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We need deeper, local, and more meaningful social interactions, and less shallow, global, low quality connections.

In the course of the last 12000 years, we've evolved from small, hunter-gatherer tribes, to highly dense, highly competitive, modern human establishments, and in the process have created a world perhaps too complex to successfully navigate without properly augmenting our intellects and social abilities. It seems that much of the technology we have developed recently hasn’t worked in our favor, but rather against us, and one consequence might very well be loneliness.

No matter what we decide the proper course of action is to successfully address the challenges of modern life, we must not forget that the only way forward is to accept our shared destiny and the need for collaboration.

After all, we’re in this together. There’s no need to fight.

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We just need 20 hour work weeks and a decent standard of living, rather than money being creamed off the top.

I take no joy in saying this, but I suspect that all else being equal, the result of this would be that people would just spend more time consuming media in isolation. Not basing this on feelings, but rather on having been up close with some (anonymized) wireless network datasets. People of all incomes and social strata spend absurd amounts of time in solipsistic media consumption.

It's easy to spend "absurd amounts of time in solipsistic media consumption" is you're weighted down after a 10+-hour work day, or an 8-hour work day + a couple hours of commute, and all others you know are in similar schedules...

Yeah, for those of us with a very finite and easily depleted amount of energy for social interaction, it’s conpletely empty by the time you get home or Saturday rolls around. Net result is, you avoid even eye contact with the person who lives 10m from you.

Work is the most meaningful part of many people's lives.

That seems to be cultural. I remember reading some study about it. Americans socialize through work, and make friends at work. Thus, work is their life. But in Europe for example, this wasn't the case. And thus they worked to live out their other activities, instead of living to work.

> they worked to live out their other activities, instead of living to work.

I'm from Europe, and I agree. Not everyone, but most people look at a job as just a means to a salary, regardless of what they do.

But I'm actually critical of this mindset: if you see things that way, then you are spending a great amount of your time doing something 'because you have to', slogging through the work day just to get to the stuff you like to do.

I know I'm generalizing, but I perceive Americans as more intense workers than Europeans. Maybe it's worse for their health, but look at what it's done to the world: space travel, computers, the internet, smartphones: all things that dominate the world (and are ultimately good, even though they have bad sides) and were made / greatly developed in America.

So hyper-capitalism isn't all that bad :)

Most Americans feel this way to. Most aren't working for NASA or doing meaningful work. They just need a paycheck, to pay for all the crap they bought on credit.

Only in countries where they have been conditioned to think so (because it makes for better servants)

And even there, not for the huge majority of the people not doing anything creative. http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

Not to mention, even for creative people who love their job, nobody stops you from working on things on your own free time (e.g. if you're a programmer you can do open source, build stuff you like as side projects, etc, the most "meaningful work" does not have to be your pointy-haired bosses mandated projects at work).

People love to complain about work, but in reality if they become unemployed, many people's lives are destroyed.

That's even if they have a decent money flow from some pension or whatever. The social isolation and lack of purpose turn a lot of people into lonely couch potatoes, just waiting for death.

I had a bad attitude to work in my youth, until I figured out how to think about it:

A ton of people work to make everything I enjoy. The food, the buildings, the vehicles, roads, appliances, etc. Millions of people who get up in the morning and work through the day and come home exhausted make all of this possible. To me, the only decent way to react to this is that I must join in and contribute my part to this system.

> That's even if they have a decent money flow from some pension or whatever. The social isolation and lack of purpose turn a lot of people into lonely couch potatoes, just waiting for death.

That's one of the saddest aspects of the current setup - even if you manage to escape the system (say, retire very early), you'll still have no one to hang out with, because everybody else is working all the time.

>People love to complain about work, but in reality if they become unemployed, many people's lives are destroyed.

That's only when they have been raised in cultures that teach them that their work is their ultimate purpose, and have them structure every aspect of their lives around it.

Nobody dies from not having to work in Mediterranean culture's for example...

>A ton of people work to make everything I enjoy. The food, the buildings, the vehicles, roads, appliances, etc. Millions of people who get up in the morning and work through the day and come home exhausted make all of this possible.

Besides the food, the buildings, the vehicles, roads, appliances, etc, that people do want and depend on, billions of people are also forced to work to make all kinds of crap they don't care about, that makes no difference, is marked up 5 to 100 percent, for others to be unhappy consuming them, and to kill the environment with externalities in the process.

E.g.:

https://www.monbiot.com/2012/12/10/the-gift-of-death/

http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

I notice a lot of retirees like this (close family included!) but I think this is a matter of conditioning and temperament. Having had a habit of working or going to school one’s entire life, suddenly having plenty of time to yourself is likely a huge sudden change.

I’ve seen some individuals, once retiring, take up hobbies and volunteer and enjoy time with friends at cafés. I think they were aware that they could spend a retirement doing nothing, and that was likely a big motivator to find pastimes.

You assume that people would not be productive with more time at their disposal. Some would not. Others would.

Or at least 8 weeks of vacation a year like in Germany?

> We need deeper, local, and more meaningful social interactions, and less shallow, global, low quality connections.

I would be fine with just relaxing in public places like parks without actually having to interact with anyone, unless some people appear to share interests.

Sadly, safe, clean public places seem to be an exception rather than the norm in the world at large, at least from what little I've seen of it.

So we go back inside enclosures that are commercial establishments (coffeehouses, restaurants etc.) in order to be around other people, but interacting with other patrons there is kind of a social taboo.

From my time on the planet I can only think of video game arcades from my childhood as the best examples of places where people got together to have safe fun and often interacted with each other out of choice and had even more fun in doing so.

> Sadly, safe, clean public places seem to be an exception rather than the norm in the world at large, at least from what little I've seen of it.

Visit Central/Eastern Europe. These places are a norm in there.

Or Japan

Or Australia.

Where exactly?

We have many of those places where I live, but I still don't take advantage of them. I think I'll try to change that and spend more time around other people in nature even if not directly interacting with them.

Edit: I realized I wrote this outside of a small cafe in my neighborhood, with people talking, relaxing on their own, and having breakfast. I consider myself an introvert but always seem to work better in cafes like this, with people around (especially if those people are also working). I always thought it was due to the tentative time limit making me focus better on the task at hand (since it would be rude to stay too long in a cafe), but now I'm wondering if just the proximity to other people might also be helping.

> video game arcades from my childhood as the best examples of places where people got together to have safe fun

As much as I loved '80s arcades (and wasted way too much money in them), "safe" is not exactly a word I'd use. Many of them, in Italy, quickly became drug markets or money-laundering operations (or both). Arguably, the few surviving ones are even worse today. They were not very healthy either, with no natural light and people smoking.

But yeah, it was a place to go with friends, and I have great memories about those times. Our furious NBAJAM challenges were the stuff of legend.

I heavily disagree regarding deep local relationships. While those are important, people seem to forget how important passing acquaintances are and how useful they can be in saving off loneliness. Not every interaction needs to be deep in order to have value.

> It seems that much of the technology we have developed recently hasn’t worked in our favor, but rather against us

Tell that to my insulin, my grandma who had a kidney transplant, my coworker conceiving via IVF, the kid down the street who called 911 on his iPhone when somebody tried to kidnap him...

To some extent some of those problems are better solved without technology.

- The diabetes and obesity crisis in America can't be cured by technology.

- IVF is often due to advanced aging, due to pressure to work later

- There was a time when kids could be left unattended 100 years ago. I'm curious why this has changed so much.

Type 1 diabetes can't be cured nor avoided by lifestyle changes.

Type 1 diabetes isn’t related to obesity.

Agreed, technology is often the easy way out of things that can and when possible should be solved without, Type II is a great example of this. It costs 1 in 4 healthcare dollars in the US. [1] It is curable, permanently, through diet and weight loss, and as recent studies show potentially just fasting [2].

Kids can be left unattended right now in Japan, it's also a cultural thing. There was a great Citylab writeup about this a few years back. It's typical for Japanese children to run errands alone via the subway at age six. FTA "'[Japanese] kids learn early on that, ideally, any member of the community can be called on to serve or help others.'" [3]

[1] http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2018/03/20/dc...

[2] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170223124259.h...

[3] https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/09/why-are-littl...

Learn more about diabetes.

Or, stick to the HN guidelines.

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

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

I think this attempts to disregard the very real, human experiences and emotions of the commentator for the sake of self satisfaction, and only serves to alienate. Even if you're right, there are other ways to go about it.

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