5 ms·

He definitely meant a different type of healthy solitude, rather than the one on which newspapers and studies report when they assert loneliness and isolation a

He definitely meant a different type of healthy solitude, rather than the one on which newspapers and studies report when they assert loneliness and isolation among young people is at an all-time high.

Stierlitz 7y ago
> He definitely meant a different type of healthy solitude, rather than the one on which newspapers and studies report when they assert loneliness and isolation among young people is at an all-time high. Maybe it's because people spend too much time exchanging msgs in forums such as this, instead of having meaningfull exchanges with real people. Even walking down the street, they have their noses buried in a device.
- giornogiovanna 7y ago
  > Maybe it's because people spend too much time exchanging msgs in forums such as this, instead of having meaningfull exchanges with real people. What does "meaningfull" mean? For example, I learn a lot more from fora such as Hacker News, so I'd argue that in-person interactions tend to be less meaningful.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >What does "meaningfull" mean? Meaningful means more according to several hundred millennia of evolution as social animals that need actual proximity. It means the person on the other end of the conversation will come to your house and help you when you're sad, desperate, sick, and not just be some alias in some other city/country who'll forget all about you just after you've stopped chatting (or give total priority to his real world friends and family). It means common shared friendship building experiences - not just the sharing, via talk, of experiences each had in isolation in a totally different place, in another context. It means having you back and you having theirs, which is rarely if ever the case from people in forums. And a few other things besides.
    - mapcars 7y ago
      >the person on the other end of the conversation will come to your house and help you when you're sad, desperate, sick People really have to grow out of this. This is what in my understanding learning being alone exactly is about. Once you are sad, desperate, sick you have to come out of it as quick as possible with what is available to you. It is your responsibility before yourself and the world, like taking shower or brushing your teeth. I say to grow out - because as children most of us learned the trick to pretend sad to get attention and it developed into all sorts of manipulations. When you don't get what you want, for whatever reasons - that is just it, to become sad or joyful is your reaction, it just shows your level of maturity in this world. Children would cry to get attention, grown-ups would keep going. But you can cry for attention only if there are people around you. If you stay alone you will quickly realize all bullshit you are creating and stop it, because anyway it has no effect. In this way being alone is a powerful way to bring one down to reality. And parents use it sometimes when they feel kids are crying to manipulate - they ignore it all-together. This is relevant to I would say 90% of mental issues, of course in case of physical sickness you need to see a doctor, not someone to calm you down, but someone to fix your body.
      - coldtea 7y ago
        >People really have to grow out of this. Actually, they should grow to the opposite direction. They're not "rebellious teenagers" who "don't need nobody". And delivery food + home alone, with "relations" mainly on the web is not a lifestyle. That's how you end with this: https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/loneliness-epidemic-consequences https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/loneliness-epidemic-c... https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-loneliness-epidemic-is-so-bad-world-leaders-have-been-forced-to-intervene https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-loneliness-epidemic-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2019/05/03/millennials-and-the-loneliness-epidemic/#59cf3a047676 https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2019/05/03/millennials... And how people end up discovered dead in their apartment for weeks, with nobody caring earlier, and their pets having chewed on them... >Once you are sad, desperate, sick you have to come out of it as quick as possible with what is available to you. It is your responsibility before yourself and the world, like taking shower or brushing your teeth. If you mean people should stop abusing others when they don't need help, sure. If you mean it as stated above, that's as far removed from humanity as possible. Some loner animals, sure, they might do this. We built society and civilisation to do better than that.
- moneytide1 7y ago
  The socially normalized buried nose produces an interesting effect when passing by someone in a hallway or sidewalk - the deferred acknowledgement: I rarely have my device out while walking in order to indicate that I am receptive to an approach. When I see an incoming buried nose, I assume they are too busy and keep my gaze past them as they are clearly not going to be available for a nod or pleasantry exchange. The thing is, after the acknowledgement window has passed and we are closing proximity, I perephrially see them look up at me at the very last second before passing. Not sure if it's just me misinterpreting social circumstances, or if there's a new standard of interaction that I need to figure out.
  - pferde 7y ago
    I don't think you are misinterpreting anything. I think those glances are part of survival instinct, assessing whether the moving object they registered out of the corner of their eyes (you), that is getting near them, is dangerous or if it can be safely ignored.
- CaptArmchair 7y ago
  I think that's a symptom. Not a cause. A lot has to do with how cultures perceive individuals and individuality. Traditionally, individuality has always been seen as something "bad". ingroup/outgroup, cultural norms to abide by, etc. etc. Sociology, anthropology,... there are entire research domains devoted to these questions. The interesting part is how society has evolved over the past 200, 100 and 50 years. Industrialisation, mass media, the information age,... have all stripped away the traditional tribal or clan-like way of living which has kept us alive for hundreds of thousands of years. Over the past 50 years, individual consumerism and producerism have come to dominate our societal framework. So, we are taught to look at relationships as affordances that help us to advance in a materialistic world; rather then to look at the deep intangible value they embody. And we are also taught that emotions are only really valid if they are useful or contributing to our well-being. What I hear from younger people is this notion of suffering from social anxiety. I'm sure that's a real thing. It's not easy to approach another human being and try and befriend them; and it's harder as we become older. But building meaningful relationships is also a learned skill which takes tons of time. And the journey starts first and foremost with learning to befriend yourself through self-aware kindness, compassion and empathy. For one, it starts by not beating yourself up over stuff you don't control. Or trying to adhere to an irealistic ideal. And it also consists of calling out those who push ideals that nobody can ever hope to attain. (Yeah, sure, Elon does great stuff. But neither you nor I are like Elon. You do you, go for it if you want to give it a shot, but who are you to judge what I do with my life?). The problem with social media is that they tie into our innate urge to connect with others; but at the same time push this idea that we all need to have our separate, successful materialistic lives. It's a disparity that only enhances the anxiety that's already there. And the only good way to deal with it is to wean yourself from your device as best as you can.
  - Hoasi 7y ago
    > It's not easy to approach another human being and try and befriend them; and it's harder as we become older. Anecdotal, and not to dismiss that reality, but I find the opposite to be true. It is easy to befriend people, with no strings attached. We have a lot in common with almost everybody.
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
dang 7y ago
Perhaps experiencing solitude as something other than isolation is part of the learning process he was advising.
namirez 7y ago
I think the difference between "alone" and "lonely" is usually clear and he is talking about being alone.
mjevans 7y ago
It's about CHOICE Like so many things, when you have a choice partaking an experience is positive; or else you'd go do something else. Voluntary is to Forced as Alone is to Lonely

Stierlitz 7y ago

> He definitely meant a different type of healthy solitude, rather than the one on which newspapers and studies report when they assert loneliness and isolation among young people is at an all-time high. Maybe it's because people spend too much time exchanging msgs in forums such as this, instead of having meaningfull exchanges with real people. Even walking down the street, they have their noses buried in a device.

giornogiovanna 7y ago
> Maybe it's because people spend too much time exchanging msgs in forums such as this, instead of having meaningfull exchanges with real people. What does "meaningfull" mean? For example, I learn a lot more from fora such as Hacker News, so I'd argue that in-person interactions tend to be less meaningful.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >What does "meaningfull" mean? Meaningful means more according to several hundred millennia of evolution as social animals that need actual proximity. It means the person on the other end of the conversation will come to your house and help you when you're sad, desperate, sick, and not just be some alias in some other city/country who'll forget all about you just after you've stopped chatting (or give total priority to his real world friends and family). It means common shared friendship building experiences - not just the sharing, via talk, of experiences each had in isolation in a totally different place, in another context. It means having you back and you having theirs, which is rarely if ever the case from people in forums. And a few other things besides.
  - mapcars 7y ago
    >the person on the other end of the conversation will come to your house and help you when you're sad, desperate, sick People really have to grow out of this. This is what in my understanding learning being alone exactly is about. Once you are sad, desperate, sick you have to come out of it as quick as possible with what is available to you. It is your responsibility before yourself and the world, like taking shower or brushing your teeth. I say to grow out - because as children most of us learned the trick to pretend sad to get attention and it developed into all sorts of manipulations. When you don't get what you want, for whatever reasons - that is just it, to become sad or joyful is your reaction, it just shows your level of maturity in this world. Children would cry to get attention, grown-ups would keep going. But you can cry for attention only if there are people around you. If you stay alone you will quickly realize all bullshit you are creating and stop it, because anyway it has no effect. In this way being alone is a powerful way to bring one down to reality. And parents use it sometimes when they feel kids are crying to manipulate - they ignore it all-together. This is relevant to I would say 90% of mental issues, of course in case of physical sickness you need to see a doctor, not someone to calm you down, but someone to fix your body.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >People really have to grow out of this. Actually, they should grow to the opposite direction. They're not "rebellious teenagers" who "don't need nobody". And delivery food + home alone, with "relations" mainly on the web is not a lifestyle. That's how you end with this: https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/loneliness-epidemic-consequences https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/loneliness-epidemic-c... https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-loneliness-epidemic-is-so-bad-world-leaders-have-been-forced-to-intervene https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-loneliness-epidemic-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2019/05/03/millennials-and-the-loneliness-epidemic/#59cf3a047676 https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2019/05/03/millennials... And how people end up discovered dead in their apartment for weeks, with nobody caring earlier, and their pets having chewed on them... >Once you are sad, desperate, sick you have to come out of it as quick as possible with what is available to you. It is your responsibility before yourself and the world, like taking shower or brushing your teeth. If you mean people should stop abusing others when they don't need help, sure. If you mean it as stated above, that's as far removed from humanity as possible. Some loner animals, sure, they might do this. We built society and civilisation to do better than that.
moneytide1 7y ago
The socially normalized buried nose produces an interesting effect when passing by someone in a hallway or sidewalk - the deferred acknowledgement: I rarely have my device out while walking in order to indicate that I am receptive to an approach. When I see an incoming buried nose, I assume they are too busy and keep my gaze past them as they are clearly not going to be available for a nod or pleasantry exchange. The thing is, after the acknowledgement window has passed and we are closing proximity, I perephrially see them look up at me at the very last second before passing. Not sure if it's just me misinterpreting social circumstances, or if there's a new standard of interaction that I need to figure out.
- pferde 7y ago
  I don't think you are misinterpreting anything. I think those glances are part of survival instinct, assessing whether the moving object they registered out of the corner of their eyes (you), that is getting near them, is dangerous or if it can be safely ignored.
CaptArmchair 7y ago
I think that's a symptom. Not a cause. A lot has to do with how cultures perceive individuals and individuality. Traditionally, individuality has always been seen as something "bad". ingroup/outgroup, cultural norms to abide by, etc. etc. Sociology, anthropology,... there are entire research domains devoted to these questions. The interesting part is how society has evolved over the past 200, 100 and 50 years. Industrialisation, mass media, the information age,... have all stripped away the traditional tribal or clan-like way of living which has kept us alive for hundreds of thousands of years. Over the past 50 years, individual consumerism and producerism have come to dominate our societal framework. So, we are taught to look at relationships as affordances that help us to advance in a materialistic world; rather then to look at the deep intangible value they embody. And we are also taught that emotions are only really valid if they are useful or contributing to our well-being. What I hear from younger people is this notion of suffering from social anxiety. I'm sure that's a real thing. It's not easy to approach another human being and try and befriend them; and it's harder as we become older. But building meaningful relationships is also a learned skill which takes tons of time. And the journey starts first and foremost with learning to befriend yourself through self-aware kindness, compassion and empathy. For one, it starts by not beating yourself up over stuff you don't control. Or trying to adhere to an irealistic ideal. And it also consists of calling out those who push ideals that nobody can ever hope to attain. (Yeah, sure, Elon does great stuff. But neither you nor I are like Elon. You do you, go for it if you want to give it a shot, but who are you to judge what I do with my life?). The problem with social media is that they tie into our innate urge to connect with others; but at the same time push this idea that we all need to have our separate, successful materialistic lives. It's a disparity that only enhances the anxiety that's already there. And the only good way to deal with it is to wean yourself from your device as best as you can.
- Hoasi 7y ago
  > It's not easy to approach another human being and try and befriend them; and it's harder as we become older. Anecdotal, and not to dismiss that reality, but I find the opposite to be true. It is easy to befriend people, with no strings attached. We have a lot in common with almost everybody.
- claudiawerner 7y ago

dang 7y ago

Perhaps experiencing solitude as something other than isolation is part of the learning process he was advising.

namirez 7y ago

I think the difference between "alone" and "lonely" is usually clear and he is talking about being alone.

mjevans 7y ago

It's about CHOICE Like so many things, when you have a choice partaking an experience is positive; or else you'd go do something else. Voluntary is to Forced as Alone is to Lonely