3 ms·

As an immigrant I feel "western" life is especially isolating. There are pockets of community like church, but not everyone is religious. Once school is done, w

by yibg 7y ago

As an immigrant I feel "western" life is especially isolating. There are pockets of community like church, but not everyone is religious. Once school is done, we're mostly left to ourselves with usually a small circle of friends that occasionally interact. Question is what to do about it? I'm not sure if this requires a cultural shift, but other places in the world seems to be better at it.

derg 7y ago
>Question is what to do about it? I'm not sure if this requires a cultural shift, but other places in the world seems to be better at it. I would actually argue it is a cultural thing to be completely honest. Speaking from experience as an American at least, there is large cultural tradition driving this: the protestant work ethic that drives the idea of rugged individualism, the automobile, the implicit requirement that you consume consume consume and every waking hour not at your job must be doing something profitable. You can't have a "hobby", you gotta try to transform that into a "side hustle" (ughhh) because your day to day job likely doesn't pay enough to live while you pay hundreds of dollars a month towards student loans for an education that you likely don't even use to live in a house or apartment that you can barely afford due to lack of housing and the high prices that creates, while driving a car you probably can't afford due to the high housing prices necessitating you to live an hour or more away from your job.
- yibg 7y ago
  The point about individualism resonates a lot with me. Other parts of the world are also (and getting increasingly) material driven as well. However many are also more collectivist and have a heavy focus on (extended) family and community for example. Maybe living arrangements can be rethought to encourage some of these local communities. Instead of massive self contained houses, we should think more about clusters of dwellings. Each dwelling can have individual bedroom and bathing facilities but with shared common areas like kitchens / bbq that encourages interaction. I'm thinking something like a 6 - 10 small units linked to a larger communal area.
  - derg 7y ago
    Even simpler: you can continue to have single-family homes that surround a common space like a yard or garden area would go a long way towards recreating a community. Even something as simple as closing streets and rerouting traffic like Barcelona is doing[0] would be an excellent start with already existing infrastructure. [0]https://www.vox.com/2016/8/4/12342806/barcelona-superblocks https://www.vox.com/2016/8/4/12342806/barcelona-superblocks
Viliam1234 7y ago
Being isolated is the price we pay for being allowed to escape from abusive communities. If you are stuck with people who hurt you, that sucks. So it seems like the best way to prevent people from being locked in hell is to make communities optional. The problem is, it is very difficult to coordinate the creation of a community. Whatever you think should be its boundaries, someone within the proposed boundaries will disagree with you. Actually, most of them would disagree with you, and each of them for a different reason. The end result is usually that there is no community. Sometimes, an external force (such as school or army) temporarily creates an involuntary community, where the people find each other's company pleasant, so the community remains even after the external force is gone. Should you base the community on common education/profession? Or rather common values? Hobbies? Age? Geographical proximity is important, too, because then you can meet in person, organize things together, discuss local things. But each of these choices makes you compromise on the other ones. Even on personal level, sometimes person A enjoys the company of person B; person B enjoys the company of person C; but the person C hates person A. So the approach "instead of defining some unifying principle, just base it on personal chemistry" fails, too. Maybe we are unable to construct a community, so the best we could do is just throw a few random people together, make them stay together for a few weeks, and then leave it up to them whether they want to keep contact with each other. I could imagine doing this as a service: organize the lottery that assigns people to each other; rent them the place they can continue meeting each other once a week. But still, where can an average person find "a few weeks" of time necessary to build the community? (Yeah, in a job, but job-based communities are problematic; if you lose a job, you lose your community, too, at the very moment you might need their support most.) Or would one day a week be enough? Sign up to become a community member, promise to spend the following 12 Friday evenings in our place, meet the same group of randomly selected people who also subscribed for the same service... and hopefully start something that can survive a few years? Not sure this would work. (Among other things, it might select for the most desperate people, who ultimately wouldn't desire to have a community with each other.) I can't even solve this problem for myself, so I can't give advice to entire society. If I dared, I would encourage people to have more hobbies, and perhaps to reduce the work time, so that people have more time for their hobbies and communities.

by yibg 7y ago

derg 7y ago

>Question is what to do about it? I'm not sure if this requires a cultural shift, but other places in the world seems to be better at it. I would actually argue it is a cultural thing to be completely honest. Speaking from experience as an American at least, there is large cultural tradition driving this: the protestant work ethic that drives the idea of rugged individualism, the automobile, the implicit requirement that you consume consume consume and every waking hour not at your job must be doing something profitable. You can't have a "hobby", you gotta try to transform that into a "side hustle" (ughhh) because your day to day job likely doesn't pay enough to live while you pay hundreds of dollars a month towards student loans for an education that you likely don't even use to live in a house or apartment that you can barely afford due to lack of housing and the high prices that creates, while driving a car you probably can't afford due to the high housing prices necessitating you to live an hour or more away from your job.

yibg 7y ago
The point about individualism resonates a lot with me. Other parts of the world are also (and getting increasingly) material driven as well. However many are also more collectivist and have a heavy focus on (extended) family and community for example. Maybe living arrangements can be rethought to encourage some of these local communities. Instead of massive self contained houses, we should think more about clusters of dwellings. Each dwelling can have individual bedroom and bathing facilities but with shared common areas like kitchens / bbq that encourages interaction. I'm thinking something like a 6 - 10 small units linked to a larger communal area.
- derg 7y ago
  Even simpler: you can continue to have single-family homes that surround a common space like a yard or garden area would go a long way towards recreating a community. Even something as simple as closing streets and rerouting traffic like Barcelona is doing[0] would be an excellent start with already existing infrastructure. [0]https://www.vox.com/2016/8/4/12342806/barcelona-superblocks https://www.vox.com/2016/8/4/12342806/barcelona-superblocks

Viliam1234 7y ago

Being isolated is the price we pay for being allowed to escape from abusive communities. If you are stuck with people who hurt you, that sucks. So it seems like the best way to prevent people from being locked in hell is to make communities optional. The problem is, it is very difficult to coordinate the creation of a community. Whatever you think should be its boundaries, someone within the proposed boundaries will disagree with you. Actually, most of them would disagree with you, and each of them for a different reason. The end result is usually that there is no community. Sometimes, an external force (such as school or army) temporarily creates an involuntary community, where the people find each other's company pleasant, so the community remains even after the external force is gone. Should you base the community on common education/profession? Or rather common values? Hobbies? Age? Geographical proximity is important, too, because then you can meet in person, organize things together, discuss local things. But each of these choices makes you compromise on the other ones. Even on personal level, sometimes person A enjoys the company of person B; person B enjoys the company of person C; but the person C hates person A. So the approach "instead of defining some unifying principle, just base it on personal chemistry" fails, too. Maybe we are unable to construct a community, so the best we could do is just throw a few random people together, make them stay together for a few weeks, and then leave it up to them whether they want to keep contact with each other. I could imagine doing this as a service: organize the lottery that assigns people to each other; rent them the place they can continue meeting each other once a week. But still, where can an average person find "a few weeks" of time necessary to build the community? (Yeah, in a job, but job-based communities are problematic; if you lose a job, you lose your community, too, at the very moment you might need their support most.) Or would one day a week be enough? Sign up to become a community member, promise to spend the following 12 Friday evenings in our place, meet the same group of randomly selected people who also subscribed for the same service... and hopefully start something that can survive a few years? Not sure this would work. (Among other things, it might select for the most desperate people, who ultimately wouldn't desire to have a community with each other.) I can't even solve this problem for myself, so I can't give advice to entire society. If I dared, I would encourage people to have more hobbies, and perhaps to reduce the work time, so that people have more time for their hobbies and communities.