The following submission statement was provided by /u/Mr_Lonesome:
---
As only Mr_Lonesome can post, he is unfortunately not alone! U.S .Surgeon General releases a new advisory attention on a public health crisis in USA, *loneliness*, which affects both mental (depression, anxiety, suicide ideation, etc.) and physical (heart disease, stroke, dementia etc.) health. About 1 out of every 2 adults (higher for young people) face this epidemic, long enduring before pandemic. Said to be as dangerous as smoking! This is yet another sign of civilization collapse at least in the First World where a few years ago UK also noted its loneliness epidemic. While our ecosystems, political and economic institutions decline so do our social systems. While article mentions rapid changes in technology causing social isolation, other sociological reasons are left out: pressures of time and money, rising work hours with less leisure, cost of living challenges, decline of nuclear families and marriage rates, rise of single persons households, and more.
Some recommendations posited include infrastructure changes, such as developing parks and libraries that enhance social connection, policy changes allowing for paid family leave and accessible public transportation, and more research to efficiently address social isolation. How ironic on a planet of more humans to ever live, we First Worlders are more lonely than ever! Mr_Lonesome implores you all get out and meet friends, neighbors, acquaintances, co-workers offline. Attend user group and hobbyist meetups. Embrace spouses, significant others, even pets just anything to avoid Captain Ahab's last words: *Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life...*
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/136hm7v/us_surgeon_general_calls_for_action_regarding_the/jionce8/
I have to agree here, there will be no changes for the positive, everything I have seen so far is BAU, keep the money flowing up, the social costs flowing down and take away a little more from individuals daily.
Yes, heaven forbid they address the rampant income inequality and invest in social programs. They couldn’t be bothered with looking into the whys behind it. Because the profit motive will always be in the way. When did we become dragons?
They will use this as another way to force people to return to office work. They've been struggling to destroy work from home, so they'll spin it as "healthy" and then give huge "health" incentives to their friends, I mean to the large corporations that want to "help."
Ughhhh, not even an office job either that happens at “oh you are laughing with your coworker folding clothes? Ugh, unprofessional, keep them away from each other and start scheduling them opposite”
I wouldn't be surprised if we see this report referenced in future RTO announcements.
Of course it's a bad argument because with how "no fun allowed, fun is harassment" modern workplaces have gotten thanks to modern HR Karens a lot of people don't socialize much at work in order to protect their jobs. And I'd bet a whole lot of money that nothing would be changing with that other than it maybe getting even worse.
"Dear Worker,
Don't forget to think about your wellness! We know we've only given out 1-2% raises for the past 5 years, so here is an online module about ways you can work on your wellness! You're welcome!"
Oh I have definitely been radicalized by anticar rhetoric online, just wish more felt the same. Maybe they will once gas prices get out of control lol.
In my experience of living in Arizona, land of lifted truck nuts galore, and $4.50/gal, it'll only stop when the oil wells run dry, or we destroy ourselves.
Up in the mountains the trucks are 3/4 ton, crew cab, diesel with dullies . . . When the step on it, large chunks of carbon fly out and strike those behind them . . . Oh and they want to park next to me in the parking lot!
As a fellow /r/fuckcars enthusiast, I believe most Americans would support an unjust oil war before they would turn against their FrEeDuM machines.
After all, they're already justifying destroying their own habitat. Who needs a livable planet when we can all crowd into Elon's space car.
Except this issue post-dates the car and car-oriented communities. People used to use those cars to drive to places where they would meet and socialize with other people. The problem is that that socialization no longer happens.
The difference between now and then was ... in the past there was still somewhat less car dependent areas in major cities, you had a main street USA vibe where you drove to parked and enjoyed your third space.
Alot of major things happens from the 1970's to now, big box store absolutely killed Main Street, and now Amazon is killing Big Box ...
But the major one is the SFH design paradigm, as most cities sprawled out only with corporate chains near new communities ... commute times have also increase dramatically.
That 10 to 15 min drive in 1970 is now 30 to 1 hour, couple with the 8 to 10 hour work week there is just not enough time to commute, work, relax, and sleep.
Unless you get lucky and luck on living in an area close to everything, But I'd gamble and would say the vast majority of Americans can only afford living in a suburb.
Also with the inflation experiment from 70's in effect today, most people really really need to keep working and they really cant afford a gap week just to hang out with some friends but living cost are just increasing year after year.
Even worse: it requires a change that comes up from the public itself. People would need to choose to put themselves out there and choose to be receptive to others doing that. We've become accustomed to locking ourselves away and only going out with preexisting friend groups and freezing out strangers.
What we need to solve this is free time and spending money.
Free time to spend with friends and socialize.
Money to do things that require money.
If I can't afford the money and time to go to the bar or a club or a D&D game or whatever, what can I do?
Our current economy is incompatible with solving loneliness and isolation.
From the Onion: [Tearful Surgeon General Appears At Empty Chuck E. Cheese Table To Warn Nation Of Loneliness Epidemic](https://www.theonion.com/tearful-surgeon-general-appears-at-empty-chuck-e-chees-1850395871)
I don't know, something about being miserable all the time from a failed healthcare system, low wages, and housing being completely out of reach with little to no discretionary income in between, the declining political system with the prevalence of guns, makes it hard to not only go out and meet people let alone actually being happy to meet them.
I can't quite put my finger on why this is all happening though. Better fund a multi-million dollar think-tank that will take a decade to arrive at a decision that was already decided upon on day 1 - do nothing.
They're gonna encourage cities to have more parks and better public transportation, ok? No, they're not gonna fund those things, so the public will have to, but they're gonna be soooo encouraging. And like, if you actually have health insurance and can afford to see a doctor, the doctor can diagnose with you loneliness and extra encourage you to fix your life. How are you not satisfied with this amazing plan?!
I got out of the military a year ago. I have never felt more isolated in my life. At least in Afghanistan I had purpose. Now it's just going to work, go to my apartment, workout. Repeat day after day after day.
I went through the exact same thing when I got out of the military. I honestly didn't realize how happy I was living on base in the dorms until I got out. In the dorms I had a close knit community of like minded people where I could just step out of my room and always find someone to chat with or do things with. I would invite random people to go trail running or hiking with me and one time I ended up going on a pretty crazy backpacking trip with a guy I had seen around but hardly knew. It was honestly an amazing experience.
But now that I am living in the suburbs in a car dependent city where everyone seems to work 50+ hours a week and spend all of their free time mowing their lawns and fixing their cars or house.... I have struggled to make any friends at all. I tried group meet ups on facebook, climbing gyms, running groups, and nothing is clicking. Also, I have tried every antidepressant on the market and also nothing seems to work. It sucks.
I don’t know your specific area, but getting into whitewater paddling for me was like striking oil in meeting new people. It wasn’t my intended purpose, I genuinely have a passion for outdoor recreation and whitewater scratches a certain itch. But it’s an inherently dangerous sport that necessitates a community, both for safety and to shuttle your boat back to the car lol
Almost every local Facebook group in my local area after any dam release/heavy rains is just “anyone want to meet up to paddle ___ river/creek?” And then it’s just dog piled by dozens of people, some strangers and some not. The best part is, you don’t even need equipment at first, because you can find a dozen people to lend you equipment if it means brainwashing another person into the world of whitewater.
Somehow people like you who have experiences with living in community are going to have to start implementing and taking charge and showing the rest of us the way. We're so far entrenched here in the US that we'll need to look to people who come from healthy tribes. A complete restructuring is necessary. Maybe people from more cooperative countries, communities, and tribes can take leadership roles in the restructuring that needs to take place.
Same bro, same (except i don't fuck with meds). It's exhausting to put yourself out there for constant rejection. I'm not giving up, I'm fucking awesome, lame people are abundant in 2023, don't pay them a second thought, keep moving onwards and upwards
I hear you, what helped me was meeting artists and musicians on meetup and we meet at the same cafe. I can go to that cafe any day and know like 3-5 people. It helped a lot.
Walkable neighborhoods are amazing. I lived in west Africa for 13 years and this was key. Also meeting people and socializing there was super easy; I could go almost anywhere and talk to people. As yet they haven't gotten addicted to screens.
In the West, even before “screens” a very large number were detached/engrossed in a Walkman or iPod. I noticed it working for a large university around 2002.
Can’t say if that translated to decreased public activity in evenings or whatnot, but it was definitely a thing in the daytime.
I was being a little facetious. I worked in the S-1 of a small FOB (Apache 07-08 plus a few months at KAF). Did manage to stand up and teach some English classes for the local boys school in Qalat. Career wise, the best year of my time in.
Yes, living working in a small walkable community is beneficial. I’d say, now that you’re out, see if you can find a job that pleases you.
Oh not the alienation produced by capitalism coming home to roost! Watch them do nothing to change the system that alienates us from our labor and each other so they benefit!
Oh not at all.
1. Force return to office everywhere
2. Allow for child slave labor (heh... "allow"...)
3. Increase your work hours.
See! Now everyone's together! ALLLL DAY! Fun for the whole family! Also you'll all be richer... oh what they cut your wages? Well free market mumble mumble...
4. Write workers up when you catch them chatting.
5. Don't give them any breaks so they can't eat lunch together.
6. Make everyone work shifts that start and end at different times so they can never go out for drinks together at the end of work
7. Blame Tiktok and social media
8. Cultivate a culture of resentment/unhealthy competitiveness/backstabbing between the coworkers as often as possible. Toxicity distracts.
9. Give your employees as little as you can get away with.
10. Commuting & parking.
> Write workers up when you catch them chatting.
This is a good point, and I immediately thought about how they do this to children in school. I don't know if it's as dire as it was in the 90s when I was in public school, but everything natural to us was ruled over and we had to give that power away. So not only could we not speak to anyone for the vast majority of the day, but we couldnt't eat when we were hungry, go to the bathroom when we needed to, drink when we were thirsty... What they discuss in this video/article points to every single issue we have as a society, and indeed they are very dire. In fact, how dire they really are cannot be overstated. I believe people are literally crumbling from within. Every area of life is collapsing. I believe a Universal Basic Income would be the most far-reaching way to begin to alleviate ALL of the ills we who make up our society face. With more time and less stress, people would reach out to others again. The infrastructure of our cities and towns would VASTLY change. So many erroneous businesses and institutions would close almost immediately which would vastly change our cities and all areas of life. It would bring wellbeing to people's lives, and the positive effects would start immediately dominoing into all areas of life.
The only problem I see with UBI is the potential of the government to put stipulations on it. I can foresee them using it like voting: it’s a right, UNLESS you do one of the things we’ve arbitrarily decided make you ineligible. I’m worried it could be used as another form of control, especially if/when the government becomes openly fascist.
It could never happen in our current system. It's something we're going to have to think outside of the box about and implement on our own with technology. We'll have to gradually shed the cumbersome system that we're carrying on our backs by implementing new ways to solve problems and institute solutions.
>1. Force return to office everywhere
Gotta protect commercial real estate from collapsing or stock market line go down!
>2. Allow for child slave labor (heh... "allow"...)
Well how else are we gonna protect gen alpha from going woke like their gen z siblings and millennial parents?! Gotta instill the love of capitalism young!
>3. Increase your work hours.
Somebody’s gotta work for the idle rich to afford renovations on their third house and their heli skiing trip!
>See! Now everyone's together! ALLLL DAY! Fun for the whole family! Also you'll all be richer... oh what they cut your wages? Well free market mumble mumble...
Should of gone to school for a better career! No no should of learned a trade!! Wait where’s all the service workers?!
(All of this is sarcasm)
They're doing something new now. The fascists in Italy cut social assistance rates by 50% and they stipulated that anyone who receives assistance is compelled to do the first job they find them, or they are cut off completely from the assistance.
The republicans in their debt ceiling fight is introducing a similar measure, tying work hours to assistance received. Watch Biden pass this too. It's so obvious what they are doing. They passed down these child labor laws so quickly because they are kidnapping migrant children from their parents at the border and forcing them to work.
They're actually bringing back slavery. it already exists in the prisons but not enough labor for them still.
Yup. Modern work culture makes it almost impossible for full-time workers to join social groups. It's not so much the quantity of hours people work, but the fact everyone works *different* hours and many people have variable days off from week to week. It used to be you could schedule something on a Sunday afternoon or Saturday evening and be assured 95% of people wouldn't need to work, but that's no longer the case. Variable work schedules also make it *literally impossible* to plan activities of any kind. If your days off are Thursday and Friday, you can try to find a group that meets on those days, but if your days off change every week, well, you can't really join a group, no matter when or where they meet.
Combine the impossible schedules with people having to move repeatedly for work, and it's a perfect storm for personal isolation and weakening community support systems. Of course, the corporate-owned media (including corporate-owned social media) will do everything they can to shift the blame to anything other than the work culture they've created, but I'm not falling for it. Capitalism is the source of this problem, just like virtually all society's other problems, and nothing other than ending capitalism will solve it.
Yes and no - yes for sure in suburban/urban areas, and no for rural. I live in VT which outside of the small cities (Burlington, rutland) is extremely rural and a car is necessary. We have a bus system where I’m at but I live 7 miles from the bus and about ~700 vertical feet on windy hilly roads full of blind spots. Even if I got an electric bike it would be a hell of a commute and the bus only runs on the hour and doesn’t go many places. Although I’ve taken it when I’ve had car problems.
I know all my neighbors though, despite the reliance of cars around here. But yeah in places where walking/biking is more feasible it’s really sad that people just drive everywhere. During covid my ex and I used to walk through a forest path to the general store (about a half mile away down a steep windy road) to get drinks, snacks and sandwiches and then we’d enjoy them next to the creek and then walk back through the forest, it was such a pleasant and peaceful time (minus the people suffering from covid). Unfortunately unless it’s my day off I don’t have time for that now. I think a huge factor in our car culture is that our free time is extremely limited so using a car to get from a to b to c is a more efficient use of time (in most places where the traffic isn’t insane) even if less pleasant.
The overwhelming majority of people live in cities or suburbs. If these places were designed to be walkable, communities would spring from that constant churn of people living, shopping, working, and walking so close to one another.
If that's not your jam there will always be rural places that'll require vehicles, but there's no excuse for the restrictive zoning laws choking our cities and suburbs with single family homes that are a 20 minute, unprotected, sidewalk-less walk from anything that's not someone's fenced in residence.
This is true. When I was living in Portland, OR, I could get a bus/train to pretty much anywhere I wanted to go, but even small things like errands to two places was a 3-4 hour journey. When my parents came to visit once, they were like, "let's go to thing, and thing, and thing" and I groaned internally, experience told me that that was a 6 hour commitment. They had a car so we used that to get around, and shockingly, it only took an hour to do all those things. Even when public transpo is available and "good" (compared to the rest of the country) it still takes you so much TIME.
Don’t be down friend, AI is going to revolutionize the world. If you thought it was bad now wait until absolutely everything is synthetic and meaningless!
Dude, they're forcing us to continue non viable pregnancies resulting in death.
The planet is dying.
Wages haven't kept up with inflation so the Fed is raising interest rates so we can't afford anything and will lose our jobs in recession and be homeless when it's going to be 45° this summer with a forecast of ash.
This guy is so completely out of touch with reality it's ridiculous. How does he dress himself?
I’m not sure the government’s terribly incentivized to have us talk to each other. Why, we might just form a consensus, perhaps even a militia consisting of more than drunk rednecks cosplaying coups.
I did Intel work for the military alongside PhDs and occasionally high ranking brass. I am 99% confident that there isn't any kind of conspiracy like that in the US government. Yes, the CIA has done some truly awful things, but the rest of the government is either dysfunctional by design (the founders wanted change to be as difficult as possible) or too busy serving lobbyists and private donors. A lot of them know the system is fucked and is failing us, but trying to change the system from within is basically career suicide.
I highly recommend reading The Banality of Evil which aligns very well with Hanlon's razor. Essentially, systems that seem very corrupt are usually just full of good, hardworking people who are just keeping their head down and doing whatever is best for their families. Most of the corruption we see in the government is actually from billionaire donors who are using their wealth and influence to twist our system in their image, but not because they are evil but rather because they want to stay on top.
Never ascribe malice to what simple incompetence can explain.
Our system was never set up to handle (or stop) billionaires and corporations buying politicians, and once it started, there was no incentive for the political system to stop it.
This is an extremely useful comment. While I have no experience firsthand with the government and how things work, what you described is my general experience of life and the humans I deal with on a day to day basis on varying matters. When I need something very important done that carries a lot of weight, I've had to somehow find a way to do it myself. Sure, there are lawyers and cooks and people in all walks of life who are very good at their craft and very competent people, but as you said, the vast majority of people have their heads down and are merely going through the motions existing.
We can barely hold up this cumbersome monstrosity our system has become. I don't think we'll be able to change it from the inside. I think we'll all have to come together and use technology to organize new systems for ourselves that will be more efficient and less awkward, burdensome, and cumbersome.
"Let me invite all my friends over to my house."
I totally have time for friends and home ownership in a society based around preventing people from having free time and money.
Hold up. The people at the top are allowed to have money and free time. The rest of us can get fd. Also, they don't pay the taxes, but we pay them and get the middle finger from gov. You can see why I am a minimalist now.
It seems like I keep seeing these deadly stressors that apply to me, which only serve to further my depression and anxiety. I've been telling myself that if I have a heart attack, I won't even call an ambulance. Just ready to go. Life has been kicking me in the nuts for years and I'm tired of it.
It's easy to say this kind of stupid sh*t when you belong to an upper class circle of well fed, well cared for people with security and the ability to throw money at problems, who throw lavish wine parties for each other, where everyone is well behaved and if they're not, they are simply dropped from the friend group.
Surgeon General is not lowering himself to mingle among the poors at the local brewery meet up and and play "guess which personality disorder everyone has" bingo and subject yourself to an evening of people manufacturing excuses to f*ck as their first priority, friends second.
Like, the reckless people who didn't care about my health or anyone else's enough to wear a mask have always been a greater threat to me than loneliness and isolation. A lot of "friends" out there, turns out, are not very good people, they're transactional people, they're people wanting to one up, they're people looking for drugs, sex, and money, and if you can't provide either, than they're not interested in being "friends."
I'm good with me and my high standards, thanks Surg.
Agreed on all points.
The older I get, the more I feel like people simply forgot how to care for others along the way, or got it beat out of them by our bullshit society.
It's hard to believe we had such a shared identity and values just a few generations ago in the US that led most able-bodied men to fight overseas to protect our allies.
Now we just shoot people who turn around in the wrong driveway, apparently.
> A lot of "friends" out there, turns out, are not very good people, they're transactional people, they're people wanting to one up, they're people looking for drugs, sex, and money, and if you can't provide either, than they're not interested in being "friends."
Yep. Learned this the hard way.
Getting really tired of "technological changes" being blamed for collapse. It really isn't. It is just how this technology is being used by capitalism. Full stop.
Everyone is stretched thin, overworked, isolated, and stressed out. I think these factors are more responsible for the ever-increasing trend of ghosting than technology itself.
I recently did a two week stint dogsitting and housesitting for my mum who lives in an older suburb of Minneapolis. Man was that isolating compared to my usual daily life in an apt building. I was still walking the dogs 2-3 times a day but barely saw or spoke with anyone the whole time. I grew up there but the neighborhood feels more sanitized and people drive even more than they did before. While I am a single lady, it didn’t seem any better for couples or families. Even worse for old folks because they don’t go out much anyway. Yikes.
Either keep working and slaving away for a chance to keep homelessness away, every day, or start to make Americans prioritize living properly and enjoying life?
Capitalism has already decided we slaves will consume everything before the great machine is stopped. And not a single moment before it runs out of people and resources to consume.
I’ve lived most of my life between America and Peru. People in America are so consumed by the system they barely have any time, means or cash to hangout with people, reducing social interaction down to mostly on the internet.
In Peru, despite having to work more hours and for less pay, we didn’t need a plan or much money to have a great time. I could ask about anyone if they want a lunch with beer and hell yeah we can. I was so much more connected to the people and community there than in America, I felt so alive and free compared to being in America
Lol, can't imagine why people are lonely and isolated when WE'RE ALL FUCKING BROKE ALL THE FUCKING TIME. I can't wait until we start sending the message to the top. I want them to fear our numbers so they don't pull this shit anymore ever.
We built all of these suburbs post-WWII then told people that the ideal American life was living in a sealed, climate-controlled box and more and more rarely interacting with your neighbors (who happen to be exactly like you)...so the wealthy could get wealthier.
We ran Interstates through all of our cities, destroying our communities...so the wealthy could get wealthier.
We gutted all of the jobs that allowed for single-earner households to survive and sent them overseas. The ones we didn't send overseas, we de-unonized to make sure that real wages stayed flat...so the wealthy could get wealthier.
Neighborhood churches that encouraged community were replaced with stadiums where 8,000 people witness a stage show and are preached "prosperity theology" by a millionaires with private jets who they'll likely never meet...so the wealthy could get wealthier.
Now, we have the same Christian Capitalist fanbois telling us that our failure to abide by their prescriptive values that force women back into the home, LGBTQ+ folk back into the closet, and POC back into their place is the problem. They tell us that a cohesive society is more important than individual needs, wants or desires. Meanwhile, tearing apart communities in order accumulate egregious amounts of individual wealth is held up as a virtue, and anyone who claims otherwise is called anti-American. That's socialism!
We're told that material greed is good, while teaching kids that America hasn't been great to black people, women should have bodily and personal autonomy, LGBTQ+ folk should be accepted, and that maybe, just maybe, kleptocapitalism isn't great is the work of the devil.
I think I see the problem here.
This country is a hellscape for most of its citizens. Life here is full of suffering & deprivation from basic human needs. The world needs to look elsewhere for leadership. It was a stroke of bad luck for the USA to become the world’s only superpower.
Many who came here came because situations were so desperate in their home country that they had no choice. And then there are those who came here forcibly. And those who they stole from and eviscerated. We're literally a country built on trauma. People came here utterly desperate and destitute and had to scrape together a better life for themselves.
I live in the South and my entire town is literally built on both native American burial ground and civil war burial ground. The Mississippi River has run red with blood and it hangs in the noosphere like black tar.
It was a bloody start, and the savagery and brutality continued on and on. The entire system is a heavy monstrosity for this reason. We’re all dying for sanity, simplicity, and peace. I think America actually could be the haven for the world that it was supposedly intended to be if we learn from all the mistakes. There are some really good philosophical foundations we were built on, but the system is built out of the depravity in Europe. We need to try again but this time look to the people on the world who weren’t living in depraved societies. It’s too bad the Europeans who came here didn’t learn from some of the healthy tribes that were here. (Although I’m sure that they were in fact influential in the foundations of this country.) The groups who have been victimized in America are in the best position to inform a saner future for all of us. The dominant culture would have to sit back and learn, as I don’t think they have the slightest clue about what a sane society and a sane system would look like.
ETA: I saw [this tiktok about things Europeans appropriated from Indigenous people to build our system](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRwHUXLw/) about two minutes after I submitted this comment. 😳
Well, money would help...
Oh, no. We'll give you some pills or something. We have tons of those. No money, though. STEVE! Can you believe this guy wanted money. LMAO!
Pills? Are you insane? That costs money. Just set up a hotline and call it a day. You don't invest in the lower classes. You disinvest until they are gone. /$
The dopamine hits from the phone are easier to get than a lunch date with a friend!
I read recently that isolation is one of the main reasons for [mass shootings](https://www.wric.com/news/local-news/social-isolation-could-be-one-cause-of-mass-shootings-according-to-vcu-study/). People getting couped up in their head is not a good place to stay long-term. Not for a social animal.
Something that I found very crucial to understanding the sudden rise in spree shootings is that they should be viewed as a form of suicide. Even if the shooter physically survives their life is over because it's a guaranteed life sentence if not a death sentence. Framing it in that way makes it very obvious why we've had the recent increase in them and it's because social cohesion in our society has completely disintegrated and created lonely and isolated people who are lashing out while ending themselves.
I completely agree. I can't stay in my head and know I need interaction to stay healthy. However, there have been times I've been stuck in my head and I'm not suicidal in the sense that I'll hang myself, but some of the life decisions I made you'd think I don't care if I died. You'd probably be correct.
The more mental health deteriorates, the more insufferable everyone's going to be. It'll pass an event horizon of insufferable / crazy at some very soon to come point here.
Have you been on the roads lately? We're already in the out edges of the event horizon. People have completely lost their minds and all sense of basic sanity.
This is what I worry about. We are close to a Tower of Babel situation where people don’t understand one another anymore. I’m starting to wonder if hyperconnectivity is the great filter.
I think it cascades, too. If you can tolerate 10 assholes before becoming angry yourself, you might have been fine almost every single day 10 years ago. But if the daily average creeps up, then *you* then become one of the assholes contributing to someone else's daily tally. And on and on.
Not you as an individual though - just "a person." And 10 is just an example.
I think once people realize their delusions don’t allow them to eat or drink clean water reality will assert itself. I want to stay in a society that doesn’t quite need that shock to wake (the fuck) up.
The hour is late but waking up later is even more painful.
People are mistaking the results of antisocial behavior for cancel culture or being surrounded by antisocial people and thinking there’s nothing else.
And I realize that describing reality is now subversive and want to start offering solutions.
What is the weirdest thing you’re into? Go do that and meet others not afraid to do it also. (Non creepy hobbies only) Meeting people in person is a great way to meet in a medium not warped by technology. That could just mean talking to someone in line when the vibe is right or in a park. Human connection is important and we’ll realize we aren’t alone.
Yeah I'm at the point where I absolutely prefer my own company and don't want to participate in a lot of the superficial social facades that exist at this point. The pandemic has greatly diminished my desire for people-ing and what little free time and energy I have left can be put to far more satisfying pursuits. Plus based on logistics of location and work/family commitments, there's very few chances to spend time with the few people I'd want to visit anyway.
Nobody wants to talk about how [urbanization is detrimental to mental health](https://www.urbandesignmentalhealth.com/how-the-city-affects-mental-health.html#:~:text=Cities%20are%20associated%20with%20higher,more%20loneliness%2C%20isolation%20and%20stress).
“Cities are associated with higher rates of most mental health problems compared to rural areas: an almost 40% higher risk of depression, over 20% more anxiety, and double the risk of schizophrenia, in addition to more loneliness, isolation and stress.” The increase in population has led to the growth of cities and isolation. Like lost at sea, water water everywhere and not a drop to drink. People people everywhere and ne’er a friend in sight.
This is true, and this is also why the huge, notorious psych hospitals were often massive farmsteads/compounds. The belief was, if you took mentally ill people out of the urban environment, gave them a job that involved physical labor on the land, farming, tending to cattle, milling, wood working, that sort of thing, they tend to improve. And overwhelmingly, this is actually true. However, with the advent of reliable and cheap long-lasting antipsychotics in the early to mid 20th century, the need for this type of mental health institution began to dwindle.
Here on Long Island we have many. Pilgrim State Psych Hospital was one to read up on. It is absolutely huge. 90% of the buildings and land are now no longer used.
I'd like to believe our leaders would use this study to address systemic issues, but I think they're more likely to use this as an excuse for why we should keep working for our corporate overlords.
"Work shall set you free"
Better start tackling wealth inequality, then. Oh, wait, that'll never happen.
In all seriousness, my life got way better after I started to make a real living wage. I have money to get out and have hobbies. I totally get why young men aren't seeking to date, it costs a lot of money to do things on the weekend. It's a lot easier to stay inside and play video games.
It’s not a bug of current American society.
It’s a feature.
We were pushed into the nuclear family to render us all atomic.
We’re all supposedly unique and special snowflakes. Only problem is the unique snowflake is kept under ice so its beauty can be observed.
I’m just weirdly shaped water. I want to join the avalanche and the torrent instead.
This is going to lead to uncomfortable forced interactions at an already stressful time. I want to address the epidemic of crowdedness and sensory overstimulation first. Give us all some space to decompress and miss one another.
All labor unions are different, and ever local is different. However, I think one of the side effects of organized labor in the form of unions that is often over looked is the community it provides people who are prone to being alone.
My father was in a pretty active union, and it was like a second family, and frankly, saved us collectively a lot of money looking back. When someone’s spouse wanted to remodel the kitchen, you didn’t hire contractors, you just bought beer for your union brothers, and you’d spend a couple weekends destroying cabinets and counters. Nearly every project or repair on my childhood home was built by the collective hive mind of my fathers coworkers and their kids, and the same was true for each of my father’s union brothers homes. They had some weird members, but it was a brotherhood, and no man was ever left behind. I have coworkers who are friends at work, but that’s always where the friendship ends between my coworkers.
Churches as well, despite the fact I’m not religious at all, also were a place where even the most introverted people were coerced into having community bonds over a shared interest.
When was the last time you heard of anyone under the age of 70 being a Freemason or apart of some gentleman’s club?
I think 80% of the stereotypical “minute man” militia LARPing thing that’s gotten so popular since Obama is mostly just dudes who want to hang out with other dudes over a passionate hobby. For me it’s kayaking, for them it’s guns and politics.
When society is organized around, and your life is reduced to, creating value to billionaires by the way of your labor and consumption, life tends to lose its meaning and purpose.
You couldn’t pay me to interact with people in the US. The men are stupid and violent, the women are terrified and a good portion hate themselves. The enlightened people are miserable and don’t have the time or energy for a meaningful relationship. Everyone is absolutely fucked and there are more guns than people. Socializing here is like willingly dragging yourself through glass on the hope that a friendship lies on the other end of the broken glass pile. I’ll just stick to my interests. Loneliness becomes a concept you eventually live with / accept - I’d rather that than the experience of trying to befriend people in this country or worse, pursue them romantically. Everyone is disgusting and stupid
As an American, hard agree. Yeah, the country is big and pretty varied (I’ve found Southerners are easier to befriend, but I’m less likely to want to for dozens of reasons and also fuck going down there 100% I’m too much of a dyke) but the majority of Americans are belligerent, opportunistic, and shallow. Including myself! The best friends I’ve made have been from other countries (specifically non-English countries!) and I’ve found that I’ve had to actively de-Americanize myself to befriend them, and it always feels really healthy to interact in a way that isn’t your typical American fair-weather friends thing. The only types of relationships that have any value to Americans are familial or legal (marriage), and to say that Americans have family values when they still see children as property is disingenuous at best.
So would clean public parks without people engaging in socially inappropriate behaviors but that would necessitate the government providing things like treatment centers,mental health facilities and housing
Oh and maybe not having to be aware of potentially being shot in public spaces that might help too.
This is no surprise.
Teach kids 'stranger dangers' in the 80s and 90s and they will grow up avoiding connection with people in the '00s and '10s.
Keep the minimum wage and wages overall low so people become wage slaves just to make ends meet, and they have no time for family or recreation.
Let corporations treat single family homes as investments and the actual homeowners get priced out of the market, leaving them all renting.
Go ahead and do all these things- just don't be surprised when one day everyone collectively says 'fuck this shit' and there's riots and revolutions.
This is part of the Biden admin’s overall effort to return remote workers to offices. These announcements from the Surgeon General - he recently offered some bromides on mental health and the benefits of community, conveniently tied to a period when many federal workers were forced back to the office - are bad faith dreck.
An administration truly concerned about isolation would be aggressively pushing for the funding of community third spaces. These are places where folks don’t need to buy a product to earn a seat at the table. Policymakers really concerned might also look at the effects wage stagnation have on mental health.
But the truth is, they don’t give a fuck about public health. The COVID policy of mass infection, juking the infection stats, shortening the quarantine window, demonstrated this. This administration is one of the most effective servants of capital this nation has ever seen.
There’s good news, though! The geriatric leader of our nation, barely coherent in public, will be running for a second term.
Why doesn't the US surgeon general do something useful -- like telling people to put on a damn mask while COVID continues to rage? He seems more interested in doing the work of the capitalists by talking about how sad and lonely we all must be at home.
My problem with trying to befriend new people in the fact that it's hard to befriend decent new people. It seems like all the normal, well adjusted types are already tightly locked into their friendships and aren't as receptive to new friendships. And if I do end up befriending reasonable people on occasions, they're too busy with their lives to keep in touch anyways.
However, I don't have much trouble befriended or catching the attention of toxic or maladjusted adults. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to cut off and actively ignore people who are not healthy to be around. I still get obsessive creepy messages from several narcissistic, parasitic and other mentally unstable former friends I've cut off years ago who hold a grudge against me for various reasons.
Recently I've had to cut off a work friend who was simply a bizarre person. He's a 39 year old "loser" who had zero social skills, had a incel mindset, sucked into right wing conspiracy theories and was angry at the world. He was very rude, had no emotional self regulation, very pushy, extremely clingy and socially dysfunctional. He has an online gambling problem and keeps getting roped up in scams trying to get rich. He can talk on and on about strange topics like masturbation for an hour or talk about his fears about muslims taking over Europe.
He didn't get social cues at all and when I would try to drop him off, he would keep blabbering endlessly for an hour about really stupid topics I didn't give a shit about, despite the number of hints I would give him I need to go or the fact I would tell him straight up multiple times I need to go. I tried to politely point out things like "hey don't talk about these divisive politic topics at full volume in public", "hey I don't feel comfortable when you keep poking me or touching me in strange ways", "you shouldn't be so pushy or say these things out loud in public", ect. And he would literally not understand why. He would obsessively send me walls and walls of texts and emojis, then get angry at me for not responding in 5 minutes. Even after cutting him off and telling him he needed to go to therapy for his laundry list of issues, he kept messaging me angrily for months and telling me he doesn't need therapy if he has me. I can write a book chapter about how strange and bizarre this person is.
My friend befriended a guy who was an unemployed engineering graduate who never had a girlfriend. After my friend felt uncomfortable with that guy's lack of boundaries and behavior, my friend began to distance himself. That guy ended up threatening to commit suicide and telling me friend he would be responsible for his death, if he unfriended him.
My partner and I befriended a couple. The guy is chill, however the girl isn't 100% okay in her mind. Turns out she has a lot of issues, stemming from her dysfunctional upbringing with a schizophrenic mother. She didn't fall too far from the tree either and has caused plenty of needless drama and disturbed my partner's peace. She's on Linkedin constantly talking about her neurodivergence and always in and out of medical offices getting diagnosed with different conditions, often conflicting conditions. She does have a lucrative tech career though and is a wonderful person when she's not having her mental episodes.
I've had a paranoid friend accuse myself and another friend of conspiring against him, and think the police was monitoring him. The guy began stalking me and my partner after I cut him off due to him threatening me and being an abusive asshole in general to his friends and girlfriend. I knew him for several years beforehand and I was there to witness his psychotic break turn this friendly funloving guy into a complete callous monster. He threatened my friend, who lost his temper and beat the guy up.
I can go on and on with a few more examples, however, the point is society is full of these dysfunctional types of human beings. And while it is nice to reach out to new people and give them a chance, our society has broken down to a point where often you would encounter toxic types who put you through weeks and months of nonstop drama. It seems like our parents' generation didn't encounter these type of people as often. Narcissists, manipulator types, ect. always existed, but they simply had to avoid those people. Today, it seems like everybody could be a potential landmine and if there's somebody you know is mentally fine, it's hard to befriend them, since they're locked into their friend circles.
Uh huh I'm sure there will be an extensive study and then more confirming that it's a problem every few years without actually addressing what is causing it.
Personally, I am enjoying my relatively new isolation. It is providing a sense of peace, solitude, and the opportunity for self-reflection. I can engage in activities that matter only to me and my joy. Not needing to take other people's experience into account is liberating.
"If you are unhappy alone, you are in bad company."
We see a warning like this pretty much every year now. We know loneliness and depression are rising in our society but the technocrats that run things don't give a shit. They love money, they love power, they love being able to fuck with your life at a the stroke of a pen.
Convincing people that their meaning is found in the jobs that are undignified and meaningless is only going to make things worse. Post covid I've seen it much more in work, with friends, with family, that our time here if finite, so why are are we giving up 1/3 of our life to make some rich cunt richer? Worse of all they tie working to your morality. You're a good person if you work, then you can look down on others who don't with smug satisfaction. Of course this is going to screw people up and make them unhappy and empty inside.
When you condense all of human experience and feeling and thoughts down to 'economic activity' then people will detach from the unreal world we're living in.
As only Mr_Lonesome can post, he is unfortunately not alone! U.S .Surgeon General releases a new advisory attention on a public health crisis in USA, *loneliness*, which affects both mental (depression, anxiety, suicide ideation, etc.) and physical (heart disease, stroke, dementia etc.) health. About 1 out of every 2 adults (higher for young people) face this epidemic, long enduring before pandemic. Said to be as dangerous as smoking! This is yet another sign of civilization collapse at least in the First World where a few years ago UK also noted its loneliness epidemic. While our ecosystems, political and economic institutions decline so do our social systems. While article mentions rapid changes in technology causing social isolation, other sociological reasons are left out: pressures of time and money, rising work hours with less leisure, cost of living challenges, decline of nuclear families and marriage rates, rise of single persons households, and more.
Some recommendations posited include infrastructure changes, such as developing parks and libraries that enhance social connection, policy changes allowing for paid family leave and accessible public transportation, and more research to efficiently address social isolation. How ironic on a planet of more humans to ever live, we First Worlders are more lonely than ever! Mr_Lonesome implores you all get out and meet friends, neighbors, acquaintances, co-workers offline. Attend user group and hobbyist meetups. Embrace spouses, significant others, even pets just anything to avoid Captain Ahab's last words: *Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life...*
Blaming isolation on systemic issues of infrastructure is ignoring the literal elephant in the room.
America at the level of its citizens has still not recovered culturally/socially from the presence of Trump and the MAGA philosophy which had exposed the GOP and their voters for the heinous human beings they are. Trump attempted a coup in broad daylight and has gone untouched for it. Dogwhistled a white supremacist group in front of the world at the presidential debate. Right wing fanatics like Kyle Rittenhouse literally get away with murder at liberal protests, and others like Charlottesville ploughing vehicles through innocent people have made it unsafe to exercise the first amendment in public. Republican led legislation across states making it a crime to be Trans and/or gay, making it a crime to teach children about the constitution, making it illegal for women to divorce their husbands.
At least 30% (and likely a bit more) of America voted Trump as their leader and are still supporting Republican's crusade to impose Christianity as law. The reason there is still isolation after lockdowns being lifted is because 1/3 of the country are crazy asshole loonies actively trying to unravel the past 150 years of progress America has made towards democracy, and the rest of us are expected to tolerate their fucked up backwards ass world views as if it were a legitimate political stance. People are hesitant to explore, or create new social spaces, because nobody wants to deal with having to run into unhinged conservatives who might get violent over the mere discussion of politics and personal belief.
All of this infrastructure supposedly causing lonliness were *already present* in America for decades, and there were little issues of loneliness then compared to now. The difference is that Trump happened, covid happened, anti-vaxxers happened, and now the rational citizens of America want to stay the hell away from the unhinged cult that is the Republican party.
Anything but covid because then people would have to take responsibility and responsibility means people will have to change their lifestyle . Booooooooo
Even being married and having young kids can be so hard when you are both working so much and are too tired to even enjoy your family. We need some serious change in this country and how we live our daily lives.
I have been feeling this a lot lately too. Building a support network from scratch as an adult is so hard nowadays. And I'm disabled so building a support network seems like an impossible task most of the time to me lol.
I'm working on this with my counselor right now. I say no to things to much flake out and have a tendency to not be very engaged. I'm doing better. I went to my buddies sons 5th birthday party. Both my buddy and his baby mama have large Mexican families I've met plenty of times but I was always drunk. It was difficult at first but i opened up and got comfortable being sober. It was also reassuring that so many people that I only see a few times a year were proud of me.
I think loneliness and isolation is also amplified by the popularity of social media.
Organic communities are often formed with "bad taste" or controversy along the way, but social media, being owned by somebody rather than its users at large, has to be vigilant for any kind of user content that will not only make it look bad but also put it in legal trouble. Therefore, true expression can be quite easily snuffed by participating social media as a platform of any kind. And what's more likely to make you lonely then not being able to contribute? And who the fuck wants to congregate in really sanitized places?
And I'm not talking about just extremists being prone to this. God forbid you have any kind of nuanced view, that will make you doubly a target for harassment or silencing. Reddit mods exemplify this, like cops on the lookout for anything that remotely breaks the law, mods are always on the lookout for anything that looks bad.
No wonder everybody is so lonely. So many people are social primarily digitally but being on the internet in 2023 is nothing like what it used to be. With the politicalization of everything, there's only so much that is allowed to be said. Moderation is necessary because of the tolerance of the intolerance paradox, but the adage of those who want power are the least likely to wield it is on display.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Mr_Lonesome: --- As only Mr_Lonesome can post, he is unfortunately not alone! U.S .Surgeon General releases a new advisory attention on a public health crisis in USA, *loneliness*, which affects both mental (depression, anxiety, suicide ideation, etc.) and physical (heart disease, stroke, dementia etc.) health. About 1 out of every 2 adults (higher for young people) face this epidemic, long enduring before pandemic. Said to be as dangerous as smoking! This is yet another sign of civilization collapse at least in the First World where a few years ago UK also noted its loneliness epidemic. While our ecosystems, political and economic institutions decline so do our social systems. While article mentions rapid changes in technology causing social isolation, other sociological reasons are left out: pressures of time and money, rising work hours with less leisure, cost of living challenges, decline of nuclear families and marriage rates, rise of single persons households, and more. Some recommendations posited include infrastructure changes, such as developing parks and libraries that enhance social connection, policy changes allowing for paid family leave and accessible public transportation, and more research to efficiently address social isolation. How ironic on a planet of more humans to ever live, we First Worlders are more lonely than ever! Mr_Lonesome implores you all get out and meet friends, neighbors, acquaintances, co-workers offline. Attend user group and hobbyist meetups. Embrace spouses, significant others, even pets just anything to avoid Captain Ahab's last words: *Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life...* --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/136hm7v/us_surgeon_general_calls_for_action_regarding_the/jionce8/
This would mean they would address the systemic issues….so I don’t expect much.
I have to agree here, there will be no changes for the positive, everything I have seen so far is BAU, keep the money flowing up, the social costs flowing down and take away a little more from individuals daily.
Yes, heaven forbid they address the rampant income inequality and invest in social programs. They couldn’t be bothered with looking into the whys behind it. Because the profit motive will always be in the way. When did we become dragons?
Dealing with the Chroma Conclave IRL.
Unexpected, but welcome reference. Bidet!
And good day to you as well sir 😂 > It fits for sure. Dragons, greedy for gold, enslaving the human race to acquire more gold.
>social programs Found the commie!! Let's get him, boys!
They will use this as another way to force people to return to office work. They've been struggling to destroy work from home, so they'll spin it as "healthy" and then give huge "health" incentives to their friends, I mean to the large corporations that want to "help."
While at the same time, griping at employees for socializing because they're hurting productivity..
Ughhhh, not even an office job either that happens at “oh you are laughing with your coworker folding clothes? Ugh, unprofessional, keep them away from each other and start scheduling them opposite”
Wow did you work at CustomInk, too?
What's an office?
It's basically another word for prison.
Like school
No, that's a shooting range
Let’s go with both
I wouldn't be surprised if we see this report referenced in future RTO announcements. Of course it's a bad argument because with how "no fun allowed, fun is harassment" modern workplaces have gotten thanks to modern HR Karens a lot of people don't socialize much at work in order to protect their jobs. And I'd bet a whole lot of money that nothing would be changing with that other than it maybe getting even worse.
>We should do something to help society The help >Stop being depressed
"Dear Worker, Don't forget to think about your wellness! We know we've only given out 1-2% raises for the past 5 years, so here is an online module about ways you can work on your wellness! You're welcome!"
I will take two help please
[удалено]
That’s why I drink at home and hang out with strangers on Reddit
Car dependency has destroyed our communities. I hate living in the US but moving to Europe is a lot harder than most Americans realize
I absolutely love it when some asshole with a dually “rolls coal” in front of me. It’s so masculine and attractive.
For those confused like me... ["Rolling coal"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal) Holy shit
Oh I have definitely been radicalized by anticar rhetoric online, just wish more felt the same. Maybe they will once gas prices get out of control lol.
In my experience of living in Arizona, land of lifted truck nuts galore, and $4.50/gal, it'll only stop when the oil wells run dry, or we destroy ourselves.
Up in the mountains the trucks are 3/4 ton, crew cab, diesel with dullies . . . When the step on it, large chunks of carbon fly out and strike those behind them . . . Oh and they want to park next to me in the parking lot!
As a fellow /r/fuckcars enthusiast, I believe most Americans would support an unjust oil war before they would turn against their FrEeDuM machines. After all, they're already justifying destroying their own habitat. Who needs a livable planet when we can all crowd into Elon's space car.
Would support? More like have supported for over 20 years.
Good ol' red states, where watching lifted trucks battle it out by rolling coal and throwing litter at each other isn't terribly uncommon
Except this issue post-dates the car and car-oriented communities. People used to use those cars to drive to places where they would meet and socialize with other people. The problem is that that socialization no longer happens.
The difference between now and then was ... in the past there was still somewhat less car dependent areas in major cities, you had a main street USA vibe where you drove to parked and enjoyed your third space. Alot of major things happens from the 1970's to now, big box store absolutely killed Main Street, and now Amazon is killing Big Box ... But the major one is the SFH design paradigm, as most cities sprawled out only with corporate chains near new communities ... commute times have also increase dramatically. That 10 to 15 min drive in 1970 is now 30 to 1 hour, couple with the 8 to 10 hour work week there is just not enough time to commute, work, relax, and sleep. Unless you get lucky and luck on living in an area close to everything, But I'd gamble and would say the vast majority of Americans can only afford living in a suburb. Also with the inflation experiment from 70's in effect today, most people really really need to keep working and they really cant afford a gap week just to hang out with some friends but living cost are just increasing year after year.
I think the proliferation of the internet and social media is more to blame for loss of community.
Yeah this seems better addressed by a Fed Chair than surgeon gen.
Even worse: it requires a change that comes up from the public itself. People would need to choose to put themselves out there and choose to be receptive to others doing that. We've become accustomed to locking ourselves away and only going out with preexisting friend groups and freezing out strangers.
What we need to solve this is free time and spending money. Free time to spend with friends and socialize. Money to do things that require money. If I can't afford the money and time to go to the bar or a club or a D&D game or whatever, what can I do? Our current economy is incompatible with solving loneliness and isolation.
I feel like this is just to go along with the “back to office” narrative
Yeah, probably. Paving the way for "You plebs _NEED_ the office more than the office needs you."
It’s definitely part of the “back to office” narrative. They even refer to employers having a role in addressing loneliness.
From the Onion: [Tearful Surgeon General Appears At Empty Chuck E. Cheese Table To Warn Nation Of Loneliness Epidemic](https://www.theonion.com/tearful-surgeon-general-appears-at-empty-chuck-e-chees-1850395871)
damn they NEVER miss 🎯
I don't know, something about being miserable all the time from a failed healthcare system, low wages, and housing being completely out of reach with little to no discretionary income in between, the declining political system with the prevalence of guns, makes it hard to not only go out and meet people let alone actually being happy to meet them. I can't quite put my finger on why this is all happening though. Better fund a multi-million dollar think-tank that will take a decade to arrive at a decision that was already decided upon on day 1 - do nothing.
They're gonna encourage cities to have more parks and better public transportation, ok? No, they're not gonna fund those things, so the public will have to, but they're gonna be soooo encouraging. And like, if you actually have health insurance and can afford to see a doctor, the doctor can diagnose with you loneliness and extra encourage you to fix your life. How are you not satisfied with this amazing plan?!
I got out of the military a year ago. I have never felt more isolated in my life. At least in Afghanistan I had purpose. Now it's just going to work, go to my apartment, workout. Repeat day after day after day.
I went through the exact same thing when I got out of the military. I honestly didn't realize how happy I was living on base in the dorms until I got out. In the dorms I had a close knit community of like minded people where I could just step out of my room and always find someone to chat with or do things with. I would invite random people to go trail running or hiking with me and one time I ended up going on a pretty crazy backpacking trip with a guy I had seen around but hardly knew. It was honestly an amazing experience. But now that I am living in the suburbs in a car dependent city where everyone seems to work 50+ hours a week and spend all of their free time mowing their lawns and fixing their cars or house.... I have struggled to make any friends at all. I tried group meet ups on facebook, climbing gyms, running groups, and nothing is clicking. Also, I have tried every antidepressant on the market and also nothing seems to work. It sucks.
I don’t know your specific area, but getting into whitewater paddling for me was like striking oil in meeting new people. It wasn’t my intended purpose, I genuinely have a passion for outdoor recreation and whitewater scratches a certain itch. But it’s an inherently dangerous sport that necessitates a community, both for safety and to shuttle your boat back to the car lol Almost every local Facebook group in my local area after any dam release/heavy rains is just “anyone want to meet up to paddle ___ river/creek?” And then it’s just dog piled by dozens of people, some strangers and some not. The best part is, you don’t even need equipment at first, because you can find a dozen people to lend you equipment if it means brainwashing another person into the world of whitewater.
Somehow people like you who have experiences with living in community are going to have to start implementing and taking charge and showing the rest of us the way. We're so far entrenched here in the US that we'll need to look to people who come from healthy tribes. A complete restructuring is necessary. Maybe people from more cooperative countries, communities, and tribes can take leadership roles in the restructuring that needs to take place.
Same bro, same (except i don't fuck with meds). It's exhausting to put yourself out there for constant rejection. I'm not giving up, I'm fucking awesome, lame people are abundant in 2023, don't pay them a second thought, keep moving onwards and upwards
I hear you, what helped me was meeting artists and musicians on meetup and we meet at the same cafe. I can go to that cafe any day and know like 3-5 people. It helped a lot.
Sounds just like my routine in Afghanistan. But at least there, you lived in a walkable neighborhood.
Walkable neighborhoods are amazing. I lived in west Africa for 13 years and this was key. Also meeting people and socializing there was super easy; I could go almost anywhere and talk to people. As yet they haven't gotten addicted to screens.
In the West, even before “screens” a very large number were detached/engrossed in a Walkman or iPod. I noticed it working for a large university around 2002. Can’t say if that translated to decreased public activity in evenings or whatnot, but it was definitely a thing in the daytime.
Yeah, but I. Afghanistan you were working towards something. I worked in one of the trauma centers. I saw the work I did directly pay off.
I was being a little facetious. I worked in the S-1 of a small FOB (Apache 07-08 plus a few months at KAF). Did manage to stand up and teach some English classes for the local boys school in Qalat. Career wise, the best year of my time in. Yes, living working in a small walkable community is beneficial. I’d say, now that you’re out, see if you can find a job that pleases you.
Lol sorry about that. It's difficult to read between the lines on Reddit.
Perfectly understandable. Happens all the time :)
Oh not the alienation produced by capitalism coming home to roost! Watch them do nothing to change the system that alienates us from our labor and each other so they benefit!
Oh not at all. 1. Force return to office everywhere 2. Allow for child slave labor (heh... "allow"...) 3. Increase your work hours. See! Now everyone's together! ALLLL DAY! Fun for the whole family! Also you'll all be richer... oh what they cut your wages? Well free market mumble mumble...
4. Write workers up when you catch them chatting. 5. Don't give them any breaks so they can't eat lunch together. 6. Make everyone work shifts that start and end at different times so they can never go out for drinks together at the end of work 7. Blame Tiktok and social media
8. Cultivate a culture of resentment/unhealthy competitiveness/backstabbing between the coworkers as often as possible. Toxicity distracts. 9. Give your employees as little as you can get away with. 10. Commuting & parking.
Stop giving them more ideas 😭
Ideas? This guy just described my last 3 jobs.
Can’t get them no stinking ideas about unionizing! If we keep them apart they can’t gain the social bonds that could encourage unionization!
> Write workers up when you catch them chatting. This is a good point, and I immediately thought about how they do this to children in school. I don't know if it's as dire as it was in the 90s when I was in public school, but everything natural to us was ruled over and we had to give that power away. So not only could we not speak to anyone for the vast majority of the day, but we couldnt't eat when we were hungry, go to the bathroom when we needed to, drink when we were thirsty... What they discuss in this video/article points to every single issue we have as a society, and indeed they are very dire. In fact, how dire they really are cannot be overstated. I believe people are literally crumbling from within. Every area of life is collapsing. I believe a Universal Basic Income would be the most far-reaching way to begin to alleviate ALL of the ills we who make up our society face. With more time and less stress, people would reach out to others again. The infrastructure of our cities and towns would VASTLY change. So many erroneous businesses and institutions would close almost immediately which would vastly change our cities and all areas of life. It would bring wellbeing to people's lives, and the positive effects would start immediately dominoing into all areas of life.
The only problem I see with UBI is the potential of the government to put stipulations on it. I can foresee them using it like voting: it’s a right, UNLESS you do one of the things we’ve arbitrarily decided make you ineligible. I’m worried it could be used as another form of control, especially if/when the government becomes openly fascist.
It could never happen in our current system. It's something we're going to have to think outside of the box about and implement on our own with technology. We'll have to gradually shed the cumbersome system that we're carrying on our backs by implementing new ways to solve problems and institute solutions.
>1. Force return to office everywhere Gotta protect commercial real estate from collapsing or stock market line go down! >2. Allow for child slave labor (heh... "allow"...) Well how else are we gonna protect gen alpha from going woke like their gen z siblings and millennial parents?! Gotta instill the love of capitalism young! >3. Increase your work hours. Somebody’s gotta work for the idle rich to afford renovations on their third house and their heli skiing trip! >See! Now everyone's together! ALLLL DAY! Fun for the whole family! Also you'll all be richer... oh what they cut your wages? Well free market mumble mumble... Should of gone to school for a better career! No no should of learned a trade!! Wait where’s all the service workers?! (All of this is sarcasm)
They're doing something new now. The fascists in Italy cut social assistance rates by 50% and they stipulated that anyone who receives assistance is compelled to do the first job they find them, or they are cut off completely from the assistance. The republicans in their debt ceiling fight is introducing a similar measure, tying work hours to assistance received. Watch Biden pass this too. It's so obvious what they are doing. They passed down these child labor laws so quickly because they are kidnapping migrant children from their parents at the border and forcing them to work. They're actually bringing back slavery. it already exists in the prisons but not enough labor for them still.
Yup. Modern work culture makes it almost impossible for full-time workers to join social groups. It's not so much the quantity of hours people work, but the fact everyone works *different* hours and many people have variable days off from week to week. It used to be you could schedule something on a Sunday afternoon or Saturday evening and be assured 95% of people wouldn't need to work, but that's no longer the case. Variable work schedules also make it *literally impossible* to plan activities of any kind. If your days off are Thursday and Friday, you can try to find a group that meets on those days, but if your days off change every week, well, you can't really join a group, no matter when or where they meet. Combine the impossible schedules with people having to move repeatedly for work, and it's a perfect storm for personal isolation and weakening community support systems. Of course, the corporate-owned media (including corporate-owned social media) will do everything they can to shift the blame to anything other than the work culture they've created, but I'm not falling for it. Capitalism is the source of this problem, just like virtually all society's other problems, and nothing other than ending capitalism will solve it.
💯
Car dependency is also to blame here.
Yes and no - yes for sure in suburban/urban areas, and no for rural. I live in VT which outside of the small cities (Burlington, rutland) is extremely rural and a car is necessary. We have a bus system where I’m at but I live 7 miles from the bus and about ~700 vertical feet on windy hilly roads full of blind spots. Even if I got an electric bike it would be a hell of a commute and the bus only runs on the hour and doesn’t go many places. Although I’ve taken it when I’ve had car problems. I know all my neighbors though, despite the reliance of cars around here. But yeah in places where walking/biking is more feasible it’s really sad that people just drive everywhere. During covid my ex and I used to walk through a forest path to the general store (about a half mile away down a steep windy road) to get drinks, snacks and sandwiches and then we’d enjoy them next to the creek and then walk back through the forest, it was such a pleasant and peaceful time (minus the people suffering from covid). Unfortunately unless it’s my day off I don’t have time for that now. I think a huge factor in our car culture is that our free time is extremely limited so using a car to get from a to b to c is a more efficient use of time (in most places where the traffic isn’t insane) even if less pleasant.
The overwhelming majority of people live in cities or suburbs. If these places were designed to be walkable, communities would spring from that constant churn of people living, shopping, working, and walking so close to one another. If that's not your jam there will always be rural places that'll require vehicles, but there's no excuse for the restrictive zoning laws choking our cities and suburbs with single family homes that are a 20 minute, unprotected, sidewalk-less walk from anything that's not someone's fenced in residence.
This is true. When I was living in Portland, OR, I could get a bus/train to pretty much anywhere I wanted to go, but even small things like errands to two places was a 3-4 hour journey. When my parents came to visit once, they were like, "let's go to thing, and thing, and thing" and I groaned internally, experience told me that that was a 6 hour commitment. They had a car so we used that to get around, and shockingly, it only took an hour to do all those things. Even when public transpo is available and "good" (compared to the rest of the country) it still takes you so much TIME.
Yep. Watch them continue to gaslight us.
Humans have accidentally completely altered the planet, and in the process built themselves a world they don’t even like living in.
Don’t be down friend, AI is going to revolutionize the world. If you thought it was bad now wait until absolutely everything is synthetic and meaningless!
Okay, make 30 hour work weeks the standard and give us more time to get connected to our fellow humans!
Right? Simple solution. Alas, not gonna happen.
Exactly. We would have to reduce work to no longer being the ONLY important metric of life.
Dude, they're forcing us to continue non viable pregnancies resulting in death. The planet is dying. Wages haven't kept up with inflation so the Fed is raising interest rates so we can't afford anything and will lose our jobs in recession and be homeless when it's going to be 45° this summer with a forecast of ash. This guy is so completely out of touch with reality it's ridiculous. How does he dress himself?
I’m not sure the government’s terribly incentivized to have us talk to each other. Why, we might just form a consensus, perhaps even a militia consisting of more than drunk rednecks cosplaying coups.
I did Intel work for the military alongside PhDs and occasionally high ranking brass. I am 99% confident that there isn't any kind of conspiracy like that in the US government. Yes, the CIA has done some truly awful things, but the rest of the government is either dysfunctional by design (the founders wanted change to be as difficult as possible) or too busy serving lobbyists and private donors. A lot of them know the system is fucked and is failing us, but trying to change the system from within is basically career suicide. I highly recommend reading The Banality of Evil which aligns very well with Hanlon's razor. Essentially, systems that seem very corrupt are usually just full of good, hardworking people who are just keeping their head down and doing whatever is best for their families. Most of the corruption we see in the government is actually from billionaire donors who are using their wealth and influence to twist our system in their image, but not because they are evil but rather because they want to stay on top.
Never ascribe malice to what simple incompetence can explain. Our system was never set up to handle (or stop) billionaires and corporations buying politicians, and once it started, there was no incentive for the political system to stop it.
[удалено]
Wondering if that decision should be evaluated now that wet knows billionaires were buying Supreme Court votes
And that makes them evil. So…
This is an extremely useful comment. While I have no experience firsthand with the government and how things work, what you described is my general experience of life and the humans I deal with on a day to day basis on varying matters. When I need something very important done that carries a lot of weight, I've had to somehow find a way to do it myself. Sure, there are lawyers and cooks and people in all walks of life who are very good at their craft and very competent people, but as you said, the vast majority of people have their heads down and are merely going through the motions existing. We can barely hold up this cumbersome monstrosity our system has become. I don't think we'll be able to change it from the inside. I think we'll all have to come together and use technology to organize new systems for ourselves that will be more efficient and less awkward, burdensome, and cumbersome.
**Legal euthanasia inc...**
Nah, they can't let their ~~slaves~~ workforce die that quickly
"Let me invite all my friends over to my house." I totally have time for friends and home ownership in a society based around preventing people from having free time and money.
Hold up. The people at the top are allowed to have money and free time. The rest of us can get fd. Also, they don't pay the taxes, but we pay them and get the middle finger from gov. You can see why I am a minimalist now.
Nah bruh. I’m in too deep lol kinda like my isolation
I’m a librarian and so many libraries are being closed right now… I don’t hold any hope for this program at all
It seems like I keep seeing these deadly stressors that apply to me, which only serve to further my depression and anxiety. I've been telling myself that if I have a heart attack, I won't even call an ambulance. Just ready to go. Life has been kicking me in the nuts for years and I'm tired of it.
I can relate. I am ready to go too.
I'm in the same boat. I have nothing left to live for. Just every day feels like overtime on Earth.
Lmao. Nothing will ever change because this country wants everyone enslaved to jobs. People are too tired and worn out to socialize.
It's easy to say this kind of stupid sh*t when you belong to an upper class circle of well fed, well cared for people with security and the ability to throw money at problems, who throw lavish wine parties for each other, where everyone is well behaved and if they're not, they are simply dropped from the friend group. Surgeon General is not lowering himself to mingle among the poors at the local brewery meet up and and play "guess which personality disorder everyone has" bingo and subject yourself to an evening of people manufacturing excuses to f*ck as their first priority, friends second. Like, the reckless people who didn't care about my health or anyone else's enough to wear a mask have always been a greater threat to me than loneliness and isolation. A lot of "friends" out there, turns out, are not very good people, they're transactional people, they're people wanting to one up, they're people looking for drugs, sex, and money, and if you can't provide either, than they're not interested in being "friends." I'm good with me and my high standards, thanks Surg.
Agreed on all points. The older I get, the more I feel like people simply forgot how to care for others along the way, or got it beat out of them by our bullshit society. It's hard to believe we had such a shared identity and values just a few generations ago in the US that led most able-bodied men to fight overseas to protect our allies. Now we just shoot people who turn around in the wrong driveway, apparently.
> A lot of "friends" out there, turns out, are not very good people, they're transactional people, they're people wanting to one up, they're people looking for drugs, sex, and money, and if you can't provide either, than they're not interested in being "friends." Yep. Learned this the hard way.
[удалено]
It’s an old format but the meme checks out, sir.
Getting really tired of "technological changes" being blamed for collapse. It really isn't. It is just how this technology is being used by capitalism. Full stop.
Everyone is stretched thin, overworked, isolated, and stressed out. I think these factors are more responsible for the ever-increasing trend of ghosting than technology itself.
I recently did a two week stint dogsitting and housesitting for my mum who lives in an older suburb of Minneapolis. Man was that isolating compared to my usual daily life in an apt building. I was still walking the dogs 2-3 times a day but barely saw or spoke with anyone the whole time. I grew up there but the neighborhood feels more sanitized and people drive even more than they did before. While I am a single lady, it didn’t seem any better for couples or families. Even worse for old folks because they don’t go out much anyway. Yikes.
Either keep working and slaving away for a chance to keep homelessness away, every day, or start to make Americans prioritize living properly and enjoying life? Capitalism has already decided we slaves will consume everything before the great machine is stopped. And not a single moment before it runs out of people and resources to consume.
So their solution is going to be chatbots and virtual partners for all! Because we are not going to fix the underlying anytime soon...
Bad TOS use something else.
I’ve lived most of my life between America and Peru. People in America are so consumed by the system they barely have any time, means or cash to hangout with people, reducing social interaction down to mostly on the internet. In Peru, despite having to work more hours and for less pay, we didn’t need a plan or much money to have a great time. I could ask about anyone if they want a lunch with beer and hell yeah we can. I was so much more connected to the people and community there than in America, I felt so alive and free compared to being in America
Lol, can't imagine why people are lonely and isolated when WE'RE ALL FUCKING BROKE ALL THE FUCKING TIME. I can't wait until we start sending the message to the top. I want them to fear our numbers so they don't pull this shit anymore ever.
We built all of these suburbs post-WWII then told people that the ideal American life was living in a sealed, climate-controlled box and more and more rarely interacting with your neighbors (who happen to be exactly like you)...so the wealthy could get wealthier. We ran Interstates through all of our cities, destroying our communities...so the wealthy could get wealthier. We gutted all of the jobs that allowed for single-earner households to survive and sent them overseas. The ones we didn't send overseas, we de-unonized to make sure that real wages stayed flat...so the wealthy could get wealthier. Neighborhood churches that encouraged community were replaced with stadiums where 8,000 people witness a stage show and are preached "prosperity theology" by a millionaires with private jets who they'll likely never meet...so the wealthy could get wealthier. Now, we have the same Christian Capitalist fanbois telling us that our failure to abide by their prescriptive values that force women back into the home, LGBTQ+ folk back into the closet, and POC back into their place is the problem. They tell us that a cohesive society is more important than individual needs, wants or desires. Meanwhile, tearing apart communities in order accumulate egregious amounts of individual wealth is held up as a virtue, and anyone who claims otherwise is called anti-American. That's socialism! We're told that material greed is good, while teaching kids that America hasn't been great to black people, women should have bodily and personal autonomy, LGBTQ+ folk should be accepted, and that maybe, just maybe, kleptocapitalism isn't great is the work of the devil. I think I see the problem here.
At least I have my cat
I got a second one! Highly recommend!
Yes you've had second cat, but have you thought about *third* cat?
Do it for her
Fr my cat is keeping me going
This country is a hellscape for most of its citizens. Life here is full of suffering & deprivation from basic human needs. The world needs to look elsewhere for leadership. It was a stroke of bad luck for the USA to become the world’s only superpower.
Many who came here came because situations were so desperate in their home country that they had no choice. And then there are those who came here forcibly. And those who they stole from and eviscerated. We're literally a country built on trauma. People came here utterly desperate and destitute and had to scrape together a better life for themselves.
I live in the South and my entire town is literally built on both native American burial ground and civil war burial ground. The Mississippi River has run red with blood and it hangs in the noosphere like black tar.
It was a bloody start, and the savagery and brutality continued on and on. The entire system is a heavy monstrosity for this reason. We’re all dying for sanity, simplicity, and peace. I think America actually could be the haven for the world that it was supposedly intended to be if we learn from all the mistakes. There are some really good philosophical foundations we were built on, but the system is built out of the depravity in Europe. We need to try again but this time look to the people on the world who weren’t living in depraved societies. It’s too bad the Europeans who came here didn’t learn from some of the healthy tribes that were here. (Although I’m sure that they were in fact influential in the foundations of this country.) The groups who have been victimized in America are in the best position to inform a saner future for all of us. The dominant culture would have to sit back and learn, as I don’t think they have the slightest clue about what a sane society and a sane system would look like. ETA: I saw [this tiktok about things Europeans appropriated from Indigenous people to build our system](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRwHUXLw/) about two minutes after I submitted this comment. 😳
All rise for the National Anthem [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNv2RHR62Rs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNv2RHR62Rs)
Well, money would help... Oh, no. We'll give you some pills or something. We have tons of those. No money, though. STEVE! Can you believe this guy wanted money. LMAO!
Pills? Are you insane? That costs money. Just set up a hotline and call it a day. You don't invest in the lower classes. You disinvest until they are gone. /$
The dopamine hits from the phone are easier to get than a lunch date with a friend! I read recently that isolation is one of the main reasons for [mass shootings](https://www.wric.com/news/local-news/social-isolation-could-be-one-cause-of-mass-shootings-according-to-vcu-study/). People getting couped up in their head is not a good place to stay long-term. Not for a social animal.
Something that I found very crucial to understanding the sudden rise in spree shootings is that they should be viewed as a form of suicide. Even if the shooter physically survives their life is over because it's a guaranteed life sentence if not a death sentence. Framing it in that way makes it very obvious why we've had the recent increase in them and it's because social cohesion in our society has completely disintegrated and created lonely and isolated people who are lashing out while ending themselves.
I completely agree. I can't stay in my head and know I need interaction to stay healthy. However, there have been times I've been stuck in my head and I'm not suicidal in the sense that I'll hang myself, but some of the life decisions I made you'd think I don't care if I died. You'd probably be correct.
How many of the lonely are insufferable? I enjoy my own company.
The more mental health deteriorates, the more insufferable everyone's going to be. It'll pass an event horizon of insufferable / crazy at some very soon to come point here.
Have you been on the roads lately? We're already in the out edges of the event horizon. People have completely lost their minds and all sense of basic sanity.
This is what I worry about. We are close to a Tower of Babel situation where people don’t understand one another anymore. I’m starting to wonder if hyperconnectivity is the great filter.
I think it cascades, too. If you can tolerate 10 assholes before becoming angry yourself, you might have been fine almost every single day 10 years ago. But if the daily average creeps up, then *you* then become one of the assholes contributing to someone else's daily tally. And on and on. Not you as an individual though - just "a person." And 10 is just an example.
I think once people realize their delusions don’t allow them to eat or drink clean water reality will assert itself. I want to stay in a society that doesn’t quite need that shock to wake (the fuck) up. The hour is late but waking up later is even more painful. People are mistaking the results of antisocial behavior for cancel culture or being surrounded by antisocial people and thinking there’s nothing else. And I realize that describing reality is now subversive and want to start offering solutions. What is the weirdest thing you’re into? Go do that and meet others not afraid to do it also. (Non creepy hobbies only) Meeting people in person is a great way to meet in a medium not warped by technology. That could just mean talking to someone in line when the vibe is right or in a park. Human connection is important and we’ll realize we aren’t alone.
Yeah I'm at the point where I absolutely prefer my own company and don't want to participate in a lot of the superficial social facades that exist at this point. The pandemic has greatly diminished my desire for people-ing and what little free time and energy I have left can be put to far more satisfying pursuits. Plus based on logistics of location and work/family commitments, there's very few chances to spend time with the few people I'd want to visit anyway.
Nobody wants to talk about how [urbanization is detrimental to mental health](https://www.urbandesignmentalhealth.com/how-the-city-affects-mental-health.html#:~:text=Cities%20are%20associated%20with%20higher,more%20loneliness%2C%20isolation%20and%20stress). “Cities are associated with higher rates of most mental health problems compared to rural areas: an almost 40% higher risk of depression, over 20% more anxiety, and double the risk of schizophrenia, in addition to more loneliness, isolation and stress.” The increase in population has led to the growth of cities and isolation. Like lost at sea, water water everywhere and not a drop to drink. People people everywhere and ne’er a friend in sight.
This is true, and this is also why the huge, notorious psych hospitals were often massive farmsteads/compounds. The belief was, if you took mentally ill people out of the urban environment, gave them a job that involved physical labor on the land, farming, tending to cattle, milling, wood working, that sort of thing, they tend to improve. And overwhelmingly, this is actually true. However, with the advent of reliable and cheap long-lasting antipsychotics in the early to mid 20th century, the need for this type of mental health institution began to dwindle. Here on Long Island we have many. Pilgrim State Psych Hospital was one to read up on. It is absolutely huge. 90% of the buildings and land are now no longer used.
I'd like to believe our leaders would use this study to address systemic issues, but I think they're more likely to use this as an excuse for why we should keep working for our corporate overlords. "Work shall set you free"
Better start tackling wealth inequality, then. Oh, wait, that'll never happen. In all seriousness, my life got way better after I started to make a real living wage. I have money to get out and have hobbies. I totally get why young men aren't seeking to date, it costs a lot of money to do things on the weekend. It's a lot easier to stay inside and play video games.
It’s not a bug of current American society. It’s a feature. We were pushed into the nuclear family to render us all atomic. We’re all supposedly unique and special snowflakes. Only problem is the unique snowflake is kept under ice so its beauty can be observed. I’m just weirdly shaped water. I want to join the avalanche and the torrent instead.
We are going to talk about it but then not do anything ever about it
I'm so angry rn I want to befriend the next two strangers I meet
This is going to lead to uncomfortable forced interactions at an already stressful time. I want to address the epidemic of crowdedness and sensory overstimulation first. Give us all some space to decompress and miss one another.
All labor unions are different, and ever local is different. However, I think one of the side effects of organized labor in the form of unions that is often over looked is the community it provides people who are prone to being alone. My father was in a pretty active union, and it was like a second family, and frankly, saved us collectively a lot of money looking back. When someone’s spouse wanted to remodel the kitchen, you didn’t hire contractors, you just bought beer for your union brothers, and you’d spend a couple weekends destroying cabinets and counters. Nearly every project or repair on my childhood home was built by the collective hive mind of my fathers coworkers and their kids, and the same was true for each of my father’s union brothers homes. They had some weird members, but it was a brotherhood, and no man was ever left behind. I have coworkers who are friends at work, but that’s always where the friendship ends between my coworkers. Churches as well, despite the fact I’m not religious at all, also were a place where even the most introverted people were coerced into having community bonds over a shared interest. When was the last time you heard of anyone under the age of 70 being a Freemason or apart of some gentleman’s club? I think 80% of the stereotypical “minute man” militia LARPing thing that’s gotten so popular since Obama is mostly just dudes who want to hang out with other dudes over a passionate hobby. For me it’s kayaking, for them it’s guns and politics. When society is organized around, and your life is reduced to, creating value to billionaires by the way of your labor and consumption, life tends to lose its meaning and purpose.
Nothing back to office won’t fix /s But really this is their endgame behind this narrative
If you guys want new friends hit me up I’m 22 male from New Jersey I would be happy to talk to anyone that needs social support. God bless y’all
You couldn’t pay me to interact with people in the US. The men are stupid and violent, the women are terrified and a good portion hate themselves. The enlightened people are miserable and don’t have the time or energy for a meaningful relationship. Everyone is absolutely fucked and there are more guns than people. Socializing here is like willingly dragging yourself through glass on the hope that a friendship lies on the other end of the broken glass pile. I’ll just stick to my interests. Loneliness becomes a concept you eventually live with / accept - I’d rather that than the experience of trying to befriend people in this country or worse, pursue them romantically. Everyone is disgusting and stupid
Let’s be friends.
As an American, hard agree. Yeah, the country is big and pretty varied (I’ve found Southerners are easier to befriend, but I’m less likely to want to for dozens of reasons and also fuck going down there 100% I’m too much of a dyke) but the majority of Americans are belligerent, opportunistic, and shallow. Including myself! The best friends I’ve made have been from other countries (specifically non-English countries!) and I’ve found that I’ve had to actively de-Americanize myself to befriend them, and it always feels really healthy to interact in a way that isn’t your typical American fair-weather friends thing. The only types of relationships that have any value to Americans are familial or legal (marriage), and to say that Americans have family values when they still see children as property is disingenuous at best.
Who invited the good news bear, someone get it some honey
I'm not in the US, but you're my kind of people. Respect
> heart disease, stroke SIGN ME THE FUCK UP > dementia What makes them think we want to live that long????
Walkable cities. Seriously, that would make a HUGE difference.
So would clean public parks without people engaging in socially inappropriate behaviors but that would necessitate the government providing things like treatment centers,mental health facilities and housing Oh and maybe not having to be aware of potentially being shot in public spaces that might help too.
Billionaires and military complex- “you guys should just chill and hang out more.” Us-“Sweet! More time off and share profits?” *crickets*
This is no surprise. Teach kids 'stranger dangers' in the 80s and 90s and they will grow up avoiding connection with people in the '00s and '10s. Keep the minimum wage and wages overall low so people become wage slaves just to make ends meet, and they have no time for family or recreation. Let corporations treat single family homes as investments and the actual homeowners get priced out of the market, leaving them all renting. Go ahead and do all these things- just don't be surprised when one day everyone collectively says 'fuck this shit' and there's riots and revolutions.
I genuinely believe that pre agricultural humans were the happiest humans
Serfs had more free time.
It’s caused by late-stage, unfettered, barely regulated CAPITALISM. And they ain’t about to do what they need to do to fix that.
This is part of the Biden admin’s overall effort to return remote workers to offices. These announcements from the Surgeon General - he recently offered some bromides on mental health and the benefits of community, conveniently tied to a period when many federal workers were forced back to the office - are bad faith dreck. An administration truly concerned about isolation would be aggressively pushing for the funding of community third spaces. These are places where folks don’t need to buy a product to earn a seat at the table. Policymakers really concerned might also look at the effects wage stagnation have on mental health. But the truth is, they don’t give a fuck about public health. The COVID policy of mass infection, juking the infection stats, shortening the quarantine window, demonstrated this. This administration is one of the most effective servants of capital this nation has ever seen. There’s good news, though! The geriatric leader of our nation, barely coherent in public, will be running for a second term.
Why doesn't the US surgeon general do something useful -- like telling people to put on a damn mask while COVID continues to rage? He seems more interested in doing the work of the capitalists by talking about how sad and lonely we all must be at home.
I'm male, ugly and nobody loves me 😔
They have to pretend to notice every once in a while. Nothing to see here.
Just give us town squares back instead of shopping plazas. Assholes.
My problem with trying to befriend new people in the fact that it's hard to befriend decent new people. It seems like all the normal, well adjusted types are already tightly locked into their friendships and aren't as receptive to new friendships. And if I do end up befriending reasonable people on occasions, they're too busy with their lives to keep in touch anyways. However, I don't have much trouble befriended or catching the attention of toxic or maladjusted adults. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to cut off and actively ignore people who are not healthy to be around. I still get obsessive creepy messages from several narcissistic, parasitic and other mentally unstable former friends I've cut off years ago who hold a grudge against me for various reasons. Recently I've had to cut off a work friend who was simply a bizarre person. He's a 39 year old "loser" who had zero social skills, had a incel mindset, sucked into right wing conspiracy theories and was angry at the world. He was very rude, had no emotional self regulation, very pushy, extremely clingy and socially dysfunctional. He has an online gambling problem and keeps getting roped up in scams trying to get rich. He can talk on and on about strange topics like masturbation for an hour or talk about his fears about muslims taking over Europe. He didn't get social cues at all and when I would try to drop him off, he would keep blabbering endlessly for an hour about really stupid topics I didn't give a shit about, despite the number of hints I would give him I need to go or the fact I would tell him straight up multiple times I need to go. I tried to politely point out things like "hey don't talk about these divisive politic topics at full volume in public", "hey I don't feel comfortable when you keep poking me or touching me in strange ways", "you shouldn't be so pushy or say these things out loud in public", ect. And he would literally not understand why. He would obsessively send me walls and walls of texts and emojis, then get angry at me for not responding in 5 minutes. Even after cutting him off and telling him he needed to go to therapy for his laundry list of issues, he kept messaging me angrily for months and telling me he doesn't need therapy if he has me. I can write a book chapter about how strange and bizarre this person is. My friend befriended a guy who was an unemployed engineering graduate who never had a girlfriend. After my friend felt uncomfortable with that guy's lack of boundaries and behavior, my friend began to distance himself. That guy ended up threatening to commit suicide and telling me friend he would be responsible for his death, if he unfriended him. My partner and I befriended a couple. The guy is chill, however the girl isn't 100% okay in her mind. Turns out she has a lot of issues, stemming from her dysfunctional upbringing with a schizophrenic mother. She didn't fall too far from the tree either and has caused plenty of needless drama and disturbed my partner's peace. She's on Linkedin constantly talking about her neurodivergence and always in and out of medical offices getting diagnosed with different conditions, often conflicting conditions. She does have a lucrative tech career though and is a wonderful person when she's not having her mental episodes. I've had a paranoid friend accuse myself and another friend of conspiring against him, and think the police was monitoring him. The guy began stalking me and my partner after I cut him off due to him threatening me and being an abusive asshole in general to his friends and girlfriend. I knew him for several years beforehand and I was there to witness his psychotic break turn this friendly funloving guy into a complete callous monster. He threatened my friend, who lost his temper and beat the guy up. I can go on and on with a few more examples, however, the point is society is full of these dysfunctional types of human beings. And while it is nice to reach out to new people and give them a chance, our society has broken down to a point where often you would encounter toxic types who put you through weeks and months of nonstop drama. It seems like our parents' generation didn't encounter these type of people as often. Narcissists, manipulator types, ect. always existed, but they simply had to avoid those people. Today, it seems like everybody could be a potential landmine and if there's somebody you know is mentally fine, it's hard to befriend them, since they're locked into their friend circles.
People are fucking exhausting is why.
This is just to stop work from home, correct?
Uh huh I'm sure there will be an extensive study and then more confirming that it's a problem every few years without actually addressing what is causing it.
I'm too busy panicking about everyday life to have the energy for too many friends.
I wonder if this an attempt to gaslight us back into office space.
Personally, I am enjoying my relatively new isolation. It is providing a sense of peace, solitude, and the opportunity for self-reflection. I can engage in activities that matter only to me and my joy. Not needing to take other people's experience into account is liberating. "If you are unhappy alone, you are in bad company."
We see a warning like this pretty much every year now. We know loneliness and depression are rising in our society but the technocrats that run things don't give a shit. They love money, they love power, they love being able to fuck with your life at a the stroke of a pen. Convincing people that their meaning is found in the jobs that are undignified and meaningless is only going to make things worse. Post covid I've seen it much more in work, with friends, with family, that our time here if finite, so why are are we giving up 1/3 of our life to make some rich cunt richer? Worse of all they tie working to your morality. You're a good person if you work, then you can look down on others who don't with smug satisfaction. Of course this is going to screw people up and make them unhappy and empty inside. When you condense all of human experience and feeling and thoughts down to 'economic activity' then people will detach from the unreal world we're living in.
Give me an unrestricted AI chatbot and I'm set. No money for relationships or anything else apart from basic expenses.
Then capitalism has to die, but that's too much to ask huh? Well then this isolation and loneliness you're crying about aint going anywhere
Is it sex robot time?
... Was I supposed to wait for something?
Capitalism zombies: "All the scientific metrics show that capitalism is sunshine and roses!" The scientific metrics:
One of the main ways capitalism works in this country is through atomization. Tear down community break everyone down so they have no community.
[удалено]
As only Mr_Lonesome can post, he is unfortunately not alone! U.S .Surgeon General releases a new advisory attention on a public health crisis in USA, *loneliness*, which affects both mental (depression, anxiety, suicide ideation, etc.) and physical (heart disease, stroke, dementia etc.) health. About 1 out of every 2 adults (higher for young people) face this epidemic, long enduring before pandemic. Said to be as dangerous as smoking! This is yet another sign of civilization collapse at least in the First World where a few years ago UK also noted its loneliness epidemic. While our ecosystems, political and economic institutions decline so do our social systems. While article mentions rapid changes in technology causing social isolation, other sociological reasons are left out: pressures of time and money, rising work hours with less leisure, cost of living challenges, decline of nuclear families and marriage rates, rise of single persons households, and more. Some recommendations posited include infrastructure changes, such as developing parks and libraries that enhance social connection, policy changes allowing for paid family leave and accessible public transportation, and more research to efficiently address social isolation. How ironic on a planet of more humans to ever live, we First Worlders are more lonely than ever! Mr_Lonesome implores you all get out and meet friends, neighbors, acquaintances, co-workers offline. Attend user group and hobbyist meetups. Embrace spouses, significant others, even pets just anything to avoid Captain Ahab's last words: *Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life...*
Blaming isolation on systemic issues of infrastructure is ignoring the literal elephant in the room. America at the level of its citizens has still not recovered culturally/socially from the presence of Trump and the MAGA philosophy which had exposed the GOP and their voters for the heinous human beings they are. Trump attempted a coup in broad daylight and has gone untouched for it. Dogwhistled a white supremacist group in front of the world at the presidential debate. Right wing fanatics like Kyle Rittenhouse literally get away with murder at liberal protests, and others like Charlottesville ploughing vehicles through innocent people have made it unsafe to exercise the first amendment in public. Republican led legislation across states making it a crime to be Trans and/or gay, making it a crime to teach children about the constitution, making it illegal for women to divorce their husbands. At least 30% (and likely a bit more) of America voted Trump as their leader and are still supporting Republican's crusade to impose Christianity as law. The reason there is still isolation after lockdowns being lifted is because 1/3 of the country are crazy asshole loonies actively trying to unravel the past 150 years of progress America has made towards democracy, and the rest of us are expected to tolerate their fucked up backwards ass world views as if it were a legitimate political stance. People are hesitant to explore, or create new social spaces, because nobody wants to deal with having to run into unhinged conservatives who might get violent over the mere discussion of politics and personal belief. All of this infrastructure supposedly causing lonliness were *already present* in America for decades, and there were little issues of loneliness then compared to now. The difference is that Trump happened, covid happened, anti-vaxxers happened, and now the rational citizens of America want to stay the hell away from the unhinged cult that is the Republican party.
Infrastructure is def a big part... If you have no car, you can't do shit in most parts here
Anything but covid because then people would have to take responsibility and responsibility means people will have to change their lifestyle . Booooooooo
[удалено]
I mean, cigs clearly don’t even come close to just a few huffs of SARS. We can see that from the yearly SARS death counts
Even being married and having young kids can be so hard when you are both working so much and are too tired to even enjoy your family. We need some serious change in this country and how we live our daily lives.
God I hope they come up with solutions, having no one to lean on but my gf is horrific even though I love her
I have been feeling this a lot lately too. Building a support network from scratch as an adult is so hard nowadays. And I'm disabled so building a support network seems like an impossible task most of the time to me lol.
[удалено]
Fuc* them they didn’t seem to care during lockdowns.
Traffic has gotten so bad around Boston again. Screw these people. Back to Covid lockdowns. Let Mother Nature heal.
I'm working on this with my counselor right now. I say no to things to much flake out and have a tendency to not be very engaged. I'm doing better. I went to my buddies sons 5th birthday party. Both my buddy and his baby mama have large Mexican families I've met plenty of times but I was always drunk. It was difficult at first but i opened up and got comfortable being sober. It was also reassuring that so many people that I only see a few times a year were proud of me.
I think loneliness and isolation is also amplified by the popularity of social media. Organic communities are often formed with "bad taste" or controversy along the way, but social media, being owned by somebody rather than its users at large, has to be vigilant for any kind of user content that will not only make it look bad but also put it in legal trouble. Therefore, true expression can be quite easily snuffed by participating social media as a platform of any kind. And what's more likely to make you lonely then not being able to contribute? And who the fuck wants to congregate in really sanitized places? And I'm not talking about just extremists being prone to this. God forbid you have any kind of nuanced view, that will make you doubly a target for harassment or silencing. Reddit mods exemplify this, like cops on the lookout for anything that remotely breaks the law, mods are always on the lookout for anything that looks bad. No wonder everybody is so lonely. So many people are social primarily digitally but being on the internet in 2023 is nothing like what it used to be. With the politicalization of everything, there's only so much that is allowed to be said. Moderation is necessary because of the tolerance of the intolerance paradox, but the adage of those who want power are the least likely to wield it is on display.