[HN Gopher] The hikikomori in Asia: A life within four walls
___________________________________________________________________
The hikikomori in Asia: A life within four walls
Author : reqo
Score : 174 points
Date : 2024-05-25 14:10 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's definitely happening in the West too. The juice isn't worth
| the squeeze for a lot of people.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Frankly I think it's more sensible than putting up with an
| unjust system in a rat race that goes nowhere, although
| eventually one has to get into the work game to survive.
| RoboTeddy wrote:
| In all the cases in the article it looks like shame plays a big
| role. I wonder if hikikomori is caused by a loop of [adverse
| circumstances that cause the person to feel shame] -> withdrawal
| to avoid shame -> being ashamed of having withdrawn [loop]
| enceladus06 wrote:
| Shame of educational pressure might be causing this, as
| mentioned in the article. But why do we as society place kids
| under so much stress? Let kids be kids and learn by exploring.
| elmomle wrote:
| I'd bet it's because the parents are feeling a lot of stress.
| Especially without a robust community support network/string
| external role models, children tend to inherit their parents'
| emotional states.
| esel2k wrote:
| As a parent I also thought "I won't repeat these patterns"
| but reality is, that is so hard. Often parents want the best
| for their children and use any possible technique to make
| sure they are successful.
|
| I am not giving an excuse but rather want to point to our
| society and our behaviour. When an expat at work asked me
| yesterday where to move to make sure that his 5 year old will
| have the best schools of the country... with such an elitist
| behaviour, I can only facepalm and see this is going to be
| much worse in the next 5-10years.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Problem is, the world is an economic slugfest today unlike
| it was at least when I grew up. When my High School class
| graduated a long time ago, most of us were competing for
| jobs with people in our own small town. At most, we were
| competing with the surrounding counties. There was
| university for A students, community college and/or middle
| class office work for B students, normal working class jobs
| for C students, and tougher lower-paying jobs for D
| students. As for university, we were competing for entrance
| with mostly other people in our state.
|
| Today's kids are competing with the entire world, _and_ the
| middle class is disappearing. So it 's much higher stakes.
| And it's bimodal: You're either one of the few winners and
| get to live a comfortable life with a professional job, or
| you're off to WalMart or an Amazon warehouse, or Prison.
| The "kind of comfortable middle class life" is shrinking
| quickly. So it's not enough to just get straight A's. You
| need extra credit, get a 5.0 GPA, take all the "right" AP
| classes, have the "right" extracurriculars, and the "right"
| community service and so on. Otherwise you risk landing on
| the bad side of the career bimodal distribution.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| And AI, should it work out, is threatening to wipe out
| even the "good" side of that equation.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Problem is, the world is an economic slugfest today
| unlike it was at least when I grew up
|
| It only did not feel like a slugfest for a select few in
| developed countries like the US/Canada/UK/Aus and maybe
| some other European countries.
|
| For the vast majority, hustling has always been a thing,
| including immigrating across oceans and leaving all of
| your friends and family behind.
|
| It just so happens that people in the US who used to or
| whose parents used to have security of
| shelter/healthcare/food no longer have that security.
| landedgentry wrote:
| Problem is, with growing inequality, the 80th-percentile
| school and the 20th-percentile school is vastly different,
| whether that is in school resources or the life
| trajectories of graduates.
| underlipton wrote:
| An interesting perspective on this:
| https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/the-new-urban-order-
| send-...
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Dr. John B. Calhoun's work with "The Beautiful Ones" may
| unfortunately generalize to human civilizations:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFveSUmh9U
| causality0 wrote:
| It's strange. We know that instincts, hormones, and other
| aspects of our biology have a tremendous influence on our
| thoughts and behaviors, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of
| effort to use that to problem-solve. There's evolutionary
| psychology, but given the fraction of human problems traceable
| to maladaption to the modern world, one would think
| "evolutionary anthropo-sociology" would a foundational pillar
| of science. Like, why doesn't "humans didn't evolve to sleep in
| a room by themselves at the age of four" carry as much weight
| as "don't let your kids eat lead paint chips"?
| BlarfMcFlarf wrote:
| Probably because evolutionary psychology is an incestuous
| pseudoscience of just-so-stories, small sample sizes, bad
| extrapolations, non reproducibility etc.
| jmyeet wrote:
| People aren't stupid. What we have in the world in general (not
| just Asia) is a crisis in hopelessness.
|
| People are facing crippling student debt (depending on your
| country), one bad medical incident away from being homeless,
| crippling housing costs and wages that barely cover costs such
| that you need 1-2 "side hustles" just to make ends meet.
|
| It's really no wonder people are checking out. It's also no
| wonder that people aren't having children either. They simply
| can't afford to.
|
| One common counterargument to this is that consumer spending is
| up but that really makes my point: people are spending now
| instead of saving _because they have no future_.
| anovikov wrote:
| But this all is so evidently untrue!
|
| Stock of accumulated capital is growing healthily which means
| savings rate is healthy too, even if most of savings is just
| reinvestment of profits from previous ones.
|
| Consumption of almost everything is growing in real terms too
| in almost all countries.
|
| GDP keeps growing just about everywhere save for a few most
| unlucky places like UK.
|
| Even inequality is falling for the first time in decades so the
| poor people actually see most improvement (especially in the
| US).
|
| That 'hopelessness' is what people call 'vibecession'. People
| just taught themselves - probably by going through too much
| doomscrolling - that things are bad. But they aren't. We are
| probably living through best times in our lifetime - especially
| the common folk, poor and working class (some highly educated,
| high income occupations might be on shaky ground). MAYBE, just
| maybe, upper middle class is a bit fucked indeed, but this is a
| small group numerically and hikikomori do not come from there.
|
| I'm glad i'm not on social media but whenever i'm trying to
| read so-called 'news', i also get depressed for a bit. People
| are trying to present absolutely everything in the most
| negative sense possible probably because otherwise it's not
| clickbait-y enough...
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| GDP or savings rates don't matter to individuals who are
| spending all of their money on food and rent
|
| Countries and corporations reporting strong financial health
| does not help the people who are living paycheck to paycheck
|
| It's very out of touch to suggest otherwise
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Maybe GDP, consumption, and corporate profits are not
| correlated to human happiness.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > Stock of accumulated capital is growing healthily
|
| How are you defining "accumulated capital"? Because in wealth
| and income terms, inequality has only been growing [1].
| Specifically, does accumulated capital include paper gains in
| housing values of your primary residence? If so, that's
| misleading.
|
| Housing is a basic need. If you buy a house for $200k and it
| has gone up in value to $500k, you might say you've
| accumulated $300k in unrealized capital gains. Thing is, what
| would you do if you sold it? You'd still have to buy a house
| somewhere. And if every other house also costs $500k, what
| have you really gained? You might be paying higher property
| taxes, higher insurance costs and possibly higher mortgage
| costs.
|
| > Consumption of almost everything is growing in real terms
| too in almost all countries.
|
| I addressed this. People aren't saving for their future.
|
| > GDP keeps growing just about everywhere
|
| And who benefits from that? Let's say your wages have gone up
| 25% in real terms, where is that money going? If it's just
| more rent to your landlord, then you'e gained nothing and
| someone else is simply exploiting more of the value you've
| created.
|
| > Even inequality is falling for the first time in decades
|
| No, it's not. See the link.
|
| > We are probably living through best times in our lifetime
|
| By pretty much any objective measure, we peaked in about
| 1972. Since then real wages have largely stagnated and the
| quality of life has gone down.
|
| [1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-
| trends/2020/01/09/trends-...
| anovikov wrote:
| That's the thing. Inequality quickly dropped in the last 4
| years. Over 40% of inequality growth accumulated since 1979
| has been cancelled out in just 4 years.
|
| And, sure enough, by every possible metric, in 50 years,
| quality of life has improved everywhere, for every income
| bracket. It's utter lunacy to suggest otherwise. With the
| U.S. real GDP per capita growing 2.5x since, there is
| simply no way for any place or any social group to feel
| worse, by any possible metric, even if cherrypicking. And,
| it's not worse than world average. Even since 1991 when
| situation has probably been strategically the best for
| America, it did not fall behind the world economically
| (China made a quantum leap, but Latin America and ex-Soviet
| sphere, has fallen way behind)
|
| As for housing, well, housing never grew in price above
| average inflation and it does not grow that way now,
| either. Inflation-adjusted square foot price in US and
| almost all Western countries have remained stagnant for ~50
| years. In UK, yes, it is different. Australia too.
|
| If people are unhappy with economic situation today,
| nothing will ever be enough for them.
| yazzku wrote:
| > People are facing crippling student debt (depending on your
| country), one bad medical incident away from being homeless.
|
| Both of these are U.S.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| On the other hand, housing being very expensive feels like a
| universal phenomenon now.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Perhaps tangentially related, but today my landlord gave
| the final inspection of the place.
|
| He told us that it pained him that we could only live there
| for a year. We were his cash cow. The year before, his wife
| had died, and he needed more family support and his
| daughter wanted a place near him. He told me that only a
| few years ago he would have simply built her a house next
| to the one he was renting us, but even building costs have
| skyrocketed so much that the only option he had was to kick
| us out and let her in.
|
| He said he was sorry, and the thing is, I believed him.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's an interesting article I don't know why it had to be
| presented in such a cumbersome graphical style. I tried the trick
| of changing "www" to "lite" in the URL but it didn't work for
| this one. I stopped reading about halfway through.
| sctb wrote:
| This presentation is surely intended to convey a sense of
| spatiality related to the idea of "A shrinking life". I enjoyed
| the graphics and photos, and I definitely got a feeling of
| constriction and isolation that added depth to my reading
| experience--YMMV.
|
| (The HN guidelines discourage complaints about these sorts of
| "tangential annoyances", by the way:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
| ilaksh wrote:
| I think this is really a spectrum and they are focusing on some
| more extreme aspects of it. But it is definitely not just an
| Asian thing and I believe to some degree this type of social
| withdrawal has affected perhaps a very significant portion of our
| society.
|
| I have definitely been socially isolated my entire life to some
| degree or another. But much more so in adulthood. Again, I
| suggest that this is relatively common, not something that
| happens to only a few million people.
|
| One aspect that is being glossed over is the amount of
| socialization or let's call it "pseudo-social" activity that is
| happening over the internet for these people.
|
| I'm someone who generally does not have friends, leaves the
| apartment literally only a handful of times per month to take the
| garbage out and maybe buy groceries once or twice a month if I am
| trying to save money versus Instacart.
|
| For me it comes down to money. I have a health issue that makes
| me fatigued etc. and don't have money for health insurance. I
| don't have money to go to restaurants or otherwise waste going
| out. So I stay home.
|
| Because I'm always in a poor health and financial state, I feel
| uncomfortable trying to do any "real" socialization.
|
| But I have always been trying one way or another to get to a
| point where I have a "real" online business that allows me to
| actually thrive. Such as buying a car and a house, getting health
| insurance and addressing my health issues, or paying taxes.
|
| But what I have managed so far is usually just enough to scrape
| by. There have been some minor successes here and there but
| rarely have I ever felt like I had enough to truly meet my basic
| needs such as the health concerns or financial stability.
|
| Anyway, I think it's easy to get in a position with health and
| financial challenges, maybe just a series of low-paying
| contracts, where some degree of social isolation is just
| practical and realistic.
| antegamisou wrote:
| I'm sorry for what you've been through and I hope your health
| gets better. However I believe you've phrased the following a
| bit poorly, although I'm sure unintentionally:
| some degree of social isolation is just practical and
| realistic.
|
| Unfortunately this leads to connotations that encourage people
| completely out of touch with the ordinary person's lifestyle
| (billionaires, CEOs etc.) make outrageous claims and dictating
| how they should navigate life with minimum wage and no
| insurance e.g. that CEO who said skip breakfast to save money,
| or HN's favorites that we should just shut up and be content
| with modern tech automating our creative abilities instead of
| assisting us with menial tasks.
|
| Instead if you had written social isolation is _inevitable_
| without controlled financial and health stability, you 'd be
| 100% spot on.
|
| _Human_ , _social isolation_ and _practical /realistic_ just
| don't fit together.
| card_zero wrote:
| Escaping something that's inevitable is not practical or
| realistic.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| > we should just shut up and be content with modern tech
| automating our creative abilities instead of assisting us
| with menial tasks
|
| This isn't true. Dalle and ChatGPT are assists, they don't
| really replace anything and make being creative more
| accessible. AI also helps with tons of menial tasks like code
| syntax
| ecjhdnc2025 wrote:
| > Dalle and ChatGPT are assists, they don't really replace
| anything and make being creative more accessible.
|
| Proponents of these tools can keep saying this, but it
| doesn't make it true.
|
| Almost nothing these tools can do really helps the creation
| of art.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| There are emotional and mental support groups, churches,
| community events, and all manner of things you can do for free
| that may help break your isolation. It takes effort to do this.
| I know you are struggling, but ultimately no one will help you
| but yourself, which is a hard pill to swallow.
| chasil wrote:
| I live in Iowa, and I had a roommate who just stopped going to
| work one day.
|
| I learned after talking to her that she had done this before.
| In talking to her, it seemed to me a mix of anxiety and
| depression with a focus on agoraphobia.
|
| Her family from several hundred miles came to retrieve her when
| they contacted me. She asked to move back in later, but I
| declined. I saw her start a new career some years afterwards.
|
| I don't know if the "laying flat/tang ping" movement in China,
| or the issues of the people in the article, are completely
| separate from this.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping
| wholemodern wrote:
| the laying flat movement has mostly to do with lack of
| jobs/opportunity for young people.
|
| - there's a societal trend to not hire people over the age of
| 30-35 in China. after months of looking for work, they've
| given up
|
| - there's an unofficial 70% youth unemployment rate, and with
| 12 million new grads each year and intense competition for
| government work, sometimes hundred of applicants for a single
| stable government spot, the new grads give up
|
| - the young generation has realized that no
| house/car/marriage/kid (Mei Fang Mei Che Mei Qi Zi ) is a
| good way to live, and there's no pressure on them to create a
| life. so they lay flat. thus the abysmal marriage/child rate
| in China, which is near the bottom of world ranking
|
| - the new grads don't want to work in a factory, day or night
| shift, for $2/hour.
|
| - if the workers are in 1st tier cities, they can barely save
| up any money working and living there, due to the recent 50%
| reduction in wages ($1000/month -> $500/month) and increased
| spending on necessities. so it's easier for them to just not
| work and live off of parents.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > there's a societal trend to not hire people over the age
| of 30-35 in China
|
| > there's an unofficial 70% youth unemployment rate
|
| > , due to the recent 50% reduction in wages
|
| I couldn't find anything on these points. The second one
| seems completely unbelievable while also being at odds with
| the first claim.
|
| What are you referring to?
| wholemodern wrote:
| It's typically on Chinese social media apps, and when
| they get popular they get taken down immediately by the
| government
|
| here are some remnants in non-chinese websites.
|
| http://www.xinhuanet.com/fortune/2023-06/26/c_1129716071.
| htm
|
| https://botanwang.com/articles/202308/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%
| E5%...
|
| https://www.voachinese.com/a/more-chinese-white-collar-
| worke...
|
| if you want to verify secondary effects: Retail sales of
| passenger cars in China declined to 1.095 million units,
| down 21% from a year earlier and 46% from January.
| https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/chinas-vehicle-sales-
| drop.... A decline of real estate development investment
| widened to 9.5% in the first quarter from 9% in the first
| two months
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-16/china-
| hom... Stingy Chinese shoppers are returning their goods,
| erasing up to 75% of their sales
| value.https://fortune.com/asia/2024/04/17/luxury-brands-
| new-headac...
| stevenae wrote:
| Last time I tracked this closely:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL4N3960Z5/
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The last official youth employment hit over 20% before
| China stopped publishing the figure.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-stop-releasing-
| you...
|
| Basically there is a trend of overeducation; China is
| producing millions more university graduates than it
| needs, without enough white collar jobs, and at the same
| time there are a lot of job openings in much more poorly
| paid factory work. This is not unique in East Asia, South
| Korea also has a lot of youth unemployment for similar
| reasons. https://keia.org/the-peninsula/low-youth-
| employment-in-korea...
|
| Also, China is currently suffering from deflation because
| it produces many more goods than it can consume or
| export, and wages are also being cut.
| ii41 wrote:
| tang ping is just an internet slang. Didn't expect it to have
| a wikipedia page.
|
| In China, the "normal" is "to try to be the best". For
| example, less than half of Chinese students can make it into
| a "good college" (in China there's a very specific definition
| of a "good college"), but if you didn't make it, like more
| than 50% of your peers, that's enough to say that you're "bad
| at studying".
|
| tang ping basically means quiting this kind of culture and
| accepting that one's normal. Buying a house and settling down
| in a city that's not Beijing or Shanghai, like 90% of people
| do.
|
| It has nothing to do with social withdrawal.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| Those people have completely taken over the west. You suffer
| alone in hopeless isolation if you are not like them. It isn't
| that you somehow didn't succeed - the majority simply prefers
| to be alone. Only the fact that the majority is "individualist"
| like this makes it much less obvious.
| underlipton wrote:
| "Money" has also generally been the issue for me. Not simply
| the money to get to and enjoy activities. The money to meet
| (sometimes unrealistic) expectations of physical presentation
| (including clothing, grooming, the time and energy and diet
| required to work out) and therefore feel comfortable among
| people who _will_ judge you for it - including, crucially and
| as a black man, authorities. The money to keep up with friends
| who might want to do things you didn 't necessarily budget for.
| The money to feel comfortable with all of this while managing
| other necessary expenses (including, for some, supporting
| family).
|
| When I had a job, I definitely didn't have the money for all of
| this, particularly while living in a hoity-toity resort town
| (and particularly when it became much more hoity and toity and
| white during the summer). Making rent was much easier (read:
| possible) when I just went home every day.
|
| I have some other thoughts, particularly about how the modern
| job market makes it more difficult for young people to build
| durable relationships at work (which, as much as legal might
| abhor it, is indeed one of the avenues through which many young
| people make friends). Might edit/reply later with those.
| Suffice it to say, when layoffs disrupt the already imperiled
| process, you end up with a lot of people entering their late
| 20s/early 30s with social lives that are exceedingly fragile,
| if they're even extant.
| paulpauper wrote:
| America has this too. It's homelessness. The drug abuse and
| mental illness makes it worse though. Unlike the comparably
| docile hikikomori, drug and alcohol use leads to erratic and
| aggressive behavior and makes accommodations and treatment
| impossible, hence homelessness.
| anovikov wrote:
| If their parents are not doing anything about it when it's their
| direct responsibility, how can anyone expect anyone else to fix
| it? If the culture allows for this, the problem is with the
| culture.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's hard to change another person's mind.
| anovikov wrote:
| In America, they'd be kicked out of home as soon as they
| turned 16. In Russia, they'd be just beaten up by their dads.
| Probably badly and regularly.
|
| They do it because they can. Key is to make it impossible and
| force them to take up productive activities. No one in adult
| age should be kept at home funded by their parents unless
| it's short term with definite plan to fix it, or they are
| seriously disabled.
|
| Of course, when it's about schoolchildren, it's different.
| Serious psychiatric help is needed. It's again parents' fault
| for not providing it.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I don't know about Russian dads, but in America it's very
| likely they'd be indulged. I don't know anyone who would
| kick their teenage child out of the house because he or she
| was depressed. Especially when you see the sort of life the
| homeless have in most places.
|
| I'm sure it happens, but at least from my perspective it
| would not be common.
| HPsquared wrote:
| That factor is probably a big one in deciding who is
| homeless and who isn't. It's the main barrier, really.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Though you could probably argue the degree to which its
| right or wrong, they way I look at it is: I brought this
| person into the world, if he isn't self-supporting at age
| 18 (or 22, or whatever) then why is it fair to society
| that I make that society's problem? He's my kid, and I
| should own the responsibility for that.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, but the acceptability of adult children living at
| home with their parents has really changed since when I
| grew up. We were pretty much _all_ kicked out at 18 to go
| live on our own. That was just what we did in the USA.
| Some had a little financial support from parents--maybe
| the parents paid for car insurance or gas or something.
| But never the rent-free home for 10-15 years like we see
| today. The culture has changed massively. My old man
| would have never accepted me living at home after high
| school, but I look at my kid and think, well, she 'll
| really struggle to afford rent, and she'll never own her
| own home, so I guess we have no choice.
| linearrust wrote:
| > Yea, but the acceptability of adult children living at
| home with their parents has really changed since when I
| grew up.
|
| For nearly all of american history, children ( adult or
| not ) stayed at home with their parents until they got
| married. Especially the daughters. Emily Dickinson's
| parents didn't kick her out when she turned 16 or 18 or
| 30 or 50. Emily Dickinson famously died in the same house
| she was born in.
|
| > That was just what we did in the USA.
|
| This is simply not true. At least not for the vast
| majority of american families. It is actually the
| opposite. Where parents wanted their kids to stay at home
| while changes in popular culture made kids want to
| venture out before they got married.
|
| > My old man would have never accepted me living at home
| after high school
|
| Even if that mean you sleeping in the streets? I doubt
| that.
|
| If what you wrote is true, we'd have a far greater
| homeless population than we do. The idea that americans
| kicked out their kids after high school is nonsense. Sure
| parents would want their kids to get a job, go to
| college, etc after high school but only a tiny fraction
| of parents would kick their kids to the curb once they
| finished high school. Especially the daughters.
|
| Just ask yourself, would you kick force your kids to live
| on the streets at 18? Of course not. Which parent would
| answer yes to that?
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Just ask yourself, would you kick force your kids to
| live on the streets at 18? Of course not. Which parent
| would answer yes to that?
|
| That was the point of my post. My parents' generation
| would and mine won't. I don't know anyone I grew up with
| who would have been allowed to live in their parents'
| house for a decade after graduating high school. It would
| be unthinkable. Times have changed and what was
| unacceptable in the 80s and 90s is more acceptable now.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'm coming up on 60 years old. Though I don't know anyone
| of my age who stayed at home after high school (I was a
| college-bound kid and all my friends were) I do not think
| my parents would have "kicked me out" at any point.
|
| I did know some kids who got jobs and moved in with
| friends or got their own apartments, but never heard it
| was because their parents kicked them out, they just
| wanted to get away from their childhood and live on their
| own.
|
| I just don't remember getting kicked out by your parents
| being a common thing. But maybe I was just never exposed
| to it.
| linearrust wrote:
| > That was the point of my post. My parents' generation
| would and mine won't.
|
| And the point of my post is that it's a lie. That parents
| are parents no matter when or where.
|
| > I don't know anyone I grew up with who would have been
| allowed to live in their parents' house for a decade
| after graduating high school.
|
| A decade? Now you are moving the goal post. The comment
| you quoted was 'Just ask yourself, would you kick force
| your kids to live on the streets at 18'. So you are
| saying everyone in your high school got kick out of their
| homes at 18? No? Fine.
|
| > Times have changed and what was unacceptable in the 80s
| and 90s is more acceptable now.
|
| Times always change and yet things always stay the same.
| I grew up in the 90s and I can say your description is
| not reality. Either we grew up in completely different
| countries or you are lying. Plenty of people stayed at
| home after high school or even after college to save
| money for their own house. Do you think it was the norm
| to dump your kids on the street as soon as they turned
| 18? What are you talking about?
|
| You wrote the following: "We were pretty much all kicked
| out at 18 to go live on our own." I wasn't. None of my
| friends were. None of my cousins were. Nobody I know was.
|
| Maybe you were kicked out at 18, but that's not
| representative of much of america. Why lie about
| something that is so demonstrably false? I don't get it.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Forcing people to work hasn't been historically successful.
| That includes stacking the incentives up to work or death.
| A large fraction of people simply choose death because no
| one wants to be forced to do things.
|
| If I had to guess, you don't either.
| golergka wrote:
| For overwhelming majority of human history people had
| either to work or die of starvation. There's absolutely
| no evidence to suggest that any significant fraction
| chose death.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Having to work is qualitatively different from being
| forced to work.
|
| We both know the difference between the two and that
| difference makes my point. Trying to equate them is an
| admission of loss on your part.
| dymk wrote:
| It sounds like you're advocating for abusing teenagers (16
| is still a child)
| linearrust wrote:
| > In America, they'd be kicked out of home as soon as they
| turned 16.
|
| This is a lie. Are you american? I've never met a single
| person who was kicked out at 16. This include kids who were
| drug addicts, high school drop outs, pregnant teens, etc.
|
| > In Russia, they'd be just beaten up by their dads.
|
| I highly doubt that. Are you russian?
|
| > No one in adult age should be kept at home funded by
| their parents unless it's short term with definite plan to
| fix it
|
| Ideally. Unless they are writing poems like emily
| dickinson?
| Throw6away wrote:
| Getting kicked out at 16 or 17 is (or used to be, when I
| was a young adult) pretty common for gay youth, and tends
| to be glossed over. This is in the US, though, where
| toxic fundamentalism is unfortunately prevalent.
| marcyb5st wrote:
| From my personal experience (I also went through a very dark
| period in my life and just recently climbed out of the hole I dug
| myself) I guess people are realizing that working hard won't get
| you anything close to what previous generations had. Once that
| settles in it's hard to push yourself to do basically anything.
|
| Additionally, I also believe that feeling is compounded by social
| media where selection bias only shows you cherry picked moments
| where it seems other people are living the life you won't get.
|
| Finally, among the younger generations there is a lot of climate
| change dread going around.
|
| For me it was a combination of all these factors and to this day
| I can't pinpoint exactly what was the trigger, but after COVID
| lockdowns I simply kept social distancing.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| People just have no historical reference.
|
| Think times are tough now? Try the great depression.
|
| Worried about climate change? In the 1980s it was nuclear war.
|
| People living paycheck to paycheck, barely scraping by? Media
| glorifying the rich and famous? Nothing new.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Yet the new struggles are real too? explaining them away as
| more of the same does nothing. There are old problems and
| there are new problems and they're both problems.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes there are struggles today. But there always have been.
| This imaginary past where most people didn't live in fear
| of unexpected expenses, debt, struggling to pay all their
| bills, and not earning enough money didn't exist.
| ThalesX wrote:
| > This imaginary past where most people didn't live in
| fear of unexpected expenses, debt, struggling to pay all
| their bills, and not earning enough money didn't exist.
|
| I call bullshit... Debt. Bills. And for that matter,
| money. These are things that our species lived for
| hundreds of thousands of years without. Furthermore,
| there are tribes that even to this day live without these
| struggles.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > there are tribes that even to this day live without
| these struggles.
|
| Instead of debt and bills, that moves the problem up to
| struggling to defend against tribes with better weapons
| who want your land/labor. Or natural disasters and no
| resilience due to trade network. Or dying from bacterial
| infections and childbirth complications.
| ThalesX wrote:
| It's hard to assess, especially from our position, which
| set of challenges the human soul prefers. But there's an
| interesting point to be made, touched in both "Civilized
| to Death: The Price of Progress"[0] as well as "The Dawn
| of Everything: A New History of Humanity"[1] that no
| 'savage' has been interested in non-coercively joining an
| 'advanced' society, whereas there are plenty of examples
| of 'civilized' people choosing the 'savage' life. I don't
| think the choice is as clear cut as it would
| superficially seem.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/Civilized-Death-What-Lost-
| Modernity/d... [1] https://www.amazon.com/-/en/David-
| Graeber/dp/0374157359
| throwthrowuknow wrote:
| As is plainly evident, the vast majority of savages have
| chosen to incrementally create and join civilized
| societies. It's a much larger challenge for an illiterate
| hunter gatherer to make a multi millennia jump into
| modern society than it is for someone to do the reverse.
| ThalesX wrote:
| This says nothing about their level of wellbeing.
|
| > As is plainly evident, the vast majority of savages
| have chosen to incrementally create and join civilized
| societies.
|
| Have they chosen? Or were they civilized?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I think at the very least there was a sense that the
| struggles were leading to a better future. In America, it
| certainly _feels_ like we've regressed from the
| optimistic "End of History" vision of the future of the
| '90s.
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| Absolutely - the thing I miss most about the 80s and 90s
| was the feeling that we could solve our problems (e.g.
| ozone layer, whaling)
| dabbledash wrote:
| Yes, that's true. For most of human history we feared
| starvation, not bankruptcy.
| underlipton wrote:
| For a bit of context: people who were hit by the New
| Year's earthquake in Japan were living on small rice ball
| rations until aid could get to them. This is partly
| because Japan's 2.5 decades of economic consternation has
| forced the country to make hard choices about where
| investment goes - mostly to the dense major metropolitan
| areas, with their higher ROI, and not to the more rural
| ones that were affected by the natural disaster (hence,
| also, the long remediation process in Fukushima).
|
| By way of comparison, much-less-dense America will find
| itself in trouble if it turns out that we're facing
| anything remotely similar in our weird will-it-won't-it
| stagflation.
|
| The Strong Towns project has a ton of information about
| the looming insolvency of many American municipalities,
| and how infrastructure and aid - as in, water pipes and
| food access - are in the crosshairs just so that the
| whole shebang doesn't blow. Ironically, starvation may be
| back on the menu.
| resolutebat wrote:
| This is a weird take. Historically Japan has overinvested
| in rural infrastructure, because the ruling LDP's support
| base is rural, rural votes carry disproportionate weight,
| and when there's nothing going on economically
| construction is the best way to funnel money in.
|
| In addition, Japan is exceptionally well prepared for
| disasters, probably better than any other country in the
| world. Those plans are regularly battle tested because it
| also has a lot of disasters. Yes, it took a while to get
| aid out, but that's because the tsunami wiped all coastal
| roads, railroads, airports etc, and AFAIK hunger was not
| an actual problem for survivors.
| bobajeff wrote:
| >The Strong Towns project has a ton of information about
| the looming insolvency of many American municipalities,
|
| I'd be interested in reading this information. Is there a
| link on their site I can go to?
| ajkjk wrote:
| yes but why do you keep saying it? It sounds like you are
| trying to invalidate people's modern problems or
| something?
| marcyb5st wrote:
| Perhaps, but back in the days you weren't exposed 24/7 to all
| of that (IMHO).
| itronitron wrote:
| user name does not check out
| silverquiet wrote:
| Then perhaps there is no issue to worry about here.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Worried about climate change? In the 1980s it was nuclear
| war.
|
| During the Cold War, they were at least telling kids (at
| least in the USA) that the nuclear holocaust might be
| avoidable "if clear heads prevail," or "if we beat the
| Russians," or "if they back down." There was at least hope.
| With Climate Change, we've told two entire generations of
| kids that there is no hope, it's inevitable and irreversible,
| and that there is no way to avoid catastrophe. So is it any
| surprise they're all doomers when it comes to Climate? If you
| tell everyone that everything is hopeless, then don't be
| surprised when a few conclude that it really is hopeless.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I was told as a kid that there was hope for climate change
| as long as we could scale back our carbon emissions.
| Watching the opposite of that happen over a lifetime is
| what made me into a doomer.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| That's true, it's a big difference. With nuclear war,
| every day that the sirens don't ring is the status quo
| protected, doom delayed by another day. With climate
| change, every day that the status quo is protected is
| another day of accelerating doom and increasing
| inevitability. They are different in that way.
| analog31 wrote:
| The deniers simply morphed from "it's fake" to "it's
| unavoidable."
| dpkirchner wrote:
| As we all predicted. Because they don't argue in good
| faith, they're just opposed to ... whatever (science,
| research, media, school, etc.)
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| The doomerism rhetoric is coming more from one side of the
| political isle, the one that was in denial about climate
| change, generally votes against legislation that helps deal
| with the consequences because they'd rather their perceived
| enemies suffer, and them along with than do good.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| >With Climate Change, we've told two entire generations of
| kids that there is no hope, it's inevitable and
| irreversible, and that there is no way to avoid
| catastrophe.
|
| If that isn't bad enough, the final nail in the emotional
| coffin is telling them there is a way out: the lifestyle of
| a Dravidian. Eat the carbon neutral bugs in BlackRock's
| leased pod. Some of us would rather die.
| krisoft wrote:
| > In the 1980s it was nuclear war
|
| As opposed to now when it is nuclear war and climate change?
| :)
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| It is hard to explain to people today how scary nuclear war
| was during the Cold War. It wasn't so much just that we
| were in real jeopardy of starting a deliberate nuclear war:
| it was the fact that we were heartbeats away from doing one
| by accident, and nearly did a couple of times [1]. It was
| standard for kids in elementary school to discuss the
| implications (at least we didn't bother with duck and cover
| when I grew up, since politicians realized that was
| pointless.) Maybe we're still in the same place (or will be
| again soon) but today's atmosphere is nowhere near as
| scary.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Sure, but after like only one decade of halcyon optimism
| 9/11 happened and thousands were killed on American soil,
| leading to over a decade of paranoia and political-
| infighting which then petered out to become... more
| paranoia and infighting, except even more self-directed.
| It seems like in America the fear is more personal than
| ever.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| And disinformation, and greater wealth inequality, and "AI
| taking our jobs" and all other forms of doomerism.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Hey, on the bright side the nuclear winter will cancel out
| global warming.
| polotics wrote:
| There's not been many studies, but no, it probably won't.
| A nuclear winter would involve heavy dust and soot, that
| won't stay up in the air for very long. After that
| settles down, the net effect is just more CO2 from all
| the burning, and CO2 is an oxide, it is very very
| stable...
| atmavatar wrote:
| Plus, we get power armor and catchy tunes on the radio.
| matej12 wrote:
| well after the Ukraine stroke radar target inside the
| Russia. Risk of nuclear war might have gone higher,, at
| least temporarily. And nuclear war Means turning earth into
| Venus or Mars twin. USA can decide how much support is too
| much support and how small support is too small support,
| because too little support might lead Russia attacking NATO
| countries event without needing to occupate but the much
| support can just lead to termination of All life on earth.
| globalnode wrote:
| well thats unhelpful, diminishing the concerns of people by
| implying: "back in my day we all had it tougher", just doesnt
| help and its just not true, back in the day it was a
| "different" tough but no less or more real than what people
| are experiencing now.
| Starlevel004 wrote:
| > Worried about climate change? In the 1980s it was nuclear
| war.
|
| Nuclear war didn't happen. Climate change _is happening_.
| Pretty key difference!
| david-gpu wrote:
| If nuclear war happened, and there was no way for us to
| know whether it would happen, there was nothing we could do
| to survive the event.
|
| While climate change _is_ happening, there is still a lot
| we can do to slow it down and mitigate its effects, both
| individually and collectively.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes, at the time it seemed like something that might
| happen tomorrow. You had TV movies like "The Day After"
| and constant discussion of it in school and in the media.
| It was a real fear.
| card_zero wrote:
| Ingmar Bergman's _Winter Light_ (1963) has somebody in
| Sweden becoming depressed and withdrawn due to anxiety
| over China developing an atomic bomb. Then in 1982 Prince
| sang "everybody's got the bomb, we could all die any
| day". That's two decades of continual anxiety about
| sudden obliteration (or worse, _near_ obliteration).
| underlipton wrote:
| When did Reagan take Carter's solar panels off the White
| House roof, again?
| card_zero wrote:
| I don't get it. The answer seems to be 1986. What do you
| mean?
| jhbadger wrote:
| The solar panels that Carter installed were nearly
| useless, given poor 1970s technology. It was
| performative, showing that he was interested in doing
| _something_ to handle the oil crisis, even if it was
| futile. And Regan 's removal of them was likewise
| performative, signaling that there no longer was an oil
| crisis.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| > While climate change is happening, there is still a lot
| we can do to slow it down and mitigate its effects
|
| Not to disagree with your general point but one of the
| most frustrating things about climate change is knowing
| how much we could do, while seeing how little hope we
| actually have of making those changes.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Rich Americans can buy a Tesla, solar panels, heat pump
| and give up meat, and feel like they're making a
| difference.
|
| But there's several billion people without those options.
| Who'd all love to consume like rich Americans if they had
| the chance.
| doktrin wrote:
| Your observation is neither novel nor helpful. People
| suffering are often not suffering due to a lack of
| information, or because they've never taken middle school
| history.
| Animats wrote:
| The article reports this happening in countries that are
| quite comfortable at the moment and have strong safety nets.
| This isn't being reported from Venezuela or Ukraine or even
| Poland or the UK.
|
| China has something else - the "lying flat" movement.[1][2]
| This is just "dropping out", something China is now rich
| enough to allow. It's not about isolation, just not working
| much.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/world/asia/china-
| slackers...
|
| [2] https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-
| china/arti...
| wholemodern wrote:
| I wouldn't call what the young people lying flat in china
| "rich enough". There are stories of people in their 20s and
| 30s, after college or after layoffs, that they've either
| got a few thousand dollars saved up or from family. They
| couldn't find any jobs due to ~70% youth unemployment rate.
| Or they don't want to work in factories that pays out
| $2/hour and waste their degree. So they are moving to very
| remote countryside and renting a room for $50/month, and
| spending only $.50 a day. Or live off of parents, what's
| also known as Ken Lao Zu or eat the old.
|
| Remember the previous Chinese premier confirmed there are
| 700 million people living off less than $100/month a few
| years ago. so this living of standard is possible for young
| people. Especially now that there's widespread 50%
| reduction in wages/cost of living in China.
| luzojeda wrote:
| >Worried about climate change? In the 1980s it was nuclear
| war.
|
| Yet they could afford _homes_. One of the most important
| things any human can have. A place to feel safe, call home,
| not be afraid month after month that your landlord will raise
| rent by 50% or 100% leaving you on the streets with all the
| stress that comes afterwards, etc.
|
| Also we have that now as well. We are at the risk of a total
| war between China, Russia, USA, EU, India, etc. all with
| nuclear weapons. We have the worst of both worlds.
| throwthrowuknow wrote:
| Looks like someone hasn't heard of stagflation and Paul
| Volcker. Way before that there were housing crises during
| other decades too.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Homes are overrated. Rented almost all my life out of
| desire for flexibility. Owned two houses for 5 years each,
| and regretted it both times. People divorce, move for
| better job, retirement and other reasons - all that is
| easier while renting.
| robotnikman wrote:
| I would say nuclear war is unfortunately back on the table
| again considering the current conflicts going on.
| hypeatei wrote:
| It always has been, regardless of the current world
| conflicts. There are nukes ready to be launched at moments
| notice all the time.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's unfortunately the kind of thing where perception
| matters just as much as reality. People worried about the
| world ending tomorrow make different decisions than
| people who put nuclear annihilation out of their minds;
| this adds up and shapes the economy, and even feeds back
| into international policy.
| everdrive wrote:
| Well, I think whether or not people objectively had it worse
| or better is sort of beside the point. How well did people
| deal with adversity before? Are people lacking something now
| which is making them less resilient, and less capable of
| connecting? I'm not sure what the precise answers to those
| questions are, but it feels like folks are generally doing
| worse from a mental health perspective. That's a problem to
| solve just like the "real" problems of the world.
| throwaway76321 wrote:
| Your comment is an example of the fallacy of relative
| privation.
| thegrim33 wrote:
| I don't understand at all. Because you (in my opinion,
| erroneously) believe that you need to work some X% harder than
| the last generation to accomplish the same thing you're just
| not going to try?
|
| What about pretty much every generation prior to the last, who
| had to toil in hard labor most days, who often didn't have
| indoor plumbing, who often didn't even have electricity, who
| went off to war, did they have any easier time being
| "successful" than you? Did they just give up and not try? Do
| you honestly believe you're worse off in 2024 than they were?
| That you're working harder than they were?
|
| I'm not even going to touch the climate dread stuff as climate
| change is a topic that can not be impartially discussed
| anymore.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| So what's the difference between the past and now? Maybe
| having corporations profiting off of people's attention and
| fear is not a good thing.
| jeremyt wrote:
| Social media. That's the difference.
| krisoft wrote:
| I don't think you are saying the same thing.
|
| You are saying this;
|
| > you need to work some X% harder than the last generation to
| accomplish the same thing
|
| And this is the contrasting bit from the comment you are
| responding:
|
| > working hard won't get you anything close to what previous
| generations had
|
| The difference is that your sentence says they have to work
| harder to achieve the same, while their comment says that
| even if they work hard they can't achieve the same. That is
| two very different things.
| raindeer2 wrote:
| The reason that ppl give up now is not that it is worse now
| than before, but rather the opposite. Now you can do almost
| nothing productive and still survive. Before, you would
| simply starve to death.
| tristor wrote:
| > I guess people are realizing that working hard won't get you
| anything close to what previous generations had.
|
| I hear this a lot. It's also untrue. If you are open to
| anecdata, it's trivial to prove this is untrue.
|
| What people constantly miss and fail to consider is what they
| are working hard at. Hard work is a requirement for success and
| class mobility, but it is not sufficient. You must also work
| hard at the right things.
|
| The truest thing I have learned about life is that you need to
| do three things to be successful:
|
| 1. Identify places where you can add value /for people who can
| compensate you/.
|
| 2. Learn how to articulate the value you add.
|
| 3. Ensure you get compensation for that value added.
|
| If you do these three things, your hard work will pay off,
| maybe in a big way.
| softsound wrote:
| #2-3 is where I would say the majority of people get stuck. I
| sure have, I volunteer to help people whenever I can but that
| doesn't mean I'll get paid or compensated for it. Not that I
| mind but I can get burnt out.
|
| #1 can really be hard when #2-3 never seems to come into the
| picture for long. It can make anything you do seem like a
| waste of time. Can you add value, sure, is it worth it?
| That's where it can be tough.
|
| I think a problem with a lot of this too is lack of real long
| term community too. But I think some people are just better
| at managing that naturally.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| My pet theory is that social media isn't the problem, the
| always-on surveillance created by smartphones is.
|
| When I was in university, we had nude parties. I'm pretty sure
| nobody would risk that nowadays. That cherry-picking you
| mentioned goes both for highs and lows. In this day and age,
| you always need to plan for your worst moment to end up in
| someone's picture. The ubiquity of cameras has made everyday
| living more risky in the sense that you're constantly at risk
| of losing social standing over insignificant mistakes.
| forinti wrote:
| My grandfather said there were such parties when he was
| young. That would have been 1930s-1940s. And what's even more
| crazy is that this was in the countryside in Portugal.
| yterdy wrote:
| It's a double-edged sword. Without that ubiquity, 4 years ago
| today, George Floyd would have just been known as a junkie
| who slipped a fake bill and had a heart attack, if he was
| known at all. Instead, we were able to see with our own eyes
| what actually happened.
|
| There is certainly a hammer/nail aspect to the issue (which
| is itself one of degrees), but I do think that part of the
| blame that gets put on the technology and its use lies more
| correctly with the society that makes judgments off of that
| use's outputs. Ideally, in a functional society, no one would
| bat an eyelash at coeds sharing platonic nakey time.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > It's a double-edged sword. Without that ubiquity, 4 years
| ago today, George Floyd would have just been known as a
| junkie who slipped a fake bill and had a heart attack, if
| he was known at all. Instead, we were able to see with our
| own eyes what actually happened.
|
| An important consideration there is that the areas
| immediately adjacent to police should be _far_ more tracked
| than general spaces or around average people.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Pumping M1 and M2 at a continuously compounding 7% CAGR is
| making Thomas Jefferson's prediction come true.
| underlipton wrote:
| The on-ramps for fulfilling activity (not even necessarily
| jobs) are disappearing. If you want to learn something new,
| you're not looking at a nominal fee at a local community
| college; maybe the suggestion is to watch (flawed, unfinished)
| tutorials on YouTube, or to buy a creative influencer's course
| pack. Maybe that gets you basic skills, maybe you waste your
| time. But let's assume you picked up [skill]. Someone's
| probably not going to hire you for it. Do you try to make
| something by yourself? Here's the list of _other_ skills you
| should probably pick up in order to compete (yes, you 're
| competing) with the wunderkids who can produce [project], and
| also the associated devlog and Patreon and streaming schedule.
| Or, maybe you try to join an existing project that needs your
| [skill]. That's going to be a decent amount of time lurking the
| Discord, trying to keep up with a group of people who _might_
| not even like you because you 're the weird new guy. If the
| goal is prosocial socialization outside of the house, this
| might be counterproductive.
|
| Did I mention that the increasing focus on "problem-solving,"
| driven by the tech Cult of Productivity, seems to have
| predisposed people to the kind of skepticism and pessimism that
| makes finding problems _to_ solve easier?
|
| Or, you could just... not.
|
| >Have problem
|
| >Don't care.
|
| >Don't have problem anymore.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| I know everyone is different, and saying things like "just get a
| job" or "just go outside" are easy to say and very hard to do
| when you're stuck in that type of loop. But, I will say, things
| that I've found will help are having some purpose (work, taking
| care of someone or a pet, anything), exercise (even walking
| outdoors), and even just getting your biological clock where you
| wake up and get exposed to sunlight (vs sleeping all day and
| staying up all night).
|
| Getting enough activation energy to do any of those things is
| difficult, but I've found that if you can muster it, it can help
| break the cycle.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's a bit like refloating a sunken ship.
| itronitron wrote:
| Yeah, it's much easier for me to leave the house when it's a
| situation in which I don't need to care about the potential of
| other people's opinions. Running quick errands, walking the
| dog, etc.
|
| For some reason taking out the recycling is a heavier lift for
| me mentally due to the risk of chaos with the bins, potential
| for bags breaking, bins being full, etc. even though there is
| less social interaction than grocery shopping.
| nanomonkey wrote:
| Honestly, my dog is my savior. I take her to the park every
| evening. This gets me out into the evening sun, walking, and
| around like-minded people. The fact that I can interact with a
| group of people without scheduling an "event" is great. We just
| show up. For me it's mostly the other dogs (puppy therapy), but
| it's nice to exchange a few words and talk to someone about
| their day while the dogs run around.
|
| The two mile walk to the lake is also key. I find a morning
| stretch and kettle bell routine, and an evening walk keeps me
| mentally and physically in tune. And it's practically free,
| unlike modern healthcare.
| itronitron wrote:
| The social home is a great idea and I am glad to hear that it
| works. It would be interesting to compare social communication
| styles between people in the social home with social
| communication among extroverts (in another situation). I expect
| they are quite different but it would be good to know how they
| differ.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| It's fun to watch mass media inflict so much harm on people with
| irresponsible reporting designed to terrify, outrage, and
| misinform you for profit, and then turn around and report on the
| fallout.
|
| Maybe fun isn't the right word.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Schadenfreude?
| ThalesX wrote:
| I've recently finished reading "Civilized to Death"[0] and I
| can't help feel there's some truth to some of the ideas.
|
| One idea that stuck with me is that shit zoos have concrete cages
| for the monkeys, and they're miserable in them, showing similar
| signs to modern humans (depression, addition, anger), whereas
| nice zoos try to keep the monkeys in similar environments to
| those that they evolved for, where the monkeys are pretty much
| chill. The author argues that we're constructing concrete zoos
| for ourselves and in the process making ourselves miserable.
| We're so far detached from what our bodies and minds evolved for,
| that it's an alien environment for our species.
|
| If this holds truth, it's really no wonder that the more we pile
| on and the further we stray from our true species' preferences,
| the more horrible we will feel, and this hikikomori is a fine
| illustration of that.
|
| As some comments pointed out 'what about the great depression',
| 'what about 'nuclear war', "don't you like your electricity"?
| These are all human patches for human made problems. I don't
| think the correlation between progress and wellbeing is as clear
| cut as some would like to see it.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/Civilized-Death-What-Lost-
| Modernity/d...
| tetris11 wrote:
| I think even if we lived in a green paradise, there would be
| those who would measure themselves to others and still find
| themselves "short" to their more vocally successful peers
|
| I think inequality and toxic competition from an early age
| demanded by our soceity is a much bigger factor
| ThalesX wrote:
| Depends on the checks and balances you have in the 'society'.
| Are vocally succesful peers lauded? Then perhaps you could
| run into this situation. Are they mocked for having a big
| mouth? Maybe the chances are slimmer.
|
| > I think inequality and toxic competition from an early age
| demanded by our soceity is a much bigger factor
|
| Yeah, I tend to agree with you in that these are important
| factors into how things are playing out. And the scale. My
| God. We used to have inequality and competition between a
| small subset of people, now we're competing with 7+ billion.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I think the "by the way our planet's dying" just adds to the
| framing of despair. It's not the root cause but certainly
| compounds to it. Independently of this phenomenon, it almost
| feels like we're reliving the '70s (pollution, urban decay,
| political breakdown).
| globular-toast wrote:
| Just need to point out that the planet isn't dying, but our
| ecosystem is. We're like a zit or a mouth ulcer to the
| planet.
| braymundo wrote:
| Agreed with regards to the scale, but without the
| ecosystem the planet is basically dead, like any other
| planet we know of.
| jwells89 wrote:
| People feeling increasingly crushed by the daily grind to
| keep one's head above water is almost certainly a bigger
| factor. So many people are just one unfortunate event, or
| even worse, one paycheck away from financial ruin with little
| in the way of an institutional safety net (and in the case of
| many, even a friends/family support network) and that takes a
| massive toll on one's psyche.
|
| Speaking for myself, if all needs were guaranteed to be met
| I'd probably be happier living in a walkable metropolis than
| idyllic countryside. The part of the city that sucks isn't
| the city as much as it is the rat race.
| navane wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the declining birth rate (or "fertility") is
| among the consequences of the change you are describing. The
| difference with past misery is the lack of stories to cover it
| up, or to give hope that this is temporary and it will get
| better.
| ppqqrr wrote:
| I haven't read the book, but I think "concrete zoos," for
| humans, is more metaphorical than literal. Humans find comfort
| in much wider ranges of environment. If it were available, I'm
| sure many would find spaceships to be comforting environments.
|
| IMO, the problem is that we're at this stage of social
| development, where capitalism, and the antiquated culture of
| jobs, management and deadline, is actively incentivized to
| limit human potential and creativity. Why? Because that's where
| competition comes from.
| admissionsguy wrote:
| I think the main thing is the lack of on-ramps. Once you have
| fallen out of the social circulation, there is basically no way
| of going back. Unless you are able to stay within an extremely
| narrow range of behaviours (in terms of not being weird,
| basically speaking expected thinks in expected tone of voice and
| body language), nobody wants to associate with you. And since
| about the only way to learn these things is to be around people
| who already behave in the "right" way, a vicious circle arises.
|
| It has nothing to do with debt, wealth or earnings. Completely
| independent things. People had it worse at every time in history
| in almost every place.
|
| It has nothing to do with social media / internet. It just
| something people tend to fall into when they withdraw, and have
| no trouble abandoning as soon as the life outside becomes tenable
| again.
| tetris11 wrote:
| I was briefly jobless in a country with a fantastic social
| security net.
|
| Easily the most stressful and financially unstable moment in my
| life.
|
| It was only two months, but I genuinely thought I'd never
| recover my social standing, or confidence ever again
| wholinator2 wrote:
| How so, what was your experience? This is pretty diametric to
| most people's assumptions so I'd be interested in hearing
| more about how that went down
| doktrin wrote:
| Possibly due to social stigma. I don't know that what I'm
| describing can be attributed to the safety net itself, but
| many countries with excellent social safety programs also
| have a low social tolerance for failure. This is not
| limited to using social benefits - e.g fail in business and
| you're a business failure who will struggle to get any
| financing ever again.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| Sounds like people I wouldn't want to associate with
| then.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| From a European perspective who made similar experiences:
| European countries all tend to be hyper neoliberal nowadays
| (despite Americans warped perspective) they don't want to
| offer social safety nets for ideological reasons but have
| to because of past, long since crushed leftist political
| movements having forced them into existence, making it very
| difficult to abandon them now by the ruling neoliberals.
|
| The net effect is the more slowly, erosion of social safety
| nets and making it as painful and unpleasant as possible to
| use them (as a matter of policy), as well as mass corporate
| media propaganda against it's recipients. It's a miserable
| experience by-design.
| robocat wrote:
| > It's a miserable experience by-design.
|
| I believe we aim for a dehumanising experience in New
| Zealand, although I am mostly unfamiliar with it.
| Certainly our current government wants to crack down: htt
| ps://assets.nationbuilder.com/nationalparty/pages/18418/a
| ...
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Sorry, i cannot edit on mobile but i just realized maybe i
| read that wrong. Are you saying that as opposed to countries
| without safety nets, or instead emphasizing that even with
| security nets it can still be a very difficult experience?
| tetris11 wrote:
| Very much the latter. I was shuttled from incompatible job
| (skills and geography) to incompatible job, treated with
| utter contempt, and had to essentially beg for financial
| support to pay the rent.
|
| I'm a top 10% earner in the country, paid more than my fair
| share of social security for many years before that.
|
| It was a jarring experience seeing just how fine the line
| was between being on the right and wrong side of the
| system.
| jimbokun wrote:
| The evidence that it has a lot to do with social media is very
| strong. See Jonathan Haidt's work on the effects of personal
| phones and social media on young people's mental health.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Maybe social media catalyzes the problem but the point is
| that it's not the root cause, in the same way that opioids
| did not in of themselves cause the opioid epidemic.
| jimbokun wrote:
| You need to provide some empirical evidence demonstrating
| what is the true root cause of the increase in mental
| health problems then.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Probably the first step is to simply prove that mental
| health issues are also increasing among populations that
| don't use social media.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| Iron poisoning and lead deficiency. They got it the wrong
| way round. They incorrectly packed every major cognitive
| process into the neocortex, instead of assigning them
| each to the correct part. They got the idea of
| intelligence the wrong way round: The function of the
| neocortex is dimensionality reduction - the more powerful
| it is, the simpler everything is. You can't improve
| anything that easily. You actually broke it.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| I see it in analogy to sugar free sweeteners. There's some
| evidence that the physical experience of tasting sweetness is
| an essential phase in triggering the body's mechanisms to
| deal with large sugar intake. And that triggering that
| mechanism without providing any material for your body to
| consume can actually do damage to you as it searches for
| something to metabolize (this is just an analogy, feel free
| to prove me wrong).
|
| But just like that, online social interactions trigger some
| part of our internal mechanisms for reacting to actual
| community and belonging and healthy debate/conversation, but
| without the complete "meal" to digest that those things
| actually provide. Thereby triggering maladaptive behaviors
| and actually doing damage to the systems that regulate in
| person socializing.
|
| Probably over complicated but who among us, right?
| betaby wrote:
| > The evidence that it has a lot to do with social media is
| very strong.
|
| Once you ignore finance and lack of housing (and/or
| overpopulation), then yes.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Japan, the subject of tfa, has low housing costs and
| falling populations in most prefectures, and a stabilizing
| population in tokyo.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| > Unless you are able to stay within an extremely narrow range
| of behaviours (in terms of not being weird, basically speaking
| expected thinks in expected tone of voice and body language),
| nobody wants to associate with you.
|
| I'll agree on the lack of on-ramps but this is a pretty
| limiting view. There's all kinds of people, many who will share
| some of whatever you think your weirdness is. If you only want
| to associate with a certain slice of society, it is not so
| weird that only certain slices of society want to associate
| with you.
| twojobsoneboss wrote:
| How many of them are both geographically close enough and
| discoverable enough tho?
| nicbou wrote:
| Social capital follows the same progression as regular capital.
| If you already have a lot of friends and acquaintances, it's
| easy to make more. You either get invited to things, or you can
| organise something and know people will come.
|
| Loneliness is a big problem among recent immigrants. They all
| struggle to make friends at first, because they have no social
| capital to build upon. It's hard to break into established
| circles without being introduced by a member, and few people
| will show up to a stranger's party unless it's vetted by
| friends.
|
| There is such a thing as being socially destitute, and the
| recovery can be quite difficult, especially when you have other
| things going on in your life.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| Great reminder about immigration's social barriers.
|
| Church and work are the lowest friction social spaces that I
| can think of outside of wealth dimension.
|
| The problem still defaults to getting your foot in the door
| though. It requires a certain elevation of compassion and
| information in enough social circles for a single person to
| overcome cultural devides.
| tombert wrote:
| So about two years ago, we got my sister in law to move into
| our house, because she was graduating high school and we felt
| that there was more opportunity in NYC than in small-town-
| USA, at least for a younger person.
|
| We like having her around, she's very nice, but she's also
| had trouble finding new friends/social-circles here, and I
| kind of feel bad for dragging her up here as a result. I've
| always been someone who is happy enough alone, and I
| generally find a few coworkers at every job that I become
| friends with anyway, it's never been too hard for me, but I
| realize that I'm pretty weird. I feel like I yanked her away
| from a relatively comfortable and established social circle,
| brought her to a place where she knows nobody, and then just
| expected everything to be ok, which makes me feel like a
| dick.
|
| Doesn't help that I ended up yelling at her boyfriend a week
| ago, for valid-but-not-worth-yelling-about reasons, and now I
| think she's afraid to leave her bedroom, so I might have
| inadvertently given her hikikomori tendencies. I'm an asshole
| :/
|
| [1] usually the especially geeky people who will listen to me
| ramble about math.
| langsoul-com wrote:
| So, how will you redeem yourself for past behaviours?
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, I have no idea. I did apologize to the relevant
| people, and it was sincere but I have no idea if they
| believe me.
|
| ETA: I thought about doing something like buying my
| sister in law a new iPhone or something, but that of
| course feels pretty dirty, like I'm just buying
| forgiveness, and frankly it's kind of selfish on my end,
| trying to convert someone's sadness into something
| transactional because transactional things are much
| easier to deal with.
| langsoul-com wrote:
| It's a pretty difficult situation. What said has been
| said, the damage has been done and there's no going back.
|
| The circumstances also matter, a period of emotional
| vulnerability. No friends, out of comfort zone. The
| current result is a breakdown of trust and feeling
| uncomfortable around each other.
|
| How can one restore trust in such a situation? Would it
| even be better to say for them to go back to the small
| town? Being honest about how they seemed better mentally
| and spiritually there? Truly not an envious position.
| jemmyw wrote:
| Presumably she does have the ability to make a decision to
| move back though? I assume you've broached her options so
| she knows you're supportive? People need a lot of
| reassurance that it's ok to change course if something
| isn't working out.
| tombert wrote:
| We've tried to make it clear that she's welcome to move
| back if she wants, but that she's also welcome to stay
| here. Obviously we're not holding her hostage, and we'd
| help her move back (or anywhere else) if that's what she
| wants.
|
| I think me yelling at her boyfriend made her feel like
| she was unwelcome to do anything fun here.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| NYC is a tough place for a lot of people. When I moved here
| years ago I was lucky in that I had a lot of friends from
| college that were also in the city. It could be tough
| meeting people if you don't already have that or a third
| space you enjoy going to.
|
| Maybe find some classes she might be interested in? There's
| art stuff at pioneer works, art/computer stuff at school
| for poetic computation, tons of music/language/cooking
| lessons, etc. I've met lots of good friends in yoga,
| meditation, or Muay Thai spaces in nyc.
|
| I think you can't be rough on yourself about bringing her
| here though. It's a beautiful place to live if you can get
| over the beginning difficulty!
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| It isn't that you're failing, they are the hikikomoris, who
| want to be alone, and the very fact that somebody tries to
| socialoze with them annoys them. It's just the norm in the
| west, so that it's you who stands out, and suffers alone.
| softsound wrote:
| I would say it's not just behaviors but isolation causes stress
| on the body that increases more irrational behaviors and fears.
|
| So that can be crippling when trying to get back to a health
| state that can handle relationships again. On-ramps to help
| destress the environment would be helpful too. It's a challenge
| because we haven't really built many areas where people are
| welcome to just be, even with 3rd spaces that doesn't those
| people that are now rewired in their stress state. Some types
| of maybe community service (clean up, plantings, painting etc)
| or festivals events might be more helpful here as they can
| sometimes be lower stress, no required interactions etc. It's a
| tough thing especially as people have different reasons to
| isolate though poverty is likely one of the most major ones.
| chx wrote:
| It's 2024. Some of us are isolating because y'all refuse to
| mask up and we can't risk going anywhere.
|
| I have powered through by wearing a Cleanspace Halo but that
| precludes a real lot of places I used to go: cafes, cinemas,
| theatres...
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| > Some of us are isolating because y'all refuse to mask up
| and we can't risk going anywhere.
|
| disclaimer: you may have an autoimmune disease in which
| case your decision is reasonable.
|
| "y'all" is about 95%-99% of humanity right now. That
| percentage is not going to go down. Are you planning on
| staying inside for the rest of your life?
| neonate wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240525142056/https://www.cnn.c...
|
| https://archive.ph/lt04t
| grugagag wrote:
| Im curios if population desnsity may have any corelation to this
| or not. Im also thinking that the culture is shunning a certain
| personality type or people with some mental struggles that their
| only way to adapt is to withdraw.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| Population density is absolutely the driver of all of this. It
| increases competition, decreases personal space, and limits
| access to nature.
|
| Humans are social animals, but we aren't ants. We're not
| supposed to live in concrete jungles. As others have said,
| hikikomoris are one extreme of a continuum of negative outcomes
| caused by modern life. A low birthrate is another, which is
| correlated with urban living (there are other factors but this
| trend is unmistakable).
|
| I believe this is a natural outcome of very high population
| density, a negative feedback mechanism. When life becomes
| unbearable because of too many people, we withdraw and don't
| reproduce.
| nakedneuron wrote:
| "Universe 25 Mouse Experiment" by J. Calhoun shows this too.
|
| https://youtu.be/7ReBJfxHjFU
|
| Key sentences (1:30): "Young ones found themselves born in a
| world with far more mice than meaningful social roles. Males
| faced a lot of competitors to defend their territory against.
| Many found that so stressful they gave up. Normal discourse
| within the community broke down and with it the ability of mice
| to form social bonds."
|
| Very nicely illustrated.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| > He dare not come in company, for fear he should be misused,
| disgraced, overshoot himself in gesture or speeches, or be sick;
| he thinks every man observes him, aims at him derides him, owes
| hint malice.
|
| - Hippocrates?[1]
|
| [1]:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/AskLiteraryStudies/comments/68zg38/...
| blopker wrote:
| > He said he didn't respond to friends' messages or confide in
| anyone, feeling like nobody would understand anyway.
|
| I feel this. I think people would call me an introvert, but I'm
| probably just an over-thinker. It's casual conversation that
| seems to be exhausting (or uninteresting?) to me. Once I'm in a
| space where I can talk openly about more abstract topics I start
| to enjoy it. Getting there just often seems like too much work
| though.
|
| I tried therapy, meditation, 'wellness' apps. It all either felt
| too 'me' focused, or too detached. I like this site because
| people here seem to share what they are actually thinking, and
| are eloquent enough to capture interesting nuance. I don't always
| agree with it, but there's a level of authenticity to where I
| always learn something about the human condition. I wanted more
| of that.
|
| [This is kind of a plug, but whatever]
|
| I've spent the last few years in a deep-dive around why we seem
| to be collectively getting lonelier over time. I started a non-
| profit[0] to house this research. It's evolved into a platform
| where we host these support groups. Anyone can join, it's free,
| and as long as you stick to the community guidelines [1] anyone
| is welcome to join.
|
| For me, it's a place to get out of my head. To hear from real
| people who don't generally feel like their voice matters. I know
| from years in tech management that these are in fact the most
| interesting people to talk to.
|
| I've never really talked about Totem here because I think it
| might be too 'woo-woo' for this crowd, but if any of that landed
| for you, come check us out. If you don't like it, I'd love to
| know why. My personal email is in my profile.
|
| We are a non-profit, grant-funded, and open-source[2]
| organization. Feedback of any kind is welcome. My hope is to
| become something like a public utility for these spaces. We're
| also looking for engineers to help make an app out of this.
|
| [0]: https://www.totem.org [1]: https://www.totem.org/guidelines/
| [2]: https://github.com/totem-technologies/totem-server
| ItCouldBeWorse wrote:
| In my experience, life-experience increases the self-isolation.
| To the point that the old-folkshome are often halls of quiet, as
| everyone knows what horrible behavior perfectly normal people are
| capable and do not wish to interact. The guy who conspires
| against everyone at work, that manager that harvests others
| laurels, the longer you life, the more you understand how many
| will flip on you in this prisoner dilemma of a society. So they
| all barricade themselves in suburbia, sniper one another through
| HOA letters and claim to do it for the family, till its time to
| inherit and even the core family falls apart.
|
| Maybe some hiki is just more aware of what a lonely hellish life
| it is to be part of western society. And chooses to opt out. Lay
| flat. Assumes the party escort position. If he would at least
| consume drugs in there, but its just ramen and colored light.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| I hope they have a roof as well.
| im3w1l wrote:
| I think it may be due to some sort of "outcome compression". The
| life of working a bottom tier-job isn't materially better than a
| life of not working at all.
|
| One solution I've been thinking of is that maybe there needs to
| be some kind of state-provided minimum life. Almost like opt in
| communism.
|
| If you opt in then you get an 8h/day job automatically. Doesn't
| matter if you don't have any skills at all. The job will be
| guaranteed safe and non-humiliating (no sex work and if you are a
| vegetarian you don't have to work as a butcher etc). In exchange
| you get enough food, clothes and shelter to provide for yourself
| and children (assuming two incomes), entertainment (exchangable
| for cash equivalent), pension, health insurance, upskill
| opportunities, and some money on top. If you have negative net
| worth when enterring the program, your loans will gradually
| decrease (this could be done as some combination of the state
| paying them off for you and the loan giver being stiffed).
|
| You can opt out at any time you want.
| enchanted-gian wrote:
| something like universal basic work?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Or a federal jobs guarantee.
| im3w1l wrote:
| That might be a more palatable name for it. But a key feature
| of my proposal is that you actually get the goods you need
| rather than a lump some of money that may or may not be
| enough to buy them.
| sirianth wrote:
| into it.
| badpun wrote:
| > I think it may be due to some sort of "outcome compression".
| The life of working a bottom tier-job isn't materially better
| than a life of not working at all.
|
| The Hikkikomoris in Japan are all sustained by their parents.
| There's actually a growing concern there about the first
| generation of Hikkikomoris who are getting into their 50s
| already and their parents are starting to die, leaving them
| with no life skills and no source of income.
| fragmede wrote:
| opt-in communism is not the name I'd go with, but that's a lot
| more palatable than universal basic income.
|
| basic job guarantee? there's absolutely no shortage of work to
| be done, it's just a distribution problem, just like with food
| and money.
| motohagiography wrote:
| our baseline entertainments are better than the long tail of
| negative interactions one persists through to get to the great
| ones. in doomscrolling vs. disappointment, more people are
| picking doomscrolling.
|
| older than the examples, but I have done this. live alone on a
| large rural property, walden style, tech comp no family, have
| online interactions for remote work, old irc channels, take some
| sport, fitness, and music training as kind of weekly rhythm,
| family lives in other time zones. it was an ideal I thought I
| could achieve and then have it to share with others.
| relationships and friendships with any personal connection or
| intimacy still manage to fail, lots of reasons but I'm the
| constant. only way to sustain anything is to keep it at a polite
| distance with no expectations.
|
| issue i suspect is that meaning comes from the cohering and
| persistence of relationships, and without that persistent mutual
| understanding, meaning just seeps away and leaves a flat state of
| inertia. no advice other than to avoid this example. I sympathize
| with these young people, it's as though they don't see a present
| or future in which there is meaning for them, or in which they
| are a participant, and so they are just withdrawing and waiting
| for the next life instead of engaging this one. it's a unique and
| recently invented trap, avoid it as best you can.
| random9749832 wrote:
| When you are a teenager it is so easy to treat your time as if it
| is unlimited and start sinking 1000s of hours into some MMO or
| other games that before you know it you are in your 20s with no
| girlfriend, job, skill or self-confidence.
|
| Then you got Japanese entertainment like Hatsune Miku, idols and
| visual novels/anime that take advantage of lonely people with
| make-believe girlfriends.
| okdood64 wrote:
| Wait, what's wrong with Hatsune Miku? It has relatively broad
| appeal; performed at Coachella.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I think they're describing a stereotype that's a decade
| behind the times.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Nope, Hatsune Miku fans have been and will always be
| weeaboos, with all of the negative pejorative that word
| entails.
| robocat wrote:
| Why would you define Japanese culture by non-Japanese? I
| presume the majority of Miku fans are Japanese?
|
| > weeaboo
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywgxey/we-asked-j-
| culture-fa...
| sunaookami wrote:
| >with all of the negative pejorative that word entails
|
| Maybe try engaging with the people instead of lumping
| everyone together? ACG culture is not niche anymore.
| There are literally big concerts with Hatsune Miku all
| over the world.
| jwells89 wrote:
| It may not be accurate to paint large amounts of time spent
| MMOs and the like as a net negative, though. Speaking
| personally as someone who grew up in a tiny town where there's
| nothing for young people to do, WoW and the small nerdy circle
| of friends that came with it almost certainly kept me out of
| serious trouble in my teenage years and I think ultimately
| helped steer my trajectory in such a way that allowed for a
| more successful adulthood, even if it was a distraction from
| shorter term development.
|
| Of course this is something that will vary greatly between
| individuals, though. For some the depths of obsession are much
| more deep and destructive.
| card_zero wrote:
| Lots of visual novels/anime are _about_ shut-ins tremulously
| venturing out into the world and eventually making friends,
| usually after a lot of anxiety and misunderstanding. I think
| they 'd probably have an encouraging effect. I remember one
| where a woman confesses her condition to the person in the next
| apartment, and is advised to start small by visiting the
| convenience store. She manages it, and is incredibly proud of
| herself. Soon she is making lists of convenience stores, and
| has visited every convenience store in a five-mile radius! And
| now her problem is to diversify, but, you know, it's a start.
| random9749832 wrote:
| How encouraging is it really if there is _lots_ of VNs about
| shut-ins? Seems like just more escapism. How many does the
| average person play before they start going outside?
| card_zero wrote:
| I guess somewhere in the region of twenty, sixty-two, or
| maybe five? How could I possibly know the answer to that
| question? But it seems good if the stories you're consuming
| discuss your issues and inspire some cognition about your
| life.
| random9749832 wrote:
| It was rhetorical. Thought I made it clear with the
| preceding sentences.
| card_zero wrote:
| OK, so you were rhetorically saying "this can't often
| help", and I was rhetorically replying "maybe it
| sometimes does", but neither of us really knows, except I
| don't think they're _bad._
| hooverd wrote:
| Hey now, Vocaloid tuning takes effort and creativity!
| Borrible wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops
|
| "Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the
| cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet
| it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for
| ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical
| instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens,
| this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in
| the centre, by its side a reading-desk - that is all the
| furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of
| flesh - a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a
| fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs."
|
| ...
|
| "Vashanti's next move was to turn off the isolation switch, and
| all the accumulations of the last three minutes burst upon her.
| The room was filled with the noise of bells, and speaking-tubes.
| What was the new food like? Could she recommend it? Has she had
| any ideas lately? Might one tell her one's own ideas? Would she
| make an engagement to visit the public nurseries at an early
| date? - say this day month."
| forinti wrote:
| In South America it's become common to hear about adolescents and
| young people (mostly men) who spend all their time on video games
| and neither work nor study.
|
| I imagine this to be a very different phenomenon from Japan,
| because the culture is so different. In South America I think it
| is just general disengagement and disillusion with society and
| work environments in general. For most people life is having a
| bad job that pays very little and you have to spend hours on a
| crowded bus to get to a pretty horrible part of town. Living in
| the virtual world is much more comfortable and pleasant.
| Gigachad wrote:
| In Australia there is a pretty good welfare system, but they
| will basically give you a job to work while you keep applying
| for a real one. Usually it's something like sorting clothes in
| a charity store. I imagine it helps to keep people engaged in
| society somewhat.
| conwy wrote:
| Why to complain? Seems like heaven to me.
| 39896880 wrote:
| If this topic interests you, you might enjoy the book "Shutting
| Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation" by
| Michael Zielenziger:
| https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24765707M/Shutting_out_the_s...
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| I think I came pretty close to ending up like this kind of person
| a few times. Each time I got out it was by basically taking a
| hammer to my superego and doing some shit I used to consider
| "unforgivable", like being long term unemployed, or engaging in
| long term substance abuse, or moving countries basically on a
| whim.
|
| And, if that's what it takes, then I stand by it. If your life
| choices are "hikikomori" or "scumbag", you'd be an idiot to not
| choose scumbag. _Ideally_ you can get out of it through less
| destructive means, but let 's not pretend like closing yourself
| off entirely from the world is better than having a problematic
| but loving relationship with it in all its colors.
| GlibMonkeyDeath wrote:
| Hmm, no one is talking about the enabler for this - modern
| wealth. In the not so distant past, refusing to get up and face
| the world would result in starvation. Survival required people to
| be more social.
|
| As a parent of two adult children who are both working, I can't
| imagine enabling this (even though I could.) Sure, if my kids
| were truly disabled that would be another story, but it seems the
| hikikomori are just unhappy with the world. Enabling them to
| spend their lives doomscrolling or playing games is actively
| harmful.
| AIorNot wrote:
| I think the bigger enabler is the internet with its endless
| source of media
| GlibMonkeyDeath wrote:
| True, the internet is a cheap, endless, addictive supply of
| distraction that didn't exist until recently. But someone
| still has to provide it - a hikikomori staying in their room
| all day will not be able to pay the utility bill without an
| enabler...
| getpost wrote:
| Several adults in my friendship circle (retired or semi-retired)
| have evolved to spending nearly their entire waking lives online.
| They're able socialize normally, but they don't make the time to
| do that as often as in the past. This is tantamount to
| hikkormoridom.
|
| One friend went to visit two other friends who live together in
| New Mexico. He imagined they'd be out and about doing stuff
| during his visit, but the hosts remained preoccupied by their
| online activities. The visitor could have stayed home and texted.
| hypeatei wrote:
| I think what's missed in a lot of these discussions is your
| upbringing. Our society changed very quickly in the last 30 years
| and parents may not be providing the proper "foundation" for
| their children since they didn't grow up with all this stuff.
| Even if you had shitty parents before, you'd probably do alright
| since all of society in past times was based on in-person
| interactions and there wasn't endless media consumption at your
| fingertips.
|
| Personally, my parents were very immature, divorced, and
| generally didn't set me up for a healthy/balanced social life. I
| haven't completely given up; I work, maintain loose contact with
| a few friends, and basically just "doing my time" until I die.
| twojobsoneboss wrote:
| Damn that last sentence is depressing. What keeps you going?
| uwagar wrote:
| bartleby the scrivener felt like a hikikomori too. anybody felt
| so?
| tombert wrote:
| I have a job and I don't live alone, so I don't think I fall into
| the hikikomri definition in any real sense of the word, but I
| will say that remote work kind of made me adjacent to it. I sort
| of have a strong distaste to leave my house a lot of the time
| since 2020.
|
| I still _do_ leave my house, I have a job that requires me to be
| in the office for two days a week, but it 's something I dread
| every single week for a variety of reasons. There's something
| bizarrely comforting about just staying in your bedroom all day
| and pretending the rest of the world doesn't exist, and it's kind
| of addictive.
|
| Going outside and having a social life is usually _worth it_ ,
| but it's also kind of intimidating; I have to take a shower, get
| on the train with a bunch of strangers and not do anything too
| weird because of course I care a tiny bit what these strangers
| think about me for whatever reason, go into an office with people
| who are not-quite-strangers and work extra hard to not be too
| weird or say anything that might upset someone and keep my desk
| clean and have meetings with managers who could fire you
| immediately for any reason they want...it's all exhausting.
|
| I still try and make an effort to leave my house sometimes, but I
| kind of get why hikikomori do it.
| amonith wrote:
| Kind of same, except add a wife and a kid under way. There's
| plenty of us. Most people absolutely do not regularly "go out"
| if they work and have a family. We maintain the bare minimum
| social interaction because we have to but we'd happily skip it
| in a heartbeat.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Yeah. I'm similar too. I guess I was almost a hikikomori at one
| point. I was basically nocturnal and really afraid of social
| situations. But I was kinda forced into society by having to
| get a job and stuff; my parents weren't going to look after me.
|
| I haven't been single for very long at all over the past 15
| years, but I have very little social interaction. In the past I
| would force myself to go out to avoid being single and lonely.
| But every single time I've been in a relationship I shy away
| from this. I used to think I should force myself to do it, like
| how some people force themselves to exercise, but now I think
| why should I force myself to do something I don't want to do
| for my whole life? It's clear at this point it's part of my
| nature and won't change. Who am I trying to impress? I just
| want to be alone most of the time. It's as simple as that. I
| work from home 5 days a week and I've never been happier.
|
| It's not that I _hate_ every second of socialising but it 's
| just not how I want to spend my life. I often tell people it's
| like going into a sauna. Yeah, you'll go in and enjoy it, but
| the most important thing is getting out. Nobody wants to spend
| their whole life in a sauna.
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, I get it. I have friends, I like my friends (else I
| wouldn't be friends with them), and I like socializing with
| them, but it almost never even occurs to me to invite them
| out to do something. Stuff like that kind of makes me a
| little anxious.
|
| It's also gotten worse since I completely stopped drinking
| alcohol for the last few years. I wasn't a huge drinker
| anyway, but the liquid courage of even a tiny bit of alcohol
| did relieve that anxiety, and made it easier to do stuff with
| friends. Now that I don't drink alcohol I'm a little boring.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| > Going outside and having a social life is usually worth it
|
| Doubt.
|
| The biggest reason for me not to attend social events is that
| 99% of people are useless from my perspective and it's
| extremely rare for me to come across someone I actually enjoy
| spending time with.
| fuzztester wrote:
| Article has such a weird UI.
| amonith wrote:
| As a man with a full time job (remote), a wife and a kid under
| way I cannot really fathom having energy for more social
| activities (except meeting some friends or family at most once a
| month, reluctantly). Am I a hikikomori? I kind of relate to them.
| My wife also doesn't meet anyone else ever. Now that I think of
| it - neither do our parents or most people living in their
| village. It's all work + church at most.
|
| Maybe as humans we don't really need social interaction THAT
| much? I mean how do you explain people who seem to thrive living
| off-grid? We do need jobs and some basic communication skills for
| sure at least to maintain the current standard of living but
| maybe not for socializing. Some comments here kind of sound like
| "extrovert propaganda" - same people who cry for the return to
| office because they cannot imagine that people can live
| differently.
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