[HN Gopher] The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis...
___________________________________________________________________
The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of
community
Author : throwup238
Score : 715 points
Date : 2024-08-02 14:40 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.afterbabel.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.afterbabel.com)
| joe_the_user wrote:
| There are so many candidates for causes here. Thinking about and
| watching climate change can't be good for, say, a teenager
| imagining their future. Of course, that teenager is also watching
| the world not coming together to solve this problem so you could
| say the situation is connected to "loss of community" in a way.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I wonder if there's any useful parallels to children and
| teenagers growing up during the Cold War - that feels
| _somewhat_ analogous, at least in the terms of a looming threat
| that could be solved by more cooperation.
| realce wrote:
| I'm reminded of Hypernormalization's portrayal of teens in
| the USSR. It's not just the impending doom, it's the
| dissolution of facts and the implicit knowledge that your
| leaders are super-predators with goals antithesis to your
| well-being.
|
| I know it's hyperbole, but anywhere you look it feels like
| nobody is really invested in the future - that everyone's
| just trying to cash out ASAP and run away to the "safe place"
| of a gated community or something.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _it 's the dissolution of facts and the implicit
| knowledge that your leaders are super-predators with goals
| antithesis to your well-being._
|
| Boy, that sounds vaguely familiar.
| tivert wrote:
| > Thinking about and watching climate change can't be good for,
| say, a teenager imagining their future.
|
| That doesn't make sense. Kids in previous generations had to
| grow up with things like the omnipresent threat of nuclear
| annihilation, which had greatly faded into the background until
| very recently. Also (at least in the 80s) destruction of the
| environment was a an issue kids were made very aware of. At
| least when it comes to this teen mental health crisis, the 70s
| and 80s are often understood to have been far better.
|
| I think pointing to climate change as a cause of the teen
| mental health crisis is a good illustration of how issue
| activists can twist and distort perceptions.
| ericmay wrote:
| I don't disagree completely but I think one could argue that
| while we had that threat, the government and people were in
| agreement that it was a problem to be addressed.
|
| The equivalent today would probably be the United States
| having a few token nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union
| stockpiling nuclear weapons, and 30% of the country largely
| in charge denying that the Soviet Union even exists.
|
| The latter scenario is probably more hopeless and
| frustrating.
| treis wrote:
| There were plenty of people denying that the Soviets and
| communism at large was a threat.
| Miraste wrote:
| I don't think increasingly poor mental health has much to do
| with climate change, but the threat of nuclear war is a bad
| comparison. Bombs either fall or don't. Climate change is a
| creeping, progressive issue that's visibly worse every few
| years, and the government has effectively said that that
| there will be no intervention.
| tivert wrote:
| I don't think I can disagree strongly enough.
|
| Creeping changes are something you can adapt to and get
| used to. Nuclear war was (and still is to an extent) a
| looming boogeyman whose simultaneous distance and nearness,
| slowness and quickness makes it a _literal nightmare
| horror-show_. I mean, it 's a literal sword of Damocles.
|
| > and the government has effectively said that that there
| will be no intervention.
|
| The government said that about nuclear war, too. No one has
| ever seriously considered getting rid of the bombs.
| Miraste wrote:
| The average person isn't so blind they don't see the
| changes. The frog-boiling experiment is a myth. When
| there are state-spanning fires that darken the sky across
| the whole country every year, and hurricanes strong
| enough to shut down city infrastructure are a regular
| occurrence, and crops fail and lakes run dry and insects
| that were so thick twenty years ago you couldn't see
| through them can no longer be found, people notice. I
| think these things add up to much more psychological
| damage than the abstract fear of missiles, even if most
| don't connect it to climate change directly.
| maxdoop wrote:
| Majority of kids and teens do not care about that, as much as
| we'd assume. They are aware, but their day to day is what is
| important to them.
|
| Friends, relationships, drama -- they are kids.
| TylerE wrote:
| It's so much more than that. It's the continually
| enshittification of literally everything. It's a
| hypercapitalist hellscape.
| ponector wrote:
| That is not true. Many things are much better now than 20
| years ago.
|
| Not mentioning even poor western people are living life in
| better conditions than the richest people lived 300+ years
| ago.
| TylerE wrote:
| Things in isolation may be better, but the totality is far
| worse.
| ponector wrote:
| Rather opposite: thighs in isolation may be worse, but
| the totality is better than ever.
| ponector wrote:
| I would say the biggest cause is the endless feed of bad
| news(good news does not sell well) coupled with unrealistically
| high expectations social media gives to the people.
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| Im not a teenager, but really climate change is not _the_
| concern I have about world that makes me disilusioned about our
| society. Its more the world-scope corruption and everpresent
| dog-eat-dog mentality thats keeping me disinterested from
| improving anything.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Worrying about nuclear war was probably worse for mental health
| since you'd die quite quickly (if you were lucky), rather than
| some nebulous future were something's going to happen.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I'd rather be atomized by a nuke than die of heat-stroke in a
| wet bulb event after my air conditioning fails. I mean, I'd
| rather not die at all but given the options...
|
| I don't know about the kids these days; I'm not one of them,
| but I'm personally rather terrified of the future that we are
| careening into in regards to climate change.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Let me tell you about fall out and how the majority of
| people who die in a nuclear attack will feel the meat peel
| off their bones over two weeks of unimaginable agony with
| nothing that can be done for them.
| xhrpost wrote:
| I've personally noticed that my own value of autonomy has often
| contributed to a reduction in social activity and community
| integration. I used to be very selective of what I did with
| others. If I had an invite from friends and the activity didn't
| seem immediately interesting to me, I'd decline. I've since
| learned to say yes more (but not always) to invites and
| particularly consider ones that are more outside my comfort zone.
| This does however require a sacrifice of my individualism that is
| so heavily prized in western culture.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > If I had an invite from friends and the activity didn't seem
| immediately interesting to me, I'd decline.
|
| I have seen many (usually younger) people make this mistake.
| The mistake is thinking that the point of the activity is the
| activity itself. It isn't. The point is the genuine social
| engagement.
|
| (Edited to add:)
|
| > I've since learned to say yes more
|
| Years ago, I learned to change my default answer to things from
| "no" to "yes". It has been a key to my career success. But,
| more than that, I have lived a more interesting life than most
| as a result of that.
|
| Making "yes" your default instead of "no" increases the chances
| that something bad will happen, this is true, but it also
| increases the chances that something good will happen.
| Personally, I've found that on the whole, the riskier path is
| the better path. But I'm quite certain that not everyone will
| feel the same.
| sameoldtune wrote:
| Was just talking with a friend about this. The reason older
| people tend to play repetitive card games isn't because they
| are captivating, it is just a thin excuse to spend a few
| relaxing hours together.
|
| After a few months of hesitation I've gotten some of my
| friends into playing simple games like euchre and hearts and
| the quality of our time together has gone up significantly.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Reminds me of a scene from a favorite book-series, where
| the protagonist is visiting with a recently-
| retired/convalescent former boss.
|
| > "So," Illyan said at last. "What do a couple of retired
| officers and gentlemen do on a country weekend?"
|
| > [...] "Tradition is, you take the local beer from the
| village--there's a woman there who home-brews it,
| extraordinary stuff--and hang the bottles over the side of
| the boat to stay cold. When the beer gets too warm to
| drink, it's too hot to fish."
|
| > "What season is that?"
|
| > "Never, as far as I could tell."
|
| > "Let us by all means observe tradition," said Illyan
| gravely.
|
| -- _Memory_ by Lois McMaster Bujold
| SoftTalker wrote:
| IDK that hasn't been my experience. When I've gotten
| together with people to play euchre it's always people who
| are super competitive about it, get annoyed if you misplay
| a hand, and don't talk about anything except how good or
| bad their last hand was.
| 317070 wrote:
| Exactly! High quality social time, interaction with real
| other people. A great excuse to get together.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| Interestingly, I've gone the opposite way in my old age. I
| realize now how very short life is and how it's absolutely
| not worth wasting what little free time I have on activities
| that don't interest me.
|
| This goes even moreso in the workplace, where saying yes
| often leads you into taking on more responsibilities for no
| extra pay or recognition, unless you simultaneously try to
| wangle the added work into a schmoozing opportunity, which
| cuts even more into the time you could have been spending
| doing something you actually wanted to do if you'd said no.
| zamfi wrote:
| I suspect people come from different baselines here, which
| for some means saying "yes" more often, and for others
| saying "no".
|
| But I think the parent's point is to "say yes" more broadly
| than just when the activity interests you; e.g., if the
| people are good, interesting people and there will be
| interesting conversation, the activity may just be an
| excuse to get together, and not its focus -- and it's too
| easy to evaluate just the activity alone in response to an
| invitation.
| fire_lake wrote:
| This assumes you know what is worth doing in advance and I
| think we rarely do.
| kredd wrote:
| Good point. Everything boils down to moderation though,
| right? My usual attitude is, if I have nothing to do -- say
| yes. If I already have plans, invite my friends, but still
| do it even if they decline. It's just my simple way of
| signalling that I like my friends, and I am happy to spend
| time with them.
|
| Workplace is a different game though, as it will always
| depend on company, politics and your ambitions.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > it's absolutely not worth wasting what little free time I
| have on activities that don't interest me.
|
| Well, my perspective is that the point is spending valuable
| free time with my friends, which I value and is good for
| everybody. What we're spending that time _doing_ is a
| secondary consideration.
|
| > in the workplace, where saying yes often leads you into
| taking on more responsibilities for no extra pay or
| recognition
|
| Of course! By saying "I changed my default answer from 'no'
| to 'yes'", I don't mean I say yes to everything (and I
| wasn't talking primarily about in the workplace). I mean it
| in the form of a shift in mental stance.
|
| In the workplace, that means my default stance to something
| that involves additional work is "ok, how could I make that
| happen?". It may very well be that I can't. Or, more
| likely, it may be that I can if I deprioritize something
| else. The stance difference is that instead of just
| rejecting it automatically, I spend a moment weighing the
| factors and am able to present the tradeoffs involved so
| that we can make a better determination as to if it's a
| good idea or not.
| anon291 wrote:
| I mean, it depends where you start at. I always say yes,
| and that has led me to overscheduling, so I'm learning to
| say no; but my default is still yes. For me, it takes
| effort and discretion to say no. It sounds like for OP, it
| is the opposite.
| nradov wrote:
| There's also a weird mistake among young people in thinking
| of Republicans versus Democrats as enemies to be shunned
| rather than the "loyal opposition" who just happen to have a
| different perspective. Becoming a political tribalist cuts
| out about half your social opportunities.
| diputsmonro wrote:
| I respect that viewpoint and would be happy to adopt it in
| different times. But it's not as simple as political
| tribalism.
|
| For example - Several of my close friends are trans. For
| the last decade or so, Republicans have been viciously
| attacking trans people and several states are actively
| taking away their rights. The entire right wing media
| ecosystem uses every chance they can to demonize trans
| people in the new culture war.
|
| After years of these horrible attacks, we're seeing hate
| crimes against trans people rise. At least two of my
| friends have been assaulted in the last year or so.
|
| How can I fault them for having a gut reaction to not
| engage with Republicans? And if someone is still happy to
| call themselves a Republican after all this hate, I think
| that reflects something about their character. Obviously if
| I were to vote for Republicans who want to hurt my trans
| friends (which is almost all of them), I could never look
| them in the eyes again. Similarly, I can't have much
| respect for those who do. The life and safety of my friends
| and family is the most important thing to me.
|
| I am happy to engage in good faith dialogue with
| conservatives on these topics, but frankly, if I'm out and
| doing something I enjoy, I'd generally rather not spoil my
| time talking to someone who is statistically likely to be a
| hateful bigot.
| saulpw wrote:
| There are people who vote Republican in private, and they
| are different from those who loudly proclaim their
| Republicanism to everyone they encounter. It might be a
| shame that the private Republicans vote how they do, but
| that doesn't have to affect their ability to engage with
| trans people, or vice versa.
|
| So I would say the problem is not the ideological divide
| per se, but the 'identity' politics which makes both
| sides openly intolerable to each other. Of course, it's
| problematic because trans people can't keep private in
| their transness at a game of cards in the way that a
| radical socialist could. But in modern discourse, we're
| all encouraged to be loud and proud in order to advance
| our preferred politics, instead of quiet and demure in
| order to foster community that transcends politics.
| diputsmonro wrote:
| > ...but that doesn't have to affect their ability to
| engage with trans people, or vice versa.
|
| I disagree. How am I supposed to trust and feel safe
| around someone who knowingly voted for a politician who
| loudly campaigned on removing my rights and demonizing my
| very existence?
|
| A politician who supports an esoteric policy that
| disadvantages me in some way is entirely different than
| one who loudly and plainly says that I am less human and
| should have fewer rights than others. That rhetoric kills
| people. And it's not a deal-breaker for you? I cannot
| call such a person a friend. A vote for a Republican in
| modern times is an expression to trans people that their
| rights and safety are less important to you than whatever
| esoteric tax policy or whatever than won your vote.
|
| You can value that policy more than the rights of trans
| people if you want, that's your prerogative. But it
| _will_ make trans people and their allies trust you a lot
| less when they discover that you think their rights are
| just a bargaining chip to be traded away, and justifiably
| so. What other situations are you willing to throw them
| under the bus over, not just in politics, but in life? It
| 's not just a matter of pride or preference, but a matter
| of rights and safety.
| saulpw wrote:
| Bingo.
|
| I'm afraid, internet stranger, that you are part of the
| problem here. The original topic for this thread was
| about "community" and the mental health crisis. Community
| brings diverse people into contact with each other, which
| fosters communication and thus has the potential to heal
| division and increase empathy.
|
| Do you not realize that a lot of people think that
| abortion is literally murder? That voting for the pro-
| choice candidate will kill more babies each year than
| there are trans people? Regardless of how correct you
| think they are, they also think this is a matter of
| rights and safety, of life and death. It may be hard to
| understand, but they believe this as strongly and
| fervently as you believe what you do.
|
| Now you tell me, without some mechanism to bring people
| of such disparate views together, how does this resolve?
| An acrimonious dissolution into a red nation and a blue
| nation? A civil war in which we both try to snuff out
| opposing views with violence? (Wouldn't that be ironic?)
|
| At best, you want your side to win, in perpetuity, until
| the current generation of bad-ists has died off and your
| views prevail. But as we see, that doesn't happen. The
| "bad" views continue to be transmitted from generation to
| generation, fomented by political opportunists, and then
| we are at constant risk of "their side" prevailing in
| perpetuity. You think 2028 or 2032 will be any better?
|
| The only way people change their minds is by coming into
| contact with other people with different viewpoints over
| a long period of time. But that involves actual
| relationships, not beating someone into submission with
| well-reasoned arguments. (Think about how well that works
| on you!) And you can't have any kind of relationship if
| you dismiss a citizen out-of-hand because of how they
| _voted_.
|
| So you want to make a real difference? Stop being so loud
| about who you can't be friends with. Don't ask your co-
| workers about their politics; it's a waste of energy.
| Talk with your relatives about their actual problems, and
| steer the conversation away from political rhetoric.
| Pretend like you want to be a part of humanity instead of
| apart from it.
| muffinman26 wrote:
| I would certainly be a better person if I was the sort of
| saint that can talk to people who hate my guts that
| badly, but not all of us are saints.
|
| It's currently illegal for me to use a public bathroom in
| Florida. Or rather, technically I am legally required to
| use the women's bathroom, but since I have a significant
| beard it's quite likely the police would get called on me
| for attempting to do so.
|
| The next best solution would be protest. What I should
| really be doing is flying to Florida, using the women's
| bathroom as legally required, and making sure that as
| many journalists and lawyers as possible know about the
| arrest. I haven't quite worked up the courage yet,
| though. Plenty of trans people can and do flee the states
| that have successfully deprived them of bathroom access
| and healthcare because they don't have the energy to
| stand and fight. The descent to attempted murder has
| already happened, and it's not the trans people starting
| it.
|
| It's only a matter of time before so-called "pro-life"
| policies start killing people too. Hospitals in Idaho are
| flying women to other states because they're not legally
| allowed to end ectopic pregnancies - which are never
| viable and always result in the death of the mother if
| not terminated - until the woman is too close to death.
| (https://www.npr.org/2024/04/25/1246990306/more-
| emergency-fli...)
| diputsmonro wrote:
| I generally agree with your sentiment, and I do think
| open dialog is necessary to bridge the divide. It is way
| more easily said than done though, especially as
| political violence becomes more frequent.
|
| But I will say - it's pretty terrible that the people
| being attacked and vilified in this situation are also
| expected to "be the better person" and bridge the divide.
| Why is the onus on the oppressed to make peace with their
| oppressor? Bystanders and allies should call out the
| bullies for starting the fight rather than blaming the
| victim for not advocating for themselves politely enough.
|
| Sure, such misfortunes are a part of life and no progress
| is made without adversity. It is a pattern, though, that
| bystanders and allies should recognize and help reduce as
| much as possible.
|
| > Pretend like you want to be a part of humanity instead
| of apart from it.
|
| It's not me or my trans friends who want to live apart
| from humanity, trust me. We just want to live here, too -
| that's what the fight is about. It's the conservatives
| who are trying to push us out and remove us from society.
| The original sin of the fracture is theirs, not ours. If
| we live in a bubble, it's because they forced us into
| one, not because it's where we want to be.
| FrobeniusTwist wrote:
| This is very well put, and I agree with it unreservedly.
| But I do think that it's worth bearing in mind that
| "trans rights" is, for better or worse, an evolving
| concept in the culture at the moment. I grew up in the
| 70s and 80s, when people even in my "west coast liberal"
| milieu wouldn't bat an eye if someone called someone else
| a "fag." That's practically inconceivable now, as would
| be playing "smear the queer" as we did just about daily
| on the playground. It seems to me that we're now in the
| middle of a similar process with trans rights, and I do
| think there are issues -- in particular those regarding
| the rights of minors and their parents -- that many
| people are trying in good faith to work through, and
| about which there are bound to be disagreements. I don't
| mean to make excuses for the politicians you mention,
| most of whom I think are using this issue
| opportunistically and not in good faith. I just think
| "the rights of trans people" is not something that has a
| well defined meaning at this point.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >I disagree. How am I supposed to trust and feel safe
| around someone who knowingly voted for a politician who
| loudly campaigned on removing my rights and demonizing my
| very existence?
|
| Because almost all that "demonizing", et al. is just
| political marketing that will mean nothing if they get
| into office.
|
| I vote Republican because, as a Japanese-American, I
| sincerely can't stand the constant identity politics the
| Left/Democrats want to play on me. No, I'm not a "BIPOC",
| I'm an American. I'm a minority and an Asian as far as
| objective facts go, but I'm an American. At least the
| Right/Republicans seem more content to just call me an
| American and leave me alone.
|
| But at the end of the day, I have no issues mingling with
| Leftists/Democrats if they have the decency to leave
| their politics at the front doors of their houses just
| like I do my Right/Republican politics.
|
| Also, it's such a fucking stupid thing to not be friendly
| with each other just because of political differences.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| > How can I fault them for having a gut reaction to not
| engage with Republicans? And if someone is still happy to
| call themselves a Republican after all this hate, I think
| that reflects something about their character.
|
| Yes and sometimes it's worth peeling back the layers to
| find out why they are embodying that character. An
| offensive strategy creates a defensive response, nothing
| will ever get resolved that way; it only creates more
| hostility. Instead, I invest time into knowing what makes
| that person so stubbornly that way while re-asserting the
| fact that I do not hold the same values. In at least a
| few of those cases, those people turned around to become
| more open to the LGBTQ+ community despite still holding
| onto their Republican status. That's a win in my book
| because it's slowly getting them to think more
| independently.
|
| One of my friends was homophobic and would often make
| homophobic slurs "he's wearing f*g sandals". Instead of
| telling him he's a bad person or laugh along with him to
| avoid making things uncomfortable, I simply reiterate
| that I have no issues with people identifying as gay
| because what people do in their lives is none of my
| business. I let him know that I've made friends with gay
| men and never had one make me uncomfortable or feel like
| they overstepped boundaries; I know that idea is
| sometimes what makes straight men afraid of gay men. It
| took some time, but one day he finally let out that he
| had a weird uncle that would touch little boys and that's
| what he associates the LGBTQ+ community with. To which I
| gently pointed out why it's irrational. He's finally
| starting to come around now. Recently he'd been heard
| saying he's ok if his daughter ever turned out to be a
| lesbian. Small step in the right direction...
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| I mean, the label of the group is "conservative". Trans
| acceptance and the explosion in trans identifying
| individuals is objectively a change in the social order,
| which by definition will be opposed by those seeking to
| conserve the existing social order.
|
| Conservatives don't have a logical argument, and when you
| press them for one they typically generate something
| nonsensical on the fly, but really they don't need a
| logical argument for every specific issue. Their broad
| position is just "social change in general is risky and
| potentially bad, and what we had before was good enough".
|
| Do you think that is not a valid position to hold? Surely
| you can think of some social changes that would obviously
| lead to catastrophic effects, and given that we can't
| simulate a society we can't know in advance whether a
| particular "not obviously bad" change will have a
| negative impact later on.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Agree to disagree. It's pretty hard, and often unrewarding,
| to bridge such fundamental divides in values.
| nradov wrote:
| It's not hard, it just requires compartmentalization.
| This is a skill that can be learned like any other, and
| brings rewards in many aspects of life. Give it a try.
|
| And if you tune out the media and talk to ordinary
| Republicans and Democrats you'll usually find that there
| are few fundamental divides and that they mostly agree on
| the main points of political and economic philosophy.
| It's like Catholics and Protestants arguing over the fine
| points of Christian theology; those might seem important
| to fanatics but if you take a step back and look at the
| disputes from the perspective of, let's say, a Buddhist
| the differences seem trivial.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| From whose perspective is restricting women's access to
| healthcare trivial?
| schrectacular wrote:
| The question there is _which_woman_? The one going to get
| the procedure or the one on the sharp end of needle? So
| the question one might ask you is "from whose perspective
| is murder trivial?" Neither seem trivial to me, which is
| probably why it's such a contentious issue. Framing it
| like you do seems mostly just to dehumanize the other
| side. I'm probably with you in how we should treat this,
| but I also worry about the slippery slope problem - at
| what point is it no longer ok to abort? If six months,
| then why not six months and a day? Then why not a moment
| before birth? Then why not after birth? What is the
| magical moment where we say the "clump of cells" becomes
| "human"? Trying to answer that question feels like it
| unavoidably treads into religious grounds even for the
| non-religious.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Your questions are moot because functionally no one is at
| the end of a needle. No woman or doctor is going around
| willy nilly getting their jollies off killing viable
| fetuses.
|
| https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/raw-data-
| abor...
|
| > What is the magical moment where we say the "clump of
| cells" becomes "human"?
|
| When that human is outside of another human. Until then,
| women and doctors should have ZERO risk of being held
| liable for decisions about saving the pregnant woman's
| life that may have to be made in seconds in a rapidly
| changing medical situation.
|
| It is a complete non issue (that is until the Repubs
| started banning women's healthcare) burning untold
| resources of our nation's political time and money.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I'm glad you picked that example because it shows how the
| practical impact is not necessarily proportionate to the
| technical difference. Protestants and catholics _have
| tortured and killed each other_ over group membership.
| The fact that their theology may have been, all things
| considered, very close does not matter when you 're in
| real danger.
|
| Politics isn't a sport or hobby, it is actually life or
| death for some people. The risk is not distributed
| equally, and those most in danger are not obligated to
| pretend the stakes are equally low for them.
| NickC25 wrote:
| "There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of
| the republic into two great parties, each arranged under
| its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each
| other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as
| the greatest political evil under our Constitution."
|
| ~John Adams.
|
| I think he was right.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Usually, though, the activity at least needs to happen,
| otherwise the point of getting together goes out the window.
|
| I used to host both movie nights and poker nights at my house
| for (different groups of) friends. These both slowly fizzled
| out and largely stopped, because people lost interest in
| doing anything besides scrolling their phones. Like we'd make
| popcorn, turn the lights down, start the movie, and within 5
| minutes, everyone would be scrolling their Instagrams rather
| than watching the movie. Even before the opening credits were
| done, people were all tuned out. And these were movies
| everyone agreed to! Same for the card games. People would
| miss their turn and just not engage with the game because
| they were on their phones.
|
| Asking people to leave their phones at the door or turn them
| off would be socially unacceptable.
|
| So, yea, default to "yes" but please do actually show up and
| engage, too!
| bunderbunder wrote:
| If compromise with others is starting to be seen as an affront
| to one's own sense of identity, it's no wonder people are
| reporting such a poor sense of well-being nowadays.
|
| I grew up before the terminally online era, and I'm not sure we
| ever saw taking turns doing each other's favorite activity as a
| sacrifice of our individualism. It was just part of what it
| means to form meaningful social bonds with other people. Heck,
| most the time we agreed to spend time together _before_
| choosing an activity, because that 's where our priorities
| lied.
| michaelt wrote:
| I agree with you, but there was certainly some pressure in
| that direction.
|
| You were probably told that if all your friends were doing
| drugs (or jumping off a cliff) you should think for yourself.
|
| And you were probably told it was bad to be a sheep and just
| follow the crowd.
|
| And you probably saw some "real fans" of
| bands/comics/whatever being scornful towards "phoneys" who
| were just "pretending".
|
| And you might have been given the impression that picking up
| some new hobby because a cute member of the opposite sex is
| into it was somehow insincere or cringe-worthy.
|
| And if some of the activities were expensive by your family's
| standards, you might have been asked if you _really_ wanted
| to do whatever.
|
| I can imagine how a person who over-thought this sort of
| stuff could have ended up thinking they shouldn't, say, go to
| a baseball game if they don't like baseball.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| I think you just wrote down a post mortem of my life's
| failure
| astrodust wrote:
| Who knew utterly destroying cities and replacing them with gated
| communities with no accommodations for children whatsoever, and
| borderline criminalizing any activity which isn't closely
| supervised would have knock-on effects.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Probably doesn't help, but we have similar issues here in
| Germany, yet those things you mentioned aren't.
| lnsru wrote:
| Buying a home and getting grounded was the key for my
| community integration. It is very clear who are tenants and
| who are the owners. The owners came with cookies and Gluhwein
| to remove together snow from our street. Tenants didn't show
| up. They know and we know that they will be gone sooner or
| later. So why waste time with strangers?
|
| Edit: what I want to say is that mobility does not create
| community and stability. I see this in Germany often: school
| system does not create community either. A child must go
| through at least couple schools. So the friends get lost and
| strong friendship does not happen in the last school.
| grahamjameson wrote:
| Risk is an important ingredient to a fulfilling life. As we
| continue to de-risk our lives, we lose our ability to evaluate
| risk and aggressively criminalize what we do not understand
| because we perceive it to be dangerous.
|
| There are many types of activities which, while not
| criminalized yet, are "anti-social" in certain environments and
| can cost you your job.
| sleepingreset wrote:
| such as?
| grahamjameson wrote:
| Sex, sex-adjacent activities, extreme sports, van life /
| nomadic lifestyle are examples for which I know people who
| have either lost a job or experienced retaliation in a
| professional environment.
|
| They are also all experiencing pressure to be criminalized
| and in certain places are already criminalized or otherwise
| regulated in a way that is harmful to individual liberty
| for a perceived gain in safety.
|
| Lastly, I'll add that cost of insurance, general ability to
| be insured, and the litigious nature of the USA apply a
| great deal of pressure to limit our ability to enrich our
| lives with risk.
| weberer wrote:
| What percentage of the population do you think lives in a gated
| community? I know its common in some areas with particularly
| high amounts of break ins like South Africa and Brazil, but
| they're fairly rare in the USA.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They've also existed for far longer than the issues under
| discussion. The very wealthy have always tended to isolate
| amongst themselves.
| jimbokun wrote:
| OK, so not "gated community" but "cul-de-sac suburb".
| Argument still holds.
| llm_trw wrote:
| The majority of people lived in villages until 1920 in the US.
|
| US birth rates started dropping off not a generation later.
| gmoot wrote:
| I mean, there was also a depression, a world war, and the
| increasing availability of birth control.
|
| That factoid doesn't mean much on its own.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Birth rates did not fall below replacement until 1972.
|
| Blaming the depression and word war is a bit of a stretch.
| amelius wrote:
| Not everything can/should be solved with technology, but would it
| be possible to get that sense of community back using e.g. VR and
| perhaps AI?
|
| (Research might also be useful for space missions)
| AlphaEsponjosus wrote:
| Why? You want to solve the problems caused by the lack of
| social integration-interaction by not socializing using VR. The
| problem with VR, videochat, social networks,etc., is that you
| are not there, you do not face the challenges nor the
| consequences of social activities. People gets anxious just
| thinking about that sonthey never leave their comfort zone,
| thus causing more issues on the individuals and,obviously in
| the society.
|
| Society and social system are not working ideally, in fact is
| far from acceptable levels if you ask me. But the solution is
| not ostracism disguised as virtual interaction.
| amelius wrote:
| Why -> because it's now a chicken and egg problem. It's hard
| to find a sense of community when everybody is looking at
| their smartphones all the time.
| AlphaEsponjosus wrote:
| You are right. The technology is part of the problem. The
| article points how social media xan not solve the problem.
| In my opinion social media is the biggest problem regarding
| this topic. Socialazing is a core necesity in human nature,
| denying this and other biological traits is what causes
| discomfort on individuals. Technology is only increassing
| the issue, not because technology is inherently bad or
| evil, but cause technology is developed to pursue wealt and
| power, bot in behalf of society.
| ryu2k2 wrote:
| Sounds like you're proposing the Matrix. No thanks.
| amelius wrote:
| This is not new. People are getting cured from anxiety
| disorders using VR all the time. E.g. arachnophobia, fear of
| flying.
| amelius wrote:
| How do astronauts train for this when preparing for long missions
| without much company?
| sneed_chucker wrote:
| Astronauts are exceptional people
| tcoff91 wrote:
| I think training can only go so far. You need to have the right
| personality type to handle being an astronaut.
| tokai wrote:
| Astronauts have a ton of community if you go by the list in the
| article. It's not about company.
| et-al wrote:
| Astronauts are older than the teens mentioned in the article, a
| very selective sample (read _We Seven_ if you haven 't), and
| still train with a team and with a clear purpose of their
| goals.
| weberer wrote:
| I've noticed an uptick recently of large brands to start
| referring to themselves as "The [Brand] Community". The author
| pointed out Youtube here (who in an Orwellian manner calls their
| ToS "community guidelines") but I've also seen it with many other
| multi-million dollar companies such as Reddit, Twitter, etc.
| Young people today are reaching out for real support structures,
| but only receiving manipulation from corporations that want them
| to watch ads, while occasionally arguing with pseudo-anonymous
| internet strangers.
| piva00 wrote:
| > while occasionally arguing with pseudo-anonymous internet
| strangers.
|
| Even this has been eroding, the amount of comments made by bots
| I see across reddit/Twitter has increased exponentially since
| the 2010s. It only got worse after LLMs.
| jimmy1337 wrote:
| I made an 'Ask HN' yesterday about the dire state of bots on
| the web and the lack of conversation around it.
|
| After a few mins, with 4 upvotes and one user reply it was
| [flagged] and I couldn't even reply to the person.
|
| So I am left with the impression we aren't allowed to discuss
| bots on the web on this platform.
|
| Edit: This comment not appearing for others?
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| > I've noticed an uptick recently of large brands to start
| referring to themselves as "The [Brand] Community"
|
| I don't think I've ever seen that. What I have seen is non-
| sponsored people referring to "the [brand] community" or "the
| [product] community" as a shorthand way of saying they discuss
| brand or product with other people with that shared interest on
| a dedicated Discord server or forum. The Sega community, the
| Final Fantasy community, etc.
| ChartMaster22 wrote:
| The official forum for SAP users is called the "SAP
| Community"[0]. I've seen it in other corporate places too,
| but this was the first occurrence which came to mind.
|
| [0] https://community.sap.com/
| c-fe wrote:
| and the apple support community:
| https://discussions.apple.com/welcome
| selimthegrim wrote:
| The "ASML Talent Community"
| navigate8310 wrote:
| https://community.n8n.io/
|
| There are many more like this. In fact, it's almost an
| unwritten rule to create a 'community.domain.tld' with
| Discourse for a self-hosted projects.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Frankly, same thing with a lot of OSS projects. Everything is a
| "community," joyously writing code together and following
| community guidelines while singing and dancing! It's grotesque.
| pirates wrote:
| I agree, it rubs me the wrong way that simply enjoying or
| consuming a particular thing or doing certain activities
| seems to automatically make you part of the "community" of
| that thing. Or maybe this isn't really true and is just what
| I perceive.
|
| But I don't like feeling like I am being spoken for, or have
| it automatically assumed that everyone partaking in something
| all share a set of values or community-wide beliefs.
| create-account wrote:
| Remember what we will regret on our deathbeds: "I wish I had
| spent more time arguing with random people on the Internet"
| thom wrote:
| Time was, we appreciated great rhetoric.
| mym1990 wrote:
| This is another form of locking in the customer, because if at
| any point a customer wants to distance themselves from the
| brand, they are always distancing themselves from the
| "community", which is harder to do than leaving a brand.
| pests wrote:
| If you can make a product part of someone's identity then
| you've won.
|
| Reminds me of back when people would slap Apple logos on non-
| Apple work devices.
| pradn wrote:
| The words "friend" (everyone knows how shallow a "Facebook
| friend" is), "share" ("ride-sharing" instead of calling a
| taxi), and "community" (is the entire customer base of Facebook
| really a community?) have been shorn of their sociable, human
| meanings. It's as if a corporation were mining the good will
| humans have accreted to those words over millenia.
|
| Sometimes there are communities in these spaces - NUMTOTs or
| small Discord servers. Other times its just marketing foo foo.
| vinnski wrote:
| Seems like almost every community nowadays has to have their
| own Discord server or private Facebook group. Often a deal-
| breaker for the more privacy-conscious people, unfortunately
| DavidPiper wrote:
| My initial reaction to your comment was that privacy-
| consciousness has always been a potential deal-breaker for
| social engagement - which I think is true, building
| connection is an inherently vulnerable activity - but it's
| interesting how the word "privacy" means something very
| different on- and off-line.
|
| We haven't ever lived in a world where not being "privacy-
| conscious" in a social setting could mean any of the
| following if that privacy is compromised by a corporation:
|
| - Someone constructed a whole fake online presence using my
| data
|
| - Someone used generative AI to make fake photos and videos
| of me doing things
|
| - Someone has access to my bank accounts and all of my
| personal communications
|
| - ...
|
| We used to think of privacy as something that exists
| between people. Now we think of it as something that is
| mediated by corporations.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > We used to think of privacy as something that exists
| between people. Now we think of it as something that is
| mediated by corporations.
|
| I have never heard of the second interpretation. The
| second sentence should in my opinion rather be: "Now we
| think of it as something that is violated by
| corporations."
| Aeolun wrote:
| > Often a deal-breaker for the more privacy-conscious
| people, unfortunately
|
| You can't have conversation in your community without them
| being public either. Saying anything in discord is just as
| public as on the middle of a busy shopping street.
| cpburns2009 wrote:
| Typically in public you don't have an irrevocable
| transcript of every word spoken. The predominace of
| electric communication and its natural surveillance has
| eliminated the ephemeral nature of conversation.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| I'm a contractor working on the GTM side of a well a
| respected company with a very active slack public
| community. And let's just say all the activity in slack is
| piped into their data lake.
| tempodox wrote:
| You're confusing facebook's customers with their users.
| Facebook's customers are companies that want to advertise.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| So many SasS companies have their own slack and discord
| communities that I'm working on a project to automatically
| scrape the channel where people can share job postings.
|
| A couple of them let me install my own apps and use the API,
| which is disturbing, but most either don't or use the free
| Slack tier and have maxed out the number of apps that can be
| installed.
| theF00l wrote:
| And on the employee side: "family", "tribe"
| chasebank wrote:
| The cause is having a tiny computer in your hand all day. It's so
| glaringly obvious.
| squigz wrote:
| That doesn't seem very obvious to me. Would you mind
| elaborating?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It tracks very well with the increase in mental health issues
| among young people.
|
| Mobile tech and social media will be seen as the equivalent
| of tobacco companies in the history books of the 22nd
| century.
| abcrawf wrote:
| Drownings and ice cream sales also track nicely, but it
| doesn't mean it's the ice cream that's causing the
| drownings.
| aklein wrote:
| Right, you need a mechanism. (Ice cream makes you fat,
| fat people can't swim, ergo drownings). Haight clearly
| outlines the mechanisms by which social media and
| smartphones have detrimental effects on mental health,
| see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l2TdinWoM8
| squigz wrote:
| But ice cream doesn't make you fat. Eating too much ice
| cream makes you fat.
| NickC25 wrote:
| And if you swim enough, you can't get fat no matter how
| much ice cream you eat. Ever seen the diet Phelps was on?
| Guy ate like crap, has over 20 gold medals to his name.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| That's not why ice cream sales are correlated with
| drowning. Ice cream sales generally peak in the summer,
| and that's also when most people swim.
|
| But if drownings had suddenly increased when ice cream
| was first introduced, that's a stronger suggestion that
| there's a relationship.
|
| Kids' mental health went off a cliff at the same time
| that they started getting smartphones and social media.
|
| Something else _could_ be the cause, but we all know it
| 's not, even if we earn our living from it.
| nequo wrote:
| Apps on your tiny computer are engineered to get you hooked.
| The time that you spend on it is time that you cannot spend
| making and cultivating face-to-face friendships.
|
| As far as I can tell, friendships are necessary for mental
| health. So those apps have a negative effect on your mental
| health.
|
| In principle, they could also have a positive effect that
| counterbalances the negative. But in my personal experience,
| that's dubious.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I was in middle school when the iPhone first became popular
| among teens. Within a couple of months, everything changed.
| Kids talked a lot less on the bus, at lunch, etc. If you
| didn't have an iPhone, your friends probably did, so same
| issue. It felt a whole lot worse and stayed that way. I ended
| up becoming closer with my few friends who didn't have phones
| and further from my old best friends, just because of who was
| more willing to hang out together.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Indeed. The old trope of the asocial "computer nerd" too
| focused on the machine to talk to girls.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| The trope is real, and what we are experiencing here is
| simply the "nerdification" of mainstream society. Everyone is
| more screen addicted in 2024 than even the most nerdy person
| was circa 2008.
|
| I honestly love it though. Sure, there is a "dystopian" bent
| to the idea of most people zombifying themselves in public -
| but all a westerner needs to do is spend even a week in a
| very communal society to realize that the radical
| individualistic society we have cultivated is actually pretty
| awesome. I LOVE the idea that I can be who I want to be and
| genuinely not care about what some "community" of people
| think of it. Everyone pretending that no one around them
| exists and being screenlocked means I can pick my nose in
| public, or do any number of even more weird shit without
| being noticed. Compare this to japan where eating a burger
| without covering your mouth as a woman is a social death
| sentence.
|
| Western individualism (and east asian hermitism and maybe
| eastern european depressive paranoia) are by far the most
| productive social situations for tech development, as we now
| have far more "tech autistic" types who tend to be the
| primary drivers of code innovation. Is it any surprise that
| there is basically consensus that the best "hardcore" games
| tend to come from either the west (usually the USA or
| northern europe), a post soviet state, or japan.
|
| Everyone in this thread bemoans the things that cause the
| youth mental health crisis, but honestly, I wouldn't go back
| and I think that higher youth mental health rates are simply
| worth it. Actual "nerds" in 2024 are less likely to be
| bullied than in the eras of good youth mental health, and the
| average becky or chad can learn to deal with the same things
| that the nerds of 2009 learned to deal with a fortnight ago.
| cvoss wrote:
| Is that the cause of the loss of community? Or is that a coping
| mechanism for the loss of community? Or a combination?
|
| I agree it's related. But that it's glaringly obviously the
| cause? I'd need to hear more.
| recursive wrote:
| Seems to be the cause to me. Community is the natural result
| of putting a group of people together. The dopamine drip
| disrupts that.
| volkk wrote:
| i would guess one effects the other in a negative (positive?)
| feedback loop. access to your phone & 24/7 easy access to
| social media started to erode communities and now people just
| rely on their phones because they have zero community around.
| there is nothing interesting to look to if you look away from
| your phone because the rest of the people around you are on
| their phones. EVERYBODY is glued to their devices every
| second of the day. waiting in a line for a coffee? have to
| stare at instagram stories. a random boring moment where you
| are allowed to be alone with your thoughts and maybe observe
| other people around you and get to start talking to someone?
| why? you have your twitter feed full of rage & engagement
| bait.
|
| the only thing these days that actually can foster any
| community is playing sports. thank god we at least still have
| that. can't exactly pull your phone out in the middle of a
| basketball or volleyball game.
| zarzavat wrote:
| Positive feedback loop. Negative feedback loop is like
| homeostasis or a PID controller.
| volkk wrote:
| had a feeling. thanks
| masklinn wrote:
| The issue started long before that, it's not like mental health
| was great in the 90s.
|
| Loss of third places, TV, necessity to move around for studies
| then jobs (and moving your kids along if / when you got them),
| increased cost of living, ... are all massive contributing
| factors.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| > Loss of third places
|
| People keep bringing up the loss of third places.
|
| Every time I look into it I come to the conclusion that there
| are more third places now than there has ever been in the
| history of humanity.
|
| In the 80s and 90s there were no skate parks, there are now
| skate parks.
|
| There are more bike and walking trails.
|
| There are more libraries.
|
| There are more community centers.
|
| My local neighborhood is breaking ground on a new fire
| station in the fall, it will include a community center where
| in the past it was just a garage and bunk house for
| firefighters-- but give me any county in the entire country
| and I'll find a 40 year history of building things for public
| use. I just looked up the small (28k), impoverished
| ($45k/house), rural county in Indiana where my now-deceased
| grandparents lived and according to their charmingly retro
| county government website over the last 20 or so years
| they've built trails, parks, playgrounds, a new library,
| and... a skate park.
|
| People are not lonely because there are fewer third places.
|
| People are lonely because they're not going to the third
| places.
| hitsurume wrote:
| I see the opposite as someone born and living in San
| Francisco. Growing up in the city, we had arcades, bowling
| alleys, mini golf, Lan Party Cafe's, etc.
|
| Then the city got more and more expensive, and businesses
| couldn't afford the rent / leases in the city anymore.
|
| Affordable recreation isn't available in SF and that leads
| me to just stay at home as an adult instead of going out
| and doing something that doesn't involve drinking.
| hibikir wrote:
| And yet this loss of community has different levels across the
| world, and yet in all of those countries teenagers still have
| tiny computers in their hand all day.
|
| I spent part of the summer in Spain, and you'd see teenagers
| hanging out in the park, or at the beach huddled together while
| looking at their own tiny computers.
| veddox wrote:
| While I agree with your scepticism of our smart phone use, this
| comment doesn't do the article justice. (The author addresses
| that point and explains why he thinks that smart phone use,
| while a problem, is not the root cause.)
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| The further upstream of that is large super structures of human
| social web cannot exist. There is no monoculture anymore and that
| has both pros and cons.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| That's interesting and I hadn't really considered that for most
| of history, children grew up in a pretty un-diverse
| environment. You lived with your tribe and your extended family
| for the most part. In cities, ethnic and religious groups
| tended to self-segregate. The social rules were clear, and
| there was a lot less room for doubt about who you were and
| where you fit in.
| brightball wrote:
| I have to assume that people leaving their home towns to work
| elsewhere is a huge driving factor of all of this.
| freshlee wrote:
| I think it's not only this, but that the process repeats over
| and over. I had very deep relationships in high school, forged
| new ones in college, then both of those ended. I moved to a new
| city where I started a new job with a bunch of other people in
| their mid-20's, and we formed yet another community. Then the
| company laid off or required everyone to move to a new city.
| New job, same story again. I still start up new friendships at
| work, but it feels less and less worth it each time and so I
| try a little less hard year by year, because you're working
| against impersonal forces that will upend your social
| structures on a whim, and it feels like a treadmill to try to
| keep them intact.
| veddox wrote:
| I've begun thinking in that direction too, after seeing how my
| peers have been moving all over the country in the last few
| years - first for uni, then for a job, then another job... I'm
| one of the movers myself, and I know why I moved, but I feel
| the cost of lost relationships quite heavily.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| That has only been declining while youth mental health got
| worse.
| brightball wrote:
| It has been with remote work but think of how much break down
| is already in place.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I recently moved. Most of my new friends aren't from here, they
| came here for work, but they consider it their own city now and
| are part of the community.
|
| It's different in a "commuter city" like San Francisco. That
| means the majority of people don't even live there during the
| day, and even their job might be temporary. Unfortunately most
| are there to make money, not friends.
| brightball wrote:
| Yep, exactly. And if your families aren't around, that will
| have an impact the moment you decide to have kids. Available
| grandparents make everything about raising children easier,
| especially for working parents.
|
| And then the grandparents will connect the kids with their
| friends, their friends families and grand kids too. And so
| on.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I see more and more old grandparents that can't handle
| little kids and are liabilities themselves, which is just
| an unavoidable fact of moving childbearing ages from 20s to
| 30s.
| fragmede wrote:
| that was definitely true pre-covid but is it still true?
| dnissley wrote:
| Americans move less than they ever have these days:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/us/american-workers-movin...
| randomdata wrote:
| Few, _and increasingly fewer_ , move far from where they were
| born.
|
| Why do the outliers who do move around become a huge driving
| factor for the larger population here?
|
| Why does the decline in the driving force bring an apparent
| increase in the effects?
| frithsun wrote:
| We lack the moral courage to be honest about why real world
| community disintegrated and are therefore doomed to suffer these
| pedantic lectures that miss the point and point in random
| directions.
| chemeril wrote:
| Notably absent from your comment is what you honestly think
| caused the disintegration of real-world community. I'd posit
| that it's an expected systemic outcome of unbounded and
| undirected capitalism.
| aklein wrote:
| You are implying the author(s) are disingenuous or are drawing
| the wrong conclusions. What makes you think this?
| recursive wrote:
| Do you also lack the courage? If not, could you be honest?
| Curious what you mean.
| luzojeda wrote:
| Seems like you lack the moral courage as well since you seem to
| be implying something but are not brave enough to explicitly
| say it.
| frithsun wrote:
| Immigration and assimilation policies in the west have been too
| rapid, faster than even those who think they're open minded can
| adapt to new people.
|
| The result is a pervasive societal siege mentality with
| everybody retreating into their homes. The Starbucks data on
| where "third places" are thriving or dying aligns very well
| with this model.
|
| The answer is as obvious as it is unwelcome, which is it slow
| down a bit and give people and families time to adapt to their
| strange new neighbors and neighborhoods.
| luzojeda wrote:
| Didn't read but will that article since it sounds
| interesting. But does Starbucks mention their potential to be
| a third place? Because as long as you have to pay for
| something to stay a certain amount of time it will never be a
| third place. It is, in my experience, a more relaxed place
| regarding the relationship consumed/time in the place
| compared to other cafes but that is not all that makes a
| third place.
|
| I mean, I would never consider just go to a Starbucks and
| expect to meet people without having to pay for something
| constantcrying wrote:
| No, absolutely not. Young people are more connected than they
| have ever been before, just now they are connected in some of the
| most unhealthy and detrimental manners possible. Instead of
| connecting with friends in real life, they form communities on
| social media, in discord channels, in video games, etc. The
| consequences are just barely starting to show themselves.
|
| As for the why, I think they are many reasons. The Internet is
| obviously an attractive and addictive place, but cities have
| gotten so much worse as well. Where I live the playgrounds I used
| to go to as a child are now full of drug dealers...
| raziel2p wrote:
| The article clearly states that the connections you mention
| don't make up a community:
|
| > Many praise the myriad benefits that smartphones and social
| media are said to bring; online connection can give a person a
| sense of "community," we are told. We can find new friends,
| discover just about any idea imaginable, network, and even date
| through our phones. We can video chat with hundreds of people
| simultaneously from far-flung locations. We can pursue learning
| largely untethered from any physical space. Based on all of
| this, it would be easy to assume that place doesn't matter.
|
| > I disagree. Physical place actually matters far more than we
| realize, especially as our lives become ever more placeless.
| constantcrying wrote:
| The article indeed makes that argument. But from a functional
| perspective it just isn't true, virtual communities have
| replaced physical ones.
|
| I also think it sells short the attractiveness of these
| digital communities. A digital community can be something
| where you spend many hours a day, with the same people, where
| the connections are just as important as your connections in
| real life. It isn't just dating apps, Facebook and YouTube.
|
| Of course what the article wants to say that they are
| different, which is obviously true and I do absolutely agree
| that digital communities can be very detrimental and aren't a
| replacement with the necessary benefits.
| carapace wrote:
| > the attractiveness of these digital communities
|
| > where the connections are just as important as your
| connections in real life
|
| That's the problem statement: these degenerate images of
| real communities are attractive and they become important
| despite being incomplete and ultimately crippling.
|
| It's exactly analogous to junk food which is attractive and
| which becomes "important" to the people addicted to it even
| as it slowly destroys their health.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| The people selling this idea of "online community" figured
| out that if they become the middleman for all of our personal
| interactions that they can charge us for each one or charge
| someone else for access to us. One of the reasons Instagram
| is so horrifying to me is that it takes something like
| "personal messages" and puts Instagram front and center in
| controlling whose message you see and at what time, and they
| use that to foster fake relationships with salespeople making
| marketing videos in their kitchens.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I remember the day in high school I saw a guy, who used to
| bully me and call me a nerd, playing multiplayer Minecraft on
| his laptop instead of talking to his buddies. Made me realize
| the bullies were right about one thing.
| imiric wrote:
| > The Internet is obviously an attractive and addictive place,
| but cities have gotten so much worse as well. Where I live the
| playgrounds I used to go to as a child are now full of drug
| dealers...
|
| Oh, c'mon. The world didn't get scarier, and force us to
| retreat to the comforts of online interaction. If anything,
| most of the world is a safer place since the 1990s[1], which
| curiously coincides with the rise of the internet.
|
| This is a complex topic that researchers can answer better. But
| personally, I think that the pseudosocial interaction where we
| can shout our thoughts into the ether without any real risk of
| consequence compared to meatspace is appealing enough for many
| people that it covers most of their needs for social activity.
| It's also the ideal safe haven for the hypersensitive newer
| generations.
|
| I think the pendulum will swing back at some point, and we'll
| start rejecting online activities. But then again, we'll also
| continue to merge with technology, so all of this could be the
| tipping point, and we have to accept it as the new normal.
|
| In any case, what is certain is that Big Tech needs to be
| heavily regulated, just as other Big industries were before it.
| The psychological manipulation and social experiments need to
| stop, and we need to better understand the effects all this
| groundbreaking technology has on our wellbeing and society as a
| whole. It's not like the future of our civilization depends on
| it, or anything...
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_drop
| constantcrying wrote:
| >Oh, c'mon. The world didn't get scarier, and force us to
| retreat to the comforts of online interaction. If anything,
| most of the world is a safer place since the 1990s[1], which
| curiously coincides with the rise of the internet.
|
| The statistics of crime nationally or globally are totally
| irrelevant to my personal experience of my surroundings.
| Definitely places which I visited as a child I would avoid
| today.
|
| I would also like to point out that an increase in crime can
| easily lead to a statistical decrease in reported crime. If
| you flat out ignore the perception of safety you easily fall
| prey to reporting bias.
|
| I am also not saying it is the only thing, definitely the
| mere existence of digital places has changed in the last
| decades.
| fergonco wrote:
| Just a data point: In Valencia, Spain, in the 80s, children
| played in the street with no much supervision from parents.
| Occasionally we would stop the football match to let a car drive
| by. Forgetting your keys at home was no issue, you could get a
| glass of milk in ten different places while you wait for other
| (more attentive) members of your family.
|
| Nowadays there is hardly a place to park your car. Parents don't
| allow kids to play in the street. And the ones that interact with
| each other are the ones who lived there in that period. It's very
| difficult for newcomers to integrate.
|
| What are the reasons for this? My take: cars and lack of stay at
| home mums. They built the social network at that time. They took
| care of each other children, the were there to help each other.
| Nowadays households have both adults working (so nobody even asks
| for salt to the neighbor, all order a pizza instead).
| gmoot wrote:
| We tried to counteract this with our own children by giving
| them a lot of freedom.
|
| But these things are very network dependent. Yes we let our
| kids play in the street and bike around the neighborhood, but
| it is boring because there are not any other kids to play with,
| so they don't do it much.
| cen4 wrote:
| We have 8 billion people on the planet. And there is no plan
| what so ever to take care of even half of them. It doesn't
| matter if we see slowing population growth. With globalization
| there is no reason to be sitting in the same spot. People are
| on the move.
| aantix wrote:
| There's now an intolerance to letting kids play freely.
|
| And if you do let your kids play freely, and something happens
| - they get hurt, they break something, they're being loud,
| there's the attitude from others of "why aren't you watching
| your f*ing kid?".
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >> There's now an intolerance to letting kids play freely.
|
| Worth noting that streets are a lot more dangerous now due to
| the large number of huge trucks that everyone drives. If your
| kid gets hit by one of them while playing, chances are they
| won't survive. Hell, the driver may not even notice.
| bitcoinmoney wrote:
| Same in Philippines in the 90s. We'd be out all day and come
| back at dinner time. There was no pedo. I think kidnapping and
| pedophile are overblown in media. Whole neighborhood would just
| play on the streets. No nanny.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is also true that sexual harassment and abuse was not
| openly discussed, especially by girls/women and still isn't
| (at least in real time).
| globular-toast wrote:
| I think you're on to something. Everyone always talks about
| social media but I honestly think cars are the most harmful
| technology of our time. Not least because it's not even
| recognised by the vast majority of people yet. Social media is
| at least given lip service.
|
| Everyone working all the time sucks for many reasons. It's a
| trap that people have fallen for and the only ones laughing are
| the billionaire oligarchs. Women in particular used to work for
| themselves and their families, building their own assets and
| their own relationships. Almost like that "founder" status
| everyone wants. Now they work for the same few men as their
| partners building wealth for those men and the closest the
| family has to a home cooked meal is a favourite takeaway.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Women in particular used to work for themselves
|
| Women only recently got the right to manage their own assets,
| and in some societies it is still in the process of
| happening.
|
| >and their families,
|
| Yes, they used to work for their families.
| anon291 wrote:
| Keeping our discussion to Spain, women have been able to
| manage their own assets for a long time (including married
| woman). Let's not project english law onto the whole world.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Wikipedia says 1930s for women's civil rights in Spain,
| which I count as recent.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_the_S
| pan...
|
| It also takes generations for the rights to fully take
| effect, for example women being refused services by
| sexist men or hitting glass ceilings at work.
|
| Even in the US, I can see very different changes in the
| treatment and expectations of my older women cousins who
| grew up in the 1980s and 1990s versus those who grew up
| in the 2000s and 2010s.
|
| Same laws, but the rate of change from those laws
| accelerated as older generations died out and critical
| mass in the population with the new views takes hold.
| trealira wrote:
| > Women in particular used to work for themselves and their
| families, building their own assets and their own
| relationships. Almost like that "founder" status everyone
| wants. Now they work for the same few men as their partners
| building wealth for those men and the closest the family has
| to a home cooked meal is a favourite takeaway.
|
| I'd caution you not to conflate home-cooked meals and family
| dinners with restrictive gender roles. It's possible to have
| them without a stay-at-home wife. For example, I grew up with
| two moms working full-time and had home-cooked meals (or
| leftovers thereof) for dinner almost every day. It's of
| course harder to make time to cook when both parents are
| working, but not impossible.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Interesting, usually cars are characterized as anti social
| elements. These are loud, take lots of space, so lower density,
| polluting and require license and you can't drink alcohol.
| Bikes on the other hand are considered more friendly as human
| centric element
| michaelt wrote:
| Personally I'm more positive about the impact of online
| communities than the author is.
|
| But you for sure need offline friends and experiences, alongside
| the online ones, to keep yourself grounded in reality; the online
| experience has loads of biases, some obvious and others very
| subtle, and only by keeping one eye on the real world can you
| know when you're encountering them.
|
| Also you're not going to meet your future wife or husband through
| HN.
| drooby wrote:
| I have recently started traveling and working remote at "co-
| living" hotels. And I must say, this is the ideal way I wish to
| live my life in my 20s-30s.
|
| Community makes life fun.
|
| Someone needs to import co-living to the US. And I don't mean
| these "co-living" apartment complexes that exist in our major
| cities. I mean like, actual communities with character and life.
| sleepingreset wrote:
| there's a few cool groups working on this, specifically for
| academics & ambitious young people as the beginning market.
| https://www.livetheresidency.com/
|
| :)
| mclau156 wrote:
| I dont understand the residency thing at all
| drooby wrote:
| That's cool. Would love to see something like this for people
| that aren't ambitious geniuses though... like myself ;)
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I'm gonna be a old man shouting at the clouds. But co-living
| spaces work because they are generally small projects and have
| very driven and charismatic people leading those projects.
|
| The moment something like that grows or scales to a tipping
| where real estate funds take interest then it will naturally
| enshitify as most things in society that have been monetized by
| large scale investors.
|
| I agree with everything you said but with the risk of gate
| keeping I worry that the only way co-living projects will work
| is by having a bunch of stubborn fun people starting it off and
| keeping it at a non-industrial scale.
| drooby wrote:
| Nah I hear you, and I agree.
|
| The co-living spaces in most major US cities are basically
| just developers trying to glamorize apartments with roomates.
|
| Though to scale it up and minimize the enshitification,
| perhaps some sort of framework or guide could be created that
| allows smaller groups to more easily navigate the legal and
| financial challenges on their own.
|
| What seems to make this so much easier in other countries are
| the lack of regulations.
|
| Hostels and some Bed and Breakfasts come close to the co-
| living experience in the US though. And they maintain their
| unique charm. It's definitely possible.
| joveian wrote:
| Maybe similar to what is called cohousing in the US? See:
|
| https://www.ic.org/directory/community-types/
| bustling-noose wrote:
| About 9 years ago I traveled to the US from India for education.
| Smartphones were still not very common in India cause data was
| not as cheap as it is today. When I was in the bus commuting
| everyone's head was buried in their phones. I thought to myself
| this is such a sad thing. Look outside talk to each other but the
| every single person had an iPhone and was doing something on the
| phone.
|
| Fast forward to 2024 and every person home here in India is
| constantly on their phones. In the gym, in the car, at work,
| everywhere. Naturally kids are also getting hooked on devices.
|
| How can you talk to someone when they aren't even looking at you
| or paying attention ? Communities and real physical social
| interaction keep people mentally healthy. All these apps and
| devices are doing is keeping people away from each other instead.
|
| Of course no one wants to admit this but people are addicted to
| devices and distractions. The sooner they dissociate, the better.
| noworriesnate wrote:
| I've noticed the same thing even on airplanes, where everyone
| is offline. Unfortunately in that case almost everything is
| either sleeping, consuming corporate entertainment, or reading
| books.
|
| BUT there are always a few people who are open to talking. I
| prefer talking to being on the phone when I'm in flight. I get
| to have a long conversation about 1/4 of flights.
|
| If you read old books like Pilgrim's Progress you see people
| walking towards the same town together, and they always struck
| up a conversation. Look at the Canterbury Tales: some really
| great literature that consists just of fellow travelers having
| a storytelling contest! We are missing so much humanity in our
| kosher lives.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| If you like those kinds of storytelling-on-a-pilgrimage
| stories, I highly recommend Hyperion by Dan Simmons. A large
| part of the book consists of a group of pilgrims-of-sorts
| traveling together and sharing stories, which gradually help
| you understand what's really going on.
| AftHurrahWinch wrote:
| I apologize if this comes across as 'how dare you talk about
| pancakes when I prefer waffles', but I just want to mention
| that, like a lot of people, I destroyed my hearing when I was
| young and now I struggle to hear on busses and planes.
|
| If someone talks to me on a plane I say "Sorry, my hearing is
| really bad", and its really embarrassing when they respond by
| speaking so loudly the whole plane can hear for the rest of
| the flight.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Have you considered using hearing aids?
| AftHurrahWinch wrote:
| Yes, I've tried two different hearing aids, and they were
| both worse than useless. They often amplified the wrong
| voices in the crowd, and not even consistently. It was
| like listening to the radio and having someone constantly
| changing stations.
|
| If you've got a recommendation for one that is able to
| identify which voice in the crowd I want amplified, I'd
| appreciate it!
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| I don't have first hand experience, I just know someone
| who described a similar problem and then raved to me once
| they got hearing aids about how life changing they were
| for that problem.
|
| It sounds like yours were trying to actively amplify
| certain voices? I wonder if that's sounds good but
| doesn't work sort of feature. Naively it seems like just
| shifting the volume on everything should work as long as
| the frequency curve matches the lost frequencies. The
| brain is what is separating the voices, not the ears.
| mariushn wrote:
| Hope this advances faster
| https://masseyeandear.org/news/press-
| releases/2023/04/mass-e...
| volkl48 wrote:
| At least in the US, most aircraft have internet now - many
| people are not offline. And even if they're not paying for
| the internet service, a number of airlines deliver their free
| entertainment services through personal devices - so they may
| be watching the same sort of content that would be in a
| seatback TV on other airlines.
|
| Speaking personally:
|
| I also tend to just load entire books onto my phone for
| flights. Reading on a small screen doesn't bother me.
|
| With regards to talking - I like talking to strangers.
| However, the plane is one of the few places I try to avoid
| striking up conversations. People around me having loud (and
| it is loud, because talking quietly on a plane is impossible)
| conversations for hours about nonsense is something
| incredibly annoying to be on the receiving end of. While I
| enjoy actually having a conversation, I also know that by
| doing it I'll be annoying a half-dozen other people not
| involved in it but forced to listen to it in an environment
| where they can't do anything to escape it, and it feels rude
| to do that - especially since I don't enjoy when I'm in their
| position.
| aftbit wrote:
| Does anyone remember when the TVs on airplanes hung down
| from the ceiling and there was only one or maybe two movies
| on the flight? There was either nothing on the back of the
| seat, or there was a very expensive satellite telephone.
|
| I still do what I did then - read. I just read on a Kindle
| now instead of a stack of paperback books bought at the
| airport.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| A fond memory I have from about 25 years ago when I was
| still a kid:
|
| I was flying economy on KLM with my mom and dad, family
| vacation to Europe. About a few hours prior to landing,
| the crew put on some Mr. Bean movies. Back then at least
| on that flight as far as I can still remember, there
| weren't seatback screens; only those dropdown TV screens
| on the ceiling above the aisles, so everyone had to watch
| Mr. Bean.
|
| Well tell you what, Mr. Bean is bloody hilarious and I
| was a kid. I couldn't help but burst out laughing even
| though I knew it was bad manners, and in short order the
| entire cabin was laughing with me. That was a fun day.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| I'm not perfect, but I do make a conscious effort to put away
| my phone when in transit or idling around. Not that it matters
| much as pretty much everyone else is stuck in their own little
| world. But I think it's better for my own health.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| It can't be treated like drug addiction, though. Most people I
| know have a _relatively_ healthy relationship with alcohol or
| cannabis. The addicts, especially of hard drugs, are the odd
| ones out.
|
| With phones, and before that music, and before that newspapers,
| it's a social norm. If you are trying to talk to people you
| feel like the weirdo.
|
| And I get it, cause I don't like making myself vulnerable. I
| wish I talked to strangers but it's hard to undo a whole
| childhood of "Don't stare, don't bother them, keep to yourself,
| everyone loves how quiet you are, you're so mature for your age
| because you never talk, etc."
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Hm. In Iowa it's thought that 10% of the customers of liquor
| stores buy 90% of the product moved through the door.
|
| That's not 10X the general population. That's 81X. One in
| nine drink 9X what _nine other people_ do.
|
| So, you have a relationship with alcohol, it's likely not a
| healthy one. It's addiction, all the way down.
| chownie wrote:
| I'm confused, you paint a picture in which the majority
| drink moderately and then say "likely not healthy" but in
| your example 90% of the customers, the vast majority, don't
| have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol.
|
| So if you have a relationship with alcohol it _is_ most
| likely a healthy one, and it 's "addiction all the way
| down" for... a minority.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Yeah, well, that majority is likely buying alcohol for
| events, for celebrations. Not so much a 'relationship
| with alcohol' as a party favor. Don't drink anything at
| all the rest of the year.
|
| You have a favorite drink, a regular bar, a liquor store
| that knows you - you are probably one of the ten percent.
| Believe it or not, most of us don't go to a bar most
| months of the year.
| ska wrote:
| > Don't drink anything at all the rest of the year.
|
| That doesn't really match my observations ,or NIH data
| https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-
| health/alcohol-to...
|
| There the majority (18 and over, and slightly under 50%
| of _12_ and over) report consumption in the last month.
|
| Of those, a bit under 7% report "heavy usage". You can
| look up the definitions, but doesn't include e.g.
| "usually has a beer or two with dinner".
|
| The category you describe definitely exists, but I don't
| think it's anywhere close to a majority, and there are
| also at least a couple reasonable categories between that
| problematic or abusive consumption.
| datameta wrote:
| I would argue it should be handled exactly like drug
| addiction ought to be. That is, as a widespread medical
| issue. But it is more complex than drug abuse due to
| interaction with people expressly being part of the equation.
| One's phone is ever available and there are very very few
| places indoors or outdoors that it isn't considered socially
| acceptable to use their smartphone for social media. The same
| is not true for alcohol or cannabis. Most people won't simply
| walk down the street or hang in a park smoking or drinking.
| Phone addiction is far more visible.
| the_snooze wrote:
| When I'm out at a sit-down restaurant, I always make a mental
| note of everyone who has their phone out on the table. It's
| usually 50-50. Not necessarily using them, but within view, as
| if they're waiting for _something else_ instead of prioritizing
| the people who took the time to be physically around them in
| the same place and time.
|
| No wonder lots of people feel disconnected. They forgot how to
| connect in even the most conducive settings for it.
| shigawire wrote:
| Counter point - phones are so large now I don't always want
| it in my pocket when seated.
| ninjanomnom wrote:
| Personally, when I'm in this situation, my phone is out and
| face down on the table to avoid the discomfort of it digging
| into me from my pocket. I've also noticed that other people
| use their phone less when I explicitly take it out and put it
| to the side. Also, even though I take it out, I never use it
| unless the conversation has asked for it, like searching an
| answer for something.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Sometimes I do that because it's just uncomfortable to sit
| with my phone in my pocket. I agree it's rude to use your
| phone while you're dining or conversing with a group.
| astura wrote:
| People take phones and sometimes even wallets out of their
| pocket when they sit down for comfort.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Not only that, but also in people's hands. I've seen on many
| occasions a couple sitting together at a two-seat table,
| obviously they're together for dinner, both silently
| scrolling on their smartphones. Not even saying a word to
| each other. It's eerie and creepy, like something out of
| Black Mirror. Last time I pointed this out on HN, most
| repliers were either defending this behavior or being
| sarcastic with "Well why don't you walk over and tell them
| how to live their lives!"
|
| This has kind of been normalized!
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > I've seen on many occasions a couple sitting together at
| a two-seat table, obviously they're together for dinner,
| both silently scrolling on their smartphones.
|
| Once upon a time, being together without having to talk was
| a measure of closeness. Relationships that achieved this
| were venerated.
|
| That ideal aside: Proximity itself nurtures trust and
| feelings of safety.
|
| It seems sad that we could miss examples of bonding because
| they don't fit our relationship model.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Some people struggle with social situations and have made
| about as much progress there as they're going to.
|
| Still other people struggle with social situations,
| sometimes.
|
| I'm in the latter group; I rarely-to-never eat out. It's
| exhausting to put on a convincing production of _Pretending
| To Enjoy Myself_.
|
| Using a device to ease that burden seems super reasonable to
| me.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| humans will always take the path of least resistance to spike
| domaine when given the option - that is why we banned drugs and
| most of these apps with short form info like tiktok, reels,
| instagram, twitter - these are pretty much like drugs. I wish i
| can just throw away my phone and live my life but 'being on' is
| just an expectation in todays world.
| ip26 wrote:
| I'm not saying smartphones are never a problem. However, look
| at old photos of the bus or subway in the USA or UK from
| decades ago. Passengers were not having social hour - they were
| minding their own business, reading a newspaper, listening to
| music, staring out the window...
|
| I'm more interested in the question of whether technology
| tethers us home more strongly, instead of venturing outside of
| our homes.
| bustling-noose wrote:
| >they were minding their own business, reading a newspaper,
| listening to music, staring out the window
|
| Much better cognitively than endlessly scrolling Instagram
| reels YouTube shorts that are algorithms trying to keep you
| hooked. Sometimes I've seen people just open random apps and
| close and do nothing. It's like a habit they are unable to
| let go.
| mr_mitm wrote:
| Phones must be orders if magnitudes more common than
| newspapers. It seems that no matter where you are in the
| world, everyone from age 12 and up has one on them 24/7 and
| uses it as soon as they have 20 seconds to spare. Newspapers
| were something only a few adults would use, and you usually
| have read all the interesting parts by the time you get your
| second coffee.
|
| I agree that the tendency for wanting distractions has always
| been present in humans, but the hyper connectivity of today's
| world really taps into it unlike anything else we had before.
| It's a different quality.
| pjlegato wrote:
| Of course, many people did read books and newspapers on the
| subway 20 years ago.
|
| A significant fraction also did speak to one another
| sometimes, and engaged in spontaneous conversations, too.
|
| That fraction has dropped to close to ~0% today.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| > How can you talk to someone when they aren't even looking at
| you or paying attention ?
|
| I'm talking to people constantly without looking at them. Some
| are loose ties like this one. But group chats, texts, Discord
| servers, even Facebook. Tons of 1:1 communication with people I
| see in person regularly. But also I don't have to see someone
| in person to have a real conversation. I'm often fully present
| with real people when on my devices, and I'm perfectly capable
| of dissociating while politely not touching my phone when I'm
| in a boring conversation with people standing next to me.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder if we wouldn't be better off is someone
| EMP'ed the northern hemisphere and killed all mobile devices at
| the same time.
| philip1209 wrote:
| The books the authors cite are great and worth reading.
|
| Some personal observations:
|
| - The USA lacks a unified cultural identity now. There are lots
| of reasons for this. But, it's considered taboo to express a love
| of the USA - which hurts our community + culture.
|
| - People put a lot of effort into work, and work is becoming more
| transactional. No more "life-long employment with the buddies"
| kind of situation.
|
| - America went from poor to rich, but still behaves like a
| developing economy. Public healthcare + public education + low-
| income housing availability are poor, while there's a big class
| of people who can afford private education + private healthcare +
| McMansions. I think this deteriorates the idea of "we're all in
| this together" because there's such unequal opportunity.
|
| - Wars used to be a way to unify a country, but we're in the era
| of proxy wars - which don't have the same aligning effect.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I don't disagree with the comment, but whenever people talk
| about a "love of the USA", I always want to ask what is it that
| you love? To stereotype a bit, I'm guessing that it will not be
| the federal government (despite a strong reverence for the flag
| of that government).
| philip1209 wrote:
| The deeper issue is that a pessimism about our country will
| become self-fulfilling. So, it's not useful.
|
| I think the USA is amazing in that it attracts the most
| ambitious people in the world, provides relative stability
| for them to work and live, and that it has managed to create
| such a stable society given the heterogeneous nature of its
| culture. It has a lot of problems, but I'd much rather be
| here than in the communist former-country my mom was born in.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Ever consider that perhaps cramming a community full of the
| most ambitious people in the world might have a bunch of
| negative consequences for that community?
| batshit_beaver wrote:
| Surely it has positive consequences too?
| stnmtn wrote:
| The absolute natural beauty and diversity of geography that
| the USA has is one of the things that make me love it. The
| "newness" of USA compared to Europe is also something that I
| really like about it.
| filoleg wrote:
| I guess it is about the spirit of it, just all the
| incongruent different groups of people coming together and
| making something greater than the individual sum of them
| happen. And just the whole grander idea of forging your own
| destiny, no matter how risky the odds are.
|
| Sure, it flies in the face of harsh reality quite often, but
| that's not the point. And we can definitely gripe about
| current immigration policies. And of course, that spirit
| doesn't feel like it holds true in a big chunk of the US. But
| to me personally, that's why NYC feels sort of magical. It's
| that whole idea solidified in flesh.
|
| As an immigrant, I can tell you that my hypothetical future
| in my old country was doomed from the start. The US, with all
| its imperfections and flaws, let me do my own thing and carve
| my own path from nothing (parents working minimum wage, so
| basically zero connections and funds). All while making me
| feel more at home than my old country ever did in every
| single way (from interactions with people to absolutely any
| other aspect of my life).
|
| Again, this isn't to discount tons of issues that the US has
| (just like any other large country would). However, I just
| struggle to think of any other country where I could've ended
| up where I am right now, as an immigrant. And that, to me
| personally, is what the (idealized) spirit of the US is all
| about.
| carapace wrote:
| There's no taboo, that's ridiculous. I love the US-of-A and I
| don't care who knows it. God bless America, and apple pie and
| moms.
|
| I love the people, even though we're mostly stupid and crazy.
| I love the land, even though it's drenched in the blood of
| the people of the First Nations and of each other. I love
| that we fight to repudiate and destroy the evil of slavery,
| even though we aren't done yet.
|
| And yeah, I even love the Federal Government. Sure it's a
| gnarly bureaucracy that makes mistakes, but most of the time
| it pretty much works. And there are so many really cool bits,
| like the USGS. And the vast majority of the people in the
| Federal workforce are decent folk just doing their best.
|
| So yeah, we have a lot of problems, but we're doing our best
| and the story isn't finished yet. I love the USA. (I also
| love the rest of the world too. It's not an either-or thing.)
| veryfancy wrote:
| Everyone's got a basket of things they can love or hate about
| this place when they're in the mood to love or to hate.
| That's something to love, I think.
| CitrusFruits wrote:
| I'll preface this with saying there are other countries that
| do many of the following things I say better, but there are
| many many countries that do things worse. Additionally, I've
| found most people who have trouble loving the U.S.A. haven't
| had the privilege of traveling to any of the 130+ countries
| of the world that have a GDP per capita of less than $15K.
| Those countries can be awesome in their own right, but they
| also can help highlight how privileged the U.S. is in many
| areas. I love the USA because of its infrastructure, it's
| natural beauty, the principles of its governmental structure,
| the diversity of people (and food!), how it provides
| opportunity for people who want that opportunity, for its
| strong civil rights, and for its natural resources. We can do
| better to protect and grow all those things I mentioned, but
| it doesn't mean they don't exist in the first place.
| samatman wrote:
| It's the flag of the nation. Not the flag of the federal
| government.
|
| There are symbols which are more directly associated with the
| government, such as the Great Seal of the United States. You
| will see patriotic expressions involving that symbol rather
| less, although the bald eagle, our national totem, is quite
| popular.
|
| Some countries have a separate state and civil flag. The
| United States is not among them.
|
| If you're asking why Americans love our nation, I don't know
| how to answer that question.
| snozolli wrote:
| _I always want to ask what is it that you love?_
|
| - Public lands. Most states have National Parks in them.
| Every state has state parks. These generally give enormous
| freedom of enjoyment to vast areas of land and are accessible
| to most.
|
| - General freedom. We've all seen videos of abusive cops, but
| the fact is that's still rare. If you want to launch a
| business, you'll likely be able to find a location,
| understand regulations, and form the legal entity without
| paying off officials. We have corruption, but it's generally
| at high levels and invisible to the general public, so you
| don't feel the pervasive effects.
|
| - Economy. Sure, I miss the 90s tech boom, but the US has the
| most advanced tax system in the world, and a highly effective
| banking system that spurs the economy. It's far from perfect,
| but it's better than a whole lot, and most people take it for
| granted.
|
| I think we peaked in many ways between 1995 and 2012, but if
| we can clean up our act and make it through the new era of
| Robber Barons and foreign interference, we'll be in a really
| good place again.
|
| Edit:
|
| - ADA. To my knowledge, no other county has as good of
| regulations benefiting the handicapped and disabled. From
| accessible businesses and buses to readable signage to
| minimum doorway widths in homes.
| anon291 wrote:
| I love the people of the United States; our shared values;
| our shared culture. I view the United States as more than
| just an ideology as outlined in our constitution but also a
| distinct group of people with a distinct culture with a
| shared past and a shared future.
|
| This is why I bristle when people get upset by terms like
| American exceptionalism. Yes, America has a unique culture.
| America is also objectively superlative, whether it's our
| wealth, military capability, longevity as a democracy, etc.
| Uniqueness + superlative = exceptional. When people disagree,
| I'm left wondering what they disagree with. Either they
| disagree with the superlatives, in which case, I question
| their grasp on reality. Or they question the uniqueness of
| American culture, at which point my social monkey brain tells
| me to shun them.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I assume nearly every culture believes that they are
| uniquely superlative in some way though; ironically this
| seems like a highly conserved quality of human psychology.
|
| If anything, a lot of the praise of America seems to be the
| federation of culture; I've heard it said the that it is
| not one country, but fifty different ones.
| hot_gril wrote:
| "it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA" is not
| really true in most of the country. I moved out of one of the
| few places where it is.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Speaking as a non-American who visited for the first time last
| year:
|
| > But, it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA
|
| American flags _everywhere_' Like seriously, I visited both
| liberal areas (Seattle) and conservative areas (Spokane's
| surrounds) and y'all patriotic as _fuck_.
|
| > Wars used to be a way to unify a country...
|
| Also because the US is just not threatened by anyone. I'd hope
| that going back to being the Arsenal of Democracy for Ukraine
| (and maybe Taiwan or South Korea if things go bad) would've
| tied the US together, but man I was wrong there.
| Balgair wrote:
| > I'd hope that going back to being the Arsenal of Democracy
| for Ukraine (and maybe Taiwan or South Korea if things go
| bad) would've tied the US together, but man I was wrong
| there.
|
| I mean, it's not like we need to be rolling out a B-29 every
| minute or an aircraft carrier a week to defeat Russia there.
| Just cleaning out some of the stock from the 80's held them
| off for months. Logistically, the war in Ukraine just isn't
| very taxing to maintain a psuedo-stalemate. If anything,
| NATO+ wants to keep this ulcer open for as long as it can in
| Russia, bleed them white.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| At a certain point (probably to a large extent already)
| Ukraine will simply run out of manpower. Demographically it
| was in a very poor state to begin with to such a degree
| they had to keep the MINIMUM age of conscription at 27 and
| lowered it to 25 a few months ago.
|
| There were only ~2.6 million men aged 15 to 30 and another
| 3 million in their 30s back in 2022. Around 0.6-0.8 million
| Ukrainian men have left the country for the EU (18-60, but
| I assume it's highly skewed towards lower ages).
|
| A significant proportion (probably the majority) of those
| that remain in the country are not particularly motivated,
| capable or otherwise keen about going to the frontline.
| It's hard to tell but looking at estimates > 150k have died
| or been severely wounded and presumably a several times
| more suffered lighter injuries.
|
| This isn't WW1/2. Poorly trained and/or highly unmotivated
| men are not very combat effective and mobilizing such a
| large proportion of population as back then is not feasible
| (especially considering that men in their 30s and 40s have
| been doing most of the fighting). So how long do you think
| Ukraine can hold out if we extrapolate the casualties rates
| from the last 12-24 months or so? By the time the West
| fully ramps up military production it might be too late.
| racional wrote:
| _So how long do you think Ukraine can hold out if we
| extrapolate the casualties rates from the last 12-24
| months or so?_
|
| I wouldn't know because I don't have their numbers, and
| unlike you, I don't trust my offhand estimates.
|
| However I will trust the Ukrainians to know, and it seems
| safe to reason that the more and better arms they have --
| the farther off the potential triggering of such a limit
| will be.
|
| The key consideration to keep in mind here is that for
| Ukraine, the fight is existential -- while for Russia (as
| a country, apart from its leadership) it is very much
| optional. So the limits for what is bearable in terms of
| any category of loss must be weighted very differently
| (apart from the what the numbers might say; and assumes
| we even have reliable numbers, which of course we don't).
|
| So the flip side of your question might be:
|
| "For how many years does Russia want to keep spending 10
| percent of its GDP on this little expansionist fantasy
| project gone horrible wrong? And how does this math
| change once Putin is gone, or his lights start to dim?"
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > and unlike you, I don't trust my offhand estimates.
|
| Yet you're fine with handwaving probably the biggest
| issue Ukraine is facing (besides the risk of losing
| western support/Trump winning the election and making a
| side-deal with Putin).
|
| > However I will trust the Ukrainians to know,
|
| The government probably does. Of course due to perfectly
| understandable reasons they will not share that
| information with the Ukrainian population at least until
| the war is over.
|
| > while for Russia (as a country, apart from its
| leadership) it is very much optional
|
| Hopefully. But underestimating the resilience of
| authoritarian/totalitarian regimes (compared to more
| free/democratic societies) isn't necessarily particularly
| wise. e.g. the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s was just as
| senseless (from the perspective of both sides) and even
| more bloody yet it went on for 8 years with hardly any
| significant dissent in either country (besides the Kurds
| the Iraq).
|
| The casualties and overall cost US sustained in the
| Vietnam war, especially if we adjust by the duration of
| both conflicts were almost miniscule compared to the cost
| the Russian society is seemingly willing to pay.
| racional wrote:
| For the sake of simplicity -- I'm assuming Trump won't
| win at this point (it could happen but the odds are
| looking quite low). And unlike Trump, the new
| administration won't simply drop-kick Ukraine or
| otherwise be in a hurry to cut a dirty deal just to get
| this thing over with.
|
| _Yet you 're fine with handwaving_
|
| I'm not; I'm saying it's a question I'll trust to the
| Ukrainians to evaluate and decide for themselves.
|
| That's something entirely different from what you're
| suggesting that I said.
|
| _[Don 't underestimate resilience of dictatorships; the
| Iran-Iraq war went on for 8 years]_
|
| That's actually an argument for why time is more on
| Ukraine's side.
|
| If Russia gives up after 8 years, or even 10 or 15 --
| then Ukraine will have squarely won.
| hollerith wrote:
| How do you think Russia is going to retaliate? Maybe they
| will help NK and Iran build ICBMs that can accurately hit
| US city centers. They'd probably do it secretly, so if some
| US cities ever get nuked by NK or Iran, there won't be a
| strong case for our going to war against Russia in response
| (unless the secret leaked).
|
| ADDED. The secret is unlikely to leak if the Russians are
| careful: they could for example anonymously send technical
| information on ICBM design to Iranian and NK missile
| scientists. The recipients might suspect that Russia is the
| source of the information, and might share their suspicions
| with others, but second-hand reports of mere suspicions
| probably won't be considered sufficient justification for
| our going to war with Russia.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| > - America went from poor to rich, but still behaves like a
| developing economy. Public healthcare + public education + low-
| income housing availability are poor, while there's a big class
| of people who can afford private education + private healthcare
| + McMansions. I think this deteriorates the idea of "we're all
| in this together" because there's such unequal opportunity.
|
| America has had a long history of unequal opportunity. It's
| kind of founded with unequal opportunity (slavery) and
| continued to shoot itself in the foot in order to ensure
| inequality (closing public schools instead of allowing
| integrated schools is why we have a rise of private schooling
| to begin with, HOAs existed primarily to ensure the community
| could enforce that no one could allow a black family to move in
| by selling their property to blacks). I think of America as a
| country that is constantly being challenged with the ideals it
| claims as having against the society it builds which falls
| short of those ideals. But I don't think this inequality has to
| do with the recent youth mental health crisis... America has
| endeavored to be more and more equal by the year.
| jeffbee wrote:
| > The USA lacks a unified cultural identity now
|
| This is why we need to pursue annexation by Mexico, so we can
| finally be a country with some culture.
| trallnag wrote:
| Looking at the demographics of the USA you just have to wait
| a few more years
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| > it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA - which
| hurts our community + culture.
|
| Nearly every bullet point the article listed for what makes a
| strong community was basically just a descriptor for cultural
| homogeneity, which also touches on a rather controversial
| taboo. This sort of critique of diversity would be considered
| hate speech by some.
| AftHurrahWinch wrote:
| > This sort of critique of diversity would be considered hate
| speech by some.
|
| How wonderful that we have the diversity of thought to find
| someone who will object to anything, and how fortunate that
| we have mechanisms to overrule and ignore them.
| ativzzz wrote:
| > But, it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA
|
| I don't agree. Every sporting event still plays the national
| anthem and often has soldiers or military involvement or
| mentions
|
| I see US flags all the time, all over the place.
|
| There are certain forms of "love" of the USA that are more
| politically one-sided that may be more taboo if you live in an
| area where most people are on the other side.
| parpfish wrote:
| there are a lot of people that like the national anthem and
| fly flags, but that's for a distinct slice of america.
|
| one tribe likes flags and overt patriotism, the other side
| does not.
|
| if i see a person with a flag sticker on their car, i can
| probably guess a lot of their unrelated political opinions
| apsurd wrote:
| I get what you mean, and i experience the same. but it's on
| you/us to consciously not make that assumption. Else we're
| complicit in the polarization.
| pphysch wrote:
| To me there is a profound difference between the flag-waving,
| corporate, pinko-hating, anti-social pseudo-patriotism
| exemplified by Reagan, which is still popular today, and
| actual patriotism.
|
| "Patriotism" as superficial brand-loyalty versus patriotism
| as lifelong civil-service.
| lisper wrote:
| > it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA
|
| American here. First-generation immigrant. Came from Germany at
| age 5.
|
| This misses a crucial part of the problem. It is considered
| taboo to express a love of the USA _in certain social circles_.
| In others, it is considered taboo _not_ to express a love of
| the USA. The problem is that the two sides have very different
| ideas of what "loving the USA" means. Among the first group
| (liberals) the USA is envisioned as an inclusive melting pot
| where all are welcome. Among the second group, the USA is
| envisioned as a set of values to which one is required to
| subscribe in order to be included; to include those who do not
| subscribe to these values would change the character of the
| nation to the point where it would not longer be the USA. These
| values include innocuous things like baseball and hot dogs, to
| abstract ideals like "freedom", less abstract ideals like
| capitalism, and quasi-religious ideals like "family values".
| Lately these have started to morph into religious ideals up to
| and including the (false) idea that an essential part of the
| national character is to be a Christian theocracy.
|
| So it's not that expressing a love of the USA is taboo, it's
| that conservatives have managed to co-opt loving the USA and
| make it part of their brand. Expressing love for the nation,
| flying the flag, singing the national anthem, etc. are nowadays
| seen as expressing tacit support for conservatism in general,
| and the Republican party and Donald Trump in particular. This
| is the reason that liberals avoid them.
|
| For me personally, I have always felt that some of the common
| rituals associated with "loving the USA" were kind of weird.
| Take the Pledge of Allegiance, for example. I get pledging
| allegiance to the _nation_ , but to the _flag_? That has always
| struck me as bizarre. The flag is just a symbol, a token. Why
| would anyone pledge allegiance to a _flag_? But to question
| this, especially as a minor in a public school, turns out to be
| unwise.
| diputsmonro wrote:
| I agree with and second every word of that.
|
| I grew up in the US during the 9/11 era, and I was just old
| enough to recognize the horrible nationalism that it spread
| through the entire country. How am I supposed to celebrate
| the flag of a country that invades the wrong country under
| false pretenses and rallies behind dumb propaganda like
| "freedom fries" to support it? How am I supposed to be proud
| of a country that chooses someone like Donald Trump as it's
| leader? (and is close to doing it again!)
|
| I do generally love the supposed ideals of the US, and I
| would like to call myself a patriot - but it is difficult to
| do when criticism of the US (which is the whole point of a
| democracy) is met with "love it or leave it" type responses
| from people who cover themselves in the flag.
|
| Real patriots want their country to improve via constructive
| criticism and change. But most conservative "patriots" in
| this country view any criticism as "hating America". Their
| "patriotism" is just fetishism for the traditions and symbols
| - which is why they cover every item they own with the flag.
|
| In that context, the flag and "patriotism" can be very
| divisive, and those who abhor the conservative culture wars
| here can be very reticent to create the appearance thay they
| stand with them.
| AftHurrahWinch wrote:
| Really great comment! You noted:
|
| > The problem is that the two sides have very different ideas
| of what "loving the USA" means. Among the first group
| (liberals) the USA is envisioned as an inclusive melting pot
| where all are welcome.
|
| Have you had the chance to talk with a 3rd group who believe
| that the US is malignant and think that the most moral action
| they can take is to undermine the state?
|
| I think there is even an American tradition of that; lots of
| US students are assigned excerpts from Thoreau's Walden or
| Civil Disobedience and from one perspective, those texts are
| arguments that because the US permitted slavery it was
| malignant and should be 'starved', of our taxes, labor, and
| participation.
|
| I can't and wouldn't argue that Thoreau was wrong to protest
| slavery by any means necessary, but I also hope that the US
| doesn't embrace the sort of widespread self-sabotage I see in
| European protest movements.
| lisper wrote:
| > Really great comment!
|
| Thank you.
|
| > Have you had the chance to talk with a 3rd group who
| believe that the US is malignant and think that the most
| moral action they can take is to undermine the state?
|
| Yes, but I don't think those people can be said to "love
| the USA" under any reasonable interpretation of that
| phrase.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Undermining with no recognition of the ideal goal is just
| stupid though. Eg republicans tend to want to starve the
| beast of government without a good definition of what the
| ideal governing philosophy would be.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| On your last point, the next line is literally "and to the
| Republic for which it stands". Its just poetic license.
| lisper wrote:
| Well, yeah, but it seems to put the emphasis in the wrong
| place, with the republic being an afterthought, secondary
| to the symbol.
|
| Also, being asked to pledge allegiance to _anything_ as a
| minor seems weird and wrong to me. IMHO it undermines the
| whole concept of pledging allegiance, which should be an
| informed choice, not a ritualistic indoctrination.
| Merad wrote:
| Pledging allegiance to the flag is a product of late 19th
| century sentiments that tie back to the US Civil War. This
| article has some backstory:
| https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/jack-david-eller-
| pledg...
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| The last war that directly affected this country in any
| conceivable manner was WWII with Pearl Harbor, and that never
| reached the mainland. Before that, you needed the Civil War.
| Sending young, poor bastards off to die to protect the profits
| of their economic betters is a pathetic way to "unify a
| country."
| colechristensen wrote:
| >The USA lacks a unified cultural identity now.
|
| The US _always_ lacked a cohesive cultural identity, it has
| always been manifold.
|
| Basically the rise of television and movies post-WWII-ish
| depicted a single culture but it was just excluding everyone
| except essentially WASPs. This had nothing to do with reality
| and was just racism. Before the world wars there was even a
| considerable amount of greater cultural diversity among
| European immigrants and descendants, German being spoken very
| widely across the country and quite a bit more of people
| retaining the culture of their ancestors.
| anon291 wrote:
| > But, it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA -
| which hurts our community + culture.
|
| Only in some circles.
| throaway12346 wrote:
| I believe a lot of people intuitively agree with this. I
| certainly do.
| thih9 wrote:
| HN readers of any age who felt alone at some point and found
| community - what worked for you?
| mclau156 wrote:
| meetup.com
| cedws wrote:
| I live in London and Meetup is an arid depressing wasteland
| here since the pandemic.
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| Church. Attending is a step up from nothing, and volunteering
| is a huge step up from attending.
| weberer wrote:
| Moving out of the city and into a small town. It made a night
| and day difference. Neighbors became people you actually know
| and talk to rather than just another stranger like the
| thousands of others on your block. Another commenter really
| nailed the difference in behavior between home owners who have
| a 30 year stake in the neighborhood, and renters who will
| probably be gone next year.
| panstromek wrote:
| I go through event listings on fb, meetup, and various other
| sources and just bookmark and visit random events that spark my
| interest. I visited a city planning debate this week, and next
| week I'm going to see a waste processing plant.
|
| Few months ago I found a recurring event where a small group of
| strangers discuss deep topics from a deck of cards with
| questions, which are often very personal. This was probably the
| most impactful, I've met some new friends there.
|
| Generally though, it's a funnel. Sometimes you find somebody,
| sometimes not, I just try to make a lot of opportunities.
| Sol- wrote:
| Is the "youth mental health crisis" confirmed? I remember reading
| there was a bit of back and forth in that topic. Some unhappiness
| was also concentrated among young progressive girls etc.
|
| It fits nicely with the pessimistic vibes that everything gets
| worse, but I wonder to what extent it's media bias and that
| actually things are normal or even good.
| hot_gril wrote:
| It's real. My class was the start of it, and it got worse
| after.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Suicide rates among young people - especially females, have
| been on the rise for close to a decade now.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| In the end your friend will be an AI that tries to sell you shit
| all day long.
| yimmothathird wrote:
| Eh, that's not even too far off from many of the people I meet.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Well, yes, we've doubled down on mediating social interactions
| through economic relationships. Most of the interactions adults
| have in their lives are with or in the framing of economic
| relations. Homes, are being invaded with tablets and mobile
| devices which bring along with them framing interactions as
| economic relations through ad and consumer frames. Workplaces are
| inherently settings of economic relations, and third places
| outside of the consumer setting are becoming extinct because they
| are non-monetizable.
|
| This last category, non-consumer third places are formerly the
| domain of kid-friendly community-building activities. When we
| talk about creating more of these and the response is, "they
| aren't economically viable," it's exactly the kind of economic
| calculus framing that I'm talking about.
| sologoub wrote:
| To take this a step further, I'd argue such framings encourage
| either creation or amplification of risk perceptions in order
| to sell the remedy (and for political gain), at least in the
| US. Kids aren't really allowed much autonomy the way even their
| parents enjoyed. All interactions are in a sense supervised and
| structured.
| RickS wrote:
| This is positively gut wrenching in its accuracy. Really well
| captured.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Anything is economically viable if enough people want it.
| meowkit wrote:
| Point == missed
|
| Its a tragedy of the commons style problem.
|
| The viability has to come from a group effort - as soon as
| there is a single entity running the show the economic
| incentives will warp or collapse the 3rd place into something
| different.
| hot_gril wrote:
| What single entity did you have in mind? An HOA will spend
| dues on parks, a regular city will spend taxes on parks. A
| luxury apartment will have common spaces or even
| activities. They make these expenditures because enough
| residents will pay extra for it. And a church will run
| community events paid for by donations. No "brought to you
| by Carl's Jr."
|
| Tragedy of the commons is when there's no big entity with
| rules, and everyone does their own thing.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| What often happens in these small community organizations
| is one or two volunteers join and begin to do a bunch of
| work to "transform" the organization and expand its
| reach. They inevitably become "indispensable" to the new
| organization, which they have wrapped around themselves
| like a cloak. Then they squeeze it around themselves
| until everyone leaves and the organization's soul has
| been sucked out. They move on to other organizations in
| the same area with a "resume" or "bio."
|
| You'll often see these people everywhere in your
| community, and they may approach you very quickly to get
| you involved in their organizations. They are in constant
| need of new volunteers to burn out on their pet projects.
| They also constantly promote themselves and are always
| telling you about what they are doing with other
| organizations both to recruit you and to make sure
| everyone knows how "indispensable" they are.
|
| These people are poisonous to community organizations
| because they will not abide any consensus-driven process
| that doesn't lead to agreement with them.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Not sure about the resume part, but I've seen these
| authoritarian volunteers. They still don't ruin
| everything. And I think my local church has enough of
| them that they cancel each other out :D
| throwway120385 wrote:
| They don't ruin it every time, but I've seen it happen
| and have also seen the end result and I'm very leery of
| specific kinds of people in communities I'm new to
| because of it.
| jprete wrote:
| Are these the techbros of community life? I can see a
| bunch of parallels.
| ant_li0n wrote:
| A housing development will create parks because they are
| required to do it. This is not market forces at work.
| hot_gril wrote:
| There are definitely fancier HOAs with bigger and nicer
| parks and common spaces than the others, and I don't
| think it's because they have different city rules.
| apsurd wrote:
| HOA style commons solutions means a city becomes
| thousands of micro, private, exclusive spaces.
|
| Perhaps better than everyone sitting in their homes
| getting amazon deliveries every few hours.
|
| but this isn't what people mean when they say public
| community spaces. We need interconnectedness across
| income, ideology, generation, education, etc, for stable
| democracy.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It's also a framing problem[1]. If we were creating an
| encyclopedia of ways third places are killed or aborted,
| centralization would definitely be a failure mode.
|
| I'd add, the belief that projects should be financially
| self-sufficient and the fiscal individualistic belief that
| I shouldn't pay for things I don't personally benefit from.
|
| There is a sense of fairness, that makes sense in
| isolation, yet have these downstream effects when applied
| to public goods like third spaces. "Kids are always on
| their phones," and "Youth programs and parks should be
| financially self-sufficient" are downstream contradictions
| of the primary belief.
|
| 1. among infinite ways to analyze it
| vishnugupta wrote:
| On point and well articulated!
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| This is both a loss in and of itself, and is also a rational
| response by people within this system. Everything MUST make
| money because everyone is FUCKING broke. People don't monetize
| their hobbies for fun, they do it because they're barely
| scraping by and the notion of spending time on things that
| don't make money is so beaten out of us that it feels wrong to
| do it. We can't go anywhere without spending money, we can't do
| anything without spending money.
|
| I shit you not my wife and I wanted to visit a park the other
| day and realized the parks dept now has paid parking stalls.
| The PARK. An outdoor space, supposedly paid for by my tax
| dollars, that because of it's distance from me is not feasible
| to walk to (and because the streets here are fucking
| terrifying) now charges me to park my vehicle there, so I can
| get some nature. Just un-fucking-believably apple pie in the
| window sill, burgers and fries, fireworks on the fourth
| American.
|
| I am so goddamn tired of every interaction I can have requiring
| money. I just want somewhere to go that's nice to be that
| doesn't demand my fucking credit card.
| jamil7 wrote:
| I think it's pretty reasonable to expect people with cars to
| pay for parking?
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| At a lot at a shopping mall, sure. At a park in the
| suburbs, IMO significantly less so. Especially when
| ostensibly my property taxes are already paying for the
| fucking park.
| iwontberude wrote:
| We should be friends, I like the way you think.
| collingreen wrote:
| I understand your frustration but I expect there are a
| lot of things that go into that decision. I expect adding
| a fee to parking makes it possible to enforce time
| limits, to remove squatting, and to ensure there are
| actually spots available. I doubt it is for the money but
| even if it is the park systems tend to be horribly
| underfunded (and often have to be held up with private
| donation money). A lot of our broken things are because
| someone with too many responsibilities and too little
| resources has to make a choice between a bunch of bad
| options and I wonder if this is similar.
|
| From your rant we know you'll pick free open spots
| compared to paid open spots but what if the choice is
| between paid open spots and no spots at all? Or worse,
| paid open spots or shady looking cars parked all day
| selling drugs?
|
| It seems like the more effective change is more parks but
| imagine the pushback if someone tried suggesting that!
| You're angry that you already pay taxes and now you have
| to pay again to have a special spot right at the park you
| can park your car in. Imagine the backlash if someone had
| the audacity to suggest raising your taxes for new parks.
| "I already pay for parks! I won't even use 95% of them!
| Why should I have to pay just because I'm a homeowner!"
|
| I can hear my dads voice saying some of these things and
| it reminds me of his complaints about funding schools
| with property taxes and I see how people like him pivot
| this into "the socialists just trying to punish the
| straight white men".
|
| It all makes me sad.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > From your rant we know you'll pick free open spots
| compared to paid open spots but what if the choice is
| between paid open spots and no spots at all?
|
| I wouldn't know, there weren't any free spots, open or
| otherwise, for consideration.
|
| > Or worse, paid open spots or shady looking cars parked
| all day selling drugs?
|
| I'm not sure what constitutes a shady car in your mind.
| I'm pretty sure no one in my neighborhood sells drugs. I
| know that cuz I have to leave my neighborhood to buy the
| drugs I want. All things being equal I'd much prefer to
| just buy them in stores but for some insane reason we're
| still carrying on the war on drugs despite it being
| linked, in ink and in recordings, directly to the Nixon
| administration wanting to prevent black people and
| hippies from voting, so we make do the best we can.
|
| > It seems like the more effective change is more parks
|
| I mean, we have plenty of parks. Some days they're pretty
| damn busy but most days they're not. I'm blessed to be a
| remote worker so I can also just go there (or you know,
| used to be able to!) and work for a bit too.
|
| > but imagine the pushback if someone tried suggesting
| that! You're angry that you already pay taxes and now you
| have to pay again to have a special spot right at the
| park you can park your car in. Imagine the backlash if
| someone had the audacity to suggest raising your taxes
| for new parks.
|
| I actually pay pretty high taxes for my area. The trade-
| off is our snow collection is extremely good and the
| roads are well kept, as are the parks for that matter
| (now marred with stupid ass parking meters but alas).
|
| I'm not opposed in the slightest to paying taxes. I
| participate in my local government, and I'm planning to
| bring this up at the next meeting because frankly I think
| it's bullshit that we're being asked to pay to park there
| when we're already funding that department. If they need
| more money or are running at a shortfall, that problem
| should be addressed with our community like everything
| else is, with a tax bump if required. I'm frankly
| infuriated that this was done not just from the
| principles of it but also because somehow it was done in
| a way that completely went under the radar of the city
| council I participate in. This was a huge change and
| should've been discussed.
|
| > "I already pay for parks! I won't even use 95% of them!
| Why should I have to pay just because I'm a homeowner!"
|
| Yes my position would be very unreasonable if it was even
| remotely this. Thankfully it's not.
|
| FWIW I also am fine with paying for our schools too.
| collingreen wrote:
| I agree with everything you've said here.
|
| My only contribution was that I've seen folks make these
| kind of choices in good faith even though it isn't
| directly a thing they want because it's the best of the
| tools in their toolboxes.
| sethammons wrote:
| it is a public space. we all pay for it via taxes. if it
| is criminal ridden, hire police. if there are squatters,
| hire police. charging parking at a non accessible
| location to a public resource, I'm sure you could find a
| solid argument for that being racist. charging for
| parking at a public park feels like charging to get to
| the voter polling location. it should be obviously wrong.
| snozolli wrote:
| Not at a public location that's too far or unsafe to walk
| to.
|
| We should have much higher density, high quality housing
| with plenty of public, walkable green spaces. They calling
| it "15-Minute Cities" now, but I always called it Tokyo.
| tuna74 wrote:
| I don't remember much "walkable green spaces" in Tokyo or
| other cities in Japan.
| rangerelf wrote:
| I don't think so; the streets are paid for by whatever
| vehicular taxes, the sidewalks are paid for by property
| taxes, there's income and sales taxes for additional
| financing; charging for parking is just adding salt to the
| wound.
|
| In fact... hear me out. It might be that, those that own
| the paid private parking lots in high traffic areas
| exacerbate the parking issues in contested areas, creating
| pressure on free parking areas; then they lobby to put
| parking meters in those free areas because "the city needs
| all the money it can get" (ehh, it shouldn't, it doesn't),
| and voila, no more free parking anywhere.
|
| Just a thought.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > and voila, no more free parking anywhere.
|
| Well... yes, that is precisely what's needed to wean
| America off its unhealthy dependence on cars.
|
| Come over here to Europe, visit our cities where you can
| actually walk on a sidewalk, where you can live without a
| car just fine because everything you need can be reached
| safely on foot, by bike or with public transport.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > Well... yes, that is precisely what's needed to wean
| America off its unhealthy dependence on cars.
|
| HIGHLY disagree. If you want people off cars, you need to
| give them an alternative. Granted, I _love_ cars. I would
| have cars whether I needed one or not, but I know I 'm
| absolutely 100% in the minority on that issue, and like,
| when I say I would have cars either way, I mean _fun_
| cars. I wouldn 't keep and maintain vehicles to just get
| around in my daily life if I didn't have to. I'd very
| much prefer to have just the vehicles I actually enjoy,
| and probably one truck and trailer to get around to
| tracks.
|
| Most people don't like cars and don't like driving which
| is why most people drive like shit. It's a chore, a
| required to-do item on the way to doing something they
| actually want to do.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > If you want people off cars, you need to give them an
| alternative.
|
| And to provide that infrastructure, you need space. Space
| that is reserved for parking cars at the moment. Just
| compare how much you pay per m2 for the parking spot in
| your average city center vs the average rent mer m2 that
| someone has to pay just for a basic shack.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > If you want people off cars, you need to give them an
| alternative
|
| Never going to happen, outside of few dense city centers.
| Once an area is platted for detached single family homes
| and big box stores on stroads, the physical layout is
| incompatible with non car life, and hence you have to
| literally destroy everything and start over with narrow
| streets and smaller plots of land.
|
| The expense of this is not going to win you any votes,
| especially as results will not be evident for at least 20
| years while infrastructure is completely rebuilt and
| legal disputes are hashed out, hence it will not happen
| until nature forces it.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Once an area is platted for detached single family
| homes and big box stores on stroads, the physical layout
| is incompatible with non car life, and hence you have to
| literally destroy everything and start over with narrow
| streets and smaller plots of land.
|
| Not really. Repave the roads to make them slimmer, use
| the space gained to provide elevated sidewalks and bike
| lanes so people can see it with their own eyes that they
| can now participate in traffic _without_ sharing
| infrastructure with cars. And whenever a reasonable sized
| lot goes up for sale, buy it up and convert it to a small
| store.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It won't work, because until you provide everything
| without a car, people will want a car, which means space
| for a car, and once they have a car, they are going to
| use the car to travel to big box stores where they want
| parking for the car to buy their goods at lower prices
| due to economies of scale.
|
| And you can't just repave roads, there are utilities and
| sewer that needs to be moved, and that's the small
| problem. The big problem is facing the outcry of very
| active voters for reducing their road space and making
| their commutes even a minute longer.
|
| And if all the homes around this repaved area are
| detached homes with garages in 0.1+ acre lots, you will
| never have the density of customers to support
| businesses.
|
| It kind of has to start at a city center and slowly, very
| slowly spread outward. But as soon as you hit the higher
| end suburbs with bigger plats, that's where any of that
| high density hope stops, because the political will
| simply isn't going to be there. Look at any US city and
| you will see the "trendy" or "hipster" or whatever areas
| with a few restaurants and whatever in a small walkable
| area are all in areas with postage stamp houses in tiny
| lots.
| tuna74 wrote:
| "And you can't just repave roads, there are utilities and
| sewer that needs to be moved, and that's the small
| problem. The big problem is facing the outcry of very
| active voters for reducing their road space and making
| their commutes even a minute longer."
|
| You don't have to redo sewers etc when you just change
| the surface by removing stroad space and adding bike lane
| space.
|
| Also you can own a car and still bike to places.
| fragmede wrote:
| the alternative is here and it's
| ebikes/scooters/something. it requires a huge culture
| change so it's gonna take some time, but batteries plus a
| motor is viable and is going to cause cities to evolve
| yet again.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| I'm wondering if it comes with the size of the city. Everyone
| wanting to live in the same place at once is a logistical
| nightmare that won't be solved in our lifetime. One can
| compromise; a medium sized city with rapid growth offers high
| pay, low cost lifestyles that don't rely on genius
| politicians to have the answers. Such a city simply faces
| smaller, more solvable problems. Parking is free everywhere
| in at least one such city of 1M. And several others I've
| lived in or visited.
| M4rkJW wrote:
| What--or who--made the streets terrifying?
| zbentley wrote:
| > I just want somewhere to go that's nice to be that doesn't
| demand my fucking credit card.
|
| Libraries meet this need in many ways. But because of the
| dwindling number of alternatives, reductions in funding, and
| increases in the number of struggling community members,
| they're being asked to perform many more community-support
| functions (social services, education, technical support,
| shelter, bathrooms, clinics, after-primary-school
| socializing) for many more people than they used to. This is
| causing some struggles, which I hope libraries and their
| supporters rise to rather than writing off another critical
| type of third place.
| StopTheWorld wrote:
| Professor Michael Rosenfeld at Stanford does research on how
| heterosexual couples in the US meet (
| https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/ ).
|
| In 1940, over 50% met via friends or family. About 36% met at
| school.
|
| In 2021, about 20% met via friends or family. About 10% met at
| school. Over 50% met online. So the majority of US couples are
| now meeting via profit-maximizing corporations. He has a 2019
| paper on this (and it has only increased since that paper).
| lawlessone wrote:
| I'm surprised dating sites work well enough that 50% of
| customers meet via it. They've no incentive to help you
| leave.
| autoexecbat wrote:
| They probably have some internal churn targets to hit, else
| people will start to figure out that the app isn't worth
| their time and try a different one
| jprete wrote:
| That's both a horrible thought and a near-certainty.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| It creates a much worse problem actually. Why have a
| committed relationship when you can always press a button
| to look at hotties and have a pull at the sex slot
| machine?
|
| If they design the system right, their audience just
| won't marry or have long term stable relationships
| kevinob11 wrote:
| I can think of a few reasons why people want (either
| already or after enough pulls of the slot machine) a
| committed relationship.
|
| Though to be clear, just because I think the other more
| stable thing is valuable to folks even with the
| availability of the sex slot machine, I still don't love
| businesses trying to push slot machines or any kind
| really.
| sulandor wrote:
| online dating (apps) did not invent uncommitted sex.
|
| debatable if it got more prevalent because of them, as
| afaik the statistics indicate both, less short _and_ less
| long term relationships, so :shrug:
| ta_1138 wrote:
| Only the people that have really huge success rates,
| which is very small, and gets way worse as one ages. Have
| you seen the swipe stats from many Tinder users? What you
| describe is not a reality for even the top 1% of hetero
| male users.
| tsss wrote:
| It is true for the top 99% of women.
| XMPPwocky wrote:
| Do people go on _dating_ sites to look at "hotties"?
| I've heard there are better websites to do that, many
| free of charge!
|
| (Not a rhetorical question - as a queer person who's
| never used a dating site or app and who's been in a long-
| term relationship (now married) for almost 8 years now, I
| really do have no idea what people do on there.)
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I think it really depends on the people. The slot machine
| would always get more boring and meaningless as time goes
| on and if someone wants meaningful relationship because
| they find the slot machine boring, this is what they will
| look to make happen. Maybe it is for the good to get it
| out of their system faster so they know what they want
| and get something meaningful.
| mlloyd wrote:
| I think committed relationships are on the decline more
| because of the change in how women interact with and are
| viewed by society, than technology. Each successive
| generation of women over the last several decades has
| increased their ability to earn an independent successful
| living, control their sex life without negative labels,
| and remove the expectations that their only value is
| domestic-oriented.
|
| Where in the past women settled for a number of reasons,
| including economic and societal/familial expectations,
| they no longer do. And because women are much less apt to
| settle down, men settle down less too. More free women =
| more free men = less committed relationships. (assuming
| we are seeing fewer committed relationships - I didn't
| fact-check that)
|
| Not at all scientific, just a vibe.
| naveen99 wrote:
| Fewer children -> fewer commitments
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Also, being in a relationship with a bad partner is worse
| than being in a relationship with no partner, especially
| for women who are in more physical danger.
|
| Therefore, with increased ability to live independently,
| expect more risk adverse behavior, which means a larger
| percentage of the "bottom" of the dating market goes
| uncoupled forever.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| Good thing Match is a monopoly that owns all of the giant
| dating apps except for Bumble!
| KittenInABox wrote:
| It might not be dating sites. I've heard of people in WoW
| guilds dating back in the day.
| itishappy wrote:
| I have a friend who met her husband on an old Dance Dance
| Revolution forum!
| duskwuff wrote:
| Let me guess: DDRFreak?
| chasd00 wrote:
| I had a couple of very fulfilling relationships with
| people I met on a band fan site.
| itishappy wrote:
| Customer success stories are free advertising.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| And the need for the service doesn't need to be
| fabricated, it's innate.
| darby_nine wrote:
| They just need to work once. Who knows how many failed
| attempts at finding someone preceded the one that suck.
| ars wrote:
| There is no shortage of potential customers, there is a
| shortage of actual customers. Anything they can do to
| attract more business helps them. So if they have tons of
| success stories they'll get far more business.
|
| It would be different in a saturated market, where they
| might want to try to keep people on the site, but that's
| not the case here.
| kelipso wrote:
| Wonder what that percentage would look like as a function
| of relationship length.
| smcameron wrote:
| 50% of heterosexual couples meeting online is not the same
| as 50% of customers of dating sites entering a
| relationship.
|
| It could be the case that say, only 10% of dating site
| customers end up in a relationship, and this 10% amounts to
| 50% of the total couples, and the math would work out.
|
| E.g.: suppose the total population is 1000 people, 500 of
| which are on a dating site, and the total number of couples
| is 20, 10 of which were formed via the dating site and 10
| of which were formed by other means, and 960 people are out
| of luck.
| throwaway48540 wrote:
| That's a possible theory, but we know the reality is
| opposite.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _They 've no incentive to help you leave_
|
| they have plenty of incentive to get you some dates, after
| that what are they gonna do?
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Get you bad dates with incompatible people?
| chongli wrote:
| _I 'm surprised dating sites work well enough that 50% of
| customers meet via it_
|
| It's not that surprising when you think of selection
| effects. Suppose you have a sack full of marbles. Half of
| the marbles are pink and the other half are random assorted
| colours. Now reach into the sack and pull out two marbles.
| If they match then they get married and you set them aside,
| otherwise return them to the sack.
|
| It's easy to see that it won't take very long until hardly
| any pink marbles remain. After that it's going to be a
| total crapshoot to pull out a pair of matching marbles.
| Maybe some more pink ones get added at a later date but
| they'll match and get removed.
|
| The fundamental problem with dating sites cannot be solved
| by any business model: marriageable people (or otherwise
| people who can form and maintain a longterm relationship)
| are removed from the pool of potential dates. What's left
| are all those who can't or won't form relationships. These
| "misfits" (for lack of a better term) tend to get
| concentrated in the pool over time. Perhaps it even gets so
| bad that marriageable people give up and just avoid dating
| sites.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| This describes what I have intuited happens while dating
| in ones 40s.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Seems to start in the 30s, in your 20s there's still
| hope. After that finding someone unscorned is rare,
| becoming such yourself. Ask me how I know
| roenxi wrote:
| > The fundamental problem with dating sites cannot be
| solved by any business model
|
| Well, it can be solved but not by a dating site
| (evidence: this was a solved problem in the past). But
| it'd have to be very radical compared to modern dating.
| Arguably the branding couldn't be as a dating site, but
| as a stable community where people don't get removed over
| time so the concentration of non-pink marbles never
| rises.
|
| That is something like the old model that church
| communities would have used. The marriageable ones pair
| off, but they are still in the community of people
| talking to each other. New marriageable people entered
| the community, didn't feel overwhelmed or different and
| eventually pair with other new entrants. The business
| model has to be that drawing a pair isn't ever expected
| to result in marriage and is fun by itself _but_ serious
| dates might happen. Then the system would be viable.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Hasn't the divorce rate also gone down. So one question is if
| the method of meeting is improving that rate
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Yeah.
|
| Marriage rate and divorce rate have plummeted since 1940.
|
| Probably not much to do with electronic media there. A lot
| more likely that financial and social pressures are
| squeezing what were previously considered cultural
| imperatives. ie - church, marriage, home ownership, etc.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Or simply that fewer marginally good fit marriages are
| occurring.
|
| Fewer teen marriages, shotgun weddings, ect.
|
| There were always a lot of financial imperatives to wed.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _There were always a lot of financial imperatives to
| wed._
|
| The point is that now the financial imperative is _not_
| to wed. ( "Girlfriend get serious! Why marry some loser
| who can't even buy a house?" or "Bro what? Do you know
| what will happen if you get divorced?")
|
| The financial imperative is _not_ to go to church.
| Working on Sunday has become the norm as people are
| regularly expected to be available on the weekends. This
| is especially true in the startup or tech space. And don
| 't even get me started on how workers in the services
| sector, who would in any other era be the most likely to
| attend church, get so few weekends free between their
| multiple jobs, that church is now an afterthought for
| them.
|
| The financial imperative is _not_ to purchase a home. (
| "Bro! You don't have that kind of money! And what if you
| have to move for your job?")
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think we have very different perceptions of the world,
| but I don't have much interest in having a discussion
| predicated on quotes from imaginary characters.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >A lot more likely that financial and social pressures
| are squeezing what were previously considered cultural
| imperatives.
|
| We are living the most affluent lives ever known to
| mankind, even so-called low income people. We all have
| more money than we know what to do with, let alone more
| money than our forefathers.
|
| Rather, I think the drop in marriage (and by extension
| divorce) has to do with increasing individualism and
| jade-ism.
|
| The more humanity (namely the west) advances, the more it
| is drilled in that all men are created equal with
| unalienable rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of
| happiness. People are increasingly more concerned with
| living their lives the way they want to the exclusion of
| spouses and children if such things are not what makes
| them happy.
|
| Combine that with the brutal realities of life, because
| life is fucking hard at the best of times (no matter how
| rich you are), and the media constantly sensationalizing
| on everyones' fears and anger aren't helping matters
| either.
|
| Also as an aside and anecdata: I'm in my mid-30s now, not
| married, never married, and never intend to marry because
| I do not find it appealing at all. I can more than afford
| to marry, but I am far too busy with other matters more
| important to me and I frankly find marriage to be nothing
| short of a human rights violation anyway.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > I frankly find marriage to be nothing short of a human
| rights violation anyway.
|
| Just curious, but how could marriage be a rights
| violation?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| First the axiom so we're all on the same page: I truly
| and wholeheartedly agree with and believe in the notion
| that life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness are
| unalienable rights.
|
| Marriage is many things, but chief among them is that
| marriage is an inevitable compromise of each others'
| liberties and therein lies the violation. Who am I to
| compromise my would-be wife's unalienable right to
| liberty? Who is my would-be wife to compromise my
| unalienable right to liberty? This is absolutely
| irreconcilable and thus I consider marriage to be a
| violation of human rights.
|
| If we also were to have children, I/we would also be
| imposing my/our will upon them. I/we would be violating
| our childrens' unalienable right to liberty and
| potentially pursuit of happiness. I cannot accept that.
|
| I am also of the position that if I were to get a divorce
| for any reason, I must question why I got married in the
| first place. Marriage is not a thing that can nor should
| be taken lightly; divorce is an out, but I consider the
| entire premise of marriage is that it is a permanent
| thing until death do us part.
|
| As such, if we end up in an unhappy marriage (eg:
| constant bickering over the kitchen or finances) then
| this is also a violation of our respective unalienable
| rights to pursuit of happiness and we both wasted
| significant amounts of our limited time that each of us
| have in this world.
|
| Therefore, along with other personal convictions, I find
| no appeal in marriage and have no intentions of ever
| pursuing it or finding myself in such an arrangement of
| my free will.
| XorNot wrote:
| > I consider the entire premise of marriage is that it is
| a permanent thing until death do us part.
|
| Right so you invented a notion of marriage which doesn't
| apply in the society you live in and then invented a
| problem created by that invented supposition.
|
| This all sounds very normal.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| If marriage is not some kind of "special" arrangement,
| why do we place so much value on the concept?
|
| Marriage is clearly very different from and more
| significant than simple friendship or other mundane
| relationship arrangement, and everyone's reasoning as to
| why will vary depending upon their religious and/or
| cultural upbringing and values.
|
| Personally, as I stated earlier, I consider marriage to
| be some kind of permanent-ish arrangement (and especially
| if children become involved). There is an artificial out
| (divorce), but as far as I'm concerned it isn't something
| that should be used with wanton abandon. Thus, I place a
| lot of weight on why I would marry in the first place; if
| I am going to divorce, I should not have married in the
| first place.
|
| I am deliberately violating the _" Do not let perfect be
| the enemy of good."_ rule precisely because _I_ demand a
| would-be marriage to be perfect given how many human
| rights _I_ would flagrantly violate. I know I am never
| going to marry with such prerequisites and I _desire_
| that, because otherwise I cannot live with myself.
|
| If you have any worthwhile arguments to the contrary to
| bring to the table I am quite happy to hear them. My
| conclusions thus far are the result of many years of deep
| and thorough deliberation, but I am also aware that it is
| far from infallible.
| CPLX wrote:
| > If marriage is not some kind of "special" arrangement,
| why do we place so much value on the concept?
|
| Marriage is an economic and logistical framework for the
| raising of children.
|
| Any society that doesn't come up with a viable way to
| raise children ceases to exist almost immediately.
|
| So that's why.
| nearlyepic wrote:
| I think that axiomatically quoting the US declaration of
| independence is a deeply unhealthy way of approaching the
| world the world at large.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| So you disagree that life, liberty, and pursuit of
| happiness are unalienable rights?
|
| Are you saying that they can (or should?!) be violated?
|
| Why?
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| No GP but I think they such rights cannot be absolute
| because the same right can conflict with itself.
|
| Say it's the 18 century with slavery is common. The slave
| owners are depriving the slaves of liberty and happiness.
| But the deprivation of the slaves liberty brings the
| owners happiness.
|
| If you cannot persuade the owners to stop depriving
| slaves of liberty, then there two options remain.
|
| One, you respect the owners right to happiness. But at
| the expense of the slave's liberty.
|
| Two, you use force to stop the owners from violating the
| slaves rights. But in doing so you violate the owners
| right to happiness.
|
| What's the answer then here if there no options that do
| not harm someone's unalienable rights?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Simple: A man's rights end where another man's rights
| begin.
|
| To use your example, the slave owner's right to pursuit
| of happiness ends where the slaves' rights to liberty and
| pursuit of happiness begin. A would-be slave owner cannot
| and should not violate another man's (a would-be slave's)
| right to liberty and pursuit of happiness.
|
| Going back to the subject of marriage, my right to
| liberty ends where my would-be wife's right to liberty
| begins and vice versa. Marriage is inevitably a
| compromise of both our rights to liberty. Thus, I find
| marriage a violation of human rights.
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| >To use your example, the slave owner's right to pursuit
| of happiness ends where the slaves' rights to liberty and
| pursuit of happiness begin. A would-be slave owner cannot
| and should not violate another man's (a would-be slave's)
| right to liberty and pursuit of happiness
|
| Except you've chosen to violate the owners right to
| happiness by attempting to place limitations on the
| rights that were so called inalienable. What you think
| the limit should be and what the slave owner thinks the
| limit should be differ.
|
| Same right, but in this case brought into conflict by
| disagreement of interpretations.
|
| Second, what happens when the other side refuses to stop
| because he believes that your interpretation is wrong?
| What do you do then?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Two rights colliding is essentially an unstoppable force
| meeting an immovable object. The two can not (should not)
| violate each other, thus one's rights end where another's
| begins.
|
| Governments are also tasked with guaranteeing those
| rights, and those who violate another's rights are
| deprived of their rights as mandated by laws.
|
| For example, a murderer (violator of another's right to
| life) is imprisoned (deprived of his right to liberty)
| and possibly even executed (deprived of his right to
| life).
| selimthegrim wrote:
| You do realize the original quote from Locke was "life,
| liberty and pursuit of property"?
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| Yes they can conflict. I chose slavery because it did
| conflict. 13 States left succeeded from the United States
| to form the Confederacy to protect slavery at the behest
| of their own citizens. And the remaining Union disagreed.
| Violently. The US Civil War was one of the bloodiest in
| it's history.
|
| Even today. SCOTUS overturning Roe vs Wade and allowing
| States to prohibit abortions. A difference because of a
| disagreement on whether or not a human embryo is entitled
| to be treated as a full human being with all the same
| rights and responsibilities.
|
| Hence the nuance. You can look at the same document that
| says these rights, but how they are achieved and what
| limits there are can differ due to differences in
| opinion.
| CPLX wrote:
| > If we also were to have children, I/we would also be
| imposing my/our will upon them. I/we would be violating
| our childrens' unalienable right to liberty and
| potentially pursuit of happiness. I cannot accept that.
|
| What? The only way to avoid mass human rights violations
| is the extinction of the human race in one generation?
| edem wrote:
| So... you're part of a suicide cult basically.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| The fact that I have no interest in violating human
| rights or propagating life have nothing to do with
| whether I am suicidal (which I am not).
| lolinder wrote:
| Marriage rates are also plummeting, so it's more likely
| that the divorce rate has gone down simply because people
| wait to get married until they've proven it works. A couple
| that cohabitates and then separates doesn't get logged in
| the divorce rates.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| There has also been about a 70% drop in number of marriages
| since the 50s.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| And as someone else noted, a significant drop in the number
| of divorces since its peak in the 1980s.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Does that include breakups? Can't get divorced if you
| were never married.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| No, unfortunately. And the number of divorce + breakups
| with kids involved is still rising...
| tivert wrote:
| > Over 50% met online.
|
| Is that actually true? I read something recently (in an
| recent article in a major publication about how online dating
| sucks and people are getting tired of it), that the
| proportion is much lower. Like people put all this money and
| effort into dating apps, but must successful relationships
| still form outside of them.
| watwut wrote:
| Online is not necessary the same as dating app. It can be
| any online group where people have an in person meetup once
| in a while.
| slightwinder wrote:
| "Online" these days more likely means social networks,
| games and other services where people with common interest
| meet. Meaning, you meet through your hobby, instead of a
| dedicated service for meeting or because you just happen to
| live in the same area.
| jrussino wrote:
| Interestingly, there was another big shift happening from
| 1940-1980:
|
| - in 1940, the top 3 were: met through family, met through
| friends, met in primary school. In that order, but pretty
| much equal
|
| - From 1940-1980, two of those three (family, primary school)
| trended sharply downward, as did "met in church", while these
| trended upward: met through friends, met in bar or
| restaurant, met as or through coworkers, met in college. "met
| through friends" was by far the most common circa 1980
|
| - starting in 1995 "met online" sees a sharp rise, and by
| 2010 it has overtaken them all.
|
| The only other category that was still on the rise after 2010
| was "met in a bar or restaurant". Is that really increasingly
| common? I have a strange feeling that some of those are just
| people too embarassed to say they met online...
|
| Anyway, my point is there was (perhaps unsurprisingly)
| already a big shift going on 1940-1980, namely that the
| immediate family, church, childhood friends became less
| dominant in people's lives and friends, work, commercially-
| facilitated interactions (bars and restaurants) became more
| central. Did we learn anything from that adjustment? Were
| people in the 80's and 90's talking ad worrying about this
| the way we're talking today about the way social interactions
| are replacing the "old" ones?
|
| (also, the values for "met online" on that graph seem to be
| small but non-zero in the 1980s! I'd like to hear the stories
| of some of those couples...)
| atribecalledqst wrote:
| > (also, the values for "met online" on that graph seem to
| be small but non-zero in the 1980s! I'd like to hear the
| stories of some of those couples...)
|
| IIRC Jason Scott's BBS documentary mentions this a bit.
| There's a couple that shows up a number of times that met
| on a BBS.
| 5- wrote:
| > stories of some of those couples
|
| this one, about two people having met online, was written
| in 1879 (not a typo):
|
| https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24353
| silisili wrote:
| > I have a strange feeling that some of those are just
| people too embarassed to say they met online
|
| Probably right. I don't really get the stigma, but I've
| known a few people personally who told the same lie and
| found later it was online. One in particular had a huge
| elaborate story about their bar meeting. His wife told me
| later one day he basically selected her from a website.
|
| So like most questions, probably worth taking self
| reporting with a giant dose of salt.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Selected... What? Not matched? You are making it seem
| like she just listed herself for selection on a website
| and went with it?
| silisili wrote:
| She was from a foreign country. I'm guessing whatever the
| modern day equivalent of a mail order bride? I didn't ask
| for specifics past that.
| throwaway48540 wrote:
| Older dating sites were basically lists of profiles and
| you could send a message to anyone, without "matching".
| anovikov wrote:
| In many countries where dating balance (i am not saying
| gender balance... because it's not really about numbers
| of guys and girls but about difference in their interest
| in dating), is not as skewed as in the West, this is
| still the case. You can actually write anyone, even on a
| free version of a dating app or website. Girls' feeds get
| a bit spammy, but not terribly so, it can still work. I
| know it sounds crazy but that's an upside of life in the
| Eastern Europe let's say, or ex-Communist bloc.
| tenacious_tuna wrote:
| Also interesting insofar as what "met online" means.
| Dating apps are certainly the most common, but one of my
| partners and I met on a Discord server for a shared
| interest, which is certainly "online" but not necessarily
| in the same context as "dating apps"
| littlestymaar wrote:
| This. I have a couple of friends who actually met their
| partner on World of Warcraft in the mid 2000s. But I
| suspect it's a very small fraction of the "online" group,
| especially nowadays with dating apps being so prevalent.
| throwaway48540 wrote:
| I'd expect that the fraction is much bigger, actually. In
| mid 2000s the couples that met through online games were
| the "weirdos", "normal" people met online on dating
| sites. Today gaming is pretty much mainstream and while
| dating apps are probably a majority, it's now absolutely
| normal to meet people while playing games.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| You question the stigma and then finish your paragraph
| with "just selected her from a website".
| silisili wrote:
| Explained a possibility in another comment.
|
| When an older, morbidly obese person is with a much more
| attractive and younger foreign person, you can work out
| most of the details in your head. Is it not more
| embarrassing to make up some Top Gun-esque story? I don't
| know.
|
| I met my first wife in person, second on Facebook(8ish
| years and going). I feel zero shame in the meeting place,
| more shame for having married the first. So yes,
| personally, I don't understand the stigma.
| CPLX wrote:
| If I message with someone on a dating app a few times and
| then make arrangements so the first time I encounter them
| in the physical world is a bar where did I "meet" them?
|
| The subjective answer to this question might be at least
| part of this statistic.
|
| Also you may be underestimating the number of people who
| pair up as part of nightlife outings. Based on my many many
| outings in cities around the world in recent years it does
| seem at a glance that people are still engaged in the
| practice.
| maeil wrote:
| FWIW here in Korea the 1940 statistic still holds, yet I
| don't think youth mental health is any better.
| Animats wrote:
| Well, of course. Today, approaching someone of the opposite
| sex whom you haven't previously chatted with online is
| creepy.
| 42lux wrote:
| Really? How old are you? There are still school, work,
| parties, clubs, bars... I even know a couple that met in
| their church.
| pickledish wrote:
| If anyone's interesting in reading more along these lines (the
| weird state we've gotten into where everything in our lives
| needs to be viewed through an economic lens for some reason,
| and the damage it causes) -- check out the book "Capitalist
| Realism" by the late Mark Fisher -- I really enjoyed it!
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6763725-capitalist-reali...
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| True. I have personally integrated this idea fully by trying to
| hire/work with friends and family whenever possible.
|
| After years trying to see people weekly and failing miserably,
| this is best hack I have found. Caveat emptor, takes discipline
| and patience from everyone but it's great to see loved ones
| daily, fully engaged in a project.
|
| It helps that I can afford to have hobby businesses.
| anon291 wrote:
| Tell me more? You own businesses and hire your family /
| friends to work in them?
| alexfromapex wrote:
| This is so accurate. There's been lots of talk of
| enshittification and it really is just everything now.
| Monetizing the well in modern capitalism means poisoning it. It
| all can be traced back to lobbying in politics. They need to
| ban money from politics immediately and everything will
| improve.
| whythre wrote:
| That just means the money moves in stealthier ways. Instead
| of soft corruption you get hard corruption.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Money moves in stealthy ways already, and there are ways to
| identify that. The problem is the legislature is supposed
| to be supervising the government entities that pursue
| financial corruption. Instead of reducing all problems to
| economic problems, where only the very rich have a voice,
| we should be encouraging a legislature with integrity to do
| what is right for everyone.
| vegadw wrote:
| What frustrates me is that, it seems (Read as: the following is
| just my vibe) that the majority of 3rd places left are
| religious in nature, but I, personally, don't want to be
| religious or raise children that are.
|
| There are some options, of course, but they're limited and
| often of poor quality, at least locally. Libraries are trying
| to adapt to fill this gap, and maker spaces spring up but most
| don't have funding to be good - or if they do, that funding
| brings things that ruin the spirit. Once you're looking for a
| place as an Adult, especially without kids, the number of
| relevant events and things to do drops quickly too - so these
| same children aren't going to find better options as they grow
| older.
| giobox wrote:
| I've found the only way to make friends/community as an adult
| outside of religion, at least for me, is to go to events
| relevant to my hobbies and interests. Yes it's difficult, but
| communities for just about everything are out there if you
| put yourself out there. If you choose events that occur
| regularly I've found you get to know people and make friends
| just by trying to become a regular face too.
|
| If you don't have a hobby/interest with a local group, you
| can try picking new ones until you find one that clicks too.
| It does take some effort initially though. The shared
| interest is critical to removing barriers to making those
| relationships for me.
| phil21 wrote:
| The mad rush to as quickly abolish religious practices in
| mainstream U.S. culture without any form of societal
| replacement is puzzling to me.
|
| I am no fan of religion having grown up in an exceedingly
| religious environment. But it was always completely obvious
| to me even as a child that the primary purpose of religion
| was to form local communities and have others with shared
| values to rely on.
|
| We seem to be doing it with more than just religion these
| days, but it's the canary in the coal mine.
|
| Lack of investment in your community will very rapidly erode
| any sort of high trust society you once had within a single
| generation. Once it's gone, it's pretty much gone for good.
|
| I believe no one is talking about this aspect of WFH either.
| It's taking away maybe the last "socially expected" regular
| commitment to your local community. Your daily life is not
| supposed to be lived in complete social comfort with planned
| interactions with a tiny group of people being your sole
| source of socialization. At times you _should_ be feeling
| uncomfortable or obligated in some community or social
| setting or you are not growing as a human being. I don't
| think the office is the best place at all for this, but for
| many folks I know it was their last social interaction of any
| sort outside of family.
|
| I've been unable to articulate these thoughts very well for
| decades now - since my late high school days I was already
| the crazy guy telling friends I was really worried how our
| hobbies and social interactions were so much less investment
| on average than our grandparents generation. On average
| having a bunch of Quake guild buddies is simply not the same
| as my grandpa who had a bunch of fishing buddies. It's been
| on my mind for quite some time, and I think the data is
| starting to show those concerns were legitimate.
| Filligree wrote:
| > The mad rush to as quickly abolish religious practices in
| mainstream U.S. culture without any form of societal
| replacement is puzzling to me. > I am no fan of religion
| having grown up in an exceedingly religious environment.
| But it was always completely obvious to me even as a child
| that the primary purpose of religion was to form local
| communities and have others with shared values to rely on.
|
| It is a problem, but... religion isn't true. How do you
| square that with any sort of culture that values reality?
| benreesman wrote:
| It seems in 2024 that one simply chooses their religion.
| Arbitrary GDP growth in a finite environment isn't true
| either, it's just another convenient fiction. More
| recently the AI doom/effective altruist community has
| just made some hypothetical AI thing into a god. Even
| rational things like environmentalism and social
| progressivism have taken on many of the trappings of a
| religion.
|
| It might be time to start judging which faith-based
| organizing principles produce the best outcomes.
| simianparrot wrote:
| Religion is literally false but metaphorically true. Our
| brain filters existence through metaphors. I'm not
| religious but my metaphors of understanding reality are
| built on a culture that was for thousands of years until
| the state got separated from church within my lifetime
| here in Norway. And it hasn't made things better.
| the_snooze wrote:
| >How do you square that with any sort of culture that
| values reality?
|
| Empiricism doesn't help you with the questions of "who
| are my people?" or "what matters?" You can make a
| legitimate case for some of religion's claims being
| empirically unsound, it doesn't take away from the fact
| that religion is very effective at giving a lot of people
| meaning and community, orthogonal to those specific
| claims.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| It's arguably only effective if you genuinely believe the
| truth claims of the faith. There is this sort of strange
| very online revival of "trad" beliefs but you can
| literally tell that the people are trying to gaslight
| themselves into believing something they don't. Sort of a
| split-brain religion at best.
|
| Nietzsche's aphorism about God being dead was correct, as
| was his prediction about the future. Religion wouldn't
| immediately die out but it would take increasingly
| pathological forms, it's arguably why religion has taken
| such a political turn as the capital 'f' Faith portion is
| just gone.
| ars wrote:
| > It's arguably only effective if you genuinely believe
| the truth claims of the faith.
|
| At least for Judaism that not true at all. There are
| enormous numbers of Jews who do not believe, and yet
| consider themselves Jewish and go to occasional services,
| and find meaning in them even while not believing.
|
| There are even pulpit Rabbis who do not believe and yet
| faithfully follow all the practices and teach.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >There are enormous numbers of Jews
|
| There aren't, which is exactly why they're exceptional.
| After the experiences of the 20th century Jews have
| retained an acute awareness of threats to their very
| survival as a group which is why they tend to adhere to
| practice despite secularization. It's also likely why
| secular Jewish women are the only secular group with a
| high birth rate.
|
| There's no historical analog to this in pretty much any
| other modern society, which is why you don't see secular
| Swedes drag themselves out of bed to go to mass on
| Sundays.
| toyg wrote:
| _> After the experiences of the 20th century_
|
| ... And the 19th, and the 18th, and the 17th, and the
| 16th, and...
|
| The Jewish condition was obviously affected by the Shoah,
| but the fundamental elements of _otherness_ from the
| communities it lived in (since the exodus), with all the
| very real threats that they inevitably attract, have
| always been there.
|
| (Sadly any further elaboration on this point cannot be
| made in a public forum today.)
| anon291 wrote:
| It's actually 'okay' to gaslight yourself into believing
| something you don't. That is the basis of human society
| and mental health. I mean, everyone gaslights themselves
| into believing all sorts of weird statements on reality,
| such as 'my parents love me unconditionally'
| (realistically, there are probably conditions attached).
| Barrin92 wrote:
| It's okay to make aspirational claims or commitments
| like, "I'm going to do my best to love my children
| unconditionally". It's not mentally healthy to tell
| yourself "my marriage is great" when your marriage is in
| fact in shambles. In an extreme case say, believing your
| parents or spouse love you unconditionally if they're
| abusing you might destroy a life. A lot of relationships
| probably decay beyond repair because people don't face
| reality early enough.
|
| Personal commitments, even if idealistic are good, trying
| to talk yourself into facts about reality that you don't
| even believe is never good. And most religions of course
| make those demands. It's basically like being in the late
| Soviet Union. Everything is great, everyone is equal, you
| leave the house and there's a doctor selling cigarettes
| and vodka on the streets to survive. And basically when
| in your mind you see that double-think it's already over
| in a way.
| 2snakes wrote:
| There are certain elements that are not true. But other
| ones are true. There are many ways to alleviate
| suffering.
| krapp wrote:
| God is not true, at least not the sense that any religion
| claims (God as an abstraction and a meme is as real as
| any other, as real as Harry Potter or Slenderman) Claims
| of absolute moral right or authority derived from divine
| right are not true. Claims made by the religious that
| belief in God is a prerequisite to morality, community or
| cultural identity are not true. Claims made by religious
| teachings about the nature of the universe are not true.
|
| So what does that leave? Philosophy, ethics and cultural
| mythology? Why do we need to keep religion around for any
| of that, any more than we need alchemy when we now have
| chemistry?
| dmkolobov wrote:
| Growing up in Nashville I've frequently heard that
| religion is a prerequisite to ethics. While I disagree in
| principle, I struggle to come up with an example where
| philosophy and ethics are discussed in a secular setting
| outside of school(academia included) and politics.
|
| It would not surprise me that on the whole our society is
| worse off for lack of a widespread secular tradition of
| discussing these concepts with your community.
|
| edit: substitute "secular setting" for "secular state",
| definitely not arguing for the integration of church and
| state.
| silverquiet wrote:
| It's always looked to me like from a first approximation,
| people just do whatever they want and come up with
| justifications. The smarter they are, the more elaborate
| the justification. I doubt I'm above it.
| dmkolobov wrote:
| Right. I would argue that organized religion
| provides(provided?) a guided framework of accountability,
| transparency, and acceptance for your "justifications"
| amongst your community. In a vacuum, these differences
| compound into a complete breakdown of understanding.
|
| It's harder to call someone a "libtard" or a "troglodyte"
| if you have to sit next to them in a pew for the rest of
| your life.
| toyg wrote:
| I fail to see how being forced to confess your crimes to
| someone who can then informally blackmail you or your
| employer, for the benefit of an elected dictator-for-life
| living on the other side of the ocean, provides any
| "transparency" or "accountability" towards the community.
| trealira wrote:
| I think you're right, but that developing a sense of
| ethics and believing those ethics and morals down to your
| bones will make you not want to do certain things. People
| without empathy don't have trouble lying to, stealing
| from, or committing violence against other people - but
| those things feel wrong to me intrinsically, because I
| was raised to feel empathy. But empathy is taught.
| Seemingly immoral things can be everyday occurrences. For
| example, it used to be acceptable for husbands to beat
| their wives up, and now it's not. Probably most people
| truly believe it's immoral now, unless they grew up with
| their father regularly beating their mother.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I suspect empathy is mostly nature with some influence
| via nurture. Once you encounter a few genuine psychopaths
| who aren't particularly good at hiding it, it sure seems
| like it's just something innate to them.
|
| Certainly you can instill reverence in people - give
| people a challenge that involves using a cross as a
| hammer to complete and they'll recoil instinctively, but
| I think that's just software tapping into something more
| akin to firmware.
| trealira wrote:
| This is just my conjecture, but I think that it's that
| psychopaths lack the capacity for empathy, and empathy is
| otherwise like a muscle in that it can be trained. I
| suspect this because I've grown more empathetic compared
| to when I was a kid, and some other people I've talked to
| said it was like that for them (not very scientific, I
| know). I remember being somewhat selfish and amoral.
|
| I think it's a combination of the environment you grew up
| in, the behavior of the people you grew up with, the
| values you were raised with, and the education you
| received, and some of it is also purely self-driven. And
| so toddlers and little kids are like amoral sponges,
| since they're still developing their senses of justice,
| morality, and empathy.
| toyg wrote:
| _> an example where philosophy and ethics are discussed
| in a secular setting_
|
| That's what the intellectual cafes of 18th/19th century
| were. In a more bastardized way, that's what pubs can be
| today.
|
| This said, school and "politics" have always been the
| main locations for such arguments - "politics", after
| all, was effectively built as an alternative to religious
| establishments to discuss matters without pesky clerics
| around.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| False beliefs are often much more instrumentally useful
| than true beliefs.
|
| I notice I usually walk away from conversations with
| fellow believers about the nature of God, the Bible etc
| feeling closer to and more trusting of them even compared
| to if I talk with them about e.g. trolley problems or
| what their take on moral realism is, especially if I
| later confirm they in fact walk the walk by living in a
| way which agrees with those principles. There's just
| something about the religious framing that gives it that
| extra kick.
|
| The actual question of whether God is real is irrelevant.
| I just assume they're playing ball the same way I am, and
| that's often enough to kickstart the friendship.
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| God is not a testable hypothesis. There is no empirical
| way to conclude God does not exist except by assuming
| that anything that cannot be tested does not exist. Such
| an assumption also rules out morality, as there is no
| empirical basis for that either.
|
| Assuming you're utilitarian, you're working off of the
| untestable belief that making people happier has some
| property called 'goodness', and that there is some
| inherent value to it. But that doesn't even matter
| because happiness is a qualia that cannot be tested
| anyway.
|
| So, while I agree that faith in God is not a prerequisite
| for morality, faith in something certainly is. And once
| you've allowed faith into your worldview, stating with
| certainty that God doesn't exist becomes inconsistent.
| krapp wrote:
| Faith in something doesn't need presuppose faith in
| anything supernatural.
|
| And theists have no empirical basis for their morality
| either, because faith by definition is belief in the
| absence of such evidence. People just believe what they
| believe. I prefer to be fed rather than starve, I prefer
| peace to suffering, I prefer liberty to slavery. I'm a
| social being capable of empathy and extending my beliefs
| about myself to include my expectations for others. I
| prefer others be fed, rather than starve. I prefer others
| have peace rather than suffer. I prefer others have
| liberty rather than slavery. I believe human life has
| value because I value my own life, and therefore value
| the lives of others.
|
| What do I need to have _faith_ in, here, other than
| nature and mortality?
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| Faith in something that is the basis for any morality
| absolutely does presuppose faith in something
| supernatural. If you know of anything in the natural
| world that proves the existence of right and wrong, by
| all means let me know.
|
| I don't disagree that theists lack empirical basis for
| morality, both because I don't think anyone does and
| because I don't believe there is an empirical basis for
| God.
|
| But it doesn't sound like you have a morality*. It sounds
| like you have preferences. One doesn't decide one's
| preferences, and even if they did, they would need a
| morality to do so rightly. This suggests that your being
| a good person is strictly luck of the draw. If my friend
| Bob the sadist says he loves it when people starve, would
| you be in the right to tell him he's wrong? On what
| grounds?
|
| *Don't take this the wrong way- I don't mean to insult
| you, and I fully expect you do have morality. I'm only
| criticizing the argument here.
| krapp wrote:
| >If my friend Bob the sadist says he loves it when people
| starve, would you be in the right to tell him he's wrong?
| On what grounds?
|
| You first. You don't believe there is an empirical basis
| for God yet you believe morality absolutely presupposes
| faith in the supernatural. Presumably, you also consider
| yourself to have morality. On what supernaturally-derived
| basis would you (presumably) believe Bob is wrong? and
| given that the supernatural cannot be objectively proven,
| how does that faith differ from a preference, on your
| part?
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| On the basis of utilitarian notions of right and wrong, I
| would have no issue with saying that Bob is objectively
| wrong- he disagrees with what I claim is objectively
| right. If all I had were preferences, I could no more
| claim Bob was wrong to prefer to be a murderer than I
| could claim he was wrong to prefer to be an art teacher.
| I say, 'I wouldn't do that if I were you', he replies,
| 'Good thing you're not!', end of discussion. And then I
| guess he would probably murder me. Or worse: teach me
| art.
|
| Faith also beats preference here in that, given the
| premise that it is good to reduce suffering and increase
| happiness, I arrive at the same conclusions about morally
| correct actions regardless of the time and place that my
| mind happens to exist in. I can align my actions to the
| right choice even if I was raised to prefer something
| else. A slave owner prefers that slavery exists; a
| utilitarian slave owner can see that that is wrong and
| free their slaves.
| Animats wrote:
| > God is not a testable hypothesis.
|
| An activist god, in the old testament sense, would be
| rather visible.
| dbrueck wrote:
| This is stating as fact several things that have not and
| cannot be proven by tools such as the scientific method.
| Seems ironic, given the subject matter. :)
| krapp wrote:
| The list of claims made by religion which have been
| disproved by science is innumerable, and the list of
| claims made by science which have been disproved by
| religion does not exist. But sure, let's pretend religion
| and science are equally valid....
| dbrueck wrote:
| Hey now, you're moving the goal posts quite a bit there!
| :)
|
| I was just pointing out that you said several things as
| if they were proven facts, and they are not. That's all.
| krapp wrote:
| >I was just pointing out that you said several things as
| if they were proven facts, and they are not. That's all.
|
| The religious do that all the time, but only atheists
| ever seem to get called out for it. Why the double
| standard, I wonder?
| svieira wrote:
| I invite you to consider The Shroud of Turin
| (https://www.shroud.com/78exam.htm) and the documented
| miracles at Lourdes (https://www.lourdes-
| france.org/en/the-miracles-of-lourdes/).
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| God as defined by Jews/Christians as 'being itself'
| doesn't seem disprovable. Especially if you believe that
| love is real in the whatever- sense.
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| > How do you square that with any sort of culture that
| values reality?
|
| You examine all cultures and find that, despite their
| claims, none truly value reality. Then you choose to
| believe, or have experiences that lead you to believe,
| one that explicitly says that there is more to life than
| what you can see.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I am surprised this needs to be pointed out, but people
| generally believe their religion to be true and do not
| find it at odds with reality at all. That doesn't mean
| _you_ have to agree with them just because they believe
| it, but it is certainly not the case that religion is
| false in a provable sense, nor that religiosity is
| incompatible with valuing reality.
| aikinai wrote:
| Well since we ended up with the most popular religions
| being monotheistic, it follows that regardless of what is
| true, most religious people are wrong. We just can't
| prove which ones.
| elliotto wrote:
| His point is a criticism of the role of religion as a
| community accessible to everyone; what if you don't
| believe in it? What if you can't? This makes the idea
| that everyone should just join their local church group a
| non starter.
| anon291 wrote:
| I feel this is a very 'Protestant' (for lack of better
| word) view of the situation.
|
| If you don't believe in it, you should just do all the
| actions and move on as normal. This is the 'liturgical'
| approach to religion and doesn't require belief.
|
| I myself have confessed many times to my priest a lack of
| belief, but by virtue of the fact I'm there, I'm clearly
| still practicing. I mean, as a very analytical person,
| sometimes I feel very skeptical, and sometimes I feel as
| if God obviously exists. But either way, it doesn't
| matter because the answer is unknowable by observation,
| so it's a choice to believe or not. But even if my choice
| feels strained, being liturgical[1] about it still
| provides the same benefits.
|
| [1] By liturgical, I mean, doing the actions, like
| kneeling, standing, bowing, etc. This builds community
| independent of any belief.
| pjlegato wrote:
| On the contrary, most religions assert that their
| particular views are the _only_ valid ones -- and many
| require their adherents to actively proselytize, to try
| to convert others to their dogma.
|
| These views are replete with many untestable and non-
| falsifiable axiomatic assumptions, which must be accepted
| on "faith."
|
| That word means "accepting the validity of those axioms
| _despite_ their lack of congruence with reality."
| scruple wrote:
| The church that I was raised in and grew up in for the
| first 18 years of my life... I became a militant atheist
| when I left that church at 18, close to 30 years ago. In
| my 30s, I started to drift between Zen Buddhism, Druidry,
| wicca, paganism, looked into Daoism, and on and on it
| went. And I finally realized, quite recently, that I had
| a God-shaped hole running right through the center of me.
| I still haven't quite figured out what to do about that,
| I've been looking deeply into Eastern Orthodox
| Christianity because I find it very compelling, and I
| have no interest in going back to Protestantism and am
| deeply troubled by the Catholic Church and it's
| hierarchy, but I have my doubts and skepticism still.
|
| Regardless, I personally find all of that to be vastly
| preferable to _whatever the fuck_ is happening to us in
| the absence of Christianity.
| wussboy wrote:
| I asked many of these same questions when I lost my
| faith. I found compelling answers as to why I had a god
| shaped hole in D.S. Wilson's Darwin's Cathedral. It's
| taken 15 years, but I also finally have plans about what
| the fuck we should be doing about it.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| As a low key non-religious person, I find the German
| Mennonites pretty appealing. They have a sort of DIY
| approach to religious practice and very little decorum.
| But AFAIK the US branch is much more radical, I'm not
| even sure if there are others than the Pennsylvania
| Dutch.
|
| Protestants in Europe are also very different from the US
| btw - they are more moderate than Catholics, not less. I
| grew up Protestant and have always had doubts, which
| turned into being pretty sure that it's all bogus from
| age 20 or so. Having something to believe in is probably
| nice, but it doesn't work for me.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| I (somewhat unknowingly) spent several months of
| immersion in a Hindu monastery. At least in the branch
| they practiced, they were very clear that your internal
| beliefs on the theology were far less important than
| doing the practices that will bring you benefits in this
| very lifetime--no need to reincarnate to enjoy your
| positive karma. Christianity puts too much emphasis on
| belief and not enough on rituals & practices to thrive in
| a skeptical public.
| pjlegato wrote:
| Catholic and Orthodox Christians still retain and
| practice vast repertoires of rituals. They are not
| thriving amidst our skeptical public.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| What culture values reality?
|
| In fact, how often is your own brain lying to you for one
| reason or another?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Religious pursuits of 'why anything' are true to the
| right hemisphere and false to the left hemisphere.
| mistermann wrote:
| > religion isn't true
|
| What does this even mean?
|
| > How do you square that with any sort of culture that
| values reality?
|
| Is reality true? Like all these agents in the comment
| section below who claim to know the unknowable, are they
| true?
|
| That model of reality you are describing, thinking that
| it is reality itself, is that true?
| ryandrake wrote:
| It seems to me that a lot of the "community" hole left by
| religion declining is being quickly filled in by politics,
| which itself is taking on quasi-religious attributes.
| pnut wrote:
| Maybe it always was one and the same.. separation of
| church and state in Western culture was a hard won,
| radical political innovation not very long ago. And
| Christians today are a highly motivated special interest
| group in the States, openly attempting to lock their
| social agenda into law. See also sharia law.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Separation of C/S at the time was about not instituting a
| state religion and protecting religious practice from the
| strong arm of the state (the only corporation we allow
| violence from).
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| > he primary purpose of religion was to form local
| communities and have others with shared values to rely on
|
| I just don't think that is true for or to many, likely
| most, religious people. Community is an aspect but at its
| core it's a religion. You can't be a part of the community
| without believing, or at least pretending to believe, in
| the religion.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| You can't because the only people remaining (or the
| overwhelming majority) in those communities are people
| who are actually religious and take the whole thing
| pretty seriously.
|
| In the past (of course it depended on the exact time and
| place) occasionally going to church even if many treated
| it mostly as a formality was the default for most people.
| Even if you didn't, chances are that you couldn't ignore
| it entirely because you still had some links to the
| community surrounding it through family members, various
| organizations, events etc.
| TylerE wrote:
| What you're describing is basically Unitarianism.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Religion is a meta-organism that uses minds as it's
| substrate.
|
| Just like ordinary organisms, it undergoes mutations and
| evolution - its characteristics are seldomly 'designed'.
|
| Without community to keep it alive, it will die out. So
| religions that include practices to tie communities
| together are at an evolutionary advantage.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| Facebook makes money by advertising someone else's
| products, while religious organizations make money by
| advertising their own. Is the devil somewhere in those
| details? Could the disingenuousness of advertising be
| interfering with the desired authenticity of personal
| relationships?
| Animats wrote:
| > The mad rush to as quickly abolish religious practices in
| mainstream U.S. culture without any form of societal
| replacement is puzzling to me.
|
| In the US, it's been a slow process over 35 years, since
| 1991.[1] England and Wales are much further along -
| believers are below 50%. But Islam is on the way up in the
| UK, at 6%.
|
| The high-intensity religions, the ones that require
| religious activity once a day or more, seem to be thriving.
|
| [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/how-u-
| s-reli...
| TylerE wrote:
| The rise of Islam in UK is due to immigration from
| Islamic countries, not natives converting.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'd say longer than that. I'd say religious participation
| in the USA has been declining since at least the 1970s.
| Animats wrote:
| See the chart in the article linked. The line is
| reasonably flat from 1972 to 1991, and then starts to
| climb linearly.
| nineplay wrote:
| I understand what you mean, I grew up in a church with a
| youth group and group friends which I valued.
|
| However I also grew up with constant anxiety about sin and
| hell. It still gets back to me when my insomnia is bad.
|
| So churches and church membership aren't necessarily a net-
| positive. I too wish there was some sort of community my
| family could belong to. But I'm not taking my kids to
| church anytime soon.
| scruple wrote:
| > I also grew up with constant anxiety about sin and
| hell.
|
| Erik Butler has a fantastic book on this overall subject
| called "The Devil and His Advocates" that you might be
| interested in.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Not all religious societies are like that. Doing it
| properly looks more like exercise towards a higher good
| than fear of failure.
| nineplay wrote:
| I think it's unavoidable in Christianity. Even if one's
| immediate religious society doesn't believe in hell, it
| is trivially easy to find other societies which do, and
| other societies that believe that everyone is damned
| except for people who've accepted the 'right' concept in
| the 'right' way. I can't tell you how relieved I was when
| I realized I could become an Atheist and mostly put the
| matter out of my mind.
|
| Quick edit: I'm aware there are a lot of theological and
| historical publications nature of hell and whether or not
| it is misunderstood. I knew that at the age of 12. It
| doesn't matter. No minister or theologian or historian
| can _prove_ that there is no hell and that I won't end up
| there.
|
| God, Messiah, Heaven, Hell - we are into the area of the
| unknowable. We don't have training and testing data.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this is really odd to read, since almost all of the
| Protestant-related theology in the US West seems to have
| dropped evil and hell almost entirely. At a graduate
| theology seminar on the History of Religion in America,
| Professor Robert McDermott asked the group "How many of
| you believe in 'evil' ?" and only half the class raised
| their hands (about a dozen).
| pjlegato wrote:
| You are speaking of what is called "mainline
| Protestantism."
|
| Catholicism is, by far, the largest Christian
| denomination in the US.
|
| Moreover, large areas in the south, midwest, and
| California favor the "evangelical" and "fundamentalist"
| varieties of Protestant theology, where Hell (and
| inculcating mass fear of Hell) is very much the central
| concern today.
|
| Your immediate local community likely does not have many
| of either group.
| svieira wrote:
| Speaking as a Christian I think Hell is often looked at
| the wrong way. It's easy to fall into, yes, but not
| because "you're just doing it wrong" but because "you
| want to". I can't speak for other denominations than
| Catholic, but no one goes to Hell because they just-
| didn't-know. They go to Hell because they _want_ to serve
| someone other than God.
|
| The reason to be afraid isn't "here's someone who's just
| waiting for you to fail" it's (speaking for myself) "I'm
| _very_ stubborn and _very_ set in my own ways. Can I do
| the work of letting God work in me? He's _eager_ to work
| in me, but He won 't without my consent. Can I die to
| myself to serve the good?"
|
| What about those who never had a chance to hear about
| God? That is between them and God. But God isn't looking
| to throw them into Hell - if they go to Hell it is
| because they decided they'd rather serve "something other
| than the good" even if they never connected "the good" to
| God.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Ah yes, I "wanted to" think of hell as a lake of eternal
| fire that most of humanity, likely myself included, would
| be thrown into and gawked at by the virtuous. Certainly
| had nothing to do with what I was indoctrinated with from
| birth. You realize you literally _are_ telling us we are
| "just doing it wrong"? Worse, that we're doing it wrong
| _because we want to_?!
|
| Hell is a fantasy that causes more mental illness than
| any marginal reduction in antisocial behavior.
|
| How many lifetimes were wasted fearing/sacrificing,
| arguing, killing, and dying over meaningless and
| unprovable silliness like heaven and hell? How many
| children scarred by things they read for themselves after
| years of being told it's--some measure of--the highest
| truth?
| svieira wrote:
| "Fall into" was a reference to the act of choosing
| "something other than God" in a permanent way (that is,
| "fall into Hell") not the act of being afraid of
| punishment (that is "fall into _fear_ of Hell "). I am
| sorry that you have had to deal with such a fear!
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| I 'chose' God for decades until it became clear he/she/it
| doesn't exist any more than santa, the toothfairy, and
| leprechauns. So until there is some evidence besides
| vibes and evidence-free testimony, I'm choosing to
| believe there is no God.
|
| Thankfully beliefs aren't permanent, or I'd still be
| anxious and miserable. Perhaps you should not permanently
| choose a god who has caused so much harm for no benefit.
| svieira wrote:
| I hope and pray that you are not anxious or miserable and
| that you can find your way to the path to permanent
| happiness and stick with it to the end!
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| That's a caricature of any serious grasp of what Hell is.
|
| If God, as Ipsum Esse Subsistens (i.e., not the straw man
| sky fairy), is the Summum Bonum, the Highest Good, and
| the only thing, in its infinity, that fully realizes Man,
| makes him whole, fulfills his nature, brings him
| everlasting peace, joy, and happiness (and all who are
| old enough can agree that nothing on earth can accomplish
| this end)...
|
| If sin is willfully choosing inferior or illusory goods
| over and above the Highest Good, acting against what is
| objectively good instead of conforming to it, choosing a
| path away from the Highest Good toward something else...
|
| If Man is created with the capacity to know the truth and
| the freedom to make choices and thus be responsible for
| those choices...
|
| ...then Hell is, first, his voluntary rejection of
| Heaven, which is unity with God and what is called the
| Beatific Vision, and second, justice received for
| committing the greatest injustice of hating God, which is
| frankly a kind of self-hatred because it involves hating
| one's own highest good. In other words, God, having made
| us free, does not violate the free exercise of choice, as
| love cannot be forced, but free. And since following
| one's own way away from the objective truth and the
| Highest Good necessarily leads to misery, and God permits
| that to occur even if He may "propose" through life
| events a change of heart, someone obstinate in his evil
| will be allowed to go exactly where he is choosing to go,
| much like a drug user can follow his drug use to his own
| self-destruction.
|
| And because being forced into Heaven would be hellish for
| anyone who doesn't want to be there, Hell is actually a
| kind of mercy. But it is ridiculous to expect Hell to be
| a wonderful condition, as what satisfies Man is a matter
| of objective fact, not subjective fancy. In other words,
| it is not a false ultimatum between loving God or getting
| it good and hard, as if it were some kind of threat.
| Human nature points toward Heaven, something we can know
| to be the case, just as we can know many things that are
| good for us, and that by refusing them, we harm
| ourselves.
|
| If thoughts of Hell are paralyzing to you, instead of
| instilling a healthy kind of vigilance and humility
| toward God, then you may come from a strange sect that is
| confused about the topic, suffer from scrupulosity, or
| have a burden of unaddressed guilt.
|
| It's not a question of what team you're on. That
| relativizes the truth, making "religion" a matter of some
| kind of personal and preferred fairy tale. Truth is the
| only consideration. If these claims are untrue, then
| they're nonsense and should not be followed. It would be
| dishonest to do so. While we can tolerate a certain range
| of sincerely held beliefs that are obviously false, and a
| certain measure of that is necessary for any society, it
| is bad faith and a lack of integrity to "believe"
| instrumentally, for a purported practical result of doing
| so.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| The universal human intuition of the concept of God is
| equally valid as the human intuitions on causality that
| stands as the ultimate fundamentals of modern science.
| Math is the mother of all sciences, philosophy the root
| of math, human intuitions the root of philosophy. The
| very psychologist under his article we're talking,
| Jonathan Haidt, have proven this, that the concept of God
| exists from birth even in Japanese kids raised in Shinto
| culture, commenting 'extraordinary' on his research being
| an atheist himself.
|
| There's no point in favoring one natural human intuition
| over the other.
|
| Then the number of people througout history who claimed
| to have taken revelation from God must be evaluated for
| authenticity of their miracles, one of which can still be
| verified today as his entire life is preserved through
| formal chain of transmissions: Muhammad (pbuh). Jesus, we
| can't even agree on the exact wording of the revelation
| he received let alone his life.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The universal human intuition of the concept of God is
| equally valid as the human intuitions on causality that
| stands as the ultimate fundamentals of modern science.
|
| This makes no sense. There are myriad cognitive biases
| that prevent or hinder the ability to model reality, that
| may or may not be advantageous to an animal depending on
| the environment it is in.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Between Christianity as a false religion with its
| unintuitive teachings ultimately and rationally leading
| to atheism and the modern American way of life with its
| freedom extremism at the expense of everything elde,
| there's a third, albeit unthinkable to many, option:
| Islam.
|
| We're doing great in terms of societal bonds.
| lolinder wrote:
| Please don't start religious flame wars.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Two other contenders: Vedanta & Buddhism.
| throw7 wrote:
| There was a post recently about dunbar's number and it
| seemed straightforward to me, while reading it, that what
| it's really revealing is what it takes to scale above
| dunbar's number and that what we call "religion" is exactly
| that "binding" and "reification".
|
| "Religion" in this case is not just about religion either,
| but also nations. The U.S. has our gods, such as Washington
| & Hamilton, and places of worship such as the "temples" in
| D.C., but we've also censored leaders like Jackson & Lee,
| and torn down slave-owning statues.
|
| We're living through a deconstruction of history and
| rebuilding an inverted digital world. I don't think it's
| been productive. It actually almost feels like an end to
| history to me.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| Maybe go fishing?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Knowing that the US will never, in my lifetime, be high
| trust like it is in Japan at the moment means we have to
| focus on the seeds for helping push it towards that after
| we die.
| gryfft wrote:
| > it was always completely obvious to me even as a child
| that the primary purpose of religion was to form local
| communities and have others with shared values to rely on.
|
| In the religious community I grew up in, the idea that the
| purpose of the church was "community" was loudly vilified.
| There was an active purism regarding sincerity of belief
| and the centricity faith should have in one's life.
|
| Of course, one can see how cult-like devotion and
| suppression of dissent are conducive to social cohesion,
| but as a young adult, I only wanted to get away from an
| environment that stymied my mind and spirit, and that
| feeling writ large has shuttered churches, I think.
| watwut wrote:
| > But it was always completely obvious to me even as a
| child that the primary purpose of religion was to form
| local communities and have others with shared values to
| rely on.
|
| That is an atheist point of view. I grew up in religious
| environment too and people really believed in god. Some
| were hypocrites and some values stand in a real life way
| (commitment to not lie makes for the worst business), but
| the basic believe that god exist was really real. And when
| you play the part just for social reasons, then I think you
| are just a hypocrite. Which would be good reason for people
| to leave - so that they dont have to pretend.
| vundercind wrote:
| > I believe no one is talking about this aspect of WFH
| either. It's taking away maybe the last "socially expected"
| regular commitment to your local community.
|
| I don't get this part. The only time I had a job in my
| local community was high school. Most of the adults (which
| was 95+% of the employees) commuted 20-60 minutes to get to
| it, though, so even _that_ wasn't my local community. You'd
| never run into your coworkers at the park or the store
| because they went to totally different parks and stores.
| Same's held for my career as an adult. Coworkers are rarely
| people you'll see anywhere other than work unless you go
| way out of your way to make it happen.
| vundercind wrote:
| My edit window's gone, but thinking more on this: it
| seems to me that remote work makes it _easier_ to be in
| one's local community. Less time lost to commute, more
| time to do local stuff. Can work from the local coffee
| shop, library, or coworking space, all of which are
| likely to have a far higher proportion of locals in them
| than an office park halfway across the city would. Can
| have lunch out at a sandwich joint near your house,
| instead of one so far away that you'd rarely or never go
| to it if you didn't have to commute to an distant office.
| cntrmmbrpsswrd wrote:
| I see the way US cities are designed, with sprawling
| suburbs and lack of shared spaces as a key contributor.
| Where I'm at the parks are filled with people throughout
| the day. The density of the city also means people tend to
| know their neighbors and watch out for each other much more
| that I've seen in the burbs.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This is all a very valid set of concerns; not quite a new
| one, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
| (2000), but definitely a Thing.
|
| > The mad rush to as quickly abolish religious practices in
| mainstream U.S. culture without any form of societal
| replacement is puzzling to me.
|
| People need to acknowledge how much the downside of this
| kind of closeness was conformism, enforced by shunning (or
| worse) the noncompliant. A lot of religious communities
| have coped incredibly badly with the sexual revolution of
| the 20th century; if the only foray of your church into
| politics is against abortion or LGBT freedom, it's not
| really surprising that young people and women are going to
| run in the opposite direction as soon as they get a chance
| - often facilitated by the Internet. While simultaneously
| responding to actual abuse with coverups and complicity. ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_c.
| ..
| anon291 wrote:
| The sexual revolution is intrinsically linked to the lack
| of community. The sexual revolution is not actually about
| free sex. People have been having weird sex for
| centuries; with or without their partners knowing.
|
| What is novel about the sexual revolution is that it
| dismissed _any_ needs for norms. Over the past two
| decades we 've seen non-religious attempts to reinstate
| those norms (consent, kink, safe words, etc). However,
| what's unpalatable to religious people is not the sex per
| se, but the lack of norms.
|
| And we need norms to function as a community with a
| common culture. Throwing those out does not actually
| help.
|
| You mention the sexual abuse by the Catholic church, but
| that was caused by the sexual revolution. At the time,
| the psychological community _encouraged_ moving
| pedophiles around. The church was -- at the time --
| attempting to modernize, and part of the modernization
| was listening to 'science', including psychologists.
| Psychologists at the time insisted these things could be
| cured and criminalization would not help.
|
| The church is not the only organization to have been
| affected by this, but it is one of the few prominent
| examples of institutions being held accountable for it.
| The same ideology caused the German foster care scandals
| [1] [2].
|
| [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-
| german-exp...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Kentler
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| The Catholic sex abuse scandal was never about the actual
| abuse, which is presumed constant between religions. It
| was always about the coverup. Only the Catholic Church
| has the preexisting organization to pull off such a
| scandal; the others simply had controversial youth
| pastors who stopped showing up one day.
| pjlegato wrote:
| If there were any other groups with an organization
| capable of pulling off coverups, we'd never know about
| it, because they would have covered it up.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > A lot of religious communities have coped incredibly
| badly with the sexual revolution of the 20th century; if
| the only foray of your church into politics is against
| abortion or LGBT freedom
|
| IMO, at least for Catholics, it is the Church's
| insistence that condoms and birth control are sinful that
| led to the mass defections from belief in the legitimacy
| of Church teaching. Yes, even more so than anti-
| homosexual rhetoric or the sex abuse coverups.
|
| It's an attitude of "these delusional celibate people
| care too much about abstract deductive logic, not
| empirical observations."
| andrepd wrote:
| Sports, hobby groups, book clubs? There are plenty of options
| to meet like-minded people other than churches.
| darepublic wrote:
| Chess clubs in my city mostly closed down due to online
| games. I remember the largest club owner complaining of
| this in the early 2000s
| benreesman wrote:
| The extent to which such a list is accurate and complete is
| the extent to which it's a great list of startup ideas to
| destroy some community institution, make it impossible to
| do without an app, and put ads on it.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Maybe in your experience. It isn't in mine. You can make
| due with email lists and flyers and word of mouth and if
| someone tries to push an app for it everyone is welcome
| to ignore it.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yeah, this really is the key. I've moved several times as
| an adult, and my new friend group always comes from doing
| sports or some hobby regularly with the same group of
| people.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Religious places didn't use to be indoctrinating. Nowadays
| they mostly are, because religions have to justify them
| economically.
|
| My guess is that "place" have become a way too expensive
| good, that people just can't afford to share for free.
| lovethevoid wrote:
| Religious places were always indoctrinating, they were just
| the norm for such a long time people didn't recognize such.
| It was just the thing you did.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Libraries are a great place to be, enjoy, learn, and relax,
| but a terrible place to meet new people. You're not really
| supposed to talk, and most people don't go there expecting to
| interact with a stranger or strike up a conversation.
| vegadw wrote:
| It depends. Many libraries host events on a regular basis
| where socialization is half the point.
| odo1242 wrote:
| Libraries are trying to do that (with community events,
| conference rooms, etc.) though. Depends on the library.
| fn-mote wrote:
| I hear you, but it sounds like you're saying you want program
| that delivers high value without paying for it.
|
| The way to make this happen is get out there and volunteer
| your big dollar software engineer time to make it happen. Use
| all of the knowledge about how to get things done that you
| get from reading HN, join a team, and start building.
|
| My volunteering experience has been amazing, but there were
| some negative experiences where it was clear we should have
| required more buy-in or up front investment.
| vegadw wrote:
| I'm willing to help, but as one person, I can only do so
| much. Hyper-locally, it's actually a problem of community
| here instead of money anyway. There's a half-way decent
| maker-space, but it's all old men. Think "ham radio guys"
| stereotype. They're knowledgeable, but without any young
| blood (and the artistic pursuits younger people tend to
| bring) it's not fun.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| May I ask where you're based in? I'm a little intrigued.
| hoosieree wrote:
| I've had the exact same feeling. I think this is some latent
| cultural zeitgeist that more people are starting to notice.
|
| My thought was to start a "philosopher's club", for Platonic
| friendships. Right now it's just me and one neighbor meeting
| every 2 weeks for coffee, but I think an ideal size might be
| around 3-4 "regulars" plus 2-5 sporadic attendees. Big enough
| to get boisterous but small enough to carpool.
| api wrote:
| You could even go so far as to say that third spaces that are
| tied to political, religious, or other types of groups are
| "monetized" in the sense that they exist to further the cause
| of growing that group.
|
| What's nearly extinct is neutral third spaces with zero
| agenda.
| s1gsegv wrote:
| I suppose parks (national, provincial/state, or just local)
| and libraries are neutral.
|
| Perhaps this was always true, but it seems for a brief time
| places like shopping malls were not as concerned as much
| somehow with having purely immediately profitable people
| inside and that's why they were able to be that third
| place.
|
| Hopefully in time a new generation of voters will want to
| fund more third places with taxes, because that seems to be
| the way to get long lasting third places that really do
| serve their purpose without an agenda.
| crooked-v wrote:
| One of the major issues with libraries these days is that
| because a lot of cities want to pretend really hard that
| homelessness doesn't exist, libraries end up as the only
| social resource available to many homeless people, which
| leads to other people avoiding them.
| Yhippa wrote:
| In a few of the local libraries near me homeless people
| occupy the bank of public computers and are frequently
| watching hardcore pornography. I'm terrified of my young
| children seeing that.
| relwin wrote:
| My local library employs internet filters, similar to
| parental control software for your home. This seems to
| significantly reduce porn watching.
| jlos wrote:
| > we've doubled down on mediating social interactions through
| economic relationships
|
| We've doubled down on marketplaces to mediate interactions
| because they are rational systems. Rational systems like
| marketplaces, elections, and bureaucracies are _the_ sine qua
| non of liberalism, which both ends of the political spectrum
| advocate for in their own ways. The right typically advocates
| more for marketplaces and corporations (i.e. market-based
| bureaucracies) and the left typically advocates for more
| government managemeant (election based bureaucracies).
|
| Rational systems are in constrast to local cultures based on
| tradition, biology, and shared history. Its why there is so
| much homogenization in farming, music, clothing, architecture,
| etc.
|
| The upside is that rational systems allow for scale,
| propserity, and individual liberty on an unprecedented level.
| On the downside, rational systems are fundamentally
| dehumanizing.
|
| We mediate everything through marketplaces because we've don't
| have any place for non-rational organizing principles
| (locality, biology, shared history, etc)
| andrepd wrote:
| It's kinda impressive how often Marx's 19th century diagnoses
| of the ills of capitalism prove themselves true in the 21st
| century.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| I'm in my 30s but I'm feeling this so hard.
|
| Growing up we used to have these kid/youth centres that were
| run by local Catholic organizations. We used to hang out there
| after school. Ostensibly the point was that there'd be 30
| minutes of catechism doctrine, but we didn't really care about
| that. To us it was just a the place where everyone would be. I
| miss that so much. A place where you can just go and meet
| people your age, without any reason to be that and without
| having to pay an entrance fee.
|
| Now as a grown up we have community centers, which are run, not
| by the Church, but by sort of hippie-lefty people. But it's not
| really the same atmosphere, because you go there, and it's just
| one demographic of people. It's not quite the same.
|
| There's also pubs and climbing gyms which people often use as
| low effort places where one can mingle, but again, it's not
| quite the same. I don't like drinking multiple times a week and
| I really don't like climbing.
| fragmede wrote:
| You don't like being drunk _that_ much, or like climbing,
| but, were your parents really _that_ Catholic? We, as humans,
| need a dream to build towards, be in service of, and find our
| place in. What are we doing here and why are we doing it? For
| those of us who haven 't figured it out yet, attaching to
| someone else's purpose gives us one and we don't have to
| figure it out ourselves.
|
| You need to find religion, just don't call it that. Find your
| dream that's impossible and work towards making it possible.
| figure out your role in making that possible. and then work
| on it. as hard as you can. find others along the way.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Parent poster doesn't want to have to drink to socialize.
| And bar meets are just that. It's actually a huge problem
| in society.
|
| Ever stream something or go to the cinema ? What does it
| show you? You're happy => you drink to celebrate. You're
| sad => drink out of sorrow. You want to hang out with
| friends => you go for drinks. DEFCON for example
| perpetuates that same behavior.
|
| Sure, one part is loss of community, but the other half is
| toxic social behavior that is perpetuated by Hollywood. The
| people that don't like this but want to belong will
| perpetuate this cycle for fear of getting ostracized.
| nradov wrote:
| In most communities there's no longer much social stigma
| against going to a bar/pub and ordering non-alcoholic
| beverages. The latest non-alcoholic beers are actually
| pretty good. (I do understand that the environment itself
| can be difficult for recovering alcoholics.)
| HideousKojima wrote:
| I used to go out not-drinking with my coworkers (I've
| been a teetotaler my entire life). The place we went to
| had free refills for sodas so I downed half a dozen
| glasses of Fanta while my coworkers were paying $3-$5 a
| beer. Seems ridiculous to me how much people pay for
| alcohol.
| throwup238 wrote:
| A bunch of places now have "mocktails" which are just
| cocktails without alcohol so you can one up your
| alcoholic friends by spending $3-5 per glass of sugar
| water.
| floren wrote:
| Visit SF, you can easily spend $10 on a mocktail out
| here.
|
| Kinda makes sense, all the cost is in the labor and the
| cleaning, a shot of vodka is like $0.20
| oerpli wrote:
| The spirit in a decent cocktail is closer to ~$3-5.
| Scharkenberg wrote:
| I would assume there is no vodka in a mocktail...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Some portion of alcohol prices are a barrier to entry to
| create the desired crowd. You might not want to attract
| the type of person looking to get shitfaced for cheap.
| Usually, non alcoholic non tap water is not way cheaper,
| especially if it is a "mocktail".
|
| Of course, some portion is also high rents. And I have
| never seen a restaurant or bar outside of Costco with
| free refills for anything other than tap water though.
| vel0city wrote:
| Lots of places around me have free refills on fountain
| soft drinks and tea. In fact, it is pretty rare for a
| restaurant to not have free refills on things like sodas.
| Something fancier like a craft lemonade or whatever
| wouldn't have free refills though.
|
| This is true for a lot of the places I travel to within
| the US as well.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Interesting. I'm most familiar with west coast and
| northeast, and can't say I have ever seen that.
| vel0city wrote:
| I've been to Patchogue, Montreal, Toronto, Cleavland,
| Myrtle Beach, Rehoboth, Baltimore, Louisville,
| Indianapolis, Nashville, Kansas City, Houston, Austin,
| Taos, Denver, Chicago, and a few other cities in the past
| couple of years. The majority of restaurants I visited
| had free refills for fountain drinks. The biggest places
| that I went to that didn't have free refills were places
| like food stands and what not, but that's expected.
| watwut wrote:
| But if you have to pay an expensive entry into that
| space, you will naturally limit who will go there and how
| often. And I do not just means "excludes people who get
| shitfaced". I mean "excludes people who are conscious
| about spending money or simply do not have super high
| salaries".
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, that is also sometimes an intended barrier to entry.
| fragmede wrote:
| while there are clearly cash grabs by the industry, the
| money for drinks goes towards the bar's rent/staff, so
| going there and not spending any money doesn't help the
| establishment's continued existence. depending on the
| establishment, that may or may not be a concern.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Well, you can also go to the cafe.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The world religion comes from Latin meaning 'to bond with
| ritual'
|
| It's not very smart to not have a ritual of community
| building in one's life.
| hateful wrote:
| It should be noted that this wasn't free - as you said, you
| had to sit through a 30 minute ad before participating.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| Ironically, to meet your definition of free you would have
| to violate the definition of community provided in the
| article.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Consider the following:
|
| 1. The chief unit and source of community is the family. The
| married couple, the family, have been deteriorating for some
| time. It shouldn't be surprising that the consequences would
| spread outward. Societies are a manner of extended family
| organized according to the principle of subsidiary.
|
| 2. American culture especially is hyperindividualistic. It
| conceives of people not as persons, but as _individuals_ ,
| which is to say, atomic units that might enter into various
| transactions, if it suits them. There is no sense of moral
| duties I did not consent to. There is no real sense of a
| common good that is a superior and prior good. If you deny
| the social nature of human beings, and conceive the social
| sphere as transactional, a sphere for odious exchanges and
| extraction and gorging, then why should we be surprised that
| social life has gone south?
|
| 3. A common culture binds people together and give them a
| common heritage, a language without which you cannot
| communicate. Culture is far more than that, and I do not mean
| to belittle or instrumentalize it (some are already
| instrumentalizing religion, which is _not_ the purpose of
| religion, even if it has that effect). But with the decay of
| ethnic culture and its replacement with an empty corporate
| pop culture (note how much discussion revolves around the
| latest episode of a show), we are robbed of a common
| identity. This explains the identity crises in the US.
| Subcultures, racial ideologies, sexual ideologies, and so on
| are just attempted substitutes for ethnic identity. Given how
| unsuitable they are for this purpose, it is also unsurprising
| that people feel alienated from society, as there really is
| no real society, just some people coexisting.
|
| 4. What we call "religion" is a fancy word for worldview with
| a superlative highest good that is worshiped and a tradition
| orienting us in life and our ultimate end according to it.
| Everyone has a religion, in that sense, because someone takes
| something to be the ultimate good. It's impossible otherwise,
| because it is by means of the ultimate good that we
| understand and order all other goods in relation to it. The
| religion of the US is liberalism (as in Hobbes, Locke, and
| Mill, not any particular partisan affiliation; all American
| parties presuppose liberalism). In this liberal worldview,
| freedom as absence of constraint is worshiped, hence the
| preoccupation with "transgression" and "crossing boundaries"
| and so on. It is an evangelical religion, concerned with
| bringing the good news of liberal freedom to the world. Of
| course, as many throughout history have noted, freedom thus
| understood is a recipe for disaster, and not freedom in any
| real sense. To be free is to be able to do what is good as
| determined by your human nature, which is the same as saying
| the freedom to be what you objectively are, not in opposition
| to it. Thus, I am not free when I become a drug user, but I
| am free when I attain self-mastery and self-restraint, much
| as a man on horseback is more free as horseback rider when
| his horse is obedient to his rationally informed will. We are
| free to be what we are when we attain this mastery, in light
| of objective truth, over ourselves, our appetites, our
| passions, our intellects, our wills, etc., what we used to
| call virtue. The opposite, vice, is a recipe for misery and
| the worst kind of enslavement that can occur. In light of
| that, and given how indulgent we are, how our economies cater
| to and feed the worst with pornography, excessive food,
| buying stuff, and how, generally speaking, we worship
| consumption and embrace a view of life that consists of
| consuming (even people, sexually speaking, including in our
| imaginations and through various media), again, why the
| surprise that we are miserable? We are incapable of healthy
| relationships, and functioning as human beings. It takes
| effort to become human. It's not a given that just falls in
| your lap.
| lovethevoid wrote:
| > The chief unit and source of community is the family.
|
| This view stems from Judeo-Christian beliefs. The very
| invention of marriage was a separation of community, where
| men wanted ownership of women and their children.
|
| I also wonder if you're fully aware of how much you've
| attempted to repackage the original sin in your comment.
| watwut wrote:
| Which communitarian society is less sexist? Best afaik,
| all the community minded societies are significantly more
| sexist. The individualism is one of the things that makes
| it easier to push and argue against it.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| I think this would imply that non-Western societies (or
| even Western ones before the spread of Christianity)
| aren't organized out of families? Also, what is a
| "shotgun wedding" in this worldview?
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Why do you think a recognization of the very human
| tendency to do stuff which harms either you or the
| society a remark for the unintuitive Christian concept of
| original sin?
| clarity20 wrote:
| Marriage goes way beyond the Jewish and Christian
| spheres. It's a far-reaching anthropological value.
| Strictly speaking it's a natural state, which means it
| isn't an invention. What we're missing most of all in
| contemporary times is an appreciation and acceptance of
| our contingency as beings. For want of this restful
| appreciation of what we really are, we have a tendency to
| become angst-ridden, semi-nihilistic types trying to find
| our bearings through acts of will and experiencing misery
| because we can never get there from here by traveling
| that path.
| anon291 wrote:
| > This view stems from Judeo-Christian beliefs.
|
| It's really not, as marriage is present in pre-Christian
| belief and in non-Christian traditions.
|
| Does it look exactly like Christian marriage / family? No
|
| But it does share common characteristics. There is a
| single man, and one or more women who bear his children.
| The man and woman have particular authorities over their
| children, and as the children grow there is a system to
| determine how they inherit their parent's resources, and
| then perhaps some duties they owe their parents.
|
| We see this in the Roman paterfamilias system, the
| Confucian filial piety system, the various Indic
| philosophies, the ancient Egyptian family system, the
| Babylonian familial system, etc. Together these encompass
| the basis of the vast majority of civilization.
|
| You're right that in hunter gatherer tribes they may have
| not even understood how reproduction works, but given
| that these social systems are not sophisticated enough to
| run our society, I'm happy to just ignore them. There
| were hunter gatherer tribes that believed that prince
| phillip was a god; they're not that sophisticated
| pjlegato wrote:
| Not at all. Family units are extremely widespread in
| cultures around the world, including those that have had
| little or no contact with Judeo-Christian beliefs. Nearly
| all cultures have them.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| You talk and sermon awfully much against individualism,
| shouldn't you quit being online and do some family or
| society work? Don't tell me you're done already, that would
| be hypocritical.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Why do you seem to consider surfing HN a vice or a sin?
| the_gipsy wrote:
| I don't?
| clarity20 wrote:
| I think he (she?) makes some good points about why
| community & social life are falling apart and what might
| be done about it.
| anon291 wrote:
| JD Vance talked about this a lot in his RNC speech. He
| says:
|
| > You know, one of the things that you hear people say
| sometimes is that America is an idea. And to be clear,
| America was indeed founded on brilliant ideas, like the
| rule of law and religious liberty. Things written into the
| fabric of our Constitution and our nation. But America is
| not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared
| history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.
|
| And he's right. America does have a culture and social
| norms that are _particular_ to this nation. Ask any
| immigrant, like my own parents, and they will tell you
| stories of adapting to them (if they 've assimilated
| properly).
|
| And yet, many Americans refuse to acknowledge that these
| exist, and if they do, some work actively against it, to
| disestablish them, as if that'd be good for a country.
|
| IMO, this is the cause of the great divide in this country.
| On one side you have people that think that social norms
| and culture should exist and be protected by the government
| (to an extent) and on the other you have those that believe
| the norms are harmful. To the former group, the various
| 'small' changes proposed by the latter group feel 'gross'
| because they reduce community cohesion, even if any one
| particular instance of letting go of a norm isn't going to
| cause _that much_ trouble.
|
| See all the debate on whether English should be a national
| language for a good illustration of this whole phenomenon
| independent of most of the culture war issues.
|
| This is not to say that America has no ideas, but any group
| of people pursuing a common goal is not just the idea, it's
| also their culture. For example, I've worked at several
| companies competing in the same space, and despite having
| the same goal (dominate the industry), the cultures are
| extremely different, to the point where you feel
| comfortable in one, and uncomfortable in the other. That's
| how people are, and we should recognize and acknowledge
| that.
| devonkim wrote:
| I think more broadly you're talking about the concept of
| "third places" and this has been suggested as another reason
| for decline of community. However, my argument is that the
| Internet replaced the "third place" for most people given
| it's where people are spending time in terms of attention and
| resources rather than necessarily physical presence.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| And how is that compliant with the human biology?
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Free internet spaces (think old school forums, some
| subreddits, discord channels, of MMORPGs servers for
| instance) are pretty much OK, especially when the
| population is stable and not too big (idk how big is
| tolerable, but it's likely under 10k). The problem is
| that these ones too have declined a lot in favor of
| algorithmically managed internet places which attempt to
| boost "engagement" by using evolutionary psychology and
| neuroscience tricks.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| You didn't answer my question. How is internet compatible
| with human biology, which was not designed for (no matter
| whether you believe in God or evolution) a technological
| lifestyle?
| watwut wrote:
| Are you saying that a group where everyone has to be a
| catholic is somehow diverse?
|
| Also, nothing will ever be like the stuff we had when we were
| kids. Because in all our minds, that is the norm.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It can be quite diverse in other factors besides the
| religion. e.g. mixing of race, class, politics, culture,
| ect
| lolinder wrote:
| > Are you saying that a group where everyone has to be a
| catholic is somehow diverse?
|
| You've clearly never lived in an area with high density of
| a specific religious group. At a certain threshold, yes,
| there can be more diversity in a single religious
| congregation than is present in most local environments
| short of the local public school.
|
| If most of your neighbors are Catholic, then you'll often
| just show up for the Catholic events regardless of whether
| you deeply believe it because that's where the community
| is. That's essentially what OP said about their own
| experience--listening to the catechism was just the tax to
| pay for the community event.
| watwut wrote:
| I actually did. The people who went to these centers were
| definitely not diverse in any sense of the word.
|
| And the range of accepted ideas or opinions, political or
| cultural, was remarkably small. Kids who went to these
| centers were very alike. That is why it felt so good to
| them .
| anon291 wrote:
| The Catholic church is racially and socioeconomically quite
| diverse, and produces the highest rate of interracial
| marriages of any religious group, and even slightly edges
| out atheists.
|
| It's as diverse as any company or organization championing
| diversity, because obviously anyone part of one particular
| movement / entity is not diverse in one axis of their life
| (institutional allegiance)
| watwut wrote:
| The youth clubs were not socioeconomically diverse, where
| I have seen them. Nor politically or culturally diverse.
|
| In here, they are also as racist as everyone else
| conservative, but also we are fairly homogenous.
| Aeolun wrote:
| We still have like 'kids community center' things in Japan,
| and it's just fantasic how you can go there and have a whole
| building filled with kids and toys/books for ages 1-14ish,
| and all free. It doesn't even have any sponsors, it's
| government run. Unfortunately these are also all slowly
| disappearing.
| benreesman wrote:
| It goes by various names ("trad life", etc.) but whatever you
| call it the premise is dystopian and terrifying: people now
| become celebrity influencers on the back of appearing to live
| some semblance of a historically normal life.
|
| For many _that's_ now the unattainable dream: a community with
| values that sit still long enough to even aim at upholding
| them, a robust partnership early enough in life to start a
| family the biological way, children who can look forward to the
| same.
|
| On the surface there is a culture war around this, and it's
| true that the old model had serious problems with admitting
| other lifestyles. That needed fixing, but not by obliterating
| the model that works for most people with overwhelming
| precedent.
|
| The real culprit as always is the "monetization" of everything,
| a baton that has now firmly been passed from finance people to
| Silicon Valley people.
|
| The #1 post on Y-Combinator's news site is in some sense the
| central locus in the observable universe for this.
| andrepd wrote:
| And even "economically viable" here is actually shorthand for
| "able to provide short-term monetary gain which can be captured
| by a private entity". Because things like quality education,
| parks, non-car centric infrastructure, etc. are _actually_
| EXCELLENT investments even from an economic perspective.
| gary_0 wrote:
| A lot of the things people used to do on the Internet for fun,
| they now do for money or "points" (or the subconscious desire
| to do for money if they become successful enough). In the past,
| things you posted online tended to get a small number of manual
| responses from people you had a chance of forming an actual
| relationship with. Now, a good deal of interaction is mediated
| by a corporate algorithm (or an up/downvote button). People are
| also a lot more aware of automated actors (ie. bots).
|
| In general, people seem to do a lot less unstructured leisure
| activity and social interaction. Quantitative goals are imposed
| by social expectations, gamified ad-funded software, or
| economic anxiety.
|
| Be sure to like and subscribe.
| ChartMaster22 wrote:
| You could extend this even further to discussions about media
| that was traditionally used to escape, like sports, movies,
| even books. A lot of interactions regarding sports is focused
| on "advanced analytics" and highlighting obscure data points
| above all else, e.g., Team X is the fourth team on the West
| coast since 1970 to score Y points through N games. People
| rarely talk about how much they enjoy a movie, but everyone
| is quick to discuss box office numbers and Rotten Tomatoes
| scores. Books too now have an entire subculture associated
| with their economic framing ("buy books from local
| bookstores!") rather than actual discussions of the material.
| Ezhik wrote:
| I miss the pointless internet.
| gary_0 wrote:
| Me too. Nowadays if you die on the internet, you die in
| real life!
| fragmede wrote:
| https://onecheckbox.com/
| MarkMarine wrote:
| The rise of (lowercase L) liberalism and replacement of feudal
| society's requirement that you be part of the community with
| the commodification of every relationship we have is the root
| cause here. We're just late enough in this transition to really
| feel it, and people are looking at symptoms and seeing cause.
| swat535 wrote:
| This is so true. I'm a practicing Catholic which gives me the
| advantage of having access to a big community and I even met my
| wife through Church events after Mass so it's wonderful. Also
| our Church offers many other programs like counseling, support
| groups, volunteering, career opportunities, etc. Of course no
| one should be forced to attend "Church" just to find a
| community, that's silly but its benefits are pretty clear.
|
| However for non-religious people there is really no third place
| to meet. Additionally, the truth is that outside of religious
| communities, people are not having children and thus it creates
| a further sense of isolation and loneliness. The best one can
| do is perhaps join meetup groups for hobbies but most of those
| cost money and may not be welcoming to everyone.
|
| I would also say that this can be a cultural phenomenon, for
| example in my home country (Iran) people are always meeting and
| socializing, at 10PM streets are bursting with activities and
| it's very easy to find people to connect with. In the west,
| unfortunately it's much harder and society is more focused on
| the individual rather than the collective so to approach a
| stranger in the street feels like a risk as they might consider
| your actions rude, disruptive or invading their personal space.
| youainti wrote:
| I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
| Saints, and I have had the same observation as you that the
| access to community is so helpful.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| > people are not having children and thus it creates a
| further sense of isolation and loneliness
|
| I don't know about that, I think in the US it's more that
| parents end up spending more time with other parents than
| anything, notably because kids are overscheduled, so as a
| childless person you don't see folks with children as much.
|
| > at 10PM streets are bursting with activities and it's very
| easy to find people to connect with
|
| I mean yes, if you have children and you have to be back at
| work at 9am, most folks aren't going to the bar every day
| (although those types of people do exist!)
| extr wrote:
| Even economically mediated third places are being phased out in
| some respects. When I was a teen we often hung out at a local
| McDonalds. Super cheap food, free refills, as long as you
| didn't cause trouble you could stay for awhile. I went back
| there somewhat recently and I was shocked at the difference.
| It's been remodeled to have less seating, no refills, most of
| the lobby/counter area is touchscreens, and of course prices
| are way, way up compared to when I was a teen (which was not
| THAT long ago). It felt sterile inside, it was clear they
| didn't want you hanging out for long. Not a teen in sight.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| I have seen some cities building skate and bike parks, I love
| seeing kids and teens doing physical activities with friends.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Teens also used to work at McDonalds. Now it's middle aged
| people who look and act like life has been kicking them in
| the face since they were born.
|
| I also used to eat there quite often but I almost never go
| now because I don't like waiting 10 or 15 minutes for a
| sullen, indifferent person to hand me a bag of food that
| might or might not contain what I ordered and like you said
| the prices are crazy.
| vel0city wrote:
| I constantly see people lament some loss of "free" third places
| that apparently used to exist and be so common but no longer
| exist. What are these free third places which used to but no
| longer exist?
| probably_wrong wrote:
| When I was a child my parents used to sit in front of our
| house and drink tea. The neighbors would do the same and all
| children would play together. But thanks to longer working
| hours and the fear induced by the 24/7 news cycle no one
| dares sit outside anymore. My nieces don't know their
| neighbors.
|
| When I was a teenager there was a specific square where one
| would go after school (or during if you skipped class that
| day). As far as I know my nieces don't have such a tradition.
|
| Less clear example: in my country of origin those living in
| apartments used to have monthly meetings to discuss any
| issues they had about the building. People used to complain
| going to those, but at least you'd get an overview of who is
| who. I believe these meetings are gone, replaced by email. No
| one complains about them anymore but, at the same time, no
| one knows who their apartment neighbors are.
| vel0city wrote:
| My children are still a bit too young, but there are lots
| of kids that play in my neighborhood in DFW. The city park
| at the end of my street has families playing, people out
| walking their dogs, fishing in the ponds. People play
| sports at the fields in the park. People hang out on their
| front patios when it's not 100F outside, have trunk or
| treats at the park, etc.
|
| The apartments I've lived in the past several years had get
| together events from time to time. I also met a lot of
| neighbors going to the gym or hanging out around the pool
| or playing billiards in the clubhouse.
|
| None of this seems radically rare from my experiences in
| Houston and DFW.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| > But thanks to longer working hours
|
| Average amount of time spent working has trended downwards
| for nearly every income group for every decade except at
| best the last decade where it's been stabilizing around ~33
| to 36 hours a week or 1700 - 1800 hours a year. I'm not
| specifying a country because I don't have to, the only
| country that has actually trended upwards in working hours
| is China.
| panta wrote:
| Very true. Long term effects are often neglected when framing
| considerations from a purely economic perspective, especially
| when these are externalized costs, like public health.
| weitendorf wrote:
| IMO the two culprits are high rents and efficient capital
| markets. Definitely many factors contributing to the first, but
| one of them is also the efficiency of capital markets.
|
| Basically it's too expensive to make spaces available for below
| market rate due to the direct cost of rents (a middle or upper-
| middle class person could drop $1000/month on a passion
| project, but not so easily $5k/month) and there's a very high
| opportunity cost to forgoing revenue/profit, because you can
| find buyers willing to buy you out for 3-25x incremental
| profit. That opportunity cost makes it tempting for any
| community space to instead chase profit. But it also makes non-
| residential property more expensive because you're bidding
| against companies that are able to convert incremental $1000/mo
| profit to $50k-100k in realized value, even if you aren't
| intending to do that.
|
| Rents themselves are very competitive not just from low supply
| but also because technology has made the rental market very
| "efficient"/liquid - it's easy to market a property and
| accurately price it, so sweetheart deals/underpriced leases are
| difficult to find. Plus rental properties themselves have been
| very well financialized as well - increases in incremental
| revenue/profit of commercial real estate can be recognized as
| many-times-more increases in equity by lenders, which can be
| accessed by loaning against the equity. So sweetheart deals are
| more costly to lessors than before.
| gen220 wrote:
| I don't remember where I read this, but I remember reading
| recently how somebody justified their decision to leave "the
| city" to move to a rural area, with the phrase "I was tired
| of competing with my neighbors".
|
| I they were trying to convey sense you describe, of intense
| economic pressure to make a certain income to pay for a
| certain living or working space, or alternatively be kicked
| out because there are ten people in line waiting to take your
| space.
|
| Perhaps a healthy culture cannot survive this degree of
| "efficiency".
| nonameiguess wrote:
| A lot of people seem to cite religious communities, if
| anything. It's consistently odd to me that no one on Hacker
| News ever seems to have been into sports. For me, the third
| places and communities of my youth were all oriented around
| some kind of physical athletic activity. This was mostly
| basketball personally, presumably because I passed 6 feet tall
| in 7th grade. Every park in the area and every school had
| outdoor courts and you'd just go down there early in the day
| with a ball, shoot around, wait for other people to show up,
| and play some pickup ball. The majority of my closest friends
| were just people I played basketball with.
|
| It didn't need to be this. Richer kids might have been into
| swimming and water polo. I got into volleyball later and ad hoc
| sand courts were all over the place. Most of the parks near me
| also had tennis courts and I played tennis quite a bit. Even
| the more counter culture kids who weren't into team sports
| often did some combo of skating, surfing, and snowboarding and
| bonded over that.
|
| Some of this is obviously mediated by where you happen to live.
| Southern California has a lot of open spaces, beaches and
| mountains, and the weather is pretty temperate all year. As
| much as Hacker News laments suburbs, the sprawl also means
| there are a lot of parks because there is so much space.
|
| I've gravitated more toward individual athletic pursuits in
| middle age, so I'm not really involved in sporting communities
| any more. Seemingly, though, all this cheap, free to the
| consumer infrastructure in the form of concrete courts with
| nets still must exist, no? Nobody ever expected parks to turn a
| profit. They were just a thing cities and counties were
| expected to provide out of tax revenue and they're a minuscule
| portion of that compared to expenditure on schooling and law
| enforcement at the municipal level. There can't be any
| economically good reason to put them on the chopping block.
| rexpop wrote:
| I believe this is what Marx termed "commodity fetishism" in the
| first chapter of _Capital_.
|
| > Adorno was born a German Jew at the end of the nineteenth
| century; he saw Hitler come to power via popular vote; and, in
| 1941, he was forced to flee Germany for the United States. Once
| there, however, he observed conditions of isolation and
| aloofness that made him worry: post-war American culture
| looked, to his eye, too much like pre-war Germany. The post-war
| "baby boom" had resulted in the growth of the American suburbs,
| sprawling sections of land developed for first-place
| functionality (private residence) and located within commuting
| distance to second-place nuclei (cities, office buildings,
| places of work). Adorno watched Americans shuttle back and
| forth in their cars between work and home, and he critiqued
| what he saw as ever-deepening habits consistent with conditions
| of social alienation. "He who stands aloof runs the risk of
| believing himself better than others and misusing his critique
| of society as an ideology for his private interest," Adorno
| argues in his 1951 work Minima Moralia. In other words, Adorno
| says, isolation begets feelings of superiority, but not solely
| because the isolated individual lacks opportunities for
| comparison; rather, isolation begets superiority because the
| isolated individual has no audience but himself, no one to
| receive (and, perhaps, critique) his image of himself, to test
| whether or not it is even accurate.
|
| --Sheila Liming, "Hanging Out" (2023)
| tmnvix wrote:
| This was essentially brought to us by neoliberalism. It's
| covered well in the documentary series 'The Century of The
| Self' (freely available on YouTube).
|
| There are many different definitions of 'left' and 'right'. One
| perspective that can be useful is to think in terms of
| 'collective' and 'individualistic'. On this axis, neoliberalism
| is firmly to the right (not in the centre as is often
| portrayed). Communities are collective by definition and
| neoliberalism is inherently anti-community.
|
| When I was younger I was always confused by the incessant
| political drive to 'privatise' everything despite the obvious
| bad outcomes. On the whole, the cost of services didn't go
| down, they didn't improve, and they didn't become more
| efficient. The opposite would happen, despite the promises to
| the contrary.
|
| My eureka moment was when I realised that it really was simply
| about ideology. The essential aim was not to improve anything.
| It was to ensure all activity was turned into a 'market
| transaction' so as to provide those with capital more
| opportunities to invest. From that point of view, the push for
| privatisation makes perfect sense.
|
| We have been fooled into selling our communities for profit (as
| if that's the only way to improve our lot).
| medion wrote:
| Capitalism has made its way into absolutely everything. Every
| piece of modern life is financialised and transactional. It is
| sad and sickening and weird how few even notice it.
| verisimi wrote:
| Great response.
|
| Yes, corporations and governments aren't great parents. But
| then neither are parents, if they allow corporations and
| government free reign over developing minds.
| carapace wrote:
| Christopher Alexander & co. have a site "Building Living
| Neighborhoods" about doing just that with his Pattern Language:
|
| > The tools offered are intended for the use of ordinary people,
| families, communities, developers, planners, architects,
| designers and builders; public officials, local representatives,
| and neighbors; business owners and people who have commercial
| interests. The processes here are expressed in the belief that
| the common-sense, plain truth about laying out a neighborhood, or
| repairing one, is equally valid for all comers, amateurs and
| professionals. They help people build or rebuild neighborhoods in
| ways that contribute something to their lives.
|
| https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm
| mclau156 wrote:
| that website is bad
| carapace wrote:
| Yeah, I know.
|
| "Ignore the bird, follow the river."
| jessriedel wrote:
| Is there a difference between 'cause' and 'upstream cause'? I
| though the whole up/downstream language was just a synonym for
| causation.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| One big change I've noticed between growing up in a small town
| and now where I'm in my mid 40s in a big metro city in India is
| increased "transactional" nature of interactions of my daily
| life.
|
| Back then we had a deeper ties with all those who served us by
| which I mean vegetable vendor, carpenter, doctor, knife
| sharpener, cloth shop, grocer, baker and so on. Whenever we
| interacted with them it would be a small chit-chat, exchange
| small updates (how's your son doing, is he married yet?) and then
| finally do the actual purchase.
|
| It was to an extent that the carpenter would come by and just
| hand over a big dining table just because he thought our house
| deserved/needed it. He wouldn't ask for immediate payment either
| and also in instalments. Some other times he would come by and
| borrow some money.
|
| All of that is now gone. Every single interaction I have now with
| vendors is 100% transactional. I don't even know their names nor
| they mine.
|
| It means that I'm now connected only with my immediate family,
| that's it. It also means that the generation now growing up know
| only transactional way of interaction with non family/friends. I
| guess these things eventually add up to the loss of community.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > I'm now connected only with my immediate family, that's it
|
| Are there no other ways to make friends via social activities?
| TbobbyZ wrote:
| Money is now our God.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Money is just a means of exchange. But basic human rights
| such as housing now being monetized and rented out and/or
| used as an investment means the endless pursuit of money is
| now mandatory to survive.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Now? How did you think housing work for millennia? It not
| being monetized before is a cold comfort when your labor
| and agricultural products are taxed directly instead.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Taxation has always been around in one form or another.
| But property ownership being out of reach of the masses
| is a relatively new thing.
|
| Not that long ago, a blue collar family could afford to
| save enough to buy a family home in under a decade.
| Nowadays most blue-collar people (and in some countries
| such as the UK, even white collars) have no option but to
| rent perpetually.
|
| And that's _just_ property, not even taking into account
| inflation of everything else. Cars (which are necessities
| in many parts of the world) have also exploded in price,
| with entry-level models now approaching what high-end
| executive cars were just 15 years ago.
| ip26 wrote:
| I would call that the difference between a small town and a
| city, which isn't new. You establish those ties because you see
| the same grocer regularly - there's only two grocers in town,
| after all. Meanwhile, in the city, you could buy groceries
| twice a week and never see the same clerk twice.
| theossuary wrote:
| This isn't the difference between a small town and city, it's
| the inevitable result of late stage capitalism. In cities
| it's still possible to go to small stores and create
| connection with your local grocer, butcher, etc. I
| purposefully do it, but I have to seek out the places it's
| still possible, they're dwindling every year. The problem is
| capitalism wants to consolidate and treat people as fungible
| to extract more value, which has the side effect of
| preventing the formation of social bonds.
| parineum wrote:
| Capitalism isn't a person, it doesn't want things.
|
| The problem with people that talk about capitalism the way
| you do is that they mistake human nature for the system
| that was built around it so when they try to change the
| system, the people are maladapted and transgress against it
| by default then it fails miserably.
| theossuary wrote:
| No, the issue is pedantic people like you who can't
| understand that "want" is a simple way of saying that a
| system is biased towards certain outcomes. Capitalism is
| _not_ an expression of human nature, it 's a single
| possible pareto equilibrium. To say otherwise ignores
| huge swaths of humans history, and many modern nations
| which have achieved equilibrium in different ways.
| parineum wrote:
| Capitalism is a system built by people that recognize
| that humans are reliably selfish and seeks to align their
| selfish interests as best as it can with the rest of the
| populous.
|
| No nation has ever achieved equilibrium but we are
| enjoying the most peaceful times in history during a time
| after the previous wave of capitalism-alternatives failed
| miserably or acquiesced.
|
| Just about every measure of human flourishing is in the
| rise, globally.
| bn-l wrote:
| And now the pitch.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| They're not wrong. Late stage capitalism sucks, but the
| alternative systems out there seem to lead to mass
| starvation or total collapse. People have been lifted out
| of poverty worldwide as well. Some kind of balance seems
| necessary.
| harimau777 wrote:
| The welfare states of Western Europe and the Nordic
| countries seem much better than America's system of late
| stage capitalism and they have not lead to mass
| starvation or total collapse.
|
| Likewise, America's economy seemed to be much more
| healthy when it had a more active/successful labor
| movement.
| harimau777 wrote:
| That's simply not true. Democratic Socialism/Social
| Democracy has been very successful.
|
| It's also quite possible that humanity can eventually
| find a new system that works better than capitalism.
| After all it took thousands of years for humanity to find
| capitalism.
| parineum wrote:
| The countries you are likely thinking if who say they are
| those things are still capitalist countries with a touch
| more of social welfare than other similar countries.
|
| There are other countries who claim to be socialist but
| are just totalitarian dictatorships (not surprising, in
| order to control the economy, you have to control the
| people), are lying or both.
| harimau777 wrote:
| That's just semantics. Whether we want to call them left
| wing forms of capitalism or moderate forms of socialism
| isn't really important. What's important is that there
| ARE nations with successful economic systems that are
| better than what people call "late stage capitalism".
| zenapollo wrote:
| Measures of human flourishing are rising for the mid-
| stagers and so globally it might look ok. In late stage
| countries human flourishing has begun a decline.
|
| While the last 20 years we have made progress on a some
| acute problems like heart disease, complex ill-health is
| very much on the rise - Cancer, nearly all mental health
| issues, obesity & diabetes, suicide. Poverty is on the
| rise, literacy rates are down.
|
| Human flourishing is just keeping its head above water in
| these places. Humans are resilient, but there are limits.
|
| Capitalist-fundamentalists will also throw up their hands
| when asked how we might solve existential problems for
| which the is no end in sight - eg global warming, the
| toxifying of our food systems with plastics and
| industrial chemicals, government debt, etc.
|
| > Capitalism is a system built by people that recognize
| that humans are reliably selfish and seeks to align their
| selfish interests as best as it can with the rest of the
| populous.
|
| You just described mass institutional psychopathy.
| theossuary wrote:
| I don't consider my family to be innately selfish within
| the family dynamic, or my friends to be innately greedy.
|
| If you build a system that rewards greed and selfishness
| (and punishes giving), people will be greedy and selfish
| within that system. Don't reverse the cause and effect.
| stoperaticless wrote:
| I understand capitalism as "things can be owned and sold"
| + "you can profit from investment".
|
| > it's a single possible pareto equilibrium
|
| I propose that those other equilibriums' stability
| depended on at least one of these: a) small population
| size&density b) violent totalitarian enforcement c)
| indoctrination in caste system and/or religion d) no
| contact with capitalism
|
| > Capitalism is not an expression of human nature
|
| Ownership is very natural for humans (2 year old already
| declares "it's mine").
|
| Finally, capitalism is just one part what makes a
| society. I bet there are quite significant societal
| differences between Sweden vs US now vs US 70 years ago.
| harimau777 wrote:
| Both capitalism and socialism are spectrums of systems
| rather than single monoliths so any definition is going
| to be fuzzy. However, it's probably useful to
| specifically say that in capitalism specifically private
| property and/or capital can be owned. Generally speaking,
| socialist systems still allow personal property to be
| owned, they just place restrictions on the ownership or
| private property and/or capital.
|
| It's also probably worth considering that socialism
| doesn't necessarily have to forbid ownership of private
| property or capital outright. It could, for example, mean
| that revenue/profit/income derived from private property
| or capital is taxed more highly than
| revenue/profit/income derived from labor.
| stoperaticless wrote:
| > Both capitalism and socialism are spectrums of systems
| rather than single monoliths
|
| Seems a reasonable and useful way to define it.
|
| > any definition is going to be fuzzy.
|
| Definitely! (That is why I preemptively added my attempt
| at the definition, to avoid a discussion past each other)
| kragen wrote:
| probably a lot of people are using terrible definitions
| of 'capitalism' such as '"things can be owned and sold" +
| "you can profit from investment"', which explains why
| these discussions are full of so much nonsense
|
| wikipedia's current definition says:
|
| _Capitalism is an economic system based on the private
| ownership of the means of production and their operation
| for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include
| capital accumulation, competitive markets, price systems,
| private property, property rights recognition, self-
| interest, economic freedom, meritocracy, work ethic,
| consumer sovereignty, profit motive, entrepreneurship,
| commodification, voluntary exchange, wage labor and the
| production of commodities. In a market economy, decision-
| making and investments are determined by owners of
| wealth, property, or ability to maneuver capital or
| production ability in capital and financial markets--
| whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services
| are mainly determined by competition in goods and
| services markets._
|
| this is not a perfect definition but it is a much better
| one
| anon291 wrote:
| Capitalism is biased towards whatever the governing
| authority says it is. In America, due to onerous
| regulations and taxes, it's difficult for independent
| players to become established and the regulations favor a
| handful of large companies in most sectors. This is not
| universally true in every country, and they're just as
| capitalist (arguably more so) than us
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| Onerous? More like pathetically lacking.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I think capitalism is fundamentally different than other
| systems because of one important nuance. In capitalism
| you can buy a plot of land and go start a communist
| society, or a socialist one, or whatever you want. So
| long as your little society can feed itself, you can do
| whatever you want. Well even if it can't feed itself, it
| can still do whatever it wants - but it probably won't be
| particularly long lived. But in socialist or communist
| societies you can't just go start up your own little
| capitalist society.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| There can be small grocers in big cities and faceless
| corporations in small towns, in fact in my experience in
| midwest America small towns (sub 5000, say) have 0 shops,
| people drive the 15 minutes to the nearest walmart
|
| midsize cities / college towns ~100k will have a specialty
| butcher and a tobacconist where you can actually get to know
| the shopowners
| somenameforme wrote:
| I'd generally agree with the stuff about everybody just
| driving to Walmart, but that was just to stock up on
| nonperishables/freezeables. There was always the local mini
| mart/gas station, movie store, school, church, pool hall,
| bar, etc. And everybody tends to know everybody anyhow,
| because you often have inter-family relations dating back
| generations.
| anon291 wrote:
| > Meanwhile, in the city, you could buy groceries twice a
| week and never see the same clerk twice.
|
| So even a cursory reading of older books and novels that
| detail city life just a few hundred years ago shows this not
| to be the case.
|
| What's gone on is that the phenomenon described above has
| started in cities and spread everywhere, for better or worse.
| notahacker wrote:
| If urban city shops and restaurants have had regularly
| rotating staff for decades then loss of those touchpoints
| can't have much difference to do with the claimed decline
| in mental health of the last couple of generations as
| suggested upthread though.
|
| (A few hundred years back cities were mostly only the size
| of small towns today anyway, the average person didn't
| really frequent stores and rural communities were sometimes
| _really_ isolated, and we don 't really have an accurate
| picture of how any of this affected mental health)
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| The city of Rome had a population of a million people. The
| anonymity of the crowd is not new it's been here for
| millennia.
| kragen wrote:
| i live in a city with a population of 14 million people,
| but still most of my everyday transactional interactions
| like buying _churros_ , chicken wings, or electrical
| supplies are with people i know and transact with
| repeatedly. that's because i walk there, lacking a motor
| vehicle. i imagine this was also true of day-to-day
| commerce in ancient rome, and of course the patron-client
| and master-slave relationships that were so central in
| roman society were anything but anonymous
| alwa wrote:
| I agree: I live on and off in a city of many, many
| millions. Maybe it's just the idiosyncrasy of how I
| choose to live and shop, but I personally know most of
| the people with whom I transact regularly in the same way
| you describe.
|
| Including many of the specific humans who staff the
| handful of Anonymous Big Chain kinds of enterprises that
| have weaseled their way into our city: even one of
| _those_ branches tends to have familiar faces managing or
| preferring to work the shift that overlaps with when I
| visit.
|
| I would know _how_ to seek social and transactional
| anonymity if I wanted to--just go do my shop in a
| different neighborhood!--but I don't want to, and that
| seems pretty consistent with the way things are done in
| my city.
| diob wrote:
| It's a mindset I think.
|
| I love being in big cities (overseas) because I actually can
| cultivate this sort of community / friendship with the locals.
|
| I go to the same coffee shops and get to know the folks there,
| bring them interesting coffee to try, etc.
|
| I will say that this only has worked for me in other countries,
| not the USA. I think folks here are too burnt out by the lack
| of safety nets and such, I really don't blame them.
| ricardo81 wrote:
| Not too different to myself in my mid forties in Scotland
| though in my case it's still the small town I was born in, the
| pleasures of working from home.
|
| There used to be local vendors as you describe (what comes to
| mind is a local shop, an ice cream van, milk man, a fizzy
| drinks vendor, a butcher/baker), but they've all been replaced
| by economies of scale (supermarkets and now online).
|
| So now there are no local shops, no weekly vans with their
| specialist goods. And those half a dozen well known local faces
| aren't doing their rounds.
|
| A local shop serves as a meeting place where conversations can
| take place. Even in the 80s in the UK when TV was at its peak,
| people could have conversations the next day on what they
| watched last night out of the 4 channels available.
|
| I guess the local social cohesion can be thought of as a
| necessity when you're going to deal with lots of local people
| and with recent trends said in the article it's considered
| optional.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Everyone is under more pressure thanks to cost of living and
| Western society being a property-indexed Ponzi scheme which
| requires endless growth just to keep up. Back when rent/home
| ownership was affordable and everyone had more "slack" it's
| easy to add humanity to transactions - you can spare the small
| opportunity cost even though you'd make more money _short-term_
| ignoring humanity and focusing purely on transactionality.
|
| Nowadays when everyone's busy trying to make as much money as
| possible to be able to make rent or survive in ever-increasing
| inflation, an extra dining table they didn't give away is one
| they can sell for money. Similarly, borrowing money is
| harder/less acceptable because everyone _else_ too is under
| pressure and is less likely to be able to help (or at least it
| would cause them more hardship).
| somenameforme wrote:
| It's mildly interesting to consider that one of the main
| arguments against an economically deflationary society is
| that people would have a motivation to hoard money which
| might deter things like investment or lending, yet in an
| inflationary society few seem concerned about the fact that
| we create a system that motivates trying to hoard 'things',
| including land. It also motivates trying to rent things to
| people instead of selling it to them.
|
| 1971 is the year that we default on our obligations under
| Bretton Woods enabling the US to begin printing money at our
| own discretion. It's quite interesting to see how that year
| ended up being a huge inflection point for so absurdly many
| issues. [1] It resulted in a rapid increase in wealth, but
| came with a rapid increase in issues alongside it.
|
| [1] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
| verall wrote:
| It's not inflation, it's bad tax policy.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| Please explain how 2x-3x housing costs in 4 years is due
| to tax policy.
| Bjartr wrote:
| Presumably the implication is that it's because lots of
| homes are being bought by real estate companies as long
| term investments that they may or may not even rent back
| out. This extra demand beyond people buying housing to,
| you know, live in it, drives up the price.
|
| A different tax policy could disincentize this behavior,
| leading to lower demand and thus lower prices.
|
| That's my current understanding of that perspective at
| least.
| alwa wrote:
| I take your point that I've never really been asked to
| think about inflationary economies encouraging hoarding
| things, especially things whose scarcity stems from natural
| limits rather than economic will. But at the risk of
| showing my naivete--wouldn't it be OK for me to exchange
| money for enough stuff for me to be content, as soon in my
| economic life as I can, and hold onto it? For that matter,
| isn't it to my advantage that it's economically desirable
| for landlords and car rental firms to let me rent a high-
| value item--like a car for the 3 days a year I need it, or
| an apartment in a city where I'm only going to live for a
| few years--instead of making me wait until I've made enough
| money to buy it outright before I can access it at all? Is
| the idea that if I could instead hoard currency of a fixed
| value, I would then _not_ hoard naturally scarce things
| /resources that I judge likely to improve in value?
|
| Re: [1], see also HN discussion [2] (2020, 808 points, 454
| comments) wrestling with the many competing theories about
| "what," if anything specific, "happened in 1971." It raises
| several possibilities outside the gold standard.
|
| See also a more substantial (or at least lengthier)
| methodological critique [3] (6 months ago, 40 points, 42
| comments). The HN discussion includes reactions both of
| gold/bitcoin enthusiasts and of economically opinionated
| folks less committed to that way of seeing the world.
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25188457
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39144867
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's hard to know which direction causality goes here. More
| personal interactions are often more expensive because they
| can't be systematized and specialized like an assembly line.
| So what came first: service providers pulling away from
| offering more personal service or consumers always opting for
| the cheapest, most optimized option?
|
| One could also argue that this race to the bottom has been a
| great boon to companies and "the managerial class" that are
| charged with optimizing this stuff and has been responsible
| for some of the rising wealth inequality.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| This maps to my experience as well.
|
| I see families struggle with things I don't recall seeing as a
| kid or teenager. We all had more people around. We were rarely
| functioning as such independent family units.
|
| And you're right, my dad was a carpenter himself and he did all
| kinds of favours for people. Especially elderly people--mostly
| women--who couldn't do the work themselves or easily afford to
| pay someone to. He would offer lower rates, fit things in for
| free, and show up at their convenience. It was the right thing
| to do. That isn't really possible now, though.
|
| Something I urge my kids to understand is that family is great,
| but it was never meant to be everything. That isn't to diminish
| family, but to encourage one to identify and appreciate what's
| so valuable and rewarding in friends and community. Humans are
| so richly social and so poor at functioning in isolation;
| there's no sense in pretending otherwise. We really need each
| other. The more community erodes, so do we each as well.
| a123b456c wrote:
| I mean, it's still possible to have non-transactional
| interactions.
|
| Many service providers appear truly surprised and then
| appreciative when I simply ask them how their day is going.
|
| Edit: Or maybe the surprise comes when they notice that I'm
| actually listening to their answer.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| I don't think this happened because of personal changes.
| Absent interference, people would almost certainly form
| close community. We need to look for the source of the
| interference, individual actions aren't enough.
| seesaw wrote:
| My experience is very similar. I believe there are two
| primary reasons for this: 1. People are wealthier, and
| wealthier people tend to be more independent. 2.
| Population density is higher. Places with lower density,
| such as villages still tend to have that people to people
| connection like in the old days
| habosa wrote:
| Those of us who worked for tech companies trying to make "Uber
| for X" really accelerated this. Having an app for everything
| makes life a series of impersonal transactions.
| mtsr wrote:
| During the early days of the "sharing economy" trend, there
| was actually plenty focus on connecting people.
|
| But at some point you need money to pay people working on
| these things. So you look at something that doesn't replace
| the core social connection, but augments the experience. Like
| selling additional services such as insurance.
|
| But it's not easy to cover costs, especially in western
| countries where employees are expensive.
|
| These days (I haven't been part of it for a long time) I've
| noticed there are also subscriptions to be part some
| community, which works but of course also makes it harder to
| grow.
|
| And investors who are looking for return on investment are
| also difficult in something that's so sensitive to good will
| from users.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > During the early days of the "sharing economy" trend,
| there was actually plenty focus on connecting people.
|
| You're describing the initial couchsurfing concept and the
| old couchsurfing.com. Everything after that has been about
| monetizing the shit out of these interactions.
| gregorymichael wrote:
| Yes! We just moved out of Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn and my
| biggest lament was losing this type of community. Wrote about
| it here: https://baugues.com/last-days-nyc
| emchammer wrote:
| Seems to be correlated with PIN pads capable of displaying
| text.
|
| "Do you have a telephone number with us?"
|
| "It's going to ask you a question." (About how much tip to add
| to your bill)
| conductr wrote:
| I'm so glad it's finally happening but also it's wild to me this
| conversation feels like it's just beginning. The Anxious
| Generation book seems to have been what was needed for people to
| see what, to me anyways, was common sense and actually question
| their silly iPad at 6months old parenting styles.
|
| As it's picking up steam, I've been hearing stories recently
| about how our local "school district decided to ban phones from
| classrooms" and just yesterday it was "the school will no longer
| allow food delivery services to drop off food". Like, educators,
| WTF, why was that ever an option? In my days long ago, 80s-90s
| primary school, there was a zero tolerance policy for this stuff.
| Why was it ever deemed allowable? I can see letting kids keep
| their phone in their locker or create some storage solution for
| it. For emergency purposes. But in emergencies, the parent should
| be able to call the office and they can fetch the kid. It worked
| just fine in the days of landlines.
|
| It's hard for me to understand the parenting styles that demanded
| and allowed this stuff to take place, because I'm sure it was
| parent driven. But there's so much else to the parenting styles
| that are contributing to all this stuff. Banning outdoor play and
| independence is why they're online so much and why the arcades
| and third places all disappeared.
|
| I say all this as a parent of an almost 6 year old boy, doing
| everything I can to shield him from the wacky parenting style
| that seems to be the norm and provide him places of community and
| activities away from screens. He won't have a phone until he
| drives, or maybe just a basic flip phone if we think we need a
| communication line to reach him when he's a bit older.
| kahmeal wrote:
| >I say all this as a parent of an almost 6 year old boy, doing
| everything I can to shield him from the wacky parenting style
| that seems to be the norm and provide him places of community
| and activities away from screens. He won't have a phone until
| he drives, or maybe just a basic flip phone if we think we need
| a communication line to reach him when he's a bit older.
|
| This is possibly a bit extreme, imo. In a world that is ever
| increasingly digital, responsible exposure is without a doubt
| necessary; However, it seems that one could also inadvertently
| foster naivete and ignorance of our digital reality, which has
| its own potential pitfalls. The "right" answer is probably
| somewhere in the middle. As usual.
| conductr wrote:
| Hard to completely elaborate on here but I think I am quite
| in the middle. It just happens to be far from norm. Or at
| least how i perceive it.
|
| He watches some age appropriate TV daily. He started gaming
| but probably gets in around a total of 5 hours a month on the
| switch. It will be the hardest thing not to give into. Right
| now it's not allowed on weekdays. And only with restrictions
| on weekends (eg. All other activities take priority). No
| smaller screens except on travels it's a treat. He will get a
| laptop next year for school but I'm going to try to encourage
| PC use as a tool/utility and not so much for
| consumption/media. Phone might be hard but our current
| community of parents has kind of made a pact so I hope we can
| stick to it. We will hold out as long as possible and still
| put some restrictions on it. Thankfully he's pretty logical
| and listens to our reasoning and understands the "rules" and
| doesn't whine or get rebellious about it (thus far)
|
| It's not like we're Amish or shun media.
| floren wrote:
| This sounds like the sort of route I hope to take with my
| son when he's old enough. We've already made it past a year
| without ever sitting him down for TV/tablet/phone time
| (except video calls with grandparents) but I'm sure it only
| gets harder from here.
|
| I'd be interested in reading any more you've previously
| written on the subject, or any other sources you've based
| your guidelines on!
| conductr wrote:
| Good start! I feel like 90% of it is just putting in the
| effort and being intentional. Our son didn't watch TV
| until about 18 months and the pandemic put us all in the
| house without childcare and our work went into overdrive.
| He went too hard on it for the first few months until we
| figured out how to balance things. We had no intention of
| starting that young but that's how it happened.
|
| I've not written on the topic. The main advice I can give
| is to always be prepared to channel their energy/boredom.
| We take a backpack of small toys and sticker books and
| putty/play dough into dine in restaurants. My kid really
| likes to know what to expect so we prepare him when we
| know he has to do something boring. Like we went to a
| funeral when he was 2 and we explained to him that we
| dressed up to show our respect and we have to sit still
| and be quiet to show respect. We told him adults might be
| crying because they're sad. That's kind of a weird
| extreme example but we do small versions of this pretty
| often.
|
| Find ways to explain to them that even if other kids do
| something "we don't do that". This varies by kid and age.
| Be consistent and make sure everyone he is with
| understands (parents, grands, etc). Or set conditions,
| like only at grandmas or only on weekends. We set a lot
| of timers. You can play Mario for 20 minutes, he's gotten
| to where he just says "yay! Hey Google, set a timer for
| 20 minutes" lol
| n8henrie wrote:
| What part of the above seems most "extreme" to you? It seems
| fairly reasonable.
|
| I'm guessing it's the "no phone..." part, but that's what
| seems most important to me. Having an always-available
| endless entertainment device is a powerful drug. There is a
| reason we disallow nicotine, alcohol, and cannabis until
| brains have reached a certain level of maturity /
| development.
|
| My oldest is 8. He rocks Manjaro and loves (open source)
| games. We do python lessons together, even though I'm only a
| hobbyist myself. But compared to the above poster I also have
| similar goals / limitations for screentime that we try (and
| struggle) to adhere to, and my wife and I don't plan to allow
| a smartphone for our son until high school at the earliest.
|
| I don't think disallowing a smartphone is an extreme
| parenting move. But perhaps I'm misinterpreting what you
| thought was extreme?
| colechristensen wrote:
| This isn't new, by the way.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
|
| A book published in 2000 based on an essay from 1995. I
| remember my sister took a university course on it.
|
| The Internet only replaced social interactions for a tiny group
| of enthusiasts at that point and "phones" were the size of
| small briefcases and were novelties in cars at that point
| (1995).
|
| Declining socialization has been happening for _decades_ and
| people are overly focused on smartphones as a cause.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| Yes, overly focused on smartphones, and underfocused on car-
| centric city planning: https://images.fastcompany.com/image/u
| pload/w_768,f_auto,q_a...
|
| https://www.fastcompany.com/90653986/traffic-devastates-
| loca...
|
| As we've become richer, we've bought more cars, we drive them
| more often, and to further locations. The amount of vehicle
| traffic and parked cars in neighborhoods have long exceeded
| the limit for how much you can have before streets become
| unsafe. This is why children can't go outside unsupervised
| anymore: there are too many cars, going too fast, and too
| many parked cars that are too good at hiding children about
| to run into the road.
|
| You have to get rid of the cars, or limit their use somehow.
| Eliminate on-street parking. Get rid of monster trucks and
| SUVs that can only see the ground 22 feet away. More speed
| bumps and traffic calming.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >This is why children can't go outside unsupervised
| anymore: there are too many cars, going too fast, and too
| many parked cars that are too good at hiding children about
| to run into the road.
|
| This really isn't it. People think their kids are going to
| get murdered/kidnapped/assaulted. "It's 10PM, do you know
| where your children are?" was a local news promo. You had
| "news magazine" TV shows designed to frighten parents which
| were just tragedy porn for attention.
|
| "My kid is going to get hit by a car" isn't why kids don't
| go out and play any more, it's the news manipulating
| culture for decades.
| boot13 wrote:
| What a load. See https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/22/jonathan-
| haidts-book-the...
| jeffbee wrote:
| This guy seems to think his city is special by not allowing kids
| to have phones in school but the thing is I've heard this claim
| of special status from a lot of places lately and in my own city
| kids have never been allowed to have phones at school so I am
| starting to think this is actually just a widespread and quite
| obvious practice.
| 0xedd wrote:
| Heh, come on. It's the breakup of the family unit by the woke
| plague. It's time to face the music and let children be children.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| What does that even mean? Please explain, because I don't think
| I understand what you're saying.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| What are you even talking about?
| luzojeda wrote:
| Gays! I knew it was them! Even when it was the atomization of
| society, loss of third places, destruction of the middle class
| and so many other things, I knew it was them.
| tarkin2 wrote:
| The lack of religion is a big factor. I'd argue as much as the
| internet.
|
| Religious activity--putting aside the well-documented negatives--
| gives group identity, belonging, a welcoming atmosphere, an in-
| person place to socialise, associated group events and a
| connection to your geographic community.
|
| The rush to abandon religion never replaced the essential in-
| person community it offered its adherents.
| kredd wrote:
| Tight knit irreligious communities always existed. I grew up in
| one, nobody in my family is/was religious, yet people still
| were close. I think the top comment nails down the root cause
| -- rampant individualism is rewarded from an economical and
| financial stand point, so people avoid making sacrifices for
| others. If you check out very religious societies (other than
| closed down sects), they have a significant decline in youth
| co-mingling as well.
|
| I'm not saying removing religion did not contribute to the
| decline (e.g. parents forcing their children to go to church),
| and we definitely screwed up when it comes to replacing that
| freed time with something more social. But actively asserting
| ideas and beliefs that don't hold ground in the modern days to
| the children isn't something I can support.
| hu3 wrote:
| > But actively asserting ideas and beliefs that don't hold
| ground in the modern days...
|
| You realize that's an opinion right? Not a fact.
|
| Such a broad and loaded generalization too.
|
| Religion might not have a place in modern society >to you<.
| Generalizing that opinion is just as radical as trying to
| impose religion onto others.
|
| Not to mention that, just because non-religious groups are
| also able to become close and social, it doesn't mean that
| religion doesn't help here too. So there is a flaw in this
| logic.
| kredd wrote:
| Fair, you're right, apologies, I just have a knee-jerk
| reaction to any commentary that suggests religious
| indoctrination of children. But again, I still think parts
| of religious traditions are amazing (like bringing the
| community together, having pre-set activities, celebrating
| things together and etc.). The "ideas and beliefs" that I'm
| against is just the usual paranormal stories that are being
| push as the objective truth.
|
| If someone can extract out the core good things out of the
| religions (being nice to the neighbour, helping others,
| decency and etc.) and apply it to the modern world, I will
| be all for that. And that's kind of what my parents taught
| me from day 1 as well. Or taking specific activities, how
| my Jewish friends do, like hosting Friday night Shabbat
| dinners to bring your friends and family together. The
| problem is, it's very hard to implement in a larger scale,
| as you can't push people one way or another through fear
| (whether it's fear of God, or going to hell, or bad karma).
|
| I obviously have no real solution to it, but just wanted to
| explain my thought process.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Some things to keep in mind:
|
| (1) A 'youth mental health crisis' may or may not actually exist.
| Consider the 'chronic pain crisis' marketing that preceded the
| opiate epidemic in the USA, and the concomittant boom in opiate
| drug prescriptions, sales and profits. Similarly the 'attention
| deficit crisis' was very profitable for the makers of
| amphetamines and their derivatives, from Ritalin to Adderall to
| Desoxyn. Here's CDC on opiate prescriptions in the USA,
| 2006-2015:
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6626a4.htm
|
| (2) A 'youth mental health crisis' may actually be a 'youth are
| looking at the dystopian world besest by war and climate chaos
| and not feeling good about their future prospects' - which means
| their mental health is probably fine and their views are entirely
| rational. See the famous "this koala is having a mental crisis'
| cartoon:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/lostgeneration/comments/avf6kh/this...
| cooolbear wrote:
| I'm surprised that the definition of 'community' he uses here so
| strongly revolves around a shared identity and activity, and that
| _what is shared_ is what defines a community.
|
| For one, I don't really think communities where people share the
| same interests or ritual really does the trick, otherwise so-
| called YouTube 'communities' or Twitch stream 'communities' or
| even strangers you play games with online would be all that's
| needed. In those cases, whether it happens in real life or online
| wouldn't really matter. I think some people can tick all the
| boxes he has here with an online group and still feel lonely from
| it. Some people still feel lonely going to church every Sunday.
|
| There certainly needs to be a common thread--that's what you get
| out of place-based communities, for example: we all experience
| the same weather--but what I feel _really_ combats loneliness and
| creates belonging is having to connect with people that are
| different you and, importantly, to witness and connect with
| people _because of_ their difference, and that these connections
| are made because _you have no choice_. The richness and
| complexity of life and all of the kinds of sorrows and joys that
| you get to see and relate to yourself and relate to others is
| what is sorely missing from incidental, emergent, real-life
| community. I suppose I 'm basically just describing the Breakfast
| Club experience.
|
| Like kids don't feel lonely because there isn't an authority
| figure around that can boss them around. That makes for a more
| ... socially conditioned ...? person, and maybe a wiser, more
| carefully-guided person, but not necessarily a less lonely
| person. It's not the bossing around that makes them feel like
| they're in a community, it's the fact that there is someone with
| a different experience with whom they share some connection, and
| it's a coincidence that it's an authoratative one.
| parpfish wrote:
| when community is formed geographically, it also helps that
| there's a diversity of people/opinions which serves to moderate
| the group.
|
| if people select community based on some other criterion, you
| are more likely to get narrow group think and increasingly
| extreme opinions/culture that isn't ultimately welcoming or
| sustainable.
| ryan93 wrote:
| Actually kids are much happier in homogenous communities. Being
| the lone white kid in a black/Hispanic community would cause
| nonstop low level stress
| Animats wrote:
| This article needs more comparison between countries. Where is
| this _not_ happening?
| canadaduane wrote:
| Seth Kaplan, professor at Johns Hopkins University and frequent
| contributor to UN and World Bank efforts to shore up community in
| difficult countries has written a book called Fragile
| Neighborhoods that I highly recommend.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I think it's less the lack of community, and more the lack of the
| ability to feel like you matter.
|
| Before the world was globalized, anybody could do something that
| would stand out in their community.
|
| On a global scale, virtually no one is good or big enough for
| anyone to care about.
|
| It doesn't matter anymore if you're the best soprano in the choir
| or the best basketball player on your team. You need to be one of
| the best in the world. And that's not realistic.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| The articles thesis on loss of community plays a role but has
| always existed in some context depending upon the individuals
| location.
|
| The primary cause (in my opinion) of the youth mental health
| crisis and falling happiness rates was the introduction of the
| smart phone. Blaming social media is a clever cop out, it's the
| actual device and inability of people to stop looking at it.
|
| Totally abnormal to human life. Will we adapt to it over time?
| Possible, but many people will be lost along the way.
| RangerScience wrote:
| Counter-take: Smartphone addiction, like other addictions, it a
| coping mechanism for _other_ issues, see
| https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/what-does-rat-park-tea...
|
| > But Alexander wondered: is this about the drug or might it be
| related to the setting they were in? To test his hypothesis, he
| put rats in "rat parks," where they were among others and free
| to roam and play, to socialize and to have sex. And they were
| given the same access to the same two types of drug laced
| bottles. When inhabiting a "rat park," they remarkably
| preferred the plain water. Even when they did imbibe from the
| drug-filled bottle, they did so intermittently, not
| obsessively, and never overdosed. A social community beat the
| power of drugs.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| I've considered the rebuttal and study you cited. I can't
| envision any social environment that would permanently stop
| people from obsessively looking at their phones.
|
| It's possible to provide an activity that would temporarily
| redirect the obsession but we're talking about 24 hours. At
| some point the individual will resume the obsessive behavior.
|
| I also bet that the rat park study would eventually fail
| given a long enough amount of time. The rats would eventually
| get bored of their environment and experiment with the drug
| filled bottle. I speculate all this of course. Can't be
| positive.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| Second comment. Sorry if excessive but it's relevant. I'm a
| computer teacher for elementary and intermediate school grades.
| You know what drives kids absolutely insane and agitated? The
| schools IT guy turning their laptops and Mac desktops into locked
| down consumption devices.
|
| The kids aren't even permitted to change their wallpaper. Those
| in tech with authority need to loosen up on control of systems,
| hardware and services if they want kids to be less agitated.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Yeah, fuck "devices". This is a massive part of the problem. Up
| to a certain age, children don't ask "does it have to be the
| way?" It's obvious why they don't: they are learning so much
| anyway, they don't have time to ask such questions. So the
| world we present is the world that is accepted, no questions
| asked. Religion thrives on this.
|
| So let's think about what world we are presenting. Physically
| you have no autonomy. You require a giant wheelchair to get
| around (called a car) which you can't drive until you're older.
| These wheelchairs are higher in the social order than you. You
| have to give way to them. If you don't they will kill you. They
| matter more than you.
|
| And in the digital world too: no autonomy. You use a "device".
| You can't participate in anything without said device. In fact,
| you basically don't exist without your device. The device is
| more important than you. Your device does what it does and no
| more. Someone else controls your device. Your device controls
| you.
|
| A tiny fraction of children will grow up and ask "does it have
| to be this was" to a tiny fraction of things. Most will go
| through their whole adult life without questioning it.
| bilater wrote:
| My controversial take on this is that we are in the mid-curve of
| this tech, i.e., smartphones/social media are not quite there to
| replace IRL experiences and are even further off from real
| community...BUT instead of going back, we need to move forward to
| the right side of the curve where full VR / network states can
| solve a lot of these problems.
|
| I'm very bullish on IRL experiences. Community building is more
| complex, with various ripple effects to consider, but
| realistically we are heading in that direction whether we like it
| or not. I find it more compelling to explore how we can reclaim
| and enhance these lost aspects in our modern world rather than
| going on "back in my day" nostalgia trips.
| yard2010 wrote:
| That sounds both implausible and dystopic. But I believe this
| is going to happen and everything is going to be fine
| romanobro56 wrote:
| As a member of generation Z I would like to add that one of the
| many enshittification reasons leading to the loss of community is
| an aging population. Many of the same neighborhoods that our
| parents used to roam and play are now a majority old or childless
| families. The kids are there, just not dense enough to form small
| tight knit play groups anymore. This applies to suburbs
| specifically
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| I think quality of the community matters here. There are a lot of
| "not real" people in our society.
| RangerScience wrote:
| Hot take:
|
| The upstream cause of _this_ is, essentially, "the rent is too
| damn high". Not necessarily in a sense of housing prices, but -
|
| In order to have a community, that community needs a _space_.
| (The early 'net was interesting in that "space" was cheap/nearly
| free - IRC, forums, etc, which might be one reason it took over
| as a social space to begin with)
|
| Extremely consistently, I see efforts at forming communities fail
| simply due to a lack of regular space in which to have them, and
| from what little I know talking to organizers, it pretty much
| always comes down to the cost of the space - the rent. This
| remains true even if the space itself wants to be cheap/free - it
| has to pay it's _own_ rent, which means it needs dollars from
| everyone using it.
|
| AFAIK, religious institutions get around this through (1)
| advantageous tax laws and (2) long-term ownership.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Kids don't even play video games together in the same room any
| more. LAN parties were a thing in the 90s but everyone was in the
| same room(ish). Even when playing console games people don't game
| together in the same room or home.
|
| That's kinda odd. Online gaming is cool but my favorite gaming
| memories are playing with the person sitting next to me.
|
| I miss those days, and wish kids knew what it was like to play
| games together as a physical experience AND a digital one.
| hitsurume wrote:
| Yep. Also besides Lan parties, we had the N64, which allowed 4
| peoplo play together. GoldenEye and various Mario games were a
| blast. the next generation had Halo and linking Xbox's
| together. Now a days I don't think kids or teens are having
| that same kind of fun we did back in the day.
| robotelvis wrote:
| I recently joined my local Elks club and the experience has been
| amazing.
|
| Being social is effortless. I just show up at the lodge and
| people I know will be there.
|
| As a parent I can let the kids run wild with other kids within
| the safe confines of the lodge and have adult conversations.
|
| If I don't have plans, I don't need to sit home reading the
| internet. I go to the lodge.
|
| It's weird that groups like the Elks have declined so much in
| recent decades, because it feels they really are the solution to
| a problem everyone complains about.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > It's weird that groups like the Elks have declined so much in
| recent decades, because it feels they really are the solution
| to a problem everyone complains about.
|
| Social orgs can supplement a healthy community. They can't
| replace one, however.
|
| A healthy community is one where it is trivial for kids to go
| on their own to a safe space. A place where they can Kid
| together, free from interfering adults.
| llm_trw wrote:
| I keep hearing all these people talking about kidding
| together.
|
| Kidding together means setting a cat on fire and laughing
| when it's screaming running around. It means beating the fat
| kid till he can't stand up.
|
| The idea that kids don't need adults is laughable to anyone
| who remembers being a kid.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Kidding together means setting a cat on fire and laughing
| when it's screaming running around. It means beating the
| fat kid till he can't stand up.
|
| This is very rarely true. I grew up with rural hill people
| and I was a skittish, annoying kid who got bullied a lot.
|
| Bullying was something that mostly happened in isolation. I
| was at-risk at school or if I was out alone and ran into
| the wrong kids, like the local neanderthal who started
| shaving at 10.
|
| Where I was safe was in groups. These were rough kids,
| sometimes brutally so. Feuds between youth could be extreme
| and the injuries were often serious. But those were between
| individuals or sometimes families.
|
| Animal cruelty existed. It wasn't common but could happen
| within a feud. ex:A pet would disappear and be found down a
| well.
|
| And like bullying, animal abuse happened in isolation.
| Torturing animals was not a social thing. Someone who
| entertained the notion could expect to get beat by the
| other kids until they thought differently. Not cool at all.
| p1mrx wrote:
| > It's weird that groups like the Elks have declined so much in
| recent decades
|
| https://www.elks.org/who/missionStatement.cfm
|
| "To be accepted as a member, one must [...] believe in God"
|
| There are groups like UU and Sunday Assembly that don't have
| this requirement.
| floren wrote:
| I've gone as far as filling out the form given to me by an
| Elk who was willing to sponsor me but when I got to the part
| where you have to affirm that belief I just couldn't make a
| solid case to myself.
|
| It seems there are plenty of Elks who are aware this is a
| problem, but change is slow.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Belief is a spectrum and there is no way to externally verify
| it. In fact, even if you could externally verify, you'll find
| that there is a wide range of beliefs even among those who
| "legitimately" believe.
|
| A cult of personality around a magic man in the sky is in the
| grand scheme of things not much different than a cult of
| personality around some celebrity or politician/party.
|
| A requirement to "believe" in god has the advantage to
| provide a common ground for members as well as a set of
| baseline manners/behaviors. In retrospect, this is actually
| an advantage. Most social clubs/etc always need _some_ common
| ground and a shared activity /belief they can congregate
| around. Whether it's a celebrity or a magic man in the sky
| doesn't particularly matter, but _something_ is needed.
|
| Unless the very tenets of the religion are so revolting to
| you (or if you actually believe in something else and this
| religion would be against what you believe), just fake it.
| Unless it's a very secluded and "practicing" religious group,
| you may find that a lot of other people have also varying
| beliefs but choose to play the game because the value of
| being part of the group outweighs the downside of faking it.
|
| Also, most mainstream religions have at least _some_ tenets
| you can get behind, even as an atheist. Just that the atheist
| would agree with them because it 's just good morals as
| opposed to having to follow some magic man's orders, but they
| don't have to know that.
| electrosphere wrote:
| I wish more people would understand this.
|
| I was borna Muslim but I consider myself a "cultural
| Muslim" and do not look into it any further.
|
| It does not stop me volunteering at my local mosque food
| bank etc. The social interaction and doing some good for
| the community trumps any views I have on the religion.
| zombiwoof wrote:
| Yet Apple will continue to push iPhones , sometimes I think the
| iPhone is worse than Facebook
| resource_waste wrote:
| This is just repeating Positive Psychology correct?
| silexia wrote:
| Mental health problems are the result of taking animals (humans)
| out of their natural environments and giving them phones with
| addictive apps and telling them that they should work instead of
| having children and growing their families.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| The internet was a bad idea.
| g9yuayon wrote:
| When I grew up in China, students in a school were divided into
| fixed classes. Those classes formed great communities, as we
| spent hours every day for at least three years and some for 6
| years. Each class had a head teacher, who fostered the sense of
| community too. No one would mock people for geeking out. No one
| would mock people for not being good at sports. No one would mock
| those who struggled at academics. At least not openly. We loved
| each other and still do. Our bond was so strong that we had
| regular reunions every few years, and most of my classmates would
| make it. We had multiple couples who were high-school sweat
| hearts, even though dating in high school was a taboo in China
| then. The concepts like nerds, like queen bees, like sports
| jockeys, like that those who can get drugs and drinks are
| popular... They were all new and parts of the culture shock to me
| when I moved to the US.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| > No one would mock people for geeking out. No one would mock
| people for not being good at sports. No one would mock those
| who struggled at academics. At least not openly.
|
| I always hoped there was a way to avoid US-style bullying. I
| hadn't considered that it might be yet another consequence of
| society existing at too big of a scale (ex: behaviors that are
| accepted or even optimal in a city of 20 million people is
| wildly different than in a social setting where everyone knows
| you, your siblings, your friends, your parents, your boss, your
| coworkers, your pastor, etc.)
|
| Cohorts sound like a good, if imperfect solution, for managing
| this at school.
| galdosdi wrote:
| Ugh, yes, and many Americans naively imagine that all that John
| Hughes movie nonsense is somehow a normal universal part of
| teenage growing up! They'll see their kids start doing it and
| since they did it too they just shrug whist fully about the
| passage of time!
|
| Ignoring that it isn't normal elsewhere and wasn't normal here
| 100 years ago either when children were too busy for that kind
| of baby court intrigue.
|
| In fact, even in the modern US it's not universal. Both I and
| my child have gone to school in different areas and in both
| cases the level of that kind of nonsense was far less in some
| places than others.
|
| Teenagers aren't naturally alienated. You're alienating them
| and that's why they're alienated. By 13 a normal child is ready
| for and craves a lot more responsibility and efficacy than much
| of modern suburban American provides them, and lacking it leads
| to trying to direct the energy into other less constructive
| outlets. Idle hands are the devil's hands.
| PaperOliver wrote:
| This reminds me of my time at school in the UK. At school we
| were divided into "houses" based on where you lived. You had to
| meet in your house twice a day so we all became friends and
| after school we would meet up and play basketball, football or
| skateboard in our rural village (this was around 2008 so smart
| phones were rare). In the winter when we got home we would just
| put our xbox 360 headsets on and play endless games of Gears of
| War or CoD MW2 together. You got as much social credit for
| being good at gaming as at you did for being sporty. Good
| times, and nowadays I still see those friends about once a
| month.
| EGreg wrote:
| Yes, ever since Robert Putnam wrote his book "bowling alone", the
| problem has been growing. And now, Big Tech has exacerbated it.
|
| Would like to get the feedback of people here. Journalists love
| to write about problems, but very few write about solutions.
| (It's just one of those things in the news media, it's like
| writing about good news and helping old ladies across the road.)
|
| I have spent 12 years building an open-source platform that will
| hopefully unite our communities and restore public health. LA
| Weekly recently wrote about it:
|
| https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I want to share what I imagine would be a controversial data
| point but one that I hope has value to this conversation - I
| recently decided to join a church just to reconnect with faith
| that I had pushed aside back in 2016, and with the church, a
| small group. It's working for me. I am making older friends for
| the first time in my life, and despite me generally not aligning
| with people politically, I'm just biting my tongue and not
| letting that define who I will spend time talking to the same way
| I used to.
|
| I'm not advocating religion specifically as a solution for
| others, just saying it works for myself. But my question is - why
| aren't there secular alternatives to religious community where
| people could just go bite their tongues and get along despite
| maybe some of our superficial cultural differences? Why can't
| there be larger weekly meetings for people, with smaller breakout
| groups, and a general sense of bringing people together in a
| community? Why is church the only place I can find that? I don't
| think the "fraternal clubs" are the solution here as they give
| off a certain "old mans club" perception that I can't get past
| (and the lack of windows on their buildings has been noted). But
| maybe somebody here could put one together and see what happens.
| hitsurume wrote:
| Churches don't pay taxes. They collect money from attendee's to
| pay for the real estate they occupy.
|
| Any other gathering / community has to deal with these real
| world problems before they can attract people.
|
| In my college years, there were clubs or fraternities, and they
| could use classrooms or student unions as low cost resources to
| gather in person and foster community. I think that's a barrier
| as an adult.
| AlexCornila wrote:
| And what are the causes for the loss of community ?
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| >I moved to my current neighborhood, Kemp Mill, just north of
| Washington, D.C., 12 years ago
|
| The unspoken truth here is that geographic community requires
| that you can stay in one spot long enough to make the massive
| investment in building or becoming involved in a local community.
|
| Recently I was thinking that I should become involved in local
| initiatives, or perhaps even local government, until I realised
| that as a renter not only would I not be here im a few years
| time, but any actual success I had in improving the local area
| would just mean a likely rent increase as it became more
| desirable and gentrified.
|
| The fact that I'm shocked and feel blessed that I'm living at the
| same address for 4 years in a row now makes it obvious how bad an
| investment trying to becime part of the local community seems to
| someone like me.
|
| In the age of homeownership haves and have-nots, it's natural for
| local community to break down.
| Caius-Cosades wrote:
| What a shocker, community ceases to exist when people living in a
| economic zone have literally nothing in common, other than being
| bipedal humanoids that are enslaved to banks.
| avereveard wrote:
| > the teens that appear least impacted by the mental health
| crisis tend to be religious, conservative, and live in less
| individualistic cultures
|
| Weird how fast the other two factors from the linked essay got
| dropped only to focus on individualism, aint it? Doesnt matter
| tho doesnt seem neither cite sources, methodology and data
| CMCDragonkai wrote:
| I find that community depends alot on culture. My experience of
| Western culture (the culture I grew up in, although not born
| into) is mostly Anglo-spherical, which in the beginning felt like
| this was Western culture, but travelling through Europe I
| realised that there's far more to Western culture than just Anglo
| practices/preferences. I have found the US to be far more diverse
| in its Western cultural roots compared to NZ and Australia. This
| might be due the fact that the US received significant
| immigration from non-Anglo Western cultures early on compared to
| Australia/NZ. Anyway my point is that what constitutes
| "community" and whether you fit into that community depends alot
| on whether you can fit into that culture, and whether that
| culture can accept you. If there's a match, then you end up
| finding community easily. If there's no match, then community can
| be difficult, and this I believe explains why there's so many
| ethnic enclaves in Sydney and I believe elsewhere too. So that's
| why unlike the "melting pot idea", Australia tends to be multi-
| cultural society. This is especially difficult for people who are
| neither there nor here, a sort of inbetween. It takes alot of
| grace and self-reflection to integrate opposing cultural norms
| and bridge communities...
| sph wrote:
| The loss of community, sadly, does not affect only the youth, but
| all people that have grown with the internet. This now includes
| older millennials like me.
|
| ---
|
| I have a silly dream that has been calling me for years now, and
| I don't know where to start [1]. We're all knowledge workers now,
| right? We basically just need electricity, a laptop and an
| internet connection to contribute to society.
|
| Is this not the time to start a movement away from the big
| chaotic cities, back into the calmer and more peaceful rural
| villages? I envision a future where "nature life" does not mean
| hippy living like the 1800s, but we can leverage our modern high
| technology to make natural life even better for us. For example,
| solar panels, low-energy devices and appliances, automated
| greenhouses/hydroponics, etc.
|
| Natural life also means community life. We are tribal animals, we
| enjoy being productive members of groups of < 50 people, where
| everybody knows each other, they have their own "culture" and way
| of doing things in harmony. In 2024, this doesn't have to mean
| warring with each other with rocks. Modern "tribes" are no more
| than communal and self-contained living and social arrangements.
|
| Basically, I have this unbearable call to settle in the middle of
| nowhere, with other people that have the luxury to live free of
| the shackles of modern society, to live like humans are meant to
| live: in the sun, in the grass, in a community but also with
| running water, fibre internet and green energy.
|
| I _know_ some of us are starting to have the same need and we are
| at a point in civilisation where this is possible, so here 's my
| shot in the dark, hoping to talk with and hear from the other
| unreasonable, uncivilised ones that just want to abandon the idea
| that we are meant to live in chaotic cities socialising mostly
| through the hellish babel that is social media.
|
| ---
|
| 1: actually, I know where to start. I am moving back to Italy
| within the next few months, and will seriously look into a place
| to settle and to make this a reality just for myself.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| Or, conversely, there's a reporting and over-reporting bias at
| work today that previously didn't exist due to much smaller
| exposure to notions of perceived and real mental health disorders
| among (admittedly often suggestible) young people. "Community" is
| not only a generic term, it's also a somewhat ambiguously
| dangerous one that captures many very biased notions of a
| supposedly ideal community that have little to do with a healthy
| reality. Many people complain about a lack of community
| specifically because their own preferred idea of how it should be
| isn't what's popular. This hardly makes them reliable sources for
| arguments about its lack.
|
| Few things about today's world of easier communication and more
| easily than ever being able to find others who share your
| interests makes it especially hard for any given person of any
| age to find what they're comfortable calling a community for
| themselves. It's certainly easier than it was decades ago when
| you either had to physically go somewhere or make a serious
| effort of some kind to find wider communities you might like.
| Either that or settle for whatever sort of fit the bill in your
| home town. These things are much easier to avoid today.
| goda90 wrote:
| > Many people complain about a lack of community specifically
| because their own preferred idea of how it should be isn't
| what's popular.
|
| If someone has little positive face to face interaction with
| people outside their immediate family, I don't see how you
| could argue that's not a lack of community.
| tyleo wrote:
| IDK. Do you have data supporting this hypothesis?
| Log_out_ wrote:
| Cooperations eat,prey and consist of isolated individuals
| integrating into a artificiql "subsetsociety" which is why
| individual progressive society is the colon of the filter feeder
| beast.
| silexia wrote:
| The spike in young Asian and white male suicides is the
| discrimination against them. See here where only 15% of them who
| are in the academic top ten percent are admitted vs 57% of black
| students in the top ten percent.
| https://nypost.com/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-acti...
|
| End all racism.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| It's not just youths.....
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