The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community | Hacker News Reader

The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

afterbabel.com

800 pointsthrowup238770 comments

One big change I've noticed between growing up in a small town and now where I'm in my mid 40s in a big metro city in India is increased "transactional" nature of interactions of my daily life.

Back then we had a deeper ties with all those who served us by which I mean vegetable vendor, carpenter, doctor, knife sharpener, cloth shop, grocer, baker and so on. Whenever we interacted with them it would be a small chit-chat, exchange small updates (how's your son doing, is he married yet?) and then finally do the actual purchase.

It was to an extent that the carpenter would come by and just hand over a big dining table just because he thought our house deserved/needed it. He wouldn't ask for immediate payment either and also in instalments. Some other times he would come by and borrow some money.

All of that is now gone. Every single interaction I have now with vendors is 100% transactional. I don't even know their names nor they mine.

It means that I'm now connected only with my immediate family, that's it. It also means that the generation now growing up know only transactional way of interaction with non family/friends. I guess these things eventually add up to the loss of community.

> I'm now connected only with my immediate family, that's it

Are there no other ways to make friends via social activities?

Not GP.

But most Indian corporate companies are sweatshops requiring you to work 10-12 hours a day. And most people live about 30 minutes to 2 hours away from their office. So, count in commute, too.

There’s simply no time for family, let alone community.

There are weekends, but sometimes you work, sometimes you go to small trips by car.

There are only religious festivals in gated communities and weddings etc. where you meet your neighbors and form some sort of connections.

Money is now our God.

Money is just a means of exchange. But basic human rights such as housing now being monetized and rented out and/or used as an investment means the endless pursuit of money is now mandatory to survive.

Now? How did you think housing work for millennia? It not being monetized before is a cold comfort when your labor and agricultural products are taxed directly instead.

Taxation has always been around in one form or another. But property ownership being out of reach of the masses is a relatively new thing.

Not that long ago, a blue collar family could afford to save enough to buy a family home in under a decade. Nowadays most blue-collar people (and in some countries such as the UK, even white collars) have no option but to rent perpetually.

And that's just property, not even taking into account inflation of everything else. Cars (which are necessities in many parts of the world) have also exploded in price, with entry-level models now approaching what high-end executive cars were just 15 years ago.

Money is an abstraction and that is where humans interpretation starts to diverge. I think that may be this problem in a nutshell: abstractions are always leaky, and they leak in different places for different people.

I would call that the difference between a small town and a city, which isn't new. You establish those ties because you see the same grocer regularly - there's only two grocers in town, after all. Meanwhile, in the city, you could buy groceries twice a week and never see the same clerk twice.

This isn't the difference between a small town and city, it's the inevitable result of late stage capitalism. In cities it's still possible to go to small stores and create connection with your local grocer, butcher, etc. I purposefully do it, but I have to seek out the places it's still possible, they're dwindling every year. The problem is capitalism wants to consolidate and treat people as fungible to extract more value, which has the side effect of preventing the formation of social bonds.

Capitalism isn't a person, it doesn't want things.

The problem with people that talk about capitalism the way you do is that they mistake human nature for the system that was built around it so when they try to change the system, the people are maladapted and transgress against it by default then it fails miserably.

No, the issue is pedantic people like you who can't understand that "want" is a simple way of saying that a system is biased towards certain outcomes. Capitalism is not an expression of human nature, it's a single possible pareto equilibrium. To say otherwise ignores huge swaths of humans history, and many modern nations which have achieved equilibrium in different ways.

Capitalism is a system built by people that recognize that humans are reliably selfish and seeks to align their selfish interests as best as it can with the rest of the populous.

No nation has ever achieved equilibrium but we are enjoying the most peaceful times in history during a time after the previous wave of capitalism-alternatives failed miserably or acquiesced.

Just about every measure of human flourishing is in the rise, globally.

And now the pitch.

They're not wrong. Late stage capitalism sucks, but the alternative systems out there seem to lead to mass starvation or total collapse. People have been lifted out of poverty worldwide as well. Some kind of balance seems necessary.

The welfare states of Western Europe and the Nordic countries seem much better than America's system of late stage capitalism and they have not lead to mass starvation or total collapse.

Likewise, America's economy seemed to be much more healthy when it had a more active/successful labor movement.

Those welfare states only exist as such because the US subsidizes their drug discovery, R&D, defense, spooks, and related.

Without the US taking one for the team, Europe could not maintain its social democracies or its welfare states.

Then I think that the US should stop taking one for the team and we can work from there.

I'm not sure if the current success of Norway can be replicated everywhere. It has a small population living off a state oil fund that has something like $300k/person.

That's simply not true. Democratic Socialism/Social Democracy has been very successful.

It's also quite possible that humanity can eventually find a new system that works better than capitalism. After all it took thousands of years for humanity to find capitalism.

The countries you are likely thinking if who say they are those things are still capitalist countries with a touch more of social welfare than other similar countries.

There are other countries who claim to be socialist but are just totalitarian dictatorships (not surprising, in order to control the economy, you have to control the people), are lying or both.

That's just semantics. Whether we want to call them left wing forms of capitalism or moderate forms of socialism isn't really important. What's important is that there ARE nations with successful economic systems that are better than what people call "late stage capitalism".

These successful economic systems are still based on private ownership rights and the right to assemble (in this context the right to form business partnerships with low exit costs). In other words: the core capitalist building blocks.

Like I said, what you call them isn't the point. The point is that there are better options than what we currently have.

That's like saying anything with four tires and a motor is a sedan. Name economic systems (including socialism) have the right to create businesses and own property. Capitalism is ownership of private ventures by an investment class who reap the profits (paying the employees as little as possible); socialism is when companies are owned collectively (most may be owned by employees, some may be owned nationally). Everything else is unrelated.

Measures of human flourishing are rising for the mid-stagers and so globally it might look ok. In late stage countries human flourishing has begun a decline.

While the last 20 years we have made progress on a some acute problems like heart disease, complex ill-health is very much on the rise - Cancer, nearly all mental health issues, obesity & diabetes, suicide. Poverty is on the rise, literacy rates are down.

Human flourishing is just keeping its head above water in these places. Humans are resilient, but there are limits.

Capitalist-fundamentalists will also throw up their hands when asked how we might solve existential problems for which the is no end in sight - eg global warming, the toxifying of our food systems with plastics and industrial chemicals, government debt, etc.

> Capitalism is a system built by people that recognize that humans are reliably selfish and seeks to align their selfish interests as best as it can with the rest of the populous.

You just described mass institutional psychopathy.

I don't consider my family to be innately selfish within the family dynamic, or my friends to be innately greedy.

If you build a system that rewards greed and selfishness (and punishes giving), people will be greedy and selfish within that system. Don't reverse the cause and effect.

I understand capitalism as “things can be owned and sold” + “you can profit from investment”.

> it's a single possible pareto equilibrium

I propose that those other equilibriums’ stability depended on at least one of these: a) small population size&density b) violent totalitarian enforcement c) indoctrination in caste system and/or religion d) no contact with capitalism

> Capitalism is not an expression of human nature

Ownership is very natural for humans (2 year old already declares “it’s mine”).

Finally, capitalism is just one part what makes a society. I bet there are quite significant societal differences between Sweden vs US now vs US 70 years ago.

Both capitalism and socialism are spectrums of systems rather than single monoliths so any definition is going to be fuzzy. However, it's probably useful to specifically say that in capitalism specifically private property and/or capital can be owned. Generally speaking, socialist systems still allow personal property to be owned, they just place restrictions on the ownership or private property and/or capital.

It's also probably worth considering that socialism doesn't necessarily have to forbid ownership of private property or capital outright. It could, for example, mean that revenue/profit/income derived from private property or capital is taxed more highly than revenue/profit/income derived from labor.

> Both capitalism and socialism are spectrums of systems rather than single monoliths

Seems a reasonable and useful way to define it.

> any definition is going to be fuzzy.

Definitely! (That is why I preemptively added my attempt at the definition, to avoid a discussion past each other)

probably a lot of people are using terrible definitions of 'capitalism' such as '“things can be owned and sold” + “you can profit from investment”', which explains why these discussions are full of so much nonsense

wikipedia's current definition says:

Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price systems, private property, property rights recognition, self-interest, economic freedom, meritocracy, work ethic, consumer sovereignty, profit motive, entrepreneurship, commodification, voluntary exchange, wage labor and the production of commodities. In a market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by owners of wealth, property, or ability to maneuver capital or production ability in capital and financial markets—whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets.

this is not a perfect definition but it is a much better one

> Ownership is very natural for humans (2 year old already declares “it’s mine”).

The idea that something a two year old does is a suitable basis for the foundations of society as a whole is both hilarious and terrifying. Two year olds are tyrants.

Yup. That is _part_ of human nature.

That’s why power corrupts.

Capitalism is biased towards whatever the governing authority says it is. In America, due to onerous regulations and taxes, it's difficult for independent players to become established and the regulations favor a handful of large companies in most sectors. This is not universally true in every country, and they're just as capitalist (arguably more so) than us

Onerous? More like pathetically lacking.

I think capitalism is fundamentally different than other systems because of one important nuance. In capitalism you can buy a plot of land and go start a communist society, or a socialist one, or whatever you want. So long as your little society can feed itself, you can do whatever you want. Well even if it can't feed itself, it can still do whatever it wants - but it probably won't be particularly long lived. But in socialist or communist societies you can't just go start up your own little capitalist society.

There can be small grocers in big cities and faceless corporations in small towns, in fact in my experience in midwest America small towns (sub 5000, say) have 0 shops, people drive the 15 minutes to the nearest walmart

midsize cities / college towns ~100k will have a specialty butcher and a tobacconist where you can actually get to know the shopowners

I'd generally agree with the stuff about everybody just driving to Walmart, but that was just to stock up on nonperishables/freezeables. There was always the local mini mart/gas station, movie store, school, church, pool hall, bar, etc. And everybody tends to know everybody anyhow, because you often have inter-family relations dating back generations.

> Meanwhile, in the city, you could buy groceries twice a week and never see the same clerk twice.

So even a cursory reading of older books and novels that detail city life just a few hundred years ago shows this not to be the case.

What's gone on is that the phenomenon described above has started in cities and spread everywhere, for better or worse.

If urban city shops and restaurants have had regularly rotating staff for decades then loss of those touchpoints can't have much difference to do with the claimed decline in mental health of the last couple of generations as suggested upthread though.

(A few hundred years back cities were mostly only the size of small towns today anyway, the average person didn't really frequent stores and rural communities were sometimes really isolated, and we don't really have an accurate picture of how any of this affected mental health)

The city of Rome had a population of a million people. The anonymity of the crowd is not new it's been here for millennia.

i live in a city with a population of 14 million people, but still most of my everyday transactional interactions like buying churros, chicken wings, or electrical supplies are with people i know and transact with repeatedly. that's because i walk there, lacking a motor vehicle. i imagine this was also true of day-to-day commerce in ancient rome, and of course the patron-client and master-slave relationships that were so central in roman society were anything but anonymous

I agree: I live on and off in a city of many, many millions. Maybe it’s just the idiosyncrasy of how I choose to live and shop, but I personally know most of the people with whom I transact regularly in the same way you describe.

Including many of the specific humans who staff the handful of Anonymous Big Chain kinds of enterprises that have weaseled their way into our city: even one of those branches tends to have familiar faces managing or preferring to work the shift that overlaps with when I visit.

I would know how to seek social and transactional anonymity if I wanted to—just go do my shop in a different neighborhood!—but I don’t want to, and that seems pretty consistent with the way things are done in my city.

It's a mindset I think.

I love being in big cities (overseas) because I actually can cultivate this sort of community / friendship with the locals.

I go to the same coffee shops and get to know the folks there, bring them interesting coffee to try, etc.

I will say that this only has worked for me in other countries, not the USA. I think folks here are too burnt out by the lack of safety nets and such, I really don't blame them.

Not too different to myself in my mid forties in Scotland though in my case it's still the small town I was born in, the pleasures of working from home.

There used to be local vendors as you describe (what comes to mind is a local shop, an ice cream van, milk man, a fizzy drinks vendor, a butcher/baker), but they've all been replaced by economies of scale (supermarkets and now online).

So now there are no local shops, no weekly vans with their specialist goods. And those half a dozen well known local faces aren't doing their rounds.

A local shop serves as a meeting place where conversations can take place. Even in the 80s in the UK when TV was at its peak, people could have conversations the next day on what they watched last night out of the 4 channels available.

I guess the local social cohesion can be thought of as a necessity when you're going to deal with lots of local people and with recent trends said in the article it's considered optional.

Everyone is under more pressure thanks to cost of living and Western society being a property-indexed Ponzi scheme which requires endless growth just to keep up. Back when rent/home ownership was affordable and everyone had more "slack" it's easy to add humanity to transactions - you can spare the small opportunity cost even though you'd make more money short-term ignoring humanity and focusing purely on transactionality.

Nowadays when everyone's busy trying to make as much money as possible to be able to make rent or survive in ever-increasing inflation, an extra dining table they didn't give away is one they can sell for money. Similarly, borrowing money is harder/less acceptable because everyone else too is under pressure and is less likely to be able to help (or at least it would cause them more hardship).

It's mildly interesting to consider that one of the main arguments against an economically deflationary society is that people would have a motivation to hoard money which might deter things like investment or lending, yet in an inflationary society few seem concerned about the fact that we create a system that motivates trying to hoard 'things', including land. It also motivates trying to rent things to people instead of selling it to them.

1971 is the year that we default on our obligations under Bretton Woods enabling the US to begin printing money at our own discretion. It's quite interesting to see how that year ended up being a huge inflection point for so absurdly many issues. [1] It resulted in a rapid increase in wealth, but came with a rapid increase in issues alongside it.

[1] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

It's not inflation, it's bad tax policy.

Please explain how 2x-3x housing costs in 4 years is due to tax policy.

Presumably the implication is that it's because lots of homes are being bought by real estate companies as long term investments that they may or may not even rent back out. This extra demand beyond people buying housing to, you know, live in it, drives up the price.

A different tax policy could disincentize this behavior, leading to lower demand and thus lower prices.

That's my current understanding of that perspective at least.

A 100% tax on property for those owning more than 50 properties would cause a large movement in the market. But people will say what about the value being tanked when all those houses go on the market? I say, good. The value of homes should go down. People need a place to live. Houses should not be considered an asset. You don't treat your home like an asset. You don't buy it when the market is right or sell it when it's right. You don't improve it in ways that are most likely to increase value. You live in your house. It's your place to be. Whether it's a flat, a house, or a boat in a canal, it's where you live and feel safe and spend a large chunk of time.

A tax on owning too many properties would be subject to gaming. Many large companies already hold properties in tranches of 5-10m worth of properties per limited partnership, so the tax policy needs to be written carefully to disincentivize holding empty properties in a way that can't easily be gamed.

1: ban new housing from being built

2: a supply shortage develops

3: prices rise, and we don't build more housing

I think the tax policy is prop 13, which is a handout to rich homewoners that means they will never sell their houses (very nice for them, not so for anyone trying to get new housing)

Banning house building is not related to tax policy

I take your point that I’ve never really been asked to think about inflationary economies encouraging hoarding things, especially things whose scarcity stems from natural limits rather than economic will. But at the risk of showing my naiveté—wouldn’t it be OK for me to exchange money for enough stuff for me to be content, as soon in my economic life as I can, and hold onto it? For that matter, isn’t it to my advantage that it’s economically desirable for landlords and car rental firms to let me rent a high-value item—like a car for the 3 days a year I need it, or an apartment in a city where I’m only going to live for a few years—instead of making me wait until I’ve made enough money to buy it outright before I can access it at all? Is the idea that if I could instead hoard currency of a fixed value, I would then not hoard naturally scarce things/resources that I judge likely to improve in value?

Re: [1], see also HN discussion [2] (2020, 808 points, 454 comments) wrestling with the many competing theories about “what,” if anything specific, “happened in 1971.” It raises several possibilities outside the gold standard.

See also a more substantial (or at least lengthier) methodological critique [3] (6 months ago, 40 points, 42 comments). The HN discussion includes reactions both of gold/bitcoin enthusiasts and of economically opinionated folks less committed to that way of seeing the world.

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25188457

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39144867

In the past decades there were still plenty of businesses renting things if you so desired. And, even better - they were often pretty small scale enterprises, because we hadn't yet entered the realm of corporations buying up basically everything in existence, including other businesses. Actually you made me look this up and it's kind of a neat factoid. Hertz's rent a car service started in 1918, with a dozen Model Ts! [1]

So the basic functioning of the economy would probably be unlikely to change in a really fundamental way. But I think what would change is that overall society would have a much healthier distribution of wealth/'things', with the cost being that the overall GDP and economic growth would probably be significantly slower.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertz_Global_Holdings#The_comp...

It's hard to know which direction causality goes here. More personal interactions are often more expensive because they can't be systematized and specialized like an assembly line. So what came first: service providers pulling away from offering more personal service or consumers always opting for the cheapest, most optimized option?

One could also argue that this race to the bottom has been a great boon to companies and "the managerial class" that are charged with optimizing this stuff and has been responsible for some of the rising wealth inequality.

This maps to my experience as well.

I see families struggle with things I don’t recall seeing as a kid or teenager. We all had more people around. We were rarely functioning as such independent family units.

And you’re right, my dad was a carpenter himself and he did all kinds of favours for people. Especially elderly people—mostly women—who couldn’t do the work themselves or easily afford to pay someone to. He would offer lower rates, fit things in for free, and show up at their convenience. It was the right thing to do. That isn’t really possible now, though.

Something I urge my kids to understand is that family is great, but it was never meant to be everything. That isn’t to diminish family, but to encourage one to identify and appreciate what’s so valuable and rewarding in friends and community. Humans are so richly social and so poor at functioning in isolation; there’s no sense in pretending otherwise. We really need each other. The more community erodes, so do we each as well.

I mean, it's still possible to have non-transactional interactions.

Many service providers appear truly surprised and then appreciative when I simply ask them how their day is going.

Edit: Or maybe the surprise comes when they notice that I'm actually listening to their answer.

I don’t think this happened because of personal changes. Absent interference, people would almost certainly form close community. We need to look for the source of the interference, individual actions aren’t enough.

My experience is very similar. I believe there are two primary reasons for this: 1. People are wealthier, and wealthier people tend to be more independent. 2. Population density is higher. Places with lower density, such as villages still tend to have that people to people connection like in the old days

I grew up poor, in a village, but otherwise have had a fairly rich life. I've landed on the other side: well off and in the city. Still alone, however.

The hassle of finding my way in life and finally doing it made me "overly independent" given common sentiment.

I'm generally fine, yet outside of posts like this... I have absolutely no interest to connect. When people at work try to get close I actually feel saddened by my incapability.

The argument could certainly be made that opening up strengthens. That may be true. It may also be a transactional relationship going the other way.

I've had that vulnerability exploited enough. It's not as simple as "we like smooshing our meat bits together". Game theory exists.

Avoidance, yes, but show me where it has failed... me.

Rhetorical, not an accusation: it feels very strange to judge others for their independence. Why, so you can benefit?

Personally, the question isn't "why aren't people socializing". It's: "why is it worthwhile?". There's no universal answer - we must find it, I'm still trying.

All of this to say, we all play our hands. Sometimes too well.

“why is it worthwhile” - generally human connection is a psychological need, if we are not conscious of it, the need will get filled with weird behaviors we don’t understand.

It sounds like you have been hurt by connection; I would encourage you to put some effort into understanding where your past experiences lead to you being exploited. If you can consciously learn how to identify safe people (they do exist) it will help with connection immensely.

Those of us who worked for tech companies trying to make “Uber for X” really accelerated this. Having an app for everything makes life a series of impersonal transactions.

During the early days of the “sharing economy” trend, there was actually plenty focus on connecting people.

But at some point you need money to pay people working on these things. So you look at something that doesn’t replace the core social connection, but augments the experience. Like selling additional services such as insurance.

But it’s not easy to cover costs, especially in western countries where employees are expensive.

These days (I haven’t been part of it for a long time) I’ve noticed there are also subscriptions to be part some community, which works but of course also makes it harder to grow.

And investors who are looking for return on investment are also difficult in something that’s so sensitive to good will from users.

> During the early days of the “sharing economy” trend, there was actually plenty focus on connecting people.

You're describing the initial couchsurfing concept and the old couchsurfing.com. Everything after that has been about monetizing the shit out of these interactions.

Yes! We just moved out of Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn and my biggest lament was losing this type of community. Wrote about it here: https://baugues.com/last-days-nyc

Seems to be correlated with PIN pads capable of displaying text.

"Do you have a telephone number with us?"

"It's going to ask you a question." (About how much tip to add to your bill)

I live in a major city outside the US and the culture here is very non-transactional with the neighbourhood vendors. Sometimes I forget to have enough cash and I they'll suggest I pay later (and always do). I'll be given excellent and free advice from my pharmacy, free fruit samples from the fruit grocer, good discounts on places I frequent. These are owner-run businesses, obviously the supermarket doesn't give me any preferential treatment. I love this city, it's very warm and generous, maybe because they have an incredibly strong social system but also because the municipality works to encourage owner-run businesses.

Ok what city??

+1. What city?

I don't mean to be so brutal about it, but these small social interactions were simply never valued that much by the majority and maybe even seen as a nuisance.

It's not all or nothing.

I live in small town India since Covid and WFH, and I spent my childhood here.

The thing is, with this much tightknit society, people are often loudly judgemental and requires you to conform.

But, there are always sensible, gentle people, and loud stupid people. You can modulate your expectations.

But what happened is- all the "good ones" leave sooner or later. There is much hue and cry about brain drain from India to US/Europe, but little about brain drain from small towns and villages to big cities.

I left for college, too.

There were many more cultural programmes, much better environment for upliftment and somewhat more sensible society when I was a child compared to now.

I engage in community as much as I can, but very selectively. Because most people want things to fall in a certain place. People are ill informed in technology, and don't really get WFH. Some bluntly ask- why I don't have a "real job"? People want girls to get married at a certain age, and squint if that limit is crossed.

Community also come with this kind of burdens.

Until you need that person, then they're a life saver. People often can't see beyond their own nose.

> Whenever we interacted with them it would be a small chit-chat, exchange small updates (how's your son doing, is he married yet?) and then finally do the actual purchase. All of that is now gone. Every single interaction I have now with vendors is 100% transactional. I don't even know their names nor they mine.

Interesting note: economics would quantify this as a significant productivity increase. You can now get more tasks done per day!

Lesson: economics does not fully capture human values.

I don't really agree. I live in a big city in Spain but I know the local bakery girls where i get my morning bread (they always keep a loaf of my favourite apart), the 2 Indian guys in the mini mart next door often accept packages for me, the staff in all the clubs I visit know me really well and always give me a hug when I come, I always have a chat with the lady in the bigger supermarket I frequent, etc. In fact most of my interactions are not just transactional. Only those with taxi drivers etc. The restaurants I visit frequently all know my preferences. The old guy with his antique workshop down the road often offers me a can of beer while we sit and have a chat. I absolutely do feel part of the community. And I live in a big city center.

Maybe in India things are different but there it's not like that at all. Ps As you mentioned people asking about your son getting married, one thing I noticed is that the focus on marriage in India is very strong, some of my coworkers in Bangalore who are from smaller villages are pretty much disowned if they don't get married by the age of 23. I know when I was 23 I was just backpacking around the world and enjoying life, not thinking about babies or families. In fact I never did get married and I'm almost 50.

I think that pressure would take its toll too. Young people like to be free and don't want to be tied down. It certainly made some of my coworkers there very stressed with the pressure because they just wanted to go clubbing. One friend's parents didn't even know she had a boyfriend for years. There seems to be a huge disconnect there between generations.

I've noticed an uptick recently of large brands to start referring to themselves as "The [Brand] Community". The author pointed out Youtube here (who in an Orwellian manner calls their ToS "community guidelines") but I've also seen it with many other multi-million dollar companies such as Reddit, Twitter, etc. Young people today are reaching out for real support structures, but only receiving manipulation from corporations that want them to watch ads, while occasionally arguing with pseudo-anonymous internet strangers.

> while occasionally arguing with pseudo-anonymous internet strangers.

Even this has been eroding, the amount of comments made by bots I see across reddit/Twitter has increased exponentially since the 2010s. It only got worse after LLMs.

I made an ‘Ask HN’ yesterday about the dire state of bots on the web and the lack of conversation around it.

After a few mins, with 4 upvotes and one user reply it was [flagged] and I couldn’t even reply to the person.

So I am left with the impression we aren’t allowed to discuss bots on the web on this platform.

Edit: This comment not appearing for others?

This comment is appearing. However your submission is not visible to me, https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jimmy1337 appears to seem empty.

You're probably not allowed to discuss it here because the people who own this website are currently making a lot of money from content stolen by bots, to be ingested by other bots.

> I've noticed an uptick recently of large brands to start referring to themselves as "The [Brand] Community"

I don't think I've ever seen that. What I have seen is non-sponsored people referring to "the [brand] community" or "the [product] community" as a shorthand way of saying they discuss brand or product with other people with that shared interest on a dedicated Discord server or forum. The Sega community, the Final Fantasy community, etc.

The official forum for SAP users is called the "SAP Community"[0]. I've seen it in other corporate places too, but this was the first occurrence which came to mind.

[0] https://community.sap.com/

and the apple support community: https://discussions.apple.com/welcome

The “ASML Talent Community”

https://community.n8n.io/

There are many more like this. In fact, it's almost an unwritten rule to create a 'community.domain.tld' with Discourse for a self-hosted projects.

Frankly, same thing with a lot of OSS projects. Everything is a "community," joyously writing code together and following community guidelines while singing and dancing! It's grotesque.

I agree, it rubs me the wrong way that simply enjoying or consuming a particular thing or doing certain activities seems to automatically make you part of the “community” of that thing. Or maybe this isn’t really true and is just what I perceive.

But I don’t like feeling like I am being spoken for, or have it automatically assumed that everyone partaking in something all share a set of values or community-wide beliefs.

I'm also everybody's "fren", and WAGMI...

Remember what we will regret on our deathbeds: “I wish I had spent more time arguing with random people on the Internet”

Time was, we appreciated great rhetoric.

This is another form of locking in the customer, because if at any point a customer wants to distance themselves from the brand, they are always distancing themselves from the "community", which is harder to do than leaving a brand.

If you can make a product part of someone's identity then you've won.

Reminds me of back when people would slap Apple logos on non-Apple work devices.

The words "friend" (everyone knows how shallow a "Facebook friend" is), "share" ("ride-sharing" instead of calling a taxi), and "community" (is the entire customer base of Facebook really a community?) have been shorn of their sociable, human meanings. It's as if a corporation were mining the good will humans have accreted to those words over millenia.

Sometimes there are communities in these spaces - NUMTOTs or small Discord servers. Other times its just marketing foo foo.

Seems like almost every community nowadays has to have their own Discord server or private Facebook group. Often a deal-breaker for the more privacy-conscious people, unfortunately

My initial reaction to your comment was that privacy-consciousness has always been a potential deal-breaker for social engagement - which I think is true, building connection is an inherently vulnerable activity - but it's interesting how the word "privacy" means something very different on- and off-line.

We haven't ever lived in a world where not being "privacy-conscious" in a social setting could mean any of the following if that privacy is compromised by a corporation:

- Someone constructed a whole fake online presence using my data

- Someone used generative AI to make fake photos and videos of me doing things

- Someone has access to my bank accounts and all of my personal communications

- ...

We used to think of privacy as something that exists between people. Now we think of it as something that is mediated by corporations.

> We used to think of privacy as something that exists between people. Now we think of it as something that is mediated by corporations.

I have never heard of the second interpretation. The second sentence should in my opinion rather be: "Now we think of it as something that is violated by corporations."

> Often a deal-breaker for the more privacy-conscious people, unfortunately

You can’t have conversation in your community without them being public either. Saying anything in discord is just as public as on the middle of a busy shopping street.

Typically in public you don't have an irrevocable transcript of every word spoken. The predominace of electric communication and its natural surveillance has eliminated the ephemeral nature of conversation.

To some extend. But some must be pretty dedicated to find something you said even several days ago in a public discord. Coupled with the low stakes communication generally going on there it seems unlikely to me anyone would ever bother.

I'm a contractor working on the GTM side of a well a respected company with a very active slack public community. And let's just say all the activity in slack is piped into their data lake.

You're confusing facebook's customers with their users. Facebook's customers are companies that want to advertise.

So many SasS companies have their own slack and discord communities that I'm working on a project to automatically scrape the channel where people can share job postings.

A couple of them let me install my own apps and use the API, which is disturbing, but most either don't or use the free Slack tier and have maxed out the number of apps that can be installed.

And on the employee side: "family", "tribe"

About 9 years ago I traveled to the US from India for education. Smartphones were still not very common in India cause data was not as cheap as it is today. When I was in the bus commuting everyone’s head was buried in their phones. I thought to myself this is such a sad thing. Look outside talk to each other but the every single person had an iPhone and was doing something on the phone.

Fast forward to 2024 and every person home here in India is constantly on their phones. In the gym, in the car, at work, everywhere. Naturally kids are also getting hooked on devices.

How can you talk to someone when they aren’t even looking at you or paying attention ? Communities and real physical social interaction keep people mentally healthy. All these apps and devices are doing is keeping people away from each other instead.

Of course no one wants to admit this but people are addicted to devices and distractions. The sooner they dissociate, the better.

I've noticed the same thing even on airplanes, where everyone is offline. Unfortunately in that case almost everything is either sleeping, consuming corporate entertainment, or reading books.

BUT there are always a few people who are open to talking. I prefer talking to being on the phone when I'm in flight. I get to have a long conversation about 1/4 of flights.

If you read old books like Pilgrim's Progress you see people walking towards the same town together, and they always struck up a conversation. Look at the Canterbury Tales: some really great literature that consists just of fellow travelers having a storytelling contest! We are missing so much humanity in our kosher lives.

If you like those kinds of storytelling-on-a-pilgrimage stories, I highly recommend Hyperion by Dan Simmons. A large part of the book consists of a group of pilgrims-of-sorts traveling together and sharing stories, which gradually help you understand what's really going on.

I apologize if this comes across as 'how dare you talk about pancakes when I prefer waffles', but I just want to mention that, like a lot of people, I destroyed my hearing when I was young and now I struggle to hear on busses and planes.

If someone talks to me on a plane I say "Sorry, my hearing is really bad", and its really embarrassing when they respond by speaking so loudly the whole plane can hear for the rest of the flight.

Have you considered using hearing aids?

Yes, I've tried two different hearing aids, and they were both worse than useless. They often amplified the wrong voices in the crowd, and not even consistently. It was like listening to the radio and having someone constantly changing stations.

If you've got a recommendation for one that is able to identify which voice in the crowd I want amplified, I'd appreciate it!

I don’t have first hand experience, I just know someone who described a similar problem and then raved to me once they got hearing aids about how life changing they were for that problem.

It sounds like yours were trying to actively amplify certain voices? I wonder if that’s sounds good but doesn’t work sort of feature. Naively it seems like just shifting the volume on everything should work as long as the frequency curve matches the lost frequencies. The brain is what is separating the voices, not the ears.

Hope this advances faster https://masseyeandear.org/news/press-releases/2023/04/mass-e...

At least in the US, most aircraft have internet now - many people are not offline. And even if they're not paying for the internet service, a number of airlines deliver their free entertainment services through personal devices - so they may be watching the same sort of content that would be in a seatback TV on other airlines.

Speaking personally:

I also tend to just load entire books onto my phone for flights. Reading on a small screen doesn't bother me.

With regards to talking - I like talking to strangers. However, the plane is one of the few places I try to avoid striking up conversations. People around me having loud (and it is loud, because talking quietly on a plane is impossible) conversations for hours about nonsense is something incredibly annoying to be on the receiving end of. While I enjoy actually having a conversation, I also know that by doing it I'll be annoying a half-dozen other people not involved in it but forced to listen to it in an environment where they can't do anything to escape it, and it feels rude to do that - especially since I don't enjoy when I'm in their position.

Does anyone remember when the TVs on airplanes hung down from the ceiling and there was only one or maybe two movies on the flight? There was either nothing on the back of the seat, or there was a very expensive satellite telephone.

I still do what I did then - read. I just read on a Kindle now instead of a stack of paperback books bought at the airport.

A fond memory I have from about 25 years ago when I was still a kid:

I was flying economy on KLM with my mom and dad, family vacation to Europe. About a few hours prior to landing, the crew put on some Mr. Bean movies. Back then at least on that flight as far as I can still remember, there weren't seatback screens; only those dropdown TV screens on the ceiling above the aisles, so everyone had to watch Mr. Bean.

Well tell you what, Mr. Bean is bloody hilarious and I was a kid. I couldn't help but burst out laughing even though I knew it was bad manners, and in short order the entire cabin was laughing with me. That was a fun day.

I'm not perfect, but I do make a conscious effort to put away my phone when in transit or idling around. Not that it matters much as pretty much everyone else is stuck in their own little world. But I think it's better for my own health.

It can't be treated like drug addiction, though. Most people I know have a _relatively_ healthy relationship with alcohol or cannabis. The addicts, especially of hard drugs, are the odd ones out.

With phones, and before that music, and before that newspapers, it's a social norm. If you are trying to talk to people you feel like the weirdo.

And I get it, cause I don't like making myself vulnerable. I wish I talked to strangers but it's hard to undo a whole childhood of "Don't stare, don't bother them, keep to yourself, everyone loves how quiet you are, you're so mature for your age because you never talk, etc."

Hm. In Iowa it's thought that 10% of the customers of liquor stores buy 90% of the product moved through the door.

That's not 10X the general population. That's 81X. One in nine drink 9X what nine other people do.

So, you have a relationship with alcohol, it's likely not a healthy one. It's addiction, all the way down.

I'm confused, you paint a picture in which the majority drink moderately and then say "likely not healthy" but in your example 90% of the customers, the vast majority, don't have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

So if you have a relationship with alcohol it is most likely a healthy one, and it's "addiction all the way down" for... a minority.

Yeah, well, that majority is likely buying alcohol for events, for celebrations. Not so much a 'relationship with alcohol' as a party favor. Don't drink anything at all the rest of the year.

You have a favorite drink, a regular bar, a liquor store that knows you - you are probably one of the ten percent. Believe it or not, most of us don't go to a bar most months of the year.

> Don't drink anything at all the rest of the year.

That doesn't really match my observations ,or NIH data https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-to...

There the majority (18 and over, and slightly under 50% of 12 and over) report consumption in the last month.

Of those, a bit under 7% report "heavy usage". You can look up the definitions, but doesn't include e.g. "usually has a beer or two with dinner".

The category you describe definitely exists, but I don't think it's anywhere close to a majority, and there are also at least a couple reasonable categories between that problematic or abusive consumption.

I would argue it should be handled exactly like drug addiction ought to be. That is, as a widespread medical issue. But it is more complex than drug abuse due to interaction with people expressly being part of the equation. One's phone is ever available and there are very very few places indoors or outdoors that it isn't considered socially acceptable to use their smartphone for social media. The same is not true for alcohol or cannabis. Most people won't simply walk down the street or hang in a park smoking or drinking. Phone addiction is far more visible.

That's fair, I guess we agree that an epidemic of addiction is treated different than a couple cases of one-off addicts

When I'm out at a sit-down restaurant, I always make a mental note of everyone who has their phone out on the table. It's usually 50-50. Not necessarily using them, but within view, as if they're waiting for something else instead of prioritizing the people who took the time to be physically around them in the same place and time.

No wonder lots of people feel disconnected. They forgot how to connect in even the most conducive settings for it.

Counter point - phones are so large now I don't always want it in my pocket when seated.

Personally, when I'm in this situation, my phone is out and face down on the table to avoid the discomfort of it digging into me from my pocket. I've also noticed that other people use their phone less when I explicitly take it out and put it to the side. Also, even though I take it out, I never use it unless the conversation has asked for it, like searching an answer for something.

Sometimes I do that because it's just uncomfortable to sit with my phone in my pocket. I agree it's rude to use your phone while you're dining or conversing with a group.

People take phones and sometimes even wallets out of their pocket when they sit down for comfort.

Not only that, but also in people's hands. I've seen on many occasions a couple sitting together at a two-seat table, obviously they're together for dinner, both silently scrolling on their smartphones. Not even saying a word to each other. It's eerie and creepy, like something out of Black Mirror. Last time I pointed this out on HN, most repliers were either defending this behavior or being sarcastic with "Well why don't you walk over and tell them how to live their lives!"

This has kind of been normalized!

> I've seen on many occasions a couple sitting together at a two-seat table, obviously they're together for dinner, both silently scrolling on their smartphones.

Once upon a time, being together without having to talk was a measure of closeness. Relationships that achieved this were venerated.

That ideal aside: Proximity itself nurtures trust and feelings of safety.

It seems sad that we could miss examples of bonding because they don't fit our relationship model.

I've had relationships where I just liked spending time with the person, even when just sitting and not talking, but I've also sat around on my phone not talking to people, and it's not at all the same. When you're on your phone, you're in your own little world trying to ignore everyone. When you're such close friends with someone that you even like sitting around and not talking, it's because you want to spend time with them so much that you want to just be around them even if there's no real "excuse" to hang out.

Some people struggle with social situations and have made about as much progress there as they're going to.

Still other people struggle with social situations, sometimes.

I'm in the latter group; I rarely-to-never eat out. It's exhausting to put on a convincing production of Pretending To Enjoy Myself.

Using a device to ease that burden seems super reasonable to me.

I’m old enough to remember a time where you would see couples on the table next to you that wouldn’t talk the entire night but listen in to other table’s conversations.

Smartphones make not working social relationships more visible, but I doubt they’re the root cause.

I will forget my phone if I’m having an excellent live experience, eg a great conversation.

humans will always take the path of least resistance to spike domaine when given the option - that is why we banned drugs and most of these apps with short form info like tiktok, reels, instagram, twitter - these are pretty much like drugs. I wish i can just throw away my phone and live my life but 'being on' is just an expectation in todays world.

I'm not saying smartphones are never a problem. However, look at old photos of the bus or subway in the USA or UK from decades ago. Passengers were not having social hour - they were minding their own business, reading a newspaper, listening to music, staring out the window...

I'm more interested in the question of whether technology tethers us home more strongly, instead of venturing outside of our homes.

>they were minding their own business, reading a newspaper, listening to music, staring out the window

Much better cognitively than endlessly scrolling Instagram reels YouTube shorts that are algorithms trying to keep you hooked. Sometimes I’ve seen people just open random apps and close and do nothing. It’s like a habit they are unable to let go.

Phones must be orders if magnitudes more common than newspapers. It seems that no matter where you are in the world, everyone from age 12 and up has one on them 24/7 and uses it as soon as they have 20 seconds to spare. Newspapers were something only a few adults would use, and you usually have read all the interesting parts by the time you get your second coffee.

I agree that the tendency for wanting distractions has always been present in humans, but the hyper connectivity of today's world really taps into it unlike anything else we had before. It's a different quality.

Of course, many people did read books and newspapers on the subway 20 years ago.

A significant fraction also did speak to one another sometimes, and engaged in spontaneous conversations, too.

That fraction has dropped to close to ~0% today.

> How can you talk to someone when they aren’t even looking at you or paying attention ?

I'm talking to people constantly without looking at them. Some are loose ties like this one. But group chats, texts, Discord servers, even Facebook. Tons of 1:1 communication with people I see in person regularly. But also I don't have to see someone in person to have a real conversation. I'm often fully present with real people when on my devices, and I'm perfectly capable of dissociating while politely not touching my phone when I'm in a boring conversation with people standing next to me.

Sometimes I wonder if we wouldn’t be better off is someone EMP’ed the northern hemisphere and killed all mobile devices at the same time.

I've personally noticed that my own value of autonomy has often contributed to a reduction in social activity and community integration. I used to be very selective of what I did with others. If I had an invite from friends and the activity didn't seem immediately interesting to me, I'd decline. I've since learned to say yes more (but not always) to invites and particularly consider ones that are more outside my comfort zone. This does however require a sacrifice of my individualism that is so heavily prized in western culture.

> If I had an invite from friends and the activity didn't seem immediately interesting to me, I'd decline.

I have seen many (usually younger) people make this mistake. The mistake is thinking that the point of the activity is the activity itself. It isn't. The point is the genuine social engagement.

(Edited to add:)

> I've since learned to say yes more

Years ago, I learned to change my default answer to things from "no" to "yes". It has been a key to my career success. But, more than that, I have lived a more interesting life than most as a result of that.

Making "yes" your default instead of "no" increases the chances that something bad will happen, this is true, but it also increases the chances that something good will happen. Personally, I've found that on the whole, the riskier path is the better path. But I'm quite certain that not everyone will feel the same.

Was just talking with a friend about this. The reason older people tend to play repetitive card games isn’t because they are captivating, it is just a thin excuse to spend a few relaxing hours together.

After a few months of hesitation I’ve gotten some of my friends into playing simple games like euchre and hearts and the quality of our time together has gone up significantly.

Reminds me of a scene from a favorite book-series, where the protagonist is visiting with a recently-retired/convalescent former boss.

> “So,” Illyan said at last. “What do a couple of retired officers and gentlemen do on a country weekend?”

> [...] “Tradition is, you take the local beer from the village—there’s a woman there who home-brews it, extraordinary stuff—and hang the bottles over the side of the boat to stay cold. When the beer gets too warm to drink, it’s too hot to fish.”

> “What season is that?”

> “Never, as far as I could tell.”

> “Let us by all means observe tradition,” said Illyan gravely.

-- Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold

IDK that hasn't been my experience. When I've gotten together with people to play euchre it's always people who are super competitive about it, get annoyed if you misplay a hand, and don't talk about anything except how good or bad their last hand was.

Exactly! High quality social time, interaction with real other people. A great excuse to get together.

That's my experience as well. In my opinion, "social" board games are always an excuse for the people who propose it to "dominate" others in an activity they don't do as often and don't care about much.

They call it socializing but it is always a type of problematic socialisation because it always ends up hypercompetitive and solely focused on the game. We know humans can't truly multi-task and this is true for games too, so what happens is that as the game progresses everyone is increasingly focused on its strategy and no real conversation about anything else happens. I think it is actually a crutch for people that are not that interesting to begin with and prefer to retort to this sort of activity (passive-agressive competitiveness built-in) instead of cultivating something interesting to talk about with other peoples.

I'm all for socialisation by talking or doing shared activities with a common goal, but games and to an extent sports are really more trouble than they are worth most of the time...

Sounds to me like you are maybe the competitive one. It could be that you are friends with board-gaming sociopaths but in my life I have met only one person who I think would propose a board game just because they could win at it.

Interestingly, I've gone the opposite way in my old age. I realize now how very short life is and how it's absolutely not worth wasting what little free time I have on activities that don't interest me.

This goes even moreso in the workplace, where saying yes often leads you into taking on more responsibilities for no extra pay or recognition, unless you simultaneously try to wangle the added work into a schmoozing opportunity, which cuts even more into the time you could have been spending doing something you actually wanted to do if you'd said no.

I suspect people come from different baselines here, which for some means saying "yes" more often, and for others saying "no".

But I think the parent's point is to "say yes" more broadly than just when the activity interests you; e.g., if the people are good, interesting people and there will be interesting conversation, the activity may just be an excuse to get together, and not its focus -- and it's too easy to evaluate just the activity alone in response to an invitation.

This assumes you know what is worth doing in advance and I think we rarely do.

Good point. Everything boils down to moderation though, right? My usual attitude is, if I have nothing to do — say yes. If I already have plans, invite my friends, but still do it even if they decline. It’s just my simple way of signalling that I like my friends, and I am happy to spend time with them.

Workplace is a different game though, as it will always depend on company, politics and your ambitions.

> it's absolutely not worth wasting what little free time I have on activities that don't interest me.

Well, my perspective is that the point is spending valuable free time with my friends, which I value and is good for everybody. What we're spending that time _doing_ is a secondary consideration.

> in the workplace, where saying yes often leads you into taking on more responsibilities for no extra pay or recognition

Of course! By saying "I changed my default answer from 'no' to 'yes'", I don't mean I say yes to everything (and I wasn't talking primarily about in the workplace). I mean it in the form of a shift in mental stance.

In the workplace, that means my default stance to something that involves additional work is "ok, how could I make that happen?". It may very well be that I can't. Or, more likely, it may be that I can if I deprioritize something else. The stance difference is that instead of just rejecting it automatically, I spend a moment weighing the factors and am able to present the tradeoffs involved so that we can make a better determination as to if it's a good idea or not.

I mean, it depends where you start at. I always say yes, and that has led me to overscheduling, so I'm learning to say no; but my default is still yes. For me, it takes effort and discretion to say no. It sounds like for OP, it is the opposite.

There's also a weird mistake among young people in thinking of Republicans versus Democrats as enemies to be shunned rather than the "loyal opposition" who just happen to have a different perspective. Becoming a political tribalist cuts out about half your social opportunities.

I respect that viewpoint and would be happy to adopt it in different times. But it's not as simple as political tribalism.

For example - Several of my close friends are trans. For the last decade or so, Republicans have been viciously attacking trans people and several states are actively taking away their rights. The entire right wing media ecosystem uses every chance they can to demonize trans people in the new culture war.

After years of these horrible attacks, we're seeing hate crimes against trans people rise. At least two of my friends have been assaulted in the last year or so.

How can I fault them for having a gut reaction to not engage with Republicans? And if someone is still happy to call themselves a Republican after all this hate, I think that reflects something about their character. Obviously if I were to vote for Republicans who want to hurt my trans friends (which is almost all of them), I could never look them in the eyes again. Similarly, I can't have much respect for those who do. The life and safety of my friends and family is the most important thing to me.

I am happy to engage in good faith dialogue with conservatives on these topics, but frankly, if I'm out and doing something I enjoy, I'd generally rather not spoil my time talking to someone who is statistically likely to be a hateful bigot.

There are people who vote Republican in private, and they are different from those who loudly proclaim their Republicanism to everyone they encounter. It might be a shame that the private Republicans vote how they do, but that doesn't have to affect their ability to engage with trans people, or vice versa.

So I would say the problem is not the ideological divide per se, but the 'identity' politics which makes both sides openly intolerable to each other. Of course, it's problematic because trans people can't keep private in their transness at a game of cards in the way that a radical socialist could. But in modern discourse, we're all encouraged to be loud and proud in order to advance our preferred politics, instead of quiet and demure in order to foster community that transcends politics.

> ...but that doesn't have to affect their ability to engage with trans people, or vice versa.

I disagree. How am I supposed to trust and feel safe around someone who knowingly voted for a politician who loudly campaigned on removing my rights and demonizing my very existence?

A politician who supports an esoteric policy that disadvantages me in some way is entirely different than one who loudly and plainly says that I am less human and should have fewer rights than others. That rhetoric kills people. And it's not a deal-breaker for you? I cannot call such a person a friend. A vote for a Republican in modern times is an expression to trans people that their rights and safety are less important to you than whatever esoteric tax policy or whatever than won your vote.

You can value that policy more than the rights of trans people if you want, that's your prerogative. But it will make trans people and their allies trust you a lot less when they discover that you think their rights are just a bargaining chip to be traded away, and justifiably so. What other situations are you willing to throw them under the bus over, not just in politics, but in life? It's not just a matter of pride or preference, but a matter of rights and safety.

Bingo.

I'm afraid, internet stranger, that you are part of the problem here. The original topic for this thread was about "community" and the mental health crisis. Community brings diverse people into contact with each other, which fosters communication and thus has the potential to heal division and increase empathy.

Do you not realize that a lot of people think that abortion is literally murder? That voting for the pro-choice candidate will kill more babies each year than there are trans people? Regardless of how correct you think they are, they also think this is a matter of rights and safety, of life and death. It may be hard to understand, but they believe this as strongly and fervently as you believe what you do.

Now you tell me, without some mechanism to bring people of such disparate views together, how does this resolve? An acrimonious dissolution into a red nation and a blue nation? A civil war in which we both try to snuff out opposing views with violence? (Wouldn't that be ironic?)

At best, you want your side to win, in perpetuity, until the current generation of bad-ists has died off and your views prevail. But as we see, that doesn't happen. The "bad" views continue to be transmitted from generation to generation, fomented by political opportunists, and then we are at constant risk of "their side" prevailing in perpetuity. You think 2028 or 2032 will be any better?

The only way people change their minds is by coming into contact with other people with different viewpoints over a long period of time. But that involves actual relationships, not beating someone into submission with well-reasoned arguments. (Think about how well that works on you!) And you can't have any kind of relationship if you dismiss a citizen out-of-hand because of how they voted.

So you want to make a real difference? Stop being so loud about who you can't be friends with. Don't ask your co-workers about their politics; it's a waste of energy. Talk with your relatives about their actual problems, and steer the conversation away from political rhetoric. Pretend like you want to be a part of humanity instead of apart from it.

I would certainly be a better person if I was the sort of saint that can talk to people who hate my guts that badly, but not all of us are saints.

It's currently illegal for me to use a public bathroom in Florida. Or rather, technically I am legally required to use the women's bathroom, but since I have a significant beard it's quite likely the police would get called on me for attempting to do so.

The next best solution would be protest. What I should really be doing is flying to Florida, using the women's bathroom as legally required, and making sure that as many journalists and lawyers as possible know about the arrest. I haven't quite worked up the courage yet, though. Plenty of trans people can and do flee the states that have successfully deprived them of bathroom access and healthcare because they don't have the energy to stand and fight. The descent to attempted murder has already happened, and it's not the trans people starting it.

It's only a matter of time before so-called "pro-life" policies start killing people too. Hospitals in Idaho are flying women to other states because they're not legally allowed to end ectopic pregnancies - which are never viable and always result in the death of the mother if not terminated - until the woman is too close to death. (https://www.npr.org/2024/04/25/1246990306/more-emergency-fli...)

I generally agree with your sentiment, and I do think open dialog is necessary to bridge the divide. It is way more easily said than done though, especially as political violence becomes more frequent.

But I will say - it's pretty terrible that the people being attacked and vilified in this situation are also expected to "be the better person" and bridge the divide. Why is the onus on the oppressed to make peace with their oppressor? Bystanders and allies should call out the bullies for starting the fight rather than blaming the victim for not advocating for themselves politely enough.

Sure, such misfortunes are a part of life and no progress is made without adversity. It is a pattern, though, that bystanders and allies should recognize and help reduce as much as possible.

> Pretend like you want to be a part of humanity instead of apart from it.

It's not me or my trans friends who want to live apart from humanity, trust me. We just want to live here, too - that's what the fight is about. It's the conservatives who are trying to push us out and remove us from society. The original sin of the fracture is theirs, not ours. If we live in a bubble, it's because they forced us into one, not because it's where we want to be.

> continue to be transmitted from generation to generation

Yes, and no. Because the baseline moves. Progressives are ahead of the baseline, and conservatives behind it.

Conservatives of my day were anti-marriage equality. The ones before them were anti-gay in general. Before them, they were anti-integration. Before them anti-women's rights. Before them anti-suffrage. Before them anti-abolition.

The conservative stance gets pushed more and more forever with each passing generation. The overall idea stays - "maintain the status quo and conserve the days of old". But the days of old have changed.

In 100 years, conservatives of that day will be wildly different than the ones right now.

This is very well put, and I agree with it unreservedly. But I do think that it's worth bearing in mind that "trans rights" is, for better or worse, an evolving concept in the culture at the moment. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, when people even in my "west coast liberal" milieu wouldn't bat an eye if someone called someone else a "fag." That's practically inconceivable now, as would be playing "smear the queer" as we did just about daily on the playground. It seems to me that we're now in the middle of a similar process with trans rights, and I do think there are issues -- in particular those regarding the rights of minors and their parents -- that many people are trying in good faith to work through, and about which there are bound to be disagreements. I don't mean to make excuses for the politicians you mention, most of whom I think are using this issue opportunistically and not in good faith. I just think "the rights of trans people" is not something that has a well defined meaning at this point.

>I disagree. How am I supposed to trust and feel safe around someone who knowingly voted for a politician who loudly campaigned on removing my rights and demonizing my very existence?

Because almost all that "demonizing", et al. is just political marketing that will mean nothing if they get into office.

I vote Republican because, as a Japanese-American, I sincerely can't stand the constant identity politics the Left/Democrats want to play on me. No, I'm not a "BIPOC", I'm an American. I'm a minority and an Asian as far as objective facts go, but I'm an American. At least the Right/Republicans seem more content to just call me an American and leave me alone.

But at the end of the day, I have no issues mingling with Leftists/Democrats if they have the decency to leave their politics at the front doors of their houses just like I do my Right/Republican politics.

Also, it's such a fucking stupid thing to not be friendly with each other just because of political differences.

> political marketing that will mean nothing if they get into office

Just not true. As the person you replied to pointed out there are hundreds of bills restricting rights for Trans people, all from the right.

In my experience, the average republican is almost allergic to accountability. Yes, these things are happening. Yes, these policies DO represent you. And yes if you vote right you contributed to it.

If that bothers you, or others, it might be time to analyze your affiliations. But you should not simply lie or live in a delusion that nothing happens. No no... things happen. The culture war politics the right cherishes do come to fruition.

> At least the Right/Republicans seem more content to just call me an American and leave me alone.

I am honestly happy that you get that treatment.

A lot of other minorities don't. The left didn't just decide to play identity politics out of nowhere. They did it because this country has a long history of racism - people alive today experienced life before the Civil Rights act. And the racists who had to be told by law to cut it out didn't just stop being racist because a law was passed, just like how laws against murder don't stop murder from occurring. The racists just found other ways to be racist, and many of the underlying issues have persisted. People on the left are still fighting that fight. And their identity does matter, because it's the very thing that is being used against them.

I imagine if you were an immigrant from Mexico, accused of stealing jobs, running drugs, or being a leech on the system - or any other of the (and I quote Trump here) "shithole countries" that the right hates - you might feel differently. You are lucky that, right now, Japan is not on that list.

> Also, it's such a fucking stupid thing to not be friendly with each other just because of political differences.

Again, it's not just "political differences". They demonize minorities to the point of violence, and two of my friends have been assaulted because of it. It's not theoretical tax policy, it's dehumanization, in rhetoric and in actual laws they hope to pass. Not wanting to be around people who want to engage in violence against my friends is not unreasonable. This isn't theoretical, and my friends have scars to prove it.

> How can I fault them for having a gut reaction to not engage with Republicans? And if someone is still happy to call themselves a Republican after all this hate, I think that reflects something about their character.

Yes and sometimes it's worth peeling back the layers to find out why they are embodying that character. An offensive strategy creates a defensive response, nothing will ever get resolved that way; it only creates more hostility. Instead, I invest time into knowing what makes that person so stubbornly that way while re-asserting the fact that I do not hold the same values. In at least a few of those cases, those people turned around to become more open to the LGBTQ+ community despite still holding onto their Republican status. That's a win in my book because it's slowly getting them to think more independently.

One of my friends was homophobic and would often make homophobic slurs "he's wearing f*g sandals". Instead of telling him he's a bad person or laugh along with him to avoid making things uncomfortable, I simply reiterate that I have no issues with people identifying as gay because what people do in their lives is none of my business. I let him know that I've made friends with gay men and never had one make me uncomfortable or feel like they overstepped boundaries; I know that idea is sometimes what makes straight men afraid of gay men. It took some time, but one day he finally let out that he had a weird uncle that would touch little boys and that's what he associates the LGBTQ+ community with. To which I gently pointed out why it's irrational. He's finally starting to come around now. Recently he'd been heard saying he's ok if his daughter ever turned out to be a lesbian. Small step in the right direction...

I mean, the label of the group is “conservative”. Trans acceptance and the explosion in trans identifying individuals is objectively a change in the social order, which by definition will be opposed by those seeking to conserve the existing social order.

Conservatives don’t have a logical argument, and when you press them for one they typically generate something nonsensical on the fly, but really they don’t need a logical argument for every specific issue. Their broad position is just “social change in general is risky and potentially bad, and what we had before was good enough”.

Do you think that is not a valid position to hold? Surely you can think of some social changes that would obviously lead to catastrophic effects, and given that we can’t simulate a society we can’t know in advance whether a particular “not obviously bad” change will have a negative impact later on.

Conservatives might not have a logical argument against this, but feminists have plenty. And if you read radical feminist writings they've been warning about this and the outcomes of this for decades. Take prisons for example. The policy changes that in some states now separate prisons by "gender identity" instead of sex has led directly to males being locked up in women's prisons, some of whom have sexually assaulted, raped and impregnated female prisoners incarcerated with them. This is just one negative outcome of many. The ideology behind "trans" causes demonstrable harm towards women and girls.

Agree to disagree. It's pretty hard, and often unrewarding, to bridge such fundamental divides in values.

It's not hard, it just requires compartmentalization. This is a skill that can be learned like any other, and brings rewards in many aspects of life. Give it a try.

And if you tune out the media and talk to ordinary Republicans and Democrats you'll usually find that there are few fundamental divides and that they mostly agree on the main points of political and economic philosophy. It's like Catholics and Protestants arguing over the fine points of Christian theology; those might seem important to fanatics but if you take a step back and look at the disputes from the perspective of, let's say, a Buddhist the differences seem trivial.

From whose perspective is restricting women’s access to healthcare trivial?

The question there is _which_woman_? The one going to get the procedure or the one on the sharp end of needle? So the question one might ask you is "from whose perspective is murder trivial?" Neither seem trivial to me, which is probably why it's such a contentious issue. Framing it like you do seems mostly just to dehumanize the other side. I'm probably with you in how we should treat this, but I also worry about the slippery slope problem - at what point is it no longer ok to abort? If six months, then why not six months and a day? Then why not a moment before birth? Then why not after birth? What is the magical moment where we say the "clump of cells" becomes "human"? Trying to answer that question feels like it unavoidably treads into religious grounds even for the non-religious.

Your questions are moot because functionally no one is at the end of a needle. No woman or doctor is going around willy nilly getting their jollies off killing viable fetuses.

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/raw-data-abor...

> What is the magical moment where we say the "clump of cells" becomes "human"?

When that human is outside of another human. Until then, women and doctors should have ZERO risk of being held liable for decisions about saving the pregnant woman’s life that may have to be made in seconds in a rapidly changing medical situation.

It is a complete non issue (that is until the Repubs started banning women’s healthcare) burning untold resources of our nation’s political time and money.

>The question there is _which_woman_? The one going to get the procedure or the one on the sharp end of needle? So the question one might ask you is "from whose perspective is murder trivial?" Neither seem trivial to me, which is probably why it's such a contentious issue. Framing it like you do seems mostly just to dehumanize the other side.

In what world is this a coherent argument that people should look past these ideological divides in their relationships? You know, the actual disagreement at hand?

I'm glad you picked that example because it shows how the practical impact is not necessarily proportionate to the technical difference. Protestants and catholics have tortured and killed each other over group membership. The fact that their theology may have been, all things considered, very close does not matter when you're in real danger.

Politics isn't a sport or hobby, it is actually life or death for some people. The risk is not distributed equally, and those most in danger are not obligated to pretend the stakes are equally low for them.

“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”

~John Adams.

I think he was right.

Usually, though, the activity at least needs to happen, otherwise the point of getting together goes out the window.

I used to host both movie nights and poker nights at my house for (different groups of) friends. These both slowly fizzled out and largely stopped, because people lost interest in doing anything besides scrolling their phones. Like we'd make popcorn, turn the lights down, start the movie, and within 5 minutes, everyone would be scrolling their Instagrams rather than watching the movie. Even before the opening credits were done, people were all tuned out. And these were movies everyone agreed to! Same for the card games. People would miss their turn and just not engage with the game because they were on their phones.

Asking people to leave their phones at the door or turn them off would be socially unacceptable.

So, yea, default to "yes" but please do actually show up and engage, too!

If compromise with others is starting to be seen as an affront to one's own sense of identity, it's no wonder people are reporting such a poor sense of well-being nowadays.

I grew up before the terminally online era, and I'm not sure we ever saw taking turns doing each other's favorite activity as a sacrifice of our individualism. It was just part of what it means to form meaningful social bonds with other people. Heck, most the time we agreed to spend time together before choosing an activity, because that's where our priorities lied.

I agree with you, but there was certainly some pressure in that direction.

You were probably told that if all your friends were doing drugs (or jumping off a cliff) you should think for yourself.

And you were probably told it was bad to be a sheep and just follow the crowd.

And you probably saw some "real fans" of bands/comics/whatever being scornful towards "phoneys" who were just "pretending".

And you might have been given the impression that picking up some new hobby because a cute member of the opposite sex is into it was somehow insincere or cringe-worthy.

And if some of the activities were expensive by your family's standards, you might have been asked if you really wanted to do whatever.

I can imagine how a person who over-thought this sort of stuff could have ended up thinking they shouldn't, say, go to a baseball game if they don't like baseball.

I think you just wrote down a post mortem of my life's failure

Just a data point: In Valencia, Spain, in the 80s, children played in the street with no much supervision from parents. Occasionally we would stop the football match to let a car drive by. Forgetting your keys at home was no issue, you could get a glass of milk in ten different places while you wait for other (more attentive) members of your family.

Nowadays there is hardly a place to park your car. Parents don't allow kids to play in the street. And the ones that interact with each other are the ones who lived there in that period. It's very difficult for newcomers to integrate.

What are the reasons for this? My take: cars and lack of stay at home mums. They built the social network at that time. They took care of each other children, the were there to help each other. Nowadays households have both adults working (so nobody even asks for salt to the neighbor, all order a pizza instead).

We tried to counteract this with our own children by giving them a lot of freedom.

But these things are very network dependent. Yes we let our kids play in the street and bike around the neighborhood, but it is boring because there are not any other kids to play with, so they don't do it much.

We have 8 billion people on the planet. And there is no plan what so ever to take care of even half of them. It doesn't matter if we see slowing population growth. With globalization there is no reason to be sitting in the same spot. People are on the move.

There's now an intolerance to letting kids play freely.

And if you do let your kids play freely, and something happens - they get hurt, they break something, they're being loud, there's the attitude from others of "why aren't you watching your f*ing kid?".

>> There's now an intolerance to letting kids play freely.

Worth noting that streets are a lot more dangerous now due to the large number of huge trucks that everyone drives. If your kid gets hit by one of them while playing, chances are they won't survive. Hell, the driver may not even notice.

Same in Philippines in the 90s. We’d be out all day and come back at dinner time. There was no pedo. I think kidnapping and pedophile are overblown in media. Whole neighborhood would just play on the streets. No nanny.

It is also true that sexual harassment and abuse was not openly discussed, especially by girls/women and still isn’t (at least in real time).

I think you're on to something. Everyone always talks about social media but I honestly think cars are the most harmful technology of our time. Not least because it's not even recognised by the vast majority of people yet. Social media is at least given lip service.

Everyone working all the time sucks for many reasons. It's a trap that people have fallen for and the only ones laughing are the billionaire oligarchs. Women in particular used to work for themselves and their families, building their own assets and their own relationships. Almost like that "founder" status everyone wants. Now they work for the same few men as their partners building wealth for those men and the closest the family has to a home cooked meal is a favourite takeaway.

> Women in particular used to work for themselves

Women only recently got the right to manage their own assets, and in some societies it is still in the process of happening.

>and their families,

Yes, they used to work for their families.

Keeping our discussion to Spain, women have been able to manage their own assets for a long time (including married woman). Let's not project english law onto the whole world.

Wikipedia says 1930s for women’s civil rights in Spain, which I count as recent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_the_Span...

It also takes generations for the rights to fully take effect, for example women being refused services by sexist men or hitting glass ceilings at work.

Even in the US, I can see very different changes in the treatment and expectations of my older women cousins who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s versus those who grew up in the 2000s and 2010s.

Same laws, but the rate of change from those laws accelerated as older generations died out and critical mass in the population with the new views takes hold.

> Women in particular used to work for themselves and their families, building their own assets and their own relationships. Almost like that "founder" status everyone wants. Now they work for the same few men as their partners building wealth for those men and the closest the family has to a home cooked meal is a favourite takeaway.

I'd caution you not to conflate home-cooked meals and family dinners with restrictive gender roles. It's possible to have them without a stay-at-home wife. For example, I grew up with two moms working full-time and had home-cooked meals (or leftovers thereof) for dinner almost every day. It's of course harder to make time to cook when both parents are working, but not impossible.

I think that was beautifully phrased. Needless to say, I agree.

Interesting, usually cars are characterized as anti social elements. These are loud, take lots of space, so lower density, polluting and require license and you can't drink alcohol. Bikes on the other hand are considered more friendly as human centric element

I’m so glad it’s finally happening but also it’s wild to me this conversation feels like it’s just beginning. The Anxious Generation book seems to have been what was needed for people to see what, to me anyways, was common sense and actually question their silly iPad at 6months old parenting styles.

As it’s picking up steam, I’ve been hearing stories recently about how our local “school district decided to ban phones from classrooms” and just yesterday it was “the school will no longer allow food delivery services to drop off food”. Like, educators, WTF, why was that ever an option? In my days long ago, 80s-90s primary school, there was a zero tolerance policy for this stuff. Why was it ever deemed allowable? I can see letting kids keep their phone in their locker or create some storage solution for it. For emergency purposes. But in emergencies, the parent should be able to call the office and they can fetch the kid. It worked just fine in the days of landlines.

It’s hard for me to understand the parenting styles that demanded and allowed this stuff to take place, because I’m sure it was parent driven. But there’s so much else to the parenting styles that are contributing to all this stuff. Banning outdoor play and independence is why they’re online so much and why the arcades and third places all disappeared.

I say all this as a parent of an almost 6 year old boy, doing everything I can to shield him from the wacky parenting style that seems to be the norm and provide him places of community and activities away from screens. He won’t have a phone until he drives, or maybe just a basic flip phone if we think we need a communication line to reach him when he’s a bit older.

>I say all this as a parent of an almost 6 year old boy, doing everything I can to shield him from the wacky parenting style that seems to be the norm and provide him places of community and activities away from screens. He won’t have a phone until he drives, or maybe just a basic flip phone if we think we need a communication line to reach him when he’s a bit older.

This is possibly a bit extreme, imo. In a world that is ever increasingly digital, responsible exposure is without a doubt necessary; However, it seems that one could also inadvertently foster naiveté and ignorance of our digital reality, which has its own potential pitfalls. The "right" answer is probably somewhere in the middle. As usual.

Hard to completely elaborate on here but I think I am quite in the middle. It just happens to be far from norm. Or at least how i perceive it.

He watches some age appropriate TV daily. He started gaming but probably gets in around a total of 5 hours a month on the switch. It will be the hardest thing not to give into. Right now it’s not allowed on weekdays. And only with restrictions on weekends (eg. All other activities take priority). No smaller screens except on travels it’s a treat. He will get a laptop next year for school but I’m going to try to encourage PC use as a tool/utility and not so much for consumption/media. Phone might be hard but our current community of parents has kind of made a pact so I hope we can stick to it. We will hold out as long as possible and still put some restrictions on it. Thankfully he’s pretty logical and listens to our reasoning and understands the “rules” and doesn’t whine or get rebellious about it (thus far)

It’s not like we’re Amish or shun media.

This sounds like the sort of route I hope to take with my son when he's old enough. We've already made it past a year without ever sitting him down for TV/tablet/phone time (except video calls with grandparents) but I'm sure it only gets harder from here.

I'd be interested in reading any more you've previously written on the subject, or any other sources you've based your guidelines on!

Good start! I feel like 90% of it is just putting in the effort and being intentional. Our son didn’t watch TV until about 18 months and the pandemic put us all in the house without childcare and our work went into overdrive. He went too hard on it for the first few months until we figured out how to balance things. We had no intention of starting that young but that’s how it happened.

I’ve not written on the topic. The main advice I can give is to always be prepared to channel their energy/boredom. We take a backpack of small toys and sticker books and putty/play dough into dine in restaurants. My kid really likes to know what to expect so we prepare him when we know he has to do something boring. Like we went to a funeral when he was 2 and we explained to him that we dressed up to show our respect and we have to sit still and be quiet to show respect. We told him adults might be crying because they’re sad. That’s kind of a weird extreme example but we do small versions of this pretty often.

Find ways to explain to them that even if other kids do something “we don’t do that”. This varies by kid and age. Be consistent and make sure everyone he is with understands (parents, grands, etc). Or set conditions, like only at grandmas or only on weekends. We set a lot of timers. You can play Mario for 20 minutes, he’s gotten to where he just says “yay! Hey Google, set a timer for 20 minutes” lol

What part of the above seems most "extreme" to you? It seems fairly reasonable.

I'm guessing it's the "no phone..." part, but that's what seems most important to me. Having an always-available endless entertainment device is a powerful drug. There is a reason we disallow nicotine, alcohol, and cannabis until brains have reached a certain level of maturity / development.

My oldest is 8. He rocks Manjaro and loves (open source) games. We do python lessons together, even though I'm only a hobbyist myself. But compared to the above poster I also have similar goals / limitations for screentime that we try (and struggle) to adhere to, and my wife and I don't plan to allow a smartphone for our son until high school at the earliest.

I don't think disallowing a smartphone is an extreme parenting move. But perhaps I'm misinterpreting what you thought was extreme?

This isn't new, by the way.

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

A book published in 2000 based on an essay from 1995. I remember my sister took a university course on it.

The Internet only replaced social interactions for a tiny group of enthusiasts at that point and "phones" were the size of small briefcases and were novelties in cars at that point (1995).

Declining socialization has been happening for _decades_ and people are overly focused on smartphones as a cause.

Yes, overly focused on smartphones, and underfocused on car-centric city planning: https://images.fastcompany.com/image/upload/w_768,f_auto,q_a...

https://www.fastcompany.com/90653986/traffic-devastates-loca...

As we've become richer, we've bought more cars, we drive them more often, and to further locations. The amount of vehicle traffic and parked cars in neighborhoods have long exceeded the limit for how much you can have before streets become unsafe. This is why children can't go outside unsupervised anymore: there are too many cars, going too fast, and too many parked cars that are too good at hiding children about to run into the road.

You have to get rid of the cars, or limit their use somehow. Eliminate on-street parking. Get rid of monster trucks and SUVs that can only see the ground 22 feet away. More speed bumps and traffic calming.

>This is why children can't go outside unsupervised anymore: there are too many cars, going too fast, and too many parked cars that are too good at hiding children about to run into the road.

This really isn't it. People think their kids are going to get murdered/kidnapped/assaulted. "It's 10PM, do you know where your children are?" was a local news promo. You had "news magazine" TV shows designed to frighten parents which were just tragedy porn for attention.

"My kid is going to get hit by a car" isn't why kids don't go out and play any more, it's the news manipulating culture for decades.

>He won’t have a phone until he drives, or maybe just a basic flip phone if we think we need a communication line to reach him when he’s a bit older.

Your kid is going to be so alienated from the other kids...

Second comment. Sorry if excessive but it's relevant. I'm a computer teacher for elementary and intermediate school grades. You know what drives kids absolutely insane and agitated? The schools IT guy turning their laptops and Mac desktops into locked down consumption devices.

The kids aren't even permitted to change their wallpaper. Those in tech with authority need to loosen up on control of systems, hardware and services if they want kids to be less agitated.

Yeah, fuck "devices". This is a massive part of the problem. Up to a certain age, children don't ask "does it have to be the way?" It's obvious why they don't: they are learning so much anyway, they don't have time to ask such questions. So the world we present is the world that is accepted, no questions asked. Religion thrives on this.

So let's think about what world we are presenting. Physically you have no autonomy. You require a giant wheelchair to get around (called a car) which you can't drive until you're older. These wheelchairs are higher in the social order than you. You have to give way to them. If you don't they will kill you. They matter more than you.

And in the digital world too: no autonomy. You use a "device". You can't participate in anything without said device. In fact, you basically don't exist without your device. The device is more important than you. Your device does what it does and no more. Someone else controls your device. Your device controls you.

A tiny fraction of children will grow up and ask "does it have to be this was" to a tiny fraction of things. Most will go through their whole adult life without questioning it.

The books the authors cite are great and worth reading.

Some personal observations:

- The USA lacks a unified cultural identity now. There are lots of reasons for this. But, it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA - which hurts our community + culture.

- People put a lot of effort into work, and work is becoming more transactional. No more "life-long employment with the buddies" kind of situation.

- America went from poor to rich, but still behaves like a developing economy. Public healthcare + public education + low-income housing availability are poor, while there's a big class of people who can afford private education + private healthcare + McMansions. I think this deteriorates the idea of "we're all in this together" because there's such unequal opportunity.

- Wars used to be a way to unify a country, but we're in the era of proxy wars - which don't have the same aligning effect.

I don't disagree with the comment, but whenever people talk about a "love of the USA", I always want to ask what is it that you love? To stereotype a bit, I'm guessing that it will not be the federal government (despite a strong reverence for the flag of that government).

The deeper issue is that a pessimism about our country will become self-fulfilling. So, it's not useful.

I think the USA is amazing in that it attracts the most ambitious people in the world, provides relative stability for them to work and live, and that it has managed to create such a stable society given the heterogeneous nature of its culture. It has a lot of problems, but I'd much rather be here than in the communist former-country my mom was born in.

Ever consider that perhaps cramming a community full of the most ambitious people in the world might have a bunch of negative consequences for that community?

Surely it has positive consequences too?

The absolute natural beauty and diversity of geography that the USA has is one of the things that make me love it. The "newness" of USA compared to Europe is also something that I really like about it.

I guess it is about the spirit of it, just all the incongruent different groups of people coming together and making something greater than the individual sum of them happen. And just the whole grander idea of forging your own destiny, no matter how risky the odds are.

Sure, it flies in the face of harsh reality quite often, but that’s not the point. And we can definitely gripe about current immigration policies. And of course, that spirit doesn’t feel like it holds true in a big chunk of the US. But to me personally, that’s why NYC feels sort of magical. It’s that whole idea solidified in flesh.

As an immigrant, I can tell you that my hypothetical future in my old country was doomed from the start. The US, with all its imperfections and flaws, let me do my own thing and carve my own path from nothing (parents working minimum wage, so basically zero connections and funds). All while making me feel more at home than my old country ever did in every single way (from interactions with people to absolutely any other aspect of my life).

Again, this isn’t to discount tons of issues that the US has (just like any other large country would). However, I just struggle to think of any other country where I could’ve ended up where I am right now, as an immigrant. And that, to me personally, is what the (idealized) spirit of the US is all about.

There's no taboo, that's ridiculous. I love the US-of-A and I don't care who knows it. God bless America, and apple pie and moms.

I love the people, even though we're mostly stupid and crazy. I love the land, even though it's drenched in the blood of the people of the First Nations and of each other. I love that we fight to repudiate and destroy the evil of slavery, even though we aren't done yet.

And yeah, I even love the Federal Government. Sure it's a gnarly bureaucracy that makes mistakes, but most of the time it pretty much works. And there are so many really cool bits, like the USGS. And the vast majority of the people in the Federal workforce are decent folk just doing their best.

So yeah, we have a lot of problems, but we're doing our best and the story isn't finished yet. I love the USA. (I also love the rest of the world too. It's not an either-or thing.)

Everyone’s got a basket of things they can love or hate about this place when they’re in the mood to love or to hate. That’s something to love, I think.

I'll preface this with saying there are other countries that do many of the following things I say better, but there are many many countries that do things worse. Additionally, I've found most people who have trouble loving the U.S.A. haven't had the privilege of traveling to any of the 130+ countries of the world that have a GDP per capita of less than $15K. Those countries can be awesome in their own right, but they also can help highlight how privileged the U.S. is in many areas. I love the USA because of its infrastructure, it's natural beauty, the principles of its governmental structure, the diversity of people (and food!), how it provides opportunity for people who want that opportunity, for its strong civil rights, and for its natural resources. We can do better to protect and grow all those things I mentioned, but it doesn't mean they don't exist in the first place.

It's the flag of the nation. Not the flag of the federal government.

There are symbols which are more directly associated with the government, such as the Great Seal of the United States. You will see patriotic expressions involving that symbol rather less, although the bald eagle, our national totem, is quite popular.

Some countries have a separate state and civil flag. The United States is not among them.

If you're asking why Americans love our nation, I don't know how to answer that question.

I always want to ask what is it that you love?

- Public lands. Most states have National Parks in them. Every state has state parks. These generally give enormous freedom of enjoyment to vast areas of land and are accessible to most.

- General freedom. We've all seen videos of abusive cops, but the fact is that's still rare. If you want to launch a business, you'll likely be able to find a location, understand regulations, and form the legal entity without paying off officials. We have corruption, but it's generally at high levels and invisible to the general public, so you don't feel the pervasive effects.

- Economy. Sure, I miss the 90s tech boom, but the US has the most advanced tax system in the world, and a highly effective banking system that spurs the economy. It's far from perfect, but it's better than a whole lot, and most people take it for granted.

I think we peaked in many ways between 1995 and 2012, but if we can clean up our act and make it through the new era of Robber Barons and foreign interference, we'll be in a really good place again.

Edit:

- ADA. To my knowledge, no other county has as good of regulations benefiting the handicapped and disabled. From accessible businesses and buses to readable signage to minimum doorway widths in homes.

I love the people of the United States; our shared values; our shared culture. I view the United States as more than just an ideology as outlined in our constitution but also a distinct group of people with a distinct culture with a shared past and a shared future.

This is why I bristle when people get upset by terms like American exceptionalism. Yes, America has a unique culture. America is also objectively superlative, whether it's our wealth, military capability, longevity as a democracy, etc. Uniqueness + superlative = exceptional. When people disagree, I'm left wondering what they disagree with. Either they disagree with the superlatives, in which case, I question their grasp on reality. Or they question the uniqueness of American culture, at which point my social monkey brain tells me to shun them.

I assume nearly every culture believes that they are uniquely superlative in some way though; ironically this seems like a highly conserved quality of human psychology.

If anything, a lot of the praise of America seems to be the federation of culture; I’ve heard it said the that it is not one country, but fifty different ones.

I mean that's totally fair. Most countries and cultures are exceptional in some way. That does not deny american exceptionalism at all.

"it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA" is not really true in most of the country. I moved out of one of the few places where it is.

Speaking as a non-American who visited for the first time last year:

> But, it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA

American flags _everywhere_' Like seriously, I visited both liberal areas (Seattle) and conservative areas (Spokane's surrounds) and y'all patriotic as _fuck_.

> Wars used to be a way to unify a country...

Also because the US is just not threatened by anyone. I'd hope that going back to being the Arsenal of Democracy for Ukraine (and maybe Taiwan or South Korea if things go bad) would've tied the US together, but man I was wrong there.

> I'd hope that going back to being the Arsenal of Democracy for Ukraine (and maybe Taiwan or South Korea if things go bad) would've tied the US together, but man I was wrong there.

I mean, it's not like we need to be rolling out a B-29 every minute or an aircraft carrier a week to defeat Russia there. Just cleaning out some of the stock from the 80's held them off for months. Logistically, the war in Ukraine just isn't very taxing to maintain a psuedo-stalemate. If anything, NATO+ wants to keep this ulcer open for as long as it can in Russia, bleed them white.

At a certain point (probably to a large extent already) Ukraine will simply run out of manpower. Demographically it was in a very poor state to begin with to such a degree they had to keep the MINIMUM age of conscription at 27 and lowered it to 25 a few months ago.

There were only ~2.6 million men aged 15 to 30 and another 3 million in their 30s back in 2022. Around 0.6-0.8 million Ukrainian men have left the country for the EU (18-60, but I assume it's highly skewed towards lower ages).

A significant proportion (probably the majority) of those that remain in the country are not particularly motivated, capable or otherwise keen about going to the frontline. It's hard to tell but looking at estimates > 150k have died or been severely wounded and presumably a several times more suffered lighter injuries.

This isn't WW1/2. Poorly trained and/or highly unmotivated men are not very combat effective and mobilizing such a large proportion of population as back then is not feasible (especially considering that men in their 30s and 40s have been doing most of the fighting). So how long do you think Ukraine can hold out if we extrapolate the casualties rates from the last 12-24 months or so? By the time the West fully ramps up military production it might be too late.

So how long do you think Ukraine can hold out if we extrapolate the casualties rates from the last 12-24 months or so?

I wouldn't know because I don't have their numbers, and unlike you, I don't trust my offhand estimates.

However I will trust the Ukrainians to know, and it seems safe to reason that the more and better arms they have -- the farther off the potential triggering of such a limit will be.

The key consideration to keep in mind here is that for Ukraine, the fight is existential -- while for Russia (as a country, apart from its leadership) it is very much optional. So the limits for what is bearable in terms of any category of loss must be weighted very differently (apart from the what the numbers might say; and assumes we even have reliable numbers, which of course we don't).

So the flip side of your question might be:

"For how many years does Russia want to keep spending 10 percent of its GDP on this little expansionist fantasy project gone horrible wrong? And how does this math change once Putin is gone, or his lights start to dim?"

> and unlike you, I don't trust my offhand estimates.

Yet you're fine with handwaving probably the biggest issue Ukraine is facing (besides the risk of losing western support/Trump winning the election and making a side-deal with Putin).

> However I will trust the Ukrainians to know,

The government probably does. Of course due to perfectly understandable reasons they will not share that information with the Ukrainian population at least until the war is over.

> while for Russia (as a country, apart from its leadership) it is very much optional

Hopefully. But underestimating the resilience of authoritarian/totalitarian regimes (compared to more free/democratic societies) isn't necessarily particularly wise. e.g. the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s was just as senseless (from the perspective of both sides) and even more bloody yet it went on for 8 years with hardly any significant dissent in either country (besides the Kurds the Iraq).

The casualties and overall cost US sustained in the Vietnam war, especially if we adjust by the duration of both conflicts were almost miniscule compared to the cost the Russian society is seemingly willing to pay.

For the sake of simplicity -- I'm assuming Trump won't win at this point (it could happen but the odds are looking quite low). And unlike Trump, the new administration won't simply drop-kick Ukraine or otherwise be in a hurry to cut a dirty deal just to get this thing over with.

Yet you're fine with handwaving

I'm not; I'm saying it's a question I'll trust to the Ukrainians to evaluate and decide for themselves.

That's something entirely different from what you're suggesting that I said.

[Don't underestimate resilience of dictatorships; the Iran-Iraq war went on for 8 years]

That's actually an argument for why time is more on Ukraine's side.

If Russia gives up after 8 years, or even 10 or 15 -- then Ukraine will have squarely won.

>I'm assuming Trump won't win at this point (it could happen but the odds are looking quite low

The odds are very much in trumps favor... what kind of rock have you been living under?

[1]https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-20...

Not the one you're living under, thankfully.

One can think of different ways to assess the likely outcome of an election -- but a betting market (with its gigantic built-in biases) would have to be one of the dodgiest.

Meanwhile reliable polls show a steady Harris lead.

How do you think Russia is going to retaliate? Maybe they will help NK and Iran build ICBMs that can accurately hit US city centers. They'd probably do it secretly, so if some US cities ever get nuked by NK or Iran, there won't be a strong case for our going to war against Russia in response (unless the secret leaked).

ADDED. The secret is unlikely to leak if the Russians are careful: they could for example anonymously send technical information on ICBM design to Iranian and NK missile scientists. The recipients might suspect that Russia is the source of the information, and might share their suspicions with others, but second-hand reports of mere suspicions probably won't be considered sufficient justification for our going to war with Russia.

> - America went from poor to rich, but still behaves like a developing economy. Public healthcare + public education + low-income housing availability are poor, while there's a big class of people who can afford private education + private healthcare + McMansions. I think this deteriorates the idea of "we're all in this together" because there's such unequal opportunity.

America has had a long history of unequal opportunity. It's kind of founded with unequal opportunity (slavery) and continued to shoot itself in the foot in order to ensure inequality (closing public schools instead of allowing integrated schools is why we have a rise of private schooling to begin with, HOAs existed primarily to ensure the community could enforce that no one could allow a black family to move in by selling their property to blacks). I think of America as a country that is constantly being challenged with the ideals it claims as having against the society it builds which falls short of those ideals. But I don't think this inequality has to do with the recent youth mental health crisis... America has endeavored to be more and more equal by the year.

> The USA lacks a unified cultural identity now

This is why we need to pursue annexation by Mexico, so we can finally be a country with some culture.

Looking at the demographics of the USA you just have to wait a few more years

> it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA - which hurts our community + culture.

Nearly every bullet point the article listed for what makes a strong community was basically just a descriptor for cultural homogeneity, which also touches on a rather controversial taboo. This sort of critique of diversity would be considered hate speech by some.

> This sort of critique of diversity would be considered hate speech by some.

How wonderful that we have the diversity of thought to find someone who will object to anything, and how fortunate that we have mechanisms to overrule and ignore them.

> But, it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA

I don't agree. Every sporting event still plays the national anthem and often has soldiers or military involvement or mentions

I see US flags all the time, all over the place.

There are certain forms of "love" of the USA that are more politically one-sided that may be more taboo if you live in an area where most people are on the other side.

there are a lot of people that like the national anthem and fly flags, but that's for a distinct slice of america.

one tribe likes flags and overt patriotism, the other side does not.

if i see a person with a flag sticker on their car, i can probably guess a lot of their unrelated political opinions

I get what you mean, and i experience the same. but it's on you/us to consciously not make that assumption. Else we're complicit in the polarization.

To me there is a profound difference between the flag-waving, corporate, pinko-hating, anti-social pseudo-patriotism exemplified by Reagan, which is still popular today, and actual patriotism.

"Patriotism" as superficial brand-loyalty versus patriotism as lifelong civil-service.

> it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA

American here. First-generation immigrant. Came from Germany at age 5.

This misses a crucial part of the problem. It is considered taboo to express a love of the USA in certain social circles. In others, it is considered taboo not to express a love of the USA. The problem is that the two sides have very different ideas of what "loving the USA" means. Among the first group (liberals) the USA is envisioned as an inclusive melting pot where all are welcome. Among the second group, the USA is envisioned as a set of values to which one is required to subscribe in order to be included; to include those who do not subscribe to these values would change the character of the nation to the point where it would not longer be the USA. These values include innocuous things like baseball and hot dogs, to abstract ideals like "freedom", less abstract ideals like capitalism, and quasi-religious ideals like "family values". Lately these have started to morph into religious ideals up to and including the (false) idea that an essential part of the national character is to be a Christian theocracy.

So it's not that expressing a love of the USA is taboo, it's that conservatives have managed to co-opt loving the USA and make it part of their brand. Expressing love for the nation, flying the flag, singing the national anthem, etc. are nowadays seen as expressing tacit support for conservatism in general, and the Republican party and Donald Trump in particular. This is the reason that liberals avoid them.

For me personally, I have always felt that some of the common rituals associated with "loving the USA" were kind of weird. Take the Pledge of Allegiance, for example. I get pledging allegiance to the nation, but to the flag? That has always struck me as bizarre. The flag is just a symbol, a token. Why would anyone pledge allegiance to a flag? But to question this, especially as a minor in a public school, turns out to be unwise.

I agree with and second every word of that.

I grew up in the US during the 9/11 era, and I was just old enough to recognize the horrible nationalism that it spread through the entire country. How am I supposed to celebrate the flag of a country that invades the wrong country under false pretenses and rallies behind dumb propaganda like "freedom fries" to support it? How am I supposed to be proud of a country that chooses someone like Donald Trump as it's leader? (and is close to doing it again!)

I do generally love the supposed ideals of the US, and I would like to call myself a patriot - but it is difficult to do when criticism of the US (which is the whole point of a democracy) is met with "love it or leave it" type responses from people who cover themselves in the flag.

Real patriots want their country to improve via constructive criticism and change. But most conservative "patriots" in this country view any criticism as "hating America". Their "patriotism" is just fetishism for the traditions and symbols - which is why they cover every item they own with the flag.

In that context, the flag and "patriotism" can be very divisive, and those who abhor the conservative culture wars here can be very reticent to create the appearance thay they stand with them.

Really great comment! You noted:

> The problem is that the two sides have very different ideas of what "loving the USA" means. Among the first group (liberals) the USA is envisioned as an inclusive melting pot where all are welcome.

Have you had the chance to talk with a 3rd group who believe that the US is malignant and think that the most moral action they can take is to undermine the state?

I think there is even an American tradition of that; lots of US students are assigned excerpts from Thoreau's Walden or Civil Disobedience and from one perspective, those texts are arguments that because the US permitted slavery it was malignant and should be 'starved', of our taxes, labor, and participation.

I can't and wouldn't argue that Thoreau was wrong to protest slavery by any means necessary, but I also hope that the US doesn't embrace the sort of widespread self-sabotage I see in European protest movements.

> Really great comment!

Thank you.

> Have you had the chance to talk with a 3rd group who believe that the US is malignant and think that the most moral action they can take is to undermine the state?

Yes, but I don't think those people can be said to "love the USA" under any reasonable interpretation of that phrase.

Undermining with no recognition of the ideal goal is just stupid though. Eg republicans tend to want to starve the beast of government without a good definition of what the ideal governing philosophy would be.

On your last point, the next line is literally “and to the Republic for which it stands”. Its just poetic license.

Well, yeah, but it seems to put the emphasis in the wrong place, with the republic being an afterthought, secondary to the symbol.

Also, being asked to pledge allegiance to anything as a minor seems weird and wrong to me. IMHO it undermines the whole concept of pledging allegiance, which should be an informed choice, not a ritualistic indoctrination.

Pledging allegiance to the flag is a product of late 19th century sentiments that tie back to the US Civil War. This article has some backstory: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/jack-david-eller-pledg...

The last war that directly affected this country in any conceivable manner was WWII with Pearl Harbor, and that never reached the mainland. Before that, you needed the Civil War. Sending young, poor bastards off to die to protect the profits of their economic betters is a pathetic way to "unify a country."

>The USA lacks a unified cultural identity now.

The US _always_ lacked a cohesive cultural identity, it has always been manifold.

Basically the rise of television and movies post-WWII-ish depicted a single culture but it was just excluding everyone except essentially WASPs. This had nothing to do with reality and was just racism. Before the world wars there was even a considerable amount of greater cultural diversity among European immigrants and descendants, German being spoken very widely across the country and quite a bit more of people retaining the culture of their ancestors.

> But, it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA - which hurts our community + culture.

Only in some circles.

When I grew up in China, students in a school were divided into fixed classes. Those classes formed great communities, as we spent hours every day for at least three years and some for 6 years. Each class had a head teacher, who fostered the sense of community too. No one would mock people for geeking out. No one would mock people for not being good at sports. No one would mock those who struggled at academics. At least not openly. We loved each other and still do. Our bond was so strong that we had regular reunions every few years, and most of my classmates would make it. We had multiple couples who were high-school sweat hearts, even though dating in high school was a taboo in China then. The concepts like nerds, like queen bees, like sports jockeys, like that those who can get drugs and drinks are popular... They were all new and parts of the culture shock to me when I moved to the US.

> No one would mock people for geeking out. No one would mock people for not being good at sports. No one would mock those who struggled at academics. At least not openly.

I always hoped there was a way to avoid US-style bullying. I hadn't considered that it might be yet another consequence of society existing at too big of a scale (ex: behaviors that are accepted or even optimal in a city of 20 million people is wildly different than in a social setting where everyone knows you, your siblings, your friends, your parents, your boss, your coworkers, your pastor, etc.)

Cohorts sound like a good, if imperfect solution, for managing this at school.

Ugh, yes, and many Americans naively imagine that all that John Hughes movie nonsense is somehow a normal universal part of teenage growing up! They'll see their kids start doing it and since they did it too they just shrug whist fully about the passage of time!

Ignoring that it isn't normal elsewhere and wasn't normal here 100 years ago either when children were too busy for that kind of baby court intrigue.

In fact, even in the modern US it's not universal. Both I and my child have gone to school in different areas and in both cases the level of that kind of nonsense was far less in some places than others.

Teenagers aren't naturally alienated. You're alienating them and that's why they're alienated. By 13 a normal child is ready for and craves a lot more responsibility and efficacy than much of modern suburban American provides them, and lacking it leads to trying to direct the energy into other less constructive outlets. Idle hands are the devil's hands.

This reminds me of my time at school in the UK. At school we were divided into "houses" based on where you lived. You had to meet in your house twice a day so we all became friends and after school we would meet up and play basketball, football or skateboard in our rural village (this was around 2008 so smart phones were rare). In the winter when we got home we would just put our xbox 360 headsets on and play endless games of Gears of War or CoD MW2 together. You got as much social credit for being good at gaming as at you did for being sporty. Good times, and nowadays I still see those friends about once a month.

Hey, I am from India, and it's exactly the same here.

Looking down on people for focusing on studies and scoring good on tests is such an American thing!

In India, geeks and nerds are celebrated.

I recently joined my local Elks club and the experience has been amazing.

Being social is effortless. I just show up at the lodge and people I know will be there.

As a parent I can let the kids run wild with other kids within the safe confines of the lodge and have adult conversations.

If I don’t have plans, I don’t need to sit home reading the internet. I go to the lodge.

It’s weird that groups like the Elks have declined so much in recent decades, because it feels they really are the solution to a problem everyone complains about.

> It’s weird that groups like the Elks have declined so much in recent decades, because it feels they really are the solution to a problem everyone complains about.

Social orgs can supplement a healthy community. They can't replace one, however.

A healthy community is one where it is trivial for kids to go on their own to a safe space. A place where they can Kid together, free from interfering adults.

I keep hearing all these people talking about kidding together.

Kidding together means setting a cat on fire and laughing when it's screaming running around. It means beating the fat kid till he can't stand up.

The idea that kids don't need adults is laughable to anyone who remembers being a kid.

> Kidding together means setting a cat on fire and laughing when it's screaming running around. It means beating the fat kid till he can't stand up.

This is very rarely true. I grew up with rural hill people and I was a skittish, annoying kid who got bullied a lot.

Bullying was something that mostly happened in isolation. I was at-risk at school or if I was out alone and ran into the wrong kids, like the local neanderthal who started shaving at 10.

Where I was safe was in groups. These were rough kids, sometimes brutally so. Feuds between youth could be extreme and the injuries were often serious. But those were between individuals or sometimes families. In groups, there were boundaries - a truce could be assumed.

Animal cruelty existed but wasn't overly common. It sometimes happened within feuds. ex:A pet would disappear and be found down a well. And like bullying, that happened in isolation.

Animal cruelty was never a social thing. Ever. Someone who entertained the notion could expect to get beat by the other kids until they thought differently. There was no tolerance for it.

To some extent the Elks is a healthy community. Our lodge is definitely a place where kids can hang out together free from interfering adults - that’s what our kids do there with their friends all the time.

We show up, they run off and do their thing with the other kids. We find them when it’s time to go home.

It’s a place with a fence so they can’t wander of, where you know everyone is safe to be around, and where you know if something bad happened another Elk would see and sort it and and come tell you.

> To some extent the Elks is a healthy community. Our lodge is definitely a place where kids can hang out together free from interfering adults

I do get that. Between scouting and youth leadership I have been part of organizing and running similar environments many times over.

But they are not communities. They are adult-generated, curated experiences. They are facsimiles, built out of patchy facades.

One facade: Moving the adults to an adjacent space and pretending that is adult-free time (I've done it).

As far as we think these simulations meet kids basic needs, we're fooling ourselves. Placing kids in adult constructs denies kids their autonomy. Every time. Mostly by design.

Worthwhile autonomy includes kids being able to come and go fully on their own. Trivially.

It's through autonomy (and genuine independence) that kids' critical growth happens. Organic kid-spaces are fertile soil where ambition grows.

They are the safe spaces (safe from adults) to make the kind of mistakes that teach strong interpersonal relationship and vital problem solving skills.

It's what every generation of kids had throughout human history, until we adults eradicated it - seemingly everywhere we could.

We adults put cars everywhere. We blast out false stranger danger messaging. We made criminal trespassing the default and maximized development. And we made lots of other kid-hostile changes to society that I'm certainly missing here.

sidebar: Compounding this is that parents are stupidly expected to fill all those new gaps in kids needs. Parents are now required to have the wisdom of all those nearby adults that disappeared with communities. And parents now have to spend 10x the time parenting, compared to their recent ancestors.

Together, this is all an unimaginably enormous loss for kids. These simulations you and I put on aren't really capable of mitigating it.

> It’s weird that groups like the Elks have declined so much in recent decades

https://www.elks.org/who/missionStatement.cfm

"To be accepted as a member, one must [...] believe in God"

There are groups like UU and Sunday Assembly that don't have this requirement.

I've gone as far as filling out the form given to me by an Elk who was willing to sponsor me but when I got to the part where you have to affirm that belief I just couldn't make a solid case to myself.

It seems there are plenty of Elks who are aware this is a problem, but change is slow.

Belief is a spectrum and there is no way to externally verify it. In fact, even if you could externally verify, you'll find that there is a wide range of beliefs even among those who "legitimately" believe.

A cult of personality around a magic man in the sky is in the grand scheme of things not much different than a cult of personality around some celebrity or politician/party.

A requirement to "believe" in god has the advantage to provide a common ground for members as well as a set of baseline manners/behaviors. In retrospect, this is actually an advantage. Most social clubs/etc always need some common ground and a shared activity/belief they can congregate around. Whether it's a celebrity or a magic man in the sky doesn't particularly matter, but something is needed.

Unless the very tenets of the religion are so revolting to you (or if you actually believe in something else and this religion would be against what you believe), just fake it. Unless it's a very secluded and "practicing" religious group, you may find that a lot of other people have also varying beliefs but choose to play the game because the value of being part of the group outweighs the downside of faking it.

Also, most mainstream religions have at least some tenets you can get behind, even as an atheist. Just that the atheist would agree with them because it's just good morals as opposed to having to follow some magic man's orders, but they don't have to know that.

I wish more people would understand this.

I was borna Muslim but I consider myself a "cultural Muslim" and do not look into it any further.

It does not stop me volunteering at my local mosque food bank etc. The social interaction and doing some good for the community trumps any views I have on the religion.

They do indeed that rule. It’s somewhat controversial internally and I can imagine it eventually going away, but is there now.

Fortunately they are pretty relaxed about what you mean by God. I’m a pantheist (everything is God and individual consciousness is an illusion) and AFAICT that’s fine. Nobody dug into my beliefs you find out exactly what I thought.

I think the key intention is that you can’t be a hedonist who cares only about yourself. You need to care about living a life of service to something greater than yourself. I’m on board with that.

Some things to keep in mind:

(1) A 'youth mental health crisis' may or may not actually exist. Consider the 'chronic pain crisis' marketing that preceded the opiate epidemic in the USA, and the concomittant boom in opiate drug prescriptions, sales and profits. Similarly the 'attention deficit crisis' was very profitable for the makers of amphetamines and their derivatives, from Ritalin to Adderall to Desoxyn. Here's CDC on opiate prescriptions in the USA, 2006-2015:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6626a4.htm

(2) A 'youth mental health crisis' may actually be a 'youth are looking at the dystopian world besest by war and climate chaos and not feeling good about their future prospects' - which means their mental health is probably fine and their views are entirely rational. See the famous "this koala is having a mental crisis' cartoon:

https://www.reddit.com/r/lostgeneration/comments/avf6kh/this...

I have to assume that people leaving their home towns to work elsewhere is a huge driving factor of all of this.

I think it's not only this, but that the process repeats over and over. I had very deep relationships in high school, forged new ones in college, then both of those ended. I moved to a new city where I started a new job with a bunch of other people in their mid-20's, and we formed yet another community. Then the company laid off or required everyone to move to a new city. New job, same story again. I still start up new friendships at work, but it feels less and less worth it each time and so I try a little less hard year by year, because you're working against impersonal forces that will upend your social structures on a whim, and it feels like a treadmill to try to keep them intact.

I've begun thinking in that direction too, after seeing how my peers have been moving all over the country in the last few years - first for uni, then for a job, then another job... I'm one of the movers myself, and I know why I moved, but I feel the cost of lost relationships quite heavily.

That has only been declining while youth mental health got worse.

It has been with remote work but think of how much break down is already in place.

I recently moved. Most of my new friends aren't from here, they came here for work, but they consider it their own city now and are part of the community.

It's different in a "commuter city" like San Francisco. That means the majority of people don't even live there during the day, and even their job might be temporary. Unfortunately most are there to make money, not friends.

Yep, exactly. And if your families aren't around, that will have an impact the moment you decide to have kids. Available grandparents make everything about raising children easier, especially for working parents.

And then the grandparents will connect the kids with their friends, their friends families and grand kids too. And so on.

I see more and more old grandparents that can’t handle little kids and are liabilities themselves, which is just an unavoidable fact of moving childbearing ages from 20s to 30s.

that was definitely true pre-covid but is it still true?

Are you talking about San Francisco? I don't know, probably.

Americans move less than they ever have these days: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/us/american-workers-movin...

Few, and increasingly fewer, move far from where they were born.

Why do the outliers who do move around become a huge driving factor for the larger population here?

Why does the decline in the driving force bring an apparent increase in the effects?

What a load. See https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/22/jonathan-haidts-book-the...

You might need to be more specific. The author attributes different conditions.

Kids don't even play video games together in the same room any more. LAN parties were a thing in the 90s but everyone was in the same room(ish). Even when playing console games people don't game together in the same room or home.

That's kinda odd. Online gaming is cool but my favorite gaming memories are playing with the person sitting next to me.

I miss those days, and wish kids knew what it was like to play games together as a physical experience AND a digital one.

Yep. Also besides Lan parties, we had the N64, which allowed 4 peoplo play together. GoldenEye and various Mario games were a blast. the next generation had Halo and linking Xbox's together. Now a days I don't think kids or teens are having that same kind of fun we did back in the day.

I'm surprised that the definition of 'community' he uses here so strongly revolves around a shared identity and activity, and that what is shared is what defines a community.

For one, I don't really think communities where people share the same interests or ritual really does the trick, otherwise so-called YouTube 'communities' or Twitch stream 'communities' or even strangers you play games with online would be all that's needed. In those cases, whether it happens in real life or online wouldn't really matter. I think some people can tick all the boxes he has here with an online group and still feel lonely from it. Some people still feel lonely going to church every Sunday.

There certainly needs to be a common thread--that's what you get out of place-based communities, for example: we all experience the same weather--but what I feel really combats loneliness and creates belonging is having to connect with people that are different you and, importantly, to witness and connect with people because of their difference, and that these connections are made because you have no choice. The richness and complexity of life and all of the kinds of sorrows and joys that you get to see and relate to yourself and relate to others is what is sorely missing from incidental, emergent, real-life community. I suppose I'm basically just describing the Breakfast Club experience.

Like kids don't feel lonely because there isn't an authority figure around that can boss them around. That makes for a more ... socially conditioned ...? person, and maybe a wiser, more carefully-guided person, but not necessarily a less lonely person. It's not the bossing around that makes them feel like they're in a community, it's the fact that there is someone with a different experience with whom they share some connection, and it's a coincidence that it's an authoratative one.

when community is formed geographically, it also helps that there's a diversity of people/opinions which serves to moderate the group.

if people select community based on some other criterion, you are more likely to get narrow group think and increasingly extreme opinions/culture that isn't ultimately welcoming or sustainable.

Actually kids are much happier in homogenous communities. Being the lone white kid in a black/Hispanic community would cause nonstop low level stress

There are other variations besides 100% and 99.99%.

No, absolutely not. Young people are more connected than they have ever been before, just now they are connected in some of the most unhealthy and detrimental manners possible. Instead of connecting with friends in real life, they form communities on social media, in discord channels, in video games, etc. The consequences are just barely starting to show themselves.

As for the why, I think they are many reasons. The Internet is obviously an attractive and addictive place, but cities have gotten so much worse as well. Where I live the playgrounds I used to go to as a child are now full of drug dealers...

The article clearly states that the connections you mention don't make up a community:

> Many praise the myriad benefits that smartphones and social media are said to bring; online connection can give a person a sense of “community,” we are told. We can find new friends, discover just about any idea imaginable, network, and even date through our phones. We can video chat with hundreds of people simultaneously from far-flung locations. We can pursue learning largely untethered from any physical space. Based on all of this, it would be easy to assume that place doesn’t matter.

> I disagree. Physical place actually matters far more than we realize, especially as our lives become ever more placeless.

The article indeed makes that argument. But from a functional perspective it just isn't true, virtual communities have replaced physical ones.

I also think it sells short the attractiveness of these digital communities. A digital community can be something where you spend many hours a day, with the same people, where the connections are just as important as your connections in real life. It isn't just dating apps, Facebook and YouTube.

Of course what the article wants to say that they are different, which is obviously true and I do absolutely agree that digital communities can be very detrimental and aren't a replacement with the necessary benefits.

> the attractiveness of these digital communities

> where the connections are just as important as your connections in real life

That's the problem statement: these degenerate images of real communities are attractive and they become important despite being incomplete and ultimately crippling.

It's exactly analogous to junk food which is attractive and which becomes "important" to the people addicted to it even as it slowly destroys their health.

I strongly disagree that online spaces can't be fulfilling. A private, invite-only discord server with a couple layers of core-member regulars, friends-of-friends, and miscellaneous passerby is a compelling substitute for joining something like the Oddfellows or Masons. In the server I hang out in, 2 people have met their spouses, a handful formed romantic relationships, and most everyone has made at least a few lasting friendships.

If that's "degenerate", what's your definition of a meaningful social space?

It sounds like you and your friends run a very nice online neighborhood, that's terrific and I don't mean to detract from that.

I'm pointing out the enormous difference in bandwidth between online and in-person interaction. It's difficult even to estimate the orders of magnitude!

Online interaction can be a healthy adjunct to a healthy social life. It's when online interaction replaces in-person interaction that we evidently get a mental health crisis.

> what's your definition of a meaningful social space?

Thanks for asking. I would start with Christopher Alexander's "Pattern Language" et. al.[1] and add in applied ecology (i.e. Permaculture, Greenway[2])

The idea being if the neighborhood is comfortable and full of life the meaningful social relations should hopefully follow. (And if not, at least you're comfortable and well-fed and not causing anybody any problems.)

[1] https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm

[2] https://newalchemists.net/2020/09/07/greenway/

The people selling this idea of "online community" figured out that if they become the middleman for all of our personal interactions that they can charge us for each one or charge someone else for access to us. One of the reasons Instagram is so horrifying to me is that it takes something like "personal messages" and puts Instagram front and center in controlling whose message you see and at what time, and they use that to foster fake relationships with salespeople making marketing videos in their kitchens.

I remember the day in high school I saw a guy, who used to bully me and call me a nerd, playing multiplayer Minecraft on his laptop instead of talking to his buddies. Made me realize the bullies were right about one thing.

> The Internet is obviously an attractive and addictive place, but cities have gotten so much worse as well. Where I live the playgrounds I used to go to as a child are now full of drug dealers...

Oh, c'mon. The world didn't get scarier, and force us to retreat to the comforts of online interaction. If anything, most of the world is a safer place since the 1990s[1], which curiously coincides with the rise of the internet.

This is a complex topic that researchers can answer better. But personally, I think that the pseudosocial interaction where we can shout our thoughts into the ether without any real risk of consequence compared to meatspace is appealing enough for many people that it covers most of their needs for social activity. It's also the ideal safe haven for the hypersensitive newer generations.

I think the pendulum will swing back at some point, and we'll start rejecting online activities. But then again, we'll also continue to merge with technology, so all of this could be the tipping point, and we have to accept it as the new normal.

In any case, what is certain is that Big Tech needs to be heavily regulated, just as other Big industries were before it. The psychological manipulation and social experiments need to stop, and we need to better understand the effects all this groundbreaking technology has on our wellbeing and society as a whole. It's not like the future of our civilization depends on it, or anything...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_drop

>Oh, c'mon. The world didn't get scarier, and force us to retreat to the comforts of online interaction. If anything, most of the world is a safer place since the 1990s[1], which curiously coincides with the rise of the internet.

The statistics of crime nationally or globally are totally irrelevant to my personal experience of my surroundings. Definitely places which I visited as a child I would avoid today.

I would also like to point out that an increase in crime can easily lead to a statistical decrease in reported crime. If you flat out ignore the perception of safety you easily fall prey to reporting bias.

I am also not saying it is the only thing, definitely the mere existence of digital places has changed in the last decades.

Hot take:

The upstream cause of this is, essentially, "the rent is too damn high". Not necessarily in a sense of housing prices, but -

In order to have a community, that community needs a space. (The early 'net was interesting in that "space" was cheap/nearly free - IRC, forums, etc, which might be one reason it took over as a social space to begin with)

Extremely consistently, I see efforts at forming communities fail simply due to a lack of regular space in which to have them, and from what little I know talking to organizers, it pretty much always comes down to the cost of the space - the rent. This remains true even if the space itself wants to be cheap/free - it has to pay it's own rent, which means it needs dollars from everyone using it.

AFAIK, religious institutions get around this through (1) advantageous tax laws and (2) long-term ownership.

The articles thesis on loss of community plays a role but has always existed in some context depending upon the individuals location.

The primary cause (in my opinion) of the youth mental health crisis and falling happiness rates was the introduction of the smart phone. Blaming social media is a clever cop out, it's the actual device and inability of people to stop looking at it.

Totally abnormal to human life. Will we adapt to it over time? Possible, but many people will be lost along the way.

Counter-take: Smartphone addiction, like other addictions, it a coping mechanism for other issues, see https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/what-does-rat-park-tea...

> But Alexander wondered: is this about the drug or might it be related to the setting they were in? To test his hypothesis, he put rats in “rat parks,” where they were among others and free to roam and play, to socialize and to have sex. And they were given the same access to the same two types of drug laced bottles. When inhabiting a “rat park,” they remarkably preferred the plain water. Even when they did imbibe from the drug-filled bottle, they did so intermittently, not obsessively, and never overdosed. A social community beat the power of drugs.

I've considered the rebuttal and study you cited. I can't envision any social environment that would permanently stop people from obsessively looking at their phones.

It's possible to provide an activity that would temporarily redirect the obsession but we're talking about 24 hours. At some point the individual will resume the obsessive behavior.

I also bet that the rat park study would eventually fail given a long enough amount of time. The rats would eventually get bored of their environment and experiment with the drug filled bottle. I speculate all this of course. Can't be positive.

> Totally abnormal to human life.

Which era of our history might best reflect "normal" human life?

It's not a binary normal/abnormal question. Smartphones triggered a rapid, extreme, and long duration shift in attention away from physical reality.

Imagine taking a person today and forcing them to use virtual reality for the average amount of time one looks at a smartphone over a 24 hours period.

You would see an even greater loss in overall happiness, increase in mental illness etc . We're evolving much too fast. The mind can't keep up. So it falls apart.

I think it's less the lack of community, and more the lack of the ability to feel like you matter.

Before the world was globalized, anybody could do something that would stand out in their community.

On a global scale, virtually no one is good or big enough for anyone to care about.

It doesn't matter anymore if you're the best soprano in the choir or the best basketball player on your team. You need to be one of the best in the world. And that's not realistic.

That would mean the winners will be those who turn towards a local community. Which makes sense. I often wondered how lawyers who are terrible at their craft can stay in business. Thing is, they just don’t compete. They build relationships with local clients over decades. And those clients, once they know, like and trust these lawyers, don’t even see how bad they are. I guess the same applies to AI experts, etc..

Who knew utterly destroying cities and replacing them with gated communities with no accommodations for children whatsoever, and borderline criminalizing any activity which isn't closely supervised would have knock-on effects.

Probably doesn't help, but we have similar issues here in Germany, yet those things you mentioned aren't.

Buying a home and getting grounded was the key for my community integration. It is very clear who are tenants and who are the owners. The owners came with cookies and Glühwein to remove together snow from our street. Tenants didn’t show up. They know and we know that they will be gone sooner or later. So why waste time with strangers?

Edit: what I want to say is that mobility does not create community and stability. I see this in Germany often: school system does not create community either. A child must go through at least couple schools. So the friends get lost and strong friendship does not happen in the last school.

Risk is an important ingredient to a fulfilling life. As we continue to de-risk our lives, we lose our ability to evaluate risk and aggressively criminalize what we do not understand because we perceive it to be dangerous.

There are many types of activities which, while not criminalized yet, are “anti-social” in certain environments and can cost you your job.

such as?

Sex, sex-adjacent activities, extreme sports, van life / nomadic lifestyle are examples for which I know people who have either lost a job or experienced retaliation in a professional environment.

They are also all experiencing pressure to be criminalized and in certain places are already criminalized or otherwise regulated in a way that is harmful to individual liberty for a perceived gain in safety.

Lastly, I’ll add that cost of insurance, general ability to be insured, and the litigious nature of the USA apply a great deal of pressure to limit our ability to enrich our lives with risk.

What percentage of the population do you think lives in a gated community? I know its common in some areas with particularly high amounts of break ins like South Africa and Brazil, but they're fairly rare in the USA.

They've also existed for far longer than the issues under discussion. The very wealthy have always tended to isolate amongst themselves.

OK, so not "gated community" but "cul-de-sac suburb". Argument still holds.

The majority of people lived in villages until 1920 in the US.

US birth rates started dropping off not a generation later.

I mean, there was also a depression, a world war, and the increasing availability of birth control.

That factoid doesn't mean much on its own.

Birth rates did not fall below replacement until 1972.

Blaming the depression and word war is a bit of a stretch.

I would agree with the parent on this:

The transition away from communities where kids had autonomy, regualr access to adult-free spaces and also easy access to a wide variety of adults - the loss of all that massively increased parenting time and resources, from a few hours per week to 24/7 adulting.

Modern young parents now how to replace many diverse and experienced adults and impossibly simulate the autonomous and independent spaces where kids learned interpersonal and problem solving skills.

The closer we got to this, the less people wanted to have kids.

My controversial take on this is that we are in the mid-curve of this tech, i.e., smartphones/social media are not quite there to replace IRL experiences and are even further off from real community...BUT instead of going back, we need to move forward to the right side of the curve where full VR / network states can solve a lot of these problems.

I'm very bullish on IRL experiences. Community building is more complex, with various ripple effects to consider, but realistically we are heading in that direction whether we like it or not. I find it more compelling to explore how we can reclaim and enhance these lost aspects in our modern world rather than going on "back in my day" nostalgia trips.

That sounds both implausible and dystopic. But I believe this is going to happen and everything is going to be fine

The lack of religion is a big factor. I'd argue as much as the internet.

Religious activity--putting aside the well-documented negatives--gives group identity, belonging, a welcoming atmosphere, an in-person place to socialise, associated group events and a connection to your geographic community.

The rush to abandon religion never replaced the essential in-person community it offered its adherents.

Tight knit irreligious communities always existed. I grew up in one, nobody in my family is/was religious, yet people still were close. I think the top comment nails down the root cause — rampant individualism is rewarded from an economical and financial stand point, so people avoid making sacrifices for others. If you check out very religious societies (other than closed down sects), they have a significant decline in youth co-mingling as well.

I’m not saying removing religion did not contribute to the decline (e.g. parents forcing their children to go to church), and we definitely screwed up when it comes to replacing that freed time with something more social. But actively asserting ideas and beliefs that don’t hold ground in the modern days to the children isn’t something I can support.

> But actively asserting ideas and beliefs that don’t hold ground in the modern days...

You realize that's an opinion right? Not a fact.

Such a broad and loaded generalization too.

Religion might not have a place in modern society >to you<. Generalizing that opinion is just as radical as trying to impose religion onto others.

Not to mention that, just because non-religious groups are also able to become close and social, it doesn't mean that religion doesn't help here too. So there is a flaw in this logic.

Fair, you're right, apologies, I just have a knee-jerk reaction to any commentary that suggests religious indoctrination of children. But again, I still think parts of religious traditions are amazing (like bringing the community together, having pre-set activities, celebrating things together and etc.). The "ideas and beliefs" that I'm against is just the usual paranormal stories that are being push as the objective truth.

If someone can extract out the core good things out of the religions (being nice to the neighbour, helping others, decency and etc.) and apply it to the modern world, I will be all for that. And that's kind of what my parents taught me from day 1 as well. Or taking specific activities, how my Jewish friends do, like hosting Friday night Shabbat dinners to bring your friends and family together. The problem is, it's very hard to implement in a larger scale, as you can't push people one way or another through fear (whether it's fear of God, or going to hell, or bad karma).

I obviously have no real solution to it, but just wanted to explain my thought process.

Personally I'm more positive about the impact of online communities than the author is.

But you for sure need offline friends and experiences, alongside the online ones, to keep yourself grounded in reality; the online experience has loads of biases, some obvious and others very subtle, and only by keeping one eye on the real world can you know when you're encountering them.

Also you're not going to meet your future wife or husband through HN.

The further upstream of that is large super structures of human social web cannot exist. There is no monoculture anymore and that has both pros and cons.

That's interesting and I hadn't really considered that for most of history, children grew up in a pretty un-diverse environment. You lived with your tribe and your extended family for the most part. In cities, ethnic and religious groups tended to self-segregate. The social rules were clear, and there was a lot less room for doubt about who you were and where you fit in.

Is the "youth mental health crisis" confirmed? I remember reading there was a bit of back and forth in that topic. Some unhappiness was also concentrated among young progressive girls etc.

It fits nicely with the pessimistic vibes that everything gets worse, but I wonder to what extent it's media bias and that actually things are normal or even good.

It's real. My class was the start of it, and it got worse after.

Suicide rates among young people - especially females, have been on the rise for close to a decade now.

i hope those rates will never climb as high as there male counterparts

>I moved to my current neighborhood, Kemp Mill, just north of Washington, D.C., 12 years ago

The unspoken truth here is that geographic community requires that you can stay in one spot long enough to make the massive investment in building or becoming involved in a local community.

Recently I was thinking that I should become involved in local initiatives, or perhaps even local government, until I realised that as a renter not only would I not be here im a few years time, but any actual success I had in improving the local area would just mean a likely rent increase as it became more desirable and gentrified.

The fact that I'm shocked and feel blessed that I'm living at the same address for 4 years in a row now makes it obvious how bad an investment trying to becime part of the local community seems to someone like me.

In the age of homeownership haves and have-nots, it's natural for local community to break down.

HN readers of any age who felt alone at some point and found community - what worked for you?

meetup.com

I live in London and Meetup is an arid depressing wasteland here since the pandemic.

Church. Attending is a step up from nothing, and volunteering is a huge step up from attending.

Moving out of the city and into a small town. It made a night and day difference. Neighbors became people you actually know and talk to rather than just another stranger like the thousands of others on your block. Another commenter really nailed the difference in behavior between home owners who have a 30 year stake in the neighborhood, and renters who will probably be gone next year.

I go through event listings on fb, meetup, and various other sources and just bookmark and visit random events that spark my interest. I visited a city planning debate this week, and next week I'm going to see a waste processing plant.

Few months ago I found a recurring event where a small group of strangers discuss deep topics from a deck of cards with questions, which are often very personal. This was probably the most impactful, I've met some new friends there.

Generally though, it's a funnel. Sometimes you find somebody, sometimes not, I just try to make a lot of opportunities.

Just being able to choose people you spend time with is a huge plus. When you are in school, you are forced to be with some people, and see them everyday despite not liking them even a bit. Growing up fixed this. Now I can choose.

What worked is volunteering in charitable activities, organizing programmes and camps, deliberately choosing some people and making time to see them regularly. That's about all.

The cause is having a tiny computer in your hand all day. It's so glaringly obvious.

That doesn't seem very obvious to me. Would you mind elaborating?

It tracks very well with the increase in mental health issues among young people.

Mobile tech and social media will be seen as the equivalent of tobacco companies in the history books of the 22nd century.

Drownings and ice cream sales also track nicely, but it doesn’t mean it’s the ice cream that’s causing the drownings.

Right, you need a mechanism. (Ice cream makes you fat, fat people can't swim, ergo drownings). Haight clearly outlines the mechanisms by which social media and smartphones have detrimental effects on mental health, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l2TdinWoM8

But ice cream doesn't make you fat. Eating too much ice cream makes you fat.

And if you swim enough, you can't get fat no matter how much ice cream you eat. Ever seen the diet Phelps was on? Guy ate like crap, has over 20 gold medals to his name.

That's not why ice cream sales are correlated with drowning. Ice cream sales generally peak in the summer, and that's also when most people swim.

But if drownings had suddenly increased when ice cream was first introduced, that's a stronger suggestion that there's a relationship.

Kids' mental health went off a cliff at the same time that they started getting smartphones and social media.

Something else could be the cause, but we all know it's not, even if we earn our living from it.

Apps on your tiny computer are engineered to get you hooked. The time that you spend on it is time that you cannot spend making and cultivating face-to-face friendships.

As far as I can tell, friendships are necessary for mental health. So those apps have a negative effect on your mental health.

In principle, they could also have a positive effect that counterbalances the negative. But in my personal experience, that's dubious.

I was in middle school when the iPhone first became popular among teens. Within a couple of months, everything changed. Kids talked a lot less on the bus, at lunch, etc. If you didn't have an iPhone, your friends probably did, so same issue. It felt a whole lot worse and stayed that way. I ended up becoming closer with my few friends who didn't have phones and further from my old best friends, just because of who was more willing to hang out together.

Indeed. The old trope of the asocial "computer nerd" too focused on the machine to talk to girls.

The trope is real, and what we are experiencing here is simply the "nerdification" of mainstream society. Everyone is more screen addicted in 2024 than even the most nerdy person was circa 2008.

I honestly love it though. Sure, there is a "dystopian" bent to the idea of most people zombifying themselves in public - but all a westerner needs to do is spend even a week in a very communal society to realize that the radical individualistic society we have cultivated is actually pretty awesome. I LOVE the idea that I can be who I want to be and genuinely not care about what some "community" of people think of it. Everyone pretending that no one around them exists and being screenlocked means I can pick my nose in public, or do any number of even more weird shit without being noticed. Compare this to japan where eating a burger without covering your mouth as a woman is a social death sentence.

Western individualism (and east asian hermitism and maybe eastern european depressive paranoia) are by far the most productive social situations for tech development, as we now have far more "tech autistic" types who tend to be the primary drivers of code innovation. Is it any surprise that there is basically consensus that the best "hardcore" games tend to come from either the west (usually the USA or northern europe), a post soviet state, or japan.

Everyone in this thread bemoans the things that cause the youth mental health crisis, but honestly, I wouldn't go back and I think that higher youth mental health rates are simply worth it. Actual "nerds" in 2024 are less likely to be bullied than in the eras of good youth mental health, and the average becky or chad can learn to deal with the same things that the nerds of 2009 learned to deal with a fortnight ago.

Is that the cause of the loss of community? Or is that a coping mechanism for the loss of community? Or a combination?

I agree it's related. But that it's glaringly obviously the cause? I'd need to hear more.

Seems to be the cause to me. Community is the natural result of putting a group of people together. The dopamine drip disrupts that.

i would guess one effects the other in a negative (positive?) feedback loop. access to your phone & 24/7 easy access to social media started to erode communities and now people just rely on their phones because they have zero community around. there is nothing interesting to look to if you look away from your phone because the rest of the people around you are on their phones. EVERYBODY is glued to their devices every second of the day. waiting in a line for a coffee? have to stare at instagram stories. a random boring moment where you are allowed to be alone with your thoughts and maybe observe other people around you and get to start talking to someone? why? you have your twitter feed full of rage & engagement bait.

the only thing these days that actually can foster any community is playing sports. thank god we at least still have that. can't exactly pull your phone out in the middle of a basketball or volleyball game.

Positive feedback loop. Negative feedback loop is like homeostasis or a PID controller.

had a feeling. thanks

The issue started long before that, it’s not like mental health was great in the 90s.

Loss of third places, TV, necessity to move around for studies then jobs (and moving your kids along if / when you got them), increased cost of living, … are all massive contributing factors.

> Loss of third places

People keep bringing up the loss of third places.

Every time I look into it I come to the conclusion that there are more third places now than there has ever been in the history of humanity.

In the 80s and 90s there were no skate parks, there are now skate parks.

There are more bike and walking trails.

There are more libraries.

There are more community centers.

My local neighborhood is breaking ground on a new fire station in the fall, it will include a community center where in the past it was just a garage and bunk house for firefighters-- but give me any county in the entire country and I'll find a 40 year history of building things for public use. I just looked up the small (28k), impoverished ($45k/house), rural county in Indiana where my now-deceased grandparents lived and according to their charmingly retro county government website over the last 20 or so years they've built trails, parks, playgrounds, a new library, and... a skate park.

People are not lonely because there are fewer third places.

People are lonely because they're not going to the third places.

I see the opposite as someone born and living in San Francisco. Growing up in the city, we had arcades, bowling alleys, mini golf, Lan Party Cafe's, etc.

Then the city got more and more expensive, and businesses couldn't afford the rent / leases in the city anymore.

Affordable recreation isn't available in SF and that leads me to just stay at home as an adult instead of going out and doing something that doesn't involve drinking.

And yet this loss of community has different levels across the world, and yet in all of those countries teenagers still have tiny computers in their hand all day.

I spent part of the summer in Spain, and you'd see teenagers hanging out in the park, or at the beach huddled together while looking at their own tiny computers.

While I agree with your scepticism of our smart phone use, this comment doesn't do the article justice. (The author addresses that point and explains why he thinks that smart phone use, while a problem, is not the root cause.)

"In it, he argued that to restore the play-based childhood, we must first rebuild strong in-person local communities." Churches! It is perfect, gives community, hope and a purpose. And the Christian way to live and be is a very good model.

I find that community depends alot on culture. My experience of Western culture (the culture I grew up in, although not born into) is mostly Anglo-spherical, which in the beginning felt like this was Western culture, but travelling through Europe I realised that there's far more to Western culture than just Anglo practices/preferences. I have found the US to be far more diverse in its Western cultural roots compared to NZ and Australia. This might be due the fact that the US received significant immigration from non-Anglo Western cultures early on compared to Australia/NZ. Anyway my point is that what constitutes "community" and whether you fit into that community depends alot on whether you can fit into that culture, and whether that culture can accept you. If there's a match, then you end up finding community easily. If there's no match, then community can be difficult, and this I believe explains why there's so many ethnic enclaves in Sydney and I believe elsewhere too. So that's why unlike the "melting pot idea", Australia tends to be multi-cultural society. This is especially difficult for people who are neither there nor here, a sort of inbetween. It takes alot of grace and self-reflection to integrate opposing cultural norms and bridge communities...

Or, conversely, there's a reporting and over-reporting bias at work today that previously didn't exist due to much smaller exposure to notions of perceived and real mental health disorders among (admittedly often suggestible) young people. "Community" is not only a generic term, it's also a somewhat ambiguously dangerous one that captures many very biased notions of a supposedly ideal community that have little to do with a healthy reality. Many people complain about a lack of community specifically because their own preferred idea of how it should be isn't what's popular. This hardly makes them reliable sources for arguments about its lack.

Few things about today's world of easier communication and more easily than ever being able to find others who share your interests makes it especially hard for any given person of any age to find what they're comfortable calling a community for themselves. It's certainly easier than it was decades ago when you either had to physically go somewhere or make a serious effort of some kind to find wider communities you might like. Either that or settle for whatever sort of fit the bill in your home town. These things are much easier to avoid today.

> Many people complain about a lack of community specifically because their own preferred idea of how it should be isn't what's popular.

If someone has little positive face to face interaction with people outside their immediate family, I don't see how you could argue that's not a lack of community.

People can leave their home, people can travel. If digital media expose to the curious a given community of shared interests, you have more avenues than ever for discovering it, and making contact. I simply can't see how this is worse than not even being able to find such communities while stuck in your supposedly superior town/neighborhood community of the people who live around you.

Sure they CAN leave their homes, but they aren't. There is a lack of positive face to face interaction with people you can see often. We need more than text on an online forum. We need facial expressions, we need body language, we need smell and touch. We need people who can see that we're in a low spot because they see us all the time to know the difference. We need the chance to do the same for others as well. We need to interact with people who have different opinions and interests or are at different stages of life. We need to be told we're wrong and to see the impact on others when we screw up.

So much of that just doesn't happen online.

IDK. Do you have data supporting this hypothesis?

Is there a difference between 'cause' and 'upstream cause'? I though the whole up/downstream language was just a synonym for causation.

I have recently started traveling and working remote at "co-living" hotels. And I must say, this is the ideal way I wish to live my life in my 20s-30s.

Community makes life fun.

Someone needs to import co-living to the US. And I don't mean these "co-living" apartment complexes that exist in our major cities. I mean like, actual communities with character and life.

there's a few cool groups working on this, specifically for academics & ambitious young people as the beginning market. https://www.livetheresidency.com/

I dont understand the residency thing at all

That's cool. Would love to see something like this for people that aren't ambitious geniuses though... like myself ;)

I'm gonna be a old man shouting at the clouds. But co-living spaces work because they are generally small projects and have very driven and charismatic people leading those projects.

The moment something like that grows or scales to a tipping where real estate funds take interest then it will naturally enshitify as most things in society that have been monetized by large scale investors.

I agree with everything you said but with the risk of gate keeping I worry that the only way co-living projects will work is by having a bunch of stubborn fun people starting it off and keeping it at a non-industrial scale.

Nah I hear you, and I agree.

The co-living spaces in most major US cities are basically just developers trying to glamorize apartments with roomates.

Though to scale it up and minimize the enshitification, perhaps some sort of framework or guide could be created that allows smaller groups to more easily navigate the legal and financial challenges on their own.

What seems to make this so much easier in other countries are the lack of regulations.

Hostels and some Bed and Breakfasts come close to the co-living experience in the US though. And they maintain their unique charm. It's definitely possible.

Maybe similar to what is called cohousing in the US? See:

https://www.ic.org/directory/community-types/

> the teens that appear least impacted by the mental health crisis tend to be religious, conservative, and live in less individualistic cultures

Weird how fast the other two factors from the linked essay got dropped only to focus on individualism, aint it? Doesnt matter tho doesnt seem neither cite sources, methodology and data

Christopher Alexander & co. have a site "Building Living Neighborhoods" about doing just that with his Pattern Language:

> The tools offered are intended for the use of ordinary people, families, communities, developers, planners, architects, designers and builders; public officials, local representatives, and neighbors; business owners and people who have commercial interests. The processes here are expressed in the belief that the common-sense, plain truth about laying out a neighborhood, or repairing one, is equally valid for all comers, amateurs and professionals. They help people build or rebuild neighborhoods in ways that contribute something to their lives.

https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm

that website is bad

Yeah, I know.

"Ignore the bird, follow the river."

The loss of community, sadly, does not affect only the youth, but all people that have grown with the internet. This now includes older millennials like me.

---

I have a silly dream that has been calling me for years now, and I don't know where to start [1]. We're all knowledge workers now, right? We basically just need electricity, a laptop and an internet connection to contribute to society.

Is this not the time to start a movement away from the big chaotic cities, back into the calmer and more peaceful rural villages? I envision a future where "nature life" does not mean hippy living like the 1800s, but we can leverage our modern high technology to make natural life even better for us. For example, solar panels, low-energy devices and appliances, automated greenhouses/hydroponics, etc.

Natural life also means community life. We are tribal animals, we enjoy being productive members of groups of < 50 people, where everybody knows each other, they have their own "culture" and way of doing things in harmony. In 2024, this doesn't have to mean warring with each other with rocks. Modern "tribes" are no more than communal and self-contained living and social arrangements.

Basically, I have this unbearable call to settle in the middle of nowhere, with other people that have the luxury to live free of the shackles of modern society, to live like humans are meant to live: in the sun, in the grass, in a community but also with running water, fibre internet and green energy.

I know some of us are starting to have the same need and we are at a point in civilisation where this is possible, so here's my shot in the dark, hoping to talk with and hear from the other unreasonable, uncivilised ones that just want to abandon the idea that we are meant to live in chaotic cities socialising mostly through the hellish babel that is social media.

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1: actually, I know where to start. I am moving back to Italy within the next few months, and will seriously look into a place to settle and to make this a reality just for myself.

Yes, ever since Robert Putnam wrote his book "bowling alone", the problem has been growing. And now, Big Tech has exacerbated it.

Would like to get the feedback of people here. Journalists love to write about problems, but very few write about solutions. (It's just one of those things in the news media, it's like writing about good news and helping old ladies across the road.)

I have spent 12 years building an open-source platform that will hopefully unite our communities and restore public health. LA Weekly recently wrote about it:

https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/

As a member of generation Z I would like to add that one of the many enshittification reasons leading to the loss of community is an aging population. Many of the same neighborhoods that our parents used to roam and play are now a majority old or childless families. The kids are there, just not dense enough to form small tight knit play groups anymore. This applies to suburbs specifically

This article needs more comparison between countries. Where is this not happening?

How do astronauts train for this when preparing for long missions without much company?

Astronauts are exceptional people

I think training can only go so far. You need to have the right personality type to handle being an astronaut.

Astronauts have a ton of community if you go by the list in the article. It's not about company.

Astronauts are older than the teens mentioned in the article, a very selective sample (read We Seven if you haven't), and still train with a team and with a clear purpose of their goals.

I want to share what I imagine would be a controversial data point but one that I hope has value to this conversation - I recently decided to join a church just to reconnect with faith that I had pushed aside back in 2016, and with the church, a small group. It's working for me. I am making older friends for the first time in my life, and despite me generally not aligning with people politically, I'm just biting my tongue and not letting that define who I will spend time talking to the same way I used to.

I'm not advocating religion specifically as a solution for others, just saying it works for myself. But my question is - why aren't there secular alternatives to religious community where people could just go bite their tongues and get along despite maybe some of our superficial cultural differences? Why can't there be larger weekly meetings for people, with smaller breakout groups, and a general sense of bringing people together in a community? Why is church the only place I can find that? I don't think the "fraternal clubs" are the solution here as they give off a certain "old mans club" perception that I can't get past (and the lack of windows on their buildings has been noted). But maybe somebody here could put one together and see what happens.

Churches don't pay taxes. They collect money from attendee's to pay for the real estate they occupy.

Any other gathering / community has to deal with these real world problems before they can attract people.

In my college years, there were clubs or fraternities, and they could use classrooms or student unions as low cost resources to gather in person and foster community. I think that's a barrier as an adult.

Thoughtful. I didn’t think deeply enough how the tax implications mattered (especially given how many church buildings sit empty for days at a time)

Seth Kaplan, professor at Johns Hopkins University and frequent contributor to UN and World Bank efforts to shore up community in difficult countries has written a book called Fragile Neighborhoods that I highly recommend.

Well, yes, we've doubled down on mediating social interactions through economic relationships. Most of the interactions adults have in their lives are with or in the framing of economic relations. Homes, are being invaded with tablets and mobile devices which bring along with them framing interactions as economic relations through ad and consumer frames. Workplaces are inherently settings of economic relations, and third places outside of the consumer setting are becoming extinct because they are non-monetizable.

This last category, non-consumer third places are formerly the domain of kid-friendly community-building activities. When we talk about creating more of these and the response is, "they aren't economically viable," it's exactly the kind of economic calculus framing that I'm talking about.

To take this a step further, I’d argue such framings encourage either creation or amplification of risk perceptions in order to sell the remedy (and for political gain), at least in the US. Kids aren’t really allowed much autonomy the way even their parents enjoyed. All interactions are in a sense supervised and structured.

This is positively gut wrenching in its accuracy. Really well captured.

Anything is economically viable if enough people want it.

Point == missed

Its a tragedy of the commons style problem.

The viability has to come from a group effort - as soon as there is a single entity running the show the economic incentives will warp or collapse the 3rd place into something different.

What single entity did you have in mind? An HOA will spend dues on parks, a regular city will spend taxes on parks. A luxury apartment will have common spaces or even activities. They make these expenditures because enough residents will pay extra for it. And a church will run community events paid for by donations. No "brought to you by Carl's Jr."

Tragedy of the commons is when there's no big entity with rules, and everyone does their own thing.

What often happens in these small community organizations is one or two volunteers join and begin to do a bunch of work to "transform" the organization and expand its reach. They inevitably become "indispensable" to the new organization, which they have wrapped around themselves like a cloak. Then they squeeze it around themselves until everyone leaves and the organization's soul has been sucked out. They move on to other organizations in the same area with a "resume" or "bio."

You'll often see these people everywhere in your community, and they may approach you very quickly to get you involved in their organizations. They are in constant need of new volunteers to burn out on their pet projects. They also constantly promote themselves and are always telling you about what they are doing with other organizations both to recruit you and to make sure everyone knows how "indispensable" they are.

These people are poisonous to community organizations because they will not abide any consensus-driven process that doesn't lead to agreement with them.

Not sure about the resumé part, but I've seen these authoritarian volunteers. They still don't ruin everything. And I think my local church has enough of them that they cancel each other out :D

They don't ruin it every time, but I've seen it happen and have also seen the end result and I'm very leery of specific kinds of people in communities I'm new to because of it.

Are these the techbros of community life? I can see a bunch of parallels.

The biggest defining factor is they have a lot of spare time to push dumb agendas and don't listen to people who have less time to deal with it. I'm not sure what a techbro is, thought it was just a techie who goes to the gym.

A housing development will create parks because they are required to do it. This is not market forces at work.

There are definitely fancier HOAs with bigger and nicer parks and common spaces than the others, and I don't think it's because they have different city rules.

HOA style commons solutions means a city becomes thousands of micro, private, exclusive spaces.

Perhaps better than everyone sitting in their homes getting amazon deliveries every few hours.

but this isn't what people mean when they say public community spaces. We need interconnectedness across income, ideology, generation, education, etc, for stable democracy.

It's also a framing problem[1]. If we were creating an encyclopedia of ways third places are killed or aborted, centralization would definitely be a failure mode.

I'd add, the belief that projects should be financially self-sufficient and the fiscal individualistic belief that I shouldn't pay for things I don't personally benefit from.

There is a sense of fairness, that makes sense in isolation, yet have these downstream effects when applied to public goods like third spaces. "Kids are always on their phones," and "Youth programs and parks should be financially self-sufficient" are downstream contradictions of the primary belief.

1. among infinite ways to analyze it

On point and well articulated!

This is both a loss in and of itself, and is also a rational response by people within this system. Everything MUST make money because everyone is FUCKING broke. People don't monetize their hobbies for fun, they do it because they're barely scraping by and the notion of spending time on things that don't make money is so beaten out of us that it feels wrong to do it. We can't go anywhere without spending money, we can't do anything without spending money.

I shit you not my wife and I wanted to visit a park the other day and realized the parks dept now has paid parking stalls. The PARK. An outdoor space, supposedly paid for by my tax dollars, that because of it's distance from me is not feasible to walk to (and because the streets here are fucking terrifying) now charges me to park my vehicle there, so I can get some nature. Just un-fucking-believably apple pie in the window sill, burgers and fries, fireworks on the fourth American.

I am so goddamn tired of every interaction I can have requiring money. I just want somewhere to go that's nice to be that doesn't demand my fucking credit card.

I think it’s pretty reasonable to expect people with cars to pay for parking?

At a lot at a shopping mall, sure. At a park in the suburbs, IMO significantly less so. Especially when ostensibly my property taxes are already paying for the fucking park.

We should be friends, I like the way you think.

I understand your frustration but I expect there are a lot of things that go into that decision. I expect adding a fee to parking makes it possible to enforce time limits, to remove squatting, and to ensure there are actually spots available. I doubt it is for the money but even if it is the park systems tend to be horribly underfunded (and often have to be held up with private donation money). A lot of our broken things are because someone with too many responsibilities and too little resources has to make a choice between a bunch of bad options and I wonder if this is similar.

From your rant we know you'll pick free open spots compared to paid open spots but what if the choice is between paid open spots and no spots at all? Or worse, paid open spots or shady looking cars parked all day selling drugs?

It seems like the more effective change is more parks but imagine the pushback if someone tried suggesting that! You're angry that you already pay taxes and now you have to pay again to have a special spot right at the park you can park your car in. Imagine the backlash if someone had the audacity to suggest raising your taxes for new parks. "I already pay for parks! I won't even use 95% of them! Why should I have to pay just because I'm a homeowner!"

I can hear my dads voice saying some of these things and it reminds me of his complaints about funding schools with property taxes and I see how people like him pivot this into "the socialists just trying to punish the straight white men".

It all makes me sad.

> From your rant we know you'll pick free open spots compared to paid open spots but what if the choice is between paid open spots and no spots at all?

I wouldn't know, there weren't any free spots, open or otherwise, for consideration.

> Or worse, paid open spots or shady looking cars parked all day selling drugs?

I'm not sure what constitutes a shady car in your mind. I'm pretty sure no one in my neighborhood sells drugs. I know that cuz I have to leave my neighborhood to buy the drugs I want. All things being equal I'd much prefer to just buy them in stores but for some insane reason we're still carrying on the war on drugs despite it being linked, in ink and in recordings, directly to the Nixon administration wanting to prevent black people and hippies from voting, so we make do the best we can.

> It seems like the more effective change is more parks

I mean, we have plenty of parks. Some days they're pretty damn busy but most days they're not. I'm blessed to be a remote worker so I can also just go there (or you know, used to be able to!) and work for a bit too.

> but imagine the pushback if someone tried suggesting that! You're angry that you already pay taxes and now you have to pay again to have a special spot right at the park you can park your car in. Imagine the backlash if someone had the audacity to suggest raising your taxes for new parks.

I actually pay pretty high taxes for my area. The trade-off is our snow collection is extremely good and the roads are well kept, as are the parks for that matter (now marred with stupid ass parking meters but alas).

I'm not opposed in the slightest to paying taxes. I participate in my local government, and I'm planning to bring this up at the next meeting because frankly I think it's bullshit that we're being asked to pay to park there when we're already funding that department. If they need more money or are running at a shortfall, that problem should be addressed with our community like everything else is, with a tax bump if required. I'm frankly infuriated that this was done not just from the principles of it but also because somehow it was done in a way that completely went under the radar of the city council I participate in. This was a huge change and should've been discussed.

> "I already pay for parks! I won't even use 95% of them! Why should I have to pay just because I'm a homeowner!"

Yes my position would be very unreasonable if it was even remotely this. Thankfully it's not.

FWIW I also am fine with paying for our schools too.

I agree with everything you've said here.

My only contribution was that I've seen folks make these kind of choices in good faith even though it isn't directly a thing they want because it's the best of the tools in their toolboxes.

it is a public space. we all pay for it via taxes. if it is criminal ridden, hire police. if there are squatters, hire police. charging parking at a non accessible location to a public resource, I'm sure you could find a solid argument for that being racist. charging for parking at a public park feels like charging to get to the voter polling location. it should be obviously wrong.

Not at a public location that's too far or unsafe to walk to.

We should have much higher density, high quality housing with plenty of public, walkable green spaces. They calling it "15-Minute Cities" now, but I always called it Tokyo.

I don't remember much "walkable green spaces" in Tokyo or other cities in Japan.

I don't think so; the streets are paid for by whatever vehicular taxes, the sidewalks are paid for by property taxes, there's income and sales taxes for additional financing; charging for parking is just adding salt to the wound.

In fact... hear me out. It might be that, those that own the paid private parking lots in high traffic areas exacerbate the parking issues in contested areas, creating pressure on free parking areas; then they lobby to put parking meters in those free areas because "the city needs all the money it can get" (ehh, it shouldn't, it doesn't), and voilá, no more free parking anywhere.

Just a thought.

> and voilá, no more free parking anywhere.

Well... yes, that is precisely what's needed to wean America off its unhealthy dependence on cars.

Come over here to Europe, visit our cities where you can actually walk on a sidewalk, where you can live without a car just fine because everything you need can be reached safely on foot, by bike or with public transport.

> Well... yes, that is precisely what's needed to wean America off its unhealthy dependence on cars.

HIGHLY disagree. If you want people off cars, you need to give them an alternative. Granted, I love cars. I would have cars whether I needed one or not, but I know I'm absolutely 100% in the minority on that issue, and like, when I say I would have cars either way, I mean fun cars. I wouldn't keep and maintain vehicles to just get around in my daily life if I didn't have to. I'd very much prefer to have just the vehicles I actually enjoy, and probably one truck and trailer to get around to tracks.

Most people don't like cars and don't like driving which is why most people drive like shit. It's a chore, a required to-do item on the way to doing something they actually want to do.

> If you want people off cars, you need to give them an alternative.

And to provide that infrastructure, you need space. Space that is reserved for parking cars at the moment. Just compare how much you pay per m² for the parking spot in your average city center vs the average rent mer m² that someone has to pay just for a basic shack.

> If you want people off cars, you need to give them an alternative

Never going to happen, outside of few dense city centers. Once an area is platted for detached single family homes and big box stores on stroads, the physical layout is incompatible with non car life, and hence you have to literally destroy everything and start over with narrow streets and smaller plots of land.

The expense of this is not going to win you any votes, especially as results will not be evident for at least 20 years while infrastructure is completely rebuilt and legal disputes are hashed out, hence it will not happen until nature forces it.

> Once an area is platted for detached single family homes and big box stores on stroads, the physical layout is incompatible with non car life, and hence you have to literally destroy everything and start over with narrow streets and smaller plots of land.

Not really. Repave the roads to make them slimmer, use the space gained to provide elevated sidewalks and bike lanes so people can see it with their own eyes that they can now participate in traffic without sharing infrastructure with cars. And whenever a reasonable sized lot goes up for sale, buy it up and convert it to a small store.

It won’t work, because until you provide everything without a car, people will want a car, which means space for a car, and once they have a car, they are going to use the car to travel to big box stores where they want parking for the car to buy their goods at lower prices due to economies of scale.

And you can’t just repave roads, there are utilities and sewer that needs to be moved, and that’s the small problem. The big problem is facing the outcry of very active voters for reducing their road space and making their commutes even a minute longer.

And if all the homes around this repaved area are detached homes with garages in 0.1+ acre lots, you will never have the density of customers to support businesses.

It kind of has to start at a city center and slowly, very slowly spread outward. But as soon as you hit the higher end suburbs with bigger plats, that’s where any of that high density hope stops, because the political will simply isn’t going to be there. Look at any US city and you will see the “trendy” or “hipster” or whatever areas with a few restaurants and whatever in a small walkable area are all in areas with postage stamp houses in tiny lots.

"And you can’t just repave roads, there are utilities and sewer that needs to be moved, and that’s the small problem. The big problem is facing the outcry of very active voters for reducing their road space and making their commutes even a minute longer."

You don't have to redo sewers etc when you just change the surface by removing stroad space and adding bike lane space.

Also you can own a car and still bike to places.

the alternative is here and it's ebikes/scooters/something. it requires a huge culture change so it's gonna take some time, but batteries plus a motor is viable and is going to cause cities to evolve yet again.

I'm wondering if it comes with the size of the city. Everyone wanting to live in the same place at once is a logistical nightmare that won't be solved in our lifetime. One can compromise; a medium sized city with rapid growth offers high pay, low cost lifestyles that don't rely on genius politicians to have the answers. Such a city simply faces smaller, more solvable problems. Parking is free everywhere in at least one such city of 1M. And several others I've lived in or visited.

What—or who—made the streets terrifying?

> I just want somewhere to go that's nice to be that doesn't demand my fucking credit card.

Libraries meet this need in many ways. But because of the dwindling number of alternatives, reductions in funding, and increases in the number of struggling community members, they're being asked to perform many more community-support functions (social services, education, technical support, shelter, bathrooms, clinics, after-primary-school socializing) for many more people than they used to. This is causing some struggles, which I hope libraries and their supporters rise to rather than writing off another critical type of third place.

Professor Michael Rosenfeld at Stanford does research on how heterosexual couples in the US meet ( https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/ ).

In 1940, over 50% met via friends or family. About 36% met at school.

In 2021, about 20% met via friends or family. About 10% met at school. Over 50% met online. So the majority of US couples are now meeting via profit-maximizing corporations. He has a 2019 paper on this (and it has only increased since that paper).

I'm surprised dating sites work well enough that 50% of customers meet via it. They've no incentive to help you leave.

They probably have some internal churn targets to hit, else people will start to figure out that the app isn't worth their time and try a different one

That's both a horrible thought and a near-certainty.

It creates a much worse problem actually. Why have a committed relationship when you can always press a button to look at hotties and have a pull at the sex slot machine?

If they design the system right, their audience just won't marry or have long term stable relationships

I can think of a few reasons why people want (either already or after enough pulls of the slot machine) a committed relationship.

Though to be clear, just because I think the other more stable thing is valuable to folks even with the availability of the sex slot machine, I still don't love businesses trying to push slot machines or any kind really.

online dating (apps) did not invent uncommitted sex.

debatable if it got more prevalent because of them, as afaik the statistics indicate both, less short _and_ less long term relationships, so :shrug:

Only the people that have really huge success rates, which is very small, and gets way worse as one ages. Have you seen the swipe stats from many Tinder users? What you describe is not a reality for even the top 1% of hetero male users.

It is true for the top 99% of women.

Do people go on dating sites to look at "hotties"? I've heard there are better websites to do that, many free of charge!

(Not a rhetorical question - as a queer person who's never used a dating site or app and who's been in a long-term relationship (now married) for almost 8 years now, I really do have no idea what people do on there.)

I think it really depends on the people. The slot machine would always get more boring and meaningless as time goes on and if someone wants meaningful relationship because they find the slot machine boring, this is what they will look to make happen. Maybe it is for the good to get it out of their system faster so they know what they want and get something meaningful.

I think committed relationships are on the decline more because of the change in how women interact with and are viewed by society, than technology. Each successive generation of women over the last several decades has increased their ability to earn an independent successful living, control their sex life without negative labels, and remove the expectations that their only value is domestic-oriented.

Where in the past women settled for a number of reasons, including economic and societal/familial expectations, they no longer do. And because women are much less apt to settle down, men settle down less too. More free women = more free men = less committed relationships. (assuming we are seeing fewer committed relationships - I didn't fact-check that)

Not at all scientific, just a vibe.

Fewer children -> fewer commitments

Also, being in a relationship with a bad partner is worse than being in a relationship with no partner, especially for women who are in more physical danger.

Therefore, with increased ability to live independently, expect more risk adverse behavior, which means a larger percentage of the “bottom” of the dating market goes uncoupled forever.

Women claim this but the success of dark triad traits and the “I can fix them” meme imply that most people actually do want to be in a “bad relationship”.

I’ve heard women unironically say “I want him to fuck my life up”. Risk aversion is only a trait in the poor or those with significant trauma, which the dating market reminds us, are dysgenic traits…

Good thing Match is a monopoly that owns all of the giant dating apps except for Bumble!

It might not be dating sites. I've heard of people in WoW guilds dating back in the day.

I have a friend who met her husband on an old Dance Dance Revolution forum!

Let me guess: DDRFreak?

Believe so!

I had a couple of very fulfilling relationships with people I met on a band fan site.

Customer success stories are free advertising.

And the need for the service doesn't need to be fabricated, it's innate.

They just need to work once. Who knows how many failed attempts at finding someone preceded the one that suck.

There is no shortage of potential customers, there is a shortage of actual customers. Anything they can do to attract more business helps them. So if they have tons of success stories they'll get far more business.

It would be different in a saturated market, where they might want to try to keep people on the site, but that's not the case here.

Wonder what that percentage would look like as a function of relationship length.

50% of heterosexual couples meeting online is not the same as 50% of customers of dating sites entering a relationship.

It could be the case that say, only 10% of dating site customers end up in a relationship, and this 10% amounts to 50% of the total couples, and the math would work out.

E.g.: suppose the total population is 1000 people, 500 of which are on a dating site, and the total number of couples is 20, 10 of which were formed via the dating site and 10 of which were formed by other means, and 960 people are out of luck.

That's a possible theory, but we know the reality is opposite.

>They've no incentive to help you leave

they have plenty of incentive to get you some dates, after that what are they gonna do?

Get you bad dates with incompatible people?

I'm surprised dating sites work well enough that 50% of customers meet via it

It’s not that surprising when you think of selection effects. Suppose you have a sack full of marbles. Half of the marbles are pink and the other half are random assorted colours. Now reach into the sack and pull out two marbles. If they match then they get married and you set them aside, otherwise return them to the sack.

It’s easy to see that it won’t take very long until hardly any pink marbles remain. After that it’s going to be a total crapshoot to pull out a pair of matching marbles. Maybe some more pink ones get added at a later date but they’ll match and get removed.

The fundamental problem with dating sites cannot be solved by any business model: marriageable people (or otherwise people who can form and maintain a longterm relationship) are removed from the pool of potential dates. What’s left are all those who can’t or won’t form relationships. These “misfits” (for lack of a better term) tend to get concentrated in the pool over time. Perhaps it even gets so bad that marriageable people give up and just avoid dating sites.

This describes what I have intuited happens while dating in ones 40s.

Seems to start in the 30s, in your 20s there's still hope. After that finding someone unscorned is rare, becoming such yourself. Ask me how I know

> The fundamental problem with dating sites cannot be solved by any business model

Well, it can be solved but not by a dating site (evidence: this was a solved problem in the past). But it'd have to be very radical compared to modern dating. Arguably the branding couldn't be as a dating site, but as a stable community where people don't get removed over time so the concentration of non-pink marbles never rises.

That is something like the old model that church communities would have used. The marriageable ones pair off, but they are still in the community of people talking to each other. New marriageable people entered the community, didn't feel overwhelmed or different and eventually pair with other new entrants. The business model has to be that drawing a pair isn't ever expected to result in marriage and is fun by itself but serious dates might happen. Then the system would be viable.

Hasn't the divorce rate also gone down. So one question is if the method of meeting is improving that rate

Yeah.

Marriage rate and divorce rate have plummeted since 1940.

Probably not much to do with electronic media there. A lot more likely that financial and social pressures are squeezing what were previously considered cultural imperatives. ie - church, marriage, home ownership, etc.

Or simply that fewer marginally good fit marriages are occurring.

Fewer teen marriages, shotgun weddings, ect.

There were always a lot of financial imperatives to wed.

There were always a lot of financial imperatives to wed.

The point is that now the financial imperative is not to wed. ("Girlfriend get serious! Why marry some loser who can't even buy a house?" or "Bro what? Do you know what will happen if you get divorced?")

The financial imperative is not to go to church. Working on Sunday has become the norm as people are regularly expected to be available on the weekends. This is especially true in the startup or tech space. And don't even get me started on how workers in the services sector, who would in any other era be the most likely to attend church, get so few weekends free between their multiple jobs, that church is now an afterthought for them.

The financial imperative is not to purchase a home. ("Bro! You don't have that kind of money! And what if you have to move for your job?")

I think we have very different perceptions of the world, but I don't have much interest in having a discussion predicated on quotes from imaginary characters.

You take a morally superior position, and you are condescending.

As if discussions and examples using imaginary characters are somehow 'lowly', and can't be used as a fair commentary of society.

In comparison, Plato's works often feature dialogues where characters, including Socrates, engage in arguments, which present various perspectives on philosophical issues through fictionalized conversations. That style of writing and the use of imaginary characters in argumentative discourse is actually hallmark of Plato's work.

The OP's style of writing (who you responded to) is therefore not out of the ordinary; just because you disagree with his or her "perceptions of the world" doesn't mean you should put it down as unworthy of reply for using "imaginary characters".

I don't think OPs points were on par with plato, and neither do you.

I think that form of communication is indicative of poor mental function and inability to communicate. The world would be better off if everyone simply refuses to engage with it and ridiculed it instead of validating it with engagement.

An anecdote is not an argument, and an imaginary one is even worse.

>A lot more likely that financial and social pressures are squeezing what were previously considered cultural imperatives.

We are living the most affluent lives ever known to mankind, even so-called low income people. We all have more money than we know what to do with, let alone more money than our forefathers.

Rather, I think the drop in marriage (and by extension divorce) has to do with increasing individualism and jade-ism.

The more humanity (namely the west) advances, the more it is drilled in that all men are created equal with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. People are increasingly more concerned with living their lives the way they want to the exclusion of spouses and children if such things are not what makes them happy.

Combine that with the brutal realities of life, because life is fucking hard at the best of times (no matter how rich you are), and the media constantly sensationalizing on everyones' fears and anger aren't helping matters either.

Also as an aside and anecdata: I'm in my mid-30s now, not married, never married, and never intend to marry because I do not find it appealing at all. I can more than afford to marry, but I am far too busy with other matters more important to me and I frankly find marriage to be nothing short of a human rights violation anyway.

> I frankly find marriage to be nothing short of a human rights violation anyway.

Just curious, but how could marriage be a rights violation?

First the axiom so we're all on the same page: I truly and wholeheartedly agree with and believe in the notion that life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness are unalienable rights.

Marriage is many things, but chief among them is that marriage is an inevitable compromise of each others' liberties and therein lies the violation. Who am I to compromise my would-be wife's unalienable right to liberty? Who is my would-be wife to compromise my unalienable right to liberty? This is absolutely irreconcilable and thus I consider marriage to be a violation of human rights.

If we also were to have children, I/we would also be imposing my/our will upon them. I/we would be violating our childrens' unalienable right to liberty and potentially pursuit of happiness. I cannot accept that.

I am also of the position that if I were to get a divorce for any reason, I must question why I got married in the first place. Marriage is not a thing that can nor should be taken lightly; divorce is an out, but I consider the entire premise of marriage is that it is a permanent thing until death do us part.

As such, if we end up in an unhappy marriage (eg: constant bickering over the kitchen or finances) then this is also a violation of our respective unalienable rights to pursuit of happiness and we both wasted significant amounts of our limited time that each of us have in this world.

Therefore, along with other personal convictions, I find no appeal in marriage and have no intentions of ever pursuing it or finding myself in such an arrangement of my free will.

> I consider the entire premise of marriage is that it is a permanent thing until death do us part.

Right so you invented a notion of marriage which doesn't apply in the society you live in and then invented a problem created by that invented supposition.

This all sounds very normal.

If marriage is not some kind of "special" arrangement, why do we place so much value on the concept?

Marriage is clearly very different from and more significant than simple friendship or other mundane relationship arrangement, and everyone's reasoning as to why will vary depending upon their religious and/or cultural upbringing and values.

Personally, as I stated earlier, I consider marriage to be some kind of permanent-ish arrangement (and especially if children become involved). There is an artificial out (divorce), but as far as I'm concerned it isn't something that should be used with wanton abandon. Thus, I place a lot of weight on why I would marry in the first place; if I am going to divorce, I should not have married in the first place.

I am deliberately violating the "Do not let perfect be the enemy of good." rule precisely because I demand a would-be marriage to be perfect given how many human rights I would flagrantly violate. I know I am never going to marry with such prerequisites and I desire that, because otherwise I cannot live with myself.

If you have any worthwhile arguments to the contrary to bring to the table I am quite happy to hear them. My conclusions thus far are the result of many years of deep and thorough deliberation, but I am also aware that it is far from infallible.

> If marriage is not some kind of "special" arrangement, why do we place so much value on the concept?

Marriage is an economic and logistical framework for the raising of children.

Any society that doesn’t come up with a viable way to raise children ceases to exist almost immediately.

So that’s why.

I think that axiomatically quoting the US declaration of independence is a deeply unhealthy way of approaching the world the world at large.

So you disagree that life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness are unalienable rights?

Are you saying that they can (or should?!) be violated?

Why?

No GP but I think they such rights cannot be absolute because the same right can conflict with itself.

Say it's the 18 century with slavery is common. The slave owners are depriving the slaves of liberty and happiness. But the deprivation of the slaves liberty brings the owners happiness.

If you cannot persuade the owners to stop depriving slaves of liberty, then there two options remain.

One, you respect the owners right to happiness. But at the expense of the slave's liberty.

Two, you use force to stop the owners from violating the slaves rights. But in doing so you violate the owners right to happiness.

What's the answer then here if there no options that do not harm someone's unalienable rights?

Simple: A man's rights end where another man's rights begin.

To use your example, the slave owner's right to pursuit of happiness ends where the slaves' rights to liberty and pursuit of happiness begin. A would-be slave owner cannot and should not violate another man's (a would-be slave's) right to liberty and pursuit of happiness.

Going back to the subject of marriage, my right to liberty ends where my would-be wife's right to liberty begins and vice versa. Marriage is inevitably a compromise of both our rights to liberty. Thus, I find marriage a violation of human rights.

>To use your example, the slave owner's right to pursuit of happiness ends where the slaves' rights to liberty and pursuit of happiness begin. A would-be slave owner cannot and should not violate another man's (a would-be slave's) right to liberty and pursuit of happiness

Except you've chosen to violate the owners right to happiness by attempting to place limitations on the rights that were so called inalienable. What you think the limit should be and what the slave owner thinks the limit should be differ.

Same right, but in this case brought into conflict by disagreement of interpretations.

Second, what happens when the other side refuses to stop because he believes that your interpretation is wrong? What do you do then?

Two rights colliding is essentially an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. The two can not (should not) violate each other, thus one's rights end where another's begins.

Governments are also tasked with guaranteeing those rights, and those who violate another's rights are deprived of their rights as mandated by laws.

For example, a murderer (violator of another's right to life) is imprisoned (deprived of his right to liberty) and possibly even executed (deprived of his right to life).

You do realize the original quote from Locke was “life, liberty and pursuit of property”?

Yes they can conflict. I chose slavery because it did conflict. 13 States left succeeded from the United States to form the Confederacy to protect slavery at the behest of their own citizens. And the remaining Union disagreed. Violently. The US Civil War was one of the bloodiest in it's history.

Even today. SCOTUS overturning Roe vs Wade and allowing States to prohibit abortions. A difference because of a disagreement on whether or not a human embryo is entitled to be treated as a full human being with all the same rights and responsibilities.

Hence the nuance. You can look at the same document that says these rights, but how they are achieved and what limits there are can differ due to differences in opinion.

> If we also were to have children, I/we would also be imposing my/our will upon them. I/we would be violating our childrens' unalienable right to liberty and potentially pursuit of happiness. I cannot accept that.

What? The only way to avoid mass human rights violations is the extinction of the human race in one generation?

So... you're part of a suicide cult basically.

The fact that I have no interest in violating human rights or propagating life have nothing to do with whether I am suicidal (which I am not).

Marriage rates are also plummeting, so it's more likely that the divorce rate has gone down simply because people wait to get married until they've proven it works. A couple that cohabitates and then separates doesn't get logged in the divorce rates.

There has also been about a 70% drop in number of marriages since the 50s.

And as someone else noted, a significant drop in the number of divorces since its peak in the 1980s.

Does that include breakups? Can't get divorced if you were never married.

No, unfortunately. And the number of divorce + breakups with kids involved is still rising…

> Over 50% met online.

Is that actually true? I read something recently (in an recent article in a major publication about how online dating sucks and people are getting tired of it), that the proportion is much lower. Like people put all this money and effort into dating apps, but must successful relationships still form outside of them.

Online is not necessary the same as dating app. It can be any online group where people have an in person meetup once in a while.

"Online" these days more likely means social networks, games and other services where people with common interest meet. Meaning, you meet through your hobby, instead of a dedicated service for meeting or because you just happen to live in the same area.

Interestingly, there was another big shift happening from 1940-1980:

- in 1940, the top 3 were: met through family, met through friends, met in primary school. In that order, but pretty much equal

- From 1940-1980, two of those three (family, primary school) trended sharply downward, as did "met in church", while these trended upward: met through friends, met in bar or restaurant, met as or through coworkers, met in college. "met through friends" was by far the most common circa 1980

- starting in 1995 "met online" sees a sharp rise, and by 2010 it has overtaken them all.

The only other category that was still on the rise after 2010 was "met in a bar or restaurant". Is that really increasingly common? I have a strange feeling that some of those are just people too embarassed to say they met online...

Anyway, my point is there was (perhaps unsurprisingly) already a big shift going on 1940-1980, namely that the immediate family, church, childhood friends became less dominant in people's lives and friends, work, commercially-facilitated interactions (bars and restaurants) became more central. Did we learn anything from that adjustment? Were people in the 80's and 90's talking ad worrying about this the way we're talking today about the way social interactions are replacing the "old" ones?

(also, the values for "met online" on that graph seem to be small but non-zero in the 1980s! I'd like to hear the stories of some of those couples...)

> (also, the values for "met online" on that graph seem to be small but non-zero in the 1980s! I'd like to hear the stories of some of those couples...)

IIRC Jason Scott's BBS documentary mentions this a bit. There's a couple that shows up a number of times that met on a BBS.

> stories of some of those couples

this one, about two people having met online, was written in 1879 (not a typo):

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24353

> I have a strange feeling that some of those are just people too embarassed to say they met online

Probably right. I don't really get the stigma, but I've known a few people personally who told the same lie and found later it was online. One in particular had a huge elaborate story about their bar meeting. His wife told me later one day he basically selected her from a website.

So like most questions, probably worth taking self reporting with a giant dose of salt.

Selected... What? Not matched? You are making it seem like she just listed herself for selection on a website and went with it?

She was from a foreign country. I'm guessing whatever the modern day equivalent of a mail order bride? I didn't ask for specifics past that.

Older dating sites were basically lists of profiles and you could send a message to anyone, without "matching".

In many countries where dating balance (i am not saying gender balance... because it's not really about numbers of guys and girls but about difference in their interest in dating), is not as skewed as in the West, this is still the case. You can actually write anyone, even on a free version of a dating app or website. Girls' feeds get a bit spammy, but not terribly so, it can still work. I know it sounds crazy but that's an upside of life in the Eastern Europe let's say, or ex-Communist bloc.

Most westerners don’t understand that the modern “phenomenon” of incels is mostly due to shitty 80s movies that connected cerebral people to nerdy stereotypes.

Rewatch wargames and note how insane the kids skills are, and how this acts as something which makes the MC more interesting to the fairer sex. Compare this to today, where busting a command line out in public is more likely to get you arrested by some idiot dogooder thinking you’re hacking the airplane instead of acting as some kind of evidence that you’re intelligent and thus possibly good partner.

Meanwhile go to the third world where life is hard and stereotypical “jocks” or “bullies” are the poor, downtrodden of society. Often these societies love nerds and cerebral people, and physical prowess isn’t valued as much here.

John Hughes is the father of the modern western incel and all related phenomenons.

Also interesting insofar as what "met online" means. Dating apps are certainly the most common, but one of my partners and I met on a Discord server for a shared interest, which is certainly "online" but not necessarily in the same context as "dating apps"

This. I have a couple of friends who actually met their partner on World of Warcraft in the mid 2000s. But I suspect it's a very small fraction of the “online” group, especially nowadays with dating apps being so prevalent.

I'd expect that the fraction is much bigger, actually. In mid 2000s the couples that met through online games were the "weirdos", "normal" people met online on dating sites. Today gaming is pretty much mainstream and while dating apps are probably a majority, it's now absolutely normal to meet people while playing games.

You question the stigma and then finish your paragraph with “just selected her from a website”.

Explained a possibility in another comment.

When an older, morbidly obese person is with a much more attractive and younger foreign person, you can work out most of the details in your head. Is it not more embarrassing to make up some Top Gun-esque story? I don't know.

I met my first wife in person, second on Facebook(8ish years and going). I feel zero shame in the meeting place, more shame for having married the first. So yes, personally, I don't understand the stigma.

If I message with someone on a dating app a few times and then make arrangements so the first time I encounter them in the physical world is a bar where did I “meet” them?

The subjective answer to this question might be at least part of this statistic.

Also you may be underestimating the number of people who pair up as part of nightlife outings. Based on my many many outings in cities around the world in recent years it does seem at a glance that people are still engaged in the practice.

FWIW here in Korea the 1940 statistic still holds, yet I don't think youth mental health is any better.

Well, of course. Today, approaching someone of the opposite sex whom you haven't previously chatted with online is creepy.

Really? How old are you? There are still school, work, parties, clubs, bars... I even know a couple that met in their church.

Since around 1997 all my romantic partners did have a solid online footprint. However, I can't say I met any of them online. Every time it was 1) getting merely acquainted on a forum or in a social network, 2) some kind of offline event initiated by users took part 3) "oh, hi, are you <handle> from <site>?"

I don't think it may be counted as "we met online", and specifically I never had any meaningful relationships via dating sites/apps.

If anyone's interesting in reading more along these lines (the weird state we've gotten into where everything in our lives needs to be viewed through an economic lens for some reason, and the damage it causes) -- check out the book "Capitalist Realism" by the late Mark Fisher -- I really enjoyed it!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6763725-capitalist-reali...

Why should we recommend yet another example of a postmodernist critical theorist who went crazy and killed either themselves or others?

You didn’t learn after althussar, or deleuze, and now you make the same mistakes. Don’t be surprised if it comes out later that he was a child diddler, much as it has for the previously well respected Foucault.

True. I have personally integrated this idea fully by trying to hire/work with friends and family whenever possible.

After years trying to see people weekly and failing miserably, this is best hack I have found. Caveat emptor, takes discipline and patience from everyone but it's great to see loved ones daily, fully engaged in a project.

It helps that I can afford to have hobby businesses.

Tell me more? You own businesses and hire your family / friends to work in them?

This is so accurate. There's been lots of talk of enshittification and it really is just everything now. Monetizing the well in modern capitalism means poisoning it. It all can be traced back to lobbying in politics. They need to ban money from politics immediately and everything will improve.

That just means the money moves in stealthier ways. Instead of soft corruption you get hard corruption.

Money moves in stealthy ways already, and there are ways to identify that. The problem is the legislature is supposed to be supervising the government entities that pursue financial corruption. Instead of reducing all problems to economic problems, where only the very rich have a voice, we should be encouraging a legislature with integrity to do what is right for everyone.

What frustrates me is that, it seems (Read as: the following is just my vibe) that the majority of 3rd places left are religious in nature, but I, personally, don't want to be religious or raise children that are.

There are some options, of course, but they're limited and often of poor quality, at least locally. Libraries are trying to adapt to fill this gap, and maker spaces spring up but most don't have funding to be good - or if they do, that funding brings things that ruin the spirit. Once you're looking for a place as an Adult, especially without kids, the number of relevant events and things to do drops quickly too - so these same children aren't going to find better options as they grow older.

I've found the only way to make friends/community as an adult outside of religion, at least for me, is to go to events relevant to my hobbies and interests. Yes it's difficult, but communities for just about everything are out there if you put yourself out there. If you choose events that occur regularly I've found you get to know people and make friends just by trying to become a regular face too.

If you don't have a hobby/interest with a local group, you can try picking new ones until you find one that clicks too. It does take some effort initially though. The shared interest is critical to removing barriers to making those relationships for me.

The mad rush to as quickly abolish religious practices in mainstream U.S. culture without any form of societal replacement is puzzling to me.

I am no fan of religion having grown up in an exceedingly religious environment. But it was always completely obvious to me even as a child that the primary purpose of religion was to form local communities and have others with shared values to rely on.

We seem to be doing it with more than just religion these days, but it’s the canary in the coal mine.

Lack of investment in your community will very rapidly erode any sort of high trust society you once had within a single generation. Once it’s gone, it’s pretty much gone for good.

I believe no one is talking about this aspect of WFH either. It’s taking away maybe the last “socially expected” regular commitment to your local community. Your daily life is not supposed to be lived in complete social comfort with planned interactions with a tiny group of people being your sole source of socialization. At times you should be feeling uncomfortable or obligated in some community or social setting or you are not growing as a human being. I don’t think the office is the best place at all for this, but for many folks I know it was their last social interaction of any sort outside of family.

I’ve been unable to articulate these thoughts very well for decades now - since my late high school days I was already the crazy guy telling friends I was really worried how our hobbies and social interactions were so much less investment on average than our grandparents generation. On average having a bunch of Quake guild buddies is simply not the same as my grandpa who had a bunch of fishing buddies. It’s been on my mind for quite some time, and I think the data is starting to show those concerns were legitimate.

> The mad rush to as quickly abolish religious practices in mainstream U.S. culture without any form of societal replacement is puzzling to me. > I am no fan of religion having grown up in an exceedingly religious environment. But it was always completely obvious to me even as a child that the primary purpose of religion was to form local communities and have others with shared values to rely on.

It is a problem, but… religion isn’t true. How do you square that with any sort of culture that values reality?

It seems in 2024 that one simply chooses their religion. Arbitrary GDP growth in a finite environment isn’t true either, it’s just another convenient fiction. More recently the AI doom/effective altruist community has just made some hypothetical AI thing into a god. Even rational things like environmentalism and social progressivism have taken on many of the trappings of a religion.

It might be time to start judging which faith-based organizing principles produce the best outcomes.

Religion is literally false but metaphorically true. Our brain filters existence through metaphors. I’m not religious but my metaphors of understanding reality are built on a culture that was for thousands of years until the state got separated from church within my lifetime here in Norway. And it hasn’t made things better.

>How do you square that with any sort of culture that values reality?

Empiricism doesn't help you with the questions of "who are my people?" or "what matters?" You can make a legitimate case for some of religion's claims being empirically unsound, it doesn't take away from the fact that religion is very effective at giving a lot of people meaning and community, orthogonal to those specific claims.

It's arguably only effective if you genuinely believe the truth claims of the faith. There is this sort of strange very online revival of "trad" beliefs but you can literally tell that the people are trying to gaslight themselves into believing something they don't. Sort of a split-brain religion at best.

Nietzsche's aphorism about God being dead was correct, as was his prediction about the future. Religion wouldn't immediately die out but it would take increasingly pathological forms, it's arguably why religion has taken such a political turn as the capital 'f' Faith portion is just gone.

> It's arguably only effective if you genuinely believe the truth claims of the faith.

At least for Judaism that not true at all. There are enormous numbers of Jews who do not believe, and yet consider themselves Jewish and go to occasional services, and find meaning in them even while not believing.

There are even pulpit Rabbis who do not believe and yet faithfully follow all the practices and teach.

>There are enormous numbers of Jews

There aren't, which is exactly why they're exceptional. After the experiences of the 20th century Jews have retained an acute awareness of threats to their very survival as a group which is why they tend to adhere to practice despite secularization. It's also likely why secular Jewish women are the only secular group with a high birth rate.

There's no historical analog to this in pretty much any other modern society, which is why you don't see secular Swedes drag themselves out of bed to go to mass on Sundays.

> After the experiences of the 20th century

... And the 19th, and the 18th, and the 17th, and the 16th, and...

The Jewish condition was obviously affected by the Shoah, but the fundamental elements of otherness from the communities it lived in (since the exodus), with all the very real threats that they inevitably attract, have always been there.

(Sadly any further elaboration on this point cannot be made in a public forum today.)

It's actually 'okay' to gaslight yourself into believing something you don't. That is the basis of human society and mental health. I mean, everyone gaslights themselves into believing all sorts of weird statements on reality, such as 'my parents love me unconditionally' (realistically, there are probably conditions attached).

It's okay to make aspirational claims or commitments like, "I'm going to do my best to love my children unconditionally". It's not mentally healthy to tell yourself "my marriage is great" when your marriage is in fact in shambles. In an extreme case say, believing your parents or spouse love you unconditionally if they're abusing you might destroy a life. A lot of relationships probably decay beyond repair because people don't face reality early enough.

Personal commitments, even if idealistic are good, trying to talk yourself into facts about reality that you don't even believe is never good. And most religions of course make those demands. It's basically like being in the late Soviet Union. Everything is great, everyone is equal, you leave the house and there's a doctor selling cigarettes and vodka on the streets to survive. And basically when in your mind you see that double-think it's already over in a way.

There are certain elements that are not true. But other ones are true. There are many ways to alleviate suffering.

God is not true, at least not the sense that any religion claims (God as an abstraction and a meme is as real as any other, as real as Harry Potter or Slenderman) Claims of absolute moral right or authority derived from divine right are not true. Claims made by the religious that belief in God is a prerequisite to morality, community or cultural identity are not true. Claims made by religious teachings about the nature of the universe are not true.

So what does that leave? Philosophy, ethics and cultural mythology? Why do we need to keep religion around for any of that, any more than we need alchemy when we now have chemistry?

Growing up in Nashville I've frequently heard that religion is a prerequisite to ethics. While I disagree in principle, I struggle to come up with an example where philosophy and ethics are discussed in a secular setting outside of school(academia included) and politics.

It would not surprise me that on the whole our society is worse off for lack of a widespread secular tradition of discussing these concepts with your community.

edit: substitute "secular setting" for "secular state", definitely not arguing for the integration of church and state.

It's always looked to me like from a first approximation, people just do whatever they want and come up with justifications. The smarter they are, the more elaborate the justification. I doubt I'm above it.

Right. I would argue that organized religion provides(provided?) a guided framework of accountability, transparency, and acceptance for your "justifications" amongst your community. In a vacuum, these differences compound into a complete breakdown of understanding.

It's harder to call someone a "libtard" or a "troglodyte" if you have to sit next to them in a pew for the rest of your life.

I fail to see how being forced to confess your crimes to someone who can then informally blackmail you or your employer, for the benefit of an elected dictator-for-life living on the other side of the ocean, provides any "transparency" or "accountability" towards the community.

I think you're right, but that developing a sense of ethics and believing those ethics and morals down to your bones will make you not want to do certain things. People without empathy don't have trouble lying to, stealing from, or committing violence against other people - but those things feel wrong to me intrinsically, because I was raised to feel empathy. But empathy is taught. Seemingly immoral things can be everyday occurrences. For example, it used to be acceptable for husbands to beat their wives up, and now it's not. Probably most people truly believe it's immoral now, unless they grew up with their father regularly beating their mother.

I suspect empathy is mostly nature with some influence via nurture. Once you encounter a few genuine psychopaths who aren’t particularly good at hiding it, it sure seems like it’s just something innate to them.

Certainly you can instill reverence in people - give people a challenge that involves using a cross as a hammer to complete and they’ll recoil instinctively, but I think that’s just software tapping into something more akin to firmware.

This is just my conjecture, but I think that it's that psychopaths lack the capacity for empathy, and empathy is otherwise like a muscle in that it can be trained. I suspect this because I've grown more empathetic compared to when I was a kid, and some other people I've talked to said it was like that for them (not very scientific, I know). I remember being somewhat selfish and amoral.

I think it's a combination of the environment you grew up in, the behavior of the people you grew up with, the values you were raised with, and the education you received, and some of it is also purely self-driven. And so toddlers and little kids are like amoral sponges, since they're still developing their senses of justice, morality, and empathy.

> an example where philosophy and ethics are discussed in a secular setting

That's what the intellectual cafes of 18th/19th century were. In a more bastardized way, that's what pubs can be today.

This said, school and "politics" have always been the main locations for such arguments - "politics", after all, was effectively built as an alternative to religious establishments to discuss matters without pesky clerics around.

False beliefs are often much more instrumentally useful than true beliefs.

I notice I usually walk away from conversations with fellow believers about the nature of God, the Bible etc feeling closer to and more trusting of them even compared to if I talk with them about e.g. trolley problems or what their take on moral realism is, especially if I later confirm they in fact walk the walk by living in a way which agrees with those principles. There's just something about the religious framing that gives it that extra kick.

The actual question of whether God is real is irrelevant. I just assume they're playing ball the same way I am, and that's often enough to kickstart the friendship.

God is not a testable hypothesis. There is no empirical way to conclude God does not exist except by assuming that anything that cannot be tested does not exist. Such an assumption also rules out morality, as there is no empirical basis for that either.

Assuming you're utilitarian, you're working off of the untestable belief that making people happier has some property called 'goodness', and that there is some inherent value to it. But that doesn't even matter because happiness is a qualia that cannot be tested anyway.

So, while I agree that faith in God is not a prerequisite for morality, faith in something certainly is. And once you've allowed faith into your worldview, stating with certainty that God doesn't exist becomes inconsistent.

Faith in something doesn't need presuppose faith in anything supernatural.

And theists have no empirical basis for their morality either, because faith by definition is belief in the absence of such evidence. People just believe what they believe. I prefer to be fed rather than starve, I prefer peace to suffering, I prefer liberty to slavery. I'm a social being capable of empathy and extending my beliefs about myself to include my expectations for others. I prefer others be fed, rather than starve. I prefer others have peace rather than suffer. I prefer others have liberty rather than slavery. I believe human life has value because I value my own life, and therefore value the lives of others.

What do I need to have faith in, here, other than nature and mortality?

Faith in something that is the basis for any morality absolutely does presuppose faith in something supernatural. If you know of anything in the natural world that proves the existence of right and wrong, by all means let me know.

I don't disagree that theists lack empirical basis for morality, both because I don't think anyone does and because I don't believe there is an empirical basis for God.

But it doesn't sound like you have a morality*. It sounds like you have preferences. One doesn't decide one's preferences, and even if they did, they would need a morality to do so rightly. This suggests that your being a good person is strictly luck of the draw. If my friend Bob the sadist says he loves it when people starve, would you be in the right to tell him he's wrong? On what grounds?

*Don't take this the wrong way- I don't mean to insult you, and I fully expect you do have morality. I'm only criticizing the argument here.

>If my friend Bob the sadist says he loves it when people starve, would you be in the right to tell him he's wrong? On what grounds?

You first. You don't believe there is an empirical basis for God yet you believe morality absolutely presupposes faith in the supernatural. Presumably, you also consider yourself to have morality. On what supernaturally-derived basis would you (presumably) believe Bob is wrong? and given that the supernatural cannot be objectively proven, how does that faith differ from a preference, on your part?

On the basis of utilitarian notions of right and wrong, I would have no issue with saying that Bob is objectively wrong- he disagrees with what I claim is objectively right. If all I had were preferences, I could no more claim Bob was wrong to prefer to be a murderer than I could claim he was wrong to prefer to be an art teacher. I say, 'I wouldn't do that if I were you', he replies, 'Good thing you're not!', end of discussion. And then I guess he would probably murder me. Or worse: teach me art.

Faith also beats preference here in that, given the premise that it is good to reduce suffering and increase happiness, I arrive at the same conclusions about morally correct actions regardless of the time and place that my mind happens to exist in. I can align my actions to the right choice even if I was raised to prefer something else. A slave owner prefers that slavery exists; a utilitarian slave owner can see that that is wrong and free their slaves.

> God is not a testable hypothesis.

An activist god, in the old testament sense, would be rather visible.

This is stating as fact several things that have not and cannot be proven by tools such as the scientific method. Seems ironic, given the subject matter. :)

The list of claims made by religion which have been disproved by science is innumerable, and the list of claims made by science which have been disproved by religion does not exist. But sure, let's pretend religion and science are equally valid....

Hey now, you're moving the goal posts quite a bit there! :)

I was just pointing out that you said several things as if they were proven facts, and they are not. That's all.

>I was just pointing out that you said several things as if they were proven facts, and they are not. That's all.

The religious do that all the time, but only atheists ever seem to get called out for it. Why the double standard, I wonder?

I invite you to consider The Shroud of Turin (https://www.shroud.com/78exam.htm) and the documented miracles at Lourdes (https://www.lourdes-france.org/en/the-miracles-of-lourdes/).

God as defined by Jews/Christians as ‘being itself’ doesn’t seem disprovable. Especially if you believe that love is real in the whatever- sense.

> How do you square that with any sort of culture that values reality?

You examine all cultures and find that, despite their claims, none truly value reality. Then you choose to believe, or have experiences that lead you to believe, one that explicitly says that there is more to life than what you can see.

I am surprised this needs to be pointed out, but people generally believe their religion to be true and do not find it at odds with reality at all. That doesn't mean you have to agree with them just because they believe it, but it is certainly not the case that religion is false in a provable sense, nor that religiosity is incompatible with valuing reality.

Well since we ended up with the most popular religions being monotheistic, it follows that regardless of what is true, most religious people are wrong. We just can’t prove which ones.

His point is a criticism of the role of religion as a community accessible to everyone; what if you don't believe in it? What if you can't? This makes the idea that everyone should just join their local church group a non starter.

I feel this is a very 'Protestant' (for lack of better word) view of the situation.

If you don't believe in it, you should just do all the actions and move on as normal. This is the 'liturgical' approach to religion and doesn't require belief.

I myself have confessed many times to my priest a lack of belief, but by virtue of the fact I'm there, I'm clearly still practicing. I mean, as a very analytical person, sometimes I feel very skeptical, and sometimes I feel as if God obviously exists. But either way, it doesn't matter because the answer is unknowable by observation, so it's a choice to believe or not. But even if my choice feels strained, being liturgical[1] about it still provides the same benefits.

[1] By liturgical, I mean, doing the actions, like kneeling, standing, bowing, etc. This builds community independent of any belief.

On the contrary, most religions assert that their particular views are the _only_ valid ones -- and many require their adherents to actively proselytize, to try to convert others to their dogma.

These views are replete with many untestable and non-falsifiable axiomatic assumptions, which must be accepted on "faith."

That word means "accepting the validity of those axioms _despite_ their lack of congruence with reality."

The church that I was raised in and grew up in for the first 18 years of my life... I became a militant atheist when I left that church at 18, close to 30 years ago. In my 30s, I started to drift between Zen Buddhism, Druidry, wicca, paganism, looked into Daoism, and on and on it went. And I finally realized, quite recently, that I had a God-shaped hole running right through the center of me. I still haven't quite figured out what to do about that, I've been looking deeply into Eastern Orthodox Christianity because I find it very compelling, and I have no interest in going back to Protestantism and am deeply troubled by the Catholic Church and it's hierarchy, but I have my doubts and skepticism still.

Regardless, I personally find all of that to be vastly preferable to whatever the fuck is happening to us in the absence of Christianity.

I asked many of these same questions when I lost my faith. I found compelling answers as to why I had a god shaped hole in D.S. Wilson’s Darwin’s Cathedral. It’s taken 15 years, but I also finally have plans about what the fuck we should be doing about it.

As a low key non-religious person, I find the German Mennonites pretty appealing. They have a sort of DIY approach to religious practice and very little decorum. But AFAIK the US branch is much more radical, I'm not even sure if there are others than the Pennsylvania Dutch.

Protestants in Europe are also very different from the US btw - they are more moderate than Catholics, not less. I grew up Protestant and have always had doubts, which turned into being pretty sure that it's all bogus from age 20 or so. Having something to believe in is probably nice, but it doesn't work for me.

I (somewhat unknowingly) spent several months of immersion in a Hindu monastery. At least in the branch they practiced, they were very clear that your internal beliefs on the theology were far less important than doing the practices that will bring you benefits in this very lifetime—no need to reincarnate to enjoy your positive karma. Christianity puts too much emphasis on belief and not enough on rituals & practices to thrive in a skeptical public.

Catholic and Orthodox Christians still retain and practice vast repertoires of rituals. They are not thriving amidst our skeptical public.

What culture values reality?

In fact, how often is your own brain lying to you for one reason or another?

Religious pursuits of ‘why anything’ are true to the right hemisphere and false to the left hemisphere.

> religion isn’t true

What does this even mean?

> How do you square that with any sort of culture that values reality?

Is reality true? Like all these agents in the comment section below who claim to know the unknowable, are they true?

That model of reality you are describing, thinking that it is reality itself, is that true?

It seems to me that a lot of the "community" hole left by religion declining is being quickly filled in by politics, which itself is taking on quasi-religious attributes.

Maybe it always was one and the same.. separation of church and state in Western culture was a hard won, radical political innovation not very long ago. And Christians today are a highly motivated special interest group in the States, openly attempting to lock their social agenda into law. See also sharia law.

Separation of C/S at the time was about not instituting a state religion and protecting religious practice from the strong arm of the state (the only corporation we allow violence from).

> he primary purpose of religion was to form local communities and have others with shared values to rely on

I just don't think that is true for or to many, likely most, religious people. Community is an aspect but at its core it's a religion. You can't be a part of the community without believing, or at least pretending to believe, in the religion.

You can't because the only people remaining (or the overwhelming majority) in those communities are people who are actually religious and take the whole thing pretty seriously.

In the past (of course it depended on the exact time and place) occasionally going to church even if many treated it mostly as a formality was the default for most people. Even if you didn't, chances are that you couldn't ignore it entirely because you still had some links to the community surrounding it through family members, various organizations, events etc.

What you’re describing is basically Unitarianism.

Religion is a meta-organism that uses minds as it’s substrate.

Just like ordinary organisms, it undergoes mutations and evolution - its characteristics are seldomly 'designed'.

Without community to keep it alive, it will die out. So religions that include practices to tie communities together are at an evolutionary advantage.

Facebook makes money by advertising someone else's products, while religious organizations make money by advertising their own. Is the devil somewhere in those details? Could the disingenuousness of advertising be interfering with the desired authenticity of personal relationships?

> The mad rush to as quickly abolish religious practices in mainstream U.S. culture without any form of societal replacement is puzzling to me.

In the US, it's been a slow process over 35 years, since 1991.[1] England and Wales are much further along - believers are below 50%. But Islam is on the way up in the UK, at 6%.

The high-intensity religions, the ones that require religious activity once a day or more, seem to be thriving.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/how-u-s-reli...

The rise of Islam in UK is due to immigration from Islamic countries, not natives converting.

I'd say longer than that. I'd say religious participation in the USA has been declining since at least the 1970s.

See the chart in the article linked. The line is reasonably flat from 1972 to 1991, and then starts to climb linearly.

I understand what you mean, I grew up in a church with a youth group and group friends which I valued.

However I also grew up with constant anxiety about sin and hell. It still gets back to me when my insomnia is bad.

So churches and church membership aren't necessarily a net-positive. I too wish there was some sort of community my family could belong to. But I'm not taking my kids to church anytime soon.

> I also grew up with constant anxiety about sin and hell.

Erik Butler has a fantastic book on this overall subject called "The Devil and His Advocates" that you might be interested in.

Not all religious societies are like that. Doing it properly looks more like exercise towards a higher good than fear of failure.

I think it's unavoidable in Christianity. Even if one's immediate religious society doesn't believe in hell, it is trivially easy to find other societies which do, and other societies that believe that everyone is damned except for people who've accepted the 'right' concept in the 'right' way. I can't tell you how relieved I was when I realized I could become an Atheist and mostly put the matter out of my mind.

Quick edit: I'm aware there are a lot of theological and historical publications nature of hell and whether or not it is misunderstood. I knew that at the age of 12. It doesn't matter. No minister or theologian or historian can _prove_ that there is no hell and that I won't end up there.

God, Messiah, Heaven, Hell - we are into the area of the unknowable. We don't have training and testing data.

this is really odd to read, since almost all of the Protestant-related theology in the US West seems to have dropped evil and hell almost entirely. At a graduate theology seminar on the History of Religion in America, Professor Robert McDermott asked the group "How many of you believe in 'evil' ?" and only half the class raised their hands (about a dozen).

You are speaking of what is called "mainline Protestantism."

Catholicism is, by far, the largest Christian denomination in the US.

Moreover, large areas in the south, midwest, and California favor the "evangelical" and "fundamentalist" varieties of Protestant theology, where Hell (and inculcating mass fear of Hell) is very much the central concern today.

Your immediate local community likely does not have many of either group.

Speaking as a Christian I think Hell is often looked at the wrong way. It's easy to fall into, yes, but not because "you're just doing it wrong" but because "you want to". I can't speak for other denominations than Catholic, but no one goes to Hell because they just-didn't-know. They go to Hell because they want to serve someone other than God.

The reason to be afraid isn't "here's someone who's just waiting for you to fail" it's (speaking for myself) "I'm _very_ stubborn and _very_ set in my own ways. Can I do the work of letting God work in me? He's eager to work in me, but He won't without my consent. Can I die to myself to serve the good?"

What about those who never had a chance to hear about God? That is between them and God. But God isn't looking to throw them into Hell - if they go to Hell it is because they decided they'd rather serve "something other than the good" even if they never connected "the good" to God.

Ah yes, I "wanted to" think of hell as a lake of eternal fire that most of humanity, likely myself included, would be thrown into and gawked at by the virtuous. Certainly had nothing to do with what I was indoctrinated with from birth. You realize you literally are telling us we are "just doing it wrong"? Worse, that we're doing it wrong because we want to?!

Hell is a fantasy that causes more mental illness than any marginal reduction in antisocial behavior.

How many lifetimes were wasted fearing/sacrificing, arguing, killing, and dying over meaningless and unprovable silliness like heaven and hell? How many children scarred by things they read for themselves after years of being told it's--some measure of--the highest truth?

"Fall into" was a reference to the act of choosing "something other than God" in a permanent way (that is, "fall into Hell") not the act of being afraid of punishment (that is "fall into fear of Hell"). I am sorry that you have had to deal with such a fear!

I 'chose' God for decades until it became clear he/she/it doesn't exist any more than santa, the toothfairy, and leprechauns. So until there is some evidence besides vibes and evidence-free testimony, I'm choosing to believe there is no God.

Thankfully beliefs aren't permanent, or I'd still be anxious and miserable. Perhaps you should not permanently choose a god who has caused so much harm for no benefit.

I hope and pray that you are not anxious or miserable and that you can find your way to the path to permanent happiness and stick with it to the end!

The universal human intuition of the concept of God is equally valid as the human intuitions on causality that stands as the ultimate fundamentals of modern science. Math is the mother of all sciences, philosophy the root of math, human intuitions the root of philosophy. The very psychologist under his article we're talking, Jonathan Haidt, have proven this, that the concept of God exists from birth even in Japanese kids raised in Shinto culture, commenting 'extraordinary' on his research being an atheist himself.

There's no point in favoring one natural human intuition over the other.

Then the number of people througout history who claimed to have taken revelation from God must be evaluated for authenticity of their miracles, one of which can still be verified today as his entire life is preserved through formal chain of transmissions: Muhammad (pbuh). Jesus, we can't even agree on the exact wording of the revelation he received let alone his life.

> The universal human intuition of the concept of God is equally valid as the human intuitions on causality that stands as the ultimate fundamentals of modern science.

This makes no sense. There are myriad cognitive biases that prevent or hinder the ability to model reality, that may or may not be advantageous to an animal depending on the environment it is in.

Between Christianity as a false religion with its unintuitive teachings ultimately and rationally leading to atheism and the modern American way of life with its freedom extremism at the expense of everything elde, there's a third, albeit unthinkable to many, option: Islam.

We're doing great in terms of societal bonds.

Please don't start religious flame wars.

Two other contenders: Vedanta & Buddhism.

There was a post recently about dunbar's number and it seemed straightforward to me, while reading it, that what it's really revealing is what it takes to scale above dunbar's number and that what we call "religion" is exactly that "binding" and "reification".

"Religion" in this case is not just about religion either, but also nations. The U.S. has our gods, such as Washington & Hamilton, and places of worship such as the "temples" in D.C., but we've also censored leaders like Jackson & Lee, and torn down slave-owning statues.

We're living through a deconstruction of history and rebuilding an inverted digital world. I don't think it's been productive. It actually almost feels like an end to history to me.

Maybe go fishing?

Knowing that the US will never, in my lifetime, be high trust like it is in Japan at the moment means we have to focus on the seeds for helping push it towards that after we die.

> it was always completely obvious to me even as a child that the primary purpose of religion was to form local communities and have others with shared values to rely on.

In the religious community I grew up in, the idea that the purpose of the church was "community" was loudly vilified. There was an active purism regarding sincerity of belief and the centricity faith should have in one's life.

Of course, one can see how cult-like devotion and suppression of dissent are conducive to social cohesion, but as a young adult, I only wanted to get away from an environment that stymied my mind and spirit, and that feeling writ large has shuttered churches, I think.

> But it was always completely obvious to me even as a child that the primary purpose of religion was to form local communities and have others with shared values to rely on.

That is an atheist point of view. I grew up in religious environment too and people really believed in god. Some were hypocrites and some values stand in a real life way (commitment to not lie makes for the worst business), but the basic believe that god exist was really real. And when you play the part just for social reasons, then I think you are just a hypocrite. Which would be good reason for people to leave - so that they dont have to pretend.

> I believe no one is talking about this aspect of WFH either. It’s taking away maybe the last “socially expected” regular commitment to your local community.

I don’t get this part. The only time I had a job in my local community was high school. Most of the adults (which was 95+% of the employees) commuted 20-60 minutes to get to it, though, so even that wasn’t my local community. You’d never run into your coworkers at the park or the store because they went to totally different parks and stores. Same’s held for my career as an adult. Coworkers are rarely people you’ll see anywhere other than work unless you go way out of your way to make it happen.

My edit window’s gone, but thinking more on this: it seems to me that remote work makes it easier to be in one’s local community. Less time lost to commute, more time to do local stuff. Can work from the local coffee shop, library, or coworking space, all of which are likely to have a far higher proportion of locals in them than an office park halfway across the city would. Can have lunch out at a sandwich joint near your house, instead of one so far away that you’d rarely or never go to it if you didn’t have to commute to an distant office.

I see the way US cities are designed, with sprawling suburbs and lack of shared spaces as a key contributor. Where I'm at the parks are filled with people throughout the day. The density of the city also means people tend to know their neighbors and watch out for each other much more that I've seen in the burbs.

This is all a very valid set of concerns; not quite a new one, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone (2000), but definitely a Thing.

> The mad rush to as quickly abolish religious practices in mainstream U.S. culture without any form of societal replacement is puzzling to me.

People need to acknowledge how much the downside of this kind of closeness was conformism, enforced by shunning (or worse) the noncompliant. A lot of religious communities have coped incredibly badly with the sexual revolution of the 20th century; if the only foray of your church into politics is against abortion or LGBT freedom, it's not really surprising that young people and women are going to run in the opposite direction as soon as they get a chance - often facilitated by the Internet. While simultaneously responding to actual abuse with coverups and complicity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_c...

The sexual revolution is intrinsically linked to the lack of community. The sexual revolution is not actually about free sex. People have been having weird sex for centuries; with or without their partners knowing.

What is novel about the sexual revolution is that it dismissed any needs for norms. Over the past two decades we've seen non-religious attempts to reinstate those norms (consent, kink, safe words, etc). However, what's unpalatable to religious people is not the sex per se, but the lack of norms.

And we need norms to function as a community with a common culture. Throwing those out does not actually help.

You mention the sexual abuse by the Catholic church, but that was caused by the sexual revolution. At the time, the psychological community encouraged moving pedophiles around. The church was -- at the time -- attempting to modernize, and part of the modernization was listening to 'science', including psychologists. Psychologists at the time insisted these things could be cured and criminalization would not help.

The church is not the only organization to have been affected by this, but it is one of the few prominent examples of institutions being held accountable for it. The same ideology caused the German foster care scandals [1] [2].

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-exp...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Kentler

The Catholic sex abuse scandal was never about the actual abuse, which is presumed constant between religions. It was always about the coverup. Only the Catholic Church has the preexisting organization to pull off such a scandal; the others simply had controversial youth pastors who stopped showing up one day.

If there were any other groups with an organization capable of pulling off coverups, we'd never know about it, because they would have covered it up.

I'm not talking about youth pastors. I'm talking about foster care (Germany) and public schooling in the US [1] [2] [3] and lots of other places.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oversight-failures-allow-sexual...

[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/has-media-ignored-sex-abuse-in-...

[3] https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/...

> A lot of religious communities have coped incredibly badly with the sexual revolution of the 20th century; if the only foray of your church into politics is against abortion or LGBT freedom

IMO, at least for Catholics, it is the Church's insistence that condoms and birth control are sinful that led to the mass defections from belief in the legitimacy of Church teaching. Yes, even more so than anti-homosexual rhetoric or the sex abuse coverups.

It's an attitude of "these delusional celibate people care too much about abstract deductive logic, not empirical observations."

There isnt a rush to abolish religious practices.

There is a rush from many to just leave it.

I read the article, it has one major fatal flaw - people don't WANT those old communities, especially religious communities he describes.

People are seeking community, and finding it, elsewhere.

Sports, hobby groups, book clubs? There are plenty of options to meet like-minded people other than churches.

Chess clubs in my city mostly closed down due to online games. I remember the largest club owner complaining of this in the early 2000s

The extent to which such a list is accurate and complete is the extent to which it’s a great list of startup ideas to destroy some community institution, make it impossible to do without an app, and put ads on it.

Maybe in your experience. It isn't in mine. You can make due with email lists and flyers and word of mouth and if someone tries to push an app for it everyone is welcome to ignore it.

Yeah, this really is the key. I've moved several times as an adult, and my new friend group always comes from doing sports or some hobby regularly with the same group of people.

Religious places didn't use to be indoctrinating. Nowadays they mostly are, because religions have to justify them economically.

My guess is that "place" have become a way too expensive good, that people just can't afford to share for free.

Religious places were always indoctrinating, they were just the norm for such a long time people didn't recognize such. It was just the thing you did.

Libraries are a great place to be, enjoy, learn, and relax, but a terrible place to meet new people. You're not really supposed to talk, and most people don't go there expecting to interact with a stranger or strike up a conversation.

It depends. Many libraries host events on a regular basis where socialization is half the point.

Libraries are trying to do that (with community events, conference rooms, etc.) though. Depends on the library.

I hear you, but it sounds like you’re saying you want program that delivers high value without paying for it.

The way to make this happen is get out there and volunteer your big dollar software engineer time to make it happen. Use all of the knowledge about how to get things done that you get from reading HN, join a team, and start building.

My volunteering experience has been amazing, but there were some negative experiences where it was clear we should have required more buy-in or up front investment.

I'm willing to help, but as one person, I can only do so much. Hyper-locally, it's actually a problem of community here instead of money anyway. There's a half-way decent maker-space, but it's all old men. Think "ham radio guys" stereotype. They're knowledgeable, but without any young blood (and the artistic pursuits younger people tend to bring) it's not fun.

May I ask where you're based in? I'm a little intrigued.

Lincoln, Nebraska

I've had the exact same feeling. I think this is some latent cultural zeitgeist that more people are starting to notice.

My thought was to start a "philosopher's club", for Platonic friendships. Right now it's just me and one neighbor meeting every 2 weeks for coffee, but I think an ideal size might be around 3-4 "regulars" plus 2-5 sporadic attendees. Big enough to get boisterous but small enough to carpool.

You could even go so far as to say that third spaces that are tied to political, religious, or other types of groups are "monetized" in the sense that they exist to further the cause of growing that group.

What's nearly extinct is neutral third spaces with zero agenda.

I suppose parks (national, provincial/state, or just local) and libraries are neutral.

Perhaps this was always true, but it seems for a brief time places like shopping malls were not as concerned as much somehow with having purely immediately profitable people inside and that’s why they were able to be that third place.

Hopefully in time a new generation of voters will want to fund more third places with taxes, because that seems to be the way to get long lasting third places that really do serve their purpose without an agenda.

One of the major issues with libraries these days is that because a lot of cities want to pretend really hard that homelessness doesn't exist, libraries end up as the only social resource available to many homeless people, which leads to other people avoiding them.

In a few of the local libraries near me homeless people occupy the bank of public computers and are frequently watching hardcore pornography. I'm terrified of my young children seeing that.

My local library employs internet filters, similar to parental control software for your home. This seems to significantly reduce porn watching.

> we've doubled down on mediating social interactions through economic relationships

We've doubled down on marketplaces to mediate interactions because they are rational systems. Rational systems like marketplaces, elections, and bureaucracies are the sine qua non of liberalism, which both ends of the political spectrum advocate for in their own ways. The right typically advocates more for marketplaces and corporations (i.e. market-based bureaucracies) and the left typically advocates for more government managemeant (election based bureaucracies).

Rational systems are in constrast to local cultures based on tradition, biology, and shared history. Its why there is so much homogenization in farming, music, clothing, architecture, etc.

The upside is that rational systems allow for scale, propserity, and individual liberty on an unprecedented level. On the downside, rational systems are fundamentally dehumanizing.

We mediate everything through marketplaces because we've don't have any place for non-rational organizing principles (locality, biology, shared history, etc)

It's kinda impressive how often Marx's 19th century diagnoses of the ills of capitalism prove themselves true in the 21st century.

I'm in my 30s but I'm feeling this so hard.

Growing up we used to have these kid/youth centres that were run by local Catholic organizations. We used to hang out there after school. Ostensibly the point was that there'd be 30 minutes of catechism doctrine, but we didn't really care about that. To us it was just a the place where everyone would be. I miss that so much. A place where you can just go and meet people your age, without any reason to be that and without having to pay an entrance fee.

Now as a grown up we have community centers, which are run, not by the Church, but by sort of hippie-lefty people. But it's not really the same atmosphere, because you go there, and it's just one demographic of people. It's not quite the same.

There's also pubs and climbing gyms which people often use as low effort places where one can mingle, but again, it's not quite the same. I don't like drinking multiple times a week and I really don't like climbing.

You don't like being drunk that much, or like climbing, but, were your parents really that Catholic? We, as humans, need a dream to build towards, be in service of, and find our place in. What are we doing here and why are we doing it? For those of us who haven't figured it out yet, attaching to someone else's purpose gives us one and we don't have to figure it out ourselves.

You need to find religion, just don't call it that. Find your dream that's impossible and work towards making it possible. figure out your role in making that possible. and then work on it. as hard as you can. find others along the way.

Parent poster doesn’t want to have to drink to socialize. And bar meets are just that. It’s actually a huge problem in society.

Ever stream something or go to the cinema ? What does it show you? You’re happy => you drink to celebrate. You’re sad => drink out of sorrow. You want to hang out with friends => you go for drinks. DEFCON for example perpetuates that same behavior.

Sure, one part is loss of community, but the other half is toxic social behavior that is perpetuated by Hollywood. The people that don’t like this but want to belong will perpetuate this cycle for fear of getting ostracized.

In most communities there's no longer much social stigma against going to a bar/pub and ordering non-alcoholic beverages. The latest non-alcoholic beers are actually pretty good. (I do understand that the environment itself can be difficult for recovering alcoholics.)

I used to go out not-drinking with my coworkers (I've been a teetotaler my entire life). The place we went to had free refills for sodas so I downed half a dozen glasses of Fanta while my coworkers were paying $3-$5 a beer. Seems ridiculous to me how much people pay for alcohol.

A bunch of places now have "mocktails" which are just cocktails without alcohol so you can one up your alcoholic friends by spending $3-5 per glass of sugar water.

Visit SF, you can easily spend $10 on a mocktail out here.

Kinda makes sense, all the cost is in the labor and the cleaning, a shot of vodka is like $0.20

The spirit in a decent cocktail is closer to ~$3-5.

I would assume there is no vodka in a mocktail...

Some portion of alcohol prices are a barrier to entry to create the desired crowd. You might not want to attract the type of person looking to get shitfaced for cheap. Usually, non alcoholic non tap water is not way cheaper, especially if it is a “mocktail”.

Of course, some portion is also high rents. And I have never seen a restaurant or bar outside of Costco with free refills for anything other than tap water though.

Lots of places around me have free refills on fountain soft drinks and tea. In fact, it is pretty rare for a restaurant to not have free refills on things like sodas. Something fancier like a craft lemonade or whatever wouldn't have free refills though.

This is true for a lot of the places I travel to within the US as well.

Interesting. I’m most familiar with west coast and northeast, and can’t say I have ever seen that.

I've been to Patchogue, Montreal, Toronto, Cleavland, Myrtle Beach, Rehoboth, Baltimore, Louisville, Indianapolis, Nashville, Kansas City, Houston, Austin, Taos, Denver, Chicago, and a few other cities in the past couple of years. The majority of restaurants I visited had free refills for fountain drinks. The biggest places that I went to that didn't have free refills were places like food stands and what not, but that's expected.

But if you have to pay an expensive entry into that space, you will naturally limit who will go there and how often. And I do not just means "excludes people who get shitfaced". I mean "excludes people who are conscious about spending money or simply do not have super high salaries".

Yes, that is also sometimes an intended barrier to entry.

while there are clearly cash grabs by the industry, the money for drinks goes towards the bar's rent/staff, so going there and not spending any money doesn't help the establishment's continued existence. depending on the establishment, that may or may not be a concern.

Well, you can also go to the café.

The world religion comes from Latin meaning ‘to bond with ritual’

It’s not very smart to not have a ritual of community building in one’s life.

It should be noted that this wasn't free - as you said, you had to sit through a 30 minute ad before participating.

Ironically, to meet your definition of free you would have to violate the definition of community provided in the article.

Consider the following:

1. The chief unit and source of community is the family. The married couple, the family, have been deteriorating for some time. It shouldn't be surprising that the consequences would spread outward. Societies are a manner of extended family organized according to the principle of subsidiary.

2. American culture especially is hyperindividualistic. It conceives of people not as persons, but as individuals, which is to say, atomic units that might enter into various transactions, if it suits them. There is no sense of moral duties I did not consent to. There is no real sense of a common good that is a superior and prior good. If you deny the social nature of human beings, and conceive the social sphere as transactional, a sphere for odious exchanges and extraction and gorging, then why should we be surprised that social life has gone south?

3. A common culture binds people together and give them a common heritage, a language without which you cannot communicate. Culture is far more than that, and I do not mean to belittle or instrumentalize it (some are already instrumentalizing religion, which is not the purpose of religion, even if it has that effect). But with the decay of ethnic culture and its replacement with an empty corporate pop culture (note how much discussion revolves around the latest episode of a show), we are robbed of a common identity. This explains the identity crises in the US. Subcultures, racial ideologies, sexual ideologies, and so on are just attempted substitutes for ethnic identity. Given how unsuitable they are for this purpose, it is also unsurprising that people feel alienated from society, as there really is no real society, just some people coexisting.

4. What we call "religion" is a fancy word for worldview with a superlative highest good that is worshiped and a tradition orienting us in life and our ultimate end according to it. Everyone has a religion, in that sense, because someone takes something to be the ultimate good. It's impossible otherwise, because it is by means of the ultimate good that we understand and order all other goods in relation to it. The religion of the US is liberalism (as in Hobbes, Locke, and Mill, not any particular partisan affiliation; all American parties presuppose liberalism). In this liberal worldview, freedom as absence of constraint is worshiped, hence the preoccupation with "transgression" and "crossing boundaries" and so on. It is an evangelical religion, concerned with bringing the good news of liberal freedom to the world. Of course, as many throughout history have noted, freedom thus understood is a recipe for disaster, and not freedom in any real sense. To be free is to be able to do what is good as determined by your human nature, which is the same as saying the freedom to be what you objectively are, not in opposition to it. Thus, I am not free when I become a drug user, but I am free when I attain self-mastery and self-restraint, much as a man on horseback is more free as horseback rider when his horse is obedient to his rationally informed will. We are free to be what we are when we attain this mastery, in light of objective truth, over ourselves, our appetites, our passions, our intellects, our wills, etc., what we used to call virtue. The opposite, vice, is a recipe for misery and the worst kind of enslavement that can occur. In light of that, and given how indulgent we are, how our economies cater to and feed the worst with pornography, excessive food, buying stuff, and how, generally speaking, we worship consumption and embrace a view of life that consists of consuming (even people, sexually speaking, including in our imaginations and through various media), again, why the surprise that we are miserable? We are incapable of healthy relationships, and functioning as human beings. It takes effort to become human. It's not a given that just falls in your lap.

> The chief unit and source of community is the family.

This view stems from Judeo-Christian beliefs. The very invention of marriage was a separation of community, where men wanted ownership of women and their children.

I also wonder if you're fully aware of how much you've attempted to repackage the original sin in your comment.

Which communitarian society is less sexist? Best afaik, all the community minded societies are significantly more sexist. The individualism is one of the things that makes it easier to push and argue against it.

I think this would imply that non-Western societies (or even Western ones before the spread of Christianity) aren't organized out of families? Also, what is a "shotgun wedding" in this worldview?

Why do you think a recognization of the very human tendency to do stuff which harms either you or the society a remark for the unintuitive Christian concept of original sin?

Marriage goes way beyond the Jewish and Christian spheres. It's a far-reaching anthropological value. Strictly speaking it's a natural state, which means it isn't an invention. What we're missing most of all in contemporary times is an appreciation and acceptance of our contingency as beings. For want of this restful appreciation of what we really are, we have a tendency to become angst-ridden, semi-nihilistic types trying to find our bearings through acts of will and experiencing misery because we can never get there from here by traveling that path.

> This view stems from Judeo-Christian beliefs.

It's really not, as marriage is present in pre-Christian belief and in non-Christian traditions.

Does it look exactly like Christian marriage / family? No

But it does share common characteristics. There is a single man, and one or more women who bear his children. The man and woman have particular authorities over their children, and as the children grow there is a system to determine how they inherit their parent's resources, and then perhaps some duties they owe their parents.

We see this in the Roman paterfamilias system, the Confucian filial piety system, the various Indic philosophies, the ancient Egyptian family system, the Babylonian familial system, etc. Together these encompass the basis of the vast majority of civilization.

You're right that in hunter gatherer tribes they may have not even understood how reproduction works, but given that these social systems are not sophisticated enough to run our society, I'm happy to just ignore them. There were hunter gatherer tribes that believed that prince phillip was a god; they're not that sophisticated

Not at all. Family units are extremely widespread in cultures around the world, including those that have had little or no contact with Judeo-Christian beliefs. Nearly all cultures have them.

You talk and sermon awfully much against individualism, shouldn't you quit being online and do some family or society work? Don't tell me you're done already, that would be hypocritical.

Why do you seem to consider surfing HN a vice or a sin?

I don't?

I think he (she?) makes some good points about why community & social life are falling apart and what might be done about it.

JD Vance talked about this a lot in his RNC speech. He says:

> You know, one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. And to be clear, America was indeed founded on brilliant ideas, like the rule of law and religious liberty. Things written into the fabric of our Constitution and our nation. But America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.

And he's right. America does have a culture and social norms that are particular to this nation. Ask any immigrant, like my own parents, and they will tell you stories of adapting to them (if they've assimilated properly).

And yet, many Americans refuse to acknowledge that these exist, and if they do, some work actively against it, to disestablish them, as if that'd be good for a country.

IMO, this is the cause of the great divide in this country. On one side you have people that think that social norms and culture should exist and be protected by the government (to an extent) and on the other you have those that believe the norms are harmful. To the former group, the various 'small' changes proposed by the latter group feel 'gross' because they reduce community cohesion, even if any one particular instance of letting go of a norm isn't going to cause that much trouble.

See all the debate on whether English should be a national language for a good illustration of this whole phenomenon independent of most of the culture war issues.

This is not to say that America has no ideas, but any group of people pursuing a common goal is not just the idea, it's also their culture. For example, I've worked at several companies competing in the same space, and despite having the same goal (dominate the industry), the cultures are extremely different, to the point where you feel comfortable in one, and uncomfortable in the other. That's how people are, and we should recognize and acknowledge that.

I think more broadly you’re talking about the concept of “third places” and this has been suggested as another reason for decline of community. However, my argument is that the Internet replaced the “third place” for most people given it’s where people are spending time in terms of attention and resources rather than necessarily physical presence.

And how is that compliant with the human biology?

Free internet spaces (think old school forums, some subreddits, discord channels, of MMORPGs servers for instance) are pretty much OK, especially when the population is stable and not too big (idk how big is tolerable, but it's likely under 10k). The problem is that these ones too have declined a lot in favor of algorithmically managed internet places which attempt to boost “engagement” by using evolutionary psychology and neuroscience tricks.

You didn't answer my question. How is internet compatible with human biology, which was not designed for (no matter whether you believe in God or evolution) a technological lifestyle?

Are you saying that a group where everyone has to be a catholic is somehow diverse?

Also, nothing will ever be like the stuff we had when we were kids. Because in all our minds, that is the norm.

It can be quite diverse in other factors besides the religion. e.g. mixing of race, class, politics, culture, ect

> Are you saying that a group where everyone has to be a catholic is somehow diverse?

You've clearly never lived in an area with high density of a specific religious group. At a certain threshold, yes, there can be more diversity in a single religious congregation than is present in most local environments short of the local public school.

If most of your neighbors are Catholic, then you'll often just show up for the Catholic events regardless of whether you deeply believe it because that's where the community is. That's essentially what OP said about their own experience—listening to the catechism was just the tax to pay for the community event.

I actually did. The people who went to these centers were definitely not diverse in any sense of the word.

And the range of accepted ideas or opinions, political or cultural, was remarkably small. Kids who went to these centers were very alike. That is why it felt so good to them .

The Catholic church is racially and socioeconomically quite diverse, and produces the highest rate of interracial marriages of any religious group, and even slightly edges out atheists.

It's as diverse as any company or organization championing diversity, because obviously anyone part of one particular movement / entity is not diverse in one axis of their life (institutional allegiance)

The youth clubs were not socioeconomically diverse, where I have seen them. Nor politically or culturally diverse.

In here, they are also as racist as everyone else conservative, but also we are fairly homogenous.

We still have like ‘kids community center’ things in Japan, and it’s just fantasic how you can go there and have a whole building filled with kids and toys/books for ages 1-14ish, and all free. It doesn’t even have any sponsors, it’s government run. Unfortunately these are also all slowly disappearing.

It goes by various names (“trad life”, etc.) but whatever you call it the premise is dystopian and terrifying: people now become celebrity influencers on the back of appearing to live some semblance of a historically normal life.

For many that’s now the unattainable dream: a community with values that sit still long enough to even aim at upholding them, a robust partnership early enough in life to start a family the biological way, children who can look forward to the same.

On the surface there is a culture war around this, and it’s true that the old model had serious problems with admitting other lifestyles. That needed fixing, but not by obliterating the model that works for most people with overwhelming precedent.

The real culprit as always is the “monetization” of everything, a baton that has now firmly been passed from finance people to Silicon Valley people.

The #1 post on Y-Combinator’s news site is in some sense the central locus in the observable universe for this.

And even "economically viable" here is actually shorthand for "able to provide short-term monetary gain which can be captured by a private entity". Because things like quality education, parks, non-car centric infrastructure, etc. are actually EXCELLENT investments even from an economic perspective.

A lot of the things people used to do on the Internet for fun, they now do for money or "points" (or the subconscious desire to do for money if they become successful enough). In the past, things you posted online tended to get a small number of manual responses from people you had a chance of forming an actual relationship with. Now, a good deal of interaction is mediated by a corporate algorithm (or an up/downvote button). People are also a lot more aware of automated actors (ie. bots).

In general, people seem to do a lot less unstructured leisure activity and social interaction. Quantitative goals are imposed by social expectations, gamified ad-funded software, or economic anxiety.

Be sure to like and subscribe.

You could extend this even further to discussions about media that was traditionally used to escape, like sports, movies, even books. A lot of interactions regarding sports is focused on "advanced analytics" and highlighting obscure data points above all else, e.g., Team X is the fourth team on the West coast since 1970 to score Y points through N games. People rarely talk about how much they enjoy a movie, but everyone is quick to discuss box office numbers and Rotten Tomatoes scores. Books too now have an entire subculture associated with their economic framing ("buy books from local bookstores!") rather than actual discussions of the material.

I miss the pointless internet.

Me too. Nowadays if you die on the internet, you die in real life!

https://onecheckbox.com/

The rise of (lowercase L) liberalism and replacement of feudal society’s requirement that you be part of the community with the commodification of every relationship we have is the root cause here. We’re just late enough in this transition to really feel it, and people are looking at symptoms and seeing cause.

This is so true. I'm a practicing Catholic which gives me the advantage of having access to a big community and I even met my wife through Church events after Mass so it's wonderful. Also our Church offers many other programs like counseling, support groups, volunteering, career opportunities, etc. Of course no one should be forced to attend "Church" just to find a community, that's silly but its benefits are pretty clear.

However for non-religious people there is really no third place to meet. Additionally, the truth is that outside of religious communities, people are not having children and thus it creates a further sense of isolation and loneliness. The best one can do is perhaps join meetup groups for hobbies but most of those cost money and may not be welcoming to everyone.

I would also say that this can be a cultural phenomenon, for example in my home country (Iran) people are always meeting and socializing, at 10PM streets are bursting with activities and it's very easy to find people to connect with. In the west, unfortunately it's much harder and society is more focused on the individual rather than the collective so to approach a stranger in the street feels like a risk as they might consider your actions rude, disruptive or invading their personal space.

I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and I have had the same observation as you that the access to community is so helpful.

> people are not having children and thus it creates a further sense of isolation and loneliness

I don't know about that, I think in the US it's more that parents end up spending more time with other parents than anything, notably because kids are overscheduled, so as a childless person you don't see folks with children as much.

> at 10PM streets are bursting with activities and it's very easy to find people to connect with

I mean yes, if you have children and you have to be back at work at 9am, most folks aren't going to the bar every day (although those types of people do exist!)

Even economically mediated third places are being phased out in some respects. When I was a teen we often hung out at a local McDonalds. Super cheap food, free refills, as long as you didn't cause trouble you could stay for awhile. I went back there somewhat recently and I was shocked at the difference. It's been remodeled to have less seating, no refills, most of the lobby/counter area is touchscreens, and of course prices are way, way up compared to when I was a teen (which was not THAT long ago). It felt sterile inside, it was clear they didn't want you hanging out for long. Not a teen in sight.

I have seen some cities building skate and bike parks, I love seeing kids and teens doing physical activities with friends.

Teens also used to work at McDonalds. Now it's middle aged people who look and act like life has been kicking them in the face since they were born.

I also used to eat there quite often but I almost never go now because I don't like waiting 10 or 15 minutes for a sullen, indifferent person to hand me a bag of food that might or might not contain what I ordered and like you said the prices are crazy.

That’s a sign of a good economy. The “hot waiter/waitress” index is real as hell in economic circles for a reason.

I constantly see people lament some loss of "free" third places that apparently used to exist and be so common but no longer exist. What are these free third places which used to but no longer exist?

When I was a child my parents used to sit in front of our house and drink tea. The neighbors would do the same and all children would play together. But thanks to longer working hours and the fear induced by the 24/7 news cycle no one dares sit outside anymore. My nieces don't know their neighbors.

When I was a teenager there was a specific square where one would go after school (or during if you skipped class that day). As far as I know my nieces don't have such a tradition.

Less clear example: in my country of origin those living in apartments used to have monthly meetings to discuss any issues they had about the building. People used to complain going to those, but at least you'd get an overview of who is who. I believe these meetings are gone, replaced by email. No one complains about them anymore but, at the same time, no one knows who their apartment neighbors are.

My children are still a bit too young, but there are lots of kids that play in my neighborhood in DFW. The city park at the end of my street has families playing, people out walking their dogs, fishing in the ponds. People play sports at the fields in the park. People hang out on their front patios when it's not 100F outside, have trunk or treats at the park, etc.

The apartments I've lived in the past several years had get together events from time to time. I also met a lot of neighbors going to the gym or hanging out around the pool or playing billiards in the clubhouse.

None of this seems radically rare from my experiences in Houston and DFW.

> But thanks to longer working hours

Average amount of time spent working has trended downwards for nearly every income group for every decade except at best the last decade where it's been stabilizing around ~33 to 36 hours a week or 1700 - 1800 hours a year. I'm not specifying a country because I don't have to, the only country that has actually trended upwards in working hours is China.

Very true. Long term effects are often neglected when framing considerations from a purely economic perspective, especially when these are externalized costs, like public health.

IMO the two culprits are high rents and efficient capital markets. Definitely many factors contributing to the first, but one of them is also the efficiency of capital markets.

Basically it's too expensive to make spaces available for below market rate due to the direct cost of rents (a middle or upper-middle class person could drop $1000/month on a passion project, but not so easily $5k/month) and there's a very high opportunity cost to forgoing revenue/profit, because you can find buyers willing to buy you out for 3-25x incremental profit. That opportunity cost makes it tempting for any community space to instead chase profit. But it also makes non-residential property more expensive because you're bidding against companies that are able to convert incremental $1000/mo profit to $50k-100k in realized value, even if you aren't intending to do that.

Rents themselves are very competitive not just from low supply but also because technology has made the rental market very "efficient"/liquid - it's easy to market a property and accurately price it, so sweetheart deals/underpriced leases are difficult to find. Plus rental properties themselves have been very well financialized as well - increases in incremental revenue/profit of commercial real estate can be recognized as many-times-more increases in equity by lenders, which can be accessed by loaning against the equity. So sweetheart deals are more costly to lessors than before.

I don’t remember where I read this, but I remember reading recently how somebody justified their decision to leave “the city” to move to a rural area, with the phrase “I was tired of competing with my neighbors”.

I they were trying to convey sense you describe, of intense economic pressure to make a certain income to pay for a certain living or working space, or alternatively be kicked out because there are ten people in line waiting to take your space.

Perhaps a healthy culture cannot survive this degree of “efficiency”.

A lot of people seem to cite religious communities, if anything. It's consistently odd to me that no one on Hacker News ever seems to have been into sports. For me, the third places and communities of my youth were all oriented around some kind of physical athletic activity. This was mostly basketball personally, presumably because I passed 6 feet tall in 7th grade. Every park in the area and every school had outdoor courts and you'd just go down there early in the day with a ball, shoot around, wait for other people to show up, and play some pickup ball. The majority of my closest friends were just people I played basketball with.

It didn't need to be this. Richer kids might have been into swimming and water polo. I got into volleyball later and ad hoc sand courts were all over the place. Most of the parks near me also had tennis courts and I played tennis quite a bit. Even the more counter culture kids who weren't into team sports often did some combo of skating, surfing, and snowboarding and bonded over that.

Some of this is obviously mediated by where you happen to live. Southern California has a lot of open spaces, beaches and mountains, and the weather is pretty temperate all year. As much as Hacker News laments suburbs, the sprawl also means there are a lot of parks because there is so much space.

I've gravitated more toward individual athletic pursuits in middle age, so I'm not really involved in sporting communities any more. Seemingly, though, all this cheap, free to the consumer infrastructure in the form of concrete courts with nets still must exist, no? Nobody ever expected parks to turn a profit. They were just a thing cities and counties were expected to provide out of tax revenue and they're a minuscule portion of that compared to expenditure on schooling and law enforcement at the municipal level. There can't be any economically good reason to put them on the chopping block.

I believe this is what Marx termed "commodity fetishism" in the first chapter of Capital.

> Adorno was born a German Jew at the end of the nineteenth century; he saw Hitler come to power via popular vote; and, in 1941, he was forced to flee Germany for the United States. Once there, however, he observed conditions of isolation and aloofness that made him worry: post-war American culture looked, to his eye, too much like pre-war Germany. The post-war “baby boom” had resulted in the growth of the American suburbs, sprawling sections of land developed for first-place functionality (private residence) and located within commuting distance to second-place nuclei (cities, office buildings, places of work). Adorno watched Americans shuttle back and forth in their cars between work and home, and he critiqued what he saw as ever-deepening habits consistent with conditions of social alienation. “He who stands aloof runs the risk of believing himself better than others and misusing his critique of society as an ideology for his private interest,” Adorno argues in his 1951 work Minima Moralia. In other words, Adorno says, isolation begets feelings of superiority, but not solely because the isolated individual lacks opportunities for comparison; rather, isolation begets superiority because the isolated individual has no audience but himself, no one to receive (and, perhaps, critique) his image of himself, to test whether or not it is even accurate.

--Sheila Liming, "Hanging Out" (2023)

This was essentially brought to us by neoliberalism. It's covered well in the documentary series 'The Century of The Self' (freely available on YouTube).

There are many different definitions of 'left' and 'right'. One perspective that can be useful is to think in terms of 'collective' and 'individualistic'. On this axis, neoliberalism is firmly to the right (not in the centre as is often portrayed). Communities are collective by definition and neoliberalism is inherently anti-community.

When I was younger I was always confused by the incessant political drive to 'privatise' everything despite the obvious bad outcomes. On the whole, the cost of services didn't go down, they didn't improve, and they didn't become more efficient. The opposite would happen, despite the promises to the contrary.

My eureka moment was when I realised that it really was simply about ideology. The essential aim was not to improve anything. It was to ensure all activity was turned into a 'market transaction' so as to provide those with capital more opportunities to invest. From that point of view, the push for privatisation makes perfect sense.

We have been fooled into selling our communities for profit (as if that's the only way to improve our lot).

Capitalism has made its way into absolutely everything. Every piece of modern life is financialised and transactional. It is sad and sickening and weird how few even notice it.

Great response.

Yes, corporations and governments aren't great parents. But then neither are parents, if they allow corporations and government free reign over developing minds.

The spike in young Asian and white male suicides is the discrimination against them. See here where only 15% of them who are in the academic top ten percent are admitted vs 57% of black students in the top ten percent. https://nypost.com/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-acti...

End all racism.

What a shocker, community ceases to exist when people living in a economic zone have literally nothing in common, other than being bipedal humanoids that are enslaved to banks.

This guy seems to think his city is special by not allowing kids to have phones in school but the thing is I've heard this claim of special status from a lot of places lately and in my own city kids have never been allowed to have phones at school so I am starting to think this is actually just a widespread and quite obvious practice.

Every group is cultish nowadays. God forbid if you have your own opinion anymore.

Mental health problems are the result of taking animals (humans) out of their natural environments and giving them phones with addictive apps and telling them that they should work instead of having children and growing their families.

Cooperations eat,prey and consist of isolated individuals integrating into a artificiql "subsetsociety" which is why individual progressive society is the colon of the filter feeder beast.

As in most spheres, the ruthless pursuit of 'efficiency' in social interactions has led to a less resilient society.

I think quality of the community matters here. There are a lot of "not real" people in our society.

There are so many candidates for causes here. Thinking about and watching climate change can't be good for, say, a teenager imagining their future. Of course, that teenager is also watching the world not coming together to solve this problem so you could say the situation is connected to "loss of community" in a way.

I wonder if there's any useful parallels to children and teenagers growing up during the Cold War - that feels somewhat analogous, at least in the terms of a looming threat that could be solved by more cooperation.

I'm reminded of Hypernormalization's portrayal of teens in the USSR. It's not just the impending doom, it's the dissolution of facts and the implicit knowledge that your leaders are super-predators with goals antithesis to your well-being.

I know it's hyperbole, but anywhere you look it feels like nobody is really invested in the future - that everyone's just trying to cash out ASAP and run away to the "safe place" of a gated community or something.

> it's the dissolution of facts and the implicit knowledge that your leaders are super-predators with goals antithesis to your well-being.

Boy, that sounds vaguely familiar.

> Thinking about and watching climate change can't be good for, say, a teenager imagining their future.

That doesn't make sense. Kids in previous generations had to grow up with things like the omnipresent threat of nuclear annihilation, which had greatly faded into the background until very recently. Also (at least in the 80s) destruction of the environment was a an issue kids were made very aware of. At least when it comes to this teen mental health crisis, the 70s and 80s are often understood to have been far better.

I think pointing to climate change as a cause of the teen mental health crisis is a good illustration of how issue activists can twist and distort perceptions.

I don’t disagree completely but I think one could argue that while we had that threat, the government and people were in agreement that it was a problem to be addressed.

The equivalent today would probably be the United States having a few token nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union stockpiling nuclear weapons, and 30% of the country largely in charge denying that the Soviet Union even exists.

The latter scenario is probably more hopeless and frustrating.

There were plenty of people denying that the Soviets and communism at large was a threat.

Not in any important ways. The mainstream of the US and the entire government was focused on the Soviet Union as an existential threat.

I don't think increasingly poor mental health has much to do with climate change, but the threat of nuclear war is a bad comparison. Bombs either fall or don't. Climate change is a creeping, progressive issue that's visibly worse every few years, and the government has effectively said that that there will be no intervention.

I don't think I can disagree strongly enough.

Creeping changes are something you can adapt to and get used to. Nuclear war was (and still is to an extent) a looming boogeyman whose simultaneous distance and nearness, slowness and quickness makes it a literal nightmare horror-show. I mean, it's a literal sword of Damocles.

> and the government has effectively said that that there will be no intervention.

The government said that about nuclear war, too. No one has ever seriously considered getting rid of the bombs.

The average person isn't so blind they don't see the changes. The frog-boiling experiment is a myth. When there are state-spanning fires that darken the sky across the whole country every year, and hurricanes strong enough to shut down city infrastructure are a regular occurrence, and crops fail and lakes run dry and insects that were so thick twenty years ago you couldn't see through them can no longer be found, people notice. I think these things add up to much more psychological damage than the abstract fear of missiles, even if most don't connect it to climate change directly.

Majority of kids and teens do not care about that, as much as we’d assume. They are aware, but their day to day is what is important to them.

Friends, relationships, drama — they are kids.

It’s so much more than that. It’s the continually enshittification of literally everything. It's a hypercapitalist hellscape.

That is not true. Many things are much better now than 20 years ago.

Not mentioning even poor western people are living life in better conditions than the richest people lived 300+ years ago.

Things in isolation may be better, but the totality is far worse.

Rather opposite: thighs in isolation may be worse, but the totality is better than ever.

I would say the biggest cause is the endless feed of bad news(good news does not sell well) coupled with unrealistically high expectations social media gives to the people.

Im not a teenager, but really climate change is not _the_ concern I have about world that makes me disilusioned about our society. Its more the world-scope corruption and everpresent dog-eat-dog mentality thats keeping me disinterested from improving anything.

I don't understand why one wouldn't see inaction on climate change as part and parcel of world-scope corruption and everpresent dog-eat-dog mentality.

Worrying about nuclear war was probably worse for mental health since you'd die quite quickly (if you were lucky), rather than some nebulous future were something's going to happen.

I'd rather be atomized by a nuke than die of heat-stroke in a wet bulb event after my air conditioning fails. I mean, I'd rather not die at all but given the options...

I don't know about the kids these days; I'm not one of them, but I'm personally rather terrified of the future that we are careening into in regards to climate change.

Let me tell you about fall out and how the majority of people who die in a nuclear attack will feel the meat peel off their bones over two weeks of unimaginable agony with nothing that can be done for them.

And what are the causes for the loss of community ?

This is just repeating Positive Psychology correct?

It's not just youths.....

We lack the moral courage to be honest about why real world community disintegrated and are therefore doomed to suffer these pedantic lectures that miss the point and point in random directions.

Notably absent from your comment is what you honestly think caused the disintegration of real-world community. I'd posit that it's an expected systemic outcome of unbounded and undirected capitalism.

You are implying the author(s) are disingenuous or are drawing the wrong conclusions. What makes you think this?

Do you also lack the courage? If not, could you be honest? Curious what you mean.

Seems like you lack the moral courage as well since you seem to be implying something but are not brave enough to explicitly say it.

Immigration and assimilation policies in the west have been too rapid, faster than even those who think they're open minded can adapt to new people.

The result is a pervasive societal siege mentality with everybody retreating into their homes. The Starbucks data on where "third places" are thriving or dying aligns very well with this model.

The answer is as obvious as it is unwelcome, which is it slow down a bit and give people and families time to adapt to their strange new neighbors and neighborhoods.

Didn't read but will that article since it sounds interesting. But does Starbucks mention their potential to be a third place? Because as long as you have to pay for something to stay a certain amount of time it will never be a third place. It is, in my experience, a more relaxed place regarding the relationship consumed/time in the place compared to other cafés but that is not all that makes a third place.

I mean, I would never consider just go to a Starbucks and expect to meet people without having to pay for something

Yet Apple will continue to push iPhones , sometimes I think the iPhone is worse than Facebook

The internet was a bad idea.

In the end your friend will be an AI that tries to sell you shit all day long.

Eh, that's not even too far off from many of the people I meet.

Heh, come on. It's the breakup of the family unit by the woke plague. It's time to face the music and let children be children.

What does that even mean? Please explain, because I don't think I understand what you're saying.

What are you even talking about?

Gays! I knew it was them! Even when it was the atomization of society, loss of third places, destruction of the middle class and so many other things, I knew it was them.

I believe a lot of people intuitively agree with this. I certainly do.

Not everything can/should be solved with technology, but would it be possible to get that sense of community back using e.g. VR and perhaps AI?

(Research might also be useful for space missions)

Why? You want to solve the problems caused by the lack of social integration-interaction by not socializing using VR. The problem with VR, videochat, social networks,etc., is that you are not there, you do not face the challenges nor the consequences of social activities. People gets anxious just thinking about that sonthey never leave their comfort zone, thus causing more issues on the individuals and,obviously in the society.

Society and social system are not working ideally, in fact is far from acceptable levels if you ask me. But the solution is not ostracism disguised as virtual interaction.

Why -> because it's now a chicken and egg problem. It's hard to find a sense of community when everybody is looking at their smartphones all the time.

You are right. The technology is part of the problem. The article points how social media xan not solve the problem. In my opinion social media is the biggest problem regarding this topic. Socialazing is a core necesity in human nature, denying this and other biological traits is what causes discomfort on individuals. Technology is only increassing the issue, not because technology is inherently bad or evil, but cause technology is developed to pursue wealt and power, bot in behalf of society.

Sounds like you're proposing the Matrix. No thanks.

This is not new. People are getting cured from anxiety disorders using VR all the time. E.g. arachnophobia, fear of flying.

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