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> The survey also found that working too little or too much is also associated with the experience of loneliness, suggesting that our workplaces are an importan
by danans 9y ago
> The survey also found that working too little or too much is also associated with the experience of loneliness, suggesting that our workplaces are an important source of our social relationships and also that work-life balance is important for avoiding loneliness.
This paragraph hints at what might be a significant factor in increased loneliness: A lack of community. Community can be a workplace or it could be a neighborhood, but in both it's a place where you feel like you and your colleagues/neighbors "have each-others' back". It's not even important that you are all best friends, just that you trust each-other enough.
These two, work and home, are of particular importance vs the other venues that we inhabit, because for most people, our time is spent either working, or in the neighborhood in which we live. If neither provides a trusting-enough sense of community, you don't have much time left in your life to find that elsewhere.
But for many people a trusted community is inaccessible for a variety of social, cultural, and economic reasons. Many (most?) workplaces don't offer a sense of community (which is fine, they shouldn't have to if that's not what their workers are seeking), and many people - especially younger adults - live in neighborhoods where they don't know many people around them.
- borplk 9y agoYes and the remaining one (and often the only one) is family. For many people workplace and neighbourhood have no sense of community at all and if you are single as well effectively you have no one to fall back to. Sure you can go to a coffee shop with your gym friend or coworker once in a while but when you seriously need someone like if you get sick or need a shoulder to cry on it's not going to work with people with whom you don't have a intimate high priority relationship like partner or family.
- jboles 9y agoCould this be related to the recent rise in tribalism and identity politics in American culture? In the sense that, without genuine connections to other people, some people focus on superficial characteristics as a way of belonging?
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Could this be related to the recent rise in tribalism and identity politics in American culture? No, because there is no recent rise in tribalism and identity politics in American culture. There is a recent rise in people who aren't sociologists, political scientists, and lay observers with intense interest in those fields talking about the tribalism and identity politics that have long prominently featured in American culture, but that's not the same thing.