these long time ago.
Can't agree more with this. Social media apps kind of force people to post(show off) about their lives constantly; with people feeling the need to broadcast even trivial things in their life like a morning coffee. Things like stories makes it even worse as people viewing/commenting on stories gives you that dopamine fix throughout the day and you crave for more of the same by constantly posting.
I like the idea of these platforms for content creators like photographers, athletes etc. but overall I see a lot more negative than positive for common users.
Online dating apps are the worst and I even found myself getting sucked into the whole attention thing. I quit it when I realized a lot of women I was talking to/went on dates, was just to get the ego boost. It was very unhealthy for me and definitely not fair for the other person.
I think the key is how social networks are used. You notably met your spouse online, which means at some point things presumably transitioned to an offline relationship which can't be terminated just by hitting a block button. Online networks can be great ways to meet new people, but there's ample evidence which suggests that having a purely digital social life is bad for mental health.
If we look at Tinder, there was a study of millennial users a while back which found that about 70% of them had never met anyone through it and didn't intend to. Moreover Tinder has economic incentives to keep you on their platform, swiping, texting, paying subscription fees, and viewing ads, all things you stop doing when you meet people and enter into a committed relationship.
Most social networks unfortunately follow this model; they have monetary incentives to keep you as engaged as possible in their all digital, all the time lifestyle, rather than unplugging and physically sharing space with other humans.
Healthier business models can certainly be imagined and maybe they'll even be implemented someday, but they aren't prevalent right now.
We are also still learning about the gut-brain axis. The human microbiome is inheritable, and many modern practices (infant formula, C-sections, antibiotics, processed foods) having detrimental effects.
What's worse is humans seem to have an instinctive trend of self-isolation in the face of psychological distress, which worsens the condition.
Add the inevitable downstream effects of climate change (economic uncertainty if not another world war)... and, yeah, it's bleak.
> Whatever it is today, I fear the future will be much worse.
People sleeping in their car at the airport to make their current gig(s) possible in the gig economy are already living in the future. Especially now that Uber has a STFU option. And not all gigs involve face to face clients.
On the other hand, we're now facing situations that we've never faced before, both as a species and as individuals. Increasingly, we're moving towards a future where you will never need to leave your home or interact with anyone. Netflix, and Amazon deliveries. Self-driving cars. Kids will eventually get their education online. Virtual reality is under active development.
Then there's AI, and sex robots. Why bother with a real boyfriend/girlfriend when you can talk to your phone and have an artificial companion? Real humans have their own wants and needs and may not do what you want. Worse, they might leave you. Your robot girlfriend on the other hand, you could have endless conversations with her in which she tells you exactly what you want to hear and never challenges you.
That's far-fetched, you say. In the near term, I tried Tinder and it's pretty addictive. An endless stream of new people I can meet. Most of them want nothing serious though. They don't even want to sleep with you more than once or twice for the most part. It's all about novelty-seeking. It seems to me like increasingly few people want a sustained relationship. Breakups hurt, so let's never risk having one, a constant stream of lovers is emotionally safer in a way, I suppose, but I can tell you it definitely leaves me feeling lonely.
> Humans have faced lots of problems over the millenia, but the reality is that our lives continue to improve as a whole
That's untrue. Human civilizations tend to go through cycles. They rise, eventually stagnate, and then decline over the span of hundreds of years. The Akkadians, the Mycenaeans, the Romans, and the Maya all collapsed and the lives of people living in those empires got worse, often for a very long time.
It's reasonable to think that a similar type of decline is happening in the west today.
I think comparing modern day civilization to the rise and fall of the Roman empire is a mistake, particularly European civilization. We learned our lesson. We’re not building empires, not waging expensive wars, not succumbing to armed revolution. People are for the time being mostly happy and prosperous.
That isn’t to say we don’t face challenges, but they’re fundamentally different from those of the empires of old. Something changed with true global markets, and mutually assured destruction.
I'm using ancient empires as an example because pretty much everyone agrees on what happened in ancient history. It's not a controversial / political issue to talk about Rome falling because nobody who was involved in those empires is alive today.
> We learned our lesson. We’re not building empires, not waging expensive wars
I don't know where you live, but here in America we've been at war with various Middle-Eastern nations for the last 2 decades. About 90% of the history of our nation has been spent involved in some kind of a war. Those are expensive wars too. We've spent trillions on Afghanistan alone. We have around 800 formal military bases in 80 foreign countries.
I think that we are far more imperialistic than the Romans, even though our culture doesn't acknowledge it.
> global markets, and mutually assured destruction
Yeah, we have better technology too and a very different financial system. However, this hasn't saved us from expressing many of the same symptoms that ancient collapsing empires had... Especially the social issues that this article talks about.
> Humans have faced lots of problems over the millenia, but the reality is that our lives continue to improve as a whole..not get worse.
I think this is no longer true. Life expectancy is actually on the decline in developed countries, driven by (among other factors) the loneliness epidemic described in this article.
You can argue over 5,000 years or something things have improved, sure, but in the present day there's a strong argument that quality of life is getting worse.
Men tend to use firearms more often when attempting suicide whereas women tend to use medication more often. The latter is easier to treat and ambulances are better equipped for overdoses than gunshots.
Firearms is one possible explanation. An other is that women get treatment more than men, particularly for depression. Treatment greatly reduce the risk of completed suicide.
There is a large uncomfortable area within suicide data. In a study, about half who attempt suicide said it was a cry for help. While we can't ask those that die, we do have data that say that those people usually have both a history of suicide attempts and a lack of treatment for it. This combination has a gendered aspect.
So it can be firearms, the culture around treatment, both, or other aspects which explains why men die by suicide 3.54x more often than women while at the same time women attempt suicide 1.2x more than men.
I think the best action to reduce suicide is with the medical profession. Treatment of drug and alcohol addiction, depression, and those who have attempted suicide in the past. We can try to reduce the number of firearms and adding barriers on bridges and subway platforms, but I have my doubts that areas which implement such action actually see a reduction in completed suicides. At best it gives the health care system a bit more time to provide treatment.
Another observation made by a few clinical physiologists I watch was that men are more likely to have a higher propensity for violence, so when they attempt suicide they are more effective at it. A man is more likely to take the more violent "way-out" and by extension the more lethal approach (rope, gunshot etc.), as opposed to a woman who takes the perceived less violent approach (overdose, suffocation etc.)
Whether that is the truth, my verdict is still out, but the literature seems to point that way.
A plausible theory but it smells a bit like the idea that women care more about how they will look when they are dead so they apply suicide methods that won't deform their face.
My verdict leans heavily that suicide is always a failure in treating the underlying issue. Depending a bit on who you ask the wast majority of suicides is caused by untreated mental or emotional disorders, most commonly depression. A untreated disease which definition is the inability to feel happy and recover from feeling sad seems quite relevant in the context of suicide, and when we know there is a difference in treatment and see a difference in outcomes then that should be our first stop in our logical conclusions.
It reads like kitchen psychology. "Wants to leave a pretty corpse" also seems like the worst possible motive, among many. Access to firearms would be a far easier explanation. Just with in the "pretty corpse" theme, I would consider "does not want those finding her to be shocked for life" to be far more important than vanity.
But we have data that show how people die and what sex they are, and we see that some methods are mostly preferred by men and some methods are mostly prefered by women.
Threads about suicide on HN are suboptimal because most people don't really know what they're talking about and the CDC data is fucking impossible to use (compared to data from the UK).
DanBC, no one is contesting the data in outcomes. The data show a clear difference in how women and men die from suicide.
What is discussed is the cause for it. The theory smells that men are violent thus they choose violent methods and women are vain and thus choose vain methods. It just conveniently fit our gender stereotypes perfectly which should be a rather big red flag for anyone looking at social science with a critical view.
There are several contending theories. To the degree that suicide attempts are a cry for help the difference in how society react towards men and women likely impacts the method of choice. An other theory is convenience where more women get opioids prescriptions then men, while more men are involved in activities with high gun ownership.
There are more. Gender differences in mental health, differences in alcohol consumption, and difference in social support networks are all additional suspects in explaining why we see a gender difference in outcomes and methods.
One of the data point that looks a bit odd is that even if we account of difference in method, men are about 60% more likely to still die in the attempt. As far as I know this difference is still there for methods like self-poisoning which is the most "preferred" method for women. Unless we want to go into the bucket of stereotypes again and simply state that men are more competent with suicide regardless of method it seems like we should entertain the idea of other causes for gender differences.
Just because stereotypes exist, does not invalidate them. Most exist because of a common perception, correct or not. While I agree they should be challenged, they likewise can reveal things as well.
Huh. Didn't know that. The firearm thing makes a lot of sense.
I left out the statistic that mentioned in 2017, firearms accounted for 50.57% of all suicide deaths. Didn't want to get misconstrued because I support the 2nd amendment and people like to use this fact as ammunition against it.
But now I would like to see a breakdown of that statistic by gender, to see how many firearm-related suicides were men vs women.
The 4th is protection from unreasonable searches and seizures. I assume you meant the 2nd.
I'm curious what the breakdown is in Japan where suicide rate is high but firearms virtually non-existant. However, I understand suicide statistics from there may be unreliable.
Government stats for Japan are here[1]. While there is a stigma around suicide here (particularly families wanting a death to be 'accidental'), I don't think it's common enough to really affect the statistics.
To quote the source:
"For men, the most common method is hanging (首つり, 69.3%), followed by jumping (飛降り, 8.8%), and suffocation by burning charcoal or a similar substance (練炭等, 7.3%), and for women the most common method is hanging (59.8%), followed by jumping (14.2%) and drowning (入水, 6.3%)."
For both sexes, jumping appears to be significantly more common for children under 19 than other groups. Train jumping (飛込み) is much less common than you might think, but is common for the "age undermined" (不詳) group (men 14.3%, women 42.9%), presumably because the remains are hard to identify.
Thanks for providing this. It's the sort of info that's virtually impossible to find as someone who doesn't speak Japanese. (I tried and only found sources that weren't official or were overly general like WHO stats.)
These all seem like pretty awful ways to die. I don't even know how you go about drowning yourself. I'm surprised medication isn't more common.
Well there are two possible conclusions from this:
1- Women can't figure out how to effectively commit suicide and fail at the attempt at a rate that is 400% greater than men because they aren't capable - I don't believe this for a minute.
or
2- Women engage more in the cry for help attempt, while men go through with it all the way more often.
Personally I'd go with 2, but I'd be open to hearing any other alternative explanations.
The 'women do it wrong because they want to look pretty when dead' or 'women can't figure out violence' (a version of #1) seem like condescending conclusions drawn to avoid having to deal with the probability of #2, which sounds simpler.
Lookup steven pinker. The short of it is even if there are certain things that seem like a big problem, overall right now is the greatest time to be alive in human history, and in 10 years, or 20 years, or 30 years the same is likely to be true.
I think is just another example where we got a short term benefit from breaking societal norms but may suffer long term. Strong family bonds can be very confining so it's often liberating to weaken them. But then you also lose that support system which has big cost long term.
I think the job market has similar trends. It used to be that jobs were more stable and you had a direct path to retirement. But this was also restricting for young people. Now we have the opposite. Young people are the stars of the job market, job hopping is the only way to get ahead and the people who aren't millionaires by age of 50 are looking into a very insecure future.
I look at so many of my single friends who are achingly lonely (late 30s to early 40s) and they all have a particular trait in common: they obsess about the possibilities the future may hold yet don’t acknowledge the hard work it would take to get there. There’s also a sort of collective delusion that if you wait around long enough, your dream partner will show up and that if a relationship takes any work at all that it should be scrapped because it interferes with “just being an individual”.
The longer people put off pairing up, the harder it seems to accomplish.
I think mainstream media has really warped a couple of generations of people’s priorities. Extended adolescence and chasing hedonism is now the norm.
My friends who eschewed that in favor of more traditional long term relationships, compromise and building family over Instagram followers are decidedly more content and less anxious.
I suspect as my generation ages these effect will amplify.
If these people are actually your friends, maybe you should show them more respect and stop assuming that the reason they are single is that they are less mature than you and chose to “chase hedonism” and “Instagram followers” over long term relationships. Despite what you might believe, it isn't easy for every person to find a long term partner, and not everyone wants to do it at the same point in their lives.
I’m not assuming anything, they’re friends I’ve know for many years and I’ve been there with them as they’ve made these choices. I’d like for them to be happy but there’s only so much you can do.
I think the problem I’m describing is pretty common amongst gen x and millennials.
Sure, but I think peoples' definition or image of self-centeredness has been obscured by societal norms. At least here in the US, it feels like one of our cultural hallmarks is the ideal of the "self made individual". If it is normalized to see oneself as apart from others, it becomes very difficult indeed to sacrifice anything for another person (and news flash, that's a big part of familial relationships).
i like your style of thinking, can you put down 5-10 bullet points of knowledge you think we should all know or sources of knowledge we should investigate.
It’s an extremely prescient, outsider’s look at the tyranny of the masses.
I would also suggest studying the context of the 20th century, especially the lead up with the industrial revolution and both world wars. It’s often lost on people that Western life as defined by American sitcoms was an anomaly powered in large part by the rest of the first world being nearly obliterated. This leads ultimately into global recovery and globalism which I see as a normalization of life after WWI and WWII.
Post-modernism is good to learn about as well. I feel like a lot of people mistake modernism and post-modernism. Post-modernism can actually include a lot of things modernism rejects, such as traditional family structures. It just does it piecemeal framed in a totally different (non-religious) context.
Why am I not surprised that Kay Hymowitz, author of Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys, is also responsible for this reactionary screed that blames the loneliness epidemic on the decline of traditional family values without even considering the possibility that the atomizing effects of late-stage capitalism and neoliberalism[1] might be a more plausible cause?
Anyone who wants to can find plenty of criticism of capitalism and neoliberalism on HN. There's a search box at the bottom of every page—just put in those terms. Alternatively, just look in this thread.
We've banned this account for repeatedly posting unsubstantive comments and, indeed, trollin'. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
Some authors such as Houellebecq count feminism as part of the atomising dynamic of neoliberalism. His idea is that sexuality becomes a parallel but no less commoditized market that works both bin tandem with and apart from the economic one. In this case the free choice of partners means that most people compete to get the attention of the partners with the best possible sexual capital, while many fail to have any partner at all if below a certain threshold of such capital.
Can't it be both? Late Stage Capitalism & Neoliberalism are responsible for the dissolution of traditional family values and other meaningful relationships?
Sure it can, but you know what? I think "traditional family values" as defined by USian conservatives are abject nonsense and the only "meaningful" relationships are the ones you create for yourself for no other reason than that you enjoy the other person's company.
How can 'meaningful relationships' be tacked on to that statement. Do they not exist anymore? Get a better argument. Further more, 'traditional family values' is not a well defined term and overly political. It claims that I NEED and should fit neatly into some kind of mold. Humans are individuals, a truth that traditionalist fail to internalize.
One can have a traditional loving partner, a traditional family, a traditional social circle and still be lonely.
One could feel isolated from their peer group because of happenstance and life choices leading to different economic outcomes.
One could feel isolated from their gender; no only because it is a social construct, but because the ones that represent you act like morons all the time.
One could feel isolated from a sibling because they are ill and can't afford healthcare.
One could feel isolated from themselves because they are have chronic pain or mental illness.
Blaming societal ills on one or two issues only divides further and obscures the macrocosm. If you want your 2.5 kids and a picket fence, godspeed, but don't step on others trying to find what makes them happy.
"People in wealthy countries became more antiauthoritarian, more critical of traditional rules and roles, and more dedicated to individual expression and choice."
It seems like she considers it and speaks directly to it. Is it that she doesn't ultimately blame capitalism? She says that the decline of the family is closely tied with the neoliberal focus on the individual.
Luis CK once said the choice between marriage and staying single is like the choice between being frustrated and being lonely.
As someone originally from a second-world country I can say that I feel people have it good these days in terms of their basic needs for survival. When you're not fighting for something, it's easy to feel like you're not fulfilled and it's hard to rally with others who are fighting for basic needs.
if you look at various surveys comparing countries outside of north america countries with no rapid colonization and urbanization like in the America, or East-Asia, people report feeling happier and less isolated. But difference between NA and EA is that NA had that European style "settling"--move out, claim your land, start a family, or divorce, repeat.
Our social DNA built for human connection, sense of belonging and family, centered around agriculture was quickly snuffed out in the West with the oncoming of Industrial Revolution, and the countries that subscribed to this model. Basically genders ended up being divided into a binary class of workers with one clearly a 2nd citizen and subsequently their social status. It used to be that women were largely limited to taking care of home and kids but with WW2's end, this has increasingly been changing.
Women from 1920s vs 2020 have drastically different liberties in socio,sexual, and economic areas. The erosion of domestic manufacturing industries through implementation of "free market" ideals where the invisible hand that moves jobs is capital itself, the cheapest and the best producer retains the capital until it cannot maintain this low cost of production, mainly through political suppression and threat of paramilitary forces of dictator. Women are repeatedly underpaid compared to men according to statistical findings, its more so that they are undervalued unconsciously by society due to its period of rapid industralization and "splitting" of genders. (fun fact: FDR used to crossdress).
Yet the latter situation with countries that has reached rapid urbanization through industrialization, this is not unique thing to North America, people in Korea and Japan are killing themselves, people are isolating themselves in urban areas, very much like the North Americas.
This social void-via-capital (jobs, capital move to cheapest cost of operations) or void-via-automation (really the same thing since automation is dirt cheap labor that gets cheaper by several folds every few years) leads to the deviation from traditional family operated around agriculture and rapid urbanization that followed high-capital industries with overseas outsourcing of manufacture, has changed the roles of the Mother or Father. This can be found in most democratic capitalist of a major economy. So is the entrance of women the culprit? If that was the case then why is it that in the Philippines, ppl aren't reporting on surveys as being less miserable or isolated as say a Brit, where many husband takes the role of rearing children while the Filipino women contribute to being the world's highest remittance destinations? Clearly it was never to do with gender being fundamentally destined for specific roles, but rather the presence of one of the parent in a child's formative years, relatively compared to absence or non-biological substitute caretakers due to unavailability of both parents due to both working or not working, has produced an increasingly self-isolated, self-caring, self-obsessed, self-exhibitionist society distracting itself through material possessions and entries in a database somewhere with arbitrarily valued "digital scores" that creates the illusion of tribal hierarchy and belonging? Or how about that we are largely rewarded for creating/contributing to products to increase the pace of this isolation?
I don't know what the solution is. But people from small town are often spooked by people not saying hello when passing by in large cities. I can feel the difference being in downtown vs rural areas. People outside of North America seem tightly integrated with their families and communities. I'm talking the super taboo thing in north america, being an adult and living with parents. Yet, its practiced in many parts of the world. I know I've been trying to get my ass out the door but honestly my addiction issues and struggling with complex post traumatic stress disorder has been crippling. Writing this ...
The Great Lakes have surpassed the 'high-water-level' record set 33 years ago.
Therefore, High-Water levels in the Great Lakes cause loneliness.
Correlation != Causation
If you are looking for things "to blame" don't forget about:
-decline in religious-group (church) participation
-stagnate wage increases for 20 years while cost of living increases (result: less of an ability to afford "going out") Also related: more people needing 2+ jobs
-increased internet access/duration/interaction
All of these equate to less 'recreational' time available. Lack of recreation time = less chance to participate in social settings = more loneliness
My mother, dad, aunts, etc. all immigrated to the US in a period of about 5 years. They all settled in Brooklyn and a few even lived in the same apartment complex. Growing up the extended family was HUGE and someone new was over every Sunday.
The next generation has become geographically spread out, I moved to the West Coast, a few of my cousins are in college out of state.. about half of this generation is likely to build their family outside of the NYC metro area, my children's generation is likely to split off from wherever I settle as well.
This is an unfortunate cost of the "American dream", my parents, aunts and uncles didn't have great paying jobs but they were close to family.. for the cost of a higher salary many of us make decisions that make communication with those we love difficult. Yesterday was my brother's 30th birthday but because of the time difference and work schedules we did not speak on the phone, only through text.
I find myself an anomaly and doubt my life choices sometimes for deciding to stay near family rather than chasing the career dream. But perhaps it's because I saw the cost, in my parents' generation, of immigration and long distances. I saw the benefits too...
I moved away from family to a new city around 5 years ago for a job, and I'm in the midst of deciding if I should move back. Most of my immediate and extended family lives where I grew up, but job prospects aren't as good (I work remotely, so less important but still relevant), and culturally it's probably a step down from where I am. That said, I'm from a fairly large family, and having them around is something I miss despite visiting several times a year.
I never had a lot of family around while I was growing up. It was just my parents and sister, one set of grandparents (until my early teens), and a few other non-family people that my parents treated like family.
I similarly moved to the west coast. My parents have passed away, and my sister (and her family) still lives on the east coast. I've made myself a family of sorts out of a group of very close friends, but I do feel the lack of family sometimes, especially when I see how close some friends are with their (local) extended family members.
It's something I never expected to have, especially given the small nature of my family while growing up, and yet I still feel like I'm missing out on something.
My grandparents as children lived in farming/ranching communities where all the rest of their family lived. But then along came WWII and after the war many went to college on GI Bills and subsequently ended up living far apart from each other. Their children ended up living in a number of different states. I have eight brothers and sisters and we all live in different states scattered all across the USA from east to west and north to south. It has been decades since we were last all together in the same location. I already assume that my children will settle down somewhere far removed from where they were raised. Heck, I plan on moving away from where I raised them when I retire. I just can't see how it could ever go back to families living in the same town. It seems so unrealistic and infeasible.
The number of people I know who advocate that “blood is thicker than water” and then spend most of our outings at a bar complaining about one or another of those blood relatives...
For years I’ve felt like I’m supposed to report in to my family (my mother in particular) because otherwise I’m assumed dead. It was never reasonable, I was always safe and happy (and not engaged in anything crazy like CIA wetwork, just traveling around the US by myself), but I finally had to do away with it and issue an ultimatum.
For me it was not family vs loneliness. It was family vs lonerness (and happiness). They were “stuck in the mud” and expected me to be the same... when I wasn’t it was out of their comfort zone and they didn’t know how to handle that.
Several months in now I’m happier than I’ve ever been... purely because I don’t have to worry about anyone’s happiness except my own and the people I actually choose to be with.
I actually had a similar(ish) situation to yours. I read a book called "boundaries" and that's made my relationships with my family much better.
This all came about when I was getting married.
This was about 10 years ago now. Fast forward to wife + kids and I did something I never thought I'd do. I moved home to be close to family again.
I'm still fully self reliant but my kids get to grow up near gma and gpa which is amazing.
It wasn't until I entered into the group of my friends with kids that I realized there's a fair amount of isolation there.
Anyway, I followed a similar path. I moved across the country to get away from my family man, and now that I've learned to set boundaries I'm back and happy with our new relationship. Maybe that'll work for you and your family and maybe it wont.
We did have friends who were family where we used to live. The kind of friends you call when you're going into labor and they pick your kid up from daycare after driving for an hour. I miss them more than almost anyone else in the world. So, while you can make it work with family and it might be great, you can also make it work without them. That's just what I chose to do.
I suppose my problem is that I’ve tried to set limitations. The people I’m setting them upon don’t agree.
So that leaves us at a crossroads. I either grit my teeth and continue to put up with what I see as unacceptable behavior, or I enforce the ultimatum and refuse to engage.
This is hardly the first time I have ever had this kind of argument with any of the people involved. It goes, as many family arguments tend to, along a predictable and repeatable pattern: argument, agreement, repetition.
Eventually I had to realize that this has happened dozens of times and if I don’t change any variables we will just continue to repeat the cycle for the rest of my life.
All of that said, I don’t have kids. I don’t really want them, but I assume at some point it’ll happen. I do realize that having grandma and grandpa there is valuable. You’ve got a free babysitter and the family roots. If it came down to compromising my ultimatum and not having that connection... I would absolutely, 100%, without any question, tell my mother to F off again.
The whole thing ends up being exactly what you said - sometimes family are a blessing and built in friends, but sometimes they aren’t and you find other friends to fill in that gap.
I just can’t stand it when people say that family is all that matters.
By divine design, fathers
are to preside over their families in love and righteousness
and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and
protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one
another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation.
This view was a major building block of civilization for thousands of years. Weird how willingly people throw it away these days and then wonder why family is collapsing and mental illness is widespread and increasing
One could argue that any period of change, be it personal or societal, involves a period of anxiety and tumult, which is often an unavoidable part of growth/progress. Could we not be in exactly such a period?
When a family splits, that means 2x everything (e.g., sofa, dishes, TV, etc.) Same goes for the social "norm" that adults above 25 y/o (?) should live alone (if they're not married).
The issue is, not only is this counter to long-established human (emotional) needs, but it is resource intensive as well. Put another way, we're bringing Mother Nature to her knees, and we're too depressed about ourselves to care about her.
Also with both parents working the labor pool has essentially doubled over the last 50-60 years. And people wonder why their parents could raise a family on one income but they cannot. Obviously there are many factors at play of which this phenomenon is just one.
True. But I think a big factor is housing. The home I grew up in (only my father drew a salary) is small by today's standards. But again, get a bigger home today, and then fill it with more shit.
People (read: their egos) are their own worst enemy. If you resist the status quo and "the Jones" it's not as bad. Perhaps not the same as before, but not as bad who tend to live beyond their means.
My biggest take away after reading this thread is that almost everyone seems to agree that there is a very significant problem, while at the same time there seems be a complete lack of universal agreement about cause(s) or cure(s). Sort of unsatisfying that way. :-|
The problem is, as far as the causes go, everyone is right and no one thinks they're wrong. My experience of the world has taught me that people shy away from complexity in favor of simple explanations. So if everyone mentioning a possible cause is, to a degree, correct, then we need to figure out what underlying systems are connecting and driving those causes.
I’ve been feeling a pretty intense sort of depression and loneliness for the last month or so.
The feelings of “you’re a white male and you work in tech and you are wealthy you are a SATAN” is just becoming too much :(.
I volunteer a tremendous amount in education, where I’m the only male I generally even see in my field, and I constantly have to listen to my coworkers gleefully talk about how excited they are at how few young boys show up to our events. I hear them blatantly express disdain when a couple do.
Its so, so sad. I try getting away from the news, but then it creeps into my life anyway.
I’m not some devil because of my genitals, my sexual orientation, or the color of my skin. I volunteer so much of my time specifically to the homeless and less fortunate, I give so much money to charity, I do so much stuff in my community...and yet I just have to hear almost constantly that I am everything wrong with the world because I am an evil, cis, white, monogamous, straight male. I tick every single box of bad guy it seems like there is, and I don’t want to be the bad guy. I actually try really hard to be a nice guy.
It just makes me so so sad :(. And if I ever do even mention that, it just makes it even worse, hence the throwaway account.
Just a piece of advice: try to take a step back and listen more carefully to the complaints you're hearing. When people talk about dismantling the patriarchy, or about racial privilege, they are not actually talking about any one particular person. You are fully able to be white, male, privileged, and still be an ally to those who do not benefit as much from the power structures in our society.
Instead of feeling personally attacked when you hear these issues discussed, try to remember we are all on the same team, fighting to tackle problems that are bigger than just one individual.
Take for example a comment from this very thread: "Feminism has brought about a lot of changes, but I don't think we can lay this one at the feet of women trying to escape their compulsory reliance on unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate men."
How should we take a step back and listen more carefully to this? How are we to interpret that other than as an attack on all men?
Are you an unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate man? If the answer is yes, then it's an attack on you ... if however you work to be reliable, selfless, and considerate, then it's not an attack on you.
Surely, you have to acknowledge that throughout history, men have been quite terrible to women ... and yes, some of that exists still today. So that being the case, you _must_ understand that for many women out there, it's still a struggle to live their life in a way that is not negatively influenced by some men.
Men have been more terrible to other men. And women have also been terrible to other women, and to men. A lot of men have lived with spouses that have made their lives incredibly shitty but it was not acceptable for them to leave either.
And it is not like the traditional gender roles means "Men has it ok and women's lives are worse".
Well, surely being either reliable, unselfish, or considerate will suffice. Fortunately, as someone notoriously unreliable and selfish, being considerate seems to be enough.
"Surely, you have to acknowledge that throughout history, men have been quite terrible to women"
Yes of course but what I don't understand is why you're choosing to focus exclusively on one narrow aspect of the entire history of human cruelty. Men have been at least as terrible to other men as they have ever been to women. And women are not without the ability to be cruel either. Are you suggesting that it's OK for men to be terrible to other men but women should be a proctected group? That is already largely the case according to my understanding of western Judeo-Christian tradition.
"You _must_ understand that for many women out there, it's still a struggle to live their life in a way that is not negatively influenced by some men.
Again, why focus on such a narrow aspect of the problem? The vast majority of men also struggle to live their life in a way that is not negatively influenced by 'some men'.
Pay attention to the syntax, it's not an attack on all men. It's quite specifically an attack on "unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate men."
These men do exist, and these men have historically used societal norms to trap women in marriages or work that was unfair. It's great that we are working toward a society which recognizes that this is harmful and allows these women to seek better opportunity for themselves!
Ah, but what about "unreliable, selfish and inconsiderate" women? Are we "allowed" to attack them or is that 'sexist'? Everyone agrees that being unreliable, selfish and inconsiderate is not great, but using this as a character smear directed towards one single gender is just wrong, whether it's "men" or "women".
> It's quite specifically an attack on "unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate men."
That's one very generous way to read it. The other is that men are unreliable, selfish and inconsiderate, which is pretty much what I've heard over the past 5 years from most people that identify as feminist.
... and the principal of charity suggest that, instead of automatically engaging outrage mode, you should try to interpret it in the most charitable way possible.
Sure, there are certainly some women who say things like this who are also misandrists, but the majority of them are not, and just want to call out the men who are actually a problem. If you're not a problem, then you're not being called out. That's been my experience. Either you've somehow managed to speak only to the most cynical and hateful of feminists, or -- more likely -- you're getting defensive over something for no good reason.
The ironic bit is that you're falling into the same trap: you're accusing "every" feminist of believing that all men are evil, based on your interactions with a few.
> ... and the principal of charity suggest that, instead of automatically engaging outrage mode, you should try to interpret it in the most charitable way possible.
I didn't engage "outrage mode", I pointed out that you were missing/leaving out an alternative way to parse that message, one that I consider likely to be correct.
> Sure, there are certainly some women who say things like this
Let me make that clear: I explicitly wrote feminist, not women. Sex/Gender isn't involved, it's ideology, and many of the most atrocious things I've heard came from male feminists (coincidentally, those I found very reasonable among them were exclusively women). Please don't put words into my mouth by implying I talked about women in general.
> If you're not a problem, then you're not being called out.
That sounds like "I'm with them, so I don't mind that". Sure, cool for you, I'm not. "Men are scum" doesn't sit right with me, and I don't believe that I'm overly defensive for no good reason or should just "listen more carefully to the complaints".
> you're accusing "every" feminist of believing that all men are evil
No, I'm not (again with the words). I'm stating what I've heard & read from feminists. I haven't talked to most or all feminists on the planet, obviously. But of the ones I did talk to, most went right down that path. As soon as I've gotten around to talking to those that I haven't yet, I'm going to update my comment and extend it to inform about my experiences with all feminists.
I'm with you on the syntax and I'll point out (as people may forget) that the "compulsory reliance" part is the real stickler. It's only in 1974 that the US passed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act; before that, a man was required to cosign for any loan or credit a woman applied for (if you were unmarried for any reason, including widowed, you'd have to find a guy somewhere). Before the 1960s, in the US women could be required to have a male attached to any bank account they opened, or could be denied the opportunity to open a bank account.
It's not that men are terrible. It's that if you have to find a man to avoid homelessness, sometimes you are stuck with terrible men, as polygamy is illegal.
> before that, a man was required to cosign for any loan or credit a woman applied for (if you were unmarried for any reason, including widowed, you'd have to find a guy somewhere
Guess what, there was a reason for that (sort of): namely, back then it was the women who were commonly - indeed, almost universally - stereotyped as "unreliable, selfish and inconsiderate", and thus as bad credit risks. Again, it just goes to prove that character smears are wrong in the first place. It's not a convincing defense of parent's attitude, at all.
No, it was not about character, it was about not having an income because women were not a large part of the formally paid labor force. It was quite legal and in fact the norm to pay women less than men, and it was in general required that women leave their jobs once they got married or once they got pregnant.
The syntax looks like just wailed hatred, just like all other wailed hatred.
People are not against immigrants, just the illegal ones that murder, rape and steal. People are also not against Muslims, just the extremists.
If we follow syntax there are no racists in the world and we can simply accuse people of not paying attention. I think that is wrong way to view it. If we talk about "unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate immigrants" then what people will read is that all immigrants are bad. That just how that kind of language get interpreted, and the assumption is that the speaker is aware of it and thus intended it.
I have a simple test. When in doubt I do a word for word replacement and replace the word "men" with "immigrants" and "women" with "natively born". If that make a sentence or article sound like a racist, then it is wailed hate. If it sounds perfectly fine regardless who is targeted then it is not.
But in this case the original author proposed that the liberation of women and feminism was contributing to loneliness and that was the reply. So i.e. feminism makes women less dependent on unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate men so that is not the cause of loneliness.
Let us say someone would say that the increased loneliness instead came from the rise of online gaming/porn/communities and that men in larger degree become less interested in meeting women and making an effort.
If someone then answered that "Men avoiding unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate women by online gaming is not a problem" you would probably see that statement as misogynistic. Even if that description does match some women.
(I fully agree with the liberation of women (and men) from many of the traditional gender roles.)
I can kind of understand people having such a knee-jerk reaction to the original article. The first part reads like someone like Jordan Peterson preaching the return to a family lifestyle according to "Judeo-Christian values" while ignoring all the reasons society changed. I nearly dropped the article there as well. The remaining part got a lot better, though it still feels like only describing problems and leaving the task of imagining solutions up to the reader, with an implied direction.
Agreed about the beginning of the article. It started to feel like the author’s value judgements were slipped in there, but later when they acknowledged “some might not see this as all bad” I felt a little better about it.
IMO complaints like this, and modern feminism aren’t about “men are bad” they’re about s lack of power that women have relative to men in the existing system, which leads to an inability to determine their futures and live free.
> Nazism has brought about a lot of changes, but I don't think we can lay this one at the feet of Aryans trying to escape their compulsory reliance on unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate Jews.
Them: “I hate all black people, we must solve the problem of brown-ness which is pervasive in our society .”
This commenter: “You should listen closely to the complaints of these people, they have legitimate concerns and you need to become an ally to help them tackle the problems they are mentioning. They are not directing hate at you in particular so you should not be personally offended.”
But nothing has changed recently in the culture of HN that would recommend using alt accounts to push conservative viewpoints. However, there’s been a big uptick of these new accounts in the past 6 months or so.
So conservative view points have always been downvoted quickly?
It may have to do with the fact that your main account may be connected to your identity, and if you work at Google for example, uttering conservative view points might get you fired.
I mean, you're not even wrong as far as that goes, but you might just be missing the point. "Racial privilege" is the latest variation on "bourgeois privilege", and we all know how toxic that idea was. Maybe he doesn't want to play on the Maoist team, or be its "ally". That's okay too. No one should be forced to deal with that kind of toxic, negative messaging.
Thank you pastor, I feel this confessional has been powerfully beneficial to my moral soul. I didn't realize I had lost touch with Justice due to my lack of prayer. I will lower my head and continue my labors, as morality demands. How many "fuck white men"s does Justice require to purify myself of this black mark?
> I volunteer a tremendous amount in education, where I’m the only male I generally even see in my field, and I constantly have to listen to my coworkers gleefully talk about how excited they are at how few young boys show up to our events. I hear them blatantly express disdain when a couple do.
But people are not agreeing about the causes of the problems or the solutions. So if you say "Yeah, but I'm not talking about all white people" you should be able to exchange that to "black" instead and still not be racist for it not to be racist for example.
People are very similar. It is nice to find a common enemy and it is nice to generalize. So on 4chan people analyze and find that black people are the problem and generalize about black people and in certain groups people find that white men are the problem and tend to generalize about white men.
This misunderstands what race even is though. Race is a made up thing (created by white people) to give white people more power. To criticize white people for that is to critisize the system itself and critisize them for creating and continuing to allow the system of racism to exist.
To say negative things about black people is sort of like victim blaming and it makes things worse.
Why do you think race is created by white people? So things like this from wiki is incorrect:
>For example, an historian of the 3rd century Han Dynasty in the territory of present-day China describes barbarians of blond hair and green eyes as resembling "the monkeys from which they are descended".[2] (Gossett, pp. 4).
or
>This theory dates back to the Babylonian Talmud, which states, "the descendants of Ham are cursed by being black, and [it] depicts Ham as a sinful man and his progeny as degenerates."
I mean that race is a social construct. Who is and isn't what race is set by society and it changes.
The definition of racism I'm using isn't simply prejudice, it's a system of oppression on the basis of race. Which, as I said above, is a social construct. Modern racism and the general idea of the current races was created out of European colonialism and racialized slavery. In America it was mostly racialized slavery. The Wikipedia article you mentioned describes this. That article says the word race itself is modern and wasn't used as it currently is until the 16th century.
Race is a social construct in the same way that dog breeds are a social construct. They're fuzzy and often overlap, but they do correspond to some underlying biological reality. They're not an artificial political creation.
But why are you removing prejudice from the equation? In my experience, in Sweden, that is often used by people who really want to say what I define as racist shit but they see themselves as anti-racists so that is a problem.
Take something pretty harmless like "white men are such shitty fucking drivers". That is an example from a young very left wing politician in Sweden on twitter. She would of course never say "arab men are such shitty fucking drivers" even if they are statistically involved in more accidents in Sweden because she would see that as racist. Same as if a guy had written "women are such shitty fucking drivers" he would probably be seen as bigoted.
I think a lot of these discussions of what is racist and not and systems of oppression comes down to that it is nice to have a group of people you can generalize over. So that is why people are redefining concepts.
If a Black American hates and think Native Americans are worthless. Is he racist then? Who wins on the oppression competition?
I'm not removing prejudice from the equation. Prejudice can be a form of oppression. I'm simply stating that racism is more then just prejudice.
> Take something pretty harmless like "white men are such shitty fucking drivers". That is an example from a young very left wing politician in Sweden on twitter. She would of course never say "arab men are such shitty fucking drivers" even if they are statistically involved in more accidents in Sweden because she would see that as racist. Same as if a guy had written "women are such shitty fucking drivers" he would probably be seen as bigoted.
All these statements, are prejudiced, yes. The reason the 2nd two are seen as bigoted is because of the power dynamic there, and the systems of oppression. "white men are such shitty fucking drivers" is punching up, whereas the other two are punching down. I personally think it's fine to punch up and challenge those in power.
> If a Black American hates and think Native Americans are worthless. Is he racist then? Who wins on the oppression competition?
Yeah, I'd say that's racist. Black people can contribute to racism against their own race using this definition of racism. They can also be racist against Native Americans.
IMO, to be racist is to support or erect the systems that continue to oppress people on the basis of race. Prejudice is probably one of the lesser ways racism happens, and even isn't always racist. Slavoj Zizek, for example, often talks about how he and others in the past have bonded by telling "racist" jokes about eachother's race. Maybe that's racist in the prejudice sense, but in the definition I'm using (and is the definition used by people that hate on white people or "whiteness") that wouldn't really be racism.
>All these statements, are prejudiced, yes. The reason the 2nd two are seen as bigoted is because of the power dynamic there, and the systems of oppression. "white men are such shitty fucking drivers" is punching up, whereas the other two are punching down. I personally think it's fine to punch up and challenge those in power.
It was said by a pretty (yes, that matters) well educated white woman living in Stockholm. She is probably more privileged than 99% of white men in the world. I would say that the reason that the two others are seen bigoted is because it is people who wants to say bad things about white men who has defined it like that. Because they see themselves as good and racism is not good, i.e. it is not racism.
>IMO, to be racist is to support or erect the systems that continue to oppress people on the basis of race. Prejudice is probably one of the lesser ways racism happens, and even isn't always racist. Slavoj Zizek, for example, often talks about how he and others in the past have bonded by telling "racist" jokes about eachother's race. Maybe that's racist in the prejudice sense, but in the definition I'm using (and is the definition used by people that hate on white people or "whiteness") that wouldn't really be racism.
Are Asian Americans oppressed? Are women in Sweden oppressed? For example in the example of women in Sweden sure they are under-represented in some areas like board of directors and pay but they also don't work as much, they don't die as much at work or otherwise, they don't kill themselves as much, they do better in school, they are not as many homeless women etc.
And will they always be seen as oppressed if it turns out that fewer women wanted to put in the sacrifice at work to reach that far as a board of directors because they are more likely to value other things in life higher? How can you ever know what is oppression or just choice?
> Are Asian Americans oppressed? Are women in Sweden oppressed? For example in the example of women in Sweden sure they are under-represented in some areas like board of directors and pay but they also don't work as much, they don't die as much at work or otherwise, they don't kill themselves as much, they do better in school, they are not as many homeless women etc.
The fact is, most people are oppressed, and most in different ways. I'm against all systems of oppression. I think it's mostly pointless to compare individuals and how oppressed one person is to another. I do think it's good to attack systems of oppression, and criticize (and maybe even attack) the people that support those systems. To criticize the idea of "whiteness" is to attack racism. To criticize how a lot of men treat women is to criticize sexism, etc. I see nothing wrong with challenging power like that.
>To criticize the idea of "whiteness" is to attack racism.
Sure, if you at the same time criticize the idea of people identifying themselves as black.
>To criticize how a lot of men treat women is to criticize sexism, etc. I see nothing wrong with challenging power like that.
But how do you know that you are challenging power. Just like it is racism when people generalize about a single black man based on their perceived idea on how all black men act the same is true for a white man. If you think it is ok to give attributes to large groups of people based on skin color or sex you cannot say it is bigoted when others do it as well.
If you think it ok for you to generalize about men because you perceive that they hold a position of power then it must be equally correct for the incel community to generalize about women because they see women in a position of power. You just value different things but nothing is objectively correct.
Nazis believe the Jews contribute to a system of oppression. Does that make it ok for them to say prejudiced things about Jews?
> Race is a made up thing (created by white people) to give white people more power. To criticize white people for that is to critisize the system itself and critisize them for creating and continuing to allow the system of racism to exist.
This is actually a very good description of many places in Latin America, and perhaps even of some parts of the U.S. (particularly the southern parts, where privilege hierarchies were always quite strong even in colonial times). It's not a sensible way of thinking about the U.S. as a whole, much less the wider Western world. To the extent that some people identify as "white" (however silly that might be from an 'objective' POV) it happens purely because self-identity is important to people, and shedding one's self-identity is really hard. Expecting people to "criticize the system" is just wishful thinking when one doesn't even understand what that "system" actually is, and where it applies!
I'm not sure what you mean. Are you saying that racism doesn't exist in most of America? Or that race is more then a social construct in most of America?
It is a social construct, but the point of that construct is identity, not a direct exercise of power. Race ('white' race especially) is an "easy" answer to the perceived problem of "what am I supposed to identify as" for many Americans. And renouncing one's self-identity is really, really hard so it's very likely that this social construct will be sticking around for a while, whether we like it or not. Of course, this also implies that whenever we engage in derogatory discourse about "white race", "whiteness" and the privileges thereof, we're launching a direct and sometimes vicious attack on what many millions of people see as part of their deep self-identity - which of course can be seen as rather disrespectful, and liable to generate pushback of some sort!
How is this different than someone saying "I think feminists are trash, and feminists who disagree with me should take time to understand what I mean."
In other words, do you understand why what you are saying is victim blaming?
Just because one was the victim in the past, does not mean one is not the perpetrators today. This just further indicates that you should have taken the time to listen to what someone might have to say, rather than strawmanning.
Of course that's true that they could no longer be the victim, but that's not the case here. Woman still are treated unequally many ways in society, and white people are still privelaged over black people (for example) in society. There's plenty of facts and statistics to back both of those statements up. Look at the wage gap between men and women and the average wealth of black vs white families, for a couple of examples.
> Look at the wage gap between men and women and the average wealth of black vs white families, for a couple of examples.
These are correlations not causations. But their truth values are, ultimately, completely irrelevant to the point being made, which is that you yourself have no desire to 'listen', but rather are attempting to simply have your quasi-religious propaganda imposed on anyone who disagrees with you, under the guise of rationality.
> The feelings of “you’re a white male and you work in tech and you are wealthy you are a SATAN” is just becoming too much :(
This is why "It's okay to be white" is a serious message, not just "a meme" or "trolling". Because, really, it is okay. You're not doing anything wrong! Don't let anyone BS you otherwise.
It's fascinating to watch the response that colleges and communities will make to seeing those signs.
They call the sign racist, which is insane. It's like the powers that be are trying to establish that if you're white, you are automatically racist and need to constantly be in a state of shame and guilt.
If you attempt to seek even the tiniest bit of pride in your race, you are a bad person.
I completely agree with everything you said. I do not donate as much of my time or money as you, but I feel completely the same.
And then when people wonder why there is a rise of white nationalism, you have to ask are they paying attention? We are getting alienated from society by force, then when we form our own inner group somehow that is also wrong.
I feel more and more white males are being pushed into a right wing extreme position, thus social justice warriors and left wing extremists are making their own boogeyman.
White nationalists are the exact same thing on the other side. They’re awful, awful people who are trying to make others feel inferior. No part of me gives and quarter to those people. My hatred of being called a devil due to the color of my skin does NOT align me with those who want to do the same thing to others. Not at all.
And I’d rather be depressed forever than give any of those people any sort of solace. No.
You don't need to give them quarter to understand the similarity between their cause and every other cause that is built around complaining about how some other demographic is everything that's wrong with the world
What problem does the White Nationalist agenda fix and why would you bring it up out of the blue?
'social justice warriors and left wing extremists are making their own boogeyman'
I am sorry that people you disagree with exist in the world, that is just the way it is. Only you can determine your engagement with society, and you can absolutely choose to only associate with your bubble and ideology, but you don't get choose who exists.
You live in Seattle, don't you? The reason I ask is because I feel more or less the same way.
I wake up at 6 am so that I can volunteer as a teaching assistant for public school CS classes.
I work with a dog rescue, spending weekends cleaning poop out of kennels and walking dogs.
And yet, native Seattleites will still accuse me of ruining "their" city. I doubt that most of these people make a fraction of the amount of effort that I do to contribute to the community. They just sit on their asses and complain on social media.
> And yet, native Seattleites will still accuse me of ruining "their" city.
If you listen to them, their complaints are likely not that "there's too much dog poop" and "kids these days just don't know enough cs" but rather "money is making the city unlivable for those not connected to tech".
> I doubt that most of these people make a fraction of the amount of effort that I do to contribute to the community. They just sit on their asses and complain on social media.
You're literally doing the same thing you're accusing them of. Besides, effort is a really poor metric for measuring the effect you have on the world.
> If you listen to them, their complaints are likely not that "there's too much dog poop" and "kids these days just don't know enough cs" but rather "money is making the city unlivable for those not connected to tech".
These same people rail against the inequality and exclusivity of the tech industry, and the borders which are drawn around socioeconomic, racial, and gender lines. I am making a significant personal sacrifice to mitigate this issue for future generations by providing the exact CS mentorship and guidance that these people are (rightfully) complaining that they lack. I have directly seen the effects of my efforts on these kids, including a few who have gone on to gasp study CS! In a few short years, they may even be my co-workers, and have completely broken out of the cycle of poverty.
Knowing the positive impact I have had on other peoples lives, and my community at large is a beautiful thing, and I am certain that it outweighs however much my presence is "driving up housing prices" (I live on the east side anyway, so it's a moot point regardless).
Your reflexive dismissal of this not-insignificant contribution and refusal to acknowledge the point being made here is unfortunate. But way to try to reduce this to "there's too much dog poop". You've provided HN readers with a prime example of manipulative framing and intellectual dishonesty.
> I am making a significant personal sacrifice to mitigate this issue for future generations by providing the exact CS mentorship and guidance that these people are (rightfully) complaining that they lack.
I'm sure the people being displaced by tech workers are warmed by this thought. If I am being reductive and manipulative, it is at least as reductive and manipulative to compare the problem of diversity in tech to the problem of capital rapidly gentrifying and displacing people.
I am grateful you provide to the community, but this attitude of "I doubt that most of these people make a fraction of the amount of effort that I do to contribute to the community." is incredibly toxic and narcissistic.
Where the hell do you live that you not only experience this but experience it enough that it affects your mental health. I've lived in multiple states, worked for multiple companies and I've yet to experience either the extreme SJW, or the extreme bigotry/racism side of things.
Where do you live that has this attitude? Perhaps you could relocate to someplace more friendly. I live in the southern U.S., volunteered in a majority womens group and never heard comments approaching anything like what you described. Everyone was very welcoming and nice. Try a different industry or location. You don’t have any obligation to put up with being insulted.
Don't try to win over people by appeasing them, it won't work and you'll hate yourself in the end. Helping those in need is great, but you need to do it in a way that doesn't burn you out. It sounds like that's the route you're on.
Find some people that appreciate you, and leave the ungrateful ones to rot in their own venom. Life is too short to give the time of day to people that just want to tear you down. Like the horse in Animal Farm, if you give more, they'll take more, until you are nothing but a bitter, worn out husk.
Don't beat yourself up over it. I myself am transgender and I am still regularly banned from LGBTQ+ online communities simply because I am not an activist and caution against extremism.
For many people, it is a cultural war. You are either "with us" or "against us".
Online media and online narratives are written in such a way that anyone outside your own group is perceived as evil. The filtering bubble effect of closed communities ("safe spaces") often aggravates the situation. I have seen people with balanced positions turn to the far right and others to the far left in knee jerk reactions to negative experiences.
What you hear is the loud minority of a minority. Racism and sexism against white males do exist. The people who hold those values are just as bigoted as any other racist or sexist individuals.
Most well rounded and balanced humans won't tell you that any demographic is "evil". In fact, most people just want to spend their days without thinking about others.
Everyone has to deal with the particular voices in their head. Women, men, genderqueer, whatever color; the voices in our head tailor themselves to attack our own particular worries, because they're part of us.
You have a part of you that is aware of the random lucky breaks you've gotten in life, which might not have been lucky in other times or places. That's a fine thing -- it's useful. But then you've got a part of you that takes that further and makes you feel undeserving, or makes you pick up and amplify on comments that resonate with that feeling of attack. Why?
To go back to the article, etc., do you have countervailing messages in your life, from family for instance?
I'm someone currently organizing a bunch of STEM outreach events for the summer, and I truly value my white dude allies who are volunteering, connecting me with speakers using their networks, asking their corporate overlords to fund us, and so on.
There is a ton of negativity in the world, as you alluded to, and we all pick up on the messages that are designed to hit us. This is a human problem, and you're not alone.
You pick up on some of them. How often do you feel bad about your thigh gap, or lack thereof? It's someone else's comment that you amplify or don't based on your circumstances. How often do you worry about the quality of the embroidery for your trousseau? Guessing not, because it's just not a thing today. How often do you worry that you're evil because you're a white male? How often do you worry that you're a slut and will go to hell?
You're probably not affected by the ads for skin-whitening creams aimed at dark-skinned women. You probably are more affected by the ads that insinuate your pecs aren't big enough. We amplify the negative messages from outside that hit us where we live.
Sure. My question was more to the point that the parent post wasn't about an unhealthy internal monologue, but about other people.
Letting your internal voice run wild with negative emotions is a problem, but it's very different from dealing with the words of other people. A black woman listening to people around her saying that black women are worthless and that it's a blessing that fewer of them are around nowadays doesn't have a problem with her inner voice amplifying insecurities, she has a problem with actually existing racists around her.
Absolutely. These voices have been called "the superego" but lately you might also hear "the voices of inner critics". In some traditions they are referred to as "the adversary", "the liar", "the devil", "the oppressor". People who fall into the void of schizotypal disorders often hear these voices very literally, and are unable to recognize them as their own inner projections of societal judgements. These internalized voices usually miss the point of what external critics are actually saying. They are echos of other peoples voices, cast in the form of our deepest, most ruthless fears and doubts.
That's not to say that people don't go around actually saying awful bigoted things. They do. They have forever. It's up to each of us to sort through them, to listen to them with courage, to protect and care for ourselves in spite of them. And if we truly care about stopping this pain, it's up to each of us to learn how to avoid reacting to external hate with our own flagrant shit.
People of color and poor people have been listening to bigoted lies and hatred for a long time now.
If you want to learn how to care for yourself in the face of internalized hatred, there are so many leaders who have led the way. Martin Luther King helped me. I've also found a lot of understanding from Krista Tippett's podcast "On Being."
'White people' are now compelled to hear a kind of racialized hatred that many have been largely insulated from until now. Maybe it's the internet? Maybe it's the politics? Either way, hate is out here in force right now and it spares no one, not even white people.
If you feel that these voices are stupid or even callous, why can't you just see that as that, and prompty ignore them? You're not the problem, they are.
It's more problematic if you're depressed at the state of the world, i.e. that so many people voice wrong and hurtful convictions - that I can somewhat sympathise with.
>I constantly have to listen to my coworkers gleefully talk about how excited they are at how few young boys show up to our events. I hear them blatantly express disdain when a couple do.
This is not appropriate behavior. There’s no excuse for discriminating against children.
It’s okay to be bothered by this. It’s okay to call people out when they do this. In practice you need to be extremely polite and patient, and offer measured criticisms.
Well... it kinda is your fault because YOUR people oppressed millions of THEIR people.. and unfortunately that's still on you. Sorry. But hey, look on the bright side. After a few more decades of societal atonement, other white cis straight males can live in harmony with their fellow citizens. Hopefully they will have learned their lesson by then.
As a fellow cis, white, monogamous, straight male...
this post sounds like such a troll that I can't take it seriously. We have every privilege and advantage that one could hope for, especially in tech. Use it. And try to use it for the good of others where possible.
If you really try to be a nice guy, and someone really shits on you for being different from them... laugh it off, knowing that you have advantages that they don't have. Offer them some dollar bills to wipe away the tears with.
You're not being systematically discriminated against. In the very worst case, you're dealing with a few assholes who don't recognize when they're projecting their own issues onto someone else. Being called "evil" is pretty meaningless if you're not actively trying to screw people over.
Yes but are you able to say you have a friendship on an equal ground with trust going on with any of the homeless you help out? To the extent that you use euphemisms to explain their homeless situation?
Stick with it, there are rewards, if one of your homeless friends cooks you a meal or takes you out for your birthday or even lends you money then I think you can re-evaluate this 'helping' thing.
Also try and do things with money more as personal philanthropy, not through a structured charity. You would be surprised at how that works out. People do get back on their feet at they do pay you back. It can be important for them to do so because you were that person there for them when nobody else was.
It is possible to be white, male, cis-gendered, educated, able to earn money and still be treated as a world citizen. Intellect is universally appreciated, but it has to come with listening and willingness. People of all walks of life from all over the globe should be able to sense a happiness and peace that you have deep within, to get this within seconds of meeting you.
You could be spending your time with the upwardly mobile, going places crowd. Or you could give up your time to be best buddies with that elderly guy who can't remember what he did two minutes ago. Or some homeless local. In normal upwardly mobile society that would be a shameful thing to do - waste time on the 'weak'. Your rotten coworkers are stuck in this paradigm.
So you have to do things for your own motivations and ignore the crowd. There also has to be some reward in it for you. Seeing someone get their health back and their sense of being back is pretty good, particularly if you can look back on it and not be able to take any credit, with them having done it all themselves. Same in the educational setting, you should be able to reflect and realise they did whatever it was.
There is a difference between 'help' and 'enabling'. Receiving is also important, if your homeless buddy makes you something or pays you back (when some random grandparent dies) then that is more like it. Obviously you cannot take gifts from senile old folk because they don't know what they are doing!!!
Sometimes the personal philanthropy budget can grow rather than shrink. This is not a given, but people do get insurance payouts, fluffy animals can turn out to be insured and people do move on in their lives to not need the same material stuff. The more audacious you are with transformative sums with zero strings attached then the more likely it is that you will get calls out the blue with random Christmasesque paybacks.
You talk of feeling depressed and lonely, if you were to be realistic about the world then you could think that this is actually a fair and realistic sentiment.
I think you will feel a lot happier if you move from formal charity things to personal philanthropy projects. Long term commitment to two people at a time is more the idea rather than turning up once a year at Christmas time to dole out sub standard food to the 'less fortunate'. (Not saying you do that conscience-buying charidy thing).
Right now you could take on some co-worker's loser teenage child and give them some data entry work and the space to grow a bit. Give it time and they could be the child your co-worker is most proud of, to go on to get the exams and everything. With one of your homeless buddies you could put together a single page website for their dog walking business, doing the SEO and picking up useful skills in design that would not be allowed in the day job. Just apply the hacker mentality.
I have been lucky enough to be able to work and live in several countries around the world. One thing in common I noticed in all these places is that guys and girls don't have time and don't want to commit to a stable long relation. They invest pretty much themselves and their time in their career, traveling , parties, dogs, cats and bitcoins :) !
The mantra is to get rich and retire at 40 years old! Travel the world and have fun.
By the time they are somewhat satisfied with theirs status they have reached ~35 years old. At that point is more difficult to find a person and accept to share your life and habits with them.
They are so used to live their own lives that they have extremely hard time compromising any part of it.
I think the society has (wrongly) evolved towards an individualist model at the expenses of families.
I have noticed that people have been more and more intolerant to family flying with kids. It is hard to find kids friendly restaurants, hotels and resorts.
People invite you to parties and kids are always not welcome. Not to mention also the additional cost associated with having a family.
But you know what ? I am so happy every day when I come home and my kids run towards me and we play and have fun. I and my wife coudln't be happier!
A piece of advice, stop running, take time off and think about your life beyond work and money. Traveling is fun but is way more fun and interesting when you can share it with some one you care about, like your family!
I think having kids is scientifically proven to make you unhappy and greatly increase your stress levels. It’s no wonder people just put off having kids until they can, or pass on having them altogether.
>but it's because of the cost of raising children and not the children themselves
that's the equivalent of saying "if I control for skin colour I observe no discrimination". The cost of raising children both financially and in time, is intrinsically linked to raising children.
It is often asserted that spousal relationships suffer from the routine chores that come with raising children, and that is not going away. Don't control for the thing you want to measure.
It's very complicated. Having kids at home makes you less happy (because they're work). But men who have had kids are significantly happier than men who never had kids once the kids are out of the house: https://ifstudies.org/blog/does-having-children-make-people-...
> By the time the 2016 survey rolled around, fathers were 40% more likely than childless men to see themselves as very happy.
By age 45, 86% of people have had kids, and only 6% of those wish they had not had kids. By contrast, out of those who didn't have kids, more than half wish they did. Even more remarkably, among all adults age 45+, as many people wish they had five or more kids as wish they had no kids (11%).
There is pretty much no other life choice (college, career, etc.) that almost every body does that almost nobody regrets.
It's very socially unacceptable to admit you regret having had your kids. Even to an anonymous stranger conducting a phone poll.
I am much more inclined to believe studies that ask for self-reported happiness and compare to life events / states like childlessness without directly asking "do you regret your kids". From what I understand, having children is negatively correlated with happiness in those sorts of studies.
> I am much more inclined to believe studies that ask for self-reported happiness and compare to life events / states like childlessness without directly asking "do you regret your kids".
Did you reply to the wrong comment? That's why the parent poster led with this quote from IFS:
> By the time the 2016 survey rolled around, fathers were 40% more likely than childless men to see themselves as very happy.
> fathers were 40% more likely than childless men to see themselves as very happy.
That part of the study is about the same fathers who are now aged 50-70 and whose children have generally left the house and are no longer children.
I guess if you see it as in investment for future happiness when you're old, you can interpret it as "children make you happy", but not if you prefer to be happy now and over the next ~18 years.
It's like saying college is an investment for when your old. You may have loved learning about new things, but still rather not have to do a bunch of meaningless homework assignments,
You can actually enjoy being a parent immediately and simultaneously not like all the sacrifices. IT's a deeper kind of commitment. For some people, it's the first time they have actually loved something more than themselves. It's hard to express.
The "science" you're referring to shows that parenting makes people less "happy" in any given moment while doing it and more "content" overall, more "satisfied" in older age. Moreover, there are significant country-by-country differences in these stats that seem to be tied to availability of high-quality, low-cost childcare and healthcare. One place to look for some overview of some of these studies is https://contemporaryfamilies.org/brief-parenting-happiness/
I think the intention is a quote rather than a scare quote.
It's a little awkward to quote a single word like that. In that circumstance the following words "... you're referring to" serve the same function. But it does highlight the notion of "you were looking for science, here is science".
Probably referencing the use of the phrase "scientifically proven" and doubting the assertion being made and that there is in fact "science" that backs it up.
That's the biggest crock I've ever read on HN. Where did this "science" come from? A bunch of self-obsessed journalists I'm sure or maybe /r/childfree?
The people who are unhappy with kids are the people who are unhappy, depressed and bitter to begin with, lacking all empathy. You have to be a pretty self-absorbed individual to not love the innocence and charm of children.
Every person I know with a family loves their children to death and are very content and happy. Happiness consists in pursuing the ultimate unchanging good and increasing in virtue, nothing passing in this life can give you ultimate everlasting happiness. It is a philosophical, metaphysical and theological question, not a question of children, free-time or money. Children are a good thing, but they're not the ultimate object whereby one becomes happy.
I feel as though having children will make a lot of people very happy. But there is also a significant part(>1%) of the population that would be miserable.
I believe a lot of the unhappiness is often from someone who was pressured into a choice they didn't critically think about or didn't want but caved in. Even if the pool of people is small the experience could be quite negative. Where as all the people who always wanted them will be happy.
I took care of my brother and sisters a lot as a child and it made it very clear that I never wanted children.
I've heard a lot of parents say something along those lines, though usually softened a bit: "I love my kids but if I had to do it all over again I wouldn't have had them."
Plenty, my wife is a nurse and plenty of the women explain how they had one and then just never wanted another one after because of regret. The nurse closer to her age straight up says it. I got plenty of warnings from coworkers about having children and most of their wives pick up most of the slack. If you are gushing about your kids no one is going to open up about a taboo subject like that.
That is just one of the many reasons I don't want kids. I have plenty of functional health issues that make keeping on weight a chore never mind a pain free day and yet again that is just the tip of the iceberg.
==If you are gushing about your kids no one is going to open up about a taboo subject like that.==
This is true. Likewise, if you are explaining all the reasons you can't or don't want to have kids someone may be more likely to agree by saying "I wish I didn't have kids."
I don't disagree with what you have said, just know that taking care of your siblings is not the same as being the parent of a child (legally, emotionally, physically, etc.). When you compare them, it detracts from the broader point you have made.
People with kids love to complain about how terrible it is to have kids. But when you poll older people who had kids and ask them if they’d “do it over again” nine out of them say they would. Meanwhile, more than half of people who never had kids wish they had at least one. (See the Pew polling I linked above.)
My original post agreed with the Pew data. Most people would most likely be happy having children.
I am aware of this bias. My Grandmother in law is blunt about never having wanted children where as lots of people are just complaining due to stress. That is why I give more weight to people who have fully raised children and are no longer stressed out by them. My anecdotal evidence is similar to Pew.
My boss complains all the time but I know he doesn't regret it even thought he looks like he got hit by a train some days.
I prefer to focus on regret rates among childless men with vasectomies who had their operation after the age of 31. I say this because not having children =/= not wanting them at 45. There could be a lack of money, a partner, fertility issue etc that could all lead to this situation.
> How many parents have you ever heard say, "I wish I didn't have kids"?
I have heard a number of friends say this, though almost always indirectly. There is a real stigma associated with being unhappy with parenthood, but many people do not seem to enjoy the process.
From my own observations, eventually most parents adjust their own personal "bar" for happiness and more or less accept their lot. I'm sure they get something positive out of it, but it seems to be a tradeoff for other sources of happiness and life satisfaction which usually become unavailable to parents.
==I have heard a number of friends say this, though almost always indirectly.==
Is it possible you are inferring it a certain way because of your bias? For instance, I complain about having kid all the time, but I wouldn't give him up for anything.
==There is a real stigma associated with being unhappy with parenthood, but many people do not seem to enjoy the process.==
This is something only a non-parent would say. Nobody enjoys the sleepless nights, dirty diapers or unexplained whining, but those are part of the same process that leads from laughing, to crawling, to walking, to speaking, to reasoning.
==From my own observations, eventually most parents adjust their own personal "bar" for happiness and more or less accept their lot. I'm sure they get something positive out of it, but it seems to be a tradeoff for other sources of happiness and life satisfaction which usually become unavailable to parents.==
Your wording implies that you have never actually asked a parent if they get anything out of it, but just make an assumption to fit your mental model. Everything in life is a trade-off, that isn't the same as wishing you didn't do something.
> Is it possible you are inferring it a certain way because of your bias? For instance, I complain about having kid all the time, but I wouldn't give him up for anything.
Not being happy with parenting doesn't imply wanting to give up your child. It just means that you made a bad decision that you're now stuck with / making the best of.
It could be that I was simply reading into things, but I have been told directly by someone that it had been a bad choice. But as people do, they adapted and moved on, though their life is very different now and I barely recognize them anymore.
I've also known happy parents. It's just silly to say that parenting is automatically a happy event. Nothing in life is going to be enjoyable for every person.
So where's the line? If your niece lives with you while your sister is incarcerated does that "count" as being similar enough to parenthood to "justify" a choice to have or not have children? If you were a full time live-in nanny? If your dead beat uncle drops your baby cousin off at your house every day? Step-parent? Foster parent? Teacher?
It seems incredibly silly to completely discount all your life experience when making important decisions...
FWIW, I've known someone who very much wanted kids then she became a full time live in nanny. That changed her mind completely about having kids of her own. She still loves working with children, and she still works with kids, just not in a live-in situation. She'll probably work with children her whole (working) life.
>How many parents have you ever heard say, "I wish I didn't have kids"?
My mother said those exact words to me every single day. Either that are similar stuff like "you ruin my life, I wish you were never born."
But, it's not something that is socially acceptable to say, so how many times you've heard is is completely irrelevant. I doubt my mother would say that to anyone else. It's like saying "how many times have you seen someone say 'I am sexually attracted to children?' None? Ok, now we can conclude pedophilia and childhood sexual abuse doesn't exist!"
> How many parents have you ever heard say, "I wish I didn't have kids"?
More and more, now that the taboo is breaking down to some degree. This has been the subject of some recent press reporting.[0][1]
That said, it is disturbing to me, at least, how people’s having children might rewire their brains. They might like their new role only because of certain changes in brain chemistry that result from parenthood. Their fondness for being parents is therefore something forced on them in a way, it is not a matter of actual choice.
"Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don't go as planned."
"Certain changes in brain chemistry" result in us adjusting to be approximately as happy as they always are even in situations which one would predict way less or way more happiness.
There are a lot of things I didn't enjoy as a child that I enjoy as an adult. Raising children is different than caring for siblings, no disrespect to your personal choice.
There's no way to objectively measure happiness, so no that hasn't been proven.
Personally, I've found having a kid to be less stressful, less expensive, and more rewarding than my college/career experience. I'm happier now than I ever was before. Yeah it's hard sometimes, but what isn't?
I have less than five kids, but more than one kid.
My kids cause me a lot of stress. The burden of knowing I have to deal with them and their energetic, ridiculous antics every day when I get home really drains me. I don't really have time to exercise anymore because from sun-up to sundown I am dealing with them, so I'm slightly overweight and out of shape in a way I was not before I had kids. My diet isn't as diverse as it was before I had kids either because I can't go to the same places I used to or take the time to prepare what I used to prepare. I've stayed in the job I have now for longer than I should just because I worry about keeping a steady salary, paying my bills, and caring for my kids more than I ever worried about those things before. I don't spend a lot of money on self-care or personal enjoyment anymore because I need to save it in case something goes wrong and I need to spend the money on them.
Am I less happy? YES. I am less happy than before.
But if I was given the choice to go back, I wouldn't. I wouldn't even consider it. Not even for a millisecond. I don't know why and I really don't need to know why, but having kids is just better than being happy. I don't want to be happy, I want to be a good dad. It's true that being a parent makes you less happy, but it also makes happiness irrelevant (for the most part). It probably has something to do with evolution.
Well, you have to make time for things you want to do. What we have done raising our kids is that we have one parent going to the gym, the other one is taking care of kids. You can do it if you are committed. Do not give up!
Yes, it is rewarding to be a parent at the end of the day when they fall asleep. :)
> But if I was given the choice to go back, I wouldn't. I wouldn't even consider it.
There's a speech in the movie Parenthood [1] that expresses a lot of what you just said. With a kid (or kids), the highs are higher, the lows lower. Some want to be on a roller coaster, others are happier on a merry-go-round.
The highs are higher, lows are lower idea seems right. And a lot of the value comes from that. Life in more real, more genuine when you aren't as insulated from pain and joy.
My wife and I have two kids, we are both in the best shape of our lives, eat better than before, and our kids are quite healthy - participating in gymnastics, volleyball, and roller derby.
Do not judge too harshly... it may not be personal choice.
Life is hard as parent but a variety of things can exacerbate problems such as: both husband and wife working, work place requires long travel, age gap between children, having children with special needs etcetra..
I could pay for a nanny or childcare of some sort for portions of the day and allow myself to focus on things like food quality, exercise, etc. I prefer to sacrifice those things to be with my kids whenever I am not working because I think it is important for me to invest that time now when they are most impressionable. But that preference isn't something I seem to have much control over. It's what I think is right, so I do it. I guess I could choose to do what I think is wrong, but that doesn't seem like a choice as much as a character failure.
Also, my kids are very young. As they get older, I expect to have more time. The early years are the absolute hardest in terms of time. It does get better as they get older and have activities to participate in outside the home.
Leaving aside the fact that you have not substantiated your claim, it could very well be that having kids in America makes you miserable, because the safety net is gutted or non-existent.
There is almost no maternal/paternal leave, health care costs are astronomical, so are child care costs, which are almost necessary, because the normal multi-generational family has been systematically destroyed over the last half-century, both with advertising and economic pressure. Not to mention the lack of compromising skills in both partners, which has been exacerbated by identity politics.
So yes, in context, maybe having kids is miserable*
That's like saying it's scientifically proven that people who invest are poorer than people who hoard their cash (and don't invest). True in the short term, false in the long term.
Wouldn't that also contradict the biological imperative to pass on our genes? If having children had an overall and prolonged negative impact on your stress levels, it would also impede humans' ability to effectively procreate since stress has a direct impact on life expectancy and fertility. I can understand that in the short-term, that might be the case, but over a longer period (say the last 10k years) it does not appear to be true.
The stronger "biological imperative" is to have sex; birth control is quite a recent invention. And once you had kids, it doesn't matter that your life expectancy or fertility drops a bit because your genes are already passed on.
Having kids takes a lot of time and money. If you work till 5 you need to pay for childcare, which isn't cheap at all and might even be akin to doubling your rent. Mom is also working so you can't just unload domestic work and childcare to someone else to worry about. If you are entry level chances are you need to get there before the boss and stay there after if you ever want to not be entry level, and work weekends during busy season, so even that 40hr week can go up to 50-60. If you are a woman asking for maternity leave in an entry level job could jeopardize your entire career trajectory. Even in superficially liberal SF, VC firms have been known to discriminate against women entrepreneurs just from the possibility that they might be pregnant one day. People can scarcely keep housing costs below 30% of their net income.
People are waiting until they have more money and a job that actually gives them time to raise a family. The real reason why people are putting off having kids is that it's not 1950 anymore.
It's easier to meet your basic survival needs as an individual, and thus you have more disposable income for nonsense commodities. Everybody I know who is single and has a good job buys tons of junk they don't need (or often even want). It's the norm.
It's a variant of norm. Another variant is to throw away anything one doesn't use for more than a year, rent-not-buy most of entertaining stuff, including musical instruments, game consoles, fancy cars and dresses, holiday villas and yachts. Actually, hoarding and junk collecting is a prerogative of the poor.
Even renting "fancy cars and dresses, holiday villas and yachts" sounds like an opulent lifestyle, where someone has a lot of disposable income and is finding was to entertain himself with the extra cash.
It may sound like that, but it may be the other way around. Here in Moscow I can rent SmartForFour Cabrio for 720 RUB (10.80 USD) per hour via carshering app, insurance and city parking included. 45 feet sailing yacht on Mediterranean costs 2500 EUR per week and is suitable for up to 6 people, berthing and fuel will add 500 EUR, cheaper than most of hotels. Check out AirBnB for holiday villas)
I'm not so sure--when my kids were infants we stayed home instead of going out. We took fewer trips. Kids aren't that expensive at that age. Diapers and formula, sure, but compared to what a teenager costs? You can save up a lot of cash during the little kid years if you're not doing daycare.
Mm, a radical idea these days! :) Lately I have come to realise that searching for the “cultured, polished being” and the “ideal life” actually made me feel even more insecure and trapping myself to my comfort zone. Oh yes doing a marathon is really stretching me. So is trying out new food. Watching a horrific war drama ... from a sofa. They’re all things that _I_ want, that _I_ control. When I get thrown into something totally random, especially when it’s stupid — like why is that kid crying? It’s just a sticker! — it distresses me a lot. Which is silly! Life is meant to be full of all sorts of randomness and silliness! So bizarrely, I am trying to do more normal things now. Like cleaning the house manually, talking to the old man next door, falling in love. All feels uncomfortable, but I feel more alive too!
Bringing a child into the world to increase my own personal happiness, when nothing else I could do has such a direct and massive climate impact, is not something I can justify personally. Not to mention, my child would have to live to see the impacts of climate change.
There is coming a point (it has already passed, in my opinion), where we can no longer justify our purpose for existence as "creating more humans."
Aside from eradicating the human race, any changes to climate will have to be driven by humans. Someone’s child will help solve the problem. It could be your’s.
Ya can keep cutting this up; it’ll be exclusively filled by kids that survive. Infant mortality rates and suicide among adults are up. Parents have to consider raising successful adults is not guaranteed.
Maybe the measure for loneliness is just wrong?
Lonely relative to traditional values family model? Which had problems with depression, infidelity, parental anxiety 24/7... in other words, rife with emotional dysfunctions of its own.
Are we concerned with decline in family because it’s the best model for organizing communal life or because we’re used to it? It feels different and weird, which can feel sad, but allows other models for socializing to explore.
The way I see it is that you don't bring child into the world to "increase" your own personal happiness. They are (at least in my personal case) the result of my own happiness. And yes they require a lot of work, but all the hard work is totally worth it every time your children look at smile at you.
My point is not that they require a lot of work. My point is that they have a massive impact on climate change. You could spend your entire life flying to conferences, living on a cruise ship, dumping trash in the ocean, and none of it would even hold a candle to the environmental impact of having a child.
So you are saying that children "have a massive impact on climate change" ?
I don't have any statistics that can either confirm or dispute that assertion. But I will gladly ban SUV and Cruise s in favor of whatever climate impact children can have.
Are you crazy? Increasing the number of humans on the planet is the number one thing you can do to worsen climate change. You forget that we are nothing but an organism, we all produce waste and contribute hardly nothing beneficial to the environment.
If that is true of organisms, then life of all types is a net negative.
What a sad perspective. I know many people who contribute massively to the environment. Maybe you need to choose a different, pro-environment lifestyle? Plant some trees. It's possible to live carbon negative and pass on those values to your children.
Why not just raise your kids with a low eco footprint? The whole argument is silly to me. If you want to find the best action you and your children can do about climate change - it’s going vegan.
There’s a ton of info out there that says it better than I can but the consensus is the vegan diet is the biggest thing you can do.
“A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use,” said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. “It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car,” he said, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions.
“Agriculture is a sector that spans all the multitude of environmental problems,” he said. “Really it is animal products that are responsible for so much of this. Avoiding consumption of animal products delivers far better environmental benefits than trying to purchase sustainable meat and dairy.”
If pro-environment people do not have children to pass their values to but anti-environment people do, then clearly there won't be much support for climate action in the future.
Climate action is still a very long road. Yes, we probably already have nearly 1.5C baked in, but our children and grandchildren will still have a massive role in the future of the environment.
> Yes, we probably already have nearly 1.5C baked in, but our children and grandchildren will still have a massive role in the future of the environment.
Another great reason not to have kids. They are going to be left to deal with the consequences of the 1.5C. Including war, famine, and the likely re-emergence of various fascist and totalitarian ideologies due to the crisis. Why would you choose to put people you love through that?
Because they can do immense good as well. The future has not been written yet. They have agency to do well, and I think that those who are able have a responsibility to pass on their values to ensure there are people in the future who will do good.
If only the fascists and pro-totalitarians pass on their values to future generations, then you're right there is little hope. But that's what we're discussing! I believe we have a responsibility to ensure that ISN'T the future.
This type of attitude is pretty common these days. It's this postmodern view of the world where humanity is somehow separate from nature and must be controlled to protect nature. This is such an arrogant attitude. Sure, you may be right, that having a child has a high carbon footprint, but your decision to not have children doesn't improve anything. Not being actively bad isn't the same as being good.
What's your point? That we should collectively bury our heads in the sand and keep living the two-kids-and-a-minivan suburb life right up until the end?
That's quite the extrapolation from what I actually said. My point is that the choice to not have children is not the same as actively helping. Not making things worse is not "good". And demonizing all of humanity as though we are somehow a virus to be eliminated is arrogant. We can be mindful of our impact on the environment without assuming that we're a problem.
If you have Choice A which actively makes things worse and Choice B which doesn't make things worse then Choice A is the "good" choice as it is the one that causes the least harm. Driving a 50cc scooter instead of a car doesn't actively help carbon emissions, in fact it still puts out carbon, but it any reasonable person would say that switching from a car to a scooter helps the environment. Splitting hairs over whether doing less harm counts as "helping" isn't very productive.
> That we should collectively bury our heads in the sand and keep living the two-kids-and-a-minivan suburb life right up until the end?
Have kids and don't do that. If the "good guys" aren't having kids then we'll be fucked. I assure you the "bad guys" are having loads of kids and they don't care one iota about climate change....
There's a 3rd option not being given attention here: adoption. Why play into the idea that the fate of the future depends on some contest to reproduce more "good guys" than "bad guys"? There's plenty of kids that need families who, otherwise, may become the very "bad guys" you speak of. At the same time, you're not further burdening the world's ecosystem with another human simply because of a selfish desire to have another "you" out there. Sounds like a win-win to me.
> Being not-bad is not the same as being good. Inaction is not the same as positive action. That's literally all I'm saying.
Well of course, I don't think anyone was suggesting that not having kids was all you had to do to become a good person and save the planet.
The person who avoids having kids is still probably doing more to reduce CO2 than the average superficially "eco-conscious" family. Positive action that actually makes a difference is really hard work; avoiding plastic bags, recycling, and driving a Tesla isn't going to do much.
Someone who has kids, and raises them to respect the environment, while also planting trees and actively working to improve the planet is far more "good" than someone who just sits around being lonely doing nothing.
Yes, if they do enough, they could have more of an impact on CO2 reduction than the average layabout with no kids. It's not impossible. It just takes a lot of work.
> It's this postmodern view of the world where humanity is somehow separate from nature and must be controlled to protect nature.
The viewpoint that really puts humanity as separate from nature is the one that assumes that the planet can support an unlimited quantity of humans without obliterating nature in the process. How many people do you think the earth can support? 10 billion? 15 billion? At some point we're going to hit a wall. But, thanks to technology, long before we hit that wall most of the plants and animals we take for granted today will be gone.
If we want to preserve a fraction of the biodiversity we have today, at some point soon the human population of the planet will have to stop growing. People who don't have kids are making the rational, forward-looking choice as far as I'm concerned.
“Nature” as it existed 500M years ago has been obliterated and does not exist today. Same for nature as it existed 100M and 10M years ago. Who’s to say which era’s version of nature is correct and deserves special preservation?
And we can work towards that kind of preservation without demonizing humanity as a whole and not view ourselves as some kind of virus that must be eliminated. That's really my point. And it's a very arrogant view that ironically stems from religion, though no liberal westerner will ever admit to it. The concept of humans being separate from nature goes back to the story of Adam and Eve and is embedded in western thought. It's a good thing to be mindful of the environment, but it's not a good thing to think that all of humanity is evil and needs to be eliminated in order to save the earth.
> The viewpoint that really puts humanity as separate from nature is the one that assumes that the planet can support an unlimited quantity of humans without obliterating nature in the process...
The true but unpleasant situation is that, on average, people on HN should be having more kids while those in developing countries should have fewer.
You not having a kid is very unlikely to be a net positive for humanity if you live in a developed country with a large, stable income.
> The true but unpleasant situation is that, on average, people on HN should be having more kids while those in developing countries should have fewer.
Exactly backwards if you look at the resource consumption and carbon footprint per capita in SF vs. that in developing countries[1]. iPhones and Ubers and Bird scooters are expensive. Not just in monetary terms but in terms of generating tons of carbon emissions during production, operation, and disposal/recycling.
> People who don't have kids are making the rational, forward-looking choice as far as I'm concerned.
People who don't have kids because they are worried about climate change are doing a big disservice because they are ensuring that all the folks who don't give a rusty rats ass about climate change eventually outnumber them.
Ideology and science are not like the ability to run fast. They don't require biological heritage to propagate. If I spent the money I would spend educating my kids on funding education in the developing world it would probably result in far more net increase in awareness of climate change.
I don't understand why you're being downvoted. Carrying capacity is a thing, and it applies both at the petri dish level and at the biome/global level.
The view isn't that humanity is separate from nature. It's being cognizant of humanity's impact on nature. The decision not to have children absolutely does improve the situation. In fact, as far as environmental impact the decision to have children is one of the highest-impact choices a person can make. I suppose if you want to be pedantic it doesn't improve anything but it does drastically reduce the continued harm to the environment.
> My point is not that they require a lot of work. My point is that they have a massive impact on climate change. You could spend your entire life flying to conferences, living on a cruise ship, dumping trash in the ocean, and none of it would even hold a candle to the environmental impact of having a child.
Your argument applies equally to "having a child" and "letting some person live."
That's a pretty big jump. In one case, I create a human where one does not currently exist. In the other case, I choose to impose my will on a human that currently exists and has a will of their own.
It's not as big of a jump as you think. If climate change is such an urgent issue that anti-natalism should be on the agenda, perhaps it's a big enough crisis to motivate a re-evaluation of some old ideas about the sanctity of individual human lives.
This is like the bartender telling you that "maybe you've had enough" and, instead of just not drinking anymore, you immediately calling an ambulance to take you to the hospital and get your stomach pumped.
> perhaps it's a big enough crisis to motivate a re-evaluation of some old ideas about the sanctity of individual human lives
You say this flippantly, but if we don't eventually reverse the trends, this will happen. It will be camouflaged in the garb of warfare against the "enemy", as it always is.
You're delusional if you think climate change isn't going to play out without human deaths on a massive scale, regardless of whether that's wars for habitable land and water or explicit murders of "surplus" populations.
We're on a path that is going to significantly lessen the carrying capacity of the planet (on the human timescales we care about). It's implicit and unavoidable barring a wholescale change in power structures and probably human attitudes in general.
It's not a good thing but it is inevitable at this point.
It really, really sounds like you haven’t done the math. The average per-capita CO2 emissions in the USA is about 15 tons (among the highest in the world) and a round-trip flight between SF and NY is about 1.5 tons, 10% of that. So if you flew to conferences 10 times per year, you would be using the entire carbon footprint of an average US citizen, which is among the highest in the world.
Your original statement - that a carbon-hedonistic lifestyle of frequent flying and cruise ships would still be lower CO2 output than having children - is flatly wrong, and your source does not bolster your argument.
Sure, but who's to say whether or not those children will fly on planes or go on cruises? Or their grandchildren? Or their great-grandchildren? This strikes me as a fallacious argument that simply not going on cruises or plane rides can offset the environmental footprint of having children. At least not unless there's some mechanism to forbid those children from every flying on a plane or taking a cruise - and not aware of any such mechanism.
In a book i've read the hero was saying that if you believe the end of the world is imminent, and you are contemplating suicide, then most likely you are in a cult.
Unfortunately modern environmentalism is a cult with its own armageddon. And WWF actively displacing native hunter gatherer people to "save the wildlife". What is the point of preserving environment if there are no people in it?
In fact shrinking population is the worst thing for the environment that can happen now, because at this point we have already activated the natural process of arctic melting and releasing CO2, and even if half of people were magically removed there wouldn't be a huge difference.
On the other hand the new science and technology depend on large number of people ready to pay for them. Things like starlink, new CPUs, would be impossible with smaller population. But if the population was larger, we would already have floating cities increasing carbon capture in sea, desalination plants irrigating large parts of sahara, system of balloons, solar updraft towers and satellites controlling the local climate.
If you are from a rich country, not having children is doubly bad, because you have all the resources to give these kids better education. The world would have been a much better place if people from western countries were immigrating to the rest of the world bringing their money and their knowledge of how to build a better society, but instead of that the rich countries are making easy for smart and entrepreneurial people to immigrate there leaving us perpetually underdeveloped. (When most of the people who were exposed to western values, and had good education immigrate, there is not enough power remaining to fight with those who want to build medieval dictatorship).
What have you personally done to change that? To reduce your ecological impact? To improve the world.
There's an old saying that if you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem. You don't think raising a child under the auspices of being environmentally aware, and that their influence would extend beyond yours is a good thing? That if you and your partner only have one child, you are generationally reducing the population while allowing your views to seed and grow.
There is so much negativity in the world... kind of lines up with the article title itself, and is more of the same problem than the solution. Even then, you aren't helping the world by actively not having children.
Forget your feelings and stick to the key question - does the world need more people, less people, or do we have exactly the right amount? I think we have too many, practically every day I see people in my own city that I will never see again in the future. It's chaotic.
Your measure of "too many people" is that you see people in your city and never see them again? That's an amazingly self-centered metric for deciding how many people there should be.
And it's very easy to fix your problem. Just move to a small town.
>Forget your feelings and stick to the key question - does the world need more people, less people, or do we have exactly the right amount?
HN doesn't have an unwritten rule about expressing emotions, and the person you're responding to didn't dodge any question. Given that the submission is about happiness, it's very much on topic to discuss children and happiness.
Maybe you’re asking the wrong question. Instead, assume that unlimited human population growth is inevitable, and ask what technology or social systems do we need to develop in order to sustain that growth.
What do we need to develop/implement in order to support a population of 10B? 100B? 1T?? At some point, routine space travel needs to come into play. 100x-to-100000x improvement in the efficiency of our energy capture/storage/distribution technology. Terraforming or other world-modification technology. At 10-100 trillion population, interstellar travel and communication. At 100+ trillion population, we need to invent stuff that isn’t even in science fiction yet.
I find all this agonizing over how to keep this tiny ball of mud habitable to be... less than ambitious.
Seriously. The only reason I could justify having kids would be if I looked around, thought to myself "gee, there seems to be a shortage of people", and then I would replicate. Justifying replication for the sake of one's happiness is such a logical folly that it makes me die inside.
On that note, how funny is it to hear people discuss "invasive species" and how they need to be culled while our numbers are such that we're able to significantly (negatively) impact our planet in the span of 100 years.
Having children bestows the incomparable gift of life on other people (your children). Bestowing that gift is the part of having children that makes someone happy. It's not a self centered happiness; the day-to-day of raising children is frequently miserable.
Well most of those species don’t have egos so I wouldn’t say it’s egotistical.
Society is entirely composed of people who were given birth to. I don’t see how the very foundation of humanity (and all life on earth) could be viewed as “selfish”. You’re literally sustaining the human race.
While true, that's not the reason people reproduce.
Most people are only truly concerned with their own offspring and their own bloodline.
That everybody in the world is primarily focused on their own legacy but just happens to contribute to the numbers of our species as a whole is an evolutionary mechanic, not a human one.
I don't think you can separate what's human and what's evolutionary. All human actions are a by product of evolution. We evolved to want to reproduce (for selfish reasons or not). Regardless, it seems pointless to assign negative moral worth to reproducing since it's an inevitable drive and very likely the only reason we exist at all.
We separate plenty of human concepts from evolution and nature already. Choosing not to do so here seems arbitrary.
And I wasn't so much casting a moral judgement on the selfishness of the act. I was just pointing it out as a selfish act as in, it is done primarily for you and your genes whether you realise or not. You are no different than any other mammal in this regard.
(I'm referring to the collective 'you' here, not you specifically.)
That's just life and evolution. I'm not admonishing anyone for it, but I can't accept the idea that having children is somehow an altruistic act done to spread the concept of happiness when the rest of the natural world and mounds of empirical data on the study of evolution and biology screams otherwise.
That makes no sense whatsoever.
You are a mammal. You will mate and reproduce to ensure the survival of your own genes. Those are your instinctual drives. This also strokes the ego if you're successful. You get to see little versions of the your own genetics populating the world.
Some of us choose not to participate in this willingly, others will delude themselves into thinking they are somehow separate from the rest of nature in terms of their biological drives.
> Having children bestows the incomparable gift of life on other people (your children). Bestowing that gift is the part of having children that makes someone happy. It's not a self centered happiness; the day-to-day of raising children is frequently miserable.
They're not saying they're making the world a better place, they're saying that the person they gave birth to would be happy to be alive and that happiness gives joy to the parent (in addition to satisfying base survival needs I suppose).
> Some of us choose not to participate in this willingly, others will delude themselves into thinking they are somehow separate from the rest of nature in terms of their biological drives.
I don't see anyone deluding themselves other than the people who think not having children is a moral position to take. It's a valid personal choice but nothing more.
> Not denying that, but you can't deny that that is a selfish thing, wanting to bestow joy to yourself.
It's only selfish if you disregard other people and/or hurt them in the process of enjoying yourself. There's nothing selfish about bestowing joy on yourself if it's also a net positive for everyone else.
I don't think your use of the world "selfish" in this debate (with me or the other commenters) has helped your argument. It implies something negative where having children is going to be viewed subjectively and objectively positive by most people. Maybe a better term would be satisfying? That covers that the individual parent benefits but also doesn't imply that having children is hurting others.
> Maybe a better term would be satisfying? That covers that the individual parent benefits but also doesn't imply that having children is hurting others.
I certainly wouldn't say satisfying, because you are deliberately ignoring any negative impacts of having children and focusing only on the positives. You say so yourself above.
I don't know if you agree that there can sometimes be negative consequences but you're opting not to speak of them to spare the feelings of parents (perhaps including yourself) or whether you genuinely believe that child birth has no negative consequences on other people or society, ever.
I'd say that's debatable at best. It depends entirely on where you live and what the impact of that child is on society and the environment.
A child's immense carbon footprint throughout life is a good example of how a child being born can be detrimental to the ecosystems we all depend on. That will remain true until (if we ever do) find a way to reduce our carbon footprints to zero or negative and in my opinion, is a reason to limit the number of children you have.
Two kids seems like a good compromise. More than that and you are adding to the problem. 'Be fruitful and multiply' does not serve our species as a mantra as well as it once did.
I don't agree. Human's use resources and not all humans will make a massive impact directly but what if one of their grandchildren does? People should have as many children as they feel comfortable with, without judgement from others. There's a lot more to life than minimizing carbon footprint in the immediate term. Otherwise we could just wipe out the human race to create a utopia. Malthusianism has been thoroughly debunked at this point.
> Malthusianism has been thoroughly debunked at this point.
It really hasn't, it has merely been updated, and yet people like yourself deliberately ignore the revisions and always focus on the obsolete original argument from the 1700's.
The only thing that has been debunked was Malthus prediction that human populations grow exponentially whereas the food production grows at an arithmetic rate. That hasn't proven true because we produce more than enough food for everyone (yet people are still hungry), but population it still continues to grow in a way we cannot accommodate even now for a variety of reasons.
Besides, the main thing people disliked about Malthus's initial prediction was not that it simply suggested limiting population growth (although the religious types certainly balked at this), but rather what his predictions implied in terms of future solutions to the problem; i.e. euthanasia, eugenics and mandatory sterilisations.
They are the main reasons people don't like to entertain the idea of population control, which is fair enough; but they are ideological arguments against population control, not practical ones.
I'd suggest reading more about this though, because I think you've just picked up on the 'Malthus was debunked' soundbite that people like to repeat ad nauseaum without really understanding the debate around it and how it has evolved into the modern era.
The peak population numbers provided by the UN that supposedly 'debunked' this theory have been repeatedly updated and revised because they don't hold. Even the idea of a 'peak' population is one that is not univerally accepted as it only factors in prosperity among developed nations leading to lower birth rates. It does nothing to account for the mantra many religions have of 'be fruitful and multiply'.
The religious are going to be primary drivers of population growth going forward while secular societies are those that are falling below replacement rates for births.
It was originally supposed to peak at 9 billion. Then it was revised to 11 billion. Then 13 billion. Now it sits somewhere around 15 billion because the models used to estimate the peak population numbers are imperfect and do not take into account all variables.
Besides, Malthusianism has nothing to do with the point of my post, which is that we are slowly poisoning the ecosystems we depend on because we consume and waste too much.
That is an entirely separate issue to raw population numbers and is an issue of poor waste management, over-consumption spurred by a an addiction to perpetual growth (in capitalist terms) and ineffective logistics.
The main problem isn't how many people we have, that's just an amplifier of other problems. The main problem we have is one of greed and apathy and an insistence on infinite growth on a planet with finite resources.
You've changed the topic of conversation into something else to avoid addressing my point.
It seems it's you that has changed the topic of our conversation. I said that having children is not a selfish act. Now you say it's not population growth, but lifestyle that is the issue. Great, but that has nothing to do with having children.
The first world is going to be in an actual crisis (not a theoretical future one) if we don't increase the reproduction rate. Look at what is happening in Japan with massive labor shortages, too many elderly to take care of, broken economy...
> The central challenge for the future of people and the planet is how to raise more of us out of poverty—the slum dwellers in Delhi, the subsistence farmers in Rwanda—while reducing the impact each of us has on the planet.
The central challenge to every individual is to survive and reproduce. People know this at a very intrinsic level. Before you can worry about people halfway across the world, you need to be able to eat, put a roof over your head, have children (if you want them -- most do) and support them.
Humanity is not a centrally planned, intelligently designed organism. It's emergent behavior from individuals following their genetic will to participate in evolution.
FWIW, in my opinion, it's pretty gross to make parenting out to be this egotistical, self centered thing. You're shitting on the most consequential experience that most people have in their entire life.
My evidence (as I explained above) is the entire field of evolutionary biology and the fact that we are still mammals with the same instinctual drives behind our reproduction.
What's yours, beyond a sense of disgust at the suggestion that you are still just an animal; and a desire to be seen as a paragon of virtue because you had sex and made little versions of yourself?
Been busy, but my god you're a jackass. If you're going to cite evolutionary biology when examining people's motives, you should at least familiarize yourself with the proximate vs. ultimate cause dichotomy. It explains pretty clearly what you seem to be missing about why people have children.
That's an extremely negative-sum way of viewing the world. Some individual humans (and even communities) can and have had a net-positive impact on the environment. For instance, did the parents of Greta Thunberg have a net-negative impact on the world by choosing to bring her into it?
When people implicitly say that bringing children in the world is necessarily a net-negative on climate, they're implying that their lifestyle is necessarily net-carbon-positive and that they just refuse to do enough to make their own lifestyle net-carbon-negative. Yet it IS possible to do so. I'm reminded of this Indian fellow who planted an entire forest pretty much by himself (although surely his wife/family also helped enable him to accomplish that goal): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7i3QlMvsZs
...there are so many decisions one can make to cut one's carbon emissions to near zero. And some decisions can even make one's carbon emissions negative (some startups at Y Combinator, even... although there are more proven methods as well).
The most powerful thing as a parent is that you can help pass on your values to your children. Teach them (through example) how to live a low or negative carbon lifestyle and teach them the value of the environment and why the Earth must be protected. Plant trees. Make intentional decisions with lifestyle (mode of travel, living arrangements, diet) that lower carbon emissions, and explain these things to your children starting at a young age.
Because the world will NEED people with those values in the future if climate change will ever be addressed and eventually reversed without a collapse of human civilization. Because if everyone with a positive view of the environment and the need to fight climate change does not pass on that worldview to their children, BUT those who deny climate change and do not value the environment pass on their worldview to their children, then that is clearly not going to work out for those who value the environment.
Just to follow up, there are things one can do immediately to drive their carbon emissions negative.
For instance, pay people to plant (native) trees and restore ecosystems (or do it yourself). About $15/month could offset your entire carbon footprint and bring it negative: https://mossy.earth/
If you don't buy that argument for forest restoration counting ($15/ton of CO2), then you could also try some of the more expensive methods like sustainable biochar sequestration ($300/ton CO2). Even the super expensive options for offsetting CO2 are no more than a car lease payment at the individual level (and cheaper, of course, if you reduce your direct emissions as well).
It is not realistic to expect that children will live without carbon emissions when it is clear that billions and billions of people don´t do that.
We have too many people on the planet. Carbon emissions is only one of the many huge environmental problems we have. Creating new consumers to the planet is clearly the most devastating act for the environment what individual people can do.
You can't just dismiss out of hand the power of individual choices (living carbon negative) while simultaneously advocating for a certain type of individual choice (not having children).
The number of people that can inhabit the planet without destroying the environment is highly dependent on individual choices and (maybe even more) government policy. Government policy is determined by voting power, which is in turn determined by the values of people weighted by population. So absolutely it matters if the pro-environment folk advocate removing (to some degree) their own voice from future populations of voters while anti-environment folk do not.
The most devastating act that individual people can do is to not pass on positive, lasting values to the next generation. Because you're not going to stop anti-environment people from passing down negative values by doing so; you'll in fact be amplifying their stance. We must heal the Earth.
I'm pretty sure that by "the world" the GP meant human civilization.
And I feel like that's obvious enough that this objection that you and others raise has to be willful, disingenuous misinterpretation, just to be disagreeable or something.
Maybe your child will be a part of a generation who can have a realm impact over the climate, in a positive way, or maybe just a path to it.
And creating more humans is not only a purpose, it is also the means of existence.
>Bringing a child into the world to increase my own personal happiness, when nothing else I could do has such a direct and massive climate impact, is not something I can justify personally. Not to mention, my child would have to live to see the impacts of climate change.
I find your comment, and your subsequent replies, exemplifies the headline of the submission quite well:
>The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness
> There is coming a point (it has already passed, in my opinion), where we can no longer justify our purpose for existence as "creating more humans."
Two comments. First, within evolution (true, a brutal and inhumane theory), the point of life is exactly to survive and reproduce. It is literally unnatural to deliberately choose to not have children (unless you don't believe in evolution).
Second, I presume that you don't mean for this to be taken to the point of nobody having children, that is, to the extinction of the human race. I get the impression that some eco-types think that would be a good thing; I deeply disagree.
>It is literally unnatural to deliberately choose to not have children
Something's being natural or unnatural has no bearing on whether it is right or wrong. I assume that when the OP says "we can no longer justify" they are making a moral claim, which means that saying it's "unnatural" to not reproduce is failing to be relevant.
First,
having a child does not require you to travel more, get a bigger house, keep it warmer or cooler, buy non-second-hand clothes or do anything else with a significant carbon footprint beyond grocery shopping (which admittedly has a nontrivial footprint). It's not until adulthood that they'll really start to have a full fledged carbon footprint of their own.
Second, social animals that we are, a person's net total impact on the carbon footprints of others can be much larger than that person's individual, "direct" footprint. Raise your kid the right way and their footprint could, in a very real sense, be negative.
Third, there are some indications that the point in the future where we either solve climate change or fail catastrophically is near enough that it may have past before your kid reaches that damaging, adult phase.
Your kid would live to see the impacts of climate change, though. If we as a society would just put a price on carbon emissions and reimburse the externalized costs through a fee & dividend system, even that would not be a problem (in theory) because your kid would be compensated financially for any climate-change-induced hardship.
I heard someone describe this as the "capstone" vs "conerstone" model. Previous generations got married and had kids much earlier, and built their lives off of that cornerstone. When it comes to me personally and my peers, we see marriage and children more as a capstone -- something to be done once our student loan is paid, or when we're ready to put a down payment on a house, when we get that promotion, etc.
The older one practiced worldly prudence, courted during high school, got engaged at beginning of college, and waited almost a decade until after her fiancé graduated before they got married and started to have children. But now he can't get a job with his degree (pharmacist), she works at some retail job as a manager, and the whole family lives with her parents. He's in >$100,000 debt and briefly went to a medical facility during a nervous breakdown after realizing he realistically can't pay it back.
The younger sister had no such ambitions. Courted in high school, got engaged, married right out of high school, immediately started a family, he works at Walmart making higher than average money, and she stays at home raising the kids. They also live with her parents in the same house.
True stories. This all happened over the past 7 years.
I would say the prudence of the second couple vastly outshines the "prudence" of the first couple.
By the way you phrase it, the outcome of the older sister hinged upon the husband failing to get a job as a pharmacist. If he had successfully landed a job, the outcome of your story would be very different.
The same argument could be made for the younger sister. What happens when Walmart downsizes, and the husband is out of job with a background only in retail?
I'm not sure it is worth citing or criticizing the 'prudence' of either couple.
The first couple waited almost a decade to start having a family, and accrued $100k in debt.
The second couple had a family immediately, have no debt, and are otherwise in the exact same situation as the first couple.
And the couple that had children sooner, are younger and more energetic, and also have less stressful jobs that allow them to spend more time and better quality time with them.
Also there is a real value in having the mom stay at home full time where she can teach their children their own values and guard them from bad practices or influences at such an impressionable age.
I am not sure how you come to that conclusion without knowing more details. What if the couples truly love each other and enjoy each other's company. What if they share looking after children thus having time for themselves and each other. There might be people who have good jobs are able to travel but hate their jobs, are lonely and don't like their spouse.
Where is this? There's no where in the US where you can't get a job as a pharmacist. No where. Retails are needed very much so, you have to stand and it pays really freaking well, except it's hard to cross over into other types. Again, in the USA, in any state in this country, working full time, at the very worse, you will make $90k/yr as a pharmacist.
Getting a PharmD used to be a golden ticket. Then a ton of schools opened up and flooded the market. Wages are actually on the way down and from what I've heard, the retail jobs really suck.
There's either something you don't know or aren't telling us. There has to be a specific reason why someone who holds a Doctor of Pharmacy would be unable to get a job.
I'm still in awe that starting off your life with massive student loans is a thing. This is almost always a very poor decision as there are tons of cheap regional schools where a part time job can mostly get you through school with very little debt. And yet we've got a generation of new adults starting life under crushing debt that purchased them something of dubious value (an expensive degree versus a cheap one). My regional university had a decent CS program and tuition was $3k/year.
As it turns out, if you ask children with little to no experience living independently and managing money to do something predicated on living independently and managing money, they make poor decisions.
I teach at the University of South Carolina, where tuition and fees are over $10K a year. To my knowledge, the same is true of all the other four-year colleges in the state (Clemson, College of Charleston, Lander, USC Upstate, The Citadel etc.)
Not as outrageous as private school tuition, but it's still a very substantial burden, especially when you factor in food and housing as well.
My impression is that this is quite typical for the US. I would be delighted to learn that I am mistaken.
The "one weird trick to graduate on the cheap! colleges hate him!" of choice these days is community college.
Have fun trying to get your credits to transfer. I had trouble getting credits to transfer from the Air Force Academy to a state college. They want you to do them there. They would take them as generic credit hours but it was an uphill battle to get them to actually satisfy graduation requirements (which are the real thing that keeps you from graduating, you will already have enough credit hours).
I've always heard that you should complete your AA at community college before transfering for your bachelors as it's a lot easier to transfer with the entire degree than trying to translate individual credit hours between schools.
So first two years cheap at community college for an AA/AS then you only have two years for your bachelors at a more expensive school.
I was charged more than that for a public university in the 1990s. In a few years I paid for that, my wife's similar loans, and a new car. I also got married and had my first two kids.
So it looks cheap to me, assuming the housing isn't insane. I think there is a reasonable assumption that a person gets loans, chooses a sensible major, and actually graduates.
That is how it was when I first went away to college in 1994; I think I paid around $3k a year tuition at University of Missouri. I started planning a 529 for my kids this week and was shocked to find that in state tuition here (South Carolina) is $15K a year for just tuition and fees. I'm scared to imagine what it will be in ten years.
You can still find small regional schools around the country which are cheaper, although not if you have to pay out of state tuition. But between rising healthcare costs and rising administrative costs, each of which represent roughly 50% of the increase in college tuition, with the small remainder being states kicking in less per student.
Without a doubt college is a lot more expensive, and it is much harder to find a school doing things cheaper. Which is why my kids will likely just live at home and get their degrees online. They'll miss out on some college experiences which they can then make up for by not being $80k in the hole when they graduate. I mean most kids are on a 25 year payment plan, which is basically their entire working life.
>I'm still in awe that starting off your life with massive student loans is a thing.
I'm of the opinion that, at least in the US, we romanticized the idea of "going off to college" to "find yourself". It is assumed to be this huge drug-fueled, party sex orgy that is funded on essentially credit.
Got married at 38, first kid coming at 40. Had nothing to do with debts and all that other stuff; I chose to live out my wild years to full satisfaction and natural completion.
Pope Francis talks a lot about this in Amoris Laetitia[1] on the topic of Love in the Family. I've only finished the first two chapters but so far he has talked a lot about the same points you mentioned, and brought a lot of insights. My memory is failing me right now on specifics, but it's a very useful and insightful read for anyone who has a family, even if you're not Catholic.
A lot of people have kids _for themselves_. There are a lot of other endeavours one can pursue that will bring happiness. I think where we fail as a society, is in teaching ourselves how to find those pursuits, surround ourselves with friends, and avoid loneliness.
> The mantra is to get rich and retire at 40
Hrm, I question the circle of people you're surrounded by. Many millennials are struggling to afford the basics, let alone travel or have a family!
This is a contentious and potentially unpopular opinion, but I posit that having children borders on unethical at this point in history. We've wrecked the planet and have growing anti-intellectual culture.
And whose tax money will be looking after you in your old age, when you have no family of your own to take care of you? The children of those ‘unethical’ people you tediously condescend so proudly up on your high horse.
> One might argue intellectuals have an obligation to procreate.
They already did and their kids are building the world's largest and most powerful surveillance and propaganda systems at Facebook and Google. Unfortunately the "G" in FAANG does not stand for "Greenpeace".
I think that intelligence is much more environmentally driven rather than genetic, though I don't have any proper references for that. I would argue that, in a properly functioning society, intellectualism, assuming it's strongly tied to wealth, wouldn't really be heritable beyond one generation.
Combating anti-intellectualism as a trend is probably more complicated than just trying to get the existing educated to have more children then the existing uneducated.
> I think that intelligence is much more environmentally driven rather than genetic, though I don't have any proper references for that.
Long time lurker, but since you look like you could use a good source I made an account.
Here[0] is a well-referenced Wikipedia page, so that you can base your understanding on fact in the future (something we all should aim for if we want to know the truth).
The key quote from the article intro is
> The heritability of IQ for adults is between 57% and 73%[6] with some more-recent estimates as high as 80%[7] and 86%.[8] IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics, for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults.
This means that opportunity for intelligence is very heritable, like height. Sad for those of us who hoped we were blank slates with equal chances of success in the information age. My personal take away is that the world always has been brutal, so "fear thy creator", and get your act together with the few IQ points you were given. I hope all the different people of our planet with can succeed in creating prosperous societies despite this, like westerners and east Asians have today.
Adopt a child. They will have an environmental impact whether you adopt them or not; presumably you will provide them a better life than an orphanage, and you can experience the joys and pains of parenthood.
>I think the society has (wrongly) evolved towards an individualist model at the expenses of families.
that's a wrong dichotomy. There's no fundamental reason why 35 year olds don't socialize, or why our education system stops at 25, why we have no communal institutions, and so on.
The alternative isn't just between individualism and the family, what is needed is building out communities in ways that gives people the ability to connect in new ways that reflect our changes in work and living arrangements.
As the article mentions the UK has introduced a minister for the problem of loneliness. What we need is to put policies into place that develop new modes of social life and to expand the public sphere.
The nuclear family isn't really that attractive any more for a reason, so just asking to go back isn't really a great idea. People like the freedom that comes with having no or fewer children, being able to move, and being financially independent.
Can you expound on what you would propose. My experience is that clubs or meetups often don't forge all that close relationships. Another example I could think of which is more positive is co-ops where people lived in a door room type experience with community rules and chore responsibilities (cooking, cleaning, maintenance). But I think many adult American's would think of a co-op as to close to a commune.
Coop living for the elderly I think would be a fairly good start, I'm German and we have some of those communities in the south, it's usually like a small village where older residents take care of each other with the assistance of some company who provides caregivers, but people enjoy much greater autonomy than they do in their homes. It's not only cheaper, but also more dignified and people seem to be happier.
For younger people I think coops are a great thing too. In the US implementing policies that discourages single family housing and promotes closer connection between workspace and living space I think would help. If you live and work in walking distance of your chess club going there is more likely compared to someone living in the suburbs.
For communities there's also time banking which has gotten a little attention in recent years. Essentially paying people in a special currency for reciprocal help in their local communities that can only be exchanged locally, and everyone earns the same based on how long they work. Basically an egalitarian approach to fill in the gap where markets are too anonymous to provide meaning or where they don't exist at all.
And then I think government and companies should do much more to promote education for middle aged and older people. And not just online learning, but physical interaction. In my experience educational institutions are some of the best places to make new social connections.
i'm 26 and have traveled a fair bit and lived/worked in the US and UK
young people go to the cities for high status, high paying jobs to pay off student loans and/or save up for the future in an increasingly uncertain world
competition is extremely high for these jobs, compounded 1000x due to the rise and use of social media among my generation, which always suggests that next thing to buy or that next vacation to go on, either from corporations or your "friends" (it's hard to tell which is which after a while) - get that raise so you can unlock the next tier of stuff you see wealthy people doing
gone are the days of getting an intellectually stimulating and well paying job with IBM/Ford/GE and building your career off it while having a family young, people my age usually stay in a job for 2/3 years then on to the next startup/job/"adventure" (if they have the right degree to get a job in the first place)
then there's a completely separate cohort of people my age who have settled outside the city, gotten married, looking to have kids in low cost of living areas and figure out job stuff as they go (very risky unless you own your own biz or work for a family biz)
dating is a similarly competitive game in the big cities, one that warrants its own 10 page essay per city based on the conversations i've had with single friends in LA/NY/London/SF
the gap between generations is growing more and more pronounced/quicker due to technology grouping similar people together and amplifying their cultures...it takes effort but you need to continuously bridge this gap with those younger than you, otherwise their needs, desires, motivations will be completely alien to you - i almost don't understand the fortnite meme generation, but i make efforts to
most young people are acutely aware of life outside work and money (especially asians/immigrants due to pressure from conservative parents), but it's getting harder and harder to find the middle class/balance between earning enough to have a family comfortably and affording a place to live while keeping your job options healthy/open for whatever BS is coming next down the economic chain
28 here, and I agree completely. Nice point about the people who try to figure the job thing out while taking the more “traditional” path — I feel like that’s a sizable part of our generation that’s usually ignored.
Also, yeah, I don’t get the memes that my high school niece sends me at all. Their sense of humor is completely foreign to me.
> young people go to the cities for high status, high paying jobs to pay off student loans and/or save up for the future in an increasingly uncertain world
The current world is very capitalistic - high risk and high reward. Smart people are aware that there are paths that will allow them to retire at 40 or earlier, and are trying to pursue them. Unfortunately, these paths often require lots of dedication, so people neglect other areas of life. Whereas in earlier days, there were perhaps fewer good paths to financial independence, and people just accepted being in their jobs until old age, and tried to find comfort in family, friends etc.
>gone are the days of getting an intellectually stimulating and well paying job with IBM/Ford/GE and building your career off it while having a family young,
well for me personally at least that's a great thing. Working for giant company X while living in company town coming home to your labradoodle and your wife with a cooking pot to in hand to watch TV to me is the horror very well portrayed in American Beauty.
Coming out of university I could pick between going abroad, working for a startup, working for a normal business, working from home even, not being looked down for not wanting a family and so on. The liberty I have today is something my parents never had. And sure, with freedom comes disorientation and competition, but to me that's exciting rather than distressing.
Yep, definitely we have much more freedom of travel and work. which is great if you embrace and are prepared and ready for that lifestyle. keep doing your thing! another book/movie that addresses the american dream trap is revolutionary road by yates, i'd recommend the book if you like american beauty. but these are both cultural artifacts of a different era IMO
And on the child-parent relationship front, we are not doing much better. As a result, kid going to schools that make them fit in cutting out creativity. It is much more rewarding to home school your kids and spends time with them bith in terms of their success later on and emotional development.
I have noticed that people have been more and more intolerant to family flying with kids.
I think we hear about the bad stuff, some flight attendant or passenger complains, and the logical conclusion of a family with a crying baby is booted is the end result. My counter-anecdote is the exact opposite, my fourteen month old daughter cried the majority of our 3.5 hour return flight and she was quietest (not quiet but quietest) was when I was standing and holding her in the middle of the aisle. Any dirty looks, and I scanned for them occasionally, were non-existent (or I missed them and they never vocalized) and most people either had noise-cancelling headphones or just rolled with it. When we apologized for the noise there was a lot of "Oh ours our teenagers now, we've been there, you're ok!"
Some of it maybe the bigger stink they make the longer it all takes, but a lot of it is probably shared communal experiences. If some baby was wailing their lungs off next to me on a plane, I'd roll with it, the parent(s) is having a far tougher time of it then I am.
Same observation here. I've never seen anyone give dirty looks to any crying kids / babies on a plane. Most people are closing their eyes / sleeping or have their headphones on doing whatever. I mean, there are so many solutions to a crying kid (for the observer) that there's no reason to get upset about it (and I haven't seen this being the case at all).
I know you're just describing your personal impression and don't claim them to be universally true.
But allow me to present some evidence, er, anecdote to the contrary: I have also traveled the world and lived on three continents. I met lots of cool people and was lucky enough to make friends with some of them in all the places that I visited. I never observed the same as you apparently did, namely that they invested themselves in nothing but their career, traveling, parties, etc.
As a matter of fact, coming to think of it, a lot of the people I know (most of them college age) were also from abroad and made sure to stay involved with the family business back home as much as they could. Also, a lot of my friends were actually couples, showing that they cared for more than just work and individual leisure. Some of them got married since.
Of course, differences may be due to a number of reasons. What area of work you're in, for example. What geographical location you're in. And naturally, you probably tend to make friends with people that are to some degree similar in some respect. Also, there's varying degrees of peer pressure to like the same things if you want to be part of the in-crowd (or any crowd you like, really). Oh, and let's not forget: cultural background.
So I don't think you can generalize as much as you did in your post.
> They are so used to live their own lives that they have extremely hard time compromising any part of it.
Reminds me of this passage from The Brothers Karamazov:
> “I heard exactly the same thing, a long time ago to be sure, from a doctor,” the elder remarked. “He was then an old man, and unquestionably intelligent. He spoke just as frankly as you, humorously, but with a sorrowful humor. ‘I love mankind,’ he said, ‘but I am amazed at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular, that is, individually, as separate persons. In my dreams,‘ he said, ‘I often went so far as to think passionately of serving mankind, and, it may be, would really have gone to the cross for people if it were somehow suddenly necessary, and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone even for two days, this I know from experience. As soon as someone is there, close to me, his personality oppresses my self-esteem and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I can begin to hate even the best of men: one because he takes too long eating his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps blowing his nose. I become the enemy of people the moment they touch me,’ he said. ‘On the other hand, it has always happened that the more I hate people individually, the more ardent becomes my love for humanity as a whole.’”
The speaker goes on to say:
> Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one’s life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and everyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science.
Nice quote. Does the author tell why he ends up hating a human when he loves humanity. I think I too have that problem. I look at all the TED talks and think I should love humanity but I have a bad husband to my wife and a bad father to my kids. tia.
I think it's not anything wrong with you per se, nor have I read the book, but I think it's because like the author says, dealing with people on an individual basis requires personal sacrifice. Particularly, emotional sacrifice. Allowing people to get a cold without letting it bother you. Making compromises and being forced to do things you don't want, while not being able to do what you want, on a daily micro level.
Whereas tasks that show your love for humanity are more detached from actual individuals. Curing cancer requires you to interact with lab equipment and microorganisms more than humans. Sure your opportunity costs here may be playing video games or traveling, but they are less emotional costs and more material costs.
Paying emotional tolls is difficult, and from my experience, many people are simply incapable of paying them. I mean, they are or may be capable, but they would have to change the way they act or behave, and they are not willing to do so. I think there's a genetic component to it.
It is nice to know you are fan of David Foster Wallace. I first came across This is Water about 10 years back, shortly after he passed away. It was an article that appeared on New York Times. The article described what an extraordinary writer he was. The I read This is Water. It was jaw dropping. I have read that essay several times after that. I have remembered the contents of that article several times when struck by melancholy. I was deeply moved by that essay. He has written This is water with such deep understanding of the human condition and with such empathy. I have wept for his untimely death. I always wonder, how does he was able everything about the humans in slow motion and with such high resolution. Amazing. No words. We are worse off without him.
> They are so used to live their own lives that they have extremely hard time compromising any part of it.
I say that when someone having extremely hard time doing something, he/she just doesn't need that something hard enough. Most of the people rarely have hard time eating or drinking or watching interesting movie or spending time with friends.
Before XX century it was extremely hard to live alone, unless one have stable source of income or an inheritance. For lay people family was just a question of survival. Children was the only recipe of aging in dignity.
It is still valid in XXI century, but now there are other ways to live one's life. Forties is not an age of retirement, but a most active age of reaping rewards and even starting a new ventures. There are other means of self realization besides family and children. I don't see anything particularly bad about it.
Good news is there are still people who get married and have kids. Bad news is they're definitely the less introspective (for lack of a less offensive word) than the ones that don't get married.
My interpretation is that we finally have the freedom from cultural norms to really do whatever we please, but with great freedom comes great responsibility, not just to society but to our own long-term selves. Perhaps these people you talk about have chosen poorly, very poorly indeed, with this freedom. Nothing to do but advise the ones who might listen, and build a moat (physical or mental) that can protect you and your loved ones from them when shit hits the fan.
Along a similar note... kids are for the young. When you're in your 20's it's MUCH easier to play with young kids and at least try to keep up as it is when you're in your 40's.
There's also something to be said for averting hookup culture and actually trying to build a relationship as opposed to ejecting at the first sign of inconvenience.
I say both of these things as a twice divorced 40-something that hasn't had kids of his own and deeply regrets it.
my dad was 45 when I was born and 47 when my brother was born.
maybe he didn't have as much energy as some of the younger dads when I was a kid. but on the other hand he was able to retire while I was in high school, so he was able to spend a lot more time with my brother and I before we moved out.
> I have been lucky enough to be able to work and live in several countries around the world. One thing in common I noticed in all these places is that guys and girls don't have time and don't want to commit to a stable long relation.
This could be selective though. If you're living in expat communities in global hubs, everyone knows people are there for only a short time, so its not worth investing in long term commitment.
Can you give examples of how people have become more intolerant of families flying with kids? Every flight I've been on where there was a kid crying the whole time, nobody so much as flinched. I think people understand that kids cry, and the situation is only worsened in a pressurized cabin. I'm curious what specific experiences you had that made you make that statement?
My life is currently more chaotic and exhausting than ever, with three young daughters and a wife in the house with me. There's not much time for doing things because I want to do them. I sometimes think about the man who was my favorite uncle growing up. He's nearly 80 now, never married, no kids. Did whatever he wanted in his 30s and 40s (and 50s and 60s for that matter) I'm sure. My mom and her sister go stay with him for a week every year.
Not saying that I couldn't end up alone at his age, but I'd like to think my kids will be around some. My mom told me once that when their mother died she (my grandmother) told my mom "Take care of your brother. He doesn't have anyone who loves him more than anyone else." Even without putting it that way, I've never regretted the chaotic, noisy, exhausting life (of sacrifice?
Yeah I think so) that I've chosen.
I think we would be certainly better off banning free dating websites and apps. Get people back into the real world where they can see and smell eachother. Heck, even speed dating is better.
For one, you don't provide any evidence to back up your claims. Your comment just imparts the impression of bitterness and frustration because it's a commonly repeated theme in the incel community. If that's the place where it's coming from please get some help instead of letting those toxic feelings fester.
Is it any wonder with the rise of no-fault divorces, feminism attempting to dismantle the patriarchy, women entering the workforce without wages adjusting in proportion to the increase of workers, and the general attitude that women seem to have toward men now?
How can someone look at the situation of how men are under attack from essentially every direction, yet they are expected to still marry women who have been with an unknown number of partners and have kids when the rate of divorce has skyrocketed.
It's really confusing how anyone could be confused about how people are more lonely now, marriages and childbirth is down, and how society feels to be unraveling.
This is what dismantling the patriarchy looks like, it's dismantling the family unit, thus forcing people to look to government for assistance and support, thus getting the next generation to be for more government and more government control.
>The results presented in this article replicate findings from previous research: Women who cohabit prior to marriage or who have premarital sex have an increased likelihood of marital disruption. Considering the joint effects of premarital cohabitation and premarital sex, as well as histories of premarital relationships, extends previous research. The most salient finding from this analysis is that women whose intimate premarital relationships are limited to their husbands—either premarital sex alone or premarital cohabitation—do not experience an increased risk of divorce. It is only women who have more than one intimate premarital relationship who have an elevated risk of marital disruption. This effect is strongest for women who have multiple premarital coresidental unions. These findings are consistent with the notion that premarital sex and cohabitation have become part of the normal courtship pattern in the United States. They do not indicate selectivity on characteristics linked to the risk of divorce and do not provide couples with experiences that lessen the stability of marriage.
Wow they just censor everything they don't like on here. So shameless. It is like HN is run by a bunch of homosexuals who hate straight people. Stop hating & censoring.
OK, so? It's easy to find abstracts of papers that support just about any conclusion, but you still need to provide a link if you're making an argument (and it isn't obvious if that's what you're doing.) Furthermore, it's a fallacy that divorces are inherently a bad thing. If you think you should only date women who have never been with any other men out of insecurity that they'll leave you otherwise then you're setting your relationship up for failure from the beginning.
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[ 0.82 ms ] story [ 533 ms ] threadGoing home feels so meh... I can watch more Sherlock Holmes videos (Jeremy Brett!), rewatch Parks and Rec or The Office, or work on music or art, but there is no one to share with, no one to quip with, no one to engage with on my passions. I just kinda laze about without more contact and stimulus.
And I do have a better social circle now than I have since I left home at age 18...minus the daily familial, non-work interaction. I can't wait to hit the phase of life with a partner and/or family living with me.
If anyone in Providence, RI wants to hang, let me know!
It's like saying attend local evangelical church. The people you meet will be potential friends for some types of people. For other types, not so much.
I used the yoga example because people there generally seek self-improvement and cultivate a good vibe, which helps in engaging social interactions
Bounce around until you find one that feels right: a good amount of regulars, people doodling, and bullshitting with baristas.
Show up a couple times a week, drop into the odd conversation. And be ready to say “anyone want to grab a beer” come quitting time.
This is just about the fastest (week to a month) way to find yourself a new in person social circle.
I’d say though that the people you meet while shooting the shit at a cafe are more likely to be “general friends” that are based more on shared personalities and humor than a shared interest. As such, these types of friendships feel/are less utilitarian
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/bxat83/people_wh...
Also great:
Volunteering. You're guaranteed to meet some good people because these are other people that are interested in (1) working together (2) helping people (3) donating their time. The very worst-case scenario is that you don't make friends, but have helped somebody in need. =)
Sports. Grown-up recreational sports are nothing like the (often hostile) world of sports you might remember as a kid. Generally very supportive places. Co-ed leagues tend to be more easygoing. If you're a beginner, pay for some lessons. For example... lots of tennis coaches out there. If you are healthy enough to move around you can learn to play a pretty decent game of tennis in not much time and with less $$$ than you'd spend on a new Xbox. Obvious direct and indirect benefits as well.
I have always loved travelling so that's what I do every weekend - to some town or hills or a beach or trekking somewhere. Treks are where I meet quite some people and they don't smoke, at least not there.
Hiking is great though
Plus all the smokers I know (not many left!) smoke outside like considerate, normal human beings so there's no way anybody would be forced to really encounter their smoke.
Smoking seems to be on the upswing among young people too.
It sounded to me like WhompingWindows is a grad student, so I heartily endorse they try this approach. Just be in public spaces more. It helps.
I always have flashback about the time I moved to another city without family bondings. Then I smiley because it's over.
Yours is an interesting reading, and I must confess it had not occurred to me before.
[0] 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Either one of you can also start feeling rejected when the other person just wants some alone time.
My wife and I have our own lives that we happen to share with each other, but at least from my perspective, if she were to somehow vanish one day, my life would be immeasurably worse for it.
I really don’t want to imagine coming home to a big empty house.
It just “happens”. I moved across town (metro area - across town is literally over an hour away with traffic), my friends and I all became busy with our own lives and i woke up one morning and realize that my family had become my whole life (not in a good way). Between that and my career I had no friendship circle and I stopped just doing things by myself to recharge. It didn’t help that most of friends were female. Of course that doesn’t work out too well when you’re married.
I had to actually start purposefully keeping in touch with friends and former coworkers as I changed jobs every couple of years and when I saw an old high school classmate (from over 20 years ago) that I was “friends” with on Facebook, I made an effort to reach out to him and another classmate to meet for drinks.
But that’s not implied by dependence. It just means you depend on that person for that thing sometimes. It means life would be tough if they stopped providing it. It doesn’t mean you would fall apart or become unable to function.
Certainly there are things people want to depend on their partner for and things they don’t. But none of it is universal. It’s totally individual. Someone might want to be financially self sufficient. Another person would feel totally safe bringing $0 to the relationship. Neither is a bad choice, it depends on whether that’s something you’re comfortable depending on your partner for, and whether they’re comfortable dependably providing it.
Edit: Just in case it wasn’t obvious, “interdependence” is the only one that is considered healthy.
But you appreciate the work you went through to attain those heights that much more when you have someone to see the view with, who appreciates it as much as you do.
Which IMO is the best part of "working on yourself", and "improving yourself". Doing it for yourself is absolutely great and can make for a wonderful lived experience. But having someone to share it delivers great sense of validation--as creatures who like to procreate, we're always going to desire that.
That's a GREAT metaphor!
Based on my own experience of being with someone for 10+ years, I can attest it takes a lot of patience, compromise, trust and hard work (from both parties).
But it can be incredibly fulfilling.
But to use the old cliché- it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
PSA, there's nothing wrong with being skinny, and some people prefer a skinny partner.
My read on that comment:
"I can't be arsed to go to the gym regularly for my own benefit, but I'm happy to do so to please her and I'm all the healthier for it. win-win!"
I mirrored the framing of your comment. If it feels ugly to you for me to reply in that manner, maybe think about that. Because that's the crux of my point.
There are good ways to promote body positivity. Making comments that look like a personal attack on someone else for simply being happy about their current choices isn't really one of them.
Being fat is normal now in American society, and anyone who isn't is seen as a deviant.
Are there other things in life where people go to the same place for, at a glance, opposite reasons?
Not just with weight, but with nearly everything in life: try to find a balance. Between time for yourself and spending time with others, between socialism and capitalism, almost every -ism, belief or drive taken to extremes becomes harmful, but can be a useful contribution to a balance between different concerns.
In any case, I used to hate working out, and always had terrible posture. I've been doing crossfit for half a year now and improvements are visible to a lot of people around me. I don't want to bulk up, but better posture is good for anyone.
libcinder, openframeworks, pure data, faust, three.js, tone.js, there are a multitude of things regular musicians could use but don't know about.
Invite someone over!
>If anyone in Providence, RI wants to hang, let me know!
I actually live in Cranston, lol. You like biking? Cryptocurrency? Music production?
What kind of music are you into? I play piano, a buddy of mine is into guitar and Linnstrument. We may be having a board game night tonight actually, been looking forward to it, LMK if you want to stop by.
I am biking the MS150 this weekend, so I may be late to reply. Wish me luck! :)
I've found biking to be an exceptional way to meet new people and break out of the lonliness funk I fell into after moving to a new city where I knew no one. Most shops organize group rides at all skill levels, and most cities have bike groups. It's a wildly social sport, and most rides end at cafes or breweries. It gets me out of the house and there's an instant camaraderie that comes with sweating with a group of people for a couple hours on a long ride.
I like and enjoy my coworkers but our respective interests are too dissimilar. The interactions at work never go deeper than the current objective or niceties. This is completely fine (for now) but in the future I would love to be on a true team.
Going home is indeed meh. As much as it feels nice to unwind, I'd much rather unwind with my gang.
I used to be on a sports team and lived morning, day, and night with my boys. Even though life was chaotic, it was incredible to have a gang. One thing I know for certain is that I could do more to gain that back. Short-term I plan on (1) joining an adult sports league and (2) hit up the super interesting people I've met since moving.
But long-term I believe lifestyle redesign is the only solution to our highly atomized world. I look to the past for ideas.
You lack family, you have coworkers, you have random humans in the area, you didn't mention any sort of buddy. So have 2 or 3 out of those 4.
I'm bummed about spending the last quarter century without a buddy. Family and coworkers and random humans do not substitute. Maybe I have no time for it, but I also think it takes a certain kind of environment. The shared environment of an Internet-free childhood neighborhood and school created the right conditions.
But when you're taking classes with people, or it's a crossfit kinda gym that's totally built around a team concept, great place to meet people.
It is in bay area, and I go-to my company gym which is fairly busy and big.
I guess it comes down to how you operate at the gym, is it a class, lifting, cardio? For me it would be really frustrating.
When I worked out at 8 am, there were a lot of retired and semi retired people that LOVED to chat.
When I switched to lunch time, hardly any of that, people were in a rush to get in and out.
At 5:30AM I met a lot of regulars and also meet a lot of my wife's gym friends as she had been going at that time for years. But I couldn't do the 5:30am thing, really messed with my sleep. Too worried about getting to sleep early enough.
You're in a phase of life where you could live with others, although there's no guarantee of there actually being a good opportunity near by.
I spent a chunk of my 20s living in a student housing cooperative in Ann Arbor, MI, and for the most part it was a great experience. It was big enough, and enough of the population was grad students, that it was easy to be left alone when that's what you wanted. But it was also plenty easy to find someone up for a game of chess or whatnot at pretty much any time of day.
It was also inexpensive, I still had some space of my own, and while some work was owed to keep the house running it was in practice substantially less than I spend on my own apartment with typically better results.
The other thing is to get involved with social physical activity, clubs, or volunteering. I played hockey and went to a group fitness gym. I made long term friends there. I am into ham radio and the club where I live is pretty good. I used to volunteer at a kids camp and that was great for making friends with the staff members and doing social things outside of camp.
To me, find where your interests align with social/community activity. Currently, I am trying to get the ham radio club to be more out in the community. We are doing radio communications for a running race this weekend. It is exciting.
Now I have my own dogs. Easy to meet people if you go to obedience, agility, or other dog classes.
With a dog you get all of the above, plus the affection from the dog, plus the additional exercise.
Unlike sports or gyms there's a lot more hanging around and chatting, plus you can end up with new destinations. Meanwhile the exercise gives you endorphins.
In my similar sized city there's enough cyclists that there are many different "scenes" depending on what you are looking for, but many overlap so that you'll almost always have a familiar face at one.
Riding a bike for transportation also lets you feel a little more human getting around your city. You may run into people you know.
Edit: (start by investigating social hobbies)
Seconded on request for clarification.
Compared to many martial arts, BJJ is very interactive in that you learn something new and then immediately put it into practice against training partners. BJJ gyms don’t really do katas (lining up the class to practice poses/moves individually).
This is nice because you get immediate feedback on what works. I’m a small guy. In a real fight I would probably get smashed by any average sized dude, but my experience diving into jiu jitsu has been fun and interesting. It’s a very technique based and strategic game, so my size isn’t as much of a factor as it would be in other sports.
Most gyms do a free trial period. You won’t have any idea what you’re doing for the first month or two, but I think it’s healthy to get humbled once in a while.
California (specifically So Cal) is kind of the Mecca of BJJ in the US, so a gym should be easy to find. Give it a try everyone.
But, I also submit that the NY area is the central place for jiu jitsu on the US east coast.
Insofar as it's possible, not taking your feelings or life seriously is the best tactic I've come to use. But I'm relatively young, so I might be wrong.
And it's pretty vacuous: so, what, don't act on chasing happiness? Feel lonely but act like it doesn't matter and do nothing? Try to exist in a psychologically-inert routine until you die? Yes. xDD Or, you know, do small things to improve things, but don't try too hard because it doesn't seem worth it.
(My exception to this would be superego, rather than id, shit like revolutionary action which has the potential to take you and everybody else into new maxima of well-being IN WHICH you otherwise try to exist in psychologically-inert routines until death -- because that's at least more meaningful than neurotically ping-ponging around for personal maxima of well-being. More return on stress investment.)
Don't make exceptions about the things that make you happy, even if you know the things that make you happy might change down the road.
A couple years ago I bought a used bass and amp (again, craigslist) for cheap, dusted off my old skills, then found some other people on meetup.com who want to play music socially for fun and improvement, but don't have the ambition to actually be in a performing group. It is nice to socialize for couple hours every couple of weeks with new people on a non-programming activity. One of the guys is especially compatible with me, and we've met up a couple of times outside of the band.
The flip side of this is that when you do actively seek out opportunities to share, you can instantly meet a lot of people in one go if you're the one sharing, instead of a spectator.
It does take effort, but opportunities are out there. I went to a "bring your own art" event in SF a couple weeks ago that was a public event on Facebook. I took a photography work I had made. I took a robot I had built to Maker Faire. For tech projects, email event organizers, meetup organizers and ask if you can present at their next event. For art projects consider sharing a unique or interesting story or journey, not just a single piece of art. If you actually do make something cool or you have a good story, you'll be surprised how easy it is to get a few yeses.
When you are the creator/presenter/speaker, you meet people quickly because it's not awkward for others to approach you and ask questions. It's a lot harder to meet people as a mere participant.
Seeking out events you can present or exhibit at is not that easy for everyone. But since you're in Providence, you should be able to find plenty of events an hour away in Boston.
Also, if you have a hard time finding events but you have a critical mass of a few friends in the area, consider hosting an event. It can be as simple as a potluck, which means you basically have to do no work except maybe make 1 dish yourself and clean up afterwards. Let your friends know it's okay to bring +1 or +2. Many times they will. You'll meet a lot of new people that way too.
While this would explain loneliness in cities, I doubt it. I believe it's unrealistic expectations from TV, social media, newspapers, both positive and negative, about relationships and people in general. Just like pornographic movies affect one's love life, seeing unrealistic depictions of social life destroy natural curiosity about other people, lead to doubts and suspicions etc. ... The availability of the option to avoid other people does its part.
I think I just got used to it. I was lucky that I inherented a small flat, although in bad condition and location. I score some freelance gigs time to time to keep myself alive. I have tried online communities or friends so to speak but I don't really get it how it's done. I didn't have a problem in real life.
I read HN always every night before I fall asleep. In 2008 or so my show HN made it to first page. I was very happy that say. Genuine happiness. I might have lacked being a human now.
Volunteering to help with for some in-person activity can provide that essential social connection.
Also, consider talking to a professional. They evaluate situations like the one you describe all the time.
Can't say the same for any link you might follow though.
Take up an “extreme” sport. Skiing, SCUBA diving, mountaineering, surfing, windsurfing, paragliding. Become a de facto member of your chosen activity’s local scene.
Or just find a girl, ???, propagate your bloodline into the future.
Like, whatever, man. It’s over when they’re packing the dirt in your grave.
Also, if I may be so presumptuous as to offer a suggestion: try contacting someone from earlier in your life. Many times, people are lost in their own world, their worries and problems and life just happens as it always does. However, they are very likely to be happy to suddenly hear from an old friend. I have been on both sides of this and it was ultimately a good experience. In one case, I also happened to have contacted someone at an opportune moment and saved them from self harm.
Again, a very happy birthday to you and I hope that, this year, you find joy in life.
The internet was just getting started then, so that experiment might work out differently now, but it's worth considering how much of our modern isolation is just a matter of choices.
One was that people will exploit that rule, even if they don't know about it. That church group would have cheerfully turned me into one of their most dedicated and active members just by inviting me to all the things. They meant well, but I was sending mixed signals by accepting all their invitations even though I wasn't interested in their faith. Once I had been to a few events I had to start saying no.
Another was that once I had a bit of a social life going, I didn't want to let happenstance push me around so much. The choice was no longer between do this thing or stay home and mope; I started to have other options and I didn't want to just end up doing the first thing that presented itself.
All in all, it was a great way to change my habits, but not a good way to live life indefinitely.
I have a family member that pretty much went all-in on came-to-it-later-in-life religion. It really felt like their susceptibility to loneliness was successfully exploited.
I've been invited to a violent sounding orgy of the many male, one female kind (always been a dream of the girl's, but I do have someone I'm seeing). In the last few months, also been invited to an open Satanic book reading sessions. Beginner friendly, I had been told.
"Hey, I need to dispose of [toxic waste¦a body¦evidence], can you help out?" "Sorry, have to wash my hair."
It just becomes a slippery slope though, because rules like this are meant to push you towards doing things you don't really want to. Once you start making exceptions, you will find reasons to say no to everything.
Like, I made myself a rule to not buy anything on the first day I see it. All well and good, but yesterday I bought a guitar for about $1500. I had technically seen it in the store before, but this was a different one of the same model, with a much nicer finish, and felt better to play.
Seems like an innocuous exception, but internally I know that I'm going to start impulse spending again. At least now I can (better) afford random bouts of stupidity!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1068680/
If she wants to do something with me, then I say yes, as long as I don't have a prior commitment, or, you know, am not sick or physically unable. I started this rule with her from the moment we met. I think it is part of why we stayed together all these years, and why we worked out well when so many of my previous relationships didn't.
I love a lot of solitary activities, like reading, writing, single-player games, drawing and painting, learning new things, working on projects that she isn't interested in, etc. Without my self-imposed rule, I would likely decline to do a lot of other activities, especially outside my own interests.
But if she wants to do something or go somewhere or just sit and talk, then I say yes.
My kids are young enough that I don't quite have the same rule with them, and partly because they just want me to do stuff with them and be with them literally all the time, so we are still in boundary-setting phase, but I assume that I will eventually adopt the "as you wish" rule with them as well.
Beautiful.
That's not what it's about. It's about doing things. Together. Marriage isn't just about signing your names on a piece of paper; it's a (supposedly) life-long commitment to a team of two people where you are one of the team members. My wife and I do the same thing (and yes, it goes both ways), and we both agree that's the one reason we're such an awesome team.
I ended up backing out of moving in with her because I didn't feel very close to her and that we didn't do enough together. Shortly after, she dumped me by text and ghosted me.
But only passively saying yes to everything is not enough. I need to take action and organise something to do with her. And also take initiative to organise things with other friends. Sadly, those friends don't seem to follow this "as you wish" rule.
That approach works great as long as you are currently getting invited to things. If it's been a year since the last time you were invited to anything, that's not going to solve your loneliness problem.
But if you have normal interactions with people on a regular basis, you'll get invitations. They might be tiny or tentative or impersonal, but if engage with questions like "Can I talk to you for a second?" or "Would you like a sample of our new Teriyaki Chicken?" or even "Do you have the time?" you'll gradually open yourself up to more possibilities.
And I do think if you're not in any club (for sports or hobbies or whatever) it gets harder and harder to make friends the older you get (spoken like a true mid-30s person ;). I don't have kids or a dog, so the workplace is next to the best venue to meet new people.
TLDR: I don't think it's in any way rare or weird to not receive invitations if you don't already have a network of friends. This is a catch-22.
Learn a new skill and meet people.
I'm not saying "you must do this, it is the only way." It worked for me at a specific place and time in my life, and that isn't a universal condition. But I don't think we are helpless. Modern urban life may be alienating, but it's not inescapable. If you find that you value human connection more than likes or RSUs or Game of Thrones, you can find a way to have more of it.
https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/06/08/53...
Wanna have lunch together? Yes!
Wanna go out with us tonight? Yes!
Wanna help me move? Yes!
It really got me out of my shell and made me realize that the reason I was alone is because I was an asshole. People had been trying to include me all my life, but I had always declined :(
I am much better these days :)
I'm just saying this because in retrospect I think I've never been lonely because I was going out and meeting people at every opportunity that came up and I could never understand people who said "I'd rather stay at home today.". But because I've not got dozens of friends this was still a manageable level and I'd still often would've gone out more.
Oh cool, nothing like giving up an entire day for the possibility of a permanent back injury or accidentally damaging someone's furniture all because they're too cheap to drop a few hundred dollars on some professional movers.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/bxat83/people_wh...
I am in relatively similar situation : I have moved from Europe to SF.
I probably work too much and my main hobbies are movies, video games, books, etc .. all pretty lonely occupations.
Most of the time I don't really mind being alone, not at all, but sometimes it is a painful feeling.
I also have a pretty established routine : -working a lot -working out -watching some movies/playing -sleep
rinse and repeat.
I know I should probably volunteer to some associations doing good.
I do have a girlfriend .. but we are in a long distance relationship, so we can't always be there for each other.
Open to tips in orer to meet new people in San Francisco !
Best of luck!
The new world views you refer to that former religious adherents adopt aren't usually terribly radical, and it's a thought-terminating pitfall to call them religions or even spirituality. Much improvement over the new cults of the 1970s.
Monotheism is against pluralism where polytheism was not. That was there from the monotheist revolution.
> it's a thought-terminating pitfall to call them religions
No it's not. Just go listen to what Harari says in his book Sapiens. Ideologies like Feminism, Liberalism, Conservatism, Humanism, etc, are all parts of a modern syncretic religion and their adherents are syncretic believers that mix and match different ideologies to fit their tastes. It's just a bald faced lie that these things are so much different from the stuff they replaced. Buddhism has no necessary Gods as don't some forms of Hinduism.
https://www.ynharari.com/topic/science-and-religion/
Typically less fringe than you may think. Quoting "Visualizing the Transition Out of High-Demand Religions":
> Subjects include disaffiliated Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Fundamentalist Protestants
Typically these groups express many of the same characteristics as "mainstream" religions due to their age, and share the same elements driving religious decline.
Luckily for future generations humans are fairly adaptable and I'm sure the rich will be just fine.
The observation does nothing to further the debate because it assumes a broad unified opinion about a group of individuals. Do third wave lesbians want chivalry?
'we live in a less chivalrous world'
chivalrous - adjective - (of a man or his behavior) courteous and gallant, especially toward women
Could just live in a more courteous and gallant world and leave out the gendered nonsense?
Also the idea that a specific gender is inherently moral / immoral is also ridiculous generalization and shouldn't be made my anyone.
These objections are exhausting. Yes, there are exceptions to every generalization. Generalizations are the only way we can reasonably describe large groups of people. In this case, the individuals in question are more or less defined by this shared opinion, so it's definitely a fair, constructive observation.
> Do third wave lesbians want chivalry?
I don't know what a "third wave lesbian" is. Also, to be clear, I doubt any third-wave feminist would say they want chivalry; but when you look at the things they advocate for ("believe all women", etc) and how they treat each gender, it looks like chivalry taken to extremes.
> Could just live in a more courteous and gallant world and leave out the gendered nonsense?
Sure we can, but it's not consistent with a traditional or third-wave-feminist worldview. Note that this isn't a criticism of any particular worldview.
> Also the idea that a specific gender is inherently moral / immoral is also ridiculous generalization and shouldn't be made my anyone.
Sure. I'm only making observations about different worldviews, not prescribing any particular worldview.
"believe all women" is a slogan. Slogans are handy because they save time. They are easy to chant. They build unity. If you were to ask 100 'feminists' what does believe all women mean to you, there would be many answers.
> Sure we can, but it's not consistent with a traditional or third-wave-feminist worldview.
I never said I wanted a traditional or a third wave world, just kinder; there are other options.
"Generalization" doesn't mean that you believe the observation is true for exactly every individual in the group. That a generalization doesn't hold for every individual in the group doesn't imply that generalization isn't useful. Now can we be done errantly nitpicking well-established semantics?
> If you were to ask 100 'feminists' what does believe all women mean to you, there would be many answers.
Many variations of the same theme.
> I never said I wanted a traditional or a third wave world, just kinder; there are other options.
You're agreeing with me rather aggressively. I didn't claim or imply that you wanted any particular kind of world.
These semantics are mental shortcuts that are harmful in this case to actually solving the problems we face. They frame the issue narrowly, which leads to a single viewpoint coloring the entire population.
> Many variations of the same theme.
Do you agree/disagree with all of them?
> You're agreeing with me rather aggressively. I didn't claim or imply that you wanted any particular kind of world.
I thought you were suggesting that only one or the other could exist, or that I needed to choose one.
The population is largely defined by that fairly narrow viewpoint. Generalizing isn’t harmful for people who understand the term, and I won’t pander to those who don’t.
> Do you agree/disagree with all of them?
I disagree with the central theme—that gender is useful and perhaps even primary for establishing credibility and/or guilt. Theoretically some women may have used the slogan to mean “pizza is delicious”, in which case I would have to agree, but this falls well outside of the normal parameters of communication and sentiment (which have regrettably been challenged too often already over the course of this conversation).
It's too early to tell how this will play out, but we as a society have underestimated the effects and consequences of rapid change. It may be another one hundred years before we can look back and understand what we are currently going through.
The studies I'm familiar with didn't mention loneliness, but rather the social responsibility.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo
If you are talking about the pill sure, but there are forms of birth control that date to ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, And China. Not to say these methods were effective and the book of Genesis did regress things a little with God slaying Onan for practicing the old pull out method, teaching that procreation is for reproduction only.
But look up Matriarchy. There are lots of shades.
Imaging paying your you and your spouse's student loans, then having two kids and paying their student loans or putting that debt on their shoulders. Much easier before tuition skyrocketed.
Healthcare prices are a consideration too.
So economics is probably a weak explanation. Personal freedoms, especially for women, is probably the root cause of low birthrates.
That doesn't even touch on the breakdown of community organizations (churches, fraternal orders, what have you).
Unpaid favors to family aren't measured in GDP and can't be taxed. Breaking down extended family into individual workers is good for the economy. Having stay-at-home moms work while sending their kids to group childcare is also more economically efficient.
What's good for the economy may not be good for individual humans though. We aren't homo economicus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus
You see this trend in other areas as well: the gift economy of the early Internet became the advertising economy of today, the open-source economy of the early 90s now has Github etc. offering rewards for creators, the karma economy of early social media contributors is replaced by the Patreon model today, the idea of driving a drunk friend home is replaced by calling them an Uber, the practice of quietly giving a family in need money is replaced by GoFundMe, and so on.
There are pluses and minuses to this: it's certainly been good for the economy, and generates liquidity where previously there was none, but it's done a lot to destroy social relationships and trust.
Sure, grandpa might be a great primary caregiver while mom and dad are at work, but he might also not be. Chances are low he has any training in early childhood education, though he may have raised his own kids -- but he's tautologically not as young as he used to be. But he might have training in law, or medicine, and might plausibly be very valuable as a consultant for the hours that he's instead watching little Ephra.
The licensed daycare in the neighborhood, by contrast, is set up to care for children, and -- depending on grandpa's hourly rate -- might do so at a lower cost. The folks there are (maybe?) trained in early childhood education, and have years of experience handling 1-2 year olds, or 2-3 year olds, or 3-4 year olds, at least compared with grandpa who might only have a year or two of experience with each.
Where has the nuclear family ever been divorced from kinship groups. A nuclear family is by definition part of an extended network, because mom and dad are both parents of one nuclear family as well as children of two others. Without a strong nuclear family there is no kinship, and all nuclear families imply extended kin groups, by definition. I will never understand where this nonsense dichotomy of nuclear family v 'kin' has come from.
Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I'm agreeing with you or not :) The paradox is that people have the ideals of the past but react in a way that produces the opposite result ("I want to be conservative, but I can't do it so I'll enjoy myself in the meantime").
Everyone is unhappy, married people on average are happier than unmarried, religious people are on average happier than unreligious people.
The sexual and feminist revolution got some 'splainin to do.
Of course, my view, the answer isn't "liberating women from the bonds of motherhood and family" but empowering women and supporting them in arguably the most powerful and most important thing one human can actually do in this world: bring new life into it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/happiness-...
I don't have a definite answer to your question but looking at most of what has happened in history I do wonder if developing opposable thumbs and a frontal cortex was worth it.
A being doesn't want to reproduce in itself, it wants to fulfill needs that compel it to reproduce. A desire for sex, for companionship, for a social role, etc. It's possible to be highly attracted to someone who is infertile because we chase the signs of procreation rather than its actual occurrence. We can rationally plan to make procreation happen but even in this case it is an illusion, we are still chasing some state of mind that leads to procreation.
On the contrary, I am trying to dispel the romanticism here and the hidden additional romantic layer that anthropomorphizes the process of evolution itself by giving it some sort of direction.
There are many reasons I don't want children, but this one in particular has stood out in my mind most of my adult life as the perfect reason not to.
Also bus isn't getting full. The issue is two fold: chain smokers in first rows and overcrowding in back rows.
Feminism isnt the search for happiness, its for equity.
Life was harder, but you could lean on friends, family, and congregation. That's where the classic trope of rich people being lonely and surrounded by fake acquaintances while poor people have authentic community comes from. Maybe now that every level of society is relatively richer we're all that much lonelier.
Granted, my father also took a job that let him stay home most of the day, because he hated working too, so I guess we're one of the few families which seems unaffected by marketing, and instead seek what we actually want. Why in the world would literally anyone want to work a job? I feel only someone who's never worked could want to do it
I'm a big proponent of financial independence & early retirement. It's mind-boggling to me how many people I've talked to about this that thing it's "unnatural" to stop working so early. Some have reasonable questions/concerns about meeting financial needs later in life, and others give an envious/sarcastic "must be nice" sort of response, but by far the majority of negative reactions I get are from people who can't even fathom the concept of not going to work every day.
And then there's always the "won't you get bored?" argument, which... honestly, if I ever get chronically bored in this amazing, rich world we have, simply because I don't have a job, I will consider that a huge personal failing.
Right. Literally, every one of my family members in the United States retired early. They came to this country with nothing -- at the time they emigrated, their country did not allow migrants to take currency over the border. The oldest one to come was almost 45-50, and they retired before most Americans, and have just made do with less, but are otherwise happy.
I cannot fathom the obsession some people have. Even my mother-in-law had a lot of consternation when she decided to quit the job she hated (they have more than enough money to retire). Luckily, that's over now. I do actually get working until you die if you love your job. Most of us are not so lucky though.
At the end of the day, most people (not all though -- some people truly have difficult circumstances) choose to not be wealthy (in the sense of being able to live off their savings), not because circumstance forces them to, but because they are afraid to, for some reason.
I would say it's important to look beyond simple labels of "good" and "bad" and think of the situation in terms of trade offs. Feminism has greatly helped some portions of the population and cost others greatly as well. Just like with any other culture or ideology, there really is no free lunch.
[0] https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/05/houellebecqs-unfi...
I just wanted to point out politely how strange this language reads to me. It's ultimately the decision of each person whether to have kids or not. This being "sad" for them is an overreach, morally, IMO--and part of the fight feminism led was to carve out a space for women in society not to be mothers, if that is their choice.
Whether it was her "choice" is hard to say. Very few people get the chance to engineer their lives the way they want. Most people instead play the cards they are dealt. And now that there are many more different types of possible cards in the deck for women, they are coming to the understanding that it is possible to be dealt a bad hand, and not realize it until it is too late.
I wonder, though, if these same women did have kids, and sacrificed their career for it, would they look back and have regrets in that regard, too.
So maybe it's just... given a multitude of options where we can't choose them all, perhaps humans will just naturally have some regrets around the path(s) not taken?
As counterpoint, I know women in their 40s and older who are very pleased with their decision to not have kids.
[1] https://www.raconteur.net/healthcare/fertility-education-sch...
[2] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000260770
[3] https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/70501/WHO_R...
[4] https://modernfertility.com/modern-state-of-fertility-2019/
If you think I'm being facetious you obviously haven't spoken to enough women that are in their low 20's. Older women have literally convinced younger women it is shameful to not be a career driven, family last type of power CEO woman.
Drop the implicit assumption that only the mother needs to give up her career to raise a child.
For some reason, nobody sheds tears over successful entrepreneur, lawyer, and doctor men who are unable to make that work with raising children.
A pregnancy lasts 9 months. Raising a child takes ~200 months.
1. If you're a working mother, you're currently assumed to either be a bad worker, or a bad mother. (Sad corollary: If you're a working father, most people don't assume this about you.)
2. If you're a professional man, and you want children, your wife is expected to compromise her career, to raise them.
Both of these are, of course, complete bullshit.
Feminism is a feminine superiority movement.
Better support for working parents.
Can men “have it all”? Is “having it all” different for men than women?
My experience is that men are able to “have it all” often at the cost of their spouse making sacrifices to stay at home, with the implicit idea that this is the way things are meant to be.
If both people in a relationship try to “have it all”, some sacrifices do have to be made (speaking from experience), but I am not sad about these choices since trade offs are an inevitable part of life :)
Really? I'm curious how one can justify this statement.
When hiring decisions are made, hiring managers will often prefer men with families, because they will generally stick with the company longer because it's riskier to change jobs with a family to support. This doesn't work for women; hiring managers will be less likely to want to hire a woman of child-bearing age because they're afraid she'll get pregnant and suffer productivity losses as well as take maternity leave. They also assume that a woman with children will be less attentive to work due to child care duties. They assume that men will be less affected by this because, while things are indeed changing, the default assumption is that men will prioritize career over child-rearing, while women will choose the opposite.
In my mental model (note: this is not what I would do, but what I imagine others would do), a woman saying she needs to go home because her baby needs her would be seen as a responsible woman, because a baby needs breastmilk and its mother provides that, whereas, if a man said he needed to go home consistently, the boss would think he's irresponsible, because -- as a man -- his baby doesn't strictly need him, and thus he is better serving his family at work.
But I understand your viewpoint; it just didn't occur to me. It seemed obvious to me that men, due to male biology, were more likely to be forced to work longer hours in order to be seen as being as responsible as an otherwise equivalent woman. Although, I guess today, formula is quite popular. Well regardless, I'm not always the best at understanding how others would react to things.
While men have longer time, the probability that a man does reproduce is significant lower than a woman. This makes the comparison a bit more complex.
This is perfectly possible. Imagine your stereotypical 1950s head of household. Fulfilling job, family is provided for, hangs out with friends on the weekend, etc. Now imagine them being female.
The fact of the matter is that this life doesn't exist for just about anyone anymore. It just never existed at all for women because back when it was possible for large numbers of people to do this they weren't part of the well paid workforce. (It didn't exist for non-whites for similar reasons but I digress)
Part of the problem is that our definition of "having it all" comes from times when circumstances were different. Now, I don't think just giving up and saying we'll never have it that good again and people have to choose between family, work and friends is a good solution but it sure seems more tractable in the short term than recreating that level of prosperity.
I believe women have been screwed over just as badly as men from all this change that occurred. Young women are being told by older women they can have it all, and that is just plain wrong and hurts other women more than it helps them.
Ignoring the endgames that come after the cessation of traditional human existence - either robotics replacing organics completely or mastery of genetics leading to the engineering of super-intelligent custom lifeforms to replace us - we are almost always either going to go extinct or refine our genetics to optimized templates. Eventually, we will be manufacturing humans with mathematically weighed balances between genetic diversity for disease resistance and optimized traits and features to make people live longer, stronger, and smarter. Probably going to be codified to be obedient to authority and not deviate from the social order as well, because that just honestly seems borderline unavoidable.
These humans will eventually be manufactured in artificial wombs in automated facilities meant to produce the population because in practice its severely debilitating and economically inefficient to take the females out of operation for so long to reproduce with such high biological risks associated. Cloned gametes from engineered templates grown in factories. The children would probably be mentally implanted with knowledge via brain-computer interfaces and taught everything virtually. Their biology would accelerate their development as much as is possible within our genetic profile. Years of research would have gone into optimizing their environments, interactions (if necessary, organic ones), and development to yield the most potential.
When you start stepping back from there, the closest bridge to that reality is going to be the institutionalization of child rearing. Before we have automated facilities breeding engineered templates we will almost certainly have public institutions dedicated to population replacement - in the optimistic scenario, women would simply "major" in parenting and live their careers as mothers. We will probably already be using engineered gametes by then because the technology is already mostly available, so these women would just have children and raise them as their full time career. Given current understanding of developmental psychology there would probably also be men assigned to play paternal roles in upbringing in full employment at such facilities as well.
I don't think at all this evolution in child rearing would ever happen overnight and its very likely in the same way you can still ride a horse today over owning a car or in the future how some will still drive manual cars in the age of autonomous vehicles some couples will do it "the old fashioned way" because they can. But it will probably, almost certainly, happen a lot less often.
And honestly from my perspective its for the best. Historically raising children is an absolutely full time job. Living on a farm, despite "working" in the fields at all hours of the day, still lets you keep the children at hand and raise them. You are never separated and the family is always together. That seems to be, barring abusive relationships, the optimal way human children develop. We have constructed employment institutions that make that impossible and try to both put pressure on laborers to reproduce but then also to somehow "do the job" of parenting at their own expense and economic disadvantage. It costs tremendous amounts of time to raise children, even more to actually do it well, and its never priced into the economy.
For now, this isn't a problem, and it likely won't be for a long time. We just get the collateral damage of mentally and physically harmed children from parental negligence that society pushes them towards. Eventually the economic pressure not to reproduce drives enough people not to that replacement becomes impossible and then such professional parenting institutions need to start being taken seriously. When it happens, its likely to be a very good thing - children raised by people pai...
This is the problem with people who think they know better. You think people should have more kids, what do you propose? Are you going to pay for the diapers, the education, the bigger house, the bigger car, the childcare? Do you want to become our live-in nanny?
After all, you seem so eager for people to have kids, surely you must be volunteering every night to help kids from low socio-economic areas get better grades and break the cycle of poverty or maybe you have adopted 5 unwanted kids already?
My wife and I don't need your sadness and your condescension. Thank you.
Most people are alone because they don't prioritize the families they already have (parents, siblings, grandparents, cousins, etc). They graduate high school, attend college in another state, move to another city far away for work, etc. Those are choices and they carry consequences. It's not good by default to follow your dreams if the only way to follow your dreams is to be alone and isolated in a strange place. Career is only a portion of our lives and it is far from the best way to draw meaning and purpose for ourselves. It's much better to draw meaning from something that is more permanent and guaranteed, like your identity and your home, not the job you just so happen to be doing at that moment.
There are exceptions to every rule, but it should be understood that when people graduate from high school, they should pick a trade school or university that is close by, not far away. When they choose a focus/major, they should ask what jobs exist in their area, not what kinds of jobs exist in the whole world. When they graduate college, they should be looking for work near their home, not on the other side of the country. Work and career is unreliable and people fail a lot. It's not the thing you should rely on to make you happy or satisfied.
It's better to have less of a career and more of a family than less of a family and more of a career. Your career accomplishments are not as important or valuable as they seem. If you didn't do them, someone else very probably would, and you will also very probably be forgotten quickly after you retire or quit or die. But more humane pursuits like family, home, faith, and community will always be there if you invest in them.
That's begging the question. Of course, one cannot, "blame the victims of villains," to paraphrase. The vast majority of people are just imperfect, normal people trying to get by. It's the aggregate actions of everyday people we should be looking at, not such outliers.
Most people are alone because they don't prioritize the families they already have
It's like the "Thanksgiving arguments" are engineered precisely to create a rift between generations.
Isolation is a self-perpetuating thing. People hate going home for Thanksgiving and arguing with their relatives because they don't actually know their relatives (their own fault) and they don't belong at home anymore (also their own fault). They isolate themselves, then become indignant when the result is disconnection and conflict. It's absurd.
They're all brainwashed by capital into thinking there should be no negative consequences from following the path that maximizes career success. The idea that we can leave our homes, chase money, and live separate lives without destroying our relationships is the greatest enemy of the traditional family.
The ideology that permeates higher education also teaches this.
However, I don't think it is the sole reason. For example, why then are wealthy people more likely to have families, as the article describes? The fact that wealthier people have families more seems to support the idea that it is at least partially caused by neoliberalism.
That's the fundamental bias of human beings. Alvin Toeffler and other authors have been banging on about that since the 60's and 70's. Vernor Vinge used to talk about this. (He helped popularize the "Singularity.")
we should take a step back and think about what is really happening
Do this, if you want to grab hold of a piece of intelligence which is invisible to the general public. This is something of a corollary to, "What you can't say."
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
If one has tried to talk about evolution to an anti-evolutionist, one is familiar with the depth and surprising strength of mental defenses working against evidence. If one wants to have an awareness beyond the ordinary, one has to do self analysis at this level. (While not succumbing even more to one's deeply held biases.)
Similarly, contraceptives aren't the reason people have fewer children. It's the fact we can't afford childcare and housing for a family.
In other words, yes current state is a function of all past states, but recent history has a far higher influence on next state than the far past. At a certain point you have to assume its influence to be close to zero.
In my own family, the American half reproduced earlier and had many more children than the "old country" half, due to economic distress and war. People in my father's generation were not directly affected by World War II, but the economic contractions that gripped Europe in the 1970s really show when you look at the reproductive choices my "old country" family made compared to my US family (which supports your previous post).
It's just weird that this longer conversation posits either idealized 1950s suburban America or an individualist society. Especially as employment configurations evolve, we should be aware that those are not the only options.
Before social media people had to meet face-to-face in order to date and they had to break up face-to-face in order to end a relationship. This forced people to develop social skills at a young age that are required to form a family.
Now people can date someone they never met and break up by ghosting. They can get to a preliminary relationship without acquiring social skills. There are also online equivalents of a mate that seem good enough if you don't understand the benefits of family.
I try to avoid social media and it makes my life much more sane. It forces me to go out and socialize with people.
If some households are multi-income, then they can pay more for housing.
This bids up the cost of housing. More households decide to become multi-income in order to pay for housing. This of course makes the housing price go up even more.
It's an arms race.
Hint - look at the austin real estate market.
You see similar modern pulls today in nations like China and India. It's really difficult to separate which came first - the economic pull or feminism. I lean to the economics of factory owners wanting low cost labor being a leading phenomenon of the cycle, and that induces the question of the rights of women who now have income, and practical freedoms going to work and working, and that independence inducing a desire for wider rights.
Once industry gets access to that labor though, they'll pay the minimum amount possible, and that practical acceptable minimum lowers if there are multiple people in the household making income.
Is the unhappiness that we may be observing with the decline of family a product of this transition period from traditional family structure to individualism? Is our current society just not well equipped yet to handle this mode of living? Maybe in 50 years, this will become the norm and people who choose to live alone will have alternative sources of happiness.
I'm not saying one is better for than the other overall, but one is surely better than the other for certain outcomes. Do we want an equitable society where low status individuals, but particularly males, have a better shot at reproduction and may contribute more to building a society that propagates that "culture" of safety and equity? Or do we go with what is probably more natural? I mean i can guess why and how religions of old and civilizations formed and why they were patriarchal
Your spouse will never move to another city for a new job w/o you. Your kids won’t leave the nucleus, at least not until they’re college ready.
Unlike family, different kinds of arrangements between people result in relationships that are less committed and less durable.
So maybe if you take stability and intimacy into account, it might as well be optimal.
I guess it begs the question, what are we optimizing for? And on what time scale?
What might seem optimal for the time being, could unleash a series of unforeseen circumstances in the future.
But I guess we can keep an open mind, allow people to choose for themselves and then report back after 2-3 generations the consequences of different paths taken.
Thus relative to the current divorce rates, I would wager that “divorce” rates among friends and other social structures are even greater.
There seems to be a pretty good correlation between which countries are most dominant today and those that encouraged monogamy in the recent past.
Maybe the differences in IQ seen between different groups are caused by how well those societies manage to mix up genes and not down to skin colour.
An important factor to consider is the nature and place of work: Men used to inherit their families business or work in the same town. Big families and relatives lived close to each other, so women could use help from other women in the family for child rearing and house chores. Nowadays you have to move to capitals/big cities to find work which deprived women from the assistance they found in extended families. I think this had an impact on gender roles and the increase of feminism and nuclear families.
Few men got to inherit a business but if your father worked a trade then you would probably find going into that trade to be a natural path. The latter part is still very true today.
Society and culture doesn't grow organically. They are created and manufactured by the people with wealth and power. For the time being, those with wealth and power have decided that the breakdown of the family is in their interest. But it could shift quickly if the people in charge want it to. An extreme example is china where they encouraged women to have lots of children in order to strengthen their country. And not too long after that, they had a change of heart and encouraged the complete opposite - one child policy. Now it seems like they are backing off of it after a few decades of one child policy.
BS. You give them way too much credit. The world is too complex and dynamic for a queen ant to "create and manufacture" the efficiency of the ant hill.
Also, women haven't been liberated from the home [1].
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/0c9f068c-711f-11e9-bf5c-6eeb83756...
Certainly liberated women may be part of the cause, but there are also no shortage of boy-men who are incapable of sacrifice, hard work and the drudgery of responsibility.
The social structures that enforced all that appear to have broken down. And that's not all together a bad thing but certainly it causes societal problems in the short term until things adjust (hopefully better than what they were before).
I never viewed feminism as mutually exclusive of having a family or a career. I might just be more mellow than everyone else. Feminism just means that men and women deserve equal opportunity and respect. Why is this the worst thing?
I might have an advantage over everyone else since my parents grew up in the great depression. All of the women in my family worked often because of hardship. One grandmother married a very bad man and ended up becoming a hairdresser and opening a salon to support my mother. Another grandmother had a sick husband and had to take over his business. My father also had an illness and although he continued to work they both agreed that my mother needed to finish her education and go back to work. Nobody made such a big deal about it since the women were also supporting the family. In fact, in most societies the women support the family working or not. This is the norm.
When my husband and I got married we I was still in school so our whole life was ahead of us. We agreed that I would finish school first only because I was only a year from graduation. Then he finished school. We both agreed that having a family was important so we both prioritized children. We both had awesome careers, but I never let go of the fact that family is more important than career. My husband and I are still feminists.
In my daughters case she decided to stay at home with her three boys. Her awesome husband is still very much involved with his boys. They are both still feminists.
I'd say the strongest factors, at least in the US:
1. Work/career is #1 priority. Career has always been a big deal in the US, but I feel like it's become more extreme in my generation (nearing 40) than it was for my parents or their parents. For them, it was more about putting food on the table and providing a better life for their children than what they had. For us it seems more about intangible things like "being successful".
2. Geographic barriers have broken down a lot. In the mid-/late-1900s, you'd likely grow up in the same place, and more often than not would find a job or go to college nearby, and stick around as an adult. You'd probably meet your future partner through family, local, or church events, and after marriage would probably still live in or near your original hometown. Nowadays, it's much more likely to move hundreds or even thousands of miles from your hometown, often to chase job opportunities (see #1). New adults going to college far from home also makes them realize that living near your hometown isn't the only option.
3. And yes, changing gender norms fit into this: women have caught the bug of #1, and we are still struggling with the "having it all" mentality of women having a strong, ambitious career, but also raising children. I personally don't think there's a universal solution to this; there are only so many hours in a day and so much energy to go around. Child care is expensive and a stretch or out of reach for many couples, even with dual incomes (and the jury's still out as to whether or not pervasive third-party child care is a detriment to early childhood development). In heterosexual couples, many men still resist taking an equal part in child-rearing duties, but I'm not convinced that would completely solve the problem anyway (again, only so many hours in a day); it would just make it more equitable as to bearing the responsibility.
Definitely agree that it may be another few generations before we fully understand the effects of all these societal changes. Some of it may be bad, even if the overall changes are good.
It is absolutely possible to have a career and be a phenomenal wife and mother with a happy family. If a person’s priority is family, it may limit career opportunities but that is true of both men’s and women’s careers (for example rejecting a promotion that requires a geographic move to keep kids in the same school or live near relatives will impact both partners).
But on the second point, I'm really not sure that online social networks are just a "surface-level mirage." I met my spouse online, and many of my closest friendships have developed online, by instant message, etc. I don't think the alternative to "online communication" is necessarily that we will all socialize in person. If we got rid of the internet and instead (just for a random example) we were all alone in our houses reading books by ourselves, I think that would be a step back.
I like the idea of these platforms for content creators like photographers, athletes etc. but overall I see a lot more negative than positive for common users.
Online dating apps are the worst and I even found myself getting sucked into the whole attention thing. I quit it when I realized a lot of women I was talking to/went on dates, was just to get the ego boost. It was very unhealthy for me and definitely not fair for the other person.
If we look at Tinder, there was a study of millennial users a while back which found that about 70% of them had never met anyone through it and didn't intend to. Moreover Tinder has economic incentives to keep you on their platform, swiping, texting, paying subscription fees, and viewing ads, all things you stop doing when you meet people and enter into a committed relationship.
Most social networks unfortunately follow this model; they have monetary incentives to keep you as engaged as possible in their all digital, all the time lifestyle, rather than unplugging and physically sharing space with other humans.
Healthier business models can certainly be imagined and maybe they'll even be implemented someday, but they aren't prevalent right now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_stress_inher...
We are also still learning about the gut-brain axis. The human microbiome is inheritable, and many modern practices (infant formula, C-sections, antibiotics, processed foods) having detrimental effects.
What's worse is humans seem to have an instinctive trend of self-isolation in the face of psychological distress, which worsens the condition.
Add the inevitable downstream effects of climate change (economic uncertainty if not another world war)... and, yeah, it's bleak.
People sleeping in their car at the airport to make their current gig(s) possible in the gig economy are already living in the future. Especially now that Uber has a STFU option. And not all gigs involve face to face clients.
This is an easy trap for humans to fall into. "The sky is falling" type stuff.
Humans have faced lots of problems over the millenia, but the reality is that our lives continue to improve as a whole..not get worse.
A little fear, and skepticism of the future, is a good thing.
Then there's AI, and sex robots. Why bother with a real boyfriend/girlfriend when you can talk to your phone and have an artificial companion? Real humans have their own wants and needs and may not do what you want. Worse, they might leave you. Your robot girlfriend on the other hand, you could have endless conversations with her in which she tells you exactly what you want to hear and never challenges you.
That's far-fetched, you say. In the near term, I tried Tinder and it's pretty addictive. An endless stream of new people I can meet. Most of them want nothing serious though. They don't even want to sleep with you more than once or twice for the most part. It's all about novelty-seeking. It seems to me like increasingly few people want a sustained relationship. Breakups hurt, so let's never risk having one, a constant stream of lovers is emotionally safer in a way, I suppose, but I can tell you it definitely leaves me feeling lonely.
That's untrue. Human civilizations tend to go through cycles. They rise, eventually stagnate, and then decline over the span of hundreds of years. The Akkadians, the Mycenaeans, the Romans, and the Maya all collapsed and the lives of people living in those empires got worse, often for a very long time.
It's reasonable to think that a similar type of decline is happening in the west today.
That isn’t to say we don’t face challenges, but they’re fundamentally different from those of the empires of old. Something changed with true global markets, and mutually assured destruction.
> We learned our lesson. We’re not building empires, not waging expensive wars
I don't know where you live, but here in America we've been at war with various Middle-Eastern nations for the last 2 decades. About 90% of the history of our nation has been spent involved in some kind of a war. Those are expensive wars too. We've spent trillions on Afghanistan alone. We have around 800 formal military bases in 80 foreign countries.
I think that we are far more imperialistic than the Romans, even though our culture doesn't acknowledge it.
> global markets, and mutually assured destruction
Yeah, we have better technology too and a very different financial system. However, this hasn't saved us from expressing many of the same symptoms that ancient collapsing empires had... Especially the social issues that this article talks about.
I think this is no longer true. Life expectancy is actually on the decline in developed countries, driven by (among other factors) the loneliness epidemic described in this article.
You can argue over 5,000 years or something things have improved, sure, but in the present day there's a strong argument that quality of life is getting worse.
This is true for some, not others.
It's happening already.
• Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the US.
• The age-adjusted suicide rate in 2017 was 14.0 per 100,000 individuals.
• In 2017, men died by suicide 3.54x more often than women.
• White males accounted for 69.67% of suicide deaths in 2017.
[0] https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/
That's a very interesting statistic considering women attempt suicide 1.2x more than men.
There is a large uncomfortable area within suicide data. In a study, about half who attempt suicide said it was a cry for help. While we can't ask those that die, we do have data that say that those people usually have both a history of suicide attempts and a lack of treatment for it. This combination has a gendered aspect.
So it can be firearms, the culture around treatment, both, or other aspects which explains why men die by suicide 3.54x more often than women while at the same time women attempt suicide 1.2x more than men.
I think the best action to reduce suicide is with the medical profession. Treatment of drug and alcohol addiction, depression, and those who have attempted suicide in the past. We can try to reduce the number of firearms and adding barriers on bridges and subway platforms, but I have my doubts that areas which implement such action actually see a reduction in completed suicides. At best it gives the health care system a bit more time to provide treatment.
Whether that is the truth, my verdict is still out, but the literature seems to point that way.
My verdict leans heavily that suicide is always a failure in treating the underlying issue. Depending a bit on who you ask the wast majority of suicides is caused by untreated mental or emotional disorders, most commonly depression. A untreated disease which definition is the inability to feel happy and recover from feeling sad seems quite relevant in the context of suicide, and when we know there is a difference in treatment and see a difference in outcomes then that should be our first stop in our logical conclusions.
Threads about suicide on HN are suboptimal because most people don't really know what they're talking about and the CDC data is fucking impossible to use (compared to data from the UK).
What is discussed is the cause for it. The theory smells that men are violent thus they choose violent methods and women are vain and thus choose vain methods. It just conveniently fit our gender stereotypes perfectly which should be a rather big red flag for anyone looking at social science with a critical view.
There are several contending theories. To the degree that suicide attempts are a cry for help the difference in how society react towards men and women likely impacts the method of choice. An other theory is convenience where more women get opioids prescriptions then men, while more men are involved in activities with high gun ownership.
There are more. Gender differences in mental health, differences in alcohol consumption, and difference in social support networks are all additional suspects in explaining why we see a gender difference in outcomes and methods.
One of the data point that looks a bit odd is that even if we account of difference in method, men are about 60% more likely to still die in the attempt. As far as I know this difference is still there for methods like self-poisoning which is the most "preferred" method for women. Unless we want to go into the bucket of stereotypes again and simply state that men are more competent with suicide regardless of method it seems like we should entertain the idea of other causes for gender differences.
I left out the statistic that mentioned in 2017, firearms accounted for 50.57% of all suicide deaths. Didn't want to get misconstrued because I support the 2nd amendment and people like to use this fact as ammunition against it.
But now I would like to see a breakdown of that statistic by gender, to see how many firearm-related suicides were men vs women.
I'm curious what the breakdown is in Japan where suicide rate is high but firearms virtually non-existant. However, I understand suicide statistics from there may be unreliable.
> I understand suicide statistics from there may be unreliable.
Why is that? I know suicide rates are high there, but isn't there information to glean from it?
To quote the source: "For men, the most common method is hanging (首つり, 69.3%), followed by jumping (飛降り, 8.8%), and suffocation by burning charcoal or a similar substance (練炭等, 7.3%), and for women the most common method is hanging (59.8%), followed by jumping (14.2%) and drowning (入水, 6.3%)."
For both sexes, jumping appears to be significantly more common for children under 19 than other groups. Train jumping (飛込み) is much less common than you might think, but is common for the "age undermined" (不詳) group (men 14.3%, women 42.9%), presumably because the remains are hard to identify.
[1] https://www.mhlw.go.jp/wp/hakusyo/jisatsu/18/dl/1-6.pdf (page 30)
These all seem like pretty awful ways to die. I don't even know how you go about drowning yourself. I'm surprised medication isn't more common.
is it still the case that women try more and men die more? By what ratios?
Men to do it to end their own existence and choose things like hanging, gunshot, jumping off a bridge etc.
1- Women can't figure out how to effectively commit suicide and fail at the attempt at a rate that is 400% greater than men because they aren't capable - I don't believe this for a minute.
or
2- Women engage more in the cry for help attempt, while men go through with it all the way more often.
Personally I'd go with 2, but I'd be open to hearing any other alternative explanations.
The 'women do it wrong because they want to look pretty when dead' or 'women can't figure out violence' (a version of #1) seem like condescending conclusions drawn to avoid having to deal with the probability of #2, which sounds simpler.
What bearing does that have on whether or not loneliness is a contributing factor to overall depression in the US?
I think the job market has similar trends. It used to be that jobs were more stable and you had a direct path to retirement. But this was also restricting for young people. Now we have the opposite. Young people are the stars of the job market, job hopping is the only way to get ahead and the people who aren't millionaires by age of 50 are looking into a very insecure future.
The longer people put off pairing up, the harder it seems to accomplish.
I think mainstream media has really warped a couple of generations of people’s priorities. Extended adolescence and chasing hedonism is now the norm.
My friends who eschewed that in favor of more traditional long term relationships, compromise and building family over Instagram followers are decidedly more content and less anxious.
I suspect as my generation ages these effect will amplify.
I think the problem I’m describing is pretty common amongst gen x and millennials.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
It’s a great look at the rise of marketing, individualism and hedonism in the 20th century.
Democracy In America is another great source:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_America
It’s an extremely prescient, outsider’s look at the tyranny of the masses.
I would also suggest studying the context of the 20th century, especially the lead up with the industrial revolution and both world wars. It’s often lost on people that Western life as defined by American sitcoms was an anomaly powered in large part by the rest of the first world being nearly obliterated. This leads ultimately into global recovery and globalism which I see as a normalization of life after WWI and WWII.
Post-modernism is good to learn about as well. I feel like a lot of people mistake modernism and post-modernism. Post-modernism can actually include a lot of things modernism rejects, such as traditional family structures. It just does it piecemeal framed in a totally different (non-religious) context.
1: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/12/neolib...
But my dick is still six inches long regardless of how many downvotes I get so I'll just keep on trollin' for great justice. :)
We've banned this account for repeatedly posting unsubstantive comments and, indeed, trollin'. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
One can have a traditional loving partner, a traditional family, a traditional social circle and still be lonely.
One could feel isolated from their peer group because of happenstance and life choices leading to different economic outcomes.
One could feel isolated from their gender; no only because it is a social construct, but because the ones that represent you act like morons all the time.
One could feel isolated from a sibling because they are ill and can't afford healthcare.
One could feel isolated from themselves because they are have chronic pain or mental illness.
Blaming societal ills on one or two issues only divides further and obscures the macrocosm. If you want your 2.5 kids and a picket fence, godspeed, but don't step on others trying to find what makes them happy.
It seems like she considers it and speaks directly to it. Is it that she doesn't ultimately blame capitalism? She says that the decline of the family is closely tied with the neoliberal focus on the individual.
As someone originally from a second-world country I can say that I feel people have it good these days in terms of their basic needs for survival. When you're not fighting for something, it's easy to feel like you're not fulfilled and it's hard to rally with others who are fighting for basic needs.
Our social DNA built for human connection, sense of belonging and family, centered around agriculture was quickly snuffed out in the West with the oncoming of Industrial Revolution, and the countries that subscribed to this model. Basically genders ended up being divided into a binary class of workers with one clearly a 2nd citizen and subsequently their social status. It used to be that women were largely limited to taking care of home and kids but with WW2's end, this has increasingly been changing.
Women from 1920s vs 2020 have drastically different liberties in socio,sexual, and economic areas. The erosion of domestic manufacturing industries through implementation of "free market" ideals where the invisible hand that moves jobs is capital itself, the cheapest and the best producer retains the capital until it cannot maintain this low cost of production, mainly through political suppression and threat of paramilitary forces of dictator. Women are repeatedly underpaid compared to men according to statistical findings, its more so that they are undervalued unconsciously by society due to its period of rapid industralization and "splitting" of genders. (fun fact: FDR used to crossdress).
Yet the latter situation with countries that has reached rapid urbanization through industrialization, this is not unique thing to North America, people in Korea and Japan are killing themselves, people are isolating themselves in urban areas, very much like the North Americas.
This social void-via-capital (jobs, capital move to cheapest cost of operations) or void-via-automation (really the same thing since automation is dirt cheap labor that gets cheaper by several folds every few years) leads to the deviation from traditional family operated around agriculture and rapid urbanization that followed high-capital industries with overseas outsourcing of manufacture, has changed the roles of the Mother or Father. This can be found in most democratic capitalist of a major economy. So is the entrance of women the culprit? If that was the case then why is it that in the Philippines, ppl aren't reporting on surveys as being less miserable or isolated as say a Brit, where many husband takes the role of rearing children while the Filipino women contribute to being the world's highest remittance destinations? Clearly it was never to do with gender being fundamentally destined for specific roles, but rather the presence of one of the parent in a child's formative years, relatively compared to absence or non-biological substitute caretakers due to unavailability of both parents due to both working or not working, has produced an increasingly self-isolated, self-caring, self-obsessed, self-exhibitionist society distracting itself through material possessions and entries in a database somewhere with arbitrarily valued "digital scores" that creates the illusion of tribal hierarchy and belonging? Or how about that we are largely rewarded for creating/contributing to products to increase the pace of this isolation?
I don't know what the solution is. But people from small town are often spooked by people not saying hello when passing by in large cities. I can feel the difference being in downtown vs rural areas. People outside of North America seem tightly integrated with their families and communities. I'm talking the super taboo thing in north america, being an adult and living with parents. Yet, its practiced in many parts of the world. I know I've been trying to get my ass out the door but honestly my addiction issues and struggling with complex post traumatic stress disorder has been crippling. Writing this ...
Correlation != Causation
If you are looking for things "to blame" don't forget about:
-decline in religious-group (church) participation
-stagnate wage increases for 20 years while cost of living increases (result: less of an ability to afford "going out") Also related: more people needing 2+ jobs
-increased internet access/duration/interaction
All of these equate to less 'recreational' time available. Lack of recreation time = less chance to participate in social settings = more loneliness
The next generation has become geographically spread out, I moved to the West Coast, a few of my cousins are in college out of state.. about half of this generation is likely to build their family outside of the NYC metro area, my children's generation is likely to split off from wherever I settle as well.
This is an unfortunate cost of the "American dream", my parents, aunts and uncles didn't have great paying jobs but they were close to family.. for the cost of a higher salary many of us make decisions that make communication with those we love difficult. Yesterday was my brother's 30th birthday but because of the time difference and work schedules we did not speak on the phone, only through text.
I similarly moved to the west coast. My parents have passed away, and my sister (and her family) still lives on the east coast. I've made myself a family of sorts out of a group of very close friends, but I do feel the lack of family sometimes, especially when I see how close some friends are with their (local) extended family members.
It's something I never expected to have, especially given the small nature of my family while growing up, and yet I still feel like I'm missing out on something.
For years I’ve felt like I’m supposed to report in to my family (my mother in particular) because otherwise I’m assumed dead. It was never reasonable, I was always safe and happy (and not engaged in anything crazy like CIA wetwork, just traveling around the US by myself), but I finally had to do away with it and issue an ultimatum.
For me it was not family vs loneliness. It was family vs lonerness (and happiness). They were “stuck in the mud” and expected me to be the same... when I wasn’t it was out of their comfort zone and they didn’t know how to handle that.
Several months in now I’m happier than I’ve ever been... purely because I don’t have to worry about anyone’s happiness except my own and the people I actually choose to be with.
This all came about when I was getting married.
This was about 10 years ago now. Fast forward to wife + kids and I did something I never thought I'd do. I moved home to be close to family again.
I'm still fully self reliant but my kids get to grow up near gma and gpa which is amazing.
It wasn't until I entered into the group of my friends with kids that I realized there's a fair amount of isolation there.
Anyway, I followed a similar path. I moved across the country to get away from my family man, and now that I've learned to set boundaries I'm back and happy with our new relationship. Maybe that'll work for you and your family and maybe it wont.
We did have friends who were family where we used to live. The kind of friends you call when you're going into labor and they pick your kid up from daycare after driving for an hour. I miss them more than almost anyone else in the world. So, while you can make it work with family and it might be great, you can also make it work without them. That's just what I chose to do.
So that leaves us at a crossroads. I either grit my teeth and continue to put up with what I see as unacceptable behavior, or I enforce the ultimatum and refuse to engage.
This is hardly the first time I have ever had this kind of argument with any of the people involved. It goes, as many family arguments tend to, along a predictable and repeatable pattern: argument, agreement, repetition.
Eventually I had to realize that this has happened dozens of times and if I don’t change any variables we will just continue to repeat the cycle for the rest of my life.
All of that said, I don’t have kids. I don’t really want them, but I assume at some point it’ll happen. I do realize that having grandma and grandpa there is valuable. You’ve got a free babysitter and the family roots. If it came down to compromising my ultimatum and not having that connection... I would absolutely, 100%, without any question, tell my mother to F off again.
The whole thing ends up being exactly what you said - sometimes family are a blessing and built in friends, but sometimes they aren’t and you find other friends to fill in that gap.
I just can’t stand it when people say that family is all that matters.
Key take away:
By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
When a family splits, that means 2x everything (e.g., sofa, dishes, TV, etc.) Same goes for the social "norm" that adults above 25 y/o (?) should live alone (if they're not married).
The issue is, not only is this counter to long-established human (emotional) needs, but it is resource intensive as well. Put another way, we're bringing Mother Nature to her knees, and we're too depressed about ourselves to care about her.
What could go wrong?
People (read: their egos) are their own worst enemy. If you resist the status quo and "the Jones" it's not as bad. Perhaps not the same as before, but not as bad who tend to live beyond their means.
The feelings of “you’re a white male and you work in tech and you are wealthy you are a SATAN” is just becoming too much :(.
I volunteer a tremendous amount in education, where I’m the only male I generally even see in my field, and I constantly have to listen to my coworkers gleefully talk about how excited they are at how few young boys show up to our events. I hear them blatantly express disdain when a couple do.
Its so, so sad. I try getting away from the news, but then it creeps into my life anyway.
I’m not some devil because of my genitals, my sexual orientation, or the color of my skin. I volunteer so much of my time specifically to the homeless and less fortunate, I give so much money to charity, I do so much stuff in my community...and yet I just have to hear almost constantly that I am everything wrong with the world because I am an evil, cis, white, monogamous, straight male. I tick every single box of bad guy it seems like there is, and I don’t want to be the bad guy. I actually try really hard to be a nice guy.
It just makes me so so sad :(. And if I ever do even mention that, it just makes it even worse, hence the throwaway account.
Instead of feeling personally attacked when you hear these issues discussed, try to remember we are all on the same team, fighting to tackle problems that are bigger than just one individual.
How should we take a step back and listen more carefully to this? How are we to interpret that other than as an attack on all men?
Surely, you have to acknowledge that throughout history, men have been quite terrible to women ... and yes, some of that exists still today. So that being the case, you _must_ understand that for many women out there, it's still a struggle to live their life in a way that is not negatively influenced by some men.
And it is not like the traditional gender roles means "Men has it ok and women's lives are worse".
Yes of course but what I don't understand is why you're choosing to focus exclusively on one narrow aspect of the entire history of human cruelty. Men have been at least as terrible to other men as they have ever been to women. And women are not without the ability to be cruel either. Are you suggesting that it's OK for men to be terrible to other men but women should be a proctected group? That is already largely the case according to my understanding of western Judeo-Christian tradition.
"You _must_ understand that for many women out there, it's still a struggle to live their life in a way that is not negatively influenced by some men.
Again, why focus on such a narrow aspect of the problem? The vast majority of men also struggle to live their life in a way that is not negatively influenced by 'some men'.
These men do exist, and these men have historically used societal norms to trap women in marriages or work that was unfair. It's great that we are working toward a society which recognizes that this is harmful and allows these women to seek better opportunity for themselves!
That's one very generous way to read it. The other is that men are unreliable, selfish and inconsiderate, which is pretty much what I've heard over the past 5 years from most people that identify as feminist.
Sure, there are certainly some women who say things like this who are also misandrists, but the majority of them are not, and just want to call out the men who are actually a problem. If you're not a problem, then you're not being called out. That's been my experience. Either you've somehow managed to speak only to the most cynical and hateful of feminists, or -- more likely -- you're getting defensive over something for no good reason.
The ironic bit is that you're falling into the same trap: you're accusing "every" feminist of believing that all men are evil, based on your interactions with a few.
In the principal of charity I'll assume it was an honest mistake.
I didn't engage "outrage mode", I pointed out that you were missing/leaving out an alternative way to parse that message, one that I consider likely to be correct.
> Sure, there are certainly some women who say things like this
Let me make that clear: I explicitly wrote feminist, not women. Sex/Gender isn't involved, it's ideology, and many of the most atrocious things I've heard came from male feminists (coincidentally, those I found very reasonable among them were exclusively women). Please don't put words into my mouth by implying I talked about women in general.
> If you're not a problem, then you're not being called out.
That sounds like "I'm with them, so I don't mind that". Sure, cool for you, I'm not. "Men are scum" doesn't sit right with me, and I don't believe that I'm overly defensive for no good reason or should just "listen more carefully to the complaints".
> you're accusing "every" feminist of believing that all men are evil
No, I'm not (again with the words). I'm stating what I've heard & read from feminists. I haven't talked to most or all feminists on the planet, obviously. But of the ones I did talk to, most went right down that path. As soon as I've gotten around to talking to those that I haven't yet, I'm going to update my comment and extend it to inform about my experiences with all feminists.
It's not that men are terrible. It's that if you have to find a man to avoid homelessness, sometimes you are stuck with terrible men, as polygamy is illegal.
Guess what, there was a reason for that (sort of): namely, back then it was the women who were commonly - indeed, almost universally - stereotyped as "unreliable, selfish and inconsiderate", and thus as bad credit risks. Again, it just goes to prove that character smears are wrong in the first place. It's not a convincing defense of parent's attitude, at all.
People are not against immigrants, just the illegal ones that murder, rape and steal. People are also not against Muslims, just the extremists.
If we follow syntax there are no racists in the world and we can simply accuse people of not paying attention. I think that is wrong way to view it. If we talk about "unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate immigrants" then what people will read is that all immigrants are bad. That just how that kind of language get interpreted, and the assumption is that the speaker is aware of it and thus intended it.
I have a simple test. When in doubt I do a word for word replacement and replace the word "men" with "immigrants" and "women" with "natively born". If that make a sentence or article sound like a racist, then it is wailed hate. If it sounds perfectly fine regardless who is targeted then it is not.
Let us say someone would say that the increased loneliness instead came from the rise of online gaming/porn/communities and that men in larger degree become less interested in meeting women and making an effort.
If someone then answered that "Men avoiding unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate women by online gaming is not a problem" you would probably see that statement as misogynistic. Even if that description does match some women.
(I fully agree with the liberation of women (and men) from many of the traditional gender roles.)
Hmm... Sounds like hate to me.
This commenter: “You should listen closely to the complaints of these people, they have legitimate concerns and you need to become an ally to help them tackle the problems they are mentioning. They are not directing hate at you in particular so you should not be personally offended.”
Out of curiosity, how did you personally come to be here on Hacker News?
It may have to do with the fact that your main account may be connected to your identity, and if you work at Google for example, uttering conservative view points might get you fired.
People are very similar. It is nice to find a common enemy and it is nice to generalize. So on 4chan people analyze and find that black people are the problem and generalize about black people and in certain groups people find that white men are the problem and tend to generalize about white men.
To say negative things about black people is sort of like victim blaming and it makes things worse.
>For example, an historian of the 3rd century Han Dynasty in the territory of present-day China describes barbarians of blond hair and green eyes as resembling "the monkeys from which they are descended".[2] (Gossett, pp. 4).
or
>This theory dates back to the Babylonian Talmud, which states, "the descendants of Ham are cursed by being black, and [it] depicts Ham as a sinful man and his progeny as degenerates."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_race_concepts
People all over the world are tribal and have probably always been.
The definition of racism I'm using isn't simply prejudice, it's a system of oppression on the basis of race. Which, as I said above, is a social construct. Modern racism and the general idea of the current races was created out of European colonialism and racialized slavery. In America it was mostly racialized slavery. The Wikipedia article you mentioned describes this. That article says the word race itself is modern and wasn't used as it currently is until the 16th century.
Take something pretty harmless like "white men are such shitty fucking drivers". That is an example from a young very left wing politician in Sweden on twitter. She would of course never say "arab men are such shitty fucking drivers" even if they are statistically involved in more accidents in Sweden because she would see that as racist. Same as if a guy had written "women are such shitty fucking drivers" he would probably be seen as bigoted.
I think a lot of these discussions of what is racist and not and systems of oppression comes down to that it is nice to have a group of people you can generalize over. So that is why people are redefining concepts.
If a Black American hates and think Native Americans are worthless. Is he racist then? Who wins on the oppression competition?
> Take something pretty harmless like "white men are such shitty fucking drivers". That is an example from a young very left wing politician in Sweden on twitter. She would of course never say "arab men are such shitty fucking drivers" even if they are statistically involved in more accidents in Sweden because she would see that as racist. Same as if a guy had written "women are such shitty fucking drivers" he would probably be seen as bigoted.
All these statements, are prejudiced, yes. The reason the 2nd two are seen as bigoted is because of the power dynamic there, and the systems of oppression. "white men are such shitty fucking drivers" is punching up, whereas the other two are punching down. I personally think it's fine to punch up and challenge those in power.
> If a Black American hates and think Native Americans are worthless. Is he racist then? Who wins on the oppression competition?
Yeah, I'd say that's racist. Black people can contribute to racism against their own race using this definition of racism. They can also be racist against Native Americans.
IMO, to be racist is to support or erect the systems that continue to oppress people on the basis of race. Prejudice is probably one of the lesser ways racism happens, and even isn't always racist. Slavoj Zizek, for example, often talks about how he and others in the past have bonded by telling "racist" jokes about eachother's race. Maybe that's racist in the prejudice sense, but in the definition I'm using (and is the definition used by people that hate on white people or "whiteness") that wouldn't really be racism.
It was said by a pretty (yes, that matters) well educated white woman living in Stockholm. She is probably more privileged than 99% of white men in the world. I would say that the reason that the two others are seen bigoted is because it is people who wants to say bad things about white men who has defined it like that. Because they see themselves as good and racism is not good, i.e. it is not racism.
>IMO, to be racist is to support or erect the systems that continue to oppress people on the basis of race. Prejudice is probably one of the lesser ways racism happens, and even isn't always racist. Slavoj Zizek, for example, often talks about how he and others in the past have bonded by telling "racist" jokes about eachother's race. Maybe that's racist in the prejudice sense, but in the definition I'm using (and is the definition used by people that hate on white people or "whiteness") that wouldn't really be racism.
Are Asian Americans oppressed? Are women in Sweden oppressed? For example in the example of women in Sweden sure they are under-represented in some areas like board of directors and pay but they also don't work as much, they don't die as much at work or otherwise, they don't kill themselves as much, they do better in school, they are not as many homeless women etc.
And will they always be seen as oppressed if it turns out that fewer women wanted to put in the sacrifice at work to reach that far as a board of directors because they are more likely to value other things in life higher? How can you ever know what is oppression or just choice?
The fact is, most people are oppressed, and most in different ways. I'm against all systems of oppression. I think it's mostly pointless to compare individuals and how oppressed one person is to another. I do think it's good to attack systems of oppression, and criticize (and maybe even attack) the people that support those systems. To criticize the idea of "whiteness" is to attack racism. To criticize how a lot of men treat women is to criticize sexism, etc. I see nothing wrong with challenging power like that.
Sure, if you at the same time criticize the idea of people identifying themselves as black.
>To criticize how a lot of men treat women is to criticize sexism, etc. I see nothing wrong with challenging power like that.
But how do you know that you are challenging power. Just like it is racism when people generalize about a single black man based on their perceived idea on how all black men act the same is true for a white man. If you think it is ok to give attributes to large groups of people based on skin color or sex you cannot say it is bigoted when others do it as well.
If you think it ok for you to generalize about men because you perceive that they hold a position of power then it must be equally correct for the incel community to generalize about women because they see women in a position of power. You just value different things but nothing is objectively correct.
Nazis believe the Jews contribute to a system of oppression. Does that make it ok for them to say prejudiced things about Jews?
This is actually a very good description of many places in Latin America, and perhaps even of some parts of the U.S. (particularly the southern parts, where privilege hierarchies were always quite strong even in colonial times). It's not a sensible way of thinking about the U.S. as a whole, much less the wider Western world. To the extent that some people identify as "white" (however silly that might be from an 'objective' POV) it happens purely because self-identity is important to people, and shedding one's self-identity is really hard. Expecting people to "criticize the system" is just wishful thinking when one doesn't even understand what that "system" actually is, and where it applies!
In other words, do you understand why what you are saying is victim blaming?
In racism, white people are not the victim, they are the creators of racism and are the people still allowing racism to exist. They are the attacker.
These are correlations not causations. But their truth values are, ultimately, completely irrelevant to the point being made, which is that you yourself have no desire to 'listen', but rather are attempting to simply have your quasi-religious propaganda imposed on anyone who disagrees with you, under the guise of rationality.
You also have claimed that I was strawmanning when I wasn't, and you are now resorting to personal attacks.
This is why "It's okay to be white" is a serious message, not just "a meme" or "trolling". Because, really, it is okay. You're not doing anything wrong! Don't let anyone BS you otherwise.
They call the sign racist, which is insane. It's like the powers that be are trying to establish that if you're white, you are automatically racist and need to constantly be in a state of shame and guilt.
If you attempt to seek even the tiniest bit of pride in your race, you are a bad person.
And then when people wonder why there is a rise of white nationalism, you have to ask are they paying attention? We are getting alienated from society by force, then when we form our own inner group somehow that is also wrong.
I feel more and more white males are being pushed into a right wing extreme position, thus social justice warriors and left wing extremists are making their own boogeyman.
And I’d rather be depressed forever than give any of those people any sort of solace. No.
'social justice warriors and left wing extremists are making their own boogeyman'
I am sorry that people you disagree with exist in the world, that is just the way it is. Only you can determine your engagement with society, and you can absolutely choose to only associate with your bubble and ideology, but you don't get choose who exists.
I wake up at 6 am so that I can volunteer as a teaching assistant for public school CS classes.
I work with a dog rescue, spending weekends cleaning poop out of kennels and walking dogs.
And yet, native Seattleites will still accuse me of ruining "their" city. I doubt that most of these people make a fraction of the amount of effort that I do to contribute to the community. They just sit on their asses and complain on social media.
If you listen to them, their complaints are likely not that "there's too much dog poop" and "kids these days just don't know enough cs" but rather "money is making the city unlivable for those not connected to tech".
> I doubt that most of these people make a fraction of the amount of effort that I do to contribute to the community. They just sit on their asses and complain on social media.
You're literally doing the same thing you're accusing them of. Besides, effort is a really poor metric for measuring the effect you have on the world.
These same people rail against the inequality and exclusivity of the tech industry, and the borders which are drawn around socioeconomic, racial, and gender lines. I am making a significant personal sacrifice to mitigate this issue for future generations by providing the exact CS mentorship and guidance that these people are (rightfully) complaining that they lack. I have directly seen the effects of my efforts on these kids, including a few who have gone on to gasp study CS! In a few short years, they may even be my co-workers, and have completely broken out of the cycle of poverty.
Knowing the positive impact I have had on other peoples lives, and my community at large is a beautiful thing, and I am certain that it outweighs however much my presence is "driving up housing prices" (I live on the east side anyway, so it's a moot point regardless).
Your reflexive dismissal of this not-insignificant contribution and refusal to acknowledge the point being made here is unfortunate. But way to try to reduce this to "there's too much dog poop". You've provided HN readers with a prime example of manipulative framing and intellectual dishonesty.
I'm sure the people being displaced by tech workers are warmed by this thought. If I am being reductive and manipulative, it is at least as reductive and manipulative to compare the problem of diversity in tech to the problem of capital rapidly gentrifying and displacing people.
I am grateful you provide to the community, but this attitude of "I doubt that most of these people make a fraction of the amount of effort that I do to contribute to the community." is incredibly toxic and narcissistic.
When?
Do they come up to you and point fingers and blame you?
Are they your friends or just strangers?
Why do you care what they think at all?
Maybe work on the part about being evil. The rest of the the things you listed grant you an advantage in life even today.
For many people, it is a cultural war. You are either "with us" or "against us".
Online media and online narratives are written in such a way that anyone outside your own group is perceived as evil. The filtering bubble effect of closed communities ("safe spaces") often aggravates the situation. I have seen people with balanced positions turn to the far right and others to the far left in knee jerk reactions to negative experiences.
What you hear is the loud minority of a minority. Racism and sexism against white males do exist. The people who hold those values are just as bigoted as any other racist or sexist individuals.
Most well rounded and balanced humans won't tell you that any demographic is "evil". In fact, most people just want to spend their days without thinking about others.
This. We must break down own issues and barriers to truly connect to others.
You have a part of you that is aware of the random lucky breaks you've gotten in life, which might not have been lucky in other times or places. That's a fine thing -- it's useful. But then you've got a part of you that takes that further and makes you feel undeserving, or makes you pick up and amplify on comments that resonate with that feeling of attack. Why?
To go back to the article, etc., do you have countervailing messages in your life, from family for instance?
I'm someone currently organizing a bunch of STEM outreach events for the summer, and I truly value my white dude allies who are volunteering, connecting me with speakers using their networks, asking their corporate overlords to fund us, and so on.
There is a ton of negativity in the world, as you alluded to, and we all pick up on the messages that are designed to hit us. This is a human problem, and you're not alone.
The "voices in their head" that are other people's voices?
You're probably not affected by the ads for skin-whitening creams aimed at dark-skinned women. You probably are more affected by the ads that insinuate your pecs aren't big enough. We amplify the negative messages from outside that hit us where we live.
Sure. My question was more to the point that the parent post wasn't about an unhealthy internal monologue, but about other people.
Letting your internal voice run wild with negative emotions is a problem, but it's very different from dealing with the words of other people. A black woman listening to people around her saying that black women are worthless and that it's a blessing that fewer of them are around nowadays doesn't have a problem with her inner voice amplifying insecurities, she has a problem with actually existing racists around her.
That's not to say that people don't go around actually saying awful bigoted things. They do. They have forever. It's up to each of us to sort through them, to listen to them with courage, to protect and care for ourselves in spite of them. And if we truly care about stopping this pain, it's up to each of us to learn how to avoid reacting to external hate with our own flagrant shit.
People of color and poor people have been listening to bigoted lies and hatred for a long time now.
If you want to learn how to care for yourself in the face of internalized hatred, there are so many leaders who have led the way. Martin Luther King helped me. I've also found a lot of understanding from Krista Tippett's podcast "On Being."
'White people' are now compelled to hear a kind of racialized hatred that many have been largely insulated from until now. Maybe it's the internet? Maybe it's the politics? Either way, hate is out here in force right now and it spares no one, not even white people.
It's more problematic if you're depressed at the state of the world, i.e. that so many people voice wrong and hurtful convictions - that I can somewhat sympathise with.
This is not appropriate behavior. There’s no excuse for discriminating against children.
It’s okay to be bothered by this. It’s okay to call people out when they do this. In practice you need to be extremely polite and patient, and offer measured criticisms.
Yeah this literally doesn't happen.
If you really try to be a nice guy, and someone really shits on you for being different from them... laugh it off, knowing that you have advantages that they don't have. Offer them some dollar bills to wipe away the tears with.
You're not being systematically discriminated against. In the very worst case, you're dealing with a few assholes who don't recognize when they're projecting their own issues onto someone else. Being called "evil" is pretty meaningless if you're not actively trying to screw people over.
Stick with it, there are rewards, if one of your homeless friends cooks you a meal or takes you out for your birthday or even lends you money then I think you can re-evaluate this 'helping' thing.
Also try and do things with money more as personal philanthropy, not through a structured charity. You would be surprised at how that works out. People do get back on their feet at they do pay you back. It can be important for them to do so because you were that person there for them when nobody else was.
It is possible to be white, male, cis-gendered, educated, able to earn money and still be treated as a world citizen. Intellect is universally appreciated, but it has to come with listening and willingness. People of all walks of life from all over the globe should be able to sense a happiness and peace that you have deep within, to get this within seconds of meeting you.
You could be spending your time with the upwardly mobile, going places crowd. Or you could give up your time to be best buddies with that elderly guy who can't remember what he did two minutes ago. Or some homeless local. In normal upwardly mobile society that would be a shameful thing to do - waste time on the 'weak'. Your rotten coworkers are stuck in this paradigm.
So you have to do things for your own motivations and ignore the crowd. There also has to be some reward in it for you. Seeing someone get their health back and their sense of being back is pretty good, particularly if you can look back on it and not be able to take any credit, with them having done it all themselves. Same in the educational setting, you should be able to reflect and realise they did whatever it was.
There is a difference between 'help' and 'enabling'. Receiving is also important, if your homeless buddy makes you something or pays you back (when some random grandparent dies) then that is more like it. Obviously you cannot take gifts from senile old folk because they don't know what they are doing!!!
Sometimes the personal philanthropy budget can grow rather than shrink. This is not a given, but people do get insurance payouts, fluffy animals can turn out to be insured and people do move on in their lives to not need the same material stuff. The more audacious you are with transformative sums with zero strings attached then the more likely it is that you will get calls out the blue with random Christmasesque paybacks.
You talk of feeling depressed and lonely, if you were to be realistic about the world then you could think that this is actually a fair and realistic sentiment.
I think you will feel a lot happier if you move from formal charity things to personal philanthropy projects. Long term commitment to two people at a time is more the idea rather than turning up once a year at Christmas time to dole out sub standard food to the 'less fortunate'. (Not saying you do that conscience-buying charidy thing).
Right now you could take on some co-worker's loser teenage child and give them some data entry work and the space to grow a bit. Give it time and they could be the child your co-worker is most proud of, to go on to get the exams and everything. With one of your homeless buddies you could put together a single page website for their dog walking business, doing the SEO and picking up useful skills in design that would not be allowed in the day job. Just apply the hacker mentality.
The mantra is to get rich and retire at 40 years old! Travel the world and have fun.
By the time they are somewhat satisfied with theirs status they have reached ~35 years old. At that point is more difficult to find a person and accept to share your life and habits with them.
They are so used to live their own lives that they have extremely hard time compromising any part of it.
I think the society has (wrongly) evolved towards an individualist model at the expenses of families.
I have noticed that people have been more and more intolerant to family flying with kids. It is hard to find kids friendly restaurants, hotels and resorts. People invite you to parties and kids are always not welcome. Not to mention also the additional cost associated with having a family.
But you know what ? I am so happy every day when I come home and my kids run towards me and we play and have fun. I and my wife coudln't be happier!
A piece of advice, stop running, take time off and think about your life beyond work and money. Traveling is fun but is way more fun and interesting when you can share it with some one you care about, like your family!
that's the equivalent of saying "if I control for skin colour I observe no discrimination". The cost of raising children both financially and in time, is intrinsically linked to raising children.
It is often asserted that spousal relationships suffer from the routine chores that come with raising children, and that is not going away. Don't control for the thing you want to measure.
https://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/why-does-anyo...
You cannot just say things like this without providing evidence.
> By the time the 2016 survey rolled around, fathers were 40% more likely than childless men to see themselves as very happy.
"Happiness" is also not the right concept here. Having kids doesn't necessarily make you "happy." But it's something people almost universally want: https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-norm.asp....
By age 45, 86% of people have had kids, and only 6% of those wish they had not had kids. By contrast, out of those who didn't have kids, more than half wish they did. Even more remarkably, among all adults age 45+, as many people wish they had five or more kids as wish they had no kids (11%).
There is pretty much no other life choice (college, career, etc.) that almost every body does that almost nobody regrets.
It's very socially unacceptable to admit you regret having had your kids. Even to an anonymous stranger conducting a phone poll.
I am much more inclined to believe studies that ask for self-reported happiness and compare to life events / states like childlessness without directly asking "do you regret your kids". From what I understand, having children is negatively correlated with happiness in those sorts of studies.
Did you reply to the wrong comment? That's why the parent poster led with this quote from IFS:
> By the time the 2016 survey rolled around, fathers were 40% more likely than childless men to see themselves as very happy.
That part of the study is about the same fathers who are now aged 50-70 and whose children have generally left the house and are no longer children.
I guess if you see it as in investment for future happiness when you're old, you can interpret it as "children make you happy", but not if you prefer to be happy now and over the next ~18 years.
That's way too simplistic.
It's like saying college is an investment for when your old. You may have loved learning about new things, but still rather not have to do a bunch of meaningless homework assignments,
You can actually enjoy being a parent immediately and simultaneously not like all the sacrifices. IT's a deeper kind of commitment. For some people, it's the first time they have actually loved something more than themselves. It's hard to express.
It's a little awkward to quote a single word like that. In that circumstance the following words "... you're referring to" serve the same function. But it does highlight the notion of "you were looking for science, here is science".
> Having children makes people happier—if they can afford it.
* https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/02/cost-rais...
The people who are unhappy with kids are the people who are unhappy, depressed and bitter to begin with, lacking all empathy. You have to be a pretty self-absorbed individual to not love the innocence and charm of children.
Every person I know with a family loves their children to death and are very content and happy. Happiness consists in pursuing the ultimate unchanging good and increasing in virtue, nothing passing in this life can give you ultimate everlasting happiness. It is a philosophical, metaphysical and theological question, not a question of children, free-time or money. Children are a good thing, but they're not the ultimate object whereby one becomes happy.
I believe a lot of the unhappiness is often from someone who was pressured into a choice they didn't critically think about or didn't want but caved in. Even if the pool of people is small the experience could be quite negative. Where as all the people who always wanted them will be happy.
I took care of my brother and sisters a lot as a child and it made it very clear that I never wanted children.
Being a parent is not the same as taking care of your siblings. Using the experience of one to justify your decisions in another is short-sighted.
How many parents have you ever heard say, "I wish I didn't have kids"?
That is just one of the many reasons I don't want kids. I have plenty of functional health issues that make keeping on weight a chore never mind a pain free day and yet again that is just the tip of the iceberg.
This is true. Likewise, if you are explaining all the reasons you can't or don't want to have kids someone may be more likely to agree by saying "I wish I didn't have kids."
I don't disagree with what you have said, just know that taking care of your siblings is not the same as being the parent of a child (legally, emotionally, physically, etc.). When you compare them, it detracts from the broader point you have made.
I am aware of this bias. My Grandmother in law is blunt about never having wanted children where as lots of people are just complaining due to stress. That is why I give more weight to people who have fully raised children and are no longer stressed out by them. My anecdotal evidence is similar to Pew.
My boss complains all the time but I know he doesn't regret it even thought he looks like he got hit by a train some days.
I prefer to focus on regret rates among childless men with vasectomies who had their operation after the age of 31. I say this because not having children =/= not wanting them at 45. There could be a lack of money, a partner, fertility issue etc that could all lead to this situation.
I have heard a number of friends say this, though almost always indirectly. There is a real stigma associated with being unhappy with parenthood, but many people do not seem to enjoy the process.
From my own observations, eventually most parents adjust their own personal "bar" for happiness and more or less accept their lot. I'm sure they get something positive out of it, but it seems to be a tradeoff for other sources of happiness and life satisfaction which usually become unavailable to parents.
Is it possible you are inferring it a certain way because of your bias? For instance, I complain about having kid all the time, but I wouldn't give him up for anything.
==There is a real stigma associated with being unhappy with parenthood, but many people do not seem to enjoy the process.==
This is something only a non-parent would say. Nobody enjoys the sleepless nights, dirty diapers or unexplained whining, but those are part of the same process that leads from laughing, to crawling, to walking, to speaking, to reasoning.
==From my own observations, eventually most parents adjust their own personal "bar" for happiness and more or less accept their lot. I'm sure they get something positive out of it, but it seems to be a tradeoff for other sources of happiness and life satisfaction which usually become unavailable to parents.==
Your wording implies that you have never actually asked a parent if they get anything out of it, but just make an assumption to fit your mental model. Everything in life is a trade-off, that isn't the same as wishing you didn't do something.
Not being happy with parenting doesn't imply wanting to give up your child. It just means that you made a bad decision that you're now stuck with / making the best of.
It could be that I was simply reading into things, but I have been told directly by someone that it had been a bad choice. But as people do, they adapted and moved on, though their life is very different now and I barely recognize them anymore.
I've also known happy parents. It's just silly to say that parenting is automatically a happy event. Nothing in life is going to be enjoyable for every person.
It seems incredibly silly to completely discount all your life experience when making important decisions...
FWIW, I've known someone who very much wanted kids then she became a full time live in nanny. That changed her mind completely about having kids of her own. She still loves working with children, and she still works with kids, just not in a live-in situation. She'll probably work with children her whole (working) life.
>How many parents have you ever heard say, "I wish I didn't have kids"?
My mother said those exact words to me every single day. Either that are similar stuff like "you ruin my life, I wish you were never born."
But, it's not something that is socially acceptable to say, so how many times you've heard is is completely irrelevant. I doubt my mother would say that to anyone else. It's like saying "how many times have you seen someone say 'I am sexually attracted to children?' None? Ok, now we can conclude pedophilia and childhood sexual abuse doesn't exist!"
More and more, now that the taboo is breaking down to some degree. This has been the subject of some recent press reporting.[0][1]
That said, it is disturbing to me, at least, how people’s having children might rewire their brains. They might like their new role only because of certain changes in brain chemistry that result from parenthood. Their fondness for being parents is therefore something forced on them in a way, it is not a matter of actual choice.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/09/love-re... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/feb/11/breakin...
Newsflash: you are your biology. Your biology demands its continuation. Defy nature at your own peril.
"Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don't go as planned."
"Certain changes in brain chemistry" result in us adjusting to be approximately as happy as they always are even in situations which one would predict way less or way more happiness.
Personally, I've found having a kid to be less stressful, less expensive, and more rewarding than my college/career experience. I'm happier now than I ever was before. Yeah it's hard sometimes, but what isn't?
My kids cause me a lot of stress. The burden of knowing I have to deal with them and their energetic, ridiculous antics every day when I get home really drains me. I don't really have time to exercise anymore because from sun-up to sundown I am dealing with them, so I'm slightly overweight and out of shape in a way I was not before I had kids. My diet isn't as diverse as it was before I had kids either because I can't go to the same places I used to or take the time to prepare what I used to prepare. I've stayed in the job I have now for longer than I should just because I worry about keeping a steady salary, paying my bills, and caring for my kids more than I ever worried about those things before. I don't spend a lot of money on self-care or personal enjoyment anymore because I need to save it in case something goes wrong and I need to spend the money on them.
Am I less happy? YES. I am less happy than before.
But if I was given the choice to go back, I wouldn't. I wouldn't even consider it. Not even for a millisecond. I don't know why and I really don't need to know why, but having kids is just better than being happy. I don't want to be happy, I want to be a good dad. It's true that being a parent makes you less happy, but it also makes happiness irrelevant (for the most part). It probably has something to do with evolution.
Yes, it is rewarding to be a parent at the end of the day when they fall asleep. :)
There's a speech in the movie Parenthood [1] that expresses a lot of what you just said. With a kid (or kids), the highs are higher, the lows lower. Some want to be on a roller coaster, others are happier on a merry-go-round.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z18vJwmxFFY
My wife and I have two kids, we are both in the best shape of our lives, eat better than before, and our kids are quite healthy - participating in gymnastics, volleyball, and roller derby.
Life is hard as parent but a variety of things can exacerbate problems such as: both husband and wife working, work place requires long travel, age gap between children, having children with special needs etcetra..
I could pay for a nanny or childcare of some sort for portions of the day and allow myself to focus on things like food quality, exercise, etc. I prefer to sacrifice those things to be with my kids whenever I am not working because I think it is important for me to invest that time now when they are most impressionable. But that preference isn't something I seem to have much control over. It's what I think is right, so I do it. I guess I could choose to do what I think is wrong, but that doesn't seem like a choice as much as a character failure.
Also, my kids are very young. As they get older, I expect to have more time. The early years are the absolute hardest in terms of time. It does get better as they get older and have activities to participate in outside the home.
There is almost no maternal/paternal leave, health care costs are astronomical, so are child care costs, which are almost necessary, because the normal multi-generational family has been systematically destroyed over the last half-century, both with advertising and economic pressure. Not to mention the lack of compromising skills in both partners, which has been exacerbated by identity politics.
So yes, in context, maybe having kids is miserable*
*with caveats and not everywhere.
People are waiting until they have more money and a job that actually gives them time to raise a family. The real reason why people are putting off having kids is that it's not 1950 anymore.
There is coming a point (it has already passed, in my opinion), where we can no longer justify our purpose for existence as "creating more humans."
Maybe the measure for loneliness is just wrong?
Lonely relative to traditional values family model? Which had problems with depression, infidelity, parental anxiety 24/7... in other words, rife with emotional dysfunctions of its own.
Are we concerned with decline in family because it’s the best model for organizing communal life or because we’re used to it? It feels different and weird, which can feel sad, but allows other models for socializing to explore.
I don't have any statistics that can either confirm or dispute that assertion. But I will gladly ban SUV and Cruise s in favor of whatever climate impact children can have.
What a sad perspective. I know many people who contribute massively to the environment. Maybe you need to choose a different, pro-environment lifestyle? Plant some trees. It's possible to live carbon negative and pass on those values to your children.
So in your view, humans are weeds. Do you think it's time to get out the weedkiller?
“A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use,” said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. “It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car,” he said, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions.
“Agriculture is a sector that spans all the multitude of environmental problems,” he said. “Really it is animal products that are responsible for so much of this. Avoiding consumption of animal products delivers far better environmental benefits than trying to purchase sustainable meat and dairy.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...
[0]: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541
If pro-environment people do not have children to pass their values to but anti-environment people do, then clearly there won't be much support for climate action in the future.
Climate action is still a very long road. Yes, we probably already have nearly 1.5C baked in, but our children and grandchildren will still have a massive role in the future of the environment.
Another great reason not to have kids. They are going to be left to deal with the consequences of the 1.5C. Including war, famine, and the likely re-emergence of various fascist and totalitarian ideologies due to the crisis. Why would you choose to put people you love through that?
If only the fascists and pro-totalitarians pass on their values to future generations, then you're right there is little hope. But that's what we're discussing! I believe we have a responsibility to ensure that ISN'T the future.
None of this matters anyway. Enjoy life.
If you have Choice A which actively makes things worse and Choice B which doesn't make things worse then Choice A is the "good" choice as it is the one that causes the least harm. Driving a 50cc scooter instead of a car doesn't actively help carbon emissions, in fact it still puts out carbon, but it any reasonable person would say that switching from a car to a scooter helps the environment. Splitting hairs over whether doing less harm counts as "helping" isn't very productive.
Have kids and don't do that. If the "good guys" aren't having kids then we'll be fucked. I assure you the "bad guys" are having loads of kids and they don't care one iota about climate change....
True, but doesn't being good involve not being actively bad?
Thanks for the aggressive ad-hominem.
> Being not-bad is not the same as being good. Inaction is not the same as positive action. That's literally all I'm saying.
Well of course, I don't think anyone was suggesting that not having kids was all you had to do to become a good person and save the planet.
The person who avoids having kids is still probably doing more to reduce CO2 than the average superficially "eco-conscious" family. Positive action that actually makes a difference is really hard work; avoiding plastic bags, recycling, and driving a Tesla isn't going to do much.
The viewpoint that really puts humanity as separate from nature is the one that assumes that the planet can support an unlimited quantity of humans without obliterating nature in the process. How many people do you think the earth can support? 10 billion? 15 billion? At some point we're going to hit a wall. But, thanks to technology, long before we hit that wall most of the plants and animals we take for granted today will be gone.
If we want to preserve a fraction of the biodiversity we have today, at some point soon the human population of the planet will have to stop growing. People who don't have kids are making the rational, forward-looking choice as far as I'm concerned.
The true but unpleasant situation is that, on average, people on HN should be having more kids while those in developing countries should have fewer.
You not having a kid is very unlikely to be a net positive for humanity if you live in a developed country with a large, stable income.
Exactly backwards if you look at the resource consumption and carbon footprint per capita in SF vs. that in developing countries[1]. iPhones and Ubers and Bird scooters are expensive. Not just in monetary terms but in terms of generating tons of carbon emissions during production, operation, and disposal/recycling.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
/sarcasm
People who don't have kids because they are worried about climate change are doing a big disservice because they are ensuring that all the folks who don't give a rusty rats ass about climate change eventually outnumber them.
Your argument applies equally to "having a child" and "letting some person live."
It's not as big of a jump as you think. If climate change is such an urgent issue that anti-natalism should be on the agenda, perhaps it's a big enough crisis to motivate a re-evaluation of some old ideas about the sanctity of individual human lives.
Seems like all-or-nothing thinking to me.
You say this flippantly, but if we don't eventually reverse the trends, this will happen. It will be camouflaged in the garb of warfare against the "enemy", as it always is.
We're on a path that is going to significantly lessen the carrying capacity of the planet (on the human timescales we care about). It's implicit and unavoidable barring a wholescale change in power structures and probably human attitudes in general.
It's not a good thing but it is inevitable at this point.
[0]: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541
Unfortunately modern environmentalism is a cult with its own armageddon. And WWF actively displacing native hunter gatherer people to "save the wildlife". What is the point of preserving environment if there are no people in it?
In fact shrinking population is the worst thing for the environment that can happen now, because at this point we have already activated the natural process of arctic melting and releasing CO2, and even if half of people were magically removed there wouldn't be a huge difference.
On the other hand the new science and technology depend on large number of people ready to pay for them. Things like starlink, new CPUs, would be impossible with smaller population. But if the population was larger, we would already have floating cities increasing carbon capture in sea, desalination plants irrigating large parts of sahara, system of balloons, solar updraft towers and satellites controlling the local climate.
If you are from a rich country, not having children is doubly bad, because you have all the resources to give these kids better education. The world would have been a much better place if people from western countries were immigrating to the rest of the world bringing their money and their knowledge of how to build a better society, but instead of that the rich countries are making easy for smart and entrepreneurial people to immigrate there leaving us perpetually underdeveloped. (When most of the people who were exposed to western values, and had good education immigrate, there is not enough power remaining to fight with those who want to build medieval dictatorship).
There's an old saying that if you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem. You don't think raising a child under the auspices of being environmentally aware, and that their influence would extend beyond yours is a good thing? That if you and your partner only have one child, you are generationally reducing the population while allowing your views to seed and grow.
There is so much negativity in the world... kind of lines up with the article title itself, and is more of the same problem than the solution. Even then, you aren't helping the world by actively not having children.
And it's very easy to fix your problem. Just move to a small town.
HN doesn't have an unwritten rule about expressing emotions, and the person you're responding to didn't dodge any question. Given that the submission is about happiness, it's very much on topic to discuss children and happiness.
What do we need to develop/implement in order to support a population of 10B? 100B? 1T?? At some point, routine space travel needs to come into play. 100x-to-100000x improvement in the efficiency of our energy capture/storage/distribution technology. Terraforming or other world-modification technology. At 10-100 trillion population, interstellar travel and communication. At 100+ trillion population, we need to invent stuff that isn’t even in science fiction yet.
I find all this agonizing over how to keep this tiny ball of mud habitable to be... less than ambitious.
Don't try to make out like your choice to have a child is because you want to 'spread happiness'.
It's a biological imperative to perpetuate your genetic code and is the single most selfish and egotistical thing you can do with your life.
Don't delude yourself that it is anything different than any other species procreating.
Society is entirely composed of people who were given birth to. I don’t see how the very foundation of humanity (and all life on earth) could be viewed as “selfish”. You’re literally sustaining the human race.
While true, that's not the reason people reproduce.
Most people are only truly concerned with their own offspring and their own bloodline.
That everybody in the world is primarily focused on their own legacy but just happens to contribute to the numbers of our species as a whole is an evolutionary mechanic, not a human one.
And I wasn't so much casting a moral judgement on the selfishness of the act. I was just pointing it out as a selfish act as in, it is done primarily for you and your genes whether you realise or not. You are no different than any other mammal in this regard.
(I'm referring to the collective 'you' here, not you specifically.)
That's just life and evolution. I'm not admonishing anyone for it, but I can't accept the idea that having children is somehow an altruistic act done to spread the concept of happiness when the rest of the natural world and mounds of empirical data on the study of evolution and biology screams otherwise.
That makes no sense whatsoever.
You are a mammal. You will mate and reproduce to ensure the survival of your own genes. Those are your instinctual drives. This also strokes the ego if you're successful. You get to see little versions of the your own genetics populating the world.
Some of us choose not to participate in this willingly, others will delude themselves into thinking they are somehow separate from the rest of nature in terms of their biological drives.
> Having children bestows the incomparable gift of life on other people (your children). Bestowing that gift is the part of having children that makes someone happy. It's not a self centered happiness; the day-to-day of raising children is frequently miserable.
They're not saying they're making the world a better place, they're saying that the person they gave birth to would be happy to be alive and that happiness gives joy to the parent (in addition to satisfying base survival needs I suppose).
> Some of us choose not to participate in this willingly, others will delude themselves into thinking they are somehow separate from the rest of nature in terms of their biological drives.
I don't see anyone deluding themselves other than the people who think not having children is a moral position to take. It's a valid personal choice but nothing more.
That's debatable, honestly. You can't possibly know the child will be happy to be alive or will live a life without suffering, it's a gamble.
Most people alive on Earth today I would wager experience suffering more than they do happiness.
> happiness gives joy to the parent
Not denying that, but you can't deny that that is a selfish thing, wanting to bestow joy to yourself.
Don't wince in disgust at the word 'selfish'. People do selfish things all the time for mere survival. Again, I wouldn't admonish anyone for it.
> I don't see anyone deluding themselves other than the people who think not having children is a moral position to take
I never said anything of the sort.
It's only selfish if you disregard other people and/or hurt them in the process of enjoying yourself. There's nothing selfish about bestowing joy on yourself if it's also a net positive for everyone else.
I don't think your use of the world "selfish" in this debate (with me or the other commenters) has helped your argument. It implies something negative where having children is going to be viewed subjectively and objectively positive by most people. Maybe a better term would be satisfying? That covers that the individual parent benefits but also doesn't imply that having children is hurting others.
I certainly wouldn't say satisfying, because you are deliberately ignoring any negative impacts of having children and focusing only on the positives. You say so yourself above.
I don't know if you agree that there can sometimes be negative consequences but you're opting not to speak of them to spare the feelings of parents (perhaps including yourself) or whether you genuinely believe that child birth has no negative consequences on other people or society, ever.
I'd say that's debatable at best. It depends entirely on where you live and what the impact of that child is on society and the environment.
A child's immense carbon footprint throughout life is a good example of how a child being born can be detrimental to the ecosystems we all depend on. That will remain true until (if we ever do) find a way to reduce our carbon footprints to zero or negative and in my opinion, is a reason to limit the number of children you have.
Two kids seems like a good compromise. More than that and you are adding to the problem. 'Be fruitful and multiply' does not serve our species as a mantra as well as it once did.
It really hasn't, it has merely been updated, and yet people like yourself deliberately ignore the revisions and always focus on the obsolete original argument from the 1700's.
The only thing that has been debunked was Malthus prediction that human populations grow exponentially whereas the food production grows at an arithmetic rate. That hasn't proven true because we produce more than enough food for everyone (yet people are still hungry), but population it still continues to grow in a way we cannot accommodate even now for a variety of reasons.
Besides, the main thing people disliked about Malthus's initial prediction was not that it simply suggested limiting population growth (although the religious types certainly balked at this), but rather what his predictions implied in terms of future solutions to the problem; i.e. euthanasia, eugenics and mandatory sterilisations.
They are the main reasons people don't like to entertain the idea of population control, which is fair enough; but they are ideological arguments against population control, not practical ones.
I'd suggest reading more about this though, because I think you've just picked up on the 'Malthus was debunked' soundbite that people like to repeat ad nauseaum without really understanding the debate around it and how it has evolved into the modern era.
The peak population numbers provided by the UN that supposedly 'debunked' this theory have been repeatedly updated and revised because they don't hold. Even the idea of a 'peak' population is one that is not univerally accepted as it only factors in prosperity among developed nations leading to lower birth rates. It does nothing to account for the mantra many religions have of 'be fruitful and multiply'.
The religious are going to be primary drivers of population growth going forward while secular societies are those that are falling below replacement rates for births.
It was originally supposed to peak at 9 billion. Then it was revised to 11 billion. Then 13 billion. Now it sits somewhere around 15 billion because the models used to estimate the peak population numbers are imperfect and do not take into account all variables.
Besides, Malthusianism has nothing to do with the point of my post, which is that we are slowly poisoning the ecosystems we depend on because we consume and waste too much.
That is an entirely separate issue to raw population numbers and is an issue of poor waste management, over-consumption spurred by a an addiction to perpetual growth (in capitalist terms) and ineffective logistics.
The main problem isn't how many people we have, that's just an amplifier of other problems. The main problem we have is one of greed and apathy and an insistence on infinite growth on a planet with finite resources.
You've changed the topic of conversation into something else to avoid addressing my point.
Some info:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2011/01/09/thom...
https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-26-2-t...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43735423?seq=1#page_scan_tab_co...
You said:
> There's a lot more to life than minimizing carbon footprint in the immediate term.
Which is a profoundly selfish (yes, selfish, I'll stand by that) sentiment given the shit state our global ecosystems are in as a dire...
The first world is going to be in an actual crisis (not a theoretical future one) if we don't increase the reproduction rate. Look at what is happening in Japan with massive labor shortages, too many elderly to take care of, broken economy...
> The central challenge for the future of people and the planet is how to raise more of us out of poverty—the slum dwellers in Delhi, the subsistence farmers in Rwanda—while reducing the impact each of us has on the planet.
The central challenge to every individual is to survive and reproduce. People know this at a very intrinsic level. Before you can worry about people halfway across the world, you need to be able to eat, put a roof over your head, have children (if you want them -- most do) and support them.
Humanity is not a centrally planned, intelligently designed organism. It's emergent behavior from individuals following their genetic will to participate in evolution.
And, aside from that, you're just plain wrong.
Convincing argument.
What's yours, beyond a sense of disgust at the suggestion that you are still just an animal; and a desire to be seen as a paragon of virtue because you had sex and made little versions of yourself?
When people implicitly say that bringing children in the world is necessarily a net-negative on climate, they're implying that their lifestyle is necessarily net-carbon-positive and that they just refuse to do enough to make their own lifestyle net-carbon-negative. Yet it IS possible to do so. I'm reminded of this Indian fellow who planted an entire forest pretty much by himself (although surely his wife/family also helped enable him to accomplish that goal): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7i3QlMvsZs
...there are so many decisions one can make to cut one's carbon emissions to near zero. And some decisions can even make one's carbon emissions negative (some startups at Y Combinator, even... although there are more proven methods as well).
The most powerful thing as a parent is that you can help pass on your values to your children. Teach them (through example) how to live a low or negative carbon lifestyle and teach them the value of the environment and why the Earth must be protected. Plant trees. Make intentional decisions with lifestyle (mode of travel, living arrangements, diet) that lower carbon emissions, and explain these things to your children starting at a young age.
Because the world will NEED people with those values in the future if climate change will ever be addressed and eventually reversed without a collapse of human civilization. Because if everyone with a positive view of the environment and the need to fight climate change does not pass on that worldview to their children, BUT those who deny climate change and do not value the environment pass on their worldview to their children, then that is clearly not going to work out for those who value the environment.
For instance, pay people to plant (native) trees and restore ecosystems (or do it yourself). About $15/month could offset your entire carbon footprint and bring it negative: https://mossy.earth/
If you don't buy that argument for forest restoration counting ($15/ton of CO2), then you could also try some of the more expensive methods like sustainable biochar sequestration ($300/ton CO2). Even the super expensive options for offsetting CO2 are no more than a car lease payment at the individual level (and cheaper, of course, if you reduce your direct emissions as well).
We have too many people on the planet. Carbon emissions is only one of the many huge environmental problems we have. Creating new consumers to the planet is clearly the most devastating act for the environment what individual people can do.
The number of people that can inhabit the planet without destroying the environment is highly dependent on individual choices and (maybe even more) government policy. Government policy is determined by voting power, which is in turn determined by the values of people weighted by population. So absolutely it matters if the pro-environment folk advocate removing (to some degree) their own voice from future populations of voters while anti-environment folk do not.
The most devastating act that individual people can do is to not pass on positive, lasting values to the next generation. Because you're not going to stop anti-environment people from passing down negative values by doing so; you'll in fact be amplifying their stance. We must heal the Earth.
The world doesn't even need human or dinosaur. It will work just fine.
And I feel like that's obvious enough that this objection that you and others raise has to be willful, disingenuous misinterpretation, just to be disagreeable or something.
Plus there's an assumption we won't figure out climate change. Why assume that kid will be as bad for the environment as you?
I find your comment, and your subsequent replies, exemplifies the headline of the submission quite well:
>The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness
I also wonder if we’re no longer properly teaching evolution in school. There are a lot of key concepts people are missing.
Two comments. First, within evolution (true, a brutal and inhumane theory), the point of life is exactly to survive and reproduce. It is literally unnatural to deliberately choose to not have children (unless you don't believe in evolution).
Second, I presume that you don't mean for this to be taken to the point of nobody having children, that is, to the extinction of the human race. I get the impression that some eco-types think that would be a good thing; I deeply disagree.
Something's being natural or unnatural has no bearing on whether it is right or wrong. I assume that when the OP says "we can no longer justify" they are making a moral claim, which means that saying it's "unnatural" to not reproduce is failing to be relevant.
Also note that my argument was trying to argue within someone else's viewpoint, and it's not a viewpoint that I agree with.
First, having a child does not require you to travel more, get a bigger house, keep it warmer or cooler, buy non-second-hand clothes or do anything else with a significant carbon footprint beyond grocery shopping (which admittedly has a nontrivial footprint). It's not until adulthood that they'll really start to have a full fledged carbon footprint of their own.
Second, social animals that we are, a person's net total impact on the carbon footprints of others can be much larger than that person's individual, "direct" footprint. Raise your kid the right way and their footprint could, in a very real sense, be negative.
Third, there are some indications that the point in the future where we either solve climate change or fail catastrophically is near enough that it may have past before your kid reaches that damaging, adult phase.
Your kid would live to see the impacts of climate change, though. If we as a society would just put a price on carbon emissions and reimburse the externalized costs through a fee & dividend system, even that would not be a problem (in theory) because your kid would be compensated financially for any climate-change-induced hardship.
The older one practiced worldly prudence, courted during high school, got engaged at beginning of college, and waited almost a decade until after her fiancé graduated before they got married and started to have children. But now he can't get a job with his degree (pharmacist), she works at some retail job as a manager, and the whole family lives with her parents. He's in >$100,000 debt and briefly went to a medical facility during a nervous breakdown after realizing he realistically can't pay it back.
The younger sister had no such ambitions. Courted in high school, got engaged, married right out of high school, immediately started a family, he works at Walmart making higher than average money, and she stays at home raising the kids. They also live with her parents in the same house.
True stories. This all happened over the past 7 years.
I would say the prudence of the second couple vastly outshines the "prudence" of the first couple.
By the way you phrase it, the outcome of the older sister hinged upon the husband failing to get a job as a pharmacist. If he had successfully landed a job, the outcome of your story would be very different.
The same argument could be made for the younger sister. What happens when Walmart downsizes, and the husband is out of job with a background only in retail?
I'm not sure it is worth citing or criticizing the 'prudence' of either couple.
The second couple had a family immediately, have no debt, and are otherwise in the exact same situation as the first couple.
And the couple that had children sooner, are younger and more energetic, and also have less stressful jobs that allow them to spend more time and better quality time with them.
Also there is a real value in having the mom stay at home full time where she can teach their children their own values and guard them from bad practices or influences at such an impressionable age.
Getting a PharmD used to be a golden ticket. Then a ton of schools opened up and flooded the market. Wages are actually on the way down and from what I've heard, the retail jobs really suck.
Where?
I teach at the University of South Carolina, where tuition and fees are over $10K a year. To my knowledge, the same is true of all the other four-year colleges in the state (Clemson, College of Charleston, Lander, USC Upstate, The Citadel etc.)
Not as outrageous as private school tuition, but it's still a very substantial burden, especially when you factor in food and housing as well.
My impression is that this is quite typical for the US. I would be delighted to learn that I am mistaken.
Have fun trying to get your credits to transfer. I had trouble getting credits to transfer from the Air Force Academy to a state college. They want you to do them there. They would take them as generic credit hours but it was an uphill battle to get them to actually satisfy graduation requirements (which are the real thing that keeps you from graduating, you will already have enough credit hours).
So first two years cheap at community college for an AA/AS then you only have two years for your bachelors at a more expensive school.
So it looks cheap to me, assuming the housing isn't insane. I think there is a reasonable assumption that a person gets loans, chooses a sensible major, and actually graduates.
That is how it was when I first went away to college in 1994; I think I paid around $3k a year tuition at University of Missouri. I started planning a 529 for my kids this week and was shocked to find that in state tuition here (South Carolina) is $15K a year for just tuition and fees. I'm scared to imagine what it will be in ten years.
Without a doubt college is a lot more expensive, and it is much harder to find a school doing things cheaper. Which is why my kids will likely just live at home and get their degrees online. They'll miss out on some college experiences which they can then make up for by not being $80k in the hole when they graduate. I mean most kids are on a 25 year payment plan, which is basically their entire working life.
I'm of the opinion that, at least in the US, we romanticized the idea of "going off to college" to "find yourself". It is assumed to be this huge drug-fueled, party sex orgy that is funded on essentially credit.
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations...
This alone would encourage me to fly with my kids as often as possible.
> The mantra is to get rich and retire at 40
Hrm, I question the circle of people you're surrounded by. Many millennials are struggling to afford the basics, let alone travel or have a family!
This is a contentious and potentially unpopular opinion, but I posit that having children borders on unethical at this point in history. We've wrecked the planet and have growing anti-intellectual culture.
I'm happy you're happy though.
This is a really bad argument. Especially in countries that have a lot more support for parents than the US.
From this thread, it would appear to be baked-in as a function of self-selection.
One might argue intellectuals have an obligation to procreate.
They already did and their kids are building the world's largest and most powerful surveillance and propaganda systems at Facebook and Google. Unfortunately the "G" in FAANG does not stand for "Greenpeace".
Combating anti-intellectualism as a trend is probably more complicated than just trying to get the existing educated to have more children then the existing uneducated.
Long time lurker, but since you look like you could use a good source I made an account.
Here[0] is a well-referenced Wikipedia page, so that you can base your understanding on fact in the future (something we all should aim for if we want to know the truth).
The key quote from the article intro is
> The heritability of IQ for adults is between 57% and 73%[6] with some more-recent estimates as high as 80%[7] and 86%.[8] IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics, for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults.
This means that opportunity for intelligence is very heritable, like height. Sad for those of us who hoped we were blank slates with equal chances of success in the information age. My personal take away is that the world always has been brutal, so "fear thy creator", and get your act together with the few IQ points you were given. I hope all the different people of our planet with can succeed in creating prosperous societies despite this, like westerners and east Asians have today.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
that's a wrong dichotomy. There's no fundamental reason why 35 year olds don't socialize, or why our education system stops at 25, why we have no communal institutions, and so on.
The alternative isn't just between individualism and the family, what is needed is building out communities in ways that gives people the ability to connect in new ways that reflect our changes in work and living arrangements.
As the article mentions the UK has introduced a minister for the problem of loneliness. What we need is to put policies into place that develop new modes of social life and to expand the public sphere.
The nuclear family isn't really that attractive any more for a reason, so just asking to go back isn't really a great idea. People like the freedom that comes with having no or fewer children, being able to move, and being financially independent.
Can you expound on what you would propose. My experience is that clubs or meetups often don't forge all that close relationships. Another example I could think of which is more positive is co-ops where people lived in a door room type experience with community rules and chore responsibilities (cooking, cleaning, maintenance). But I think many adult American's would think of a co-op as to close to a commune.
For younger people I think coops are a great thing too. In the US implementing policies that discourages single family housing and promotes closer connection between workspace and living space I think would help. If you live and work in walking distance of your chess club going there is more likely compared to someone living in the suburbs.
For communities there's also time banking which has gotten a little attention in recent years. Essentially paying people in a special currency for reciprocal help in their local communities that can only be exchanged locally, and everyone earns the same based on how long they work. Basically an egalitarian approach to fill in the gap where markets are too anonymous to provide meaning or where they don't exist at all.
And then I think government and companies should do much more to promote education for middle aged and older people. And not just online learning, but physical interaction. In my experience educational institutions are some of the best places to make new social connections.
young people go to the cities for high status, high paying jobs to pay off student loans and/or save up for the future in an increasingly uncertain world
competition is extremely high for these jobs, compounded 1000x due to the rise and use of social media among my generation, which always suggests that next thing to buy or that next vacation to go on, either from corporations or your "friends" (it's hard to tell which is which after a while) - get that raise so you can unlock the next tier of stuff you see wealthy people doing
gone are the days of getting an intellectually stimulating and well paying job with IBM/Ford/GE and building your career off it while having a family young, people my age usually stay in a job for 2/3 years then on to the next startup/job/"adventure" (if they have the right degree to get a job in the first place)
then there's a completely separate cohort of people my age who have settled outside the city, gotten married, looking to have kids in low cost of living areas and figure out job stuff as they go (very risky unless you own your own biz or work for a family biz)
dating is a similarly competitive game in the big cities, one that warrants its own 10 page essay per city based on the conversations i've had with single friends in LA/NY/London/SF
the gap between generations is growing more and more pronounced/quicker due to technology grouping similar people together and amplifying their cultures...it takes effort but you need to continuously bridge this gap with those younger than you, otherwise their needs, desires, motivations will be completely alien to you - i almost don't understand the fortnite meme generation, but i make efforts to
most young people are acutely aware of life outside work and money (especially asians/immigrants due to pressure from conservative parents), but it's getting harder and harder to find the middle class/balance between earning enough to have a family comfortably and affording a place to live while keeping your job options healthy/open for whatever BS is coming next down the economic chain
Also, yeah, I don’t get the memes that my high school niece sends me at all. Their sense of humor is completely foreign to me.
The current world is very capitalistic - high risk and high reward. Smart people are aware that there are paths that will allow them to retire at 40 or earlier, and are trying to pursue them. Unfortunately, these paths often require lots of dedication, so people neglect other areas of life. Whereas in earlier days, there were perhaps fewer good paths to financial independence, and people just accepted being in their jobs until old age, and tried to find comfort in family, friends etc.
well for me personally at least that's a great thing. Working for giant company X while living in company town coming home to your labradoodle and your wife with a cooking pot to in hand to watch TV to me is the horror very well portrayed in American Beauty.
Coming out of university I could pick between going abroad, working for a startup, working for a normal business, working from home even, not being looked down for not wanting a family and so on. The liberty I have today is something my parents never had. And sure, with freedom comes disorientation and competition, but to me that's exciting rather than distressing.
I think we hear about the bad stuff, some flight attendant or passenger complains, and the logical conclusion of a family with a crying baby is booted is the end result. My counter-anecdote is the exact opposite, my fourteen month old daughter cried the majority of our 3.5 hour return flight and she was quietest (not quiet but quietest) was when I was standing and holding her in the middle of the aisle. Any dirty looks, and I scanned for them occasionally, were non-existent (or I missed them and they never vocalized) and most people either had noise-cancelling headphones or just rolled with it. When we apologized for the noise there was a lot of "Oh ours our teenagers now, we've been there, you're ok!"
Some of it maybe the bigger stink they make the longer it all takes, but a lot of it is probably shared communal experiences. If some baby was wailing their lungs off next to me on a plane, I'd roll with it, the parent(s) is having a far tougher time of it then I am.
I know you're just describing your personal impression and don't claim them to be universally true.
But allow me to present some evidence, er, anecdote to the contrary: I have also traveled the world and lived on three continents. I met lots of cool people and was lucky enough to make friends with some of them in all the places that I visited. I never observed the same as you apparently did, namely that they invested themselves in nothing but their career, traveling, parties, etc.
As a matter of fact, coming to think of it, a lot of the people I know (most of them college age) were also from abroad and made sure to stay involved with the family business back home as much as they could. Also, a lot of my friends were actually couples, showing that they cared for more than just work and individual leisure. Some of them got married since.
Of course, differences may be due to a number of reasons. What area of work you're in, for example. What geographical location you're in. And naturally, you probably tend to make friends with people that are to some degree similar in some respect. Also, there's varying degrees of peer pressure to like the same things if you want to be part of the in-crowd (or any crowd you like, really). Oh, and let's not forget: cultural background.
So I don't think you can generalize as much as you did in your post.
Reminds me of this passage from The Brothers Karamazov:
> “I heard exactly the same thing, a long time ago to be sure, from a doctor,” the elder remarked. “He was then an old man, and unquestionably intelligent. He spoke just as frankly as you, humorously, but with a sorrowful humor. ‘I love mankind,’ he said, ‘but I am amazed at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular, that is, individually, as separate persons. In my dreams,‘ he said, ‘I often went so far as to think passionately of serving mankind, and, it may be, would really have gone to the cross for people if it were somehow suddenly necessary, and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone even for two days, this I know from experience. As soon as someone is there, close to me, his personality oppresses my self-esteem and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I can begin to hate even the best of men: one because he takes too long eating his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps blowing his nose. I become the enemy of people the moment they touch me,’ he said. ‘On the other hand, it has always happened that the more I hate people individually, the more ardent becomes my love for humanity as a whole.’”
The speaker goes on to say:
> Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one’s life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and everyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science.
Whereas tasks that show your love for humanity are more detached from actual individuals. Curing cancer requires you to interact with lab equipment and microorganisms more than humans. Sure your opportunity costs here may be playing video games or traveling, but they are less emotional costs and more material costs.
Paying emotional tolls is difficult, and from my experience, many people are simply incapable of paying them. I mean, they are or may be capable, but they would have to change the way they act or behave, and they are not willing to do so. I think there's a genetic component to it.
It’s incredible and very relevant.
I say that when someone having extremely hard time doing something, he/she just doesn't need that something hard enough. Most of the people rarely have hard time eating or drinking or watching interesting movie or spending time with friends.
Before XX century it was extremely hard to live alone, unless one have stable source of income or an inheritance. For lay people family was just a question of survival. Children was the only recipe of aging in dignity.
It is still valid in XXI century, but now there are other ways to live one's life. Forties is not an age of retirement, but a most active age of reaping rewards and even starting a new ventures. There are other means of self realization besides family and children. I don't see anything particularly bad about it.
My interpretation is that we finally have the freedom from cultural norms to really do whatever we please, but with great freedom comes great responsibility, not just to society but to our own long-term selves. Perhaps these people you talk about have chosen poorly, very poorly indeed, with this freedom. Nothing to do but advise the ones who might listen, and build a moat (physical or mental) that can protect you and your loved ones from them when shit hits the fan.
There's also something to be said for averting hookup culture and actually trying to build a relationship as opposed to ejecting at the first sign of inconvenience.
I say both of these things as a twice divorced 40-something that hasn't had kids of his own and deeply regrets it.
I am a bit worried about having an 18 year old and being 68 though. We'll see how it goes.
maybe he didn't have as much energy as some of the younger dads when I was a kid. but on the other hand he was able to retire while I was in high school, so he was able to spend a lot more time with my brother and I before we moved out.
This could be selective though. If you're living in expat communities in global hubs, everyone knows people are there for only a short time, so its not worth investing in long term commitment.
Not saying that I couldn't end up alone at his age, but I'd like to think my kids will be around some. My mom told me once that when their mother died she (my grandmother) told my mom "Take care of your brother. He doesn't have anyone who loves him more than anyone else." Even without putting it that way, I've never regretted the chaotic, noisy, exhausting life (of sacrifice? Yeah I think so) that I've chosen.
That plus MDMA every now and then and going to shows with my friends has pretty much dealt with my last few issues with socialization.
80% of women go for the men they like the most.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100725135317/http://blog.okcup...
https://www.girlsaskguys.com/sexual-behavior/a22977-girls-on...
My demands are so high.
I only date cute girls with degrees in engineering, math, science or in rank of first lieutenants and above. And preferably with good cooking skills.
How can someone look at the situation of how men are under attack from essentially every direction, yet they are expected to still marry women who have been with an unknown number of partners and have kids when the rate of divorce has skyrocketed.
It's really confusing how anyone could be confused about how people are more lonely now, marriages and childbirth is down, and how society feels to be unraveling.
This is what dismantling the patriarchy looks like, it's dismantling the family unit, thus forcing people to look to government for assistance and support, thus getting the next generation to be for more government and more government control.
Why does this matter?
Excerpt:
>The results presented in this article replicate findings from previous research: Women who cohabit prior to marriage or who have premarital sex have an increased likelihood of marital disruption. Considering the joint effects of premarital cohabitation and premarital sex, as well as histories of premarital relationships, extends previous research. The most salient finding from this analysis is that women whose intimate premarital relationships are limited to their husbands—either premarital sex alone or premarital cohabitation—do not experience an increased risk of divorce. It is only women who have more than one intimate premarital relationship who have an elevated risk of marital disruption. This effect is strongest for women who have multiple premarital coresidental unions. These findings are consistent with the notion that premarital sex and cohabitation have become part of the normal courtship pattern in the United States. They do not indicate selectivity on characteristics linked to the risk of divorce and do not provide couples with experiences that lessen the stability of marriage.
Good grief.