5 ms·

America: Land of Loners?

90 points by jamesbritt 16y ago

todayiamme 16y ago
There is a paragraph in the essay which stood out to me; >>>The irony is that straight men could learn a thing or two from their gay brethren, as Andrew Sullivan implied in his insightful book on the AIDS crisis, Love Undetectable: Notes on Friendship, Sex, and Survival (1998). Often estranged from their natural families and barred from forming legally acknowledged new ones of their own, gay men, Sullivan observed, learned to rely not on the kindness of strangers but the loyalty of friends: “Insofar as friendship was an incalculable strength of homosexuals during the calamity of AIDS, it merely showed, I think, how great a loss is our culture’s general underestimation of this central human virtue.”<<< I've experienced that in my life. The closest people I have are people who have no direct relation through blood with me. This was something really counter-intuitive to me, because I grew up in a country where family is supposed to be paramount, but I discovered that isn't so. I am willing to bet that anyone who has had to deal with forced social isolation be it through abuse, or homelessness will agree. No one taught me that relationships are only as good as the people who compose it. Friendships don't magically happen. You have to work for them, and the cost isn't just time but it is something deeper and more intrinsic to who you are. The smartest thing anyone could have ever said is that love is a verb. To love someone involves making "sacrifices" at one level or the other for the sake of the relationship, and most people are unwilling to do that. They don't realize that you can't have your cake and eat it too. I think that this is the reason why most people, not just in the USA, think it's cool to be alone. They tend to desire instant results, which simply isn't possible.
- pasbesoin 16y ago
  Slightly OT, but I think we/society needs to find a better word than "sacrifice". To me, it invokes too much of an image of giving up power and of one-way giving. I've had this conversation with friends (as a conversation, I mean, not an accusation nor negotiation), and usually there is agreement. At the moment, I feel I'm not recalling our best substitutes, but I am thinking of the word "contribution". We contribute to relationships. Like an investment. We put in something of value and hope/expect to grow that investment. Like an investment in work you enjoy, it should -- on balance -- not feel like a burden. And all parties need to be contributing. Contributions may vary; at times, one may have more to give while another has less. At times, someone may need to borrow a bit of equity, e.g. when they are acutely ill. It's when, over time, the contributions/investments do not balance, that we need to have concern. Those are not sustainable relationships. Unless, perhaps, they are offset by other relationships and we chose to accept this trade off. For example, when a family member is seriously ill, we don't necessarily withdraw our support. Friends help to balance the equation and get us, and indirectly so also our family member -- who is relying on our support -- through. I don't see sacrifice. I see collaboration. And working with a really good team can be one of the best experiences of one's life.
- ahoyhere 16y ago
  Hear, hear. I'm an American and I get dirty looks when I mention that I don't talk to my family - that I didn't invite my mother or brother to my wedding - that I don't care about them. People don't believe it. But the friends I've made -- once I got over my insularity and fear, and decided to trust unless proven otherwise, to be a friend instead of hoping for friends -- are my chosen family. They've treated me better than my family ever did. I know that if something happens tomorrow and I'm homeless, I have 20 people who'd put me up, feed me, and take care of me until I could do it on my own. And I'd do it for them, too. And that's because of effort and willingness and bravery and love (the verb), not accident of birth.
  - todayiamme 16y ago
    I know exactly what you mean. For some people their biological family is their chosen family. For some of us it simply isn't. I don't think I will have any contact whatsoever with my biological family after this year. It's not just one sided, but they've made it pretty explicit to me. On one level it's really hard to deal with, but on the other it has taught me things in a small period of time which usually takes decades to settle in. I've learnt how to sense emotions, and whether or not I can trust someone. I've learnt the difference between anger and deep seated hatred. I've learnt the difference between the storms that pass and an eternal jupiter-esque red spot. I've learnt so much that I simply can't condense it into words, let alone a comment. No matter what I have gained though. I still wish that things weren't like this. Everything has taken it's toll on me. The most direct result is that I have deep seated insecurities and fears about things like rejection, failure etc. The most worrying result is that a part of me, no most of me, is just old and dead (the other part increasingly vanishing part is roughly 13). As someone pointed out I am 18 and I talk like I am in my 30s & 40s. What worries me is that I really can't remember the last time I had a genuinely happy day. It's like I can't have fun. Everything from conversations to thoughts just spiral down into that survival mode. I hate it, but it's almost a part of me now and I can't imagine an existence without it. So yeah life sucks, but at least I have a family that helps me to deal with it. Does it truly matter what's in their veins? P.S. - I can tell that you've been through a lot of pain yourself. Is there any way I can help you to deal with it? Take care.
pfifth 16y ago
+1 if you're lonely.
toxicflavor 16y ago
Unfortunately this is not a uniquely American problem. I think you can easily extrapolate this to at least most of the developed economies.
- owkaye 16y ago
  Maybe so. I've lived in the Philippines and it's not a developed country so this isolation problem is not much of an issue there (yet). But their culture is becoming more and more 'American' and gradually losing the closeness of friends and family and I'm afraid of what it's going to be like years in the future. I hope it doesn't become another USA but it very well could, or even worse.
julius_geezer 16y ago
Ah, yes, the American soul according to D.H. Lawrence: cold, stoic, isolate, a killer. (That would be Natty Bumpo.) I find this sort of piece unhelpful. It is full of generalities that seem more or less plausible, yet which can't be verified or refuted.
hbt 16y ago
Loners are not necessarily lonely people. Perhaps it was only my impression reading the article, but in some sections, the author tends to confuse "loneliness" and "solitude". True loners are people "suffering" from schizoid personality disorders. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizoid_personality_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizoid_personality_disorder I should use the term "suffering" carefully because true loners actually enjoy being alone, they admire self-reliance and feel stronger by not _needing_ others. The beauty of modern society is how easy it is to isolate yourself from others and live like a king -- compared to hundreds of years ago, where people were needed to get the little things in life. About _meaningful_ friendship: The Internet and the ability to travel (if needed) helps you experience the third flavor (shared pursuit of virtue) without being limited by a physical location, face to face communication and simply helps you find like-minded people.
- ahoyhere 16y ago
  I know lots of loners who want friends but have none, because of fear and a lack of drive, not a personality disorder.
  - MartinCron 16y ago
    You know them, but are you friends with them?
    - ahoyhere 16y ago
      A few, who are charming but socially afraid. (Depending on your outlook, I am either supremely approachable, or outright terrifying - because I am both loud and friendly.) The ones who have absolutely no social skills, no. But they feel very different in their lack of social skills than a person who has a genuine mental problem. It's like, they've gotten so long by decrying it, that now it'd be a big blow to their ego to do something as stupid and minor as read a book on social skills. You can see in their eyes that they're hurting from being alone, though. I've also met lots of loners who probably do "have something wrong with them", who are wrong in a scary fashion. They certainly exist - it's a symptom. But many who have the symptom don't have the disease.
lzw 16y ago
I think this article is really all about how we should subborn our individualism to the rule of the collective than about the question of friendships. Reality is, the loners and the individualists have friendships, and so they aren't really alone. But they are not collectivists, and therefore they must be portrayed as having some sort of defect. You see this in every collectivist society.... as no form of socialism can survive if the people recognize it for what it is and resist.
- philwelch 16y ago
  Not everything can be reduced to an Ayn Rand novel.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- julius_geezer 16y ago
  Of the big names the author dragged in (and that I recognized) none was in any way that I can identify a collectivist. Most lived or flourished before socialism was named.
rdtsc 16y ago
I think a lot of us (at least who were born before the 90s) had these friendships as kids if their family didn't move much. I had a only a couple of good friends, but I had them for 10+ years. We'd stay at each other houses, spend time with each other's families. Play, watch movies, get into fights, goof around and so on. Then eventually, as girlfriends came around, as we went to different universities, different countries, it was hard to keep the same level of friendship. First they become just "acquaintances", then sadly, they become strangers... The point being, I think a lot of us know what the article means, it is just that we failed to hang on to it. In America people just move more. It is hard to foster good friendships without face contact. Don't matter what the resolution of your Skype video, it is just not the same. So, we are stuck. We'll end up spending more time on HN, playing Warcraft, working. Another sensitive issue is that a higher proportion of HN-ers are probably introverts. Nothing wrong with that. I am one too. That means it is easier by default to be lonely. But in the long run it also hurts.
- _delirium 16y ago
  > It is hard to foster good friendships without face contact. Don't matter what the resolution of your Skype video, it is just not the same. I haven't entirely found this to be the case, though it's different. I'd say my closest friends are about halfway split between people I mainly talk to online and people I mainly talk to face-to-face. With a handful of people I do both frequently, but with some people one or the other feels more acquaintancey--- there are people I'm good friends with IRL who I only exchange matter-of-fact type of information with online (locations, phone numbers, times of events, etc.), and people I'm good friends with online where hanging out IRL feels really weird and acquaintancey (get a beer and talk about the weather or something). Textual communication with someone who's also fluent in it feels to me like speaking another language; has a different set of strengths/weaknesses, cadences, emotional cues, etc. than spoken English does. The fluency is important, though: maintaining a text-chat-based friendship with people who didn't grow up on BBSs or something similar is much harder in my experience.
- jpdbaugh 16y ago
  I didn't move the whole time I was growing up and had the same friends the whole first part of my life before college and a simliar thing is happening right now with us going down the path of becoming strangers. However, I do think that sometimes a person does need to go out make new friends. I just don't have anything in common with my old friends from high school. For better or worse they are going down a different path. I really resonate with this article though and thoroughly believe I need close friendships to be happy, but I do not think that one should hold onto old friendships, especially ones from high school that you were likely forced into, at all costs.
dennisgorelik 16y ago
We are moving into virtual world (Internet, TV, etc.) there is simply not much need for physical interaction.
metamemetics 16y ago
Is this really more of a severe problem in America than in South Korea or Japan? How important is population density factor into ones loneliness? Yes the US is large, Some googling on Urban Alienation turned this up though, food for though: http://nymag.com/news/features/52450/ http://nymag.com/news/features/52450/ I really think the main culprit of American Loneliness is piss-poor urban planning. There are so many areas of urban sprawl where instead of putting the store fronts directly on the side-walk and having communal parking garages behind the stores, each store or public place gets its own half-mile of desert pavement between the sidewalk and the destination, with a patchwork of green barricades thrown in for good measure. Small shops can't stay in business because there is no foot-traffic to support them. There is no ambient sense of community because it is a generic pavement desert for cars rather than a community for humans. You can't discover places in these communities, the store has to be gigantic and you make a conscious decision Living in a city with zero urban planning is like living in no city at all -> no community -> no feeling of belonging. If everyone simply told their city council to approve no more building permits unless the store-front was on the sidewalk American Lonliness would be solved. Otherwise of course we will be lonely, because we aren't even living in real cities meant to be used by people.

90 points by jamesbritt 16y ago

There is a paragraph in the essay which stood out to me; >>>The irony is that straight men could learn a thing or two from their gay brethren, as Andrew Sullivan implied in his insightful book on the AIDS crisis, Love Undetectable: Notes on Friendship, Sex, and Survival (1998). Often estranged from their natural families and barred from forming legally acknowledged new ones of their own, gay men, Sullivan observed, learned to rely not on the kindness of strangers but the loyalty of friends: “Insofar as friendship was an incalculable strength of homosexuals during the calamity of AIDS, it merely showed, I think, how great a loss is our culture’s general underestimation of this central human virtue.”<<< I've experienced that in my life. The closest people I have are people who have no direct relation through blood with me. This was something really counter-intuitive to me, because I grew up in a country where family is supposed to be paramount, but I discovered that isn't so. I am willing to bet that anyone who has had to deal with forced social isolation be it through abuse, or homelessness will agree. No one taught me that relationships are only as good as the people who compose it. Friendships don't magically happen. You have to work for them, and the cost isn't just time but it is something deeper and more intrinsic to who you are. The smartest thing anyone could have ever said is that love is a verb. To love someone involves making "sacrifices" at one level or the other for the sake of the relationship, and most people are unwilling to do that. They don't realize that you can't have your cake and eat it too. I think that this is the reason why most people, not just in the USA, think it's cool to be alone. They tend to desire instant results, which simply isn't possible.

pasbesoin 16y ago
Slightly OT, but I think we/society needs to find a better word than "sacrifice". To me, it invokes too much of an image of giving up power and of one-way giving. I've had this conversation with friends (as a conversation, I mean, not an accusation nor negotiation), and usually there is agreement. At the moment, I feel I'm not recalling our best substitutes, but I am thinking of the word "contribution". We contribute to relationships. Like an investment. We put in something of value and hope/expect to grow that investment. Like an investment in work you enjoy, it should -- on balance -- not feel like a burden. And all parties need to be contributing. Contributions may vary; at times, one may have more to give while another has less. At times, someone may need to borrow a bit of equity, e.g. when they are acutely ill. It's when, over time, the contributions/investments do not balance, that we need to have concern. Those are not sustainable relationships. Unless, perhaps, they are offset by other relationships and we chose to accept this trade off. For example, when a family member is seriously ill, we don't necessarily withdraw our support. Friends help to balance the equation and get us, and indirectly so also our family member -- who is relying on our support -- through. I don't see sacrifice. I see collaboration. And working with a really good team can be one of the best experiences of one's life.
ahoyhere 16y ago
Hear, hear. I'm an American and I get dirty looks when I mention that I don't talk to my family - that I didn't invite my mother or brother to my wedding - that I don't care about them. People don't believe it. But the friends I've made -- once I got over my insularity and fear, and decided to trust unless proven otherwise, to be a friend instead of hoping for friends -- are my chosen family. They've treated me better than my family ever did. I know that if something happens tomorrow and I'm homeless, I have 20 people who'd put me up, feed me, and take care of me until I could do it on my own. And I'd do it for them, too. And that's because of effort and willingness and bravery and love (the verb), not accident of birth.
- todayiamme 16y ago
  I know exactly what you mean. For some people their biological family is their chosen family. For some of us it simply isn't. I don't think I will have any contact whatsoever with my biological family after this year. It's not just one sided, but they've made it pretty explicit to me. On one level it's really hard to deal with, but on the other it has taught me things in a small period of time which usually takes decades to settle in. I've learnt how to sense emotions, and whether or not I can trust someone. I've learnt the difference between anger and deep seated hatred. I've learnt the difference between the storms that pass and an eternal jupiter-esque red spot. I've learnt so much that I simply can't condense it into words, let alone a comment. No matter what I have gained though. I still wish that things weren't like this. Everything has taken it's toll on me. The most direct result is that I have deep seated insecurities and fears about things like rejection, failure etc. The most worrying result is that a part of me, no most of me, is just old and dead (the other part increasingly vanishing part is roughly 13). As someone pointed out I am 18 and I talk like I am in my 30s & 40s. What worries me is that I really can't remember the last time I had a genuinely happy day. It's like I can't have fun. Everything from conversations to thoughts just spiral down into that survival mode. I hate it, but it's almost a part of me now and I can't imagine an existence without it. So yeah life sucks, but at least I have a family that helps me to deal with it. Does it truly matter what's in their veins? P.S. - I can tell that you've been through a lot of pain yourself. Is there any way I can help you to deal with it? Take care.

pfifth 16y ago

+1 if you're lonely.

toxicflavor 16y ago

Unfortunately this is not a uniquely American problem. I think you can easily extrapolate this to at least most of the developed economies.

owkaye 16y ago
Maybe so. I've lived in the Philippines and it's not a developed country so this isolation problem is not much of an issue there (yet). But their culture is becoming more and more 'American' and gradually losing the closeness of friends and family and I'm afraid of what it's going to be like years in the future. I hope it doesn't become another USA but it very well could, or even worse.

julius_geezer 16y ago

Ah, yes, the American soul according to D.H. Lawrence: cold, stoic, isolate, a killer. (That would be Natty Bumpo.) I find this sort of piece unhelpful. It is full of generalities that seem more or less plausible, yet which can't be verified or refuted.

hbt 16y ago

Loners are not necessarily lonely people. Perhaps it was only my impression reading the article, but in some sections, the author tends to confuse "loneliness" and "solitude". True loners are people "suffering" from schizoid personality disorders. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizoid_personality_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizoid_personality_disorder I should use the term "suffering" carefully because true loners actually enjoy being alone, they admire self-reliance and feel stronger by not _needing_ others. The beauty of modern society is how easy it is to isolate yourself from others and live like a king -- compared to hundreds of years ago, where people were needed to get the little things in life. About _meaningful_ friendship: The Internet and the ability to travel (if needed) helps you experience the third flavor (shared pursuit of virtue) without being limited by a physical location, face to face communication and simply helps you find like-minded people.

ahoyhere 16y ago
I know lots of loners who want friends but have none, because of fear and a lack of drive, not a personality disorder.
- MartinCron 16y ago
  You know them, but are you friends with them?
  - ahoyhere 16y ago
    A few, who are charming but socially afraid. (Depending on your outlook, I am either supremely approachable, or outright terrifying - because I am both loud and friendly.) The ones who have absolutely no social skills, no. But they feel very different in their lack of social skills than a person who has a genuine mental problem. It's like, they've gotten so long by decrying it, that now it'd be a big blow to their ego to do something as stupid and minor as read a book on social skills. You can see in their eyes that they're hurting from being alone, though. I've also met lots of loners who probably do "have something wrong with them", who are wrong in a scary fashion. They certainly exist - it's a symptom. But many who have the symptom don't have the disease.

lzw 16y ago

I think this article is really all about how we should subborn our individualism to the rule of the collective than about the question of friendships. Reality is, the loners and the individualists have friendships, and so they aren't really alone. But they are not collectivists, and therefore they must be portrayed as having some sort of defect. You see this in every collectivist society.... as no form of socialism can survive if the people recognize it for what it is and resist.

philwelch 16y ago
Not everything can be reduced to an Ayn Rand novel.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
julius_geezer 16y ago
Of the big names the author dragged in (and that I recognized) none was in any way that I can identify a collectivist. Most lived or flourished before socialism was named.

rdtsc 16y ago

I think a lot of us (at least who were born before the 90s) had these friendships as kids if their family didn't move much. I had a only a couple of good friends, but I had them for 10+ years. We'd stay at each other houses, spend time with each other's families. Play, watch movies, get into fights, goof around and so on. Then eventually, as girlfriends came around, as we went to different universities, different countries, it was hard to keep the same level of friendship. First they become just "acquaintances", then sadly, they become strangers... The point being, I think a lot of us know what the article means, it is just that we failed to hang on to it. In America people just move more. It is hard to foster good friendships without face contact. Don't matter what the resolution of your Skype video, it is just not the same. So, we are stuck. We'll end up spending more time on HN, playing Warcraft, working. Another sensitive issue is that a higher proportion of HN-ers are probably introverts. Nothing wrong with that. I am one too. That means it is easier by default to be lonely. But in the long run it also hurts.

_delirium 16y ago
> It is hard to foster good friendships without face contact. Don't matter what the resolution of your Skype video, it is just not the same. I haven't entirely found this to be the case, though it's different. I'd say my closest friends are about halfway split between people I mainly talk to online and people I mainly talk to face-to-face. With a handful of people I do both frequently, but with some people one or the other feels more acquaintancey--- there are people I'm good friends with IRL who I only exchange matter-of-fact type of information with online (locations, phone numbers, times of events, etc.), and people I'm good friends with online where hanging out IRL feels really weird and acquaintancey (get a beer and talk about the weather or something). Textual communication with someone who's also fluent in it feels to me like speaking another language; has a different set of strengths/weaknesses, cadences, emotional cues, etc. than spoken English does. The fluency is important, though: maintaining a text-chat-based friendship with people who didn't grow up on BBSs or something similar is much harder in my experience.
jpdbaugh 16y ago
I didn't move the whole time I was growing up and had the same friends the whole first part of my life before college and a simliar thing is happening right now with us going down the path of becoming strangers. However, I do think that sometimes a person does need to go out make new friends. I just don't have anything in common with my old friends from high school. For better or worse they are going down a different path. I really resonate with this article though and thoroughly believe I need close friendships to be happy, but I do not think that one should hold onto old friendships, especially ones from high school that you were likely forced into, at all costs.

dennisgorelik 16y ago

We are moving into virtual world (Internet, TV, etc.) there is simply not much need for physical interaction.

metamemetics 16y ago

Is this really more of a severe problem in America than in South Korea or Japan? How important is population density factor into ones loneliness? Yes the US is large, Some googling on Urban Alienation turned this up though, food for though: http://nymag.com/news/features/52450/ http://nymag.com/news/features/52450/ I really think the main culprit of American Loneliness is piss-poor urban planning. There are so many areas of urban sprawl where instead of putting the store fronts directly on the side-walk and having communal parking garages behind the stores, each store or public place gets its own half-mile of desert pavement between the sidewalk and the destination, with a patchwork of green barricades thrown in for good measure. Small shops can't stay in business because there is no foot-traffic to support them. There is no ambient sense of community because it is a generic pavement desert for cars rather than a community for humans. You can't discover places in these communities, the store has to be gigantic and you make a conscious decision Living in a city with zero urban planning is like living in no city at all -> no community -> no feeling of belonging. If everyone simply told their city council to approve no more building permits unless the store-front was on the sidewalk American Lonliness would be solved. Otherwise of course we will be lonely, because we aren't even living in real cities meant to be used by people.