The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

https://www.city-journal.org/decline-of-family-loneliness-epidemic

by paulpauper • 7 years ago

1329 1095 7 years ago

I felt loneliness acutely this week. I live alone, spend most evenings alone, and on top, work's coding and research has been slow for 2 weeks. Collaborators are at conferences and on vacation, so I had much less work and much less face-to-face contact than usual. Given that I code on my own, distribute analyses via email, and occasionally meet if people are around, I barely talked to people some days this week.

Going home feels so meh... I can watch more Sherlock Holmes videos (Jeremy Brett!), rewatch Parks and Rec or The Office, or work on music or art, but there is no one to share with, no one to quip with, no one to engage with on my passions. I just kinda laze about without more contact and stimulus.

And I do have a better social circle now than I have since I left home at age 18...minus the daily familial, non-work interaction. I can't wait to hit the phase of life with a partner and/or family living with me.

If anyone in Providence, RI wants to hang, let me know!

ratsimihah6• 7 years ago

Try yoga at a small studio, communities are often great :>

mythrwy3• 7 years ago

That's not everyone's "fit in" group though.

It's like saying attend local evangelical church. The people you meet will be potential friends for some types of people. For other types, not so much.

astura4• 7 years ago

My anecdote: I went to yoga the same night at the same small studio for years. Mostly the same people showed up every week but I didn't find it to be an atmosphere good for socialization at all. I don't know at what point in a yoga class you'd have time for conversation.

armenarmen2• 7 years ago

A good longer play to bust out of that is to start working out of an independent cafe. Find one with a lower rate of laptop jockeys but that still has a couple.

Bounce around until you find one that feels right: a good amount of regulars, people doodling, and bullshitting with baristas.

Show up a couple times a week, drop into the odd conversation. And be ready to say “anyone want to grab a beer” come quitting time.

This is just about the fastest (week to a month) way to find yourself a new in person social circle.

brailsafe3• 7 years ago

It's a good idea, but I don't don't know about the fastest. I'd recommend your idea and a series of neutral/specific hobbies/sports that give you a wider breadth

mehrdadn• 7 years ago

Do you mean like going to lots of cafes literally full-time (~8 hours a day) or something? Otherwise how do you possibly bounce around lots of cafes and figure out who the regulars are within just a week?

JohnBooty3• 7 years ago

This is great advice! (I also agree with OP's sad lack of connection in America. It is there but it is work to find it sometimes)

Also great:

Volunteering. You're guaranteed to meet some good people because these are other people that are interested in (1) working together (2) helping people (3) donating their time. The very worst-case scenario is that you don't make friends, but have helped somebody in need. =)

Sports. Grown-up recreational sports are nothing like the (often hostile) world of sports you might remember as a kid. Generally very supportive places. Co-ed leagues tend to be more easygoing. If you're a beginner, pay for some lessons. For example... lots of tennis coaches out there. If you are healthy enough to move around you can learn to play a pretty decent game of tennis in not much time and with less $$$ than you'd spend on a new Xbox. Obvious direct and indirect benefits as well.

scott_s3• 7 years ago

When I wasn't working in the office, I did my work in coffee shops during grad school. I still try not to work at home now, and walk to a local coffee shop if I need to work on a weekend. Working in a public place made grad school more tolerable. Even though I was doing my work, I felt like part of my community and I was able to interact with other people. I even did make some friends doing it.

It sounded to me like WhompingWindows is a grad student, so I heartily endorse they try this approach. Just be in public spaces more. It helps.

_trampeltier• 7 years ago

I'm also single (again), almost 40, do sport twice a week (with people) and usually go outonce a week with somebody. I because I wanna see other people than just the guys on work an friends, I use for example public transportation for going to work.

hanklazard• 7 years ago

Maybe a local book or movie club? I find these are a great way to meet some new people as an adult.

realPubkey2• 7 years ago

I had the same situation. A non sustainable life. With her all changed. I go to the gym so she does not have a skinny boyfriend. When I find something good at netflix I wait until she is home and we can watch it together. When I find a nice place, I remmember it so I can show her the nice bench under that tree in my hometown.

I always have flashback about the time I moved to another city without family bondings. Then I smiley because it's over.

ratsimihah6• 7 years ago

That sounds great! Just be careful not too become too dependent on someone else.

bdamm2• 7 years ago

Then when she develops more serious health or mental problems, and you have nobody to help look after your children, relationship therapy has burned through a couple therapists, and you're telling each other how lonely you each are but avoid real conversations because they inevitably lead to more loneliness, then you will again have a new perspective. Good luck.

futureastronaut2• 7 years ago

I go to the gym so she does not have a skinny boyfriend.

PSA, there's nothing wrong with being skinny, and some people prefer a skinny partner.

monetus• 7 years ago

I don't know what the music scene is like in your area, but there is a vast plethora of people who want to compose/improvise with others. You can turn your coding/art-fu into a social asset if you see how to use it.

libcinder, openframeworks, pure data, faust, three.js, tone.js, there are a multitude of things regular musicians could use but don't know about.

criddell3• 7 years ago

Also check out processing.org.

jpm_sd• 7 years ago

Join something! A band, a chamber group, an orchestra? An artists' collective with shared studio space?

theonlyklas3• 7 years ago

Going home feels so meh... I can go work through more Sherlock Holmes videos or Netflix series or work on music or art, but there is no one to share with, no one to talk to throughout the day, no one to engage with on my passions. I just kinda laze about without more contact.

Invite someone over!

If anyone in Providence, RI wants to hang, let me know!

I actually live in Cranston, lol. You like biking? Cryptocurrency? Music production?

WhompingWindows2• 7 years ago

Hecks yeah! I bike around East Bay Path, Blackstone River Path, I also love to ride around the Boulevard on the East Side.

What kind of music are you into? I play piano, a buddy of mine is into guitar and Linnstrument. We may be having a board game night tonight actually, been looking forward to it, LMK if you want to stop by.

celestialcheese• 7 years ago

I'm a lot like you - work from home, spend most of my time interacting with people through non-physical mediums, get very lonely often.

I've found biking to be an exceptional way to meet new people and break out of the lonliness funk I fell into after moving to a new city where I knew no one. Most shops organize group rides at all skill levels, and most cities have bike groups. It's a wildly social sport, and most rides end at cafes or breweries. It gets me out of the house and there's an instant camaraderie that comes with sweating with a group of people for a couple hours on a long ride.

learned2code• 7 years ago

I can relate to every sentence you wrote, minus certain details.

I like and enjoy my coworkers but our respective interests are too dissimilar. The interactions at work never go deeper than the current objective or niceties. This is completely fine (for now) but in the future I would love to be on a true team.

Going home is indeed meh. As much as it feels nice to unwind, I'd much rather unwind with my gang.

I used to be on a sports team and lived morning, day, and night with my boys. Even though life was chaotic, it was incredible to have a gang. One thing I know for certain is that I could do more to gain that back. Short-term I plan on (1) joining an adult sports league and (2) hit up the super interesting people I've met since moving.

But long-term I believe lifestyle redesign is the only solution to our highly atomized world. I look to the past for ideas.

souprock8• 7 years ago

There are different kinds of loneliness. I suppose the worst is when all apply.

You lack family, you have coworkers, you have random humans in the area, you didn't mention any sort of buddy. So have 2 or 3 out of those 4.

I'm bummed about spending the last quarter century without a buddy. Family and coworkers and random humans do not substitute. Maybe I have no time for it, but I also think it takes a certain kind of environment. The shared environment of an Internet-free childhood neighborhood and school created the right conditions.

Aaronstotle• 7 years ago

Attend some meetups in your area/start going to the gym regularly if you aren't already, I find the gym is a good way to meet people.

hughes• 7 years ago

Are they? I usually feel like the last thing I'd ever do at a gym is talk to someone, and someone talking to me would be really surprising...

pragmatic• 7 years ago

Yes and no.

When I worked out at 8 am, there were a lot of retired and semi retired people that LOVED to chat.

When I switched to lunch time, hardly any of that, people were in a rush to get in and out.

At 5:30AM I met a lot of regulars and also meet a lot of my wife's gym friends as she had been going at that time for years. But I couldn't do the 5:30am thing, really messed with my sleep. Too worried about getting to sleep early enough.

dllthomas3• 7 years ago

I can't wait to hit the phase of life with a partner and/or family living with me.

You're in a phase of life where you could live with others, although there's no guarantee of there actually being a good opportunity near by.

I spent a chunk of my 20s living in a student housing cooperative in Ann Arbor, MI, and for the most part it was a great experience. It was big enough, and enough of the population was grad students, that it was easy to be left alone when that's what you wanted. But it was also plenty easy to find someone up for a game of chess or whatnot at pretty much any time of day.

It was also inexpensive, I still had some space of my own, and while some work was owed to keep the house running it was in practice substantially less than I spend on my own apartment with typically better results.

claytonjy• 7 years ago

As someone in the same area, I'm curious if you did this post-grad-school? I can't imagine the co-ops in e.g. Kerrytown are very welcoming of non-students, but I don't know.

robear• 7 years ago

There are some good ideas in this thread. I spent a lot of lonely time in my 20s living alone and working from home. One thing is to live in a shared house. That is a way to have people to live with. It worked for me to not be as lonely at times in my adulthood.

The other thing is to get involved with social physical activity, clubs, or volunteering. I played hockey and went to a group fitness gym. I made long term friends there. I am into ham radio and the club where I live is pretty good. I used to volunteer at a kids camp and that was great for making friends with the staff members and doing social things outside of camp.

To me, find where your interests align with social/community activity. Currently, I am trying to get the ham radio club to be more out in the community. We are doing radio communications for a running race this weekend. It is exciting.

jansho2• 7 years ago

Hmm you might be readier to start that partner/ family phase than you think ;)

xenospn2• 7 years ago

Adopt a dog. Go to the park twice a day. You’ll feel amazing.

Angostura• 7 years ago

Not a great idea if you are out at work all day.

astura4• 7 years ago

Dogs don't fit in with every lifestyle.

canadapups• 7 years ago

I used to live in an area with lots of apartment buildings and had to babysit a friends dog for a couple of weeks. I met a couple of people when I took the dog out at 6:30am because they were doing the same thing. Ran into the same people every day. Plus you always let the dogs visit (sniff each other) so starting a conversation is almost automatic.

Now I have my own dogs. Easy to meet people if you go to obedience, agility, or other dog classes.

With a dog you get all of the above, plus the affection from the dog, plus the additional exercise.

magduf6• 7 years ago

Dogs are a pain in the ass. They smell bad, and make your home smell bad. They require constant attention. Leaving them at home, locked up, all day long while you're at work working long hours is cruel. Your apartment/condo will require you to pay a big fee to get their poop DNA tested, and when you don't pick up their poop, you'll be slapped with a huge fine. Honestly, it's easier having a child: at least children can go to the bathroom by themselves after a few years, and eventually can feed themselves too.

dashundchen• 7 years ago

Do you know how to ride a bike? It's summer and I am sure there are a ton of casual (i.e. non-racing/fitness groups) bike groups that ride around regularly.

Unlike sports or gyms there's a lot more hanging around and chatting, plus you can end up with new destinations. Meanwhile the exercise gives you endorphins.

In my similar sized city there's enough cyclists that there are many different "scenes" depending on what you are looking for, but many overlap so that you'll almost always have a familiar face at one.

Riding a bike for transportation also lets you feel a little more human getting around your city. You may run into people you know.

tty2300• 7 years ago

This is some good advice. Riding a bike gives you a much better sense of community because you see the people and recognise they are the same people you see all the time rather than just another generic car you will never recognise again.

Chirael2• 7 years ago

I’m in Providence but have no idea how to send a DM on HN; if you can see the email on my profile feel free to send something

dang10• 7 years ago

HN doesn't have DMs, so no one has an idea how to send them. Thanks for watching out for a fellow user.

kaybe• 7 years ago

You need to put contact information into the 'about' text field of your user account if you want to be contacted, the account email address is hidden.

bitexploder3• 7 years ago

I recommend social hobbies. Mine are BJJ and Magic the Gathering. BJJ is great because it can be highly technical but you will meet people way outside of nerd circles. My kids do it and love it as well. It is a hard thing, too, so it keeps the ego in check. You have no choice but to be extremely, intimately close with other humans. The friends I am making are great. There are plenty of other hobbies, but start there.

Edit: (start by investigating social hobbies)

clarry• 7 years ago

Don't we all know what BJJ is.

scott_s3• 7 years ago

Seconded. I've been training Brazilian jiu jitsu for 15 years. For most of that time, friends from jiu jitsu has been half of my social life. When I graduated and moved to a new area by myself for a job, jiu jitsu is how I met people.

ManuelKiessling• 7 years ago

Human nature is really weird. I can totally relate to everything you've written, and at the same time, I, as a father and husband, would love to experience a week like that really badly every now and then.

shrimp_emoji• 7 years ago

It shows that what people think they want is a silly, shifting goalpost and that "happiness" is an untenable, fictional concept the mind uses to distract itself on its meaningless quest to stay alive.

Insofar as it's possible, not taking your feelings or life seriously is the best tactic I've come to use. But I'm relatively young, so I might be wrong.

And it's pretty vacuous: so, what, don't act on chasing happiness? Feel lonely but act like it doesn't matter and do nothing? Try to exist in a psychologically-inert routine until you die? Yes. xDD Or, you know, do small things to improve things, but don't try too hard because it doesn't seem worth it.

(My exception to this would be superego, rather than id, shit like revolutionary action which has the potential to take you and everybody else into new maxima of well-being IN WHICH you otherwise try to exist in psychologically-inert routines until death -- because that's at least more meaningful than neurotically ping-ponging around for personal maxima of well-being. More return on stress investment.)

panzagl• 7 years ago

Amen. I feel so bad about how much I look forward to the occasional travel I do for work...

uonyx• 7 years ago

Strike a deal with your other. We both take solo 1 week trips each year.

rb8083• 7 years ago

I think its really important to have your own time in a family. I think its a bit weird to go on holiday by yourself but that is maybe the best way. My wife goes home with the children for a while in the Summer and I'm left by myself and its really great - even when you just learn that you miss them.

Japhy_Ryder• 7 years ago

Hey man. I'm in Westerly! Occasionally make it into the city. And I'm very much into cycling. Always down to get beers, ride, check out live music, etc.

Eruditorum• 7 years ago

Boston, MA. Send me an email.

tasty_freeze2• 7 years ago

You make music? Go to meetup.com or craigslist to find other musicians with similar skill levels and ambitions. I'm in my mid 50s and my kids are off at college and I finally have free time, and no friends.

A couple years ago I bought a used bass and amp (again, craigslist) for cheap, dusted off my old skills, then found some other people on meetup.com who want to play music socially for fun and improvement, but don't have the ambition to actually be in a performing group. It is nice to socialize for couple hours every couple of weeks with new people on a non-programming activity. One of the guys is especially compatible with me, and we've met up a couple of times outside of the band.

jamesmp982• 7 years ago

Anecdotal, of course, but I've found the meetup scene to be terrible in a some places. Most I've seen are inactive, aimed at a specific demographic, or are fronts for scams / MLM's.

cwarrior• 7 years ago

Why don't you make an effort to meet new people and expand your social circle?

dheera• 7 years ago

but there is no one to share with

The flip side of this is that when you do actively seek out opportunities to share, you can instantly meet a lot of people in one go if you're the one sharing, instead of a spectator.

It does take effort, but opportunities are out there. I went to a "bring your own art" event in SF a couple weeks ago that was a public event on Facebook. I took a photography work I had made. I took a robot I had built to Maker Faire. For tech projects, email event organizers, meetup organizers and ask if you can present at their next event. For art projects consider sharing a unique or interesting story or journey, not just a single piece of art. If you actually do make something cool or you have a good story, you'll be surprised how easy it is to get a few yeses.

When you are the creator/presenter/speaker, you meet people quickly because it's not awkward for others to approach you and ask questions. It's a lot harder to meet people as a mere participant.

Seeking out events you can present or exhibit at is not that easy for everyone. But since you're in Providence, you should be able to find plenty of events an hour away in Boston.

Also, if you have a hard time finding events but you have a critical mass of a few friends in the area, consider hosting an event. It can be as simple as a potluck, which means you basically have to do no work except maybe make 1 dish yourself and clean up afterwards. Let your friends know it's okay to bring +1 or +2. Many times they will. You'll meet a lot of new people that way too.

raz32dust• 7 years ago

Makes me wonder - is the abundance of choice that makes us lonely? True, deep relationships take time. Your social circle is larger, but you haven't gotten the chance to develop any deep bond because neither you nor they have enough time for each other - because there's so much else to do.

lazyjones• 7 years ago

Makes me wonder - is the abundance of choice that makes us lonely?

While this would explain loneliness in cities, I doubt it. I believe it's unrealistic expectations from TV, social media, newspapers, both positive and negative, about relationships and people in general. Just like pornographic movies affect one's love life, seeing unrealistic depictions of social life destroy natural curiosity about other people, lead to doubts and suspicions etc. ... The availability of the option to avoid other people does its part.

marviel• 7 years ago

I know this is a bit out of the blue; but going to improv classes, and book clubs, were really good ways to get out and meet interesting people. I wish you the best of luck in your socialization endeavors.

ptaffs• 7 years ago

A friend of a friend told me that people, such as diplomat families who have to quickly settle but often relocate, will deliberately but routinely eat at the same restaurant, say, every Thursday evening. After a couple of weeks they'll find staff or other regular diners will engage with them and build relationships.

madengr• 7 years ago

In some countries, that is a good way to get killed.

pthomas5512• 7 years ago

It's a bit easier as an expat because there are lots of other expats also looking to meet people. Very freshman year of college type vibe in my experience. Your problem becomes less making friends, and instead ensuring you make the right friends. There are a lot of dodgy characters in expat communities.

9HZZRfNlpR• 7 years ago

I felt very similar but at the age of 20 I shut myself indoors and it's been like that ever since. Everyone has long forgot about me. I turned 31 an hour ago.

I think I just got used to it. I was lucky that I inherented a small flat, although in bad condition and location. I score some freelance gigs time to time to keep myself alive. I have tried online communities or friends so to speak but I don't really get it how it's done. I didn't have a problem in real life.

I read HN always every night before I fall asleep. In 2008 or so my show HN made it to first page. I was very happy that say. Genuine happiness. I might have lacked being a human now.

marshray• 7 years ago

You don't sound too thrilled about the way things are going. You can change it if you want.

Volunteering to help with for some in-person activity can provide that essential social connection.

Also, consider talking to a professional. They evaluate situations like the one you describe all the time.

mpfundstein• 7 years ago

Happy birthday mate

somatic3• 7 years ago

You have cash, good health, and free time.

Take up an “extreme” sport. Skiing, SCUBA diving, mountaineering, surfing, windsurfing, paragliding. Become a de facto member of your chosen activity’s local scene.

Or just find a girl, ???, propagate your bloodline into the future.

Like, whatever, man. It’s over when they’re packing the dirt in your grave.

loblollyboy• 7 years ago

Happy bday man. Recently turned 30 myself. Living w some guys i used to work w right now and its really turned my life around - we need people

nf05papsjfVbc• 7 years ago

Happy Birthday!

Also, if I may be so presumptuous as to offer a suggestion: try contacting someone from earlier in your life. Many times, people are lost in their own world, their worries and problems and life just happens as it always does. However, they are very likely to be happy to suddenly hear from an old friend. I have been on both sides of this and it was ultimately a good experience. In one case, I also happened to have contacted someone at an opportune moment and saved them from self harm.

Again, a very happy birthday to you and I hope that, this year, you find joy in life.

nkg• 7 years ago

Happy Birthday, friend!

mlurp• 7 years ago

Hey, I'm in prov too. I'm pretty busy but hit me up if you're interested in hanging out sometime.

dang10• 7 years ago

The email field in your profile isn't visible to other HN users, only to the site admins. If you want to be contactable, you'll need to include contact details in the About field.

cwp5• 7 years ago

I had a bout of this about 20 years ago, so I made a rule for myself: I wasn't allowed to decline an invitation. If somebody proposed doing something together and I was able, I had to do it. That made a huge difference in my life. I did a lot of things that were... unexpected. (A few examples: I joined an ultimate frisbee league. I went skydiving. I joined a church group. I went to a strip club. I attended a wedding.) It wasn't all fun or even pleasant, but I wasn't lonely anymore.

The internet was just getting started then, so that experiment might work out differently now, but it's worth considering how much of our modern isolation is just a matter of choices.

drdeadringer• 7 years ago

Do you still follow this "never no" rule, or did you come to a point or change in your life to ease up or ease off?

sk0g2• 7 years ago

As much as I'd like to follow the rule, I think I have an actual, varied social life now, and this would be... Risky.

I've been invited to a violent sounding orgy of the many male, one female kind (always been a dream of the girl's, but I do have someone I'm seeing). In the last few months, also been invited to an open Satanic book reading sessions. Beginner friendly, I had been told.

maynman• 7 years ago

That sounds like a great plot for a movie.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1068680/

sdrn• 7 years ago

"Smoke crack with me bro"

checkyoursudo• 7 years ago

I have a similar rule with my wife, that she doesn't know about.

If she wants to do something with me, then I say yes, as long as I don't have a prior commitment, or, you know, am not sick or physically unable. I started this rule with her from the moment we met. I think it is part of why we stayed together all these years, and why we worked out well when so many of my previous relationships didn't.

I love a lot of solitary activities, like reading, writing, single-player games, drawing and painting, learning new things, working on projects that she isn't interested in, etc. Without my self-imposed rule, I would likely decline to do a lot of other activities, especially outside my own interests.

But if she wants to do something or go somewhere or just sit and talk, then I say yes.

My kids are young enough that I don't quite have the same rule with them, and partly because they just want me to do stuff with them and be with them literally all the time, so we are still in boundary-setting phase, but I assume that I will eventually adopt the "as you wish" rule with them as well.

bscphil2• 7 years ago

I had a bout of this about 20 years ago, so I made a rule for myself: I wasn't allowed to decline an invitation.

That approach works great as long as you are currently getting invited to things. If it's been a year since the last time you were invited to anything, that's not going to solve your loneliness problem.

psychomugs• 7 years ago

This guy took that idea to the extreme: built an app to randomly join random Facebook events and forced himself to go wherever it took him.

https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/06/08/53...

rock_hard• 7 years ago

I started something similar about 12 years ago...inspired by the movie “Yes man” I started saying yes to every opportunity that I came across.

Wanna have lunch together? Yes!

Wanna go out with us tonight? Yes!

Wanna help me move? Yes!

It really got me out of my shell and made me realize that the reason I was alone is because I was an asshole. People had been trying to include me all my life, but I had always declined :(

I am much better these days :)

tartinipaolo• 7 years ago

Wow, thank you for your advise! This might be interesting to try...

dorchadas• 7 years ago

I've made the exact same rule, as well. I've spent more money because of it, but my life has been much better. Sometimes, a trade-off is necessary. It also makes life much more interesting, and it's really made me grow as a person.

brailsafe3• 7 years ago

Replied to a similar sentiment on reddit yesterday. Might be worth a read.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/bxat83/people_wh...

turrican• 7 years ago

I had a career change away from tech about two years ago, which happens to be the same time I moved to Providence! If you want to grab a drink sometime in the next couple days and chat about parks and rec, let me know!

kenneth3• 7 years ago

Here's an idea: stay at a hostel. It's the easiest time you'll have making new friends. They won't last long and they will be young and poor but they'll be very friendly almost immediately. It won't give you true fulfilment but it'll make you not feel lonely for a while.

kenneth3• 7 years ago

Another idea: be an expat. Move to a foreign country that speaks a different language and take language classes. First, it'll be a big valuable change, and it'll provide plenty of adventure, and expats are quick to make new friends given the shared isolation. I would recommend China or Taiwan.

Fjolsvith4• 7 years ago

Roatan, Honduras. With daily cruise ships in port, there's a steady influx of English speakers. Its cheap to live there, too.

ca98am79• 7 years ago

Some other things you can do (which worked for me during a time of loneliness) are:

  * be resourceful. For example, reach out to old co-workers or people you enjoyed being with and ask them to lunch or coffee
  * go to coffee shops just to be around people
  * go out to a movie
  * use a dating site or app, if for nothing else but to meet and talk with another person

jtms• 7 years ago

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a fantastic way to make a ton of friends and feel like you are part of something bigger than yourself. It’s a very “intimate” sport to begin with so forming close relationships is quite natural. The only negative is that serious injuries can and do happen that can take you out of the game for long periods of time (or permanently)

on_and_off• 7 years ago

Wow, this post made me feel very lonely !

I am in relatively similar situation : I have moved from Europe to SF.

I probably work too much and my main hobbies are movies, video games, books, etc .. all pretty lonely occupations.

Most of the time I don't really mind being alone, not at all, but sometimes it is a painful feeling.

I also have a pretty established routine : -working a lot -working out -watching some movies/playing -sleep

rinse and repeat.

I know I should probably volunteer to some associations doing good.

I do have a girlfriend .. but we are in a long distance relationship, so we can't always be there for each other.

Open to tips in orer to meet new people in San Francisco !

aksh1t• 7 years ago

Check out https://www.meetup.com/. There are usually a lot of activities happening there where you can meet new people. I used to go to some photography meetups in south bay and tech meetups too, it was a nice low pressure way to meet new people.

wolco3• 7 years ago

As crazy as this sounds smoking weed can help if you are feeling lonely. It will help you disconnect from outside stimulus but too much and you'll find social interactions not as desirable as they are now.

slothtrop2• 7 years ago

It also makes you content with boredom. I'm not sure that's a proper solution, as in the long-term breeds a dependency.

utksh• 7 years ago

We are the most connected society in the history but still the most depressed and loneliest one. We have lost the significance of physical presence of someone. Over the years we have evolved to live in tribes, that is why depression was quite rare in Joint families.

kurjam• 7 years ago

Hey, you got a bunch of great people giving you suggestions for what to do. Just wanted to add - hang in there. I'm sure you'll get to a place in your life where you'll feel more connected with someone/less lonely in general.

Best of luck!

ekanes• 7 years ago

Consider adding a /social/ hobby. The ones I've found have very friendly people are improv and jiu jitsu.

Avshalom• 7 years ago

Yup, sounds about right, decry the death of the multi generational home then decry boomerang kids then decry people living alone.

devoply4• 7 years ago

Yeah the people pushing all these different ideologies basically engineered a culture to be like this. With various ideologies replacing religion (which are themselves really modern religions) that don't really work out the implications of their ideas in any sort of consistent system... instead down with this and down with that, and sure individually those things might be bad but they form some sort of coherent system and when you get rid of a part of that system the whole thing falls apart.

JackFr• 7 years ago

They?

tomrod3• 7 years ago

My experience was that established religions got hungry for tithing and thus optimized their messages with new ideas that ignore tolerance and abuse pluralism. Former adherents are more than excused to dissociate with groups that lack transparency, foster cultures of abuse, or otherwise require rigid in-/out-group splits.

The new world views you refer to that former religious adherents adopt aren't usually terribly radical, and it's a thought-terminating pitfall to call them religions or even spirituality. Much improvement over the new cults of the 1970s.

inscionent5• 7 years ago

Humans, not thinking abut the ramifications of their actions since, well, forever. Could these changes and fractures be compared to past religious reformation movements? Reformers always like denouncing things.

Luckily for future generations humans are fairly adaptable and I'm sure the rich will be just fine.

notfromhere2• 7 years ago

Multigenerational housing is all fun and games until you're somehow nonconforming enough for it to be palpable. I feel like people aching for multigenerational housing really don't know the downsides of those arrangements.

codingslave3• 7 years ago

I would argue that the decline of the family is directly linked to feminism, or better stated, the liberation of women from the home and from conservative sexual values. The two forces behind that are birth control and women entering the work force. These two are magnified by online dating and social media. I am not saying at all that these are bad things, just that we have yet to see the true effects of feminism on society. Again, I am not asserting that feminism is a bad thing, just that when modes and patterns of societal interaction break down after hundreds of years (or more) of existence, we should take a step back and think about what is really happening.

It's too early to tell how this will play out, but we as a society have underestimated the effects and consequences of rapid change. It may be another one hundred years before we can look back and understand what we are currently going through.

throwayEngineer3• 7 years ago

By the way, this might seem revolutionary, but there are plenty of societies ( in history) that didn't have rule by Men and an awakening of feminism.

The studies I'm familiar with didn't mention loneliness, but rather the social responsibility.

russian_bot• 7 years ago

please name a few - i am curious to read about these

codingslave3• 7 years ago

I have heard this argument before, and think it is extremely overstated. Our current version of feminism has expanded across almost all of the west. Technologies like birth control and economies/technologies that allow for women to be in the workforce at mass scale were simply impossible in the past. It's really an apples to oranges comparison, and is an intellectually dishonest one at that.

rjkennedy98• 7 years ago

Can you please provide examples. Birth control has only been available for a short period of history, so its not obvious to most of us what societies you are talking about and how their liberation of women actually affected the society.

0xDEFC0DE• 7 years ago

Notable mention for flat/declining wages since the average cost of raising kids probably doesn't get cheaper as time goes on.

Imaging paying your you and your spouse's student loans, then having two kids and paying their student loans or putting that debt on their shoulders. Much easier before tuition skyrocketed.

Healthcare prices are a consideration too.

youeseh• 7 years ago

Better technology and a doubling of the potential workforce probably had more to do with stagnating wages than anything else.

bazooka_penguin3• 7 years ago

Real wages, wages adjusted for inflation, have been flat. So people arent exactly getting poorer (on average) in the US. You're right to point some stuff out, medical care and housing have inflated at disproportionately high rates. Higher education as well, but that's elective. Problem is even in countries, like several European states, that offer state incentives or support or regulation to take the load off parents, birthrates are still low among the educated and well to do natives. In fact I'm pretty sure that's a general trend across the world, the poor and less educated are typically more likely to have kids than people who should be financial more capable of supporting kid, at least up to a certain level.

So economics is probably a weak explanation. Personal freedoms, especially for women, is probably the root cause of low birthrates.

parrellel2• 7 years ago

Not feminism, the establishment of the discrete nuclear family as a social and labor unit divorced from kinship groups. When you've already pared down the web of fundamental relations to 2-5 person cells, your already only a step away from complete individual social collapse.

That doesn't even touch on the breakdown of community organizations (churches, fraternal orders, what have you).

klipt2• 7 years ago

Arguably this all comes down to economics/capitalism.

Unpaid favors to family aren't measured in GDP and can't be taxed. Breaking down extended family into individual workers is good for the economy. Having stay-at-home moms work while sending their kids to group childcare is also more economically efficient.

What's good for the economy may not be good for individual humans though. We aren't homo economicus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus

tathougies7• 7 years ago

the establishment of the discrete nuclear family as a social and labor unit divorced from kinship groups.

Where has the nuclear family ever been divorced from kinship groups. A nuclear family is by definition part of an extended network, because mom and dad are both parents of one nuclear family as well as children of two others. Without a strong nuclear family there is no kinship, and all nuclear families imply extended kin groups, by definition. I will never understand where this nonsense dichotomy of nuclear family v 'kin' has come from.

gcheong3• 7 years ago

I would surmise that we can solve the loneliness problem without going back to having larger families which would only place more stress on the environment hastening our eventual extinction. The crux of the matter is having opportunities for meaningful social interactions daily. While this may have been provided by family in the past, there is no reason this has to be so as far as I can tell. If we can't solve the problem I would still rather have people able to choose their own paths in the world rather than have some arbitrary and oppressive system imposed upon them.

rayiner5• 7 years ago

Could you be reversing the roles? It could just as well be the case that it's the "liberation of men from the home and from conservative sexual values" that is the explanation. There's not a lot of real data on what people actually want in terms of relationships. But some attitudes have been quite stable over the last 50 years. For example, women's ideal number of kids has been stable at about 2.5 since the 1970s: https://ifstudies.org/blog/how-many-kids-do-women-want. Anecdotally, it seems like it's usually men that are less interested in settling down, not women.

kaitai12• 7 years ago

This is a really good point, and may also tie back to the role of American capitalism (to differentiate how it's done here from pure capitalism as an economic system). The "decline of the family" in the US has a lot to do with people not getting married or delaying marriage, and a lot of that has to do with how men see their role in a marriage. Men are delaying marriage in part because they want to be "economically settled" first -- they want to be able to provide for a family -- but changes in our economy have really impacted that ability.

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I'm agreeing with you or not :) The paradox is that people have the ideals of the past but react in a way that produces the opposite result ("I want to be conservative, but I can't do it so I'll enjoy myself in the meantime").

icxa• 7 years ago

the liberation of women from the home and from conservative sexual values.

Everyone is unhappy, married people on average are happier than unmarried, religious people are on average happier than unreligious people.

The sexual and feminist revolution got some 'splainin to do.

Of course, my view, the answer isn't "liberating women from the bonds of motherhood and family" but empowering women and supporting them in arguably the most powerful and most important thing one human can actually do in this world: bring new life into it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/happiness-...

Bakary5• 7 years ago

Seems a bit circular to me. If the most important thing a human can do is bring life, then that life also has as its most important mission to bring some more life into the mix and so on. You end up with an endless chain of causation and no real answer as to what makes the entire thing worthwhile.

welly• 7 years ago

Is bringing another being into the world the most important thing one can actually do? I'm not sure if you've noticed but we're getting pretty full. And we're living longer. Feels to me like the bus is getting full.

whatshisface3• 7 years ago

Feminism was motivated by the minority of women that wanted a job in 1950, and their legitimate frustration with how the system was trying to stop them from doing that. Somehow that got switched around into a society where almost every woman is required to have an income. It's like we went from oppressing half of all women to oppressing the other half of all women.

hobs• 7 years ago

Each person is free to choose their own destiny, including unhappiness.

Feminism isnt the search for happiness, its for equity.

mial• 7 years ago

It can also be linked to the rise of individualism, an essential part of the capitalist ideology.

bendbro2• 7 years ago

Seems unlikely: why do staunch conservatives reproduce far better than liberals?

drak0n1c• 7 years ago

There's an opposite political argument that the decline of the family, especially among the poor, was due to government benefits replacing the need to maintain social networks and interdependent families. In the 1800s and early 1900s, at the height of the industrial revolution and in the absence of any welfare state, poor Americans of every ethnicity had incredibly close-knit communities and extended families.

Life was harder, but you could lean on friends, family, and congregation. That's where the classic trope of rich people being lonely and surrounded by fake acquaintances while poor people have authentic community comes from. Maybe now that every level of society is relatively richer we're all that much lonelier.

sgustard• 7 years ago

I always felt that my mother, as a traditional housewife, seemed rather lonely, and that she blossomed once she started working outside the home. But the social support she provided for my dad and us kids took a hit. I would argue the net effect was still a positive one for the family.

tathougies7• 7 years ago

These are all anecdotes though. My mother -- who wanted to be a traditional housewife -- but, as a migrant to this country, was forced to work to support our family seemed incredibly depressed that she couldn't be at home. Once she started staying at home (by becoming a teacher, and thus getting some months off with us), she became so much happier and it was a net positive for my family. Once she retired early, it became even better, and she was just a much happier person.

Granted, my father also took a job that let him stay home most of the day, because he hated working too, so I guess we're one of the few families which seems unaffected by marketing, and instead seek what we actually want. Why in the world would literally anyone want to work a job? I feel only someone who's never worked could want to do it

Bakary5• 7 years ago

There's a recent review essay of Houellebecq's work by a Dutch populist that goes into this topic a little bit. Well worth a read IMO, even if his conclusions are quite extreme.[0]

I would say it's important to look beyond simple labels of "good" and "bad" and think of the situation in terms of trade offs. Feminism has greatly helped some portions of the population and cost others greatly as well. Just like with any other culture or ideology, there really is no free lunch.

[0] https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/05/houellebecqs-unfi...

nugget5• 7 years ago

At the risk of wading into deeply controversal territory, I'll add some personal observations. One of the harsh realities I have seen is that it's very difficult for women to "have it all" meaning a fulfilling personal, family, and professional life, especially in the most competitive fields. Yet for many years this idea has persisted in a mythical sense as broadly achievable. I am now in my late 30s. I've watched my female friends and classmates have productive and inspiring careers, but often at the cost of their personal lives. The writing is on the wall that many of these women will likely never end up having biological children due to declining fertility. It makes me sad because while they are awesome entrepreneurs, physicians, lawyers and so on, they would have been awesome mothers as well. And at the societal level, from a selection standpoint, these are the type of genes we should want to pass on. I'm not sure what the answer is, but we should at least be honest about discussing the reality of what people wrestle with and why and how.

kilowatt• 7 years ago

It makes me sad because while they have awesome professional accomplishments, they would have been awesome mothers and parents as well.

I just wanted to point out politely how strange this language reads to me. It's ultimately the decision of each person whether to have kids or not. This being "sad" for them is an overreach, morally, IMO--and part of the fight feminism led was to carve out a space for women in society not to be mothers, if that is their choice.

vkou2• 7 years ago

I'm not sure what the answer is,

Drop the implicit assumption that only the mother needs to give up her career to raise a child.

For some reason, nobody sheds tears over successful entrepreneur, lawyer, and doctor men who are unable to make that work with raising children.

A pregnancy lasts 9 months. Raising a child takes ~200 months.

weberc26• 7 years ago

This isn’t a uniquely female phenomenon. The expectation has always been for men to trade time with family for time at work.

jonny_eh• 7 years ago

I'm not sure what the answer is

Better support for working parents.

SoylentOrange• 7 years ago

I have a serious question for you, curious on your answer.

Can men “have it all”? Is “having it all” different for men than women?

My experience is that men are able to “have it all” often at the cost of their spouse making sacrifices to stay at home, with the implicit idea that this is the way things are meant to be.

If both people in a relationship try to “have it all”, some sacrifices do have to be made (speaking from experience), but I am not sad about these choices since trade offs are an inevitable part of life :)

dsfyu404ed3• 7 years ago

At the risk of wading into deeply controversal territory, I'll add some personal observations. One of the harsh realities I have seen is that it's very difficult for women to "have it all" meaning a fulfilling personal, family, and professional life, especially in the most competitive fields.

This is perfectly possible. Imagine your stereotypical 1950s head of household. Fulfilling job, family is provided for, hangs out with friends on the weekend, etc. Now imagine them being female.

The fact of the matter is that this life doesn't exist for just about anyone anymore. It just never existed at all for women because back when it was possible for large numbers of people to do this they weren't part of the well paid workforce. (It didn't exist for non-whites for similar reasons but I digress)

Part of the problem is that our definition of "having it all" comes from times when circumstances were different. Now, I don't think just giving up and saying we'll never have it that good again and people have to choose between family, work and friends is a good solution but it sure seems more tractable in the short term than recreating that level of prosperity.

zanny2• 7 years ago

I like to look at this from the perspective of "how are we going to organize society given further technological advancement in the far future" and how do we get there.

Ignoring the endgames that come after the cessation of traditional human existence - either robotics replacing organics completely or mastery of genetics leading to the engineering of super-intelligent custom lifeforms to replace us - we are almost always either going to go extinct or refine our genetics to optimized templates. Eventually, we will be manufacturing humans with mathematically weighed balances between genetic diversity for disease resistance and optimized traits and features to make people live longer, stronger, and smarter. Probably going to be codified to be obedient to authority and not deviate from the social order as well, because that just honestly seems borderline unavoidable.

These humans will eventually be manufactured in artificial wombs in automated facilities meant to produce the population because in practice its severely debilitating and economically inefficient to take the females out of operation for so long to reproduce with such high biological risks associated. Cloned gametes from engineered templates grown in factories. The children would probably be mentally implanted with knowledge via brain-computer interfaces and taught everything virtually. Their biology would accelerate their development as much as is possible within our genetic profile. Years of research would have gone into optimizing their environments, interactions (if necessary, organic ones), and development to yield the most potential.

When you start stepping back from there, the closest bridge to that reality is going to be the institutionalization of child rearing. Before we have automated facilities breeding engineered templates we will almost certainly have public institutions dedicated to population replacement - in the optimistic scenario, women would simply "major" in parenting and live their careers as mothers. We will probably already be using engineered gametes by then because the technology is already mostly available, so these women would just have children and raise them as their full time career. Given current understanding of developmental psychology there would probably also be men assigned to play paternal roles in upbringing in full employment at such facilities as well.

I don't think at all this evolution in child rearing would ever happen overnight and its very likely in the same way you can still ride a horse today over owning a car or in the future how some will still drive manual cars in the age of autonomous vehicles some couples will do it "the old fashioned way" because they can. But it will probably, almost certainly, happen a lot less often.

And honestly from my perspective its for the best. Historically raising children is an absolutely full time job. Living on a farm, despite "working" in the fields at all hours of the day, still lets you keep the children at hand and raise them. You are never separated and the family is always together. That seems to be, barring abusive relationships, the optimal way human children develop. We have constructed employment institutions that make that impossible and try to both put pressure on laborers to reproduce but then also to somehow "do the job" of parenting at their own expense and economic disadvantage. It costs tremendous amounts of time to raise children, even more to actually do it well, and its never priced into the economy.

For now, this isn't a problem, and it likely won't be for a long time. We just get the collateral damage of mentally and physically harmed children from parental negligence that society pushes them towards. Eventually the economic pressure not to reproduce drives enough people not to that replacement becomes impossible and then such professional parenting institutions need to start being taken seriously. When it happens, its likely to be a very good thing - children raised by people paid to raise them, whose job is to be the best parent possible, and who will have comprehensive education in the hugely complex fields surrounding human development will be a substantial boon to the first children raised under it. Its just the cost of basically privatizing reproduction has to justify the investment, both culturally and economically, to make it happen.

For now the best thing to do would be to reduce the economic burden of life on adults to let them be more recreational and social and thus less lonely. Trying to force people back into a mold that was already broken to begin with is a violation of liberty with no real corresponding benefit - we aren't going to go back that way ever again, because truthfully we can do much better. We just have to choose to.

taysic3• 7 years ago

I don’t see a reason to be sad because I think it’s a wonderful thing more people have a choice now. Whether I end up making perfect decisions or not I wouldn’t trade anything for that.

rdm_blackhole• 7 years ago

What a condescending comment... My wife and I are childfree. Should I tell her that her accomplishments in the workplace or even getting a good education and graduating from university mean nothing because having kids should be her top priority?

This is the problem with people who think they know better. You think people should have more kids, what do you propose? Are you going to pay for the diapers, the education, the bigger house, the bigger car, the childcare? Do you want to become our live-in nanny?

After all, you seem so eager for people to have kids, surely you must be volunteering every night to help kids from low socio-economic areas get better grades and break the cycle of poverty or maybe you have adopted 5 unwanted kids already?

My wife and I don't need your sadness and your condescension. Thank you.

baroffoos2• 7 years ago

What makes you think these people even wanted kids?

camelNotation6• 7 years ago

Feminism has brought about a lot of changes, but I don't think we can lay this one at the feet of women trying to escape their compulsory reliance on unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate men.

Most people are alone because they don't prioritize the families they already have (parents, siblings, grandparents, cousins, etc). They graduate high school, attend college in another state, move to another city far away for work, etc. Those are choices and they carry consequences. It's not good by default to follow your dreams if the only way to follow your dreams is to be alone and isolated in a strange place. Career is only a portion of our lives and it is far from the best way to draw meaning and purpose for ourselves. It's much better to draw meaning from something that is more permanent and guaranteed, like your identity and your home, not the job you just so happen to be doing at that moment.

There are exceptions to every rule, but it should be understood that when people graduate from high school, they should pick a trade school or university that is close by, not far away. When they choose a focus/major, they should ask what jobs exist in their area, not what kinds of jobs exist in the whole world. When they graduate college, they should be looking for work near their home, not on the other side of the country. Work and career is unreliable and people fail a lot. It's not the thing you should rely on to make you happy or satisfied.

It's better to have less of a career and more of a family than less of a family and more of a career. Your career accomplishments are not as important or valuable as they seem. If you didn't do them, someone else very probably would, and you will also very probably be forgotten quickly after you retire or quit or die. But more humane pursuits like family, home, faith, and community will always be there if you invest in them.

stcredzero3• 7 years ago

I don't think we can lay this one at the feet of women trying to escape their compulsory reliance on unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate men

That's begging the question. Of course, one cannot, "blame the victims of villains," to paraphrase. The vast majority of people are just imperfect, normal people trying to get by. It's the aggregate actions of everyday people we should be looking at, not such outliers.

Most people are alone because they don't prioritize the families they already have

It's like the "Thanksgiving arguments" are engineered precisely to create a rift between generations.

zaccus3• 7 years ago

A lot of people aren't leaving home to "follow their dreams", they're leaving home because there just aren't any jobs there anymore. Jobs of any sort are scarce outside urban areas.

Miner49er• 7 years ago

I'm sure feminism plays a role. As the article said, women can now more freely leave abusive husbands. That's one example of how it would increase divorce rates.

However, I don't think it is the sole reason. For example, why then are wealthy people more likely to have families, as the article describes? The fact that wealthier people have families more seems to support the idea that it is at least partially caused by neoliberalism.

nroah• 7 years ago

Sad times we live in that you have to say it twice that you don't oppose feminism, otherwise you know your comment will get flagged, which means your opinion will simply be hidden away. That is the state of the debate, if we can even call it a debate.

codingslave3• 7 years ago

Yeah, to be honest, I would like to elaborate more but I don't want my account banned. Best we can do is hint at our opinions and hope that it fosters some thought and debate

patentatt4• 7 years ago

Can you define what you see as the debate here?

stcredzero3• 7 years ago

we as a society have underestimated the effects and consequences of rapid change

That's the fundamental bias of human beings. Alvin Toeffler and other authors have been banging on about that since the 60's and 70's. Vernor Vinge used to talk about this. (He helped popularize the "Singularity.")

we should take a step back and think about what is really happening

Do this, if you want to grab hold of a piece of intelligence which is invisible to the general public. This is something of a corollary to, "What you can't say."

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

If one has tried to talk about evolution to an anti-evolutionist, one is familiar with the depth and surprising strength of mental defenses working against evidence. If one wants to have an awareness beyond the ordinary, one has to do self analysis at this level. (While not succumbing even more to one's deeply held biases.)

holy_city2• 7 years ago

There's imo a stronger argument that economic/financial factors are far more significant than "feminism." The closing in the employment gap in the 1980s was driven by hyperinflation and consumer debt - everyone had to work to pay the bills.

Similarly, contraceptives aren't the reason people have fewer children. It's the fact we can't afford childcare and housing for a family.

devmunchies• 7 years ago

Well, doubling the labor supply made wages go down so women HAD to work. They no longer had the freedom to choose.

kaitai12• 7 years ago

These are big factors. I'm also struck, though, by the short historical view most of these comments have. Back in the day, many people "stayed at home", where that means tending the gardens and fields, tending the cows and pigs, hunting for additional protein, gathering for additional carbs and sugars, doing the washing and getting the water. Pre-Industrial Revolution, this whole "men go to work and earn a wage while women stay home" thing did not exist the way it does now. Servants lived in the houses of the people they served, merchants operated as families, and rural people all devoted significant amounts of time to food production. And there was no real choice "not to work" unless you were rich.

maire2• 7 years ago

Social media and not feminism is the likely root cause of the decline in families. Families are declining world wide including in repressive societies. Social media itself is likely the root cause.

Before social media people had to meet face-to-face in order to date and they had to break up face-to-face in order to end a relationship. This forced people to develop social skills at a young age that are required to form a family.

Now people can date someone they never met and break up by ghosting. They can get to a preliminary relationship without acquiring social skills. There are also online equivalents of a mate that seem good enough if you don't understand the benefits of family.

I try to avoid social media and it makes my life much more sane. It forces me to go out and socialize with people.

dv_dt4• 7 years ago

It seems a stretch to blame feminism when economics has thinned most workers wages to the point that multi income households are a requirement to eke out a life.

tropo5• 7 years ago

Feminism can't avoid taking some of the blame for the economics.

If some households are multi-income, then they can pay more for housing.

This bids up the cost of housing. More households decide to become multi-income in order to pay for housing. This of course makes the housing price go up even more.

It's an arms race.

malvosenior14• 7 years ago

Doubling the workforce would surely put downward pressure on wages due to supply and demand.

daemonk• 7 years ago

Perhaps the more interesting question is whether the traditional nuclear family is the "optimal" mode of human society?

Is the unhappiness that we may be observing with the decline of family a product of this transition period from traditional family structure to individualism? Is our current society just not well equipped yet to handle this mode of living? Maybe in 50 years, this will become the norm and people who choose to live alone will have alternative sources of happiness.

bazooka_penguin3• 7 years ago

I really doubt the traditional nuclear family is natural and hence "optimal" although I guess that depends on your goal. I think as an extension or outcome, perhaps the purpose of civilization, nuclear families provide safety and security rather than producing the best offspring for the species as a whole. What's better, people of every level of fitness and intelligence pairing off to produce God knows what sort of mutants that will be protected on some level by society, or a handful of males who are naturally predisposed to good health, fitness, and intelligence, turbo Chads if you will, seeding large groups of females.

I'm not saying one is better for than the other overall, but one is surely better than the other for certain outcomes. Do we want an equitable society where low status individuals, but particularly males, have a better shot at reproduction and may contribute more to building a society that propagates that "culture" of safety and equity? Or do we go with what is probably more natural? I mean i can guess why and how religions of old and civilizations formed and why they were patriarchal

plainOldText2• 7 years ago

I don’t know if it’s optimal, but it sure is intimate and stable.

Your spouse will never move to another city for a new job w/o you. Your kids won’t leave the nucleus, at least not until they’re college ready.

Unlike family, different kinds of arrangements between people result in relationships that are less committed and less durable.

So maybe if you take stability and intimacy into account, it might as well be optimal.

I guess it begs the question, what are we optimizing for? And on what time scale?

What might seem optimal for the time being, could unleash a series of unforeseen circumstances in the future.

But I guess we can keep an open mind, allow people to choose for themselves and then report back after 2-3 generations the consequences of different paths taken.

dpoochieni5• 7 years ago

I'd say it is a natural way of living, but maybe you have been unlucky in not experiencing it for yourself. This debate is pretty old, Plato's Republic hinting at the disappearance of the family echoes much of the current western culture. He figured out you could not impose a totalitarian state while having people's allegiance lie on their family.

rjsw• 7 years ago

I suspect that it is the best model we have found so far. I also wonder whether monogamy is the cause of modern society rather than a result of it.

There seems to be a pretty good correlation between which countries are most dominant today and those that encouraged monogamy in the recent past.

Maybe the differences in IQ seen between different groups are caused by how well those societies manage to mix up genes and not down to skin colour.

kelnos9• 7 years ago

It's interesting that you consider the nuclear family as "traditional", while it's actually a fairly recent phenomenon. And in many places in the world it's still common for a family to consist of multiple generations and often aunts/uncles/cousins/etc. living in the same household.

yamrzou• 7 years ago

Feminism is surely related, but I’m not sure if it is a cause or a consequence (or maybe both?) to the decline of family.

An important factor to consider is the nature and place of work: Men used to inherit their families business or work in the same town. Big families and relatives lived close to each other, so women could use help from other women in the family for child rearing and house chores. Nowadays you have to move to capitals/big cities to find work which deprived women from the assistance they found in extended families. I think this had an impact on gender roles and the increase of feminism and nuclear families.

dsfyu404ed3• 7 years ago

Men used to inherit their families business or work in the same town.

Few men got to inherit a business but if your father worked a trade then you would probably find going into that trade to be a natural path. The latter part is still very true today.

User23• 7 years ago

We do know how it will play out. Like all evolutionarily maladaptive traits, this one will decline in prevalence over the space of a few generations.

germanlee2• 7 years ago

Feminism is a symptom rather than the cause. The cause is the commoditization of humans into productivity and consumption units in a post-industrial environment where the state and corporations dominate. Corporations want to extract every bit of production and consumption out of individuals. A woman taking time off for pregnancy or deciding to become a stay-at-home mom is a drain on corporate productivity. And every state has to some degree tried to diminish the role of parents and family in order to sap every ounce of allegiance from an individual to the state. In totalitarian states, the head of the state becomes the father of the people and the state becomes its family. It's easier to control and manipulate individuals with weak family ties. And it's easier for entities to inject themselves into a controlling family role with individuals with weak family ties. It's why pimps and madams target runaways and make themselves into paternal or maternal figures.

Society and culture doesn't grow organically. They are created and manufactured by the people with wealth and power. For the time being, those with wealth and power have decided that the breakdown of the family is in their interest. But it could shift quickly if the people in charge want it to. An extreme example is china where they encouraged women to have lots of children in order to strengthen their country. And not too long after that, they had a change of heart and encouraged the complete opposite - one child policy. Now it seems like they are backing off of it after a few decades of one child policy.

strikelaserclaw3• 7 years ago

Agreed. A large part of american culture has been engineered consciously or unconsciously to be some sort of productivity/materialistic porno. It is completely unbalanced. The american values nowadays all go towards trying to create an "Übermensch".

kodz44• 7 years ago

Society and culture doesn't grow organically. They are created and manufactured by the people with wealth and power.

BS. You give them way too much credit. The world is too complex and dynamic for a queen ant to "create and manufacture" the efficiency of the ant hill.

ashika• 7 years ago

I feel you've said more or less the same thing the article is saying, just in more casually dismissive and incendiary terms. TFA refers to many of these factors as being driven by the second demographic transformation. Yes, feminism is a very important part of the SDT, but one needs to be careful with cause and effect. Did feminism cause the SDT? Unlikely. Did the SDT cause feminist ideas to become attractive to more people? That seems far more likely. If that's the case then I wouldn't necessarily lay this (more old people living/dying alone) at feminism's feet. Feminism may provide an ideological argument in favor of certain relationships, but we are the ones choosing to live and die alone, and when we choose we do so for myriad reasons.

Also, women haven't been liberated from the home [1].

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/0c9f068c-711f-11e9-bf5c-6eeb83756...

mythrwy3• 7 years ago

I believe it's not really feminism so much as a societally pernicious type of individualism.

Certainly liberated women may be part of the cause, but there are also no shortage of boy-men who are incapable of sacrifice, hard work and the drudgery of responsibility.

The social structures that enforced all that appear to have broken down. And that's not all together a bad thing but certainly it causes societal problems in the short term until things adjust (hopefully better than what they were before).

dpoochieni5• 7 years ago

In the words of my LTR (a gorgeous and professionally successful woman) "Feminism was the worst thing that happened to women."

maire2• 7 years ago

I am curious how do you and your LTR define feminism. Nobody is forcing anyone to choose career over family. That would be anti-feminist.

I never viewed feminism as mutually exclusive of having a family or a career. I might just be more mellow than everyone else. Feminism just means that men and women deserve equal opportunity and respect. Why is this the worst thing?

I might have an advantage over everyone else since my parents grew up in the great depression. All of the women in my family worked often because of hardship. One grandmother married a very bad man and ended up becoming a hairdresser and opening a salon to support my mother. Another grandmother had a sick husband and had to take over his business. My father also had an illness and although he continued to work they both agreed that my mother needed to finish her education and go back to work. Nobody made such a big deal about it since the women were also supporting the family. In fact, in most societies the women support the family working or not. This is the norm.

When my husband and I got married we I was still in school so our whole life was ahead of us. We agreed that I would finish school first only because I was only a year from graduation. Then he finished school. We both agreed that having a family was important so we both prioritized children. We both had awesome careers, but I never let go of the fact that family is more important than career. My husband and I are still feminists.

In my daughters case she decided to stay at home with her three boys. Her awesome husband is still very much involved with his boys. They are both still feminists.

kelnos9• 7 years ago

I think the shift to eschew "traditional" gender roles plays a part, certainly, but I don't think it's the dominating factor.

I'd say the strongest factors, at least in the US:

1. Work/career is #1 priority. Career has always been a big deal in the US, but I feel like it's become more extreme in my generation (nearing 40) than it was for my parents or their parents. For them, it was more about putting food on the table and providing a better life for their children than what they had. For us it seems more about intangible things like "being successful".

2. Geographic barriers have broken down a lot. In the mid-/late-1900s, you'd likely grow up in the same place, and more often than not would find a job or go to college nearby, and stick around as an adult. You'd probably meet your future partner through family, local, or church events, and after marriage would probably still live in or near your original hometown. Nowadays, it's much more likely to move hundreds or even thousands of miles from your hometown, often to chase job opportunities (see #1). New adults going to college far from home also makes them realize that living near your hometown isn't the only option.

3. And yes, changing gender norms fit into this: women have caught the bug of #1, and we are still struggling with the "having it all" mentality of women having a strong, ambitious career, but also raising children. I personally don't think there's a universal solution to this; there are only so many hours in a day and so much energy to go around. Child care is expensive and a stretch or out of reach for many couples, even with dual incomes (and the jury's still out as to whether or not pervasive third-party child care is a detriment to early childhood development). In heterosexual couples, many men still resist taking an equal part in child-rearing duties, but I'm not convinced that would completely solve the problem anyway (again, only so many hours in a day); it would just make it more equitable as to bearing the responsibility.

Definitely agree that it may be another few generations before we fully understand the effects of all these societal changes. Some of it may be bad, even if the overall changes are good.

mch82• 7 years ago

In my experience & observation feminism and women working has nothing to do with the inability to sustain a rich family or romantic life. My grandmothers worked, my mom worked, the women I’ve dated have great careers.

It is absolutely possible to have a career and be a phenomenal wife and mother with a happy family. If a person’s priority is family, it may limit career opportunities but that is true of both men’s and women’s careers (for example rejecting a promotion that requires a geographic move to keep kids in the same school or live near relatives will impact both partners).

throwayEngineer3• 7 years ago

My suggestion is to keep a few close friends for these times. I don't find it hard, but I genuinely enjoy my friends.

koala_man• 7 years ago

Similarly, if you don't have bread, my suggestion is to eat cake.

nugget5• 7 years ago

Whatever it is today, I fear the future will be much worse. The most devastating existential consequences of loneliness can take decades to manifest. You feel a little lonely in your day to day life now, but wake up twenty years from now and realize you're socially isolated with no meaningful relationships or community and it's "too late" to make up the lost time. Most dangerous of all may be that online social networks provide participants with the feeling of deep social and community engagement that turns out to be a surface-level mirage beneath which we were just each staring at ourselves in the mirror the entire time.

decasia• 7 years ago

I agree with your first point — like other structural problems, loneliness adds up over time.

But on the second point, I'm really not sure that online social networks are just a "surface-level mirage." I met my spouse online, and many of my closest friendships have developed online, by instant message, etc. I don't think the alternative to "online communication" is necessarily that we will all socialize in person. If we got rid of the internet and instead (just for a random example) we were all alone in our houses reading books by ourselves, I think that would be a step back.

nugget5• 7 years ago

Yes on the second point, I think there's likely a distribution - perhaps 20% of participants use it as a helpful tool and 80% use it as a harmful crutch. I don't know what the actual ratio would be, but anecdotally I know quite a few young people in the latter group for whom many casual relationships seem to have replaced fewer serious ones.

durnygbur• 7 years ago

The opposite over here. Met less than a dozen at most of people exclusively through various online interactions. Use various online media and platforms only to sustain existing relationships and even this not always works. Dating and social networking applications from the FB platform are so full of attention absorbing people, inflencers, and similar that I have quit these long time ago.

apatters2• 7 years ago

I think the key is how social networks are used. You notably met your spouse online, which means at some point things presumably transitioned to an offline relationship which can't be terminated just by hitting a block button. Online networks can be great ways to meet new people, but there's ample evidence which suggests that having a purely digital social life is bad for mental health.

If we look at Tinder, there was a study of millennial users a while back which found that about 70% of them had never met anyone through it and didn't intend to. Moreover Tinder has economic incentives to keep you on their platform, swiping, texting, paying subscription fees, and viewing ads, all things you stop doing when you meet people and enter into a committed relationship.

Most social networks unfortunately follow this model; they have monetary incentives to keep you as engaged as possible in their all digital, all the time lifestyle, rather than unplugging and physically sharing space with other humans.

Healthier business models can certainly be imagined and maybe they'll even be implemented someday, but they aren't prevalent right now.

losteric2• 7 years ago

Have you heard about transgenerational stress inheritance?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_stress_inher...

We are also still learning about the gut-brain axis. The human microbiome is inheritable, and many modern practices (infant formula, C-sections, antibiotics, processed foods) having detrimental effects.

What's worse is humans seem to have an instinctive trend of self-isolation in the face of psychological distress, which worsens the condition.

Add the inevitable downstream effects of climate change (economic uncertainty if not another world war)... and, yeah, it's bleak.

a3n• 7 years ago

Whatever it is today, I fear the future will be much worse.

People sleeping in their car at the airport to make their current gig(s) possible in the gig economy are already living in the future. Especially now that Uber has a STFU option. And not all gigs involve face to face clients.

rco87862• 7 years ago

Whatever it is today, I fear the future will be much worse.

This is an easy trap for humans to fall into. "The sky is falling" type stuff.

Humans have faced lots of problems over the millenia, but the reality is that our lives continue to improve as a whole..not get worse.

rubicon332• 7 years ago

Wouldn't it be ironic if the reason they continue to improve, is because of our fear that it won't?

A little fear, and skepticism of the future, is a good thing.

tachyonbeam2• 7 years ago

On the other hand, we're now facing situations that we've never faced before, both as a species and as individuals. Increasingly, we're moving towards a future where you will never need to leave your home or interact with anyone. Netflix, and Amazon deliveries. Self-driving cars. Kids will eventually get their education online. Virtual reality is under active development.

Then there's AI, and sex robots. Why bother with a real boyfriend/girlfriend when you can talk to your phone and have an artificial companion? Real humans have their own wants and needs and may not do what you want. Worse, they might leave you. Your robot girlfriend on the other hand, you could have endless conversations with her in which she tells you exactly what you want to hear and never challenges you.

That's far-fetched, you say. In the near term, I tried Tinder and it's pretty addictive. An endless stream of new people I can meet. Most of them want nothing serious though. They don't even want to sleep with you more than once or twice for the most part. It's all about novelty-seeking. It seems to me like increasingly few people want a sustained relationship. Breakups hurt, so let's never risk having one, a constant stream of lovers is emotionally safer in a way, I suppose, but I can tell you it definitely leaves me feeling lonely.

slang8002• 7 years ago

Humans have faced lots of problems over the millenia, but the reality is that our lives continue to improve as a whole

That's untrue. Human civilizations tend to go through cycles. They rise, eventually stagnate, and then decline over the span of hundreds of years. The Akkadians, the Mycenaeans, the Romans, and the Maya all collapsed and the lives of people living in those empires got worse, often for a very long time.

It's reasonable to think that a similar type of decline is happening in the west today.

apatters2• 7 years ago

Humans have faced lots of problems over the millenia, but the reality is that our lives continue to improve as a whole..not get worse.

I think this is no longer true. Life expectancy is actually on the decline in developed countries, driven by (among other factors) the loneliness epidemic described in this article.

You can argue over 5,000 years or something things have improved, sure, but in the present day there's a strong argument that quality of life is getting worse.

_khau4• 7 years ago

but the reality is that our lives continue to improve as a whole..not get worse.

This is true for some, not others.

soulofmischief4• 7 years ago

Suicide rates have skyrocketed for middle-aged white men in the US. They are now the highest statistic. [0]

It's happening already.

• Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the US.

• The age-adjusted suicide rate in 2017 was 14.0 per 100,000 individuals.

• In 2017, men died by suicide 3.54x more often than women.

• White males accounted for 69.67% of suicide deaths in 2017.

[0] https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/

55555• 7 years ago

men died by suicide 3.54x more often than women

That's a very interesting statistic considering women attempt suicide 1.2x more than men.

ggregoire• 7 years ago

Are you assuming that all those suicides are linked to loneliness? What about people with money issues, incurable diseases, mental conditions, etc?

gnopgnip• 7 years ago

Lookup steven pinker. The short of it is even if there are certain things that seem like a big problem, overall right now is the greatest time to be alive in human history, and in 10 years, or 20 years, or 30 years the same is likely to be true.

maxxxxx• 7 years ago

I think is just another example where we got a short term benefit from breaking societal norms but may suffer long term. Strong family bonds can be very confining so it's often liberating to weaken them. But then you also lose that support system which has big cost long term.

I think the job market has similar trends. It used to be that jobs were more stable and you had a direct path to retirement. But this was also restricting for young people. Now we have the opposite. Young people are the stars of the job market, job hopping is the only way to get ahead and the people who aren't millionaires by age of 50 are looking into a very insecure future.

malvosenior14• 7 years ago

I look at so many of my single friends who are achingly lonely (late 30s to early 40s) and they all have a particular trait in common: they obsess about the possibilities the future may hold yet don’t acknowledge the hard work it would take to get there. There’s also a sort of collective delusion that if you wait around long enough, your dream partner will show up and that if a relationship takes any work at all that it should be scrapped because it interferes with “just being an individual”.

The longer people put off pairing up, the harder it seems to accomplish.

I think mainstream media has really warped a couple of generations of people’s priorities. Extended adolescence and chasing hedonism is now the norm.

My friends who eschewed that in favor of more traditional long term relationships, compromise and building family over Instagram followers are decidedly more content and less anxious.

I suspect as my generation ages these effect will amplify.

bfrydl• 7 years ago

If these people are actually your friends, maybe you should show them more respect and stop assuming that the reason they are single is that they are less mature than you and chose to “chase hedonism” and “Instagram followers” over long term relationships. Despite what you might believe, it isn't easy for every person to find a long term partner, and not everyone wants to do it at the same point in their lives.

malvosenior14• 7 years ago

I’m not assuming anything, they’re friends I’ve know for many years and I’ve been there with them as they’ve made these choices. I’d like for them to be happy but there’s only so much you can do.

I think the problem I’m describing is pretty common amongst gen x and millennials.

AnimalMuppet4• 7 years ago

You mean, a totally self-centered outlook on life leaves you lonely? Who knew?

defterGoose4• 7 years ago

Sure, but I think peoples' definition or image of self-centeredness has been obscured by societal norms. At least here in the US, it feels like one of our cultural hallmarks is the ideal of the "self made individual". If it is normalized to see oneself as apart from others, it becomes very difficult indeed to sacrifice anything for another person (and news flash, that's a big part of familial relationships).

abledon5• 7 years ago

i like your style of thinking, can you put down 5-10 bullet points of knowledge you think we should all know or sources of knowledge we should investigate.

malvosenior14• 7 years ago

Sure, the best place to start is The Century of The Self:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self

It’s a great look at the rise of marketing, individualism and hedonism in the 20th century.

Democracy In America is another great source:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_America

It’s an extremely prescient, outsider’s look at the tyranny of the masses.

I would also suggest studying the context of the 20th century, especially the lead up with the industrial revolution and both world wars. It’s often lost on people that Western life as defined by American sitcoms was an anomaly powered in large part by the rest of the first world being nearly obliterated. This leads ultimately into global recovery and globalism which I see as a normalization of life after WWI and WWII.

Post-modernism is good to learn about as well. I feel like a lot of people mistake modernism and post-modernism. Post-modernism can actually include a lot of things modernism rejects, such as traditional family structures. It just does it piecemeal framed in a totally different (non-religious) context.

ppeetteerr• 7 years ago

Luis CK once said the choice between marriage and staying single is like the choice between being frustrated and being lonely.

As someone originally from a second-world country I can say that I feel people have it good these days in terms of their basic needs for survival. When you're not fighting for something, it's easy to feel like you're not fulfilled and it's hard to rally with others who are fighting for basic needs.

w_s_l• 7 years ago

if you look at various surveys comparing countries outside of north america countries with no rapid colonization and urbanization like in the America, or East-Asia, people report feeling happier and less isolated. But difference between NA and EA is that NA had that European style "settling"--move out, claim your land, start a family, or divorce, repeat.

Our social DNA built for human connection, sense of belonging and family, centered around agriculture was quickly snuffed out in the West with the oncoming of Industrial Revolution, and the countries that subscribed to this model. Basically genders ended up being divided into a binary class of workers with one clearly a 2nd citizen and subsequently their social status. It used to be that women were largely limited to taking care of home and kids but with WW2's end, this has increasingly been changing.

Women from 1920s vs 2020 have drastically different liberties in socio,sexual, and economic areas. The erosion of domestic manufacturing industries through implementation of "free market" ideals where the invisible hand that moves jobs is capital itself, the cheapest and the best producer retains the capital until it cannot maintain this low cost of production, mainly through political suppression and threat of paramilitary forces of dictator. Women are repeatedly underpaid compared to men according to statistical findings, its more so that they are undervalued unconsciously by society due to its period of rapid industralization and "splitting" of genders. (fun fact: FDR used to crossdress).

Yet the latter situation with countries that has reached rapid urbanization through industrialization, this is not unique thing to North America, people in Korea and Japan are killing themselves, people are isolating themselves in urban areas, very much like the North Americas.

This social void-via-capital (jobs, capital move to cheapest cost of operations) or void-via-automation (really the same thing since automation is dirt cheap labor that gets cheaper by several folds every few years) leads to the deviation from traditional family operated around agriculture and rapid urbanization that followed high-capital industries with overseas outsourcing of manufacture, has changed the roles of the Mother or Father. This can be found in most democratic capitalist of a major economy. So is the entrance of women the culprit? If that was the case then why is it that in the Philippines, ppl aren't reporting on surveys as being less miserable or isolated as say a Brit, where many husband takes the role of rearing children while the Filipino women contribute to being the world's highest remittance destinations? Clearly it was never to do with gender being fundamentally destined for specific roles, but rather the presence of one of the parent in a child's formative years, relatively compared to absence or non-biological substitute caretakers due to unavailability of both parents due to both working or not working, has produced an increasingly self-isolated, self-caring, self-obsessed, self-exhibitionist society distracting itself through material possessions and entries in a database somewhere with arbitrarily valued "digital scores" that creates the illusion of tribal hierarchy and belonging? Or how about that we are largely rewarded for creating/contributing to products to increase the pace of this isolation?

I don't know what the solution is. But people from small town are often spooked by people not saying hello when passing by in large cities. I can feel the difference being in downtown vs rural areas. People outside of North America seem tightly integrated with their families and communities. I'm talking the super taboo thing in north america, being an adult and living with parents. Yet, its practiced in many parts of the world. I know I've been trying to get my ass out the door but honestly my addiction issues and struggling with complex post traumatic stress disorder has been crippling. Writing this probably isn't good for my job prospects. I can only hope that my SaaS makes money when it launches on Monday, so I can move out, be alone. Life is fucked and I can only hope to unfuck it a little bit at a time.

UI_at_80x243• 7 years ago

The Great Lakes have surpassed the 'high-water-level' record set 33 years ago. Therefore, High-Water levels in the Great Lakes cause loneliness.

Correlation != Causation

If you are looking for things "to blame" don't forget about:

-decline in religious-group (church) participation

-stagnate wage increases for 20 years while cost of living increases (result: less of an ability to afford "going out") Also related: more people needing 2+ jobs

-increased internet access/duration/interaction

All of these equate to less 'recreational' time available. Lack of recreation time = less chance to participate in social settings = more loneliness

40acres2• 7 years ago

My mother, dad, aunts, etc. all immigrated to the US in a period of about 5 years. They all settled in Brooklyn and a few even lived in the same apartment complex. Growing up the extended family was HUGE and someone new was over every Sunday.

The next generation has become geographically spread out, I moved to the West Coast, a few of my cousins are in college out of state.. about half of this generation is likely to build their family outside of the NYC metro area, my children's generation is likely to split off from wherever I settle as well.

This is an unfortunate cost of the "American dream", my parents, aunts and uncles didn't have great paying jobs but they were close to family.. for the cost of a higher salary many of us make decisions that make communication with those we love difficult. Yesterday was my brother's 30th birthday but because of the time difference and work schedules we did not speak on the phone, only through text.

kaitai12• 7 years ago

I find myself an anomaly and doubt my life choices sometimes for deciding to stay near family rather than chasing the career dream. But perhaps it's because I saw the cost, in my parents' generation, of immigration and long distances. I saw the benefits too...

xur17• 7 years ago

I moved away from family to a new city around 5 years ago for a job, and I'm in the midst of deciding if I should move back. Most of my immediate and extended family lives where I grew up, but job prospects aren't as good (I work remotely, so less important but still relevant), and culturally it's probably a step down from where I am. That said, I'm from a fairly large family, and having them around is something I miss despite visiting several times a year.

kelnos9• 7 years ago

I never had a lot of family around while I was growing up. It was just my parents and sister, one set of grandparents (until my early teens), and a few other non-family people that my parents treated like family.

I similarly moved to the west coast. My parents have passed away, and my sister (and her family) still lives on the east coast. I've made myself a family of sorts out of a group of very close friends, but I do feel the lack of family sometimes, especially when I see how close some friends are with their (local) extended family members.

It's something I never expected to have, especially given the small nature of my family while growing up, and yet I still feel like I'm missing out on something.

irrational3• 7 years ago

My grandparents as children lived in farming/ranching communities where all the rest of their family lived. But then along came WWII and after the war many went to college on GI Bills and subsequently ended up living far apart from each other. Their children ended up living in a number of different states. I have eight brothers and sisters and we all live in different states scattered all across the USA from east to west and north to south. It has been decades since we were last all together in the same location. I already assume that my children will settle down somewhere far removed from where they were raised. Heck, I plan on moving away from where I raised them when I retire. I just can't see how it could ever go back to families living in the same town. It seems so unrealistic and infeasible.

Ericson2314• 7 years ago

Yeah articles like this oen gloss over the nuclear family already being historically odd and perhaps the first step on this lonely disaggregation.

chrismeller2• 7 years ago

The number of people I know who advocate that “blood is thicker than water” and then spend most of our outings at a bar complaining about one or another of those blood relatives...

For years I’ve felt like I’m supposed to report in to my family (my mother in particular) because otherwise I’m assumed dead. It was never reasonable, I was always safe and happy (and not engaged in anything crazy like CIA wetwork, just traveling around the US by myself), but I finally had to do away with it and issue an ultimatum.

For me it was not family vs loneliness. It was family vs lonerness (and happiness). They were “stuck in the mud” and expected me to be the same... when I wasn’t it was out of their comfort zone and they didn’t know how to handle that.

Several months in now I’m happier than I’ve ever been... purely because I don’t have to worry about anyone’s happiness except my own and the people I actually choose to be with.

bargl• 7 years ago

I actually had a similar(ish) situation to yours. I read a book called "boundaries" and that's made my relationships with my family much better.

This all came about when I was getting married.

This was about 10 years ago now. Fast forward to wife + kids and I did something I never thought I'd do. I moved home to be close to family again.

I'm still fully self reliant but my kids get to grow up near gma and gpa which is amazing.

It wasn't until I entered into the group of my friends with kids that I realized there's a fair amount of isolation there.

Anyway, I followed a similar path. I moved across the country to get away from my family man, and now that I've learned to set boundaries I'm back and happy with our new relationship. Maybe that'll work for you and your family and maybe it wont.

We did have friends who were family where we used to live. The kind of friends you call when you're going into labor and they pick your kid up from daycare after driving for an hour. I miss them more than almost anyone else in the world. So, while you can make it work with family and it might be great, you can also make it work without them. That's just what I chose to do.

chrismeller2• 7 years ago

I suppose my problem is that I’ve tried to set limitations. The people I’m setting them upon don’t agree.

So that leaves us at a crossroads. I either grit my teeth and continue to put up with what I see as unacceptable behavior, or I enforce the ultimatum and refuse to engage.

This is hardly the first time I have ever had this kind of argument with any of the people involved. It goes, as many family arguments tend to, along a predictable and repeatable pattern: argument, agreement, repetition.

Eventually I had to realize that this has happened dozens of times and if I don’t change any variables we will just continue to repeat the cycle for the rest of my life.

All of that said, I don’t have kids. I don’t really want them, but I assume at some point it’ll happen. I do realize that having grandma and grandpa there is valuable. You’ve got a free babysitter and the family roots. If it came down to compromising my ultimatum and not having that connection... I would absolutely, 100%, without any question, tell my mother to F off again.

The whole thing ends up being exactly what you said - sometimes family are a blessing and built in friends, but sometimes they aren’t and you find other friends to fill in that gap.

I just can’t stand it when people say that family is all that matters.

nvusuvu• 7 years ago

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/bc/content/shared/conten...

Key take away:

By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation.

dang10• 7 years ago

Please don't take HN threads in this direction, however helpful your intention. It can only lead to a flamey mess.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

charliesharding• 7 years ago

This view was a major building block of civilization for thousands of years. Weird how willingly people throw it away these days and then wonder why family is collapsing and mental illness is widespread and increasing

RankingMember6• 7 years ago

One could argue that any period of change, be it personal or societal, involves a period of anxiety and tumult, which is often an unavoidable part of growth/progress. Could we not be in exactly such a period?

RankingMember6• 7 years ago

What say they of matriarchal societies that thrive? Did the divine designer's magic fingers slip while assembling those?

chiefalchemist2• 7 years ago

True. But it's great for the economy.

When a family splits, that means 2x everything (e.g., sofa, dishes, TV, etc.) Same goes for the social "norm" that adults above 25 y/o (?) should live alone (if they're not married).

The issue is, not only is this counter to long-established human (emotional) needs, but it is resource intensive as well. Put another way, we're bringing Mother Nature to her knees, and we're too depressed about ourselves to care about her.

What could go wrong?

mberning• 7 years ago

Also with both parents working the labor pool has essentially doubled over the last 50-60 years. And people wonder why their parents could raise a family on one income but they cannot. Obviously there are many factors at play of which this phenomenon is just one.

chiefalchemist2• 7 years ago

True. But I think a big factor is housing. The home I grew up in (only my father drew a salary) is small by today's standards. But again, get a bigger home today, and then fill it with more shit.

People (read: their egos) are their own worst enemy. If you resist the status quo and "the Jones" it's not as bad. Perhaps not the same as before, but not as bad who tend to live beyond their means.

paradox1234• 7 years ago

My biggest take away after reading this thread is that almost everyone seems to agree that there is a very significant problem, while at the same time there seems be a complete lack of universal agreement about cause(s) or cure(s). Sort of unsatisfying that way. :-|

defterGoose4• 7 years ago

The problem is, as far as the causes go, everyone is right and no one thinks they're wrong. My experience of the world has taught me that people shy away from complexity in favor of simple explanations. So if everyone mentioning a possible cause is, to a degree, correct, then we need to figure out what underlying systems are connecting and driving those causes.

taway060619• 7 years ago

I’ve been feeling a pretty intense sort of depression and loneliness for the last month or so.

The feelings of “you’re a white male and you work in tech and you are wealthy you are a SATAN” is just becoming too much :(.

I volunteer a tremendous amount in education, where I’m the only male I generally even see in my field, and I constantly have to listen to my coworkers gleefully talk about how excited they are at how few young boys show up to our events. I hear them blatantly express disdain when a couple do.

Its so, so sad. I try getting away from the news, but then it creeps into my life anyway.

I’m not some devil because of my genitals, my sexual orientation, or the color of my skin. I volunteer so much of my time specifically to the homeless and less fortunate, I give so much money to charity, I do so much stuff in my community...and yet I just have to hear almost constantly that I am everything wrong with the world because I am an evil, cis, white, monogamous, straight male. I tick every single box of bad guy it seems like there is, and I don’t want to be the bad guy. I actually try really hard to be a nice guy.

It just makes me so so sad :(. And if I ever do even mention that, it just makes it even worse, hence the throwaway account.

jonahrd3• 7 years ago

Just a piece of advice: try to take a step back and listen more carefully to the complaints you're hearing. When people talk about dismantling the patriarchy, or about racial privilege, they are not actually talking about any one particular person. You are fully able to be white, male, privileged, and still be an ally to those who do not benefit as much from the power structures in our society.

Instead of feeling personally attacked when you hear these issues discussed, try to remember we are all on the same team, fighting to tackle problems that are bigger than just one individual.

SuddsMcDuff3• 7 years ago

Take for example a comment from this very thread: "Feminism has brought about a lot of changes, but I don't think we can lay this one at the feet of women trying to escape their compulsory reliance on unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate men."

How should we take a step back and listen more carefully to this? How are we to interpret that other than as an attack on all men?

0815test3• 7 years ago

I mean, you're not even wrong as far as that goes, but you might just be missing the point. "Racial privilege" is the latest variation on "bourgeois privilege", and we all know how toxic that idea was. Maybe he doesn't want to play on the Maoist team, or be its "ally". That's okay too. No one should be forced to deal with that kind of toxic, negative messaging.

amvalo2• 7 years ago

I volunteer a tremendous amount in education, where I’m the only male I generally even see in my field, and I constantly have to listen to my coworkers gleefully talk about how excited they are at how few young boys show up to our events. I hear them blatantly express disdain when a couple do.

cc814• 7 years ago

But people are not agreeing about the causes of the problems or the solutions. So if you say "Yeah, but I'm not talking about all white people" you should be able to exchange that to "black" instead and still not be racist for it not to be racist for example.

People are very similar. It is nice to find a common enemy and it is nice to generalize. So on 4chan people analyze and find that black people are the problem and generalize about black people and in certain groups people find that white men are the problem and tend to generalize about white men.

tathougies7• 7 years ago

How is this different than someone saying "I think feminists are trash, and feminists who disagree with me should take time to understand what I mean."

In other words, do you understand why what you are saying is victim blaming?

zanmat0• 7 years ago

Rise up over that bs. Something is wrong with the world, not with you.

scarejunba3• 7 years ago

Go to a different volunteer place. This one sounds kinda fun by assholes.

herr_warrum3• 7 years ago

You live in Seattle, don't you? The reason I ask is because I feel more or less the same way.

I wake up at 6 am so that I can volunteer as a teaching assistant for public school CS classes.

I work with a dog rescue, spending weekends cleaning poop out of kennels and walking dogs.

And yet, native Seattleites will still accuse me of ruining "their" city. I doubt that most of these people make a fraction of the amount of effort that I do to contribute to the community. They just sit on their asses and complain on social media.

SomeOldThrow2• 7 years ago

And yet, native Seattleites will still accuse me of ruining "their" city.

If you listen to them, their complaints are likely not that "there's too much dog poop" and "kids these days just don't know enough cs" but rather "money is making the city unlivable for those not connected to tech".

I doubt that most of these people make a fraction of the amount of effort that I do to contribute to the community. They just sit on their asses and complain on social media.

You're literally doing the same thing you're accusing them of. Besides, effort is a really poor metric for measuring the effect you have on the world.

leesec3• 7 years ago

And yet, native Seattleites will still accuse me of ruining "their" city.

When?

Do they come up to you and point fingers and blame you?

Are they your friends or just strangers?

Why do you care what they think at all?

strikelaserclaw3• 7 years ago

Where the hell do you live that you not only experience this but experience it enough that it affects your mental health. I've lived in multiple states, worked for multiple companies and I've yet to experience either the extreme SJW, or the extreme bigotry/racism side of things.

herr_warrum3• 7 years ago

It's not a problem for you, and therefore not a problem, amiright?

criddell3• 7 years ago

I am everything wrong with the world because I am an evil, cis, white, monogamous, straight male.

Maybe work on the part about being evil. The rest of the the things you listed grant you an advantage in life even today.

cityofdelusion• 7 years ago

Where do you live that has this attitude? Perhaps you could relocate to someplace more friendly. I live in the southern U.S., volunteered in a majority womens group and never heard comments approaching anything like what you described. Everyone was very welcoming and nice. Try a different industry or location. You don’t have any obligation to put up with being insulted.

misiti3780• 7 years ago

where do you live ? why are you satan because you work in tech ?

luckylion6• 7 years ago

Don't try to win over people by appeasing them, it won't work and you'll hate yourself in the end. Helping those in need is great, but you need to do it in a way that doesn't burn you out. It sounds like that's the route you're on.

thrower1232• 7 years ago

Find some people that appreciate you, and leave the ungrateful ones to rot in their own venom. Life is too short to give the time of day to people that just want to tear you down. Like the horse in Animal Farm, if you give more, they'll take more, until you are nothing but a bitter, worn out husk.

Raphmedia• 7 years ago

Don't beat yourself up over it. I myself am transgender and I am still regularly banned from LGBTQ+ online communities simply because I am not an activist and caution against extremism.

For many people, it is a cultural war. You are either "with us" or "against us".

Online media and online narratives are written in such a way that anyone outside your own group is perceived as evil. The filtering bubble effect of closed communities ("safe spaces") often aggravates the situation. I have seen people with balanced positions turn to the far right and others to the far left in knee jerk reactions to negative experiences.

What you hear is the loud minority of a minority. Racism and sexism against white males do exist. The people who hold those values are just as bigoted as any other racist or sexist individuals.

Most well rounded and balanced humans won't tell you that any demographic is "evil". In fact, most people just want to spend their days without thinking about others.

inscionent5• 7 years ago

Most well rounded and balanced humans won't tell you that any demographic is "evil".

This. We must break down own issues and barriers to truly connect to others.

kaitai12• 7 years ago

Everyone has to deal with the particular voices in their head. Women, men, genderqueer, whatever color; the voices in our head tailor themselves to attack our own particular worries, because they're part of us.

You have a part of you that is aware of the random lucky breaks you've gotten in life, which might not have been lucky in other times or places. That's a fine thing -- it's useful. But then you've got a part of you that takes that further and makes you feel undeserving, or makes you pick up and amplify on comments that resonate with that feeling of attack. Why?

To go back to the article, etc., do you have countervailing messages in your life, from family for instance?

I'm someone currently organizing a bunch of STEM outreach events for the summer, and I truly value my white dude allies who are volunteering, connecting me with speakers using their networks, asking their corporate overlords to fund us, and so on.

There is a ton of negativity in the world, as you alluded to, and we all pick up on the messages that are designed to hit us. This is a human problem, and you're not alone.

luckylion6• 7 years ago

Everyone has to deal with the particular voices in their head.

The "voices in their head" that are other people's voices?

badpun3• 7 years ago

If you feel that these voices are stupid or even callous, why can't you just see that as that, and prompty ignore them? You're not the problem, they are.

It's more problematic if you're depressed at the state of the world, i.e. that so many people voice wrong and hurtful convictions - that I can somewhat sympathise with.

leesec3• 7 years ago

Who calls you a devil? Can you name any explicit times when people have mentioned or acted in a way regarding your sexuality/gender/profession?

scythe• 7 years ago

I constantly have to listen to my coworkers gleefully talk about how excited they are at how few young boys show up to our events. I hear them blatantly express disdain when a couple do.

This is not appropriate behavior. There’s no excuse for discriminating against children.

It’s okay to be bothered by this. It’s okay to call people out when they do this. In practice you need to be extremely polite and patient, and offer measured criticisms.

kadendogthing3• 7 years ago

The feelings of “you’re a white male and you work in tech and you are wealthy you are a SATAN” is just becoming too much :(.

Yeah this literally doesn't happen.

Theodores• 7 years ago

Yes but are you able to say you have a friendship on an equal ground with trust going on with any of the homeless you help out? To the extent that you use euphemisms to explain their homeless situation?

Stick with it, there are rewards, if one of your homeless friends cooks you a meal or takes you out for your birthday or even lends you money then I think you can re-evaluate this 'helping' thing.

Also try and do things with money more as personal philanthropy, not through a structured charity. You would be surprised at how that works out. People do get back on their feet at they do pay you back. It can be important for them to do so because you were that person there for them when nobody else was.

It is possible to be white, male, cis-gendered, educated, able to earn money and still be treated as a world citizen. Intellect is universally appreciated, but it has to come with listening and willingness. People of all walks of life from all over the globe should be able to sense a happiness and peace that you have deep within, to get this within seconds of meeting you.

You could be spending your time with the upwardly mobile, going places crowd. Or you could give up your time to be best buddies with that elderly guy who can't remember what he did two minutes ago. Or some homeless local. In normal upwardly mobile society that would be a shameful thing to do - waste time on the 'weak'. Your rotten coworkers are stuck in this paradigm.

So you have to do things for your own motivations and ignore the crowd. There also has to be some reward in it for you. Seeing someone get their health back and their sense of being back is pretty good, particularly if you can look back on it and not be able to take any credit, with them having done it all themselves. Same in the educational setting, you should be able to reflect and realise they did whatever it was.

There is a difference between 'help' and 'enabling'. Receiving is also important, if your homeless buddy makes you something or pays you back (when some random grandparent dies) then that is more like it. Obviously you cannot take gifts from senile old folk because they don't know what they are doing!!!

Sometimes the personal philanthropy budget can grow rather than shrink. This is not a given, but people do get insurance payouts, fluffy animals can turn out to be insured and people do move on in their lives to not need the same material stuff. The more audacious you are with transformative sums with zero strings attached then the more likely it is that you will get calls out the blue with random Christmasesque paybacks.

You talk of feeling depressed and lonely, if you were to be realistic about the world then you could think that this is actually a fair and realistic sentiment.

I think you will feel a lot happier if you move from formal charity things to personal philanthropy projects. Long term commitment to two people at a time is more the idea rather than turning up once a year at Christmas time to dole out sub standard food to the 'less fortunate'. (Not saying you do that conscience-buying charidy thing).

Right now you could take on some co-worker's loser teenage child and give them some data entry work and the space to grow a bit. Give it time and they could be the child your co-worker is most proud of, to go on to get the exams and everything. With one of your homeless buddies you could put together a single page website for their dog walking business, doing the SEO and picking up useful skills in design that would not be allowed in the day job. Just apply the hacker mentality.

residentfoam3• 7 years ago

I have been lucky enough to be able to work and live in several countries around the world. One thing in common I noticed in all these places is that guys and girls don't have time and don't want to commit to a stable long relation. They invest pretty much themselves and their time in their career, traveling , parties, dogs, cats and bitcoins :) !

The mantra is to get rich and retire at 40 years old! Travel the world and have fun.

By the time they are somewhat satisfied with theirs status they have reached ~35 years old. At that point is more difficult to find a person and accept to share your life and habits with them.

They are so used to live their own lives that they have extremely hard time compromising any part of it.

I think the society has (wrongly) evolved towards an individualist model at the expenses of families.

I have noticed that people have been more and more intolerant to family flying with kids. It is hard to find kids friendly restaurants, hotels and resorts. People invite you to parties and kids are always not welcome. Not to mention also the additional cost associated with having a family.

But you know what ? I am so happy every day when I come home and my kids run towards me and we play and have fun. I and my wife coudln't be happier!

A piece of advice, stop running, take time off and think about your life beyond work and money. Traveling is fun but is way more fun and interesting when you can share it with some one you care about, like your family!

xenospn2• 7 years ago

I think having kids is scientifically proven to make you unhappy and greatly increase your stress levels. It’s no wonder people just put off having kids until they can, or pass on having them altogether.

1zee• 7 years ago

That's a pretty general, sweeping claim to make without a source.

jerkstate3• 7 years ago

Conflating happiness (immediate) with satisfaction (long-term) is exactly the problem, nicely illustrated.

ogig• 7 years ago

Anecdote; my kid is my greatest source of happiness.

biohax2015• 7 years ago

If it's scientifically proven, there should be some research backing it up. Do you have a link to that research?

You cannot just say things like this without providing evidence.

rayiner5• 7 years ago

It's very complicated. Having kids at home makes you less happy (because they're work). But men who have had kids are significantly happier than men who never had kids once the kids are out of the house: https://ifstudies.org/blog/does-having-children-make-people-...

By the time the 2016 survey rolled around, fathers were 40% more likely than childless men to see themselves as very happy.

"Happiness" is also not the right concept here. Having kids doesn't necessarily make you "happy." But it's something people almost universally want: https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-norm.asp....

By age 45, 86% of people have had kids, and only 6% of those wish they had not had kids. By contrast, out of those who didn't have kids, more than half wish they did. Even more remarkably, among all adults age 45+, as many people wish they had five or more kids as wish they had no kids (11%).

There is pretty much no other life choice (college, career, etc.) that almost every body does that almost nobody regrets.

kaitai12• 7 years ago

The "science" you're referring to shows that parenting makes people less "happy" in any given moment while doing it and more "content" overall, more "satisfied" in older age. Moreover, there are significant country-by-country differences in these stats that seem to be tied to availability of high-quality, low-cost childcare and healthcare. One place to look for some overview of some of these studies is https://contemporaryfamilies.org/brief-parenting-happiness/

Ascetik• 7 years ago

That's the biggest crock I've ever read on HN. Where did this "science" come from? A bunch of self-obsessed journalists I'm sure or maybe /r/childfree?

The people who are unhappy with kids are the people who are unhappy, depressed and bitter to begin with, lacking all empathy. You have to be a pretty self-absorbed individual to not love the innocence and charm of children.

Every person I know with a family loves their children to death and are very content and happy. Happiness consists in pursuing the ultimate unchanging good and increasing in virtue, nothing passing in this life can give you ultimate everlasting happiness. It is a philosophical, metaphysical and theological question, not a question of children, free-time or money. Children are a good thing, but they're not the ultimate object whereby one becomes happy.

brianmc213• 7 years ago

I feel as though having children will make a lot of people very happy. But there is also a significant part(>1%) of the population that would be miserable.

I believe a lot of the unhappiness is often from someone who was pressured into a choice they didn't critically think about or didn't want but caved in. Even if the pool of people is small the experience could be quite negative. Where as all the people who always wanted them will be happy.

I took care of my brother and sisters a lot as a child and it made it very clear that I never wanted children.

zaccus3• 7 years ago

There's no way to objectively measure happiness, so no that hasn't been proven.

Personally, I've found having a kid to be less stressful, less expensive, and more rewarding than my college/career experience. I'm happier now than I ever was before. Yeah it's hard sometimes, but what isn't?

camelNotation6• 7 years ago

I have less than five kids, but more than one kid.

My kids cause me a lot of stress. The burden of knowing I have to deal with them and their energetic, ridiculous antics every day when I get home really drains me. I don't really have time to exercise anymore because from sun-up to sundown I am dealing with them, so I'm slightly overweight and out of shape in a way I was not before I had kids. My diet isn't as diverse as it was before I had kids either because I can't go to the same places I used to or take the time to prepare what I used to prepare. I've stayed in the job I have now for longer than I should just because I worry about keeping a steady salary, paying my bills, and caring for my kids more than I ever worried about those things before. I don't spend a lot of money on self-care or personal enjoyment anymore because I need to save it in case something goes wrong and I need to spend the money on them.

Am I less happy? YES. I am less happy than before.

But if I was given the choice to go back, I wouldn't. I wouldn't even consider it. Not even for a millisecond. I don't know why and I really don't need to know why, but having kids is just better than being happy. I don't want to be happy, I want to be a good dad. It's true that being a parent makes you less happy, but it also makes happiness irrelevant (for the most part). It probably has something to do with evolution.

avip• 7 years ago

Happiness is overrated.

antisthenes• 7 years ago

Leaving aside the fact that you have not substantiated your claim, it could very well be that having kids in America makes you miserable, because the safety net is gutted or non-existent.

There is almost no maternal/paternal leave, health care costs are astronomical, so are child care costs, which are almost necessary, because the normal multi-generational family has been systematically destroyed over the last half-century, both with advertising and economic pressure. Not to mention the lack of compromising skills in both partners, which has been exacerbated by identity politics.

So yes, in context, maybe having kids is miserable*

*with caveats and not everywhere.

umvi2• 7 years ago

That's like saying it's scientifically proven that people who invest are poorer than people who hoard their cash (and don't invest). True in the short term, false in the long term.

joshuamcginnis• 7 years ago

Wouldn't that also contradict the biological imperative to pass on our genes? If having children had an overall and prolonged negative impact on your stress levels, it would also impede humans' ability to effectively procreate since stress has a direct impact on life expectancy and fertility. I can understand that in the short-term, that might be the case, but over a longer period (say the last 10k years) it does not appear to be true.

asdff• 7 years ago

Having kids takes a lot of time and money. If you work till 5 you need to pay for childcare, which isn't cheap at all and might even be akin to doubling your rent. Mom is also working so you can't just unload domestic work and childcare to someone else to worry about. If you are entry level chances are you need to get there before the boss and stay there after if you ever want to not be entry level, and work weekends during busy season, so even that 40hr week can go up to 50-60. If you are a woman asking for maternity leave in an entry level job could jeopardize your entire career trajectory. Even in superficially liberal SF, VC firms have been known to discriminate against women entrepreneurs just from the possibility that they might be pregnant one day. People can scarcely keep housing costs below 30% of their net income.

People are waiting until they have more money and a job that actually gives them time to raise a family. The real reason why people are putting off having kids is that it's not 1950 anymore.

tracker16• 7 years ago

IIRC, married couples with children have some of the highest happiness indexes of the entire world.

KevinS626• 7 years ago

It's easier to sell to lonely individuals than a satisfied family. Hence all the crazy pressure to work more and be less... human.

CydeWeys2• 7 years ago

You sure? People with families tend to spend more money (out of necessity). It's easier for people without kids to save up more money.

jansho2• 7 years ago

Mm, a radical idea these days! :) Lately I have come to realise that searching for the “cultured, polished being” and the “ideal life” actually made me feel even more insecure and trapping myself to my comfort zone. Oh yes doing a marathon is really stretching me. So is trying out new food. Watching a horrific war drama ... from a sofa. They’re all things that _I_ want, that _I_ control. When I get thrown into something totally random, especially when it’s stupid — like why is that kid crying? It’s just a sticker! — it distresses me a lot. Which is silly! Life is meant to be full of all sorts of randomness and silliness! So bizarrely, I am trying to do more normal things now. Like cleaning the house manually, talking to the old man next door, falling in love. All feels uncomfortable, but I feel more alive too!

jniedrauer9• 7 years ago

Bringing a child into the world to increase my own personal happiness, when nothing else I could do has such a direct and massive climate impact, is not something I can justify personally. Not to mention, my child would have to live to see the impacts of climate change.

There is coming a point (it has already passed, in my opinion), where we can no longer justify our purpose for existence as "creating more humans."

malvosenior14• 7 years ago

Aside from eradicating the human race, any changes to climate will have to be driven by humans. Someone’s child will help solve the problem. It could be your’s.

residentfoam3• 7 years ago

The way I see it is that you don't bring child into the world to "increase" your own personal happiness. They are (at least in my personal case) the result of my own happiness. And yes they require a lot of work, but all the hard work is totally worth it every time your children look at smile at you.

ecoled_ame4• 7 years ago

Seriously. The only reason I could justify having kids would be if I looked around, thought to myself "gee, there seems to be a shortage of people", and then I would replicate. Justifying replication for the sake of one's happiness is such a logical folly that it makes me die inside.

Robotbeat7• 7 years ago

That's an extremely negative-sum way of viewing the world. Some individual humans (and even communities) can and have had a net-positive impact on the environment. For instance, did the parents of Greta Thunberg have a net-negative impact on the world by choosing to bring her into it?

When people implicitly say that bringing children in the world is necessarily a net-negative on climate, they're implying that their lifestyle is necessarily net-carbon-positive and that they just refuse to do enough to make their own lifestyle net-carbon-negative. Yet it IS possible to do so. I'm reminded of this Indian fellow who planted an entire forest pretty much by himself (although surely his wife/family also helped enable him to accomplish that goal): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7i3QlMvsZs

...there are so many decisions one can make to cut one's carbon emissions to near zero. And some decisions can even make one's carbon emissions negative (some startups at Y Combinator, even... although there are more proven methods as well).

The most powerful thing as a parent is that you can help pass on your values to your children. Teach them (through example) how to live a low or negative carbon lifestyle and teach them the value of the environment and why the Earth must be protected. Plant trees. Make intentional decisions with lifestyle (mode of travel, living arrangements, diet) that lower carbon emissions, and explain these things to your children starting at a young age.

Because the world will NEED people with those values in the future if climate change will ever be addressed and eventually reversed without a collapse of human civilization. Because if everyone with a positive view of the environment and the need to fight climate change does not pass on that worldview to their children, BUT those who deny climate change and do not value the environment pass on their worldview to their children, then that is clearly not going to work out for those who value the environment.

lordnacho• 7 years ago

You're going to die someday though, and so will whoever you make the kid with. So that will reduce the impact.

Plus there's an assumption we won't figure out climate change. Why assume that kid will be as bad for the environment as you?

kaftoy• 7 years ago

Maybe your child will be a part of a generation who can have a realm impact over the climate, in a positive way, or maybe just a path to it. And creating more humans is not only a purpose, it is also the means of existence.

BeetleB4• 7 years ago

Bringing a child into the world to increase my own personal happiness, when nothing else I could do has such a direct and massive climate impact, is not something I can justify personally. Not to mention, my child would have to live to see the impacts of climate change.

I find your comment, and your subsequent replies, exemplifies the headline of the submission quite well:

The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

tracker16• 7 years ago

That is the single most negative comment I've seen in a while... I'm glad you aren't spreading your view to a new generation.

AnimalMuppet4• 7 years ago

There is coming a point (it has already passed, in my opinion), where we can no longer justify our purpose for existence as "creating more humans."

Two comments. First, within evolution (true, a brutal and inhumane theory), the point of life is exactly to survive and reproduce. It is literally unnatural to deliberately choose to not have children (unless you don't believe in evolution).

Second, I presume that you don't mean for this to be taken to the point of nobody having children, that is, to the extinction of the human race. I get the impression that some eco-types think that would be a good thing; I deeply disagree.

trizzak2• 7 years ago

People who care deeply about the planet are exactly the people who should pass their sensibilities to the next generation.

mac010212• 7 years ago

I'm not sure all that logic is sound.

First, having a child does not require you to travel more, get a bigger house, keep it warmer or cooler, buy non-second-hand clothes or do anything else with a significant carbon footprint beyond grocery shopping (which admittedly has a nontrivial footprint). It's not until adulthood that they'll really start to have a full fledged carbon footprint of their own.

Second, social animals that we are, a person's net total impact on the carbon footprints of others can be much larger than that person's individual, "direct" footprint. Raise your kid the right way and their footprint could, in a very real sense, be negative.

Third, there are some indications that the point in the future where we either solve climate change or fail catastrophically is near enough that it may have past before your kid reaches that damaging, adult phase.

Your kid would live to see the impacts of climate change, though. If we as a society would just put a price on carbon emissions and reimburse the externalized costs through a fee & dividend system, even that would not be a problem (in theory) because your kid would be compensated financially for any climate-change-induced hardship.

40acres2• 7 years ago

I heard someone describe this as the "capstone" vs "conerstone" model. Previous generations got married and had kids much earlier, and built their lives off of that cornerstone. When it comes to me personally and my peers, we see marriage and children more as a capstone -- something to be done once our student loan is paid, or when we're ready to put a down payment on a house, when we get that promotion, etc.

sdegutis4• 7 years ago

I know two sisters who each got married.

The older one practiced worldly prudence, courted during high school, got engaged at beginning of college, and waited almost a decade until after her fiancé graduated before they got married and started to have children. But now he can't get a job with his degree (pharmacist), she works at some retail job as a manager, and the whole family lives with her parents. He's in >$100,000 debt and briefly went to a medical facility during a nervous breakdown after realizing he realistically can't pay it back.

The younger sister had no such ambitions. Courted in high school, got engaged, married right out of high school, immediately started a family, he works at Walmart making higher than average money, and she stays at home raising the kids. They also live with her parents in the same house.

True stories. This all happened over the past 7 years.

I would say the prudence of the second couple vastly outshines the "prudence" of the first couple.

merpnderp2• 7 years ago

I'm still in awe that starting off your life with massive student loans is a thing. This is almost always a very poor decision as there are tons of cheap regional schools where a part time job can mostly get you through school with very little debt. And yet we've got a generation of new adults starting life under crushing debt that purchased them something of dubious value (an expensive degree versus a cheap one). My regional university had a decent CS program and tuition was $3k/year.

DisruptiveDave2• 7 years ago

Got married at 38, first kid coming at 40. Had nothing to do with debts and all that other stuff; I chose to live out my wild years to full satisfaction and natural completion.

sdegutis4• 7 years ago

Pope Francis talks a lot about this in Amoris Laetitia[1] on the topic of Love in the Family. I've only finished the first two chapters but so far he has talked a lot about the same points you mentioned, and brought a lot of insights. My memory is failing me right now on specifics, but it's a very useful and insightful read for anyone who has a family, even if you're not Catholic.

http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations...

stronglikedan2• 7 years ago

I have noticed that people have been more and more intolerant to family flying with kids.

This alone would encourage me to fly with my kids as often as possible.

Nagyman• 7 years ago

A lot of people have kids _for themselves_. There are a lot of other endeavours one can pursue that will bring happiness. I think where we fail as a society, is in teaching ourselves how to find those pursuits, surround ourselves with friends, and avoid loneliness.

The mantra is to get rich and retire at 40

Hrm, I question the circle of people you're surrounded by. Many millennials are struggling to afford the basics, let alone travel or have a family!

This is a contentious and potentially unpopular opinion, but I posit that having children borders on unethical at this point in history. We've wrecked the planet and have growing anti-intellectual culture.

I'm happy you're happy though.

curious_fella1• 7 years ago

edit: That seems a little extreme and defeatist IMO.

maneshi2• 7 years ago

And whose tax money will be looking after you in your old age, when you have no family of your own to take care of you? The children of those ‘unethical’ people you tediously condescend so proudly up on your high horse.

hindsightbias• 7 years ago

and have growing anti-intellectual culture.

From this thread, it would appear to be baked-in as a function of self-selection.

One might argue intellectuals have an obligation to procreate.

tasty_freeze2• 7 years ago

Adopt a child. They will have an environmental impact whether you adopt them or not; presumably you will provide them a better life than an orphanage, and you can experience the joys and pains of parenthood.

Barrin924• 7 years ago

I think the society has (wrongly) evolved towards an individualist model at the expenses of families.

that's a wrong dichotomy. There's no fundamental reason why 35 year olds don't socialize, or why our education system stops at 25, why we have no communal institutions, and so on.

The alternative isn't just between individualism and the family, what is needed is building out communities in ways that gives people the ability to connect in new ways that reflect our changes in work and living arrangements.

As the article mentions the UK has introduced a minister for the problem of loneliness. What we need is to put policies into place that develop new modes of social life and to expand the public sphere.

The nuclear family isn't really that attractive any more for a reason, so just asking to go back isn't really a great idea. People like the freedom that comes with having no or fewer children, being able to move, and being financially independent.

swejo• 7 years ago

That is an interesting opinion.

Can you expound on what you would propose. My experience is that clubs or meetups often don't forge all that close relationships. Another example I could think of which is more positive is co-ops where people lived in a door room type experience with community rules and chore responsibilities (cooking, cleaning, maintenance). But I think many adult American's would think of a co-op as to close to a commune.

roymurdock3• 7 years ago

i'm 26 and have traveled a fair bit and lived/worked in the US and UK

young people go to the cities for high status, high paying jobs to pay off student loans and/or save up for the future in an increasingly uncertain world

competition is extremely high for these jobs, compounded 1000x due to the rise and use of social media among my generation, which always suggests that next thing to buy or that next vacation to go on, either from corporations or your "friends" (it's hard to tell which is which after a while) - get that raise so you can unlock the next tier of stuff you see wealthy people doing

gone are the days of getting an intellectually stimulating and well paying job with IBM/Ford/GE and building your career off it while having a family young, people my age usually stay in a job for 2/3 years then on to the next startup/job/"adventure" (if they have the right degree to get a job in the first place)

then there's a completely separate cohort of people my age who have settled outside the city, gotten married, looking to have kids in low cost of living areas and figure out job stuff as they go (very risky unless you own your own biz or work for a family biz)

dating is a similarly competitive game in the big cities, one that warrants its own 10 page essay per city based on the conversations i've had with single friends in LA/NY/London/SF

the gap between generations is growing more and more pronounced/quicker due to technology grouping similar people together and amplifying their cultures...it takes effort but you need to continuously bridge this gap with those younger than you, otherwise their needs, desires, motivations will be completely alien to you - i almost don't understand the fortnite meme generation, but i make efforts to

most young people are acutely aware of life outside work and money (especially asians/immigrants due to pressure from conservative parents), but it's getting harder and harder to find the middle class/balance between earning enough to have a family comfortably and affording a place to live while keeping your job options healthy/open for whatever BS is coming next down the economic chain

rewgs• 7 years ago

28 here, and I agree completely. Nice point about the people who try to figure the job thing out while taking the more “traditional” path — I feel like that’s a sizable part of our generation that’s usually ignored.

Also, yeah, I don’t get the memes that my high school niece sends me at all. Their sense of humor is completely foreign to me.

badpun3• 7 years ago

young people go to the cities for high status, high paying jobs to pay off student loans and/or save up for the future in an increasingly uncertain world

The current world is very capitalistic - high risk and high reward. Smart people are aware that there are paths that will allow them to retire at 40 or earlier, and are trying to pursue them. Unfortunately, these paths often require lots of dedication, so people neglect other areas of life. Whereas in earlier days, there were perhaps fewer good paths to financial independence, and people just accepted being in their jobs until old age, and tried to find comfort in family, friends etc.

Barrin924• 7 years ago

gone are the days of getting an intellectually stimulating and well paying job with IBM/Ford/GE and building your career off it while having a family young,

well for me personally at least that's a great thing. Working for giant company X while living in company town coming home to your labradoodle and your wife with a cooking pot to in hand to watch TV to me is the horror very well portrayed in American Beauty.

Coming out of university I could pick between going abroad, working for a startup, working for a normal business, working from home even, not being looked down for not wanting a family and so on. The liberty I have today is something my parents never had. And sure, with freedom comes disorientation and competition, but to me that's exciting rather than distressing.

StreamBright2• 7 years ago

And on the child-parent relationship front, we are not doing much better. As a result, kid going to schools that make them fit in cutting out creativity. It is much more rewarding to home school your kids and spends time with them bith in terms of their success later on and emotional development.

jbigelow76• 7 years ago

I have noticed that people have been more and more intolerant to family flying with kids.

I think we hear about the bad stuff, some flight attendant or passenger complains, and the logical conclusion of a family with a crying baby is booted is the end result. My counter-anecdote is the exact opposite, my fourteen month old daughter cried the majority of our 3.5 hour return flight and she was quietest (not quiet but quietest) was when I was standing and holding her in the middle of the aisle. Any dirty looks, and I scanned for them occasionally, were non-existent (or I missed them and they never vocalized) and most people either had noise-cancelling headphones or just rolled with it. When we apologized for the noise there was a lot of "Oh ours our teenagers now, we've been there, you're ok!"

Some of it maybe the bigger stink they make the longer it all takes, but a lot of it is probably shared communal experiences. If some baby was wailing their lungs off next to me on a plane, I'd roll with it, the parent(s) is having a far tougher time of it then I am.

genema2• 7 years ago

Same observation here. I've never seen anyone give dirty looks to any crying kids / babies on a plane. Most people are closing their eyes / sleeping or have their headphones on doing whatever. I mean, there are so many solutions to a crying kid (for the observer) that there's no reason to get upset about it (and I haven't seen this being the case at all).

umvi2• 7 years ago

You even have movies promoting this lifestyle... La La Land anyone?

wetpaws• 7 years ago

I believe what you described is called 'survivor bias'.

kleiba• 7 years ago

Sorry, but I call baloney.

I know you're just describing your personal impression and don't claim them to be universally true.

But allow me to present some evidence, er, anecdote to the contrary: I have also traveled the world and lived on three continents. I met lots of cool people and was lucky enough to make friends with some of them in all the places that I visited. I never observed the same as you apparently did, namely that they invested themselves in nothing but their career, traveling, parties, etc.

As a matter of fact, coming to think of it, a lot of the people I know (most of them college age) were also from abroad and made sure to stay involved with the family business back home as much as they could. Also, a lot of my friends were actually couples, showing that they cared for more than just work and individual leisure. Some of them got married since.

Of course, differences may be due to a number of reasons. What area of work you're in, for example. What geographical location you're in. And naturally, you probably tend to make friends with people that are to some degree similar in some respect. Also, there's varying degrees of peer pressure to like the same things if you want to be part of the in-crowd (or any crowd you like, really). Oh, and let's not forget: cultural background.

So I don't think you can generalize as much as you did in your post.

ismail-khan• 7 years ago

They are so used to live their own lives that they have extremely hard time compromising any part of it.

Reminds me of this passage from The Brothers Karamazov:

“I heard exactly the same thing, a long time ago to be sure, from a doctor,” the elder remarked. “He was then an old man, and unquestionably intelligent. He spoke just as frankly as you, humorously, but with a sorrowful humor. ‘I love mankind,’ he said, ‘but I am amazed at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular, that is, individually, as separate persons. In my dreams,‘ he said, ‘I often went so far as to think passionately of serving mankind, and, it may be, would really have gone to the cross for people if it were somehow suddenly necessary, and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone even for two days, this I know from experience. As soon as someone is there, close to me, his personality oppresses my self-esteem and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I can begin to hate even the best of men: one because he takes too long eating his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps blowing his nose. I become the enemy of people the moment they touch me,’ he said. ‘On the other hand, it has always happened that the more I hate people individually, the more ardent becomes my love for humanity as a whole.’”

The speaker goes on to say:

Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one’s life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and everyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science.

hi412• 7 years ago

Nice quote. Does the author tell why he ends up hating a human when he loves humanity. I think I too have that problem. I look at all the TED talks and think I should love humanity but I have a bad husband to my wife and a bad father to my kids. tia.

SergeAx3• 7 years ago

They are so used to live their own lives that they have extremely hard time compromising any part of it.

I say that when someone having extremely hard time doing something, he/she just doesn't need that something hard enough. Most of the people rarely have hard time eating or drinking or watching interesting movie or spending time with friends.

Before XX century it was extremely hard to live alone, unless one have stable source of income or an inheritance. For lay people family was just a question of survival. Children was the only recipe of aging in dignity.

It is still valid in XXI century, but now there are other ways to live one's life. Forties is not an age of retirement, but a most active age of reaping rewards and even starting a new ventures. There are other means of self realization besides family and children. I don't see anything particularly bad about it.

ramraj07• 7 years ago

Good news is there are still people who get married and have kids. Bad news is they're definitely the less introspective (for lack of a less offensive word) than the ones that don't get married.

My interpretation is that we finally have the freedom from cultural norms to really do whatever we please, but with great freedom comes great responsibility, not just to society but to our own long-term selves. Perhaps these people you talk about have chosen poorly, very poorly indeed, with this freedom. Nothing to do but advise the ones who might listen, and build a moat (physical or mental) that can protect you and your loved ones from them when shit hits the fan.

tracker16• 7 years ago

Along a similar note... kids are for the young. When you're in your 20's it's MUCH easier to play with young kids and at least try to keep up as it is when you're in your 40's.

There's also something to be said for averting hookup culture and actually trying to build a relationship as opposed to ejecting at the first sign of inconvenience.

I say both of these things as a twice divorced 40-something that hasn't had kids of his own and deeply regrets it.

duderific2• 7 years ago

FWIW I'm 50 and have an almost 5-year-old and almost 1-year-old. So far I'm keeping up with them OK.

I am a bit worried about having an 18 year old and being 68 though. We'll see how it goes.

rb8083• 7 years ago

I have been lucky enough to be able to work and live in several countries around the world. One thing in common I noticed in all these places is that guys and girls don't have time and don't want to commit to a stable long relation.

This could be selective though. If you're living in expat communities in global hubs, everyone knows people are there for only a short time, so its not worth investing in long term commitment.

genema2• 7 years ago

Can you give examples of how people have become more intolerant of families flying with kids? Every flight I've been on where there was a kid crying the whole time, nobody so much as flinched. I think people understand that kids cry, and the situation is only worsened in a pressurized cabin. I'm curious what specific experiences you had that made you make that statement?

trey-jones• 7 years ago

My life is currently more chaotic and exhausting than ever, with three young daughters and a wife in the house with me. There's not much time for doing things because I want to do them. I sometimes think about the man who was my favorite uncle growing up. He's nearly 80 now, never married, no kids. Did whatever he wanted in his 30s and 40s (and 50s and 60s for that matter) I'm sure. My mom and her sister go stay with him for a week every year.

Not saying that I couldn't end up alone at his age, but I'd like to think my kids will be around some. My mom told me once that when their mother died she (my grandmother) told my mom "Take care of your brother. He doesn't have anyone who loves him more than anyone else." Even without putting it that way, I've never regretted the chaotic, noisy, exhausting life (of sacrifice? Yeah I think so) that I've chosen.

scarejunba3• 7 years ago

I had this problem a few years ago but I think all my friends reached the realization at the same time as me so now we hang out all the time.

That plus MDMA every now and then and going to shows with my friends has pretty much dealt with my last few issues with socialization.

CydeWeys2• 7 years ago

This is why I've never lived alone. I always either lived with family, lived with roommates, or recently, lived with my girlfriend. I'm not the most proactively social person and if I didn't live with people then I know I'd definitely get too lonely.

mgolawala• 7 years ago

Actually one of the things my wife and I often discuss is how with our current society even what we consider our "nuclear family" is at most just a part time family.

For most of humanity a family group stayed together for the majority of each day. Children played with siblings, cousins and were usually within earshot of one of their parents or relatives. Certainly they would have found their way back when hungry. As they got older, they worked right beside their parents on the various chores and tasks.

In modern western society, the spouses are separated for the majority of their waking hours. (Even if one spouse chose to stay at home, the issue would still remain as the other spouse would have to go to work). The children spend either a significant or a major portion of their time in day care or school, also separated from their siblings. Then throw in the after school activities, projects and homework needed to create a modern "well rounded" child. (Don't even get me started on how un-affordable it is to have kids)

They do get to have a rushed breakfast together and hopefully a good dinner as well, but that is about it. A significant portion of the weekend is spent doing chores. Add in the American working culture of taking very few vacation days.

The decline of the family is because our culture has created an environment where we are working .. working constantly.. (either chasing a higher standard of living or running as fast as we can just to maintain our current standard of living (housing, education, healthcare), working so you can afford to have kids) and we work in an environment where we are disconnected from our family and friends. Often, if you are lucky, you make friends at work.. but almost always these aren't like the friends you made at high school, they aren't as meaningful and strong. Then People change jobs and you "stay in touch"... If you are lucky, you find the person you love at work, but work places romances are tricky as well.. sometimes (usually?) frowned upon.

We just have much less TIME to build those sorts of deep bonds. Visit a village or a small town in the developing world and observe how much more TIME people seem to have. How much more time they spend with each other.

mmsimanga2• 7 years ago

As someone from village in a developing world (I don't work there but visit at least once a year) I totally concur with all your sentiments. One of the things that takes some getting used when I am back home is how loosely scheduled days can be. There no such things as invites for lunch of dinner. People just pitch up and a plan is made. Wake in the morning and we supposed to go check on the cows. A cousin arrives as we eating breakfast, next thing it is 12 noon. Its too late now, cows are out grazing. Shrug, tomorrow is another day. No one stressed and it was good to see my cousin. I am not naive enough to think this is how life should be but it is nice break from my city life. We need a balance and of both sorts of lives and we don't have that balance in the city.

NateEag4• 7 years ago

Homeschooling gives at least one parent the opportunity to spend large amounts of time with their kids, and also gives the kids lots of time together.

Source: was homeschooled, starting to homeschool my own children (well, mostly my wife is, but I help where I can).

twoquestions• 7 years ago

There are other ways of solving the loneliness problem than economically castrating more than half the population in an attempt to return to an idealized past that never actually was. The world is different now than it was in the 1950s, and we're going to have to find different ways to get our necessary face-time, and luckily we have more tools to better take responsibility for our social health than we did even 10 years ago.

Are there anyone here outside the straight, white (or white-adjacent), male demographic who would like to return to having less economic opportunity?

defterGoose4• 7 years ago

I think that could be part of the problem: a necessary reliance on "tools" to take care of our social health. Whereas before a cohesive family or social group took care of the need for it's members' social well-being, now we have a toxic culture of individuality which impels a person to solve all their own problems, aided by a synthetic tool that first off incurs an altogether new cognitive fatigue while at the same time being tuned to turn a profit for someone else.

dangus4• 7 years ago

The article is long and I skimmed a bit.

It appears to be one of these pieces that just covers so many topics and issues, I'm not sure which ones correlate to loneliness and which ones don't.

I'll tell you one thing, and this is a personal belief: the modern way of making a living and the modern relationship to my family is far preferable to me than "the old way."

For most of human history we've had to stick with our families and build a large set of children in order to perform labor and work around high mortality rates. Usually we were all subsistence farmers or perhaps running a family business.

In no way to I prefer that lifestyle to that of modern life. Old style families tie everyone into the extended family. For better or worse you're stuck with your blood relatives and you must continue the family farm, family business, or whatever it is. Your fate is determined from the day you are born, and you must stick with these people no matter how toxic they are.

Yes, it's possible to be lonely thanks to overwork, distance (physical or emotional) from family, or a number of other factors that have some kind of connection to modern life.

But also, I most definitely don't want to live with my parents, or with my children forever. I want them to have the luxury of living around whoever they choose, not who they're born into having a relationship with.

In the past, a lot of these choices were made for us because that's what our community and family expected from us. I would not trade that aspect of familial social pressure, lack of freedom, and predetermined expectations for some (rectifiable) modern day loneliness.

iamgopal• 7 years ago

Lots of choices are toxic and most people underutilise free will. Society will have to pay the cost in terms of poor mental health and related issues. Some people thrives alone while someone else in groups. Both should co-exist for functional society.

dangus4• 7 years ago

I think your first sentence is a great way to sum up what I was trying to say.

What we have now that we didn't use to have is an actual freedom to choose our path - at least, relative to what we had in the past pre-industrialization.

It is indeed very easy to make a lot of choices that result in loneliness or unhappiness. But at least more of us have those choices.

BeetleB4• 7 years ago

I think you're believing in a false dichotomy. You can have a full family experience without doing labor, or working a farm, or a family business. Look at immigrant families from certain parts of the world. When I lived in the Midwest, I interacted with them. Most of them were well educated, and not doing business or laborious work. They were spread apart in different cities, but mostly within driving distance. Culturally, they insisted on maintaining close social ties.

A coworker of mine who is in his 30's (PhD in engineering, doing tech work) is thinking he'll move back to the Midwest where his family is after 2-3 more years here (West coast). He loves it here (especially the weather), but all the niceties in culture and weather here don't compensate for the lack of having family and cousins nearby. His kids will grow up there, just as he did.

(Just in case anyone is wondering, he's not white, and so will be moving back to a much less diverse part of the country).

Having experienced both sides, there are definitely down sides to close family ties, but I view family as a wider spectrum. If your relatives are horrible (or way out of sync with your mindset), then it's much worse than the individualist mindset. But if you get along with them, it's way better than anything you can achieve as an individualist.

dangus4• 7 years ago

I see your point here.

On the other hand I wonder if we've prematurely jumped to this conclusion that non-immigrant Americans have this horribly individualist culture where we shun all our relatives once we have a professional job. Like, what actual evidence is pointing us to that? Is it just feelings, or is there some kind of metric we can look at?

I don't have an answer, just thinking about it.

flattone3• 7 years ago

Better to be lonely sometimes than to be divorced ever IMO.

UI_at_80x243• 7 years ago

My first wife might agree with you, me? Not so much.

I'm not the same person I was 10 years ago, so why would I expect her to be the same women I fell in love with 10 years ago?

It's not a crime to change, grow, evolve; so why punish the person you are with?

flattone3• 7 years ago

See... But I agree with you.

Which is why I'm voting to not get married ever. So far.

egypturnash3• 7 years ago

Move to another city. Leave your small-town life. Chase your dream. Live alone. Pay more per capita to landlords. Pay more per capita for basic services, for staple foods. Pay businesses to do the household chores that you can't handle alone when you're also working a full-time job, and don't have a family to spread them out among.

Buy more stuff to fill that emotional hole. Consume.

Live in an apartment. Never see your neighbors. Wonder why you can't make friends.

Fly home once or twice a year to watch your parents slowly die of loneliness in the small town you left. And to watch them slowly become strangers to you; what do you have in common? Their only friends now are the talking heads on Fox News and you're a big-city liberal.

Eventually, fly home to bury one of them. Probably the other one in anywhere from a few months to a year.

It's the American dream.

beerbajay• 7 years ago

Leave the small town attitudes and pervasive small town social control. Live in close contact with people of many backgrounds and experiences. Learn to be your own person. Earn substantially more in the city, so pay a smaller percent of your wages for basic services and staple foods. Have access to a set of services which are unsupportable in sparse populations. Have your parents become assholes as they are propagandized into xenophobia by a giant foreign corporation.

sp5272• 7 years ago

Pay more per capita to landlords.

If you run the numbers, no one should want to be a landlord. Atrocious ROI. Homes are horrific investments if you live in them and still terrible even if you rent them out. I would encourage anyone who thinks otherwise to model this out for any major city/region to convince themselves.

Renting is a great deal. You pay less, get better ROI on what would have been the downpayment by investing it elsewhere, and there's someone contractually obligated to deal with most things that can go wrong. And if you're in California, chances are you benefit from a lot of regulations that protect tenants as well.

defterGoose4• 7 years ago

If you live as a renter in California, you are almost certainly not getting "a great deal", and the regulations that benefit you are probably only in the form of being protected from meaningless eviction and substandard living conditions. If you're an owner of property in California, OTOH, you're likely taking advantage of a tax rate that was calculated on your property's value 39 years ago.

ph4• 7 years ago

Don't move. Stay in your small town. Narrow the scope of your dreams, dial down your ambition to something more reasonable. Jettison idealistic principles, come to terms with self-imposed limits on your potential using elaborate rationalizations. Opt-out of the status game by creating a new I-don't-need-status game. Struggle to find opportunity in a stagnant or declining economy. Struggle to find a compatible partner in a significantly smaller dating pool. Earn less. Pay less for lower quality food from chain restaurants. Pay less for housing with limited access to natural or cultural wonders of any kind. Explore and experience less. Settle. Compromise.

Make some friends. Go to your friends' funerals when they die from opioid overdoses. Make some new friends. Go to the local bar with them, listen to the same songs. Every weekend.

Your parents die anyway.

It's the American dream.

(I don't think either of these depictions are helpful or accurate).

throw51319• 7 years ago

This is exactly what I struggle with every day as I work in the city at 27. It's just a bunch of experiences usually without true depth because of the devaluation of one to one connections in the big hustle and bustle.

Then my parents get older and older and I think is this it, will I just work here until they pass away and also my good friends in other cities or towns aren't as good friends anymore because I can't feasibly visit them all every few months.

So I end up with like 300k, mid 30's, and not many close connections.

ryanmercer• 7 years ago

As convert of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints I can attest to this.

'Mormon' families do everything together, I'm amazed weekly at this 14ish years in.

Take dinner. Dinner for me growing up, until my father died just before I turned 13, would be my mother in one room - me in another - my father in a third eating dinner while we did our own things.

In jr and sr high school most Fridays it was "here's pizza money, I'll be back Sunday afternoon" (I'm not faulting my mother here, she'd call and check and was 10-15 minutes away in traffic, I was fine with her being gone so my friends and I didn't have to censor ourselves not that we'd be home other than to sleep anyway once one of us had a license) yet even back then you'd have never seen something like that with an LDS family. You'd have them eating most or all of their meals together, studying scripture together, doing activities together.

Even when kids grow up and marry they still, unless they move quite far away, often do things with their parents and siblings and it isn't uncommon to see those that have moved a state or two away to regularly drive home for long weekends, holidays, vacations etc.

These types are generally extremely happy and pleasant and will bend over backwards to help even strangers. Sure there is depression in the community but if you take them as a whole it's Ned Flanders and a bunch of my generation that doesn't have a strong family bond are an army of Eeyores.

Even if you just look at social media, for most it is "look at me, look at what I did, look at how cool I want you to think I am, give me your approval, give me your likes, give me your commons, comment and click to subscribe!" but with most LDS it is "here are a few family photos, I'm so proud of my distant relation/friend for doing thing/everyone congratulate THEM, we got a new used couch would anyone like our old one, it'd be great for a young couple?, we will be at so and so park playing a pickup game if anyone would like to bring their families and come join us".

They stress family, and appear genuinely happy more oft than not.

For me and my friends, family were people you were related to my blood and had to tolerate until you could go out on your own. A lot of my friends have unhealthy relationships and regularly seek therapy, I and my friends carefully curate our online presences to try and show our best not our normal, we sit around staring at Netflix or Hulu thinking "man, this sucks, I'm lonely, is it time to die yet, ugh I want to go get food but I don't want to eat alone... forget it I'll just order in".

When a family invites me over for FHE or dinner or to an activity, I genuinely don't want to go because it feels so foreign and I'm afraid I'll seem like more of a freak than I am. I'm so lonely that I'm afraid of being in social settings because I simply don't know what normal family dynamic is like and it just feels so alien. People have inside jokes with family members, they have fun stories and memories, they talk to their family...

My father's father was in the hospital on life support and no one told us, I found out when a friend that worked there noticed I hadn't visited and violated law by even talking to me about it and without them I'd have not even known. After his funeral a few weeks later I asked his brother some genealogy questions... he didn't even know his mother's maiden name or either of his grandmothers first names despite having known them for decades until their deaths... a few years later he died and neither of his adult children told us, I tried calling him one day to catch up and the number was disconnected and I found his obit. He lived 3~ miles from me. After my father's death, his father would only come to visit at Christmas despite living about 15 BLOCKS away and one of my father's brothers lived even closer and never came at all, I've seen him exactly twice since my father's funeral 21 years ago... worse, he had a diabetic episode a few years ago and laid on his floor for several days until a co-worker went to his house concerned that he hadn't come to work and his daughter had no idea he was even flippin' diabetic! It is no surprise to me most of my family, on both sides, had substance abuse problems and varying levels of depression, now they're nearly all dead.

My mother's mother went on life support and my mother's sisters took her off and never even told my mom she went on. This happened over a couple of days. My mother started receiving facebook messages from cousins and second cousins "so sorry for your loss"... this is how she found out her mother was dead... AFTER the funeral. Then in the same calendar year they repeated it when her father passed! Can you imagine that, you're in your 60's and your parents die and your sisters try and hide it from you, two different times mom barely got out of bed for weeks each time. Crying, depressed, feeling wholly abandoned. All because her side of the family was as dysfunctional as my father's.

When I tell this to my fellow members of the Church the look at me in horror, like I'm an alien that just landed on their lawn and ate one of their children and asked for a coke to wash them down because they value family and while they also have bad moments in life they are on average far far happier than me and my non-member friends.

creaghpatr• 7 years ago

Good story, and good point.

moorhosj4• 7 years ago

I find the HN comments on an article like this fascinating. So many people that admit to not having kids who think they are experts on what it means or is like to have kids.

Toine2• 7 years ago

Prepare for a generation of desperate people when they figure out that they actually wanted to have kids but it's too late.

NateEag4• 7 years ago

I mean, isn't that most non-software HN threads? A bunch of programmers opining loudly about subjects and fields they have not spent much time in?

jknoepfler• 7 years ago

Strange, I always thought the epidemic of loneliness in post-industrial countries was attributable to alienation from culture and community, because we'd replaced self-sufficiently interesting forms of life with meaningless jobs in equally meaningless service stores built in meaningless communities by faceless multinational conglomerates, sold with lifestyle ads bundled with meaningless mass entertainment to people lacking a cultural immune response to the siren song of shallow mass culture.

The nuclear suburban household is a manifestation of the soulless, profit-driven mass culture that we've been actively fleeing from ever since we woke up to find ourselves isolated amongst our acquaintances. Every generation in the West since the 1950s has engaged in a desperate scramble to find meaning and connection, because, spoilers, there's something hauntingly awful about eating microwave dinners in front of the television with your family after working 10 hours doing supply chain managment for WhateverCo. with a spouse with whom you never learned to communicate with and children whose only job is to stay on the rails and not get any strange ideas about life.

I don't even think that loneliness is intrinsically a bad thing. Pain is a signal that forces you to adapt.

rc_hadoken• 7 years ago

I still just don't find the appeal of married family life yet. Maybe itll change but if it doesn't I dont care. My creative output and need to learn have so far been part of a journey I find near orgasmic in enjoyment when I look back on how far I've come. Yes I'm an introvert but not the shy kind just the kind that needs two hours alone for every hour with people.

eruci• 7 years ago

What's wrong with being alone? The only problem I see is for people who can't handle a certain burden (X) _being_ alone.

Perhaps a right balance can be struck, but often times it is better to be alone (X) than to be around people you have to make a certain amount of effort (Y) to be with.

imgabe• 7 years ago

Most worthwhile things require some amount of effort.

blurbleblurble2• 7 years ago

I think it's not uncommon for people to experience loneliness because of the insularity of certain conventional styles of family (especially nuclear family, but even of extended family). Various forms of chosen family are too often taboo or devalued against more exclusive "proper" forms of family. In spite of this article's allusion, nuclear family has such strong privilege over alternative, less biologically immediate forms of kinship and community, and it's so easy for it to wipe them out altogether.

From my point of view, intensely idealized, exclusive biological family models are inherently lonely, as too often they marginalize and preclude opportunities for us to explore deeply our broader human kinship with one another.

My experience has been that various organic communities have given me some of the most wonderful joy. My own nuclear family wouldn't have survived, time and time again, if it weren't for each of our larger chosen families, and for our acceptance of each others' chosen families.

seltzered_• 7 years ago

One thing to keep in mind is city-journal.org / manhattan institute is a conservative think-tank (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy... ).

The author makes a lot of fair points I agree with but doesn't go into the positive situations - the change where people may have more ability now to get out of toxic families (or at least distance themselves), questioning how we can move beyond just religious congregations of community (perhaps congregation more around bioregionalism?). Or if awareness of resource limitations in the future may be causing less developed-world birth than earlier.

Finally, to quote David Chapman - ""Just as there are mental states only possible in crowds, there are mental states only possible in privacy."

Loneliness epidemic—or a golden age of privacy?"

https://mobile.twitter.com/Meaningness/status/97139760655443...

lostdog• 7 years ago

The author had a lot of interesting things to say, but I wish they were a lot more open about their biases. It's pretty clear that they are starting from the position that marriage and "traditional" family values are important, and therefore hard to tell whether or not they are glossing over or ignoring conflicting evidence.

geff82• 7 years ago

This is one of the reason I married into a (liberal) middle eastern family: while we have enough room for our own when we need it, the traditional family ties are so strong that it is impossible to get sick from loneliness. I'd rather be stressed from too many people around me than being alone, western style.

kamfc• 7 years ago

Opinion vs opinion driven by marketing. At the end of the day, the mom who chose to breast feed her baby using formula will argue that breast milk lack essential nutrients as opposed to scientifically researched formula and and the cross-fit practitioner will tell you their regime is safe and sound for the human body. Who wins at the end of the day? Me. The one selling you the dream with frequently purchased items such as products and services to improve your chosen lifestyle.

Solution? Build a family that consists of blood relation and friends that are not fickle like your aunt Judy. People who can show genuine support and encouragement when you talk to them about life. If the "family" doesn't show goodwill, boot them. You want absolute loyalty. Fuck high school drama.

Otherwise, you will grow old, grumpy and lonely like your uncle Jerry. Mom and dad are dead; best friend settled down with a family; old Henry broke off with you; and a trip to the Land of Smiles isn't so happy anymore when no one visits you, but elementary kids during their field trips to your retirement home.

Jokes aside, have a family or don't. People like me are the real winners...you're just a by-product of our secret marketing. With that said, how do you feel about our latest product we know can improve your lifestyle immediately without any side effects in less than 7 days for as little as $0.25 a day (ps: your friend probably uses it too, no wonder he's always better than you).

segmondy2• 7 years ago

I don't know that it's family alone, technology is helping. You can live vicariously through your palm today by holding on to a phone. We see it when people are out and about and peering deeply into their phone as if it's the end of the world. Most people spend more time looking into their phone than talking to others. In some ways it connects us to those far away but disconnects us from those closest to us. In Japan, the hikikomori sometimes have family and yet are lonely, and lock themselves up in their room and just live through black mirrors.

JTbane• 7 years ago

The family has declined in no small part due to the increasing portion of living costs that housing has occupied for many people.

irrational3• 7 years ago

Is it just the family, or is it also community institutions?

I'm thinking specifically about the decline in church attendance. Regardless of your beliefs, church congregations (not mega-churches, but small congregations of at most a few hundred) provided a built-in community that could provide support, companionship, activities, etc. So far I haven't seen anything that really replicates all those communities had to offer.

kadendogthing3• 7 years ago

I'm thinking specifically about the decline in church attendance.

This is an often repeated point but I don't see how it has any credence. Most people who attend churches may talk with each other for just a few hours -- and personally I've found most churches don't really foster a socially-healthy atmosphere. And that's fine, that's not the goals of churches, never has been and most likely never will be.

Churches if anything have never played a role in a healthy community -- and to this day if we map church attendance to social ills there's a pretty good correlation between the two: steady church attendance in areas tends to correlate with heavy drug problems, domestic abuse, and suicide.

However you want to dice that up, good or bad, it simply means one thing: church attendance and socially healthy communities probably aren't really related, and if they are, it probably doesn't have the effect you think it does given the available evidence.

hobofan2• 7 years ago

I'm not big on churches, but I'll share a specific anecdotal perspective about a subset of church-related communities: youth groups.

When I grew up, I was an alter boy in our local catholic church. Out of the big 4 youth group options (3 religion related ones + boyscouts) available, it was probably the one with the biggest religious involvement, but that still wasn't much. I was never really that religious and also managed to stay away from most of the church service pretty sucessfully. Anyway, being in that youth group has shaped my social skills a lot, and I've made many great friends through that. I think the same goes for most of the ~15% percent of the local youth between 12-18 that were in one of those youth groups. So I would say for the young people that was at least part of their healthy communities.

Over the last ~7 years all 4 of those groups drastically reduced in member size (1/5 of what they were back then), with nothing comparable taking their place. Whether that in the end turns out to be a good or bad thing, I don't know.

celeritascelery• 7 years ago

I would disagree with this dismissal.

Church attendance is correlated with higher self esteem and better mental health. And the studies I have seen show decreases in suicide and drug use with religion (Though I suppose you can find a study to “prove” anything).

In my experience, church is very much correlated with social health and can help provide the missing elements in a persons life when dealing with the decline of the family. There is a a reason people always talk about their “church family”.

britch2• 7 years ago

I cannot speak for all churches and I do not have data (though I would love to see a source for the correlation you mention in drug problems/abuse/suicide).

What I can offer is an anecdote: the church my grandparents went to was the center of their social life. The church had donuts and coffee after service in the basement. The whole community would stay and chat. It may have only been for an hour or so, but it allowed for people to get to know their neighbors and would lead to other things. They would organize fundraising and volunteering activities for the community.

Obviously this is just an anecdote, but I don't think it's an anomaly.

I personally am not very religious, and would not consider attending a church even for all these things. I agree that churches often push ideas that are harmful, but I think saying they never served the purpose of creating community is untrue.

mensetmanusman• 7 years ago

Lots of sociological data disputing this...

hobofan2• 7 years ago

That's one of my fears as well.

I'm 25, and recently started studying at university where most of my peers are 18-20. After getting to know them for a bit, from everything I've gathered most of them have not been in youth groups of any kind (that topic recently came up during lunch), and are also not involved in any other communities at the moment. Also no bands. The contrast to my friends from high school at that age is crazy.

The difference might be more pronounced due to other factors: They are mostly straight A students vs. I was basically the opposite (though my friends did well in school). They mostly grew up in metropolitan areas vs. us in a semi-rural setting.

But even if those are significant factors, that doesn't make the outlook any better, with more and more pressure being put on children to perform well in school and more and more people moving to big cities.

britch2• 7 years ago

I agree, the article puts really heavy emphasis on the nuclear family which I find questionable.

Long term cohabitation is dismissed because it is not marriage.

The idea that historically people (especially women) where UNHAPPILY stuck together because of societal norms is dismissed.

Attributing the cause of the decline of marriage and all the negative effects to the pill strikes me a especially strange. The alternative of forcing people into a family they didn't want because of an unexpected pregnancy doesn't seem better for people's mental well-being.

While they are brought up, the article seems to downplay the decline of the community institutions like the church as you mention. It also seems to downplay economic forces like 24 hour work culture and stagnating wages.

I think there's some truth and good ideas in the article, but I find some of the choices strange.

bravura• 7 years ago

Formerly: The decline of being single has unleashed an epidemic of claustrophobia.

beat14• 7 years ago

My own concerns are different. I'm in my 50s now, happily married for over 25 years, with a terrific social life. I'm not at all lonely or isolated.

It's my children that I worry about.

They're boy/girl twins, now 25. My daughter is in the process of breaking up with the boyfriend she's lived with for the past two years, and moving back home to re-settle her life. She has a career, and wants to get married and start a family sometime soon. Her boyfriend is a great person to be around and she adores him, but... he doesn't want kids (and is actually freaked out by them). He doesn't want marriage. And he can't keep himself organized enough to uphold his financial/personal responsibilities in cohabitation. So where is she going to find a potential partner who shares her social values, and wants a life partnership and a co-parent, who can uphold their responsibilities? She doesn't even know where to look.

Her brother lives at home, and probably always will. He doesn't have a real career and can't adult well enough to live on his own, even if he had to. He has never been on a date, even, and lives for video games. What happens if he looks around one day and suddenly feels lonely for a family other than his aging parents? With no financial substance or adulting skills and no romantic experience, he's not much of a catch for partners his age. He'll have to take more family/household responsibility as he gets older, and that's fine, but what happens when his parents finally pass away and he's an old man?

As a parent, these situations worry me greatly.

driven20• 7 years ago

Your son is 25. Shouldn't he have more responsibilities? Metaphorically speaking should you push him out of the nest? Or at least move towards that direction.

whiskyant• 7 years ago

Seriously. With food and shelter always taken of, there's no incentive for him to get a job or "adult" at all.

drugme• 7 years ago

She's 25? I wouldn't be worried.

empath75• 7 years ago

If it makes you feel better, I was still living with my parents at 24 and had never had a girlfriend and I am now happily married with two kids. Some people are late bloomers.

reitanqild• 7 years ago

Moved from home early but didn't get a girlfriend until I got engaged somewhere after I was 25.

I've now been married for over a decade and we have more than two kids, - together ;-)

desireco42• 7 years ago

I am in similar marriage /w 3 kids, I have younger kids who I believe have values like your daughter but I also worry that it will be much harder for them to find serious partners.

My wife isn't worried, she believes things will work themselves out somehow.

I don't think people who don't have kids can understand how concerning shift in values and attitudes is and can be for parents.

kop3162• 7 years ago

If I may comment as a young(er) generation (I am early 30s now): I met who I wanted to marry when I was 29, and proposed to her at 30. I think she will be fine. I honestly think your daughter having to re-settle her life to find someone who shares the same wants in life out of her will lead to longer term happiness. When I was 25, I was dating someone long term whom it was kind of similar, I adored her, but ultimately we were not compatible. I am much happier now with the person I adore and am compatible with.

benj111• 7 years ago

"I think she will be fine"

What a ringing endorsement of your wife :)

(probably not what you meant though)

opportune2• 7 years ago

Your daughter is fine but unless your son is disabled / has other potential issues (like autism, severe depression) you need to get him on the right track. No 25 year old should be able to get away with the excuse of being unable to "adult well enough to live on his own". Your son of course has responsibility but that's really your problem to fix if he won't

beat14• 7 years ago

He's pretty seriously autistic.

One thing having twins did for me was push me way over to the nature side of nature vs nurture. They're so different, and always have been. And I don't expect to have more control over their lives than my parents had over mine at that age.

vfinn2• 7 years ago

I'm sorry to say this, but the tone in your voice towards your son sounds more detached than it should in my opinion. I mean, why would you let him slip into that bleak future you're describing for him? Shouldn't you be the one to wake him up, especially if he lives under your roof. I get it if you don't believe in discipline, but I think that's what is required here (or at least fatherly guidance).

bytematic• 7 years ago

If they are mid-twenties they have probably heard it a million different times in a million different ways, what do you do?

icelancer2• 7 years ago

Yeah can't you just... kick him out?

Meekro• 7 years ago

I'm usually the biggest advocate for personal responsibility, reaping what you sow, etc. but I think you may be being too hard on the parent. For one thing, parents lose a lot of power as kids age-- how exactly do you punish a 25 year old living at home? Send him to bed without dinner? Take away his Nintendo Switch?

Also, reading between the lines of parent's post, I'm wondering if the son is depressed. Maybe suicidal? Trying to "light a fire under his ass" could drive him deeper within himself, and if someone wants to die, there isn't much you could threaten them with anyway.

I certainly appreciate the destructive feedback loop: failure contributes to depression, depression and idleness cause further failure. That lifestyle probably causes obesity, making everything worse. Then there's the datelessness, etc. But breaking the cycle requires, among other things, that the kid want to get better-- I mean really want it more than he's wanted anything in his life. Short of that, and unless you're willing to toss him out on the street and hope for the best, the options are not great.

ok_coo• 7 years ago

Your son's situation sounds a lot like my own, but I am married and maybe am a bit more responsible than him. :)

So, we're a couple that doesn't want to / plan to have children and we've discussed the "getting old" thing before. What I regret about our American society is that it's no longer common to live together as an extended family. Why couldn't he live with his sister (or near her), after you're gone? What about other relatives?

I think it's possible that, in the future, we'll see more communal living situations because I have a feeling there's a lot of GenX and younger people who aren't going to end up having children. Communities can be remade if people make the effort to come back together and live around one another again. I'm thinking of communities like the elderly have in Florida, but maybe people will start living together at a younger age? Just some thoughts I've had.

I've seen the pain and the struggle around this (personally) and I'm hoping it's something that people start taking seriously soon.

beat14• 7 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if he winds up living with his sister someday. They're pretty close, really. We had a talk about wills with the kids last year, and one question was "What should we do about the house? Do you kids want to keep it, or sell it for the money?", and they were both adamant about keeping the house they grew up in.

In the meantime, part of my son's responsibility as we get older is taking care of his aging parents. Last summer, my wife had a serious knee injury that had her bedridden for a while and limited mobility for longer, and he had to step up then. We warned him that this was the first of many, and they'll get worse.

ronnier• 7 years ago

Your daughter will be ok. She can go anywhere and immediately find social groups and have no issues finding dates — if she gets online she can literally have hundreds or thousands of men ready to take her out. It’s completely opposite for most men — isolated and hard to find social circles.

rayiner5• 7 years ago

It’s easy for women to find dates. Much harder to find competent potential life partners who want to start a family.

aisengard• 7 years ago

This is insane. I used to think this way in high school - "wow, girls have it so easy, every man wants sex and if girls want sex they just have to raise their hand, it's so hard for men!"

Then I lived in the real world and realized that, well, people don't actually want to have sex with anything that moves, and it's a gift to be a man who doesn't get dozens of sexual advances per day, and doesn't have to worry about what literally every person's intentions are.

SerLava• 7 years ago

if she gets online she can literally have hundreds or thousands of men ready to take her out

Women have to actually filter out the serial killers you know. That's what they're doing on the dating thing.

baxtr• 7 years ago

I am not sure if that’s true. Both my female cousins fit the description above, except they’re in their late 30s by now and still aren’t able to find partners for life. Sometimes I think maybe that’s the way it’s always been and that’s why there were forced marriages, which you might not have liked but in the end they made you happy through the family you’d usually had around you as you grow older. Don’t know

brightball• 7 years ago

Should consider looking into an F3 workout group. Totally free men’s group.

Circuits• 7 years ago

Sounds to me like your son needs to learn a trade.

AlwaysRock2• 7 years ago

Is the boyfriend 25? It took me until 25 to start being open to the idea of kids. I'm 27 now and actually open to the idea. I had never spent time with kids really. Having a niece and nephew helped a lot because I realized kids, while a lot of work, can bring a lot of joy.

danbolt3• 7 years ago

That’s really interesting. What made you feel that your mind changed? When I was 25 I was much more open to children, but now at 27 I’m very sure I don’t want to have them.

sizzle2• 7 years ago

What has your son been doing since turning 18? Did you try to lay out a foundation in teaching him life skills/weaning him off of financial support so he can learn the value of a dollar?

I understand disabilities and disorders can hold adult children back, if that isn't the case I'm curious where things went off the rails, as a soon to be first time dad myself. This stuff worries me, that regardless of all the investment and good parenting in the world, that my kid(s) can fail to thrive.

beat14• 7 years ago

Pretty severe autism. The main reason we never just kicked him out is because he really can't function on his own. He'd suck at being homeless. That was hard for me to get used to, as I've been on my own since I was 18. And his sister moved out as soon as it was practical for her, although she lives just minutes away and we see her at least weekly.

And if there's one piece of parenting advice I can offer, it's this... your kids are their own people. Parents only have just so much control. (The flip side is also true; at a certain point, you can't just blame your parents for your own life.)

a2tech• 7 years ago

Sounds like the best thing he could do for his son is give him the first month's rent on an apartment and kick him out. He won't like it, but isn't being a parent about making the hard decisions?

esoterica3• 7 years ago

25 is very young. You’re not going to find many urban, college-educated 25 year olds willing to start a family that early.

HBKXNCUO11• 7 years ago

Not as far as fertility is concerned. 25 means only a couple of years left at peak fertility.

jriot3• 7 years ago

25 is not young. I was married for 4 years (still married at 34 to the same woman), a one-year-old daughter, working as an air traffic controller for 7 years, deployed to the ME, stationed at three different bases, traveled to 12 countries (at the time), completed undergrad, and half-way through graduate school. The age appearing young is because society likes to make excuses on why people haven't gotten their act together.

tropo5• 7 years ago

If starting a family is the goal, I don't think "urban, college-educated 25 year olds" are what you'd look for. That gets you fewer kids and a moderately high disease risk.

Optimizing for the goal of a family, you'd look for suburban people who will be reaching your jurisdiction's marriage age within a year. Secondary to that you might look for ones who are smart, but they'd have to prioritize family.

KaoruAoiShiho• 7 years ago

Your son's issue may be exacerbated by video game addiction. As a game developer I know exactly how effective our methods are.

abledon5• 7 years ago

what are your thoughts on League of Legends?

kodz44• 7 years ago

You gotta kick them out. Unless they get cancer or are struck by lightning this kind of babysitting of 25 year olds does more damage than good. And with Mom and Dad around taking care of things there is zero motivation to make mistakes, learn from them and figure anything out.

sonnyblarney• 7 years ago

Sometimes dudes need something to 'flip' them into activity, saying this as a dude myself, so I can't speak for the ladies.

A family member of mine smoked pot and lived in a van a skiied the backtrails for 10 years (!!!) and then poof got his CA way late in life and is not 'caught up' in his career.

Another peer worked in marketing, hated it, went to work stoned. Then one day 'poof' he got serious, was a manager (it was a rapidly growing company), Director then VP within a few years.

Sometimes I think 'guys need a reason', and for many it just comes along.

If your kids are safe, healthy, decent people and not in existential trouble with the law etc., consider yourself fortunate in a way, it could be much worse.

'20's are the new teens' anyhow. 25 is still very young.

beat14• 7 years ago

Yeah. In a way, I really admire his focus. His life has everything he cares about, and he ruthlessly ignores everything that doesn't actually matter to him. And he's smart, capable of incredible focus, and can interact with people in structured ways (he works in retail and is actually good at it).

Maybe someday he'll decide to aim it somewhere else.

jackjoness• 7 years ago

I'm a boy, 24, and willing to have many kids, your daughter sounds like a girl I'd like to have.

vladletter• 7 years ago

I like loneliness. You avoid to listen to bullshit.

itsaidpens• 7 years ago

Dude, you’re their parents! Take some responsibility!

sametmax2• 7 years ago

Yes, I'd like to read a "I must have messed up somewhere". That would be a good starting point to "what can I do about it".

mlcrypto• 7 years ago

Yes I would say the mistake was made 20 years ago

fackfallnass• 7 years ago

that's a bad attitude to take and leads to a lot of unnecessary guilt about something you have little control over. parents cannot do much to shape the personality and ability of their children in adulthood.

cc814• 7 years ago

The daughter seems to be doing fine and we don't know the cause behind why is son is behaving the way he does.

dang10• 7 years ago

Aggressive, unsubstantive comments about personally intimate situations... please don't.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20118297 and marked it off-topic.

ikeyany• 7 years ago

* edited for good reason

dang10• 7 years ago

Personal attacks aren't ok here.

I'm sure your intention is good, but the gruff tough-love approach which just maybe, if you have a good connection, can work sometimes in person—and even then is probably too harsh to do anything but cause pain—doesn't come across at all well in an internet comment. The genre is much too low-information and distant.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20118297 and marked it off-topic.

nyxtom• 7 years ago

Great explanation on why we should simply treat loneliness like a symptom of being hungry. As you form healthier habits in general around socializing, the person becomes more whole and in doing so you grant yourself additional opportunities to meet people, engage in conversation, and increase the probability of friendships and relationships.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Xv_g3g-mA

The other thought process I've been subscribing to lately is the idea that you have to actually become the kind of person that "can socialize" or that "can be friendly" before you suddenly find yourself in: a friendship, a relationship, a marriage, a solid social network. None of these things come over night and they certainly don't come easy for people who are stricken with the habit of isolation. Once you make decisions and form actual habits around trying to be friendly to other people:

- put yourself in a situation where you have the opportunity at all to socialize (a store, a coffeeshop, a restaurant, a club, a meetup). Socializing doesn't mean you have to be friends with the person, it seems to be about just being the kind of person who is even able at all to be friendly

- make an observation (the weather, the environment around you, the place you're at, something someone is wearing, a pin, a shoe, an outfit, a drink, a dog... whatever - just make any observation at all and comment on it)

- listen (observe how the other person make the same or differing observations; listen to any other observation other people make, internalize and actually listen - don't be thinking of the next thing to say after they are done talking. Listen so you can understand them in some way and what they are actually saying)

- ask questions (if you discovered something work asking, or maybe the observation involved a question like "where did you get those cool shoes?" "what do you recommend here?" "what is your favorite item?" "can you help explain something to me?"). It's great to ask questions that involve help because it invites the other person into a social situation where you can trust them to give you advice or knowledge. People try this with neighbors for instance, such as borrowing a tool or something like this.

- receive feedback, or give feedback based on the questions

- it is usually the case that questions lead to other questions, you can develop a conversation from here most of the time

- repeat observation, listen, ask questions, feedback, communicate something you enjoy/relevant to conversation

Once you've internalize a process for being friendly and you take action to actually make it a habit, you become the kind of person that can be friendly. It doesn't actually matter if you don't necessarily know whether you will want to be friends with a person, it's that you are showing yourself that you can be friendly. Most importantly, you are practicing and making it a habit.

Once it is a habit, it becomes natural. Being friendly turns into developing actual friendships and opening yourself up to the world to trying new experiences. Some of those experiences may lead to forming friendships and those friendships may end up being relationships.

It also seems to me that you must understand that social networks are precisely that. you don't know whether one person might invite you to something where you meet another person. The same is true the other way around, inviting a neighbor, or other people over creates the possibility that you might extend, reinforce or cause you to re-evaluate your social network. By allowing yourself the time to be uncomfortable with this sort of unpredictability you can avoid remaining stagnant.

wnmurphy• 7 years ago

Someone posted in another similar thread on loneliness that volunteering was a great cure. Build social connections, shift to 'other' focus, contribute to something outside of yourself. Seemed like a perfect solution.

kyllo• 7 years ago

The fixation on the nuclear family and its supposed decline, is transparently reactionary ideology. The term "nuclear family" was first used in 1947 and didn't even become the most common form of household until the 1960s or so.[1] Prior to that (and still today in many less-industrialized cultures), cohabitation with extended family and communal parenting arrangements were much more common.

You could just as easily blame capitalism for making people lonely by concentrating lucrative employment opportunities in just a few cities and encouraging young people to uproot their lives and relocate for work.

[1] https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-nuclear-families/

bregma• 7 years ago

I live in a cabin in the woods. I rarely talk to my family, maybe once or twice a year. My kids have grown up and moved out. I only talk to coworkers when I have to, and until recently I worked remotely. I can go days without vocalizing except to the dog (who does talk back, just in dog). Life is great.

I think society is coming along nicely in the right direction.

sakopov• 7 years ago

Man, the older I get the more I realize that life is always a balancing act. I immigrated from a 3rd world country (probably a 2nd world now) 20 years ago with my parents. Both of my parents were engineers and both were paid about once a year by their employer because nobody had any money. So we were broke and poor my entire childhood. And yet we always had friends visiting us. There were always celebrations. Seemed like we managed to get by and stay happy despite the circumstances. Rewind a couple decades later and I barely see my parents living. Both come home exhausted from work. I spent most days stuck in the office and then toil away working on my own projects and ideas. And that's it. We have everything we ever wanted and absolutely no happiness. I recently came back from a trip to my home country and I see neighbors talking to each other and inviting each other for dinners and celebrations. People are eager to help each other out. You can strike up a conversation with a total stranger at a bus station and it doesn't feel weird and awkward. I was looking at all of this and thinking if i'd give up everything i have now to simply enjoy humanity for a change. You can't have everything in this world.

secabeen• 7 years ago

“You'll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You'll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact and remember that Life's a Great Balancing Act. Just never forget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up your right foot with your left.”

― Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!

mieseratte3• 7 years ago

Pleasantly surprised to see this.

Grew up alongside a large family with an almost annual high school graduation party. That book was a cornerstone of the event, read aloud and a copy given to each graduate.

Never really "got it" until just now. Makes me wish I'd read his books a kid.

Mr_Shiba• 7 years ago

Lived for a couple of years in America and opted to return to my country for similar reasons as yours

Industrialized nations mistake comfort and wealth for happiness

zdragnar2• 7 years ago

I don't know where in America you lived, but not everywhere is like that. It is a big and diverse place, after all.

kodz44• 7 years ago

Everyone does, not just Americans. People aren't born knowing what they want out of life. So the first instinct or the default setting, is to do what everyone else is doing. If everyone around you is chasing X you are likely to chase it too. The more connected the world gets the more that tendency is amplified. Everyone wants an iPhone and everyone wants to line up for Avengers 29 or whatever. If it was just the Americans Apple and Disney wouldn't be raking in the cash that they do. They are just taking advantage of that default setting.

People who have twiddled about with their own default settings, whether they are in China, America or Congo find different routes to happiness that have nothing to do with what the rest of herd is upto.

zhirafovod2• 7 years ago

Neither discomfort and misery give you happiness. But with wealth and in comfort you have more resources to focus on what is really important to you!

rubicon332• 7 years ago

I find it so incredibly ironic that it was immigrants, fleeing countries utterly lacking in comfort, wealth, or happiness, in search of a better life for themselves and their children, that helped build the comfortable industrialized nation of the United States.

It seems life - human existence - is cyclical and has amnesia. We forget too quickly what real discomfort is. Or at least, fail to strike a proper balance.

Swizec2• 7 years ago

One workaholic to another: There’s plenty of people in the US, even in places like San Francisco, who have balanced lives and don’t spend their whole time working. Put in their 8 or 10 hours per day at a startup then go off and do fun hobbies like standup comedy, singing in church choirs, or just binging Netflix.

Hell, my girlfriend has zero sidehustle and she does just great for herself.

Working all day erryday is a choice you are making. I make that choice because I didn’t move here to coast and I’m okay, even happy, with the tradeoff.

Food for thought :)

jxramos• 7 years ago

I always appreciated those jobs postings that explicitly mention not working crazy hours. I should keep a journal of such statements. It's an interesting phenomena.

everyone• 7 years ago

8 hours is a full days work. Most people only have a couple of hours to themselves after working 8 hours + commuting, buying/preparing/eating food, ablutions, taking care of various chores etc. Is 10 the norm where you are? That is very saddening. Where are you btw? During/after the industrial revolution many workers fought hard and died just to get the the working day down to 8 hours (and not 12 or more which is what the industrialists wanted)

blfr2• 7 years ago

You, too, can strike up a conversation with a total stranger at a bus station and it doesn't have to feel weird. It is, however, likely to be short because people are so unused to it in the atomized west that, if you don't carry the whole conversation, they simply won't know what to say.

chc• 7 years ago

Your second sentence seems to contradict the "it doesn't have to feel weird" part of the first.

SiVal• 7 years ago

In much of "flyover country", Americans routinely greet, chat with, and interact with strangers in public. Ironically, it's one of the American traits often criticized by Europeans. "How rude, how intrusive, to invade my private bubble."

But then, the UK has a similar phenomenon, with sophisticated Londoners making the same complaints about England's own flyover country, "the North" [1]

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT0ay9u1gg4

beat14• 7 years ago

Last night, I said something to my spouse about a conversation I had with a "single serving friend", and she didn't know what I was talking about. I said it was a Fight Club reference, then went farther and explained that I had a five minute conversation with a complete stranger (just walking down the street together), and I had to explain this idea to her, because she's an introvert and would never, ever engage in a conversation with a stranger.

new4thaccount• 7 years ago

The South is pretty friendly and outgoing in many places. I strike up conversations almost everywhere and most people are ok with it. Of course there are some people that hate small talk and I try to respect that.

adamc• 7 years ago

:'(

The older I get, the more certain I am that people come first. No one sits around in old age wishing they had spent longer hours at the office.

wolco3• 7 years ago

Some do.. there are better nursing homes out there.

sdegutis4• 7 years ago

We can have that here. We need to downsize our lives. Stop paying for things we don't need or really even want. Be okay with jobs that make less, even a lot less, as long as our basic needs are met. Leave our mobile phones on the desk and walk outside not knowing what you'll expect, and be open with meeting new people. If enough people do this, our towns and suburbs can be revitalized.

s_k_• 7 years ago

We have everything we ever wanted and absolutely no happiness. I guess this is the difference between generations and why they struggle most of the time understanding each other. What older generation dreamed about and worked hard to get the younger generation takes for granted, and that is not necessarily something bad. I would argue that it's mostly good, because that's why people have ambitions/goals/dreams about something which previously thought was impossible. Hence pioneering in different fields of science, entrepreneurship, social interaction, etc. This is basic evolution, yet we struggle to understand it. Old organisms in almost every aspect of life are hard to change. That's why the nature takes care of it time so naturally. Most parents don't realize that they don't have to love what their children do in order to simply love them and let them live their dream.

Max_aaa• 7 years ago

Just like with everything in this universe, "Wants" tend to swing from one side to the other just like a pendulum.

The tricky part is trying to find the balance without overshooting, and restarting the cycle.

rb8083• 7 years ago

toil away working on my own projects and ideas

Maybe you should give up that part and have fun instead.

zhirafovod2• 7 years ago

Just move to you home country and enjoy all you like about it! It is that easy! You have to live there to compare, as grass is always greener on the other side, especially when you are on a vacation.

You are the master of your life! Make a block party to make neighbor friends, go to a park on a weekend, take a bus (yes, you can't start a conversation at a bus station if you only drive), travel to different US cities.

somuchlan• 7 years ago

especially when you are on a vacation.

This. I used to live in Seattle after vacationing there a handful of times, but after living there I found it to be one of the most least welcoming, racist, Progressively Elitist™ places I've ever lived (and I've lived all over the US).

It's easy to say "I will commit to making more meaningful connections with people/strangers today", but if this is not received or reciprocated; well...there's not really much you can outside of devoting more time in trying to breakthrough some sort of glass wall that some places have created an environment for. Which comes down to two choices in my book:

1. Fight through and prove yourself/others wrong 2. Go somewhere else that you feel will be more accepting

subpixel3• 7 years ago

i'd give up everything i have now to simply enjoy humanity for a change.

Everything but security which, unfortunately, is worth giving up a lot of other things to have.

I'd move to my wife's home country tomorrow if we could live without fear of our child being kidnapped. My wife's uncle was kidnapped and murdered, another aunt and cousins bound in their home by robbers, and another cousin held for a day by a group of illegally armed militiamen from a neighboring country.

Other than that it's paradise!

themodelplumber• 7 years ago

What you wrote reminded me of an old film from 1986, _The Mosquito Coast_. Specifically the quote, "everything we need is right here."

amelius• 7 years ago

And don't forget health-care ...

the_common_man• 7 years ago

I'd move to my wife's home country tomorrow if we could live without fear of our child being kidnapped

Not comparing it with your wife's country (especially since you said people got murdered), but in the bay area, you won't find kids walking alone anywhere. Despite being one of the safest places in the US, parents and society overall is paranoid. They have traded group safety for individual safety.

percentcer• 7 years ago

Brazil?

winter_blue• 7 years ago

inviting each other for dinners and celebrations

I've experienced more of this in the U.S., than in the Indian culture I grew up in. Hanging out with friends, having dinner together, inviting new people you don't know to dinner -- are all very much a part of American culture. People in the U.S. quite intentionally go out of their way to make new friends. It's one of things I love about the United States. In Indian culture, people often stick to just family, and a small circle of friends that rarely changes through life. Compared to that, American openness is wonderful.

You can strike up a conversation with a total stranger at a bus station and it doesn't feel weird and awkward.

Ironically, the U.S. might be one of the only countries where this is common, and quite socially acceptable. Even in New York, I've broken norms, talked to strangers, and made new friends. In many countries, if you try to strike up a conversation with a stranger, you'll likely get a strange look, followed by silence or a curt unfriendly reply. I'm thankful that in general, people in the U.S. are so friendly, and happily willing to talk to and befriend total strangers.

tw1010• 7 years ago

Guys, just start reading fiction. It's like having a conversation with someone super smart and super relatable. You'll get hooked once you find something that fits your subconscious, but don't settle until you do. (I've been really digging Richard Yates and Thomas Mann lately, so maybe start there if you need inspiration. Murakami is also a famously great read if you need a companion.)

rossdavidh• 7 years ago

Hypothesis: Up until recently, you only needed a so-so amount of interest in settling down and having children, in order to pass on your genes. Some people did, but others didn't, and while this was not entirely genes it wasn't entirely NOT genes either. But, since everyone got more or less pushed into marrying and starting a family anyway, by strong social pressures, there was no strong evolutionary advantage to a strong desire for family.

For about one generation now, the people who WANT kids, and are willing to be half of a committed couple in order to have more of them, are the ones having more kids. Others, either don't have any children, or only have one.

In a couple generations, they will look back at this time and wonder why people back then were so (relatively) uninterested in family.

Just a hypothesis. Could happen relatively quickly, though. Which would mean, in only a few generations.

thorwasdfasdf• 7 years ago

I used to get a bit lonely. For 10 years I tried to get a girlfriend. It took forever, but eventually I finally succeeded. anyways, we eventually got married and even had a kid. Now, I never feel lonely.

jdavis703• 7 years ago

Lonely-death cleaning companies promise to be a good investment in Japan. The culture’s legendary filial piety has gone the way of the samurai; children and grandchildren are often too busy or far away for regular visiting

Me and my partner have to divide our time between visiting four different families since our parents were both single parents. We usually take a summer vacation and a winter vacation, so that means each family really only gets to be visited by us once every two years.

When it comes time to care for them as "old folks" I have no idea what we're going to do. We're basiclly the only people in our family with the financial capacity to support our parents and/or siblings... And I'm not alone in this, there's millions of Americans in the same position. I guess we better start removing systems that support traditional families (e.g. support for single family homes over apartments / co-living) and instead create "syntehtic" families that will be easier to subsidize.

DowsingSpoon• 7 years ago

The term “third world” does not mean something like “third rate.” The first world is the Western bloc, under the influence of the USA. The second world is the Eastern bloc, under the influence of the USSR. The third world is everyone else.

I think we should stop using these terms.

jamesmp982• 7 years ago

I disagree, almost everyone understands the colloquial usage of the term and it's rather pendantic and useless to complain about it

robotresearcher• 7 years ago

That ship sailed long ago. Like the use of ‘literally’ to mean ‘figuratively’, words mean what they are frequently used to mean. Fighting it is futile.

Swenrekcah• 7 years ago

I agree in principle but you should still literally slap anyone that says they “could care less” when they mean they couldn’t

shkkmo• 7 years ago

'literally' is often used figuratively to mean 'figuratively', that doesn't change it's literal meaning :D

pault• 7 years ago

I agree those terms are antiquated, and I suggest "developed" and "developing" instead.

lentil_soup• 7 years ago

I think developed and developing is also strange. It implies an universal direction countries have to follow where reality is way more complex. We should instead stop trying to simplify countries and segregating them into categories.

rahulnair23• 7 years ago

Developed and developing are also terms that are arbitrary. Human Development Indices of some countries that are considered developing today exceed those of developed countries when these terms were first used.

In common use it implies a strict hierarchy in rather simplistic terms.

the_pwner224• 7 years ago

Should not stagnant/stagnating also be added to that list? And also a negative term (staganation is neutral)? Not every undeveloped country is developing.

Bakary5• 7 years ago

As someone who grew up in a third world country, I actually think it's a very apt descriptor of certain patterns and problems that continually occur across seemingly unrelated cultures.

toby-• 7 years ago

No, this is no longer what these terms mean in common parlance.

(There is no arbiter of language; words are imbued with meaning through usage. People use "first world" and "third world" quite differently now than during the Cold War.)

matthewaveryusa• 7 years ago

It was invented in the 50s in france and literally is translated to 1/3rd world (tiers monde.) third (as in third place) would translate to troisieme. Poor translation basically.

Frondo3• 7 years ago

These words are no longer used in common parlance at all.

Now people use "developing nation" and "developed nation," and "second world" never evolved to mean "somewhere less poor than dirt-floor huts but less rich than London". About once a year I see someone make that mistake; it's not common, just a mistake.

But agreed, there's no arbiter of language for English, and we all understood the original poster, which is really the important part.

owldimoon• 7 years ago

just because you think a term should be used one way or another doesn't mean your opinion is at all valuable. it's more useful to go with the wave of society rather than trying to imbue change on an obscure web forum.

jobigoud• 7 years ago

Still valuable to point out that a number of people will not understand the sentence in the way the person intends it to be understood. In this case it's clear from context, but sometimes not so much.

layoutIfNeeded• 7 years ago

And they are called crackers, not hackers!!! /s

dang10• 7 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20118799 and marked it off-topic.

mjevans• 7 years ago

Recipe for solving loneliness and increasing the odds of "successful marriages" (which is really what this article seems focused on conveying as a problem).

Build a successful community:

    * Enough housing, at reasonable cost
    * Enough jobs to "employ" all adults
    * Good jobs, fitting the skills of workers
    * Stable jobs, that aren't a gig or contract
    * Career jobs, with a future in the area
    * Good transit mesh
    * More diverse third places / third spaces

Right now transit sucks, zoning sucks, housing options suck, and decades of trying to manage things from the consumption side have lead the supply side to be crazy in all sorts of aspects. Since markets aren't free (zoning laws, all sorts of other regulations) active maintenance is not just desirable from a ripple smoothing standpoint, it's actually required from a systemic viewpoint. There are also too many areas of uncertainty on the supply side; cases where things fail because of those who already got their happiness.

Japan's "nuisance" based zoning is better (#1), if a project fits within an area's limits and passes environmental/other planning review it can be done. Their transit structure is also partly funded by the "taxes" involved with the rail companies also owning the land around the stations (which ends up falling in to the higher end of the nuisance classes and gets the shopping centers, hotels, and denser apartments built on it); but that could happen here too if we actually had civic planning, taxes, and open book accountability that could tie taxes to spending and involved politicians/companies in people's minds.

I'm also in favor of a //long term// plan for establishing an expanding zone of high quality (Japanese subway/rail style) transit that has frequent, on time, predictable service. This would spread out from city centers over time and would involve interface and storage silos (for cars, and big stuff). Critically this should start with first improving transit, then adding the interface silos that adapt legacy infrastructure to the city-core infrastructure, and only then getting the cars out of the city; entirely. Aside from maybe an underground network for deliveries and emergency transport.

Finally, because the market is so screwed up with respect to available housing in the areas that need it, emergency remediation should be instituted and reviewed until the crisis is resolved. That would probably start with a short-table evaluation of rezoning, and even loans if at least 70% of the units were intended for median in the state's population income and at least 10% for those making "minimum wage" (the lesser of state and city values).

A land-value based tax should also be instituted to encourage the evolution of a zone over time rather than keeping historic single dwelling housing just because it made sense 50-100 years ago.

#1 http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html #1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540845

room271• 7 years ago

'By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.' (Jesus, John 13:35)

mnorton• 7 years ago

lol the hacker news relationship advice this spawned

oneepic• 7 years ago

Going in the opposite direction, this means it's generally becoming more likely for the people you meet (even if you meet very briefly) to not have any real close friends, people to hang out with, etc. Therefore, if you're feeling lonely yourself, it sounds like a great idea to ask a bunch of people you meet to all hang out together. It might give everyone some relief.

I've been on the fence about trying to put together a friend group and see who fits at my new workplace, since I started with a bunch of other newbies that seemed relatively nervous. I think I'll ask them if they wanna hang out.

SolaceQuantum• 7 years ago

Question to the HN crowd: How do you feel about choosing one's own family, as is a common phenomenon among the LGBTQIA+ community (who are more at risk of family rejecting them?)

solidsnack9000• 7 years ago

Maybe the decline of family is an effect, rather than a cause, of loneliness. It's the loss of community that's our real problem.

bitwalker• 7 years ago

I don't think the decline of the family is the primary issue today. My own perspective is that the "epidemic of loneliness" has more to do with the prevalance of, and addiction to, social media in its various forms.

It is easier than ever to form and maintain all your relationships, acquaintences, friends, and family, online via social media. You can see what people are up to, even "participate" to some degree via commentary/messaging, and it leaves people feeling like they've done their part in keeping the relationship alive. My observation is that because relationships kept this way are increasingly normalized, people are less interested in getting together in the physical world because it takes a lot more effort, and requires a much more significant investment in time.

On the plus side, it means you can keep relationships alive across great distances, and even during times where life is so busy that you have limited spare time.

But the problem is that forming meaningful relationships becomes an increasingly difficult task, to the point where you can begin to wonder if there is something wrong with you due to not being able to form those relationships. Further, you feel increasingly disconnected and isolated, when you have a lot of skin-deep relationships, but none which are truly meaningful.

I consider myself lucky to have a wonderful wife, and her company is more than enough to sustain me even when nobody else is around; but both of us still feel the isolation when we are unable to get together with friends for too long. We moved away from my home state, and she immigrated from another country, so both of us have left friendships behind, and been trying to form new relationships near where we live. It has been harder than expected, and I think it is in part due to people finding it really easy to blow off getting together in person when there is even the slightest inconvenience, especially knowing that they don't have to actually meet in person to keep the relationship alive.

As a result, my pet peeve these days is when people, when asked why they keep blowing off getting together, say "I've been so busy". For one, it is a meaningless statement, most people are busy, it is just the nature of having to work at least one full-time job and then fit in the other activities you want to do in the time left over. Most people still find time to get together with friends at least once in awhile. Thanks to the perpetual need to post everything on social media, it is usually evident that the "busy" person is not really actually busy, and instead what they really meant was "I've been too busy doing things I value more than our friendship, but am too uncomfortable to tell you that".

I don't know if it is related or not, but in my experience, the detachment derived from social media seems to go hand in hand with avoiding anything that is perceived as unpleasant, such as being honest with someone when it is a hard truth, e.g. "hey, my life is full, I'd like to keep in touch, but I'm not in a position to add new friendships right now".

This probably comes off as a rant against social media, but I'm not really anti-social media, I just think the way we find ourselves using it has real, detrimental effects on human relationships, in a way that we don't really understand and are only really starting to see the impact of.

luckydata• 7 years ago

I just skimmed the article and it all resonates with my experience as an immigrant in the US but I'm also going to point out that the way cities are built in the US plays a huge role in isolating people. In most american cities the spaces to aggregate without having to pay money (let's say a restaurant) are scarce or even absent. There's no benches on the side of the streets, because we fear that someone could sit on it and NOT SPEND MONEY at a nearby business (the horror!).

We build houses far, far away from stores and places of work, so everyone needs to drive to those places in their own motorized isolation box.

We built profoundly inhuman places to live, and the result is that nobody is happy and we're all dying of all kinds of preventable diseases.

I think this model of society has largely failed, and people in western countries are now struggling to figure out where do we go from here, a question we will probably not answer in my lifetime.

luckylion6• 7 years ago

I'm not so sure about city planning being a large factor.

European cities are very different but we face similar problems. We have parks, you don't need to travel far (I grew up in a large city, now live in a small one right next to it, and have never had a car and never needed one) to get places, most people live in multi-family-homes and overly long commutes are the exception, not the rule.

I do agree with your last sentence though, and maybe it's the individualism that expresses itself more strongly in US cities because they are much younger, and more purpose built.

baroffoos2• 7 years ago

This has been on my mind for a while and it really bothers me. Everyone I know lives 10-20km away and the only time we meet up is at the pub where we spend a huge amount of money. There are very few public spaces in the city and they are all loud and unpleasant to be in due to the car traffic.

I honestly think the invention of cars is to blame for the loneliness issues. All the other things like social media are just background noise compared to the invention that made it very incontinent to just casually meet other people.

paganel• 7 years ago

Especially now that Uber has a STFU option

I never understood why people are so against talking to the people that give them a ride. I once was in a very rough spot in my life and talking with taxi-drivers almost daily about the most trivial stuff (weather, politics, traffic) used to give me a very healthy reprieve from the black thoughts I used to have.

hrktb• 7 years ago

Ideally that’s a two way street, with driver that really want to talk to clients not accepting silent drives and vice versa.

Otherwise, just as talking to people seem to have helped you a lot, for other people not having to talk is also a godsend. I think it’s fine to not understand everyone’s motives or functionning, as long as their needs are met somehow.

simmanian• 7 years ago

Being silent in the absence of anything noteworthy to talk about is exactly the healthy reprieve some people are looking for. I personally find it absolutely taxing to talk about the weather or the traffic because I just don't enjoy talking for the sake of talking and I shouldn't be pressured to meet an arbitrary social expectation I have no interest in.

robocat• 7 years ago

For that case, perhaps there should be an option to tick as you order the Uber.

jdminhbg• 7 years ago

I never understood why people are so against talking to the people that give them a ride.

I'm not always against talking to people, but there are definitely drivers who don't know how to read the mood in the car and will drag you into conversations you don't care about. Particularly if you're on a 4:30 am ride to the airport, you might just want to be left alone.

JimboOmega5• 7 years ago

As a woman, there are definitely times I don't want to deal with a driver hitting on me. It happens annoyingly frequently, and it's this delicate social situation that requires more mental effort to negotiate than I want to give it.

Friendly conversation (with men and women both) is fine and I've engaged in plenty. But if a driver is too busy telling me just how beautiful I am and as a result drives me to the cargo part of the airport rather than the passenger terminal and makes me late... and I have to sort of humor him and not just say wtf because that's the social contract? Or if I have to for some reason convince him I'm an engineer and not a dancer in spite of my long legs? Yeah, I'll pass on that.

In other situations I can thank them for the compliment and go somewhere else, but with a driver I'm stuck for quite a while. And sometimes I'm really not in the mood. I've complained before there really needs to be a "please don't hit on me" option, and STFU is a decent alternative.

dgzl6• 7 years ago

and it's this delicate social situation that requires more mental effort to negotiate than I want to give it

I understand what you're saying, and I recognize the blessing/curse that comes with attracting people.

However, as I've become an adult with a career and have left essentially all my friends behind, I've realized that making new friends is incredibly difficult. Even worse is trying to find dating partners. Lately I've been resorting to just talking to strangers and seeing if I can start a conversation.

Not to excuse the behavior of your drivers, but you should understand that men are having a difficult time with approaching women these days. We feel really inadequate and sort of aimless. The dating world is seriously dangerous right now and to be honest, there isn't a lot of guidance from women.

I've experienced a range of rejections and the least painful are always honest and upfront. Maybe you could try that?

smsm422• 7 years ago

Because for some people talking to strangers is hard. Literally - like for some people carrying a 50 lbs bag might be hard, so can be talking to a stranger. Can I take this 50 lbs bag and walk with you for a mile or two because you think it'd be fun for you? Yes, I can. Do I want to? Maybe, if you're my friend or I feel like working out or just in the mood. Or maybe not, because I don't feel like doing this work now. Maybe I just want to rest and be alone with my thoughts right now. Not for the whole life - but right now, in this moment.

People have different needs and different informational metabolism. Some like conversing with strangers, some - not really.

avtar• 7 years ago

Reading this felt like you've been observing me at the gym and documenting my behaviour. I've been trying to establish an exercise habit and at some point I'd like to become comfortable again talking to strangers. It used to be a skill that I practiced unknowingly when I was young and could talk to anyone. Now there are days when I'm done working out and it takes all the effort just to make eye contact with someone and mutter something like "hey, how was your class?"

toyg• 7 years ago

why people are so against talking to the people that give them a ride.

I'm an ethnic minority where I live, but I'm white. Do I want to be dragged into some racist conversation fuelled by Nigel Farage on talk-radio and by made-up stories in The Sun? Nope. Even if I did, would it change anything? Nope - a 20-min cab ride is not enough time to dispel all the crap accumulated over decades of disinformation.

If I had a STFU button for regular cabs, most of the time I would hit it hard. But there isn't one, so I put earphones up, send all the social signals I can think of that say "leave me alone", and tip well if they do exactly that.

actuator3• 7 years ago

I like talking with the person on the wheel on my Uber rides, unless I am busy with something important. Even when I am in a new place and don't know the local language well, I try to talk to them. It just gives a different perspective to what I usually get from my social circle and makes the time go by so fast.

ionised11• 7 years ago

I've never been interested in talking to my taxi driver.

I will if they initiate conversation just to be polite, but I'd really rather just be left alone to stare out the window and think.

lunchables4• 7 years ago

I never understood why people are so against talking to the people that give them a ride.

Its frequently one of the few times during the day where I do not have to interact with someone, especially when traveling for work. Sometimes I just want 10 minutes to myself to think.

dang10• 7 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20117510.

oneshot908• 7 years ago

I relocated out of the bay area in 2016-2017 and it was the happiest year of my adult life. I think Silicon Valley has a zero sum culture and having returned here for personal reasons but otherwise against my best judgment, I cannot wait to GTFO for keeps.

I am really really good (perhaps top 10 or so worldwide) at one thing, and pretty good at a couple other things. If I didn't have that, I think I would feel utterly worthless in 2019. If I extrapolate to most of America, wow, I get why they elected who they elected.

Something has gone very wrong here. And I am stymied as to how to fix it because neither political party, which gets to set the agenda every 4 years, seems to grasp what has gone wrong.

But when I travel abroad, I am happy. I see can-do cultures that have far less than western nations, but are so inspiringly optimistic to do more, that I don't want to come back to America. I want to set down roots and help them knock it out of the park. And I am getting close to doing exactly that. Doing so would shatter my personal life, but I suspect if 2020 continues what we started in 2016, I will follow through on what my inner voice is telling me to do.

_bxg1• 7 years ago

I'm not a fan of "who they elected" myself, but I don't really see what politics has to do with any of this

castlecrasher2• 7 years ago

yeah, the solution comes from individuals, not from politicians

tachyonbeam2• 7 years ago

I am really really good (perhaps top 10 or so worldwide) at one thing, and pretty good at a couple other things. If I didn't have that, I think I would feel utterly worthless in 2019.

With the internet, our kind of global culture and the kind of "attention economy" that we have, there is a bit of a culture where if you're not the best at something, and the first to do it, you're irrelevant. The world has changed, and so have we. A lot of the people leading the tech field today were kids in the 1980s and 1990s, just playing with computers for fun. In the pre-internet days, you couldn't just publish code online and immediately get a lot of attention for it. Sure, you'd be proud of yourself if you did something cool, but showing people might involve getting someone to come to your house.

I struggle with this too. When I work on a personal project, I want it to have impact, to be world class if possible. That creates pressure. I sometimes forget to just try and have fun. Over a year ago, I had to abandon my main open source project because it was reaching about 8 regular contributors, and just reviewing pull requests after coming home from work felt like another job on top of my job and I was like... Fuck no, I can't do this, when I come home from work, I actually need to rest and have a life of my own.

droptablemain• 7 years ago

As someone who is single and "kinless," reading this hit pretty hard. I have had a total of probably less than 12 hours of IRL human contact over the past year. I work 100% remotely, so I suppose this isn't surprising. Dating was incredibly frustrating, so I stopped. Moved to a new city, no friends, etc.

Lately I find myself dreaming of the incredibly mundane -- like sitting and having a conversation with a friend, holding hands with made-up humans, etc.

balfirevic• 7 years ago

Have you thought about seeing a therapist? In any case, hang in there and I wish you good luck.

MH153• 7 years ago

Join an adult spots league or other club. This behavior isn't healthy in the long term.

Daegalus• 7 years ago

I have a fiance and a healthy family but even then I notice I didn't have quite as many friends outside my online social chats.

My fiance became friends with a couple that i became friends with, and the husband on the other side introduced me to Disc Golf. I loved the sport, but something I found there was a community, a pretty tight one.

Disc Golf communities are local, and they build clubs around their local courses. People go out regularly to play, weekly rounds that are rated to have a friendly leaderboard, $5 to be included in the leaderboard and to add to the Ace pot. If someone gets an ace thats part of it, wins the pot. People cheer and are excited for other's great shots, aces, and so on. Its the person against the course, and everyone is supporting each other through it.

At the same time, I found new friends. I now go outside regularly into parks, hiking areas, and golf courses to play with them and meet new people.

Disc golf might not be your jam, but the little story is to say that sports, clubs, hobbies can be a huge way to reduce loneliness.

Especially the more casual sports. Bowling, Disc Golf, tennis, ball golf, etc.

You can join a local sewing club if you are into that. Book club. Barnes & Noble now hosts some run by local employees and people in the community.

Look into your hobbies, and see if you can find like minded individuals to make friends over it.

If you are a coder and thats your passion and you want to be more social, go to meetups, dev events, etc. At least here in SF there is many daily, some are reoccuring with a usual crowd.

afpx• 7 years ago

Decline of the family? How about decline of the entire Homo Sapien social structure ...

I’m looking out my window, and I see houses of neighbors I’ve never met, and the rest are owned by people with whom I have nothing in common. So, needless to say, I spend a lot of time at work. Work has sadly become my “new family”. Yet, I trust none of them. So, no wonder my Homo Sapien brain is flipping out.

microcolonel• 7 years ago

I'm only 22, and moving back into my mom's house has made my life a lot better, especially while living the startup life; it's better to have somebody around who loves you unconditionally, and it's okay to be at home when you're reeel young (as long as you know you don't have to be there).

I now know it'll important to organize and integrate my next local community when I move out, or I'll probably end up lonely.

Go meet your neighbours!

arendtio• 7 years ago

Cohabiting couples break up faster and more often than marrieds.

I find the distinction between cohabiting and married couples a bit weird. I mean, aren't most couples cohabiting before they marry? Which in turn would mean that married couples have, on average, a more mature relationship? No wonder that those relationships are more stable than the mixed group, from fresh couples to equally mature couples, which is called 'cohabiting couples'.

Feels a bit like apples and oranges and I wonder what the message behind those facts should be.

thtthings• 7 years ago

(my baseless rant with no scientific proof)I think people who move a lot are lonelier as opposed to those who never left the place they grew up. I have a few childhood friends in my home town that even if i meet after years still share a bond. I feel that it must be easier for women to make friends. It is very hard to make guy friends as most guys who are not in a relationship tend to focus on finding/hooking up. Also, we are a bit conditioned by pornography and also are a bit delusional. Everyone thinks too highly of themselves.. no one wants to settle. The women/men who can settle don't as their mischief(fucking around) catches on to them. Nothing wrong with that but there are consequences.

We half of us are lonely and don't want to be. Can't we all just get along and be nice to each other and build genuine relationships? No. For that first we need to accept that conditioning is messing up with our heads.. Change our habits and slow but surely we will meet like minded people

actuator3• 7 years ago

I moved around as a kid and had to change schools, it definitely made keeping in touch with people hard. I can't do "What's up" with people who aren't near as it gets tiring after a while and I prefer hanging out with people in person. So, most of the friends I have now are either from uni or people who I met in my first job.

Though moving around did help me in one thing. Despite being an introvert, it forced me to try to talk to new people.

rayraegah• 7 years ago

Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell had an excellent research report as video summarizing loneliness, published earlier this year [0] with sources linking to the facts in the video [1].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Xv_g3g-mA

[1] https://sites.google.com/view/sourcesloneliness/startseite

closetohome• 7 years ago

I'd like to point out that this is a radically right-wing source, published by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

Which is why they keep talking about traditional families as if they were the only thing standing between us and the collapse of civilization.

djtriptych• 7 years ago

Probably the biggest draw for city life. I have an awesome huge social circle centered around performing artists (I’m a DJ on the side).

Get a social hobby and mean it!

rglover• 7 years ago

If anybody wants to talk/tell jokes/bullshit, hit me up: me@ryanglover.net.

This is the only way we get out of this mess: take initiative as individuals to start connecting with others again. Even when (especially) we have differing opinions.

The old rules of "don't discuss religion and politics" need to be reintroduced to the social contract—step up to the plate and call others out for bringing up these topics (no matter how enticing).

metta2uall• 7 years ago

I think what's helped me a lot are teachings by Ajahn Brahm on YouTube that touch on loneliness and how to be at peace with oneself. I've learned that I'm always with a friend - myself. Learning to be friends with oneself also helps one be friends with others for example by being generally happier and much less critical.

mixmastamyk• 7 years ago

Was very lonely in my twenties, now desperate for alone time. Suppose that’s comforting or the opposite. In any case, things change so give yourself a break.

yters• 7 years ago

A contrarian opinion to this narrative of loneliness:

While the American dream has likely contributed to the epidemic of loneliness, it has also introduced many more options for reversing the trend: - Large amount of wealth and high level of safety to make it easier to raise families - High mobility and communication technology allows for individuals to easily group together, while more easily maintaining distant relationships - Many foster care and adoption options for those who cannot or do not wish to have biological children

Additionally, all of our freedom allows us to solve the loneliness epidemic is a highly humanitarian manner, such as through foster care and adoption, and freedom to form families.

StillBored• 7 years ago

I tend to be more the loner, harder now that i'm married with kids, but I've moved a few times to places where I knew absolutely no one. So, frankly if your in this boat don't do the studio apartment, and definitely don't got home and turn on the TV/computer.

Get a two bedroom, and advertise for a roommate, and be creative for joining organizations/activities where you will interact with the same group of people repeatedly, volunteering, team sports, workout groups, adult learning classes, church, etc. Something will stick as long as you smile at people and start random conversations. I might even suggest the bar, but again you need to find a more neighborhoody/dive bar and go there enough to see the same people. Then find out what there interests are and invite them to do something with you,

The point is get the fsck out of the house. Loner activities can even work if you strike up conversations with the people you meet while out running/etc and then invite them for a coffee/beer/etc.

Invite your coworkers to lunch, happy hour, etc.

Now at that said, a big part of this is making sure your friendly and positive, and act interested in people. Start acting negative, or self centered and people won't want to go hang out again.

jonahbenton2• 7 years ago

City Journal is such conservative bullshit I can't even.

There is a lot of loneliness- as there has always been for humans, who have unique capabilities in migration and adaptation. Humans can survive loneliness.

There is a higher measure of divorce, which of course is often painful at the time, but it increasingly leads to improved "family" dynamics down the road.

Levels of acceptance for kids who are "different", while still suboptimal, are so much greater now than ever before. To be a gay kid in the City Journal's golden age for families- no thank you.

Opportunities to facilitate human connection through digital means have never been greater.

City Journal is garbage. Doesn't deserve HN attention.

pascalxus• 7 years ago

i wonder how much work life balance plays a role in this. Since we're at a point of record low work life balance maybe people simply aren't making enough time to enjoy themselves in groups? Imagine if we live in a world where people only worked 6 hours a day and spent the other 2 socializing with peers? would it make a difference?

inakarmacoma• 7 years ago

What if the invite is to something you really don't enjoy, and saying yes results in your sacrificing doing things that bring you joy? Is the yes rule reciprocated?

oryyx5• 7 years ago

I've been lonely for so long, I'm almost numb to it. I'm 28, and sometimes I don't even feel human. I can go weeks where the only words I utter to other humans are during the 10-20 minute catch-ups with my parents who live 2000 miles away. My only consistent communication is with a group of ~5 guys on Discord, where we mostly discuss the game we play together via text. I have never so much as cuddled with another person, much less kissed/held hands/etc. I'm so starved for physical human contact that it's almost painful.

Anyway, I recently went back to school to finish a CS bachelor's. I have zero friends, shitty grades, no internship experience, a criminal record (technically expunged), and a GitHub profile that's essentially empty; supposed to be graduating next week and finding a job.

I don't know why I'm writing this here. Despite the fact that I'm graduating next week, I'm somehow at an all-time-low in my life. And unbelievably lonely. Like I can't even express how lonely I am, it's just a pit. Basically been in this state for 10 years now. My 20's down the fucking drain.

cparsons30003• 7 years ago

Have you tried meeting or just talking to anyone on Okcupid or Tinder? Or tried chatting with folks on Twitch?

oryyx5• 7 years ago

Yeah, I met some women (mostly on OKC) a couple years ago. Went on about 5 dates with 5 different women. Only clicked with one; we setup a second date, and she cancelled on me last minute to say that she was getting back together with her ex.

Honestly though, as much as I want to be with someone -- I don't know if it's the best time. I'm basically a depressed man-child, living on grant money and parental support. My self-esteem is ridiculously low, and I'm actually terrified of the physical aspect of dating. I have ZERO experience, and it's going to be obvious. That's gotta be a red flag for most women my age.

abstractbarista• 7 years ago

Hey I feel for you stranger. I don't know what to say really because I don't have it figured out, but try not to worry about wasting time. I guess it's all sort of pointless in the end so might as well gamble with yourself? Do something unusual, try to meet people with similar interests. Maybe go to a bar or a park? You're not a failure for not having experienced those things you listed.

oryyx5• 7 years ago

I appreciate the sympathy. I think you're right about everything being sort of pointless. When I think about the scale of the universe and my place within it, my insecurities are kinda humorous. But even with that realization, my stupid brain is still depressed. Humans just aren't mean to be solitary like I am, I guess.

roymurdock3• 7 years ago

Do you live anywhere near LA? You mention you surf? If so hit me up at murdock.roy@gmail.com and let's hang out. I'm 26 and still figuring stuff out too...don't worry, everyone is constantly trying to figure it out...

abledon5• 7 years ago

great username! to solve your problem, go volunteer at ANYTHING. whether its a marathon handing out water, a soup kitchen, habitat 4 humanity, bartender at a skatepark, ticket / usher guy at theatre or sports event. so many places need volunteers and its a great way to do something that brings you above your ego.

holler3• 7 years ago

If anyone lives in Seattle and is feeling lonely hit me up! I'll grab coffee with you any time. I'm 35 & a few years ago my loneliness spiraled out of control and almost killed me. I had a lot of crap from my late teens -> late 20's and it led me to a dark place. I know what it's like to be in that place. I got sober and turned things around. Now I work remote and have a flexible schedule. Life is good! I love the goodness of humanity & meeting new people, so hit me up anytime, cheers!

picometer• 7 years ago

My friend made an app for this, and it's live in Seattle - https://www.jointhaw.com/

dag11• 7 years ago

Oh hi, I've seen your posters posted throughout Cap Hill.

I'm curious, with these kinds of apps, do you use it yourself? I've always wondered if dating as a Tinder/Grinder employee would be weird, and here I'm curious if it's weird in a more platonic world.

holler3• 7 years ago

ooh that looks sharp! nice design on the marketing page. I will have to try it out :D

midwestcode• 7 years ago

I'll bite! If you update a way to contact in your description or something, I'll send a message your way. :)

holler3• 7 years ago

sorry for late reply, added to profile :)

pnathan• 7 years ago

Always happy to meet strangers from the internet in Seattle (particularly downtown).

Love nerding out with fellow nerds. :)

daveheq• 7 years ago

I think the increase in ostracization, bullying, and shallow celebrity reality shows has caused people to feel like they can barely do anything without being shamed, criticized, or ridiculed for showing a bit of difference from the established TV/movie/politically-correct norm. The divisiveness in owner/worker rich/poor and politician/voter has only sprayed fuel on the fire. Nevermind stagnating wages causing young folks to hold out on having children giving them less incentive to marry.

I don't know how many times I've heard about people not even being able to have conversations at the dinner table because of some stupid hot-button political issue that people feel they have to go hard-line on or take to the extreme just to get a little bit of gloat over things that are trumped-up in the mainstream/YouTube media. If you're the head of the household or workplace or friend group and you don't lay down the law about this kind of divisiveness, then you're letting the people you love tear each other apart.

navs• 7 years ago

I hear a lot of people admit to depression, anxiety, OCD but rarely do I hear mention of loneliness. I don't have a close circle of friends and my primary social interaction comes from local meetups. I run two, one of which is focused on mental health topics. I've met a lot of people through it and never once heard mention of loneliness.

There's a subreddit, r/foreveralone, where I sometimes go seeking validation that others feel the same way. Are there others who received amazing information but have no one to share it with? I only find those stories on the internet. Do we need more celebrities coming out about their loneliness for it to become more socially acceptable to ask of someone: "I'm feeling really lonely, do you want to grab lunch?".

It's not so much that I'm not around people, I just don't have meaningful relationships with any of them. If I were to suddenly get married, aside from my mother, I don't know who else to invite to my wedding. The relationships feel superficial, career focused or just spur of the moment interactions.

I also fear that maybe I'm overly romanticising friendships and family. Is the image portrayed on tv the basis for what constitutes a meaningful relationship? Maybe it's ok to live life like this, with only passing interactions. Then I read something like this:

Public-health researchers have known for a long time that unmarried men and women are at higher risk of early death from a variety of diseases

And wonder.

mooreds• 7 years ago

Wow, that was a sobering piece.

maskiii• 7 years ago

Coming from India, one of the things I deeply cherish about our culture is the deep family bonds we have here. Ironically, it was when I came to the US that I realized the importance of it!

dragonsky2• 7 years ago

I think this has very little to do with some "decline of the family" whatever that means and more to do with the dilution of social norms.

In the past it was expected that people would attend the local church/sports club/dance/get together and everybody did it even if they didn't really want to, because it was expected and the default behaviour.

These days, there is more acceptance that the members of your community may not share your interests, so the expectation of conformance has diminished and with it the obligation to attend community events.

This is great for those of us who have a social group that they identify with, as these fill the gap. Unfortunately for those of use who's social group is online, distant or non existent then there is no option for physical world socialisation. I would expect that as each interest group becomes more focused, the tolerance for divergent attitudes within those groups is reduced.

This leaves those of us who's socialisation would have been through these default activities with the choice of doing nothing and potentially being lonely, or having to make an effort to find a group we can fit in with and who will accept us.

holri• 7 years ago

Also rivalry is favored over collaboration in our not species-appropriate economy and society.

Lowkeyloki• 7 years ago

Is the implication of this article that people should be having kids to avoid loneliness? Because that's a bit of a twisted reason to have kids IMHO.

"Low on friends? Have kids! They're pretty much required to be your friends." Yikes.

justsee• 7 years ago

One of the most inclusive, satisfying social activities - which serves as a cure for so many of a technologist's ills - is one most likely to be dismissed out-of-hand.

This activity is:

* physical and active - you're required to 'get in' your body, which for HN head-types is very healthy

* extremely inclusive: your age, height, weight, athleticism, looks, coordination, social skills, background, race, gender, sexuality are all irrelevant to participation

* social, but not social: you have to interact to some degree, but it's not necessary to be a hyper-social extrovert at all. Participants can be introverted, suffer social anxiety, or fall somewhere on a spectrum and still be a part of this community

* global: once you master it to some degree, it's easy to drop-in to many cities and towns across the world and have an instant community to interact with

* intellectual, but in a different context: it's possible to 'switch off' from your day-job problem solving, but still explore and enjoy solving in a different, 3-dimensional space

Partner dancing is predictably dismissed by so many - particularly males - as they immediately self-identify as a non-dancer with 'two left feet.'

That's a shame because, in the case of the males, the gender ratios are often reversed compared to the tech sector: there's usually always women in classes and at socials standing out waiting for the next available lead to dance with.

Also, while 'meeting someone' is possible (as in any social activity involving multiple people) if that's part of your loneliness problem, it's not the primary focus for most dance scenes, and the requirement to continually learn a skill to a level of competence quickly filters out people who misunderstand the primary focus of the community.

Those that come with the right intentions and are single do often end up 'finding someone', but that's as a secondary side-effect (and remember the filter means they don't have to deal with a scene of predatory competitors)

It's really worth stressing the inclusivity bit too: is there a more inclusive group activity than partner dancing? Nothing comes to mind. Some of the most popular dancers in communities I've been involved in have been very heavy-set, or old, or not 'good looking'.

There are so many scenes to pick from depending on your musical tastes: Brazilian Zouk, Kizomba, West Coast Swing, Tango, Salsa, Bachata, Rock N Roll and many more.

As a non-dancer who dived in a few years ago, I wish I'd given it a go a decade or two ago.

Highly recommended.

eevilspock• 7 years ago

To me this is just another symptom of our hyper-individualistic libertarian culture. (Yes, political party fortunes aside, modern culture is increasingly libertarian:

- every person for herself

- selfishness is a virtue

- everything she does, good or bad, is all on her (meritocracy rules!, you have no one to blame but yourself)

- whatever the market pays is what she earned, even if it is 100 or 1000 times what other hard workers get (government, keep your stinking hands off MY money)

- life is transactional. (sure i can do that. what's in it for me?)

Improvotter• 7 years ago

I'm moving to an entirely different city for the first time in my life, moving into an apartment for the first time in my life (not including student studios as I am incredible fortunate with my parents). I look at it both ways:

On the one hand, in my mind I have to take every possible opportunity that presents itself. You're not living when you say no to everything and I'm pretty easy to convince when my friends are going places. Last night I asked whether someone was up for getting something to eat, planning on returning and studying after again. Though I ended up staying and meeting a dozen new people. You're never going to discover life when you don't leave your comfort bubble.

Then on the other hand I am afraid. I barely know anyone where I'm going, those I do know are older than me so I'm not really inclined on "hanging" with them like I "hang" with my people of my age (early twenties). (I hate the verb to hang, but eh.) In my mind I'll figure it out and get some new friends. Ever since I moved to a student apartment/room I've changed significantly. I've made it a habit to cook for new people I know: at the start of the year I invite everyone over for dinner or I playfully mention to some new people I know that they should come over someday and I'll cook for them, most of them are very much inclined to say yes. It'll be harder in the big city where I'm going to be living as I'm currently living in a much smaller city where I bike everywhere and there is a huge amount of students. I'm in multiple student unions or clubs so I get to meet new people that way as well.

So in the end I feel like the best moments in life is when you're afraid. It means you're actually living, taking on what is to come. Most of my good memories are because I'm afraid and it turns out great. When I don't overcome that fear and don't go out for example, I almost always regret it and then I've missed out. So in the end, I'm very excited to move to an entirely new city as well :).

For those who are wondering, I'm moving to London.

asdfk-12• 7 years ago

I moved for a job that I found entirely agreeable, and after a year I still have no strong ties as a 28 y/o man. No prospects of friendship, not to mention a relationship. Participating in local boards, playing fiddle music weekly with a community group, and actively participating in my workplace’s social scene.

Beginning to come to terms with the fact that the only option I have is to move to a place where I can grow emotionally and find people that I belong with, since that’s obviously not happening here. This is a shame, since my work aligns with prime ESG metrics and although it doesn’t pay well, I have a five minute commute and access to trails, nature, camping, hunting etc. which I thoroughly take advantage of..

This is an enormous public health crisis. I feel it from the center of my being.

sasaf5• 7 years ago

"The SDT began emerging in the West after World War II. As societies became richer and goods cheaper and more plentiful, people no longer had to rely on traditional families to afford basic needs like food and shelter. They could look up the Maslovian ladder toward “post-material” goods: self-fulfillment, exotic and erotic experiences, expressive work, education."

I think there's one more cause for the Second Demographic Transition: The majority of jobs are now in the service sector. After spending the day negotiating and putting up with others, people may want some solitude.

gytdev• 7 years ago

I'm going to propose a critical point of view, but stay with me.

I feel that the only people that are lonely choose loneliness up on them selves. In this day and age You can do so many things. Why only job, home, whine, repeat?

You can join a dance class, go to meetups, do volunteering, try yoga (acro Yoga my favourite), go to group gym classes, organize treks, events, hikes, meetups, go hitchhiking or go to Asia.

It's up to You to either spend Your days alone or with other people. Just say "hi, how are You doing?" to people in events. Everybody is looking for someone to bond with.

Unless You are really shy or only care about Your job and making money.

zxcvbnm10• 7 years ago

For those that can spare some cash. Get yourself a vacation for a couple weeks to Greece or Turkey, meet some locals there. Even better, try living abroad there or other nations that are known for their social culture. Believe me you will change. You get to experience a new culture and learn a thing or two about yourself.

rafaelvasco• 7 years ago

Yeah. We can of course live our life in solitude. We have that choice. But the truth is that we are made so that we find someone, our SO, our life partner, so that we can grow together, love one another, help one another with the path of life, create a life together. It's not merely social conventions, it's deeply engrained in ourselves. Some will disagree of course, but to live alone is to miss on life imo.

hypertexthero• 7 years ago

Do you know what loneliness means? Some of you may be unfamiliar with that word, but you know the feeling very well. You try going out for a walk alone, or being without a book, without someone to talk to, and you will see how quickly you get bored. You know that feeling well enough, but you don't know why you get bored, you have never inquired into it. If you inquire a little into boredom you will find that the cause of it is loneliness. It is in order to escape from loneliness that we want to be together, we want to be entertained, to have distractions of every kind: gurus, religious ceremonies, prayers, or the latest novels. Being inwardly lonely we become mere spectators in life; and we can be the players only when we understand loneliness and go beyond it.
After all, most people marry and seek other social relationships because they don't know how to live alone. Not that one must live alone; but, if you marry because you want to be loved, or if you are bored and use your job as a means of forgetting yourself, then you will find that your whole life is nothing but an endless search for distractions. Very few go beyond this extraordinary fear of loneliness; but one must go beyond it, because beyond it lies the real treasure.
You know, there is a vast difference between loneliness and aloneness. Some of the younger students may still be unaware of loneliness, but the older people know it: the feeling of being utterly cut off, of suddenly being afraid without apparent cause. The mind knows this fear when for a moment it realizes that it can rely on nothing, that no distraction can take away the sense of self-enclosing emptiness. That is loneliness. But aloneness is something entirely different; it is a state of freedom which comes into being when you have gone through loneliness and understand it. In that state of aloneness you don't rely on anyone psychologically because you are no longer seeking pleasure, comfort, gratification. It is only then that the mind is completely alone, and only such a mind is creative.
All this is part of education: to face the ache of loneliness, that extraordinary feeling of emptiness which all of us know, and not be frightened when it comes; not to turn on the radio, lose oneself in work, or run to the cinema, but to look at it, go into it, understand it. There is no human being who has not felt or will not feel that quivering anxiety. It is because we try to run away from it through every form of distraction and gratification - through sex, through God, through work, through drink, through writing poems or repeating certain words which we have learnt by heart - that we never understand that anxiety when it comes upon us.
So, when the pain of loneliness comes upon you, confront it, look at it without any thought of running away. If you run away you will never understand it, and it will always be there waiting for you around the corner. Whereas, if you can understand loneliness and go beyond it, then you will find there is no need to escape, no urge to be gratified or entertained, for your mind will know a richness that is incorruptible and cannot be destroyed.
All this is part of education. If at school you merely learn subjects in order to pass examinations, then learning itself becomes a means of escape from loneliness. Think about it a little and you will see. Talk it over with your educators and you will soon find out how lonely they are, and how lonely you are. But those who are inwardly alone, whose minds and hearts are free from the ache of loneliness - they are real people, for they can discover for themselves what reality is, they can receive that which is timeless.

—Jiddu Krishnamurti, Think on These Things, Chapter 23. The Need to Be Alone

loosyloosy• 7 years ago

From what I've seen, there're 3 kind of people that deal with loneliness differently:

1) The average social people, they had grown up in social contexts, more or less, given as granted, so loneliness is more of a pain point.

2) The socially disconnected people by choice or experience, they had grown up like 1) people but after an event or experience they disconnected(implicitly or explicitly) their minds from the social/cultural/(and sometimes identity) contexts that they got used through their lifetime, so loneliness is, more or less, painless, because at this point your deeper existential self is on spot.

3) The socially disconnected people born with clinical syndromes that physically make their minds, really hard or impossible, achieve a basic perception task as connecting/learning from social clues, through a lifetime.

I'm from the 2nd kind.

ptah• 7 years ago

for many it's too expensive to start families or to socialise

c0vfefe• 7 years ago

The individualism of the Enlightenment and the sexual revolution has gutted the meaning-making institutions of Western society. We threw out the baby with the bathwater, and are by-&-large culturally programmed to pursue individual freedom & self-actualization, while abandoning the truth that humans are tribal creatures.

magwa101• 7 years ago

JFC what do people want from life? They long for something they don't have. Ever seen a big family, full of back stabbing? Not all families are great. Be alone, enjoy the void, wtf.

edisonjoao• 7 years ago

I legit created this app to cure all of this http://foxie.cool

demetria• 7 years ago

I always find when I move to a new city (or perhaps become a bit despondent) a new bit of energy emerges from Meetups. Go to a few, find some interesting people, maybe learn a skill or two and enjoy the new diverse group of people. Cheers

The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness

Related Stories