[HN Gopher] Choosing solitude
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Choosing solitude
Author : robg
Score : 61 points
Date : 2024-10-12 13:33 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| ObiWanFrijoles wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Hx4mj
| lynx23 wrote:
| Well, forecasts says 45% of women 20-44 will be single 2030. On
| YouTube, you can find videos with tons of views discussing the
| loneliness epidemic, focusing on men having checked out because
| they are done with overly high expectations and plain entitlement
| from younger women. I am a bit surprised, because I always
| thought the inherent attraction towards your prefered sex would
| always overrule bad experiences in the past, but apparently, I am
| wrong. It almost feels like a coordinated campaign by the incel
| community. Whatever it is, modern politics is dividing the sexes,
| and it is starting to show stastistically.
|
| And what does this article do? Find another excuse for this to be
| OK.
|
| Actually, good question. Can your personal experiences with other
| people be so bad that it is actually beneficial for you in the
| long run to stay in solitude? If so, thats an indicator that some
| people are _really_ horrible.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Do you have any sources?
| lynx23 wrote:
| For what, exactly? The 45%-single forecast is easy to Google.
| And the word "male loneliness epidemic" is also easy to drop
| into a YouTube search.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| > I am a bit surprised, because I always thought the inherent
| attraction towards your prefered sex would always overrule bad
| experiences in the past, but apparently, I am wrong.
|
| Sexuality is complicated. It isn't binary. It exists on a
| spectrum and it would not be surprising for many people that
| the need for sex is less than the need for safety.
|
| And people like me have no attraction even though we may be
| interested in relationships. I see so many bad relationships
| around me that I am just not willing to take the risk.
|
| No one taught me how this was supposed to work. How can I
| mention I'm interested in someone without being fake or creepy?
| lynx23 wrote:
| I am not sure what safety-vs-sex has to do with sexuality
| supposedly not being a binary thing? I deliberately wrote
| "preferred sex" to be as inclusive as I could, but I find
| everything else pretty much uncalled for. For me, for
| instance, sexuality is pretty much the most binary thing I
| can think of. Its OK that you see it differently. But hiding
| advocacy in every statement is really tiring...
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| And it was very condescending as well, like explaining to
| you that the sky is blue while you were debatting of the
| weather implications of the cloud shapes.
| moralestapia wrote:
| It really is a bummer when someone just straight out
| projects all their trauma into a conversation, even when it
| is totally uncalled.
|
| An anecdote:
|
| I am learning French, I want to find places where I can
| listen/speak French all the time. I am also a Catholic and
| go to church every Sunday. My two neurons connected one day
| and I decided it is a great idea to join and hang out at a
| French parish.
|
| I have acquaintances who come from France, they send their
| kids to French speaking schools here, they go to bars where
| French people hang out, etc... So, naturally, I decided to
| just ask them if they happen to know about French catholic
| communities.
|
| Their replies were nothing like "no, I have no idea", or
| "yes, you can try at ..."; but, instead, they immediately
| derailed the conversation into how they don't believe in
| God and started rationalizing their decision to me as if I
| was going to be interested on all that ...
|
| Which leads me to a tangential issue, we have become
| absurdly narcissistic. We think of us as the absolute
| center of our (minuscule) worlds to a pathological level.
| This is a major cause behind the rising problems regarding
| loneliness and relationships in general, I think.
| ravieira wrote:
| What city would that be? Fellow francophone catholic here
| :)
| hybrid_study wrote:
| It's all a matter of degree also
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Can your personal experiences with other people be so bad that
| it is actually beneficial for you in the long run to stay in
| solitude? If so, thats an indicator that some people are really
| horrible."
|
| It might not be dependent only on your own experiences or even
| on specific people. If you have a significant number of friends
| going through rough relationships or divorces, what's the
| upside? Why bother getting married if the perceived risks
| outweigh the perceived benefits? As a society, we overestimate
| the benefits and heavily underestimate the risks. You can even
| see this baked into our laws in the asymmetric
| requirements/counseling to get married vs get divorced.
| lynx23 wrote:
| I am fully on your side. The asymmetry, or shall we call it
| sexism, in how divorces are handled, is definitely a
| contributing factor for younger men to no longer aim for
| marriage. If you look at it rationally, its simply too high a
| risk that you will get treated unfairly down the road in a
| few years.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I agree, but my original asymmetric comment was about how
| it's so easy to get married but is painful to get divorced.
| Making a massive legal decision of getting married doesn't
| require counseling, but most divorces require counseling
| sessions. Most people get lawyers for a divorce, but very
| few people get lawyers (or counseling, or financial
| consults) before marriage. So it seems all the focus is on
| the aftermath with new laws, regulations, or rulings on how
| to handle divorce with no focus on preventative education.
| safety1st wrote:
| Oh yeah, young men have figured out the game and are done
| with marriage. There's only one statistic you need to know
| which is that 8 out of 10 divorces are initiated by the
| woman.
|
| Why the fuck would any man marry ever again once he knows
| that? The odds are against you. Marriage and reproduction
| are such a fundamental thing that this took a couple
| generations to kick in after divorce laws were liberalized,
| but the jig is up now.
| dambi0 wrote:
| In what proportion of those marriages did the partner not
| initiating the divorce want the marriage to continue?
| Because without knowing that, this just tells is who more
| likely to act first.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >this just tells is who more likely to act first
|
| Which is irrelevant as that doesn't seem to be biased
| towards any specific sex.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| As a male near 60, all my relationships and a marriage have
| ended in heartbreak. I've been solo by choice since my mid 40s,
| and have never even thought about getting into another
| relationship. Just not worth it.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Thanks for proofing my point. Also, congrats for actually
| following through with your decision. Thats not a given for
| many, because natural urges typically are so strong, they
| sometimes resemble addicition. In any case, full power to
| you.
| fyolnish wrote:
| A single anecdote proved your point?
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| I'm upvoting this comment because it's a good bit of juicy
| flamebait and I wouldn't like it to go to waste. Not on HN
| anyway. It has all the hallmarks of the genre trope. The
| undertone is that of the cliche: it's women who are suffering,
| and the underlying blame is on men because people in general
| don't care about the percentage of men who are lonely between
| the ages of X1 and X2. My feelings disagree with reality, so
| those high IQ incels have hijacked the narrative and are
| pushing their agenda. I'm chuckling at someone seriously
| suggesting that incels have the pop culture pull to execute on
| this. But I can play along - there are no wrong answers here.
|
| I think there are a handful of reasons, some obvious, some too
| disturbing to discuss on a polite forum - but I'm sure folks
| here will jump to conjecture all the same that align with their
| educated opinions, as to the reasons why this narrative/reality
| is unfolding. This has been dragging on for decades and is only
| now really picking up steam.
|
| In all seriousness, I would look towards in a kind of a
| squinting eyes way towards what Haidt is talking about. Social
| Media is toxic cancer and it has replaced a notion of positive
| communal relationships. I would then follow up with life
| priorities, and somewhere, very far down the line, interview a
| handful of those incels to get a raw (though tunnel-visioned)
| perspective on why they are the way they are. I would bridge
| topics like peoples needs and wants and desires and obsessions
| with wealth and being seen and heard and all these things as a
| kind of maelstrom for the unhappy and sad/solitudal landscape
| we have in front of us. Lives bereft of deeper joys and harmony
| in living.
|
| People of course, both men and women, (and sometimes children
| too!) want it easy. They grow up with celeb magazines of the
| old or the Disney+ of the new and they have it in their mind
| that somewhere down the line, the cosmic balance will right
| itself and they will come out alright. But we all know, seeing
| the wealthy and prosperous on Instagram and TikTok and god
| knows what they'll invent tomorrow, that we couldn't be further
| from that. That the world is wholly, in human terms anyway,
| unfair unjust cruel et cetera. So naturally people gravitate
| towards complete detachment and, I suppose in a good bit of
| cases, resentment that manifests itself in all sorts of ways.
| Some inward, some outward.
|
| But, nevermind that. I'm here for the flamebait, and OP
| delivered.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Some of us saw what our fathers went through and thought
| 'that's not for me'
|
| For me it's more 'been there done that, got the postcard'. In
| the past I have had little influence on my partners decisions
| but when they make bad decisions I'm expected to bail them out
| the consequences. Perhaps there is some selection criteria bias
| - women who date me are more likely to make bad decisions.
| Being old enough to have seen what has happened to the women
| I've dated and the women I've not dated makes me think I've
| dodged enough bullets for one lifetime.
|
| The probability that when meet someone new that I like that
| person more than the people I have already met decreases as I
| meet more people. Since I've previously gotten to know a large
| number of people that probability is now too low for me to
| bother with it.
|
| I covet intelligence and only find intelligent people
| interesting, instead of searching the globe for these people I
| prefer reading old books written by smart people.
| thefaux wrote:
| I sometimes wonder about the negative effects of media
| (particularly literature) on my personal relationships. Minds
| in real life rarely measure up to what I find on the page.
| And yet I know that those words were the product of an
| embodied human and I wonder where they are.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| They exist but are rare - with books you're generally
| looking at the best of all time that have undergone a very
| strong selection criteria bias. I think the shift from an
| intellectual elite culture to a more egalitarian culture
| has reduced the extent that such elites could be found in
| the same place and thus the likelihood of a very smart
| person meeting another very smart person is similarly
| greatly reduced.
| globular-toast wrote:
| > I am a bit surprised, because I always thought the inherent
| attraction towards your prefered sex would always overrule bad
| experiences in the past
|
| Porn exists. If you've had enough with the heartbreak etc then
| this is just an itch that's easy to scratch.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > Well, forecasts says 45% of women 20-44 will be single 2030
|
| From my (cis white mid-30s) male perspective, if this winds up
| being true then it will be because they choose to be single
|
| They will lament that they cannot find any good men, but they
| will be overlooking "good enough" men in thier lives, I
| guarantee
|
| I see this with all of my wife's friends all the time. They are
| all single and they have insane expectations for what they want
| out of a man
|
| It's a mix of funny and sad because they often will tell her
| how she's lucky to have found such a great guy, but I wouldn't
| check even half of their dating requirements
|
| And of course men have high standards too. But despite how
| gender norms have changed, it remains the case that men pursue
| women and women choose who they date. So it's on men to meet
| women's standards but also on women to have realistic,
| reasonable standards. I see women with unreasonable standards
| all the time.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Price is set at the margin with fewer females dating the
| remaining set the price. I think the core part of the problem
| is that women do not seem to know the actual distribution of
| men and what should be the expected likelihood of desired
| attributes. This is most obvious when they sincerely pick
| attributes which they believe to be the median range but are
| in fact only in the >90% of men. I think this is the
| predominant reason why fewer women are at the price setting
| margin.
|
| There is little attention paid to the negative consequences
| of this overestimation - possibly because few people pay
| attention to older women who have paid those consequences and
| older women have no incentive to inform younger women as
| quite often they are still in competition with them. Trying
| to educate young women that they really should realistic
| about their prospects is not going to be popular. In general
| men appear to already have an accurate estimate of the
| distribution of attributes. I think the proportion of the
| difference is demonstrated by the attributes that men and
| women covet and the difficulty in achieving those attributes.
| For example losing weight is far easier than growing taler.
| namaria wrote:
| Women have no obligation to date or pair up. Why is it a
| problem if a lot of women's standards are too high for the
| majority of men and they decide to not date? It's well
| within their right to be single.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| It's well within their right to be single, but don't
| complain if you want to be in a relationship and "can't
| find a good man"
|
| Men aren't obligated to meet some unreasonable set of
| standards either
|
| For this stuff to work, people need to meet each other in
| the middle somewhere
| chongli wrote:
| It's not about obligation, it's about loneliness. That
| was the start of this whole thread. Women with
| unrealistic expectations creating the conditions for
| their own loneliness.
|
| I don't think it's entirely their fault though, as others
| in the thread seem to imply. The rise in expectations
| seems to closely match the rise of mass (and later
| social) media. Simply put, women and girls are exposed to
| all kinds of images and stories about attractive and high
| status men. Along with that we have dating apps that seem
| to reinforce this illusion of abundance. So then we
| should not be surprised at all that it's so common for
| women to have an unrealistic picture of their prospects.
| namaria wrote:
| > Women with unrealistic expectations creating the
| conditions for their own loneliness.
|
| Replace that with 'solitude' and the article pretty much
| explains why that is a non-issue. Women deciding they are
| better off alone is not a problem. Accusing them of being
| unhappy and then purporting to explain why is pretty
| weird.
|
| If there are psychological issues with people being
| lonely, coming to the conclusion that they should date
| more and if they can't it's "women's fault" is kinda
| flabbergasting. The social fabric isn't made of romantic
| pairs, and that's definitely not women's collective
| responsibility.
| chongli wrote:
| I'm not accusing anyone of being unhappy. I am believing
| people when they say they are unhappy.
|
| Furthermore I said specifically that it's not women's
| fault.
| namaria wrote:
| > it's so common for women to have an unrealistic picture
| of their prospects
|
| You kinda did.
|
| > I am believing people when they say they are unhappy.
|
| Who are these unhappy women that need to lower their
| standards to be happy? I see two different problems:
| people seem to be lonely because the social fabric is
| being corroded away; and some people seem to think that
| the issue is somehow related with too many single women.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Just because you're single doesn't mean you're alone.
| Anecdotally, a lot of people are married or in relationships
| and are completely alone, miserable and struggling. Meanwhile
| despite being single, a lot of people are finding meaning
| beyond marriage. From a personal experience, being with the
| wrong partner can be worse than being single.
| abeppu wrote:
| This article is about time spent alone, which isn't
| intrinsically tied to the kinds of relationships one has (i.e.
| can be a thing you do more than a long-term state you're in),
| and which certainly is not the same as not being married or in
| a romantic relationship:
|
| - those not in a romantic relationship can have friends, family
| or community that they spend a lot of time with, or not
|
| - those in a romantic relationship can have time alone (chosen
| or incidental, as in distanced relationships), or not
|
| In fact there's some evidence on single people having more
| friends. Perhaps describing unmarried people as "single" is
| fundamentally misleading, and says more about society
| privileging certain relationships than it does about the person
| being described.
|
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-single/201905...
| keybored wrote:
| First step is to read the article.
|
| Is "solitude" distinguished as a voluntary activity as opposed
| to involuntary aloneness (we could call it invalone)? Check.
| Does the article make clear that you should do this because you
| want to and not be alone if you _feel_ lonely? Check. Does the
| article explain that being "lonely" is really a feeling of
| inadequacy, thus a first-person felt experience and not
| something that someone can just say that someone _is_? Check.
| Does the article make clear that you should be conscious about
| how you spend your time alone (don't be mindless about it)?
| Check.[1] Does the article remember to remind us that so-called
| extroverts are a superior breed compared to those so-called
| introverts? Check.[2] Does the article _mention the "loneliness
| epidemic"_??? CHECK.
|
| Is the article just a promotional piece for a book? Unclear
| (semi-check).
|
| Your inane response makes as much sense as someone protesting
| on an article about people practicing Japanese tea rituals.
| "But we already consume too much coffeine!"
|
| [1] We must use our noggin' here: "solitude" here is not about
| doomscrolling Twitter. It's about quality solitude, like going
| for a quiet walk or maybe meditating, not mindless social media
| consumption or something like that. Can you even _call_ social
| media consumption solitude-time? I wouldn't. You are too likely
| to get caught up reading annoying opinions from other people
| (Hell is other people's opinions).
|
| [2] > She adds that this may be because extroverts are often
| happier and better adjusted overall, and it's likely their
| happiness and well-being -- rather than their extroversion
| itself -- that drives their enjoyment of solitude.
| Andys wrote:
| Or, to flip it, what is your reason for being biased against
| solitude?
|
| Isn't the pressure to be in a relationship just a form of
| "expectation" and/or "entitlement"?
| wklm wrote:
| I'm wondering if it works the same way if the solitude is
| choosing you.
| tayo42 wrote:
| The first line under the article headline says solitude isn't
| the same as loneliness.
| moralestapia wrote:
| And I assume you understand that ... ?
|
| Why are you replying to GP's comment that is not talking
| about loneliness but solitude?
| Zooti wrote:
| What exactly is it meant by Solitude choosing you? To me
| that sounds like involuntary time spent alone, solitude
| chasing you, which could also be understood as loneliness.
| moralestapia wrote:
| You are sent to Antarctica for 3 months.
|
| You don't feel lonely but the contrary, you are quite
| excited.
|
| You come back and write a blog post titled "I found my
| true self during an unexpected trip in solitude" or
| something.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Weird that this good curiosity got downvoted... for some reason
| when you say "I wonder" on HN it tends to be taken as if you're
| being sarcastic or something the like.
| jmbwell wrote:
| Alone time I find quite valuable.
|
| Every now and then I find myself with a day or two by myself,
| having no expectations, nobody to have to coordinate with,
| nowhere to be at a particular time. It's incredibly resetting.
|
| I know it's valuable because when I can pull it off, I feel like
| I'm stealing something.
| apwell23 wrote:
| Joys of being a non parent. I miss those 'open days' :(
| plasma_beam wrote:
| Au contraire, I get Columbus day off work. None of my kids
| are off school :) I've been looking forward to this coming
| Monday for months. Those brief periods of solitude must be
| taken advantage of with kids.
| jmbwell wrote:
| Being a parent is why I value them
| lostemptations5 wrote:
| You're right though -- all the parents I know desperately
| want alone time.
| kaffekaka wrote:
| Can't speak for anyone else of course, but before kids a day
| with no obligations was mostly just a nice day. With kids it
| is so much more significant.
|
| My colleagues that don't have kids, they waste their time.
| Not by doing nothing - that would be awesome - but by
| creating problems for themselves that end up taking their
| spare time. It is like they believe they will always have
| empty days to spare.
| synthoidzeta wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Hx4mj
| randcraw wrote:
| Interesting theory. The notion that some expressions of
| personality are obstructed by social 'noise' and thus benefit
| from solitude makes a lot of sense. By their reckoning, solitude
| is positive, voluntary and purposeful, the means to a desired
| end. In contrast, loneliness is negative, involuntary, a response
| to the loss of several sources of social support.
|
| The OP (and others) suggest solitude's desiderata to be: 1)
| pursuit of a personal passion, and 2) disinterest in affirmation
| (or criticism) from others, 3) the belief that this journey will
| be preferable when taken alone.
|
| Do the terms introvert and extrovert capture such personality
| quirks usefully? And are solitude and loneliness synonymous? I've
| long thought not.
|
| As I understand the terms (informally), introverts are drained of
| energy when in a group while extroverts gain energy. But by that
| definition, loneliness should arise only when extroverts go it
| alone. Introverts should be immune. But not so, so there must be
| more to the story.
|
| The best work I've read on the complexities of introversion and
| the merits of solitude is Susan Cain's marvelous book, "Quiet".
| As I recall, it confirms the OP's thesis.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| For some reason, after being own my own for a few days, I start
| to feel sorry for myself, feel nostalgic and don't take very well
| care of self anymore. So I'm super lucky, privileged for not
| being alone.
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