Oddly, doesn't directly argue there's no cure for loneliness, just outlines the sad extent of loneliness today. I certainly hope there is something that can be done for the situation today.
It would require better societal structures and labor laws to address mental health, which requires political will. However, just like climate change, this is a thing where you'd have to make society pass through a local minima before reaching a global maxima, and as a result it is very difficult to put this in front of a politician even for the slightest bit of consideration.
And unlike the more vocal counterparts of minorities who take to the streets when they feel aggrieved, people with adverse mental health keep suffering in isolation, so it's difficult to make a political issue out of it in the first place.
IMO the cure for loneliness is probably self fulfilling. The longer you are lonely the more you grow tired of being lonely and decide to intentionally do something about it.
Maybe it’s joining an exercise group, a hobby club, a church, a volunteer group, etc. Maybe it’s trying to work on yourself to achieve a goal or work up the courage to have a conversation with somebody special.
The output of loneliness should eventually be motivation to no longer be lonely and the determination to make it happen. It’s hard, but worth it.
Every time I have tried deliberately putting myself out there, in a social sense, I just get my hopes crushed. So now I just focus on the few things that matter to me most in the world and live my life. Sometimes all you can do is stop seeing what isn't there and focus on what is.
It’s not just putting yourself out there though. It’s also figuring out what isn’t working and trying to improve it.
I didn’t write the book on it or anything, but I’ve gone through it in my own life and I know it’s possible. For me I lost weight, got in shape, started dressing more intentionally and then joined a couple of clubs aligned with my interests.
Pretty quickly I discovered which of those groups I felt I fit better with and gravitated more there. Over time, those people became friends outside the group too.
The older you get the more deliberate this process becomes I find.
I don't know; I (irrationally) feel like everyone hates me, all the time. My wife, my kids, my parents, my best friend. I'd really love to not feel this way, but it's just the way it is. I've seen therapists, but they're not very helpful. A few of them have been kind enough to point out that this is not true, or logical, so I should not feel this way.
If I could add anything of help I would say to focus on yourself. Self love shouldn’t be underestimated. If people can’t love, like or live with the person you love, there might be an issue with your environment, not you. Anyways hope you find compassion
I think that might be one of the author's points. The 'cure' for just as often has been either drugs or alcohol, with former often having often lethal effect. Opiates trigger chemical response similar to affection; it's not terribly surprising so many choose to find comfort at the end of a needle.
Maybe you're trying to be helpful or perhaps virtue signalling, but do you seriously believe "joining an exercise group" can cure severe loneliness? We are talking about lack of deep connections to any other human. The type of shallow connections you make in those places is not going to help anyone with real loneliness. Which is a lot more common now.
Sort of agree though I would argue "joining an exercise group" is a healthy way to create shallow connections with the aim that one or more of them becomes deeper. Finding deep connections is difficult and requires significant effort from at least one party. You have to work at it. And attempts to create shallow connections shouldn't be dismissed because you generally can't try to create deeper connections in isolation and separately from trying to create shallow connections.
The difficulty of growing a shallow connection into a deeper connection is a large part of why so many people are lonely. We can't just ignore shallow connections because it's unrealistic to only ever aim for deep connections. Connections are experiments that grow.
yeah like where do people expect deep connections to form from? are they supposed to spring forth, fully formed from the swipe of an app? no! they take work and time and effort and form from shallower connections.
(I imagine some might balk and say that's not the type of group that interests them, but it does seem clear that at least for some, an exercise group does help form these connections.)
To make deeper connections, you start with shallow connections.
In school you made friends by first going to the same school so you were around each other long enough to become friends.
It’s the same with anything else. You have to consistently be around people long enough to get to know them well enough to make deeper connections. Inviting them to grab lunch sometime. Go to a movie. Play poker, bowling, golf, etc.
Certain exercise groups are exactly like that. Cross fit groups, F3 groups, etc. They are very social.
Groups that have a schedule and regular attendees are the easiest place to start. At first, you’re going to be the new guy but the longer you attend the more comfortable you’ll be. You have to stick to it.
Probably one of the biggest reasons we see more of it is how much people move around for work, away from their established family and friends. Deliberately solving this is hard since you will always feel like an outsider in a new place.
I moved to Bali over 1 year ago, knowing only a single person in the entire island. Now I have dozens of good friends there. And a handful of them I consider really good friends with whom I have a good connection with and shared very intimate and vulnerable moments. These relationships keep growing overtime the more time we spend together.
Some friends I've met at the gym, others were my neighbors, others at BBQs, others at an acting class... The list goes on.
Maybe out of topic, but socializing is a skill. And it's sad some people associate socializing with = people pleaser. Learning to socialize is learning to engage with others and put yourself out there. Whether you do it staying true to yourself or not, that's another thing.
But going back to the main thing: Deep connections don't happen out of thin air, and not without effort.
These expat enclaves are a bit of a fantasy world. They attract like-minded outgoing people eager for adventure and making new friends who all happen to have one big thing in common: they’re Westerners in a foreign land. You’re playing on easy mode ;)
When I was depressed and lonely after a couple years living in LA, I spent a year or so hanging out with Herbalife "health coaches" at the beach. We would play dodgeball, exercise in the sand, then go to a nearby venue and drink $5 protein shakes while they tried to get us to join the MLM scheme. It was a positive experience, despite the connections being mostly shallow. I also lost 40lb and could do 100 pull-ups in a day.
To add to what others said, you will get social skills there. Being lonely for a long time makes you loose social skills. It makes presence of other people very tiring and difficult.
Starting with a shallow place where you can observe how others interact and relearn basic conversation and interpersonal skills help incredibly a lot.
The more lonley you are the more you psychologically adapt to it. You reason about or do whatever to make sense of it. Some people want to be alone but no one wants to be lonely. If you are lonely it isn't because you want to be.
The longer you are lonley, the more you need to reason about and adapt and get used to it and you will lose or won't gain neccesary skills, knowledge and character that helps people gain and keep company.
It is similar to how rich people tell poor people to save up, work harder and stop buying avocado toast so they can get rich what you are saying, like they think the poorer you are the more you will get rich or something. Povery is expensive and loneliness likes company.
Generally speaking, it is called the vanishing finish like (I think there is even a wiki page for it). The longer it takes, the longer it is going to take.
People who are unemployed or out of a relationship can also testify to this, the "feast or famine" phenomena where if you already have it, it's easier to have more of it.
Personally, I don't know about a cure but probably the more you realize your mortality and how you need to appreciate now and today, I think that helps get a better perspective and lets you enjoy the few days you have on earth with or without company.
I don’t think loneliness fits in the same category as the rest, but I do agree with appreciating now and today.
Eventually, a person should hopefully realize that the regret from not making that effort is worse than the alternative.
It’s one of the reasons that groups help, especially volunteer or community groups. You’re there for the social aspect but also for the purpose. It helps to have everybody working toward the same goal.
I've gotten into watching a few travel vloggers. One of the best IMHO is Eva Zu Beck. She's not without some minor controversy, but who really isn't? What I enjoy about her channel is her contemplations on the beauty of the world and the difference between loneliness and solitude.
It was a recent video where she said something to the effect of "solitude is something you choose, loneliness is something inflicted on you by others."
I thought this was rather profound and changed my perspective on what loneliness was in terms of giving power over yourself to others. You can't cure loneliness because you have to fix the world first. What you can do is to refuse to give that power to others.
If you find yourself alone, it's okay. You still have your power. If you stay calm you can find peace in solitude.
I think she clearly compensates the alone aspect of her travelling by having a 1.58M subscribers youtube channel with 500k~ views videos. I am not saying this COMPLETELY replaces face-to-face interaction, but I bet travelling without videoblogging and receiving feedback+receiving attention from thousands from people around the world would not be the same...
All negative emotions are down to unmet expectations. This isn't a rationalization. The culture we live in is full of unrealistic expectations.
Happiness is a matter of a deeper understanding your observations, the causes of all recognized outcomes, and staying focused on your outcomes. You write your own story. Free will is not an illusion just because there's an inequality of probabilities. Debugging yourself is like anything else.
I think this perspective has a lot of value but it's also important recognize that it has limits.
Imagine you were kidnapped and kept locked in a cage-- you could still make the best of the situation-- but it's not a good one and you still should endeavor to get out of it, and not only try to discover what happiness you can find there.
'God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.'
I am not at all advocating for low expectations. It doesn't even take much to dramatically affect the odds of individual outcomes. It just takes brutal honesty some are unwilling to have with themselves.
It's all about identifying what changes have the biggest impact. Many are working too long for the wrong employer, started a family too young, have bad habits, waste their free time on useless hobbies they've long outgrown, etc.
To address your quote, far less "cannot change" than many realize.
So, while every country in the world has issues with social isolation and loneliness I think the US seems to have a particularly large problem with it. I have no evidence to back this up but it seems to me that family structures in the US are less solid than they are in other countries. And for the people who say "I'm from X immigrant community and we have very strong familial bonds", imagine how much stronger they would be had you not come to the US, and will the next generations bonds be as strong or stronger than your generations bonds?
There is a self-reliance in the US which when it works seems to work ok (although even "successful" people can be very lonely), but when it breaks down very quickly leaves people with no where to turn. People often travel long distances from their families. Often relocating across the country again for work breaking whatever bonds they formed in University. People see their families once or twice a year (because the distances are so great). People prioritize economic needs over family and societal needs and this weakening of familial and societal bonds is the result. Often you end up living far from your family with a spouse and kids. If that doesn't work out - say you break up - you can find yourself alone very fast.
I feel that the homeless problem in the US is a symptom of this - although it also has many other causes. In societies with much stronger societal bonds, people don't let people live on the streets.
I don't have a solution for it, it's just something I've noticed and think about a lot when I listen to stories like this one. And don't get me wrong. Every country has problems like this. It's very easy to get isolated in large crowds of people, I just think the US has a pronounced case of it.
* The US has a strong individualistic culture and is a highly capitalistic society. Taken together, this produces people are who driven to prioritize career over other things, like staying close to your family. I live in the bay area and can list all the people who are here, far away from family, for better career opportunities. I am one of them.
* The US is a large country with various hubs. If your family is not near a hub, you see them less.
* Anecdotally, my friends who have children tend to be less lonely not due to the presence of kids but the surrounding "village" that develops around them (grandparents, relatives, parents of your kids' friends, etc). The US has a declining birth rate, which is pronounced in the major hubs. Again, I don't have data to back this claim up but I think on the whole, parents are less lonely.
I remember reading an article about youth unemployment in Spain. It was extremely high, something like 60% for people under 25. And the obvious answer (to me an Irishman) was why don't you emigrate. Lots of other parts of the EU have healthy job markets. But the reason given was that the young people didn't want to move out of their local town and move away from family life. I thought that was very interesting and I think it's just an example of what the opposite orientation looks like.
I’m in Sweden which in many cultural respects is the polar opposite of the US (within the West at least). But loneliness seems to be a major societal issue here as well. Where the US is self-reliant Sweden is probably “state-reliant”, but the effect is similar.
It has its upsides though. My parents were abusive and our relationship is very limited today. Limiting contact with them is the best decision I’ve made in my life, and I’m not sure I would have been able to do that in a culture with stronger familial bonds.
> It has its upsides though. My parents were abusive and our relationship is very limited today. Limiting contact with them is the best decision I’ve made in my life
Same here. My mother is a narcissist who lives in denial and makes the rest of her family miserable through her emotional abuse. As a young adult, possibly due to not being able to recognize any red flags, I ended up engaged to a woman who also was a narcissist and abuser, and eventually things led to her holding a chef's knife to my face telling me she was going to kill me and then herself because she thought I didn't spend enough time with her.
I much prefer loneliness to enduring that kind of stuff. I'm grateful to the loneliness, in a sense. I have no master to answer to but my own generosity and patience, and I'd gladly trade anything to never be in a situation like that again.
But the point I was getting at is that perhaps having a wider network of connections - larger than just your immediate family - would be a better buffer against loneliness.
In societies with more dense familial/societal networks people just have more people around. Imagine if you lived in a town with half of your extended family. Say 4 aunts and uncles and 30 cousins (of different degrees 1st, 2nd etc). You'd know more immediate family but also they'd know people who you would have gotten to know.
If you lost contact with parents or a spouse you wouldn't end up knowing nobody. You would have a rich network to fall back on.
Now there are issues with this. You might not like everyone and everyone might know your business, which is annoying - but you'd probably suffer from less loneliness.
>I much prefer loneliness to enduring that kind of stuff.
That comment made me chuckle, no offense.
You're right, one big issue with loneliness is "what are the alternatives to it?" and sometimes they're even worse, even though you may not notice it at first.
Hanging out with people just to avoid being alone could lead you to engage in some vicious relationships who may end up being worse for you and your mental health.
It's tricky. Myself being very comfortable alone, I still find myself sometimes craving for socialization, but hanging out with people who don't like the same music as me always leaves me more depressed than before.
Reads like:
- I got burned by fire.
- Now I do not use fire at my house, I don't need it.
- But now, you also cannot cook or warm yourself.
I think you may be missing on some important things be staying alone. Humans are social beings, social capital is also a thing. Being alone is good when you are young and healthy, when you get older and have a health issue (hopefully not) it may be a devastating experience when no one visits you in the hospital.
I am a single now, but I don't want it to stay this way forever. It would be kind of sad for me to spend my older days alone. Also I want to have a child, after all it may be my best contribution to the world (my code would probably be all gone in next 15 years).
>Limiting contact with them is the best decision I’ve made in my life, and I’m not sure I would have been able to do that in a culture with stronger familial bonds.
As someone with toxic family and a stronger family-oriented culture, I’d say it’s easier: family size is larger (in the sense that our relationship with cousins, uncles, etc is almost as much as with core family) so you might be able to maintain contact with a part, saving you from an all or nothing situation.
I broke contact with my father’s family, but my mother’s side of the family is still 10-15 people.
At least in Seattle, the homeless problem is a drug addiction problem, as 90% of them are drug addicts or alcoholics. Drug addicted people often wind up homeless because their families can't live with them anymore, as the addiction consumes them.
Only anecdata but I have been homeless, ten years ago for around 4 months, and I would agree that the vast majority of other homeless people in the same area fell into this category.
In the case of those pretending to be homeless for the purpose of begging, I'd say it was 100%.
If we're looking to find root causes, then, in most cases, we can't stop at the drugs. There are almost always outside, causative circumstances which lead to those individuals taking the addiction pathway in life.
It's not a type of life that many would choose knowingly with eyes wide open.
As such, I don't see much point in stopping the buck at "the addiction".
Because even if we could magically, instantly reform all such people to full health, we'd just end up with another batch soon enough, if we did not also address the underlying societal and family causes that leads to the downfall of these susceptible individuals, and creates permanent "underclasses".
Life taught me something. If one reaches old age believing that complex issues stem from (and can be resolved by focusing on) single/simple causes, one has not learned well.
I suspect we're fooled into believing some simple act is a solution when pressures and harms get shifted out of our sight.
In considering that 90% of homeless people, you infer that the complexities that led them there are actually a single cause. This seems to be a fairly absurd notion. I would certainly find no wisdom in basing action on it.
"60 Minutes" didn't buy it either. They went to Seattle to see for themselves, and everyone they interviewed turned out to be homeless because of drug addiction or alcoholism.
By focusing solely upon drug addiction, one runs the risk of overlooking the myriad other complex factors which lead these people to where they are.
The actual causes go further back than the addictions themselves. A person desperate enough to descend into substance abuse is already damaged. It's that damage we need to prevent, if one truly wants a 'fix'.
That's unfortunate because, whatever other factors may exist, it's undeniable that heavy addiction to certain drugs like alcohol or heroin can be completely debilitating in it's own right. But it's also true that as long as society has outcasts, it will also have people who turn to desperate, normally-undesirable ends. No matter what drugs are available, or where.
> I'm saying that the homeless problem cannot be fixed while one is pretending that drug addiction is not the cause of most of it.
Drug addiction is, in fact, not the cause of most of it, abd ignoring the homeless problem is, in terms of actual real policy failures, more of a problem for dealing with drug addiction than ignoring drug addiction is for dealing with the homelessness problem (they are intertwined amd both underaddressed, but homelessness is far more underaddressed in the context of addressing addiction than vice versa.)
Your understanding of homelessness seems to be from curated, indirect sources and your opinions reflect that.
For a contrast, I just spent 10 years adjacent to a large homeless community and had direct and ongoing interaction the entire time. My wife left our family to join it. I've been homeless myself (30 years ago). Lastly, me and my adult children came scary close to being on the streets 18 mos ago.
From the top. It's poverty and mental illness, in that order. Those things don't magically disappear in the absence of drugs. Given that the vast, vast majority of addicts are housed, correlation would tell us that drugs cause housing - if one were keen to make assumptions based on a single instance of correlation.
My ex is a stereotypical example of our homeless. She'd been housed for 9 months and was just evicted for behavior during a prolonged delusional state. The park manager was fully clear why she had to go. The drug addicts in the park are remaining housed and nothing indicates that will change.
Last year, my family nearly joined the ranks of homeless (with savings in the bank) because our rental was sold. We have zero credit (save, then buy) which bars us from all corp rentals and ~100% of private ones.
Past that, every available rental has dozens->hundreds of applicants and bidding wars are common. It's one rental for every 40 households that need one and rental prices are 50%-300% higher than they were in Jan 2020 (our rent is 70% higher, we were lucky). These are the actual numbers facing renters, not curated.
Survivor bias is why I can post this info.
For a closing note, consider this. News orgs have been reporting on official homeless figures (a direct count plus extrapolation). The numbers are meant to represent actual numbers of homeless.
Let's say my county homeless count is N.
Schools are also federally mandated to report numbers of homeless students. My county's homeless student population is N x 2.5. Even that is an obvious undercount as it only reflects students in attendance.
The news orgs reporting homeless numbers - they're accepting what is given to them, apparently without any attempt at verification. The homeless info that's curated for us doesn't seem like what we want, if what we want is to understand the reality of the situation.
The US is actually special that quite a fraction of the homeless population isn't homeless because of substance abuse or mental illness but because of actual poverty. That rarely happens in western Europe, for example.
As someone with lots of ties to homelessness, I've long observed how it had been an all of the above situation. Typically the two sliders of mental illness(inc drug addiction) & poverty keep getting nudged up until a tipping point is reached.
In the last two years however, new homeless entries are dominated by folks who suddenly got their poverty slider slammed hard. This includes renters with savings who had their home sold. They quickly found themselves in a bidding war for what few rentals were available.
Let’s assume your 90% is accurate. How many of them were addicts when they started being homeless? Homeless culture lends itself to destructive habits because you’ve got nothing left to lose.
When you get addicted to drugs, you lose your job, your friends, and your family. And wind up homeless. I've seen it happen. When "60 Minutes" did a segment on the video I cited, they wanted to prove it wrong. They came out to Seattle to interview homeless. They couldn't find one who didn't become homeless after getting addicted to drugs or alcohol.
urban sprawl may be a factor. Loneliness is a physical thing. Even without friends, it feels good to know that humans are within 10 meters rather than 40. Most european cities are old and very high density, built for horses.
While I agree that being somewhat physically close can help, I disagree that high-density cities are a solution.
I live in an apartment in such a European city. I wouldn't be able to recognize my next-door neighbor in a crowd. I've never made any friends because they lived close to me. It's always been through places where people would get together anyway: school (lived in the suburbs at the time), work, other activities.
Density brings its own issues. When there are so many people around, a sense of anonymity sets in. No one cares about any one given person when you cross paths with thousands every day. People rarely, if ever, randomly strike up conversations in the metro.
> it feels good to know that humans are within 10 meters rather than 40.
No, it does not. Because people are not only positive, many are extremely annoying. It's horrible when you can't get away from it even for five minutes of respite.
They are noisy. I hate with a passion my upstairs neighbor who thinks it's fine to blast his TV 24/7. Yes, even at 3 in the morning. Yes, I can go complain. No, he doesn't bother opening the door to listen to me (although I wouldn't bet he can actually hear the doorbell).
They don't care about other people's things (try parking a car on the streets of Paris for two days – and I'm not even talking about theft or willful vandalism, though that's an issue, of course).
In some places, they really don't care about public cleanliness.
And with the point above about anonymity, social pressure works much less well to force people into behaving properly.
The places where I've seen the most "community spirit" is where people were not overly densely packed together, just "close enough".`
I agree with all of this. I spent some time living cheaply in Spain a few years ago, in high density housing, and I would describe it best as a living hell. Slamming doors, multiple barking dogs on every balcony, conversations held at such high volume as to sound like people were murdering each other, etc.
On the positive side, everyone would smile at me and wish me a good day if our paths ever crossed leaving or entering the building.
As a kid I lived in a middle class suburb where everyone knew each other and, at the time, I was fairly happy with this. As an adult though, I would find it uncomfortable.
I guess there is an ideal balance between loneliness and being suffocated that isn't easy to get right.
It's a question of degree. The way I understand the last part of seydor's point:
> Most european cities are old and very high density, built for horses
is that "high density, at the level of European cities, is a required condition.
I take issue with this level of density being a requirement. My point is that said level is too much and, actually, goes against the intended outcome because this much proximity creates tension between the people.
Instead, in my view, the optimal level of density is "average", somewhere betwen "US suburbia sprawl" and "European city can't breathe density".
Now, of course, "average" is not an actual measure, but it allows at least to eliminate European cities as a model to strive for.
I've seen many an article in the local (France) papers talking about increasing levels of solitude, and people always chime in with "Yeah, that's [big city] for you. In my [small town], it's much easier to make new friends".
> Even without friends, it feels good to know that humans are within 10 meters rather than 40
Strongly disagree. I've been lonely for long periods of time in small apartments, detached houses, and large farms where your neighbor usually can't be seen. The small apartment situation is the worst. If anything living in a dense crowd makes me feel even more socially hopeless, since they're right there and I can't manage to interact meaningfully with them. TBH I got more social interaction out in the country where people need to depend on each other occasionally and therefore literally stop their in the middle of the dirt roads to chat.
The flip side of this will be if you are an outsider (immigrant or born into an unlucky family), you will feel more lonely because people are not gonna be as eager to find new bonds?
This is a problem that many immigrants have in Germany, especially in villages. I heard the certain cities are particularly closed to newcomers too. It's not necessarily xenophobia. People just grow up together and don't accept new people into their circles.
The family in the West has been attacked and decimated and denigrated and deprecated. I am not sure whether it can survive.
Women's/universal adult suffrage damaged our family unit by saying that the single voice/vote for a household is insufficient and the household must have many separate voices, thus dividing a house against itself. President Lincoln knew the perils of this.
Divorce and worse, remarriage tore into the family by saying it wasn't necessarily permanent.
Abortion, same-sex marriage, gender ideology, gang culture, public schools, all sorts of things have chipped away at family unity and said that individualism and personal sovereignty is king. Well, I'm sorry but that's just not how human beings can live.
Homelessness and poverty in general are real problems for families. Because families are unwilling to tolerate living with a relative or supporting a relative who is unwilling/incapable of supporting himself, they turn that relative out into the world and force him to fend for himself. Others live off public assistance. Public assistance is a scourge of an anti-family society that doesn't have enough religious charity to support people. The rise of the welfare state is a shameful travesty, a knock-on effect from the failure of Christianity and the family.
I've said in prior threads that there's no real poverty in these United States except where you work for it, but the true poverty, the devastating poverty, is to be alone, and isolated from one's family, and to feel rejected and unwanted. The rising culture of incels is a symptom of the family's failure to nurture and value blood relationships.
It's a shame that so many people are growing up abused and/or neglected, but that's not the fault of the abusers, it's a systemic, generational fault in society.
> It's a shame that so many people are growing up abused and/or neglected, but that's not the fault of the abusers, it's a systemic, generational fault in society.
It is fault of the abusers. And the societal changes you foaming about allow people to escape those abusers. Most abuse happen inside family and is directed toward weaker or dependent members. The social help from society allows people escape these dynamics and allows them to disassociate themselves from the abusers.
Statistically however, majority of Americans stays close to where they have been born. There are subgroups where traveling is common (to Sillicon Valley, for military). But overall, average American stays around where he or she came from.
The problem entirely boils down the size of the US and how normalized it is for people to relocate entirely away from their family for work.
I have a very large family that was stable in one city for a very long time (100+ years). I moved away for work (not even very far, only 3 hours drive) and it's very different from my cousins who came back. I've always assumed since there are so many other countries smaller than many US states (geographically) that this would be a less common problem.
Not to go all conspiracy theory either, but the involvement of politics in activities that routinely brought communities together have certainly had a noticeable impact as well. It's happened so much in the last 15 years especially that it seems intentional.
Loneliness in the context of Western society is a result of the influence of American culture. It puts systems, politics and economic success far above the integrity of the human individual.
> It puts systems, politics and economic success far above the integrity of the human individual.
This sounds weird to me. I’m not American, but to me it seems like American culture puts a very high value of integrity, much higher than most of the rest of the world.
I’d say integrity is always in conflict with belonging: if you insist on being yourself, having your own values and beliefs, then it will be more difficult to “fit in”. So I’d say American culture prioritizes integrity over belonging. I guess that’s what individualism is.
With integrity I meant “intactness”/ wholesomeness, or being a balanced human being. I refer to the value system of society. This is different to individualism in the popular context.
In the way I meant it, classic individualism can often be opposite to being a balanced (and whole/integer) individual.
It is never an either/or situation. There are also several layers.
For example, a society could be advocating for solidarity with a community at expense of individualistic expression, yet in its nuances all individuals might be more balanced: maybe because they are part of a community, and the individual is catered for by having a culture that carefully balances understanding of the individual against the requirements of society.
The labels of socialism, capitalism etc are smokescreens that prevent us from looking at the nuances of culture and how it affects us.
For example, capitalism will celebrate the individual’s right and freedoms on the frontend, where in fact society expects us to be successful and sacrifice a lot for our material economic success.
Again, the cultural “pressures” and “elements of care” express themselves in different layers and contexts. The richer a culture, the more layers to mitigate the influence of another. Layers of culture can be: Family, Work, Sport, Arts, Internet social spheres, Organisations or hobbies, etc.
Thus we would do well to increase richness of culture again, vs. the overbearing influence of our telephones (for example).
> With integrity I meant “intactness”/ wholesomeness, or being a balanced human being. I refer to the value system of society. This is different to individualism in the popular context.
I don’t know… I grew up in a highly collectivist and conformist culture (Sweden of the 70/80-ties). My view is that this “balanced” personality is something that is forced on people through socialization. That may feel great to those (90%?) who are naturally like this, but it requires totally crushing the (10%?) outliers. Being a whole human being means being yourself, regardless of how “balanced” other people think that self is.
No I disagree. Northern Europe naturally fall into loneliness with their culture combined with dependency on the state.
Family grouos are small and people are easily siloed.
Once you start a family of your own its not uncommon to lose almost all relation with anyone else outside your partner and children.
Troublemakers ( as in physically and/or mentally Ill ) are handed off to the government.
The government are also responsible for helping you take care of the children and make ends meet financially.
Making it less necessary to maintain connection with family and friends. And so everyone silos up.
For better or for worse Id argue that socialism has very much contributed to loneliness in northern europe.
Not American influence.
This problem predates the internet and smartphones.
While what you say is true for many Scandinavian families, there's no law of nature that forces people to isolate, to not stay in touch with family and friends, or to not be interested in building connection with new people in their lives.
Death is also a good cure for loneliness. When you are literally six feet under, you don't have time for loneliness. Dead people are never lonely, it's only the alive class which isolates itself deliberately that ends up lonely.
Hmm... trying to flesh out the article (and escape the trap of individual vs social responsibility...)
When the author says there's no cure for loneliness, he means he can't cure what ails his patients. As a doctor, it's very difficult to engage desperate patients you can't help.
So regardless of whether you think societies or individuals are responsible for loneliness, the question is whether you can cure someone else's loneliness. The author answered in part by doing so, by just listening. But as a result, he also grieved his patient's death.
There are many, many ER staff confronting the gamut of desperation in the U.S. They are not really trained or compensated to do so, but most evolve approaches out of some combination of emotional defense and compassion.
Since Congress made it illegal for ER's to send people away, people have learned they can go to the ER for help. This is very, very good because it's almost always cheaper to solve a problem early. But it had the initial effect of bankrupting many (inner-city) hospitals unable to cross-subsidize the ER, until the Affordable Care Act reduced the number of uninsured's (accelerating hospital consolidation). Unfortunately, hospital systems are still reducing their exposure to these obligations.
We need medical staff to cure people, parents to raise children, and teachers to teach people. We are no where near actually supporting people who build human capacity, and people avoid those roles because of the sacrifices involved.
So costs are exported to capacity-building people, society suffers more costs as a result of diminished services, the marketplace is only accelerating the trend, and there is no vested constituency with the resources to push for political solutions. The system is driving to disaster.
The author suggests a common dynamic underlying both drug addiction and machine addiction -- the hollowing out of will directed at personal or social goals. Choice, made subconsciously and then rationalized, is co-opted by a reward system dedicated by habit to the addicting behavior.
And only takes a small percentage of participants being uncooperative to make cooperation untenable. In the patient's case, his kids simply weren't responsive, and they were all he had after his wife died (and he presumably had no friends left over from work).
i.e.,: the system is driving only because we're not at the wheel.
70 comments and nobody pointed out that some of the sharpest minds in the tech industries spend their day making social networks and videogames more addictive.
My father died 16 years ago. My mother, I thought, was strong. My mother, I would think on different days, is very frail.
She did a lot to occupy herself. She enrolled in sewing classes, even though she knew a lot already, because it offered some company each week. She joined a group of friends to go visiting museums and sites and other things, for the same reason. She made sure to spend weekends with friends. She had her children with her, some times more frequently than others.
I believe she held up quite well for a number of years. I used to see her every week, once, twice, maybe speak on the phone when I couldn't go.
Her sewing teacher moved to the other side of town; she made the effort to still go there, but by 2018-2019 she was too tired to drive all that way for just two hours. She tried but in the end she stopped going. Then 2020. The museum group was cancelled. She couldn't go visit her friends on weekends. My siblings stopped visiting. My own visits became, for a while, less frequent but we talked every single night on the phone.
As soon as the April lockdowns ended, I started going almost every single day but it was just too late already. We put our masks and went out to the park just outside her building for a walk. Or grocery shopping. Or just stayed at home when the weather was sour.
Just those two months of March and April 2020, of rarely going outside, of being alone most of the day, were devastating. On the one hand, her physique was hit. Where she had been a healthy person before, she was now starting to feel quite tired even after "just" cooking, and then having difficulty just walking. But much more than that, much more profound, was the effect on her mind. Where she had been lucid and quick, keeping track of her appointments, her tasks, family, friends, events, etc, she started forgetting... well, everything. Most days now she doesn't remember what day of the week it is, even after being told just five minutes ago, or that she broke her hip and couldn't get up on her feet for some time. She has a very hard time keeping her attention through a conversation. The TV is mostly a mystery; she watches intently without being able to follow the plot, frequently asking what is happening or who the characters are.
She just called to ask why don't we go for lunch; she'll call my siblings too, she says. I explained that we were all going after lunch so it's easier. My brother, his wife and kids will eat there and then the rest will go visit and we will all get together. 15 minutes later she sends a short message inviting us all for lunch again.
There is a pattern to it, of course. I don't think she consciously knows but most of the things she says, most of her ideas, are about visiting, about staying there just a bit more. I can stay for a week and then, when I have to go, she'll suggest casually that I can stay if I want, that she can prepare a bed for me -which she really can't; I prepare hers-. I go out the door and she'll call me to go for dinner or something. She craves the company.
I think the lack of exercise was like a weight on her, a physical weight added to her muscles that slows her down and tires her. But I feel the loneliness was like a punch to her head every single day. A really hard but unseen blow that has accumulated day after day and has broken her.
I am broken-hearted, of course, but fortunately I've been able to accept it. Whatever happens, we'll go through it together, with a good disposition and as much of a smile as we can keep. But the really hard part is looking back, just three years back, and realizing just how hard of a fall it has been, how complete of a difference the loneliness has made.
I’m very sorry to read this. I went through some similar times with my mom after a stroke. Exercise, seeing people, and helping her feel useful helped a lot with the symptoms, but convincing her to do these things wasn’t always easy.
My mom’s case wasn’t necessarily a symptom of loneliness, but I can corroborate with my own anecdata that when I feel most lonely, I’m very tired, no matter how much I sleep. My muscles will ache, even.
It does take a very real physical toll, and I have little doubt that loneliness can cause or accelerate cognitive issues. Loneliness is as genuine of a health concern as obesity and other physical issues, IMO.
Best of luck to you and your mother. You have the right attitude - it won’t be easy, but you can still make some memories and experiences with her.
I can also say from my own experiences with my mom, even when she gives outward indications of not remembering what may have happened hours ago, all the time you spend together DOES make a difference.
These articles are kinda funny. The last article of that kind I was reading while walking Spanish streets full of people of all ages sitting around tables and talking for hours. When I first arrived there I felt how people are in general content and relaxed, despite not having salaries enough to buy every latest iphone.
Personally, I spend most of my time alone, and really enjoy it.
Loneliness is certainly something I feel at times, and I can understand how people feel left out because of it, but I have a hard time understanding how people become so crippled by it.
I mean really, do people just not like themselves very much?
My theory is the over-emphasis of one's internal mental state. I like to say "The overwhelming majority of the universe is OUTSIDE of my litre of jello". This means: focus on observing the world through your senses, not on your internal thought process, which is an infinite black-hole of pointless introspection.
Without exception we will all die and leave this brief experience of consciousness.
Enjoy this brief opportunity to be a self aware entity! And seriously, get over yourself and spend your time trying to see the miracles of the natural world...
I remember when the WHO designated loneliness as a pandemic. Social support networks are also listed as a determinant of health.
There are good TED talks on how loneliness is worse for our health than smoking X amount of cigs per day.
We can experience loneliness even around other people. A spouse may feel lonely while sitting right next to the other spouse if there is no meaningful connection.
We can go to events, even church, and feel lonely during or right after the event. Loneliness tends to spread because the behavioral and thinking patterns that cause it tend to affect those around.
Not just in the US, but globally, people are losing meaningful, long-term relationships. Statistically, we have less close friends now than in the past.
Also, loneliness has been touted as the most important component of opioid addiction.
I've come to perceive that all human society worldwide is optimized for isolation and compartmentalized.
Even the more communal cultures, like Middle-Eastern or Asian, with extended families living in the same household for multiple generations.
We have distinct "spheres" with minimum overlap but almost no interfaces to mingle between them: Work, home, civilian, government, policing, shops, services, online, offline...
People in different spheres only interact for specific transactions, and then they're on their different ways.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 142 ms ] threadAnd unlike the more vocal counterparts of minorities who take to the streets when they feel aggrieved, people with adverse mental health keep suffering in isolation, so it's difficult to make a political issue out of it in the first place.
I think this is kind of a saying among medical professionals, and we probably all agree there is no medical cure for loneliness.
Maybe it’s joining an exercise group, a hobby club, a church, a volunteer group, etc. Maybe it’s trying to work on yourself to achieve a goal or work up the courage to have a conversation with somebody special.
The output of loneliness should eventually be motivation to no longer be lonely and the determination to make it happen. It’s hard, but worth it.
I didn’t write the book on it or anything, but I’ve gone through it in my own life and I know it’s possible. For me I lost weight, got in shape, started dressing more intentionally and then joined a couple of clubs aligned with my interests.
Pretty quickly I discovered which of those groups I felt I fit better with and gravitated more there. Over time, those people became friends outside the group too.
The older you get the more deliberate this process becomes I find.
I will say, that it sounds like you have a confidence problem and that you’re projecting it onto people around you.
Talk to your wife though.
The difficulty of growing a shallow connection into a deeper connection is a large part of why so many people are lonely. We can't just ignore shallow connections because it's unrealistic to only ever aim for deep connections. Connections are experiments that grow.
There's that whole thing about long journeys starting with a single step. Got to start with meeting people somehow.
In fact, this recent NYT article was about an exercise group that fosters deep connections: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/us/f3-workout-men-texas.h...
(I imagine some might balk and say that's not the type of group that interests them, but it does seem clear that at least for some, an exercise group does help form these connections.)
In school you made friends by first going to the same school so you were around each other long enough to become friends.
It’s the same with anything else. You have to consistently be around people long enough to get to know them well enough to make deeper connections. Inviting them to grab lunch sometime. Go to a movie. Play poker, bowling, golf, etc.
Certain exercise groups are exactly like that. Cross fit groups, F3 groups, etc. They are very social.
Groups that have a schedule and regular attendees are the easiest place to start. At first, you’re going to be the new guy but the longer you attend the more comfortable you’ll be. You have to stick to it.
Probably one of the biggest reasons we see more of it is how much people move around for work, away from their established family and friends. Deliberately solving this is hard since you will always feel like an outsider in a new place.
I moved to Bali over 1 year ago, knowing only a single person in the entire island. Now I have dozens of good friends there. And a handful of them I consider really good friends with whom I have a good connection with and shared very intimate and vulnerable moments. These relationships keep growing overtime the more time we spend together.
Some friends I've met at the gym, others were my neighbors, others at BBQs, others at an acting class... The list goes on.
Maybe out of topic, but socializing is a skill. And it's sad some people associate socializing with = people pleaser. Learning to socialize is learning to engage with others and put yourself out there. Whether you do it staying true to yourself or not, that's another thing.
But going back to the main thing: Deep connections don't happen out of thin air, and not without effort.
Starting with a shallow place where you can observe how others interact and relearn basic conversation and interpersonal skills help incredibly a lot.
The more lonley you are the more you psychologically adapt to it. You reason about or do whatever to make sense of it. Some people want to be alone but no one wants to be lonely. If you are lonely it isn't because you want to be.
The longer you are lonley, the more you need to reason about and adapt and get used to it and you will lose or won't gain neccesary skills, knowledge and character that helps people gain and keep company.
It is similar to how rich people tell poor people to save up, work harder and stop buying avocado toast so they can get rich what you are saying, like they think the poorer you are the more you will get rich or something. Povery is expensive and loneliness likes company.
Generally speaking, it is called the vanishing finish like (I think there is even a wiki page for it). The longer it takes, the longer it is going to take.
People who are unemployed or out of a relationship can also testify to this, the "feast or famine" phenomena where if you already have it, it's easier to have more of it.
Personally, I don't know about a cure but probably the more you realize your mortality and how you need to appreciate now and today, I think that helps get a better perspective and lets you enjoy the few days you have on earth with or without company.
Eventually, a person should hopefully realize that the regret from not making that effort is worse than the alternative.
It’s one of the reasons that groups help, especially volunteer or community groups. You’re there for the social aspect but also for the purpose. It helps to have everybody working toward the same goal.
It was a recent video where she said something to the effect of "solitude is something you choose, loneliness is something inflicted on you by others."
I thought this was rather profound and changed my perspective on what loneliness was in terms of giving power over yourself to others. You can't cure loneliness because you have to fix the world first. What you can do is to refuse to give that power to others.
If you find yourself alone, it's okay. You still have your power. If you stay calm you can find peace in solitude.
Nietzsche
Happiness is a matter of a deeper understanding your observations, the causes of all recognized outcomes, and staying focused on your outcomes. You write your own story. Free will is not an illusion just because there's an inequality of probabilities. Debugging yourself is like anything else.
Imagine you were kidnapped and kept locked in a cage-- you could still make the best of the situation-- but it's not a good one and you still should endeavor to get out of it, and not only try to discover what happiness you can find there.
'God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.'
It's all about identifying what changes have the biggest impact. Many are working too long for the wrong employer, started a family too young, have bad habits, waste their free time on useless hobbies they've long outgrown, etc.
To address your quote, far less "cannot change" than many realize.
There is a self-reliance in the US which when it works seems to work ok (although even "successful" people can be very lonely), but when it breaks down very quickly leaves people with no where to turn. People often travel long distances from their families. Often relocating across the country again for work breaking whatever bonds they formed in University. People see their families once or twice a year (because the distances are so great). People prioritize economic needs over family and societal needs and this weakening of familial and societal bonds is the result. Often you end up living far from your family with a spouse and kids. If that doesn't work out - say you break up - you can find yourself alone very fast.
I feel that the homeless problem in the US is a symptom of this - although it also has many other causes. In societies with much stronger societal bonds, people don't let people live on the streets.
I don't have a solution for it, it's just something I've noticed and think about a lot when I listen to stories like this one. And don't get me wrong. Every country has problems like this. It's very easy to get isolated in large crowds of people, I just think the US has a pronounced case of it.
* The US has a strong individualistic culture and is a highly capitalistic society. Taken together, this produces people are who driven to prioritize career over other things, like staying close to your family. I live in the bay area and can list all the people who are here, far away from family, for better career opportunities. I am one of them.
* The US is a large country with various hubs. If your family is not near a hub, you see them less.
* Anecdotally, my friends who have children tend to be less lonely not due to the presence of kids but the surrounding "village" that develops around them (grandparents, relatives, parents of your kids' friends, etc). The US has a declining birth rate, which is pronounced in the major hubs. Again, I don't have data to back this claim up but I think on the whole, parents are less lonely.
It has its upsides though. My parents were abusive and our relationship is very limited today. Limiting contact with them is the best decision I’ve made in my life, and I’m not sure I would have been able to do that in a culture with stronger familial bonds.
Same here. My mother is a narcissist who lives in denial and makes the rest of her family miserable through her emotional abuse. As a young adult, possibly due to not being able to recognize any red flags, I ended up engaged to a woman who also was a narcissist and abuser, and eventually things led to her holding a chef's knife to my face telling me she was going to kill me and then herself because she thought I didn't spend enough time with her.
I much prefer loneliness to enduring that kind of stuff. I'm grateful to the loneliness, in a sense. I have no master to answer to but my own generosity and patience, and I'd gladly trade anything to never be in a situation like that again.
In societies with more dense familial/societal networks people just have more people around. Imagine if you lived in a town with half of your extended family. Say 4 aunts and uncles and 30 cousins (of different degrees 1st, 2nd etc). You'd know more immediate family but also they'd know people who you would have gotten to know.
If you lost contact with parents or a spouse you wouldn't end up knowing nobody. You would have a rich network to fall back on.
Now there are issues with this. You might not like everyone and everyone might know your business, which is annoying - but you'd probably suffer from less loneliness.
That comment made me chuckle, no offense.
You're right, one big issue with loneliness is "what are the alternatives to it?" and sometimes they're even worse, even though you may not notice it at first.
Hanging out with people just to avoid being alone could lead you to engage in some vicious relationships who may end up being worse for you and your mental health.
I think you may be missing on some important things be staying alone. Humans are social beings, social capital is also a thing. Being alone is good when you are young and healthy, when you get older and have a health issue (hopefully not) it may be a devastating experience when no one visits you in the hospital.
I am a single now, but I don't want it to stay this way forever. It would be kind of sad for me to spend my older days alone. Also I want to have a child, after all it may be my best contribution to the world (my code would probably be all gone in next 15 years).
I can recommend you this book as a starting point: https://www.amazon.com/What-Happened-You-Understanding-Resil... It helped me understand some of my issues.
I'm quite happy living on my own.
Not having to put up with other people's drama is a giant asset.
Maybe you just need an influencer to tell you how to live your own life?
To me, this is a really sad aspect of living in one's own head, instead of appreciating our brief moment of not being a mineral...
As someone with toxic family and a stronger family-oriented culture, I’d say it’s easier: family size is larger (in the sense that our relationship with cousins, uncles, etc is almost as much as with core family) so you might be able to maintain contact with a part, saving you from an all or nothing situation.
I broke contact with my father’s family, but my mother’s side of the family is still 10-15 people.
Citation needed.
In the case of those pretending to be homeless for the purpose of begging, I'd say it was 100%.
It's not a type of life that many would choose knowingly with eyes wide open.
As such, I don't see much point in stopping the buck at "the addiction".
Because even if we could magically, instantly reform all such people to full health, we'd just end up with another batch soon enough, if we did not also address the underlying societal and family causes that leads to the downfall of these susceptible individuals, and creates permanent "underclasses".
I suspect we're fooled into believing some simple act is a solution when pressures and harms get shifted out of our sight.
And I never said "all" homelessness was caused by addiction. It's 90%, at least in Seattle.
The underlying causes need to be addressed, else you'll simply get a new batch.
I'm saying that the homeless problem cannot be fixed while one is pretending that drug addiction is not the cause of most of it.
The actual causes go further back than the addictions themselves. A person desperate enough to descend into substance abuse is already damaged. It's that damage we need to prevent, if one truly wants a 'fix'.
Drug addiction is, in fact, not the cause of most of it, abd ignoring the homeless problem is, in terms of actual real policy failures, more of a problem for dealing with drug addiction than ignoring drug addiction is for dealing with the homelessness problem (they are intertwined amd both underaddressed, but homelessness is far more underaddressed in the context of addressing addiction than vice versa.)
For a contrast, I just spent 10 years adjacent to a large homeless community and had direct and ongoing interaction the entire time. My wife left our family to join it. I've been homeless myself (30 years ago). Lastly, me and my adult children came scary close to being on the streets 18 mos ago.
From the top. It's poverty and mental illness, in that order. Those things don't magically disappear in the absence of drugs. Given that the vast, vast majority of addicts are housed, correlation would tell us that drugs cause housing - if one were keen to make assumptions based on a single instance of correlation.
My ex is a stereotypical example of our homeless. She'd been housed for 9 months and was just evicted for behavior during a prolonged delusional state. The park manager was fully clear why she had to go. The drug addicts in the park are remaining housed and nothing indicates that will change.
Last year, my family nearly joined the ranks of homeless (with savings in the bank) because our rental was sold. We have zero credit (save, then buy) which bars us from all corp rentals and ~100% of private ones.
Past that, every available rental has dozens->hundreds of applicants and bidding wars are common. It's one rental for every 40 households that need one and rental prices are 50%-300% higher than they were in Jan 2020 (our rent is 70% higher, we were lucky). These are the actual numbers facing renters, not curated.
Survivor bias is why I can post this info.
For a closing note, consider this. News orgs have been reporting on official homeless figures (a direct count plus extrapolation). The numbers are meant to represent actual numbers of homeless.
Let's say my county homeless count is N.
Schools are also federally mandated to report numbers of homeless students. My county's homeless student population is N x 2.5. Even that is an obvious undercount as it only reflects students in attendance.
The news orgs reporting homeless numbers - they're accepting what is given to them, apparently without any attempt at verification. The homeless info that's curated for us doesn't seem like what we want, if what we want is to understand the reality of the situation.
In the last two years however, new homeless entries are dominated by folks who suddenly got their poverty slider slammed hard. This includes renters with savings who had their home sold. They quickly found themselves in a bidding war for what few rentals were available.
I live in an apartment in such a European city. I wouldn't be able to recognize my next-door neighbor in a crowd. I've never made any friends because they lived close to me. It's always been through places where people would get together anyway: school (lived in the suburbs at the time), work, other activities.
Density brings its own issues. When there are so many people around, a sense of anonymity sets in. No one cares about any one given person when you cross paths with thousands every day. People rarely, if ever, randomly strike up conversations in the metro.
> it feels good to know that humans are within 10 meters rather than 40.
No, it does not. Because people are not only positive, many are extremely annoying. It's horrible when you can't get away from it even for five minutes of respite.
They are noisy. I hate with a passion my upstairs neighbor who thinks it's fine to blast his TV 24/7. Yes, even at 3 in the morning. Yes, I can go complain. No, he doesn't bother opening the door to listen to me (although I wouldn't bet he can actually hear the doorbell).
They don't care about other people's things (try parking a car on the streets of Paris for two days – and I'm not even talking about theft or willful vandalism, though that's an issue, of course).
In some places, they really don't care about public cleanliness.
And with the point above about anonymity, social pressure works much less well to force people into behaving properly.
The places where I've seen the most "community spirit" is where people were not overly densely packed together, just "close enough".`
On the positive side, everyone would smile at me and wish me a good day if our paths ever crossed leaving or entering the building.
As a kid I lived in a middle class suburb where everyone knew each other and, at the time, I was fairly happy with this. As an adult though, I would find it uncomfortable.
I guess there is an ideal balance between loneliness and being suffocated that isn't easy to get right.
High density is a required condition for building communities, but not sufficient.
> Most european cities are old and very high density, built for horses
is that "high density, at the level of European cities, is a required condition.
I take issue with this level of density being a requirement. My point is that said level is too much and, actually, goes against the intended outcome because this much proximity creates tension between the people.
Instead, in my view, the optimal level of density is "average", somewhere betwen "US suburbia sprawl" and "European city can't breathe density".
Now, of course, "average" is not an actual measure, but it allows at least to eliminate European cities as a model to strive for.
I've seen many an article in the local (France) papers talking about increasing levels of solitude, and people always chime in with "Yeah, that's [big city] for you. In my [small town], it's much easier to make new friends".
There is no such thing. European cities are not HK.
There are density maps available to check.
Indeed, they are not.
Paris: 21,000/km2 (53,000/sq mi)
Barcelona: 16,000/km2 (41,000/sq mi)
London: 5,598/km2 (14,500/sq mi)
Madrid: 5,300/km2 (14,000/sq mi)
Amsterdam: 5,214/km2 (13,500/sq mi)
Hong Kong: 6,801/km2 (17,614.5/sq mi)
Shanghai: 3,900/km2 (10,000/sq mi)
Source: the cities' pages on Wikipedia.
---
Also, X being worse than Y doesn't make Y good.
To put it mildly. It's well known by urban planners that sprawl, food deserts, large malls and car culture destroy local communities.
Strongly disagree. I've been lonely for long periods of time in small apartments, detached houses, and large farms where your neighbor usually can't be seen. The small apartment situation is the worst. If anything living in a dense crowd makes me feel even more socially hopeless, since they're right there and I can't manage to interact meaningfully with them. TBH I got more social interaction out in the country where people need to depend on each other occasionally and therefore literally stop their in the middle of the dirt roads to chat.
Women's/universal adult suffrage damaged our family unit by saying that the single voice/vote for a household is insufficient and the household must have many separate voices, thus dividing a house against itself. President Lincoln knew the perils of this.
Divorce and worse, remarriage tore into the family by saying it wasn't necessarily permanent.
Abortion, same-sex marriage, gender ideology, gang culture, public schools, all sorts of things have chipped away at family unity and said that individualism and personal sovereignty is king. Well, I'm sorry but that's just not how human beings can live.
Homelessness and poverty in general are real problems for families. Because families are unwilling to tolerate living with a relative or supporting a relative who is unwilling/incapable of supporting himself, they turn that relative out into the world and force him to fend for himself. Others live off public assistance. Public assistance is a scourge of an anti-family society that doesn't have enough religious charity to support people. The rise of the welfare state is a shameful travesty, a knock-on effect from the failure of Christianity and the family.
I've said in prior threads that there's no real poverty in these United States except where you work for it, but the true poverty, the devastating poverty, is to be alone, and isolated from one's family, and to feel rejected and unwanted. The rising culture of incels is a symptom of the family's failure to nurture and value blood relationships.
It's a shame that so many people are growing up abused and/or neglected, but that's not the fault of the abusers, it's a systemic, generational fault in society.
dude...I don't even know where to begin
I guess you think hitting your wife is just "correcting her"?
https://www.un.org/en/coronavirus/what-is-domestic-abuse
So I have to assume this is for real.
I'm going to have to just say this is 100% not what I am talking about.
First off when I say "family" I mean extended family that you are related to including cousins, grandparents, in-laws etc.
But also seriously, I think I disagree with almost every sentence you've written.
It is fault of the abusers. And the societal changes you foaming about allow people to escape those abusers. Most abuse happen inside family and is directed toward weaker or dependent members. The social help from society allows people escape these dynamics and allows them to disassociate themselves from the abusers.
I have a very large family that was stable in one city for a very long time (100+ years). I moved away for work (not even very far, only 3 hours drive) and it's very different from my cousins who came back. I've always assumed since there are so many other countries smaller than many US states (geographically) that this would be a less common problem.
Not to go all conspiracy theory either, but the involvement of politics in activities that routinely brought communities together have certainly had a noticeable impact as well. It's happened so much in the last 15 years especially that it seems intentional.
This sounds weird to me. I’m not American, but to me it seems like American culture puts a very high value of integrity, much higher than most of the rest of the world.
I’d say integrity is always in conflict with belonging: if you insist on being yourself, having your own values and beliefs, then it will be more difficult to “fit in”. So I’d say American culture prioritizes integrity over belonging. I guess that’s what individualism is.
In the way I meant it, classic individualism can often be opposite to being a balanced (and whole/integer) individual.
It is never an either/or situation. There are also several layers.
For example, a society could be advocating for solidarity with a community at expense of individualistic expression, yet in its nuances all individuals might be more balanced: maybe because they are part of a community, and the individual is catered for by having a culture that carefully balances understanding of the individual against the requirements of society.
The labels of socialism, capitalism etc are smokescreens that prevent us from looking at the nuances of culture and how it affects us.
For example, capitalism will celebrate the individual’s right and freedoms on the frontend, where in fact society expects us to be successful and sacrifice a lot for our material economic success.
Again, the cultural “pressures” and “elements of care” express themselves in different layers and contexts. The richer a culture, the more layers to mitigate the influence of another. Layers of culture can be: Family, Work, Sport, Arts, Internet social spheres, Organisations or hobbies, etc.
Thus we would do well to increase richness of culture again, vs. the overbearing influence of our telephones (for example).
I don’t know… I grew up in a highly collectivist and conformist culture (Sweden of the 70/80-ties). My view is that this “balanced” personality is something that is forced on people through socialization. That may feel great to those (90%?) who are naturally like this, but it requires totally crushing the (10%?) outliers. Being a whole human being means being yourself, regardless of how “balanced” other people think that self is.
Troublemakers ( as in physically and/or mentally Ill ) are handed off to the government. The government are also responsible for helping you take care of the children and make ends meet financially.
Making it less necessary to maintain connection with family and friends. And so everyone silos up.
For better or for worse Id argue that socialism has very much contributed to loneliness in northern europe. Not American influence. This problem predates the internet and smartphones.
While what you say is true for many Scandinavian families, there's no law of nature that forces people to isolate, to not stay in touch with family and friends, or to not be interested in building connection with new people in their lives.
So why is it so ?
When the author says there's no cure for loneliness, he means he can't cure what ails his patients. As a doctor, it's very difficult to engage desperate patients you can't help.
So regardless of whether you think societies or individuals are responsible for loneliness, the question is whether you can cure someone else's loneliness. The author answered in part by doing so, by just listening. But as a result, he also grieved his patient's death.
There are many, many ER staff confronting the gamut of desperation in the U.S. They are not really trained or compensated to do so, but most evolve approaches out of some combination of emotional defense and compassion.
Since Congress made it illegal for ER's to send people away, people have learned they can go to the ER for help. This is very, very good because it's almost always cheaper to solve a problem early. But it had the initial effect of bankrupting many (inner-city) hospitals unable to cross-subsidize the ER, until the Affordable Care Act reduced the number of uninsured's (accelerating hospital consolidation). Unfortunately, hospital systems are still reducing their exposure to these obligations.
We need medical staff to cure people, parents to raise children, and teachers to teach people. We are no where near actually supporting people who build human capacity, and people avoid those roles because of the sacrifices involved.
So costs are exported to capacity-building people, society suffers more costs as a result of diminished services, the marketplace is only accelerating the trend, and there is no vested constituency with the resources to push for political solutions. The system is driving to disaster.
The author suggests a common dynamic underlying both drug addiction and machine addiction -- the hollowing out of will directed at personal or social goals. Choice, made subconsciously and then rationalized, is co-opted by a reward system dedicated by habit to the addicting behavior.
And only takes a small percentage of participants being uncooperative to make cooperation untenable. In the patient's case, his kids simply weren't responsive, and they were all he had after his wife died (and he presumably had no friends left over from work).
i.e.,: the system is driving only because we're not at the wheel.
She did a lot to occupy herself. She enrolled in sewing classes, even though she knew a lot already, because it offered some company each week. She joined a group of friends to go visiting museums and sites and other things, for the same reason. She made sure to spend weekends with friends. She had her children with her, some times more frequently than others.
I believe she held up quite well for a number of years. I used to see her every week, once, twice, maybe speak on the phone when I couldn't go.
Her sewing teacher moved to the other side of town; she made the effort to still go there, but by 2018-2019 she was too tired to drive all that way for just two hours. She tried but in the end she stopped going. Then 2020. The museum group was cancelled. She couldn't go visit her friends on weekends. My siblings stopped visiting. My own visits became, for a while, less frequent but we talked every single night on the phone.
As soon as the April lockdowns ended, I started going almost every single day but it was just too late already. We put our masks and went out to the park just outside her building for a walk. Or grocery shopping. Or just stayed at home when the weather was sour.
Just those two months of March and April 2020, of rarely going outside, of being alone most of the day, were devastating. On the one hand, her physique was hit. Where she had been a healthy person before, she was now starting to feel quite tired even after "just" cooking, and then having difficulty just walking. But much more than that, much more profound, was the effect on her mind. Where she had been lucid and quick, keeping track of her appointments, her tasks, family, friends, events, etc, she started forgetting... well, everything. Most days now she doesn't remember what day of the week it is, even after being told just five minutes ago, or that she broke her hip and couldn't get up on her feet for some time. She has a very hard time keeping her attention through a conversation. The TV is mostly a mystery; she watches intently without being able to follow the plot, frequently asking what is happening or who the characters are.
She just called to ask why don't we go for lunch; she'll call my siblings too, she says. I explained that we were all going after lunch so it's easier. My brother, his wife and kids will eat there and then the rest will go visit and we will all get together. 15 minutes later she sends a short message inviting us all for lunch again.
There is a pattern to it, of course. I don't think she consciously knows but most of the things she says, most of her ideas, are about visiting, about staying there just a bit more. I can stay for a week and then, when I have to go, she'll suggest casually that I can stay if I want, that she can prepare a bed for me -which she really can't; I prepare hers-. I go out the door and she'll call me to go for dinner or something. She craves the company.
I think the lack of exercise was like a weight on her, a physical weight added to her muscles that slows her down and tires her. But I feel the loneliness was like a punch to her head every single day. A really hard but unseen blow that has accumulated day after day and has broken her.
I am broken-hearted, of course, but fortunately I've been able to accept it. Whatever happens, we'll go through it together, with a good disposition and as much of a smile as we can keep. But the really hard part is looking back, just three years back, and realizing just how hard of a fall it has been, how complete of a difference the loneliness has made.
My mom’s case wasn’t necessarily a symptom of loneliness, but I can corroborate with my own anecdata that when I feel most lonely, I’m very tired, no matter how much I sleep. My muscles will ache, even.
It does take a very real physical toll, and I have little doubt that loneliness can cause or accelerate cognitive issues. Loneliness is as genuine of a health concern as obesity and other physical issues, IMO.
Best of luck to you and your mother. You have the right attitude - it won’t be easy, but you can still make some memories and experiences with her.
I can also say from my own experiences with my mom, even when she gives outward indications of not remembering what may have happened hours ago, all the time you spend together DOES make a difference.
Loneliness is certainly something I feel at times, and I can understand how people feel left out because of it, but I have a hard time understanding how people become so crippled by it.
I mean really, do people just not like themselves very much?
My theory is the over-emphasis of one's internal mental state. I like to say "The overwhelming majority of the universe is OUTSIDE of my litre of jello". This means: focus on observing the world through your senses, not on your internal thought process, which is an infinite black-hole of pointless introspection.
Without exception we will all die and leave this brief experience of consciousness.
Enjoy this brief opportunity to be a self aware entity! And seriously, get over yourself and spend your time trying to see the miracles of the natural world...
There are good TED talks on how loneliness is worse for our health than smoking X amount of cigs per day.
We can experience loneliness even around other people. A spouse may feel lonely while sitting right next to the other spouse if there is no meaningful connection.
We can go to events, even church, and feel lonely during or right after the event. Loneliness tends to spread because the behavioral and thinking patterns that cause it tend to affect those around.
Not just in the US, but globally, people are losing meaningful, long-term relationships. Statistically, we have less close friends now than in the past.
Also, loneliness has been touted as the most important component of opioid addiction.
Even the more communal cultures, like Middle-Eastern or Asian, with extended families living in the same household for multiple generations.
We have distinct "spheres" with minimum overlap but almost no interfaces to mingle between them: Work, home, civilian, government, policing, shops, services, online, offline...
People in different spheres only interact for specific transactions, and then they're on their different ways.