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Relationships naturally form when people have common activities and goals. I think the problem is that outside of the office and family, that connective tissue

Relationships naturally form when people have common activities and goals. I think the problem is that outside of the office and family, that connective tissue just isn't there anymore. You can find it, if you seek it out (various hobby meetups for instance), but anymore nobody is just automatically included. Everyone has diverse interests, which is great, but often you find you have nothing in common with your neighbours. I don't think the problem is people's protective layers of presentation. We need those fictions when we're learning if we can trust someone. The problem is it's incredibly hard to form a bond with someone if you don't have a clear "why", and there's rarely that context anymore. There are a lot of people I meet Id love to be friends with, but it's awkward to just organise that without a social excuse sometimes. Especially because if the relationship goes poorly, if you have a common thing its easier to pull back, whereas if its just "want to be friends?", if you pull back it seems more personal.

cheeko1234 7y ago
You hit the nail there. So many hobbies that used to be in-person have transferred to the internet. Personally, I thought that would be enough for getting my social fix, but boy was I wrong. As I get older, I'm finding out that there is something essential about physically hanging out with a common goal, whether it's sports, hiking, boardgames, etc.
watwut 7y ago
I think that these two are causes rather then requirements. The fact that in our current culture it is awkward and socially wrong to "just organise that without a social excuse" and that we need "common activities and goals" to even consider socialization is why we are lonely. Of course common activities and goals do help. But when they are the only thing, the relationship is destined to die the moment something changes. But people who are not lonely tend to value relationships for themselves. They organize without excuse, send each other mails for no reason about ordinary life and call each other for no reason. What they do have is values that put priority on relationship and skills to keep them. There is also mutual reciprocity to some extend with helping each other and such. A lot of these things are low-key stigmatized in some sub-cultures. The above is wasting time, just hanging around, just being social etc. See how spending a lot of time on phone was mocked - but it was reasonable way for people who dont have common activities and goals to keep relationships. The need for at least pretend common goal and important enough topic so that we dont feel like wasting time is more of symptom then the solution. Because it prevents us to keep relationship unless it is immediately useful.
- stuxnet79 7y ago
  > A lot of these things are low-key stigmatized in some sub-cultures. I would actually go further and say that it is high-key stigmatized. My take on this is it has a lot to do with how individualistic & market-oriented American culture (and to an extent 'western' culture) is. I spent the formative part of my youth both in a highly individualistic culture and a more communal culture and while both have their pros and cons the lack of authentic interaction or community is very much a feature of the existing (North American) culture, it is not a bug.
netcan 7y ago
I think you're on point. I'd also add that beyond shared activities or goals, there's mutual need as a basis for relationships. My grandparents were born peasant-farmers (Ireland, the 20s). They had very strong social bonds. Yes, they had institutions like church and such. But, they also just needed favours from eachother all the time. Every day a neighbor would stop by to help with something. Move sheep, fix fences, diagnose crop problems, watch kids, loan tools. Interesting point about "*do you want to be friends" approaches. The thing is, we do exactly this for dating. It's just as awkward, we just have a social context for it. These days, we have apps for it.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  there's a slight paradox in that modernity was half pushed by people to free themselves from all of these. independance has two edges
joe_the_user 7y ago
Relationships naturally form when people have common activities and goals. That is part of it but I don't think it is all of it. Relationships form when people share membership in something like a "community", a larger group of people sharing common approach of "looking out for each other", of engaging in basic acceptance of each, common language, history and "values", to various extents. This isn't saying that a relationship can't form between people not sharing a community but to an extent, such relationships have to expand to create the things that community naturally provides (making just "common interest" relationships a little fragile). I mean, human beings began having relationships in terms of small bands deeply sharing an entire culture. The more developed human societies made those sorts of relationship more flexible but still fall what I'd vague call "deep commonality" but form such commonality in a "market place" is extremely difficult each person is going to feel a lack of the basic loyalty that "deep commonality" implied.
agumonkey 7y ago
and small groups or tribes had a nice common goal, using a bit of land to live together the hyper decoupling benefits costed us that

cheeko1234 7y ago

You hit the nail there. So many hobbies that used to be in-person have transferred to the internet. Personally, I thought that would be enough for getting my social fix, but boy was I wrong. As I get older, I'm finding out that there is something essential about physically hanging out with a common goal, whether it's sports, hiking, boardgames, etc.

watwut 7y ago

I think that these two are causes rather then requirements. The fact that in our current culture it is awkward and socially wrong to "just organise that without a social excuse" and that we need "common activities and goals" to even consider socialization is why we are lonely. Of course common activities and goals do help. But when they are the only thing, the relationship is destined to die the moment something changes. But people who are not lonely tend to value relationships for themselves. They organize without excuse, send each other mails for no reason about ordinary life and call each other for no reason. What they do have is values that put priority on relationship and skills to keep them. There is also mutual reciprocity to some extend with helping each other and such. A lot of these things are low-key stigmatized in some sub-cultures. The above is wasting time, just hanging around, just being social etc. See how spending a lot of time on phone was mocked - but it was reasonable way for people who dont have common activities and goals to keep relationships. The need for at least pretend common goal and important enough topic so that we dont feel like wasting time is more of symptom then the solution. Because it prevents us to keep relationship unless it is immediately useful.

stuxnet79 7y ago
> A lot of these things are low-key stigmatized in some sub-cultures. I would actually go further and say that it is high-key stigmatized. My take on this is it has a lot to do with how individualistic & market-oriented American culture (and to an extent 'western' culture) is. I spent the formative part of my youth both in a highly individualistic culture and a more communal culture and while both have their pros and cons the lack of authentic interaction or community is very much a feature of the existing (North American) culture, it is not a bug.

netcan 7y ago

I think you're on point. I'd also add that beyond shared activities or goals, there's mutual need as a basis for relationships. My grandparents were born peasant-farmers (Ireland, the 20s). They had very strong social bonds. Yes, they had institutions like church and such. But, they also just needed favours from eachother all the time. Every day a neighbor would stop by to help with something. Move sheep, fix fences, diagnose crop problems, watch kids, loan tools. Interesting point about "*do you want to be friends" approaches. The thing is, we do exactly this for dating. It's just as awkward, we just have a social context for it. These days, we have apps for it.

agumonkey 7y ago
there's a slight paradox in that modernity was half pushed by people to free themselves from all of these. independance has two edges

joe_the_user 7y ago

Relationships naturally form when people have common activities and goals. That is part of it but I don't think it is all of it. Relationships form when people share membership in something like a "community", a larger group of people sharing common approach of "looking out for each other", of engaging in basic acceptance of each, common language, history and "values", to various extents. This isn't saying that a relationship can't form between people not sharing a community but to an extent, such relationships have to expand to create the things that community naturally provides (making just "common interest" relationships a little fragile). I mean, human beings began having relationships in terms of small bands deeply sharing an entire culture. The more developed human societies made those sorts of relationship more flexible but still fall what I'd vague call "deep commonality" but form such commonality in a "market place" is extremely difficult each person is going to feel a lack of the basic loyalty that "deep commonality" implied.

agumonkey 7y ago

and small groups or tribes had a nice common goal, using a bit of land to live together the hyper decoupling benefits costed us that