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So, while every country in the world has issues with social isolation and loneliness I think the US seems to have a particularly large problem with it. I have n

So, while every country in the world has issues with social isolation and loneliness I think the US seems to have a particularly large problem with it. I have no evidence to back this up but it seems to me that family structures in the US are less solid than they are in other countries. And for the people who say "I'm from X immigrant community and we have very strong familial bonds", imagine how much stronger they would be had you not come to the US, and will the next generations bonds be as strong or stronger than your generations bonds? There is a self-reliance in the US which when it works seems to work ok (although even "successful" people can be very lonely), but when it breaks down very quickly leaves people with no where to turn. People often travel long distances from their families. Often relocating across the country again for work breaking whatever bonds they formed in University. People see their families once or twice a year (because the distances are so great). People prioritize economic needs over family and societal needs and this weakening of familial and societal bonds is the result. Often you end up living far from your family with a spouse and kids. If that doesn't work out - say you break up - you can find yourself alone very fast. I feel that the homeless problem in the US is a symptom of this - although it also has many other causes. In societies with much stronger societal bonds, people don't let people live on the streets. I don't have a solution for it, it's just something I've noticed and think about a lot when I listen to stories like this one. And don't get me wrong. Every country has problems like this. It's very easy to get isolated in large crowds of people, I just think the US has a pronounced case of it.

dopeboy 4y ago
I'd agree. Couple comments: * The US has a strong individualistic culture and is a highly capitalistic society. Taken together, this produces people are who driven to prioritize career over other things, like staying close to your family. I live in the bay area and can list all the people who are here, far away from family, for better career opportunities. I am one of them. * The US is a large country with various hubs. If your family is not near a hub, you see them less. * Anecdotally, my friends who have children tend to be less lonely not due to the presence of kids but the surrounding "village" that develops around them (grandparents, relatives, parents of your kids' friends, etc). The US has a declining birth rate, which is pronounced in the major hubs. Again, I don't have data to back this claim up but I think on the whole, parents are less lonely.
- reillyse 4y ago
  I remember reading an article about youth unemployment in Spain. It was extremely high, something like 60% for people under 25. And the obvious answer (to me an Irishman) was why don't you emigrate. Lots of other parts of the EU have healthy job markets. But the reason given was that the young people didn't want to move out of their local town and move away from family life. I thought that was very interesting and I think it's just an example of what the opposite orientation looks like.
bjornsing 4y ago
I’m in Sweden which in many cultural respects is the polar opposite of the US (within the West at least). But loneliness seems to be a major societal issue here as well. Where the US is self-reliant Sweden is probably “state-reliant”, but the effect is similar. It has its upsides though. My parents were abusive and our relationship is very limited today. Limiting contact with them is the best decision I’ve made in my life, and I’m not sure I would have been able to do that in a culture with stronger familial bonds.
- beebmam 4y ago
  > It has its upsides though. My parents were abusive and our relationship is very limited today. Limiting contact with them is the best decision I’ve made in my life Same here. My mother is a narcissist who lives in denial and makes the rest of her family miserable through her emotional abuse. As a young adult, possibly due to not being able to recognize any red flags, I ended up engaged to a woman who also was a narcissist and abuser, and eventually things led to her holding a chef's knife to my face telling me she was going to kill me and then herself because she thought I didn't spend enough time with her. I much prefer loneliness to enduring that kind of stuff. I'm grateful to the loneliness, in a sense. I have no master to answer to but my own generosity and patience, and I'd gladly trade anything to never be in a situation like that again.
  - reillyse 4y ago
    But the point I was getting at is that perhaps having a wider network of connections - larger than just your immediate family - would be a better buffer against loneliness. In societies with more dense familial/societal networks people just have more people around. Imagine if you lived in a town with half of your extended family. Say 4 aunts and uncles and 30 cousins (of different degrees 1st, 2nd etc). You'd know more immediate family but also they'd know people who you would have gotten to know. If you lost contact with parents or a spouse you wouldn't end up knowing nobody. You would have a rich network to fall back on. Now there are issues with this. You might not like everyone and everyone might know your business, which is annoying - but you'd probably suffer from less loneliness.
  - 4y ago
WalterBright 4y ago
At least in Seattle, the homeless problem is a drug addiction problem, as 90% of them are drug addicts or alcoholics. Drug addicted people often wind up homeless because their families can't live with them anymore, as the addiction consumes them.
- DenisM 4y ago
  > as 90% of them are drug addicts or alcoholics Citation needed.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw
  - dazc 4y ago
    Only anecdata but I have been homeless, ten years ago for around 4 months, and I would agree that the vast majority of other homeless people in the same area fell into this category. In the case of those pretending to be homeless for the purpose of begging, I'd say it was 100%.
- crtified 4y ago
  If we're looking to find root causes, then, in most cases, we can't stop at the drugs. There are almost always outside, causative circumstances which lead to those individuals taking the addiction pathway in life. It's not a type of life that many would choose knowingly with eyes wide open. As such, I don't see much point in stopping the buck at "the addiction". Because even if we could magically, instantly reform all such people to full health, we'd just end up with another batch soon enough, if we did not also address the underlying societal and family causes that leads to the downfall of these susceptible individuals, and creates permanent "underclasses".
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    The cures for homelessness in Seattle fail because homelessness is a consequence of drug addiction, and the city government will not recognize that.
seydor 4y ago
urban sprawl may be a factor. Loneliness is a physical thing. Even without friends, it feels good to know that humans are within 10 meters rather than 40. Most european cities are old and very high density, built for horses.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  While I agree that being somewhat physically close can help, I disagree that high-density cities are a solution. I live in an apartment in such a European city. I wouldn't be able to recognize my next-door neighbor in a crowd. I've never made any friends because they lived close to me. It's always been through places where people would get together anyway: school (lived in the suburbs at the time), work, other activities. Density brings its own issues. When there are so many people around, a sense of anonymity sets in. No one cares about any one given person when you cross paths with thousands every day. People rarely, if ever, randomly strike up conversations in the metro. > it feels good to know that humans are within 10 meters rather than 40. No, it does not. Because people are not only positive, many are extremely annoying. It's horrible when you can't get away from it even for five minutes of respite. They are noisy. I hate with a passion my upstairs neighbor who thinks it's fine to blast his TV 24/7. Yes, even at 3 in the morning. Yes, I can go complain. No, he doesn't bother opening the door to listen to me (although I wouldn't bet he can actually hear the doorbell). They don't care about other people's things (try parking a car on the streets of Paris for two days – and I'm not even talking about theft or willful vandalism, though that's an issue, of course). In some places, they really don't care about public cleanliness. And with the point above about anonymity, social pressure works much less well to force people into behaving properly. The places where I've seen the most "community spirit" is where people were not overly densely packed together, just "close enough".`
  - dazc 4y ago
    I agree with all of this. I spent some time living cheaply in Spain a few years ago, in high density housing, and I would describe it best as a living hell. Slamming doors, multiple barking dogs on every balcony, conversations held at such high volume as to sound like people were murdering each other, etc. On the positive side, everyone would smile at me and wish me a good day if our paths ever crossed leaving or entering the building. As a kid I lived in a middle class suburb where everyone knew each other and, at the time, I was fairly happy with this. As an adult though, I would find it uncomfortable. I guess there is an ideal balance between loneliness and being suffocated that isn't easy to get right.
elvis10ten 4y ago
The flip side of this will be if you are an outsider (immigrant or born into an unlucky family), you will feel more lonely because people are not gonna be as eager to find new bonds?
- nicbou 4y ago
  This is a problem that many immigrants have in Germany, especially in villages. I heard the certain cities are particularly closed to newcomers too. It's not necessarily xenophobia. People just grow up together and don't accept new people into their circles.
Eleison23 4y ago
The family in the West has been attacked and decimated and denigrated and deprecated. I am not sure whether it can survive. Women's/universal adult suffrage damaged our family unit by saying that the single voice/vote for a household is insufficient and the household must have many separate voices, thus dividing a house against itself. President Lincoln knew the perils of this. Divorce and worse, remarriage tore into the family by saying it wasn't necessarily permanent. Abortion, same-sex marriage, gender ideology, gang culture, public schools, all sorts of things have chipped away at family unity and said that individualism and personal sovereignty is king. Well, I'm sorry but that's just not how human beings can live. Homelessness and poverty in general are real problems for families. Because families are unwilling to tolerate living with a relative or supporting a relative who is unwilling/incapable of supporting himself, they turn that relative out into the world and force him to fend for himself. Others live off public assistance. Public assistance is a scourge of an anti-family society that doesn't have enough religious charity to support people. The rise of the welfare state is a shameful travesty, a knock-on effect from the failure of Christianity and the family. I've said in prior threads that there's no real poverty in these United States except where you work for it, but the true poverty, the devastating poverty, is to be alone, and isolated from one's family, and to feel rejected and unwanted. The rising culture of incels is a symptom of the family's failure to nurture and value blood relationships. It's a shame that so many people are growing up abused and/or neglected, but that's not the fault of the abusers, it's a systemic, generational fault in society.
- mustaddon 4y ago
  > It's a shame that so many people are growing up abused and/or neglected, but that's not the fault of the abusers dude...I don't even know where to begin I guess you think hitting your wife is just "correcting her"? https://www.un.org/en/coronavirus/what-is-domestic-abuse https://www.un.org/en/coronavirus/what-is-domestic-abuse
- reillyse 4y ago
  Is this satire/sarcasm ? Cause if it is you need a little more humor in it so we can recognize it. So I have to assume this is for real. I'm going to have to just say this is 100% not what I am talking about. First off when I say "family" I mean extended family that you are related to including cousins, grandparents, in-laws etc. But also seriously, I think I disagree with almost every sentence you've written.
watwut 4y ago
Statistically however, majority of Americans stays close to where they have been born. There are subgroups where traveling is common (to Sillicon Valley, for military). But overall, average American stays around where he or she came from.
brightball 4y ago
The problem entirely boils down the size of the US and how normalized it is for people to relocate entirely away from their family for work. I have a very large family that was stable in one city for a very long time (100+ years). I moved away for work (not even very far, only 3 hours drive) and it's very different from my cousins who came back. I've always assumed since there are so many other countries smaller than many US states (geographically) that this would be a less common problem. Not to go all conspiracy theory either, but the involvement of politics in activities that routinely brought communities together have certainly had a noticeable impact as well. It's happened so much in the last 15 years especially that it seems intentional.

dopeboy 4y ago

I'd agree. Couple comments: * The US has a strong individualistic culture and is a highly capitalistic society. Taken together, this produces people are who driven to prioritize career over other things, like staying close to your family. I live in the bay area and can list all the people who are here, far away from family, for better career opportunities. I am one of them. * The US is a large country with various hubs. If your family is not near a hub, you see them less. * Anecdotally, my friends who have children tend to be less lonely not due to the presence of kids but the surrounding "village" that develops around them (grandparents, relatives, parents of your kids' friends, etc). The US has a declining birth rate, which is pronounced in the major hubs. Again, I don't have data to back this claim up but I think on the whole, parents are less lonely.

reillyse 4y ago
I remember reading an article about youth unemployment in Spain. It was extremely high, something like 60% for people under 25. And the obvious answer (to me an Irishman) was why don't you emigrate. Lots of other parts of the EU have healthy job markets. But the reason given was that the young people didn't want to move out of their local town and move away from family life. I thought that was very interesting and I think it's just an example of what the opposite orientation looks like.

bjornsing 4y ago

I’m in Sweden which in many cultural respects is the polar opposite of the US (within the West at least). But loneliness seems to be a major societal issue here as well. Where the US is self-reliant Sweden is probably “state-reliant”, but the effect is similar. It has its upsides though. My parents were abusive and our relationship is very limited today. Limiting contact with them is the best decision I’ve made in my life, and I’m not sure I would have been able to do that in a culture with stronger familial bonds.

beebmam 4y ago
> It has its upsides though. My parents were abusive and our relationship is very limited today. Limiting contact with them is the best decision I’ve made in my life Same here. My mother is a narcissist who lives in denial and makes the rest of her family miserable through her emotional abuse. As a young adult, possibly due to not being able to recognize any red flags, I ended up engaged to a woman who also was a narcissist and abuser, and eventually things led to her holding a chef's knife to my face telling me she was going to kill me and then herself because she thought I didn't spend enough time with her. I much prefer loneliness to enduring that kind of stuff. I'm grateful to the loneliness, in a sense. I have no master to answer to but my own generosity and patience, and I'd gladly trade anything to never be in a situation like that again.
- reillyse 4y ago
  But the point I was getting at is that perhaps having a wider network of connections - larger than just your immediate family - would be a better buffer against loneliness. In societies with more dense familial/societal networks people just have more people around. Imagine if you lived in a town with half of your extended family. Say 4 aunts and uncles and 30 cousins (of different degrees 1st, 2nd etc). You'd know more immediate family but also they'd know people who you would have gotten to know. If you lost contact with parents or a spouse you wouldn't end up knowing nobody. You would have a rich network to fall back on. Now there are issues with this. You might not like everyone and everyone might know your business, which is annoying - but you'd probably suffer from less loneliness.
- 4y ago

WalterBright 4y ago

At least in Seattle, the homeless problem is a drug addiction problem, as 90% of them are drug addicts or alcoholics. Drug addicted people often wind up homeless because their families can't live with them anymore, as the addiction consumes them.

DenisM 4y ago
> as 90% of them are drug addicts or alcoholics Citation needed.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw
- dazc 4y ago
  Only anecdata but I have been homeless, ten years ago for around 4 months, and I would agree that the vast majority of other homeless people in the same area fell into this category. In the case of those pretending to be homeless for the purpose of begging, I'd say it was 100%.
crtified 4y ago
If we're looking to find root causes, then, in most cases, we can't stop at the drugs. There are almost always outside, causative circumstances which lead to those individuals taking the addiction pathway in life. It's not a type of life that many would choose knowingly with eyes wide open. As such, I don't see much point in stopping the buck at "the addiction". Because even if we could magically, instantly reform all such people to full health, we'd just end up with another batch soon enough, if we did not also address the underlying societal and family causes that leads to the downfall of these susceptible individuals, and creates permanent "underclasses".
- WalterBright 4y ago
  The cures for homelessness in Seattle fail because homelessness is a consequence of drug addiction, and the city government will not recognize that.

seydor 4y ago

urban sprawl may be a factor. Loneliness is a physical thing. Even without friends, it feels good to know that humans are within 10 meters rather than 40. Most european cities are old and very high density, built for horses.

vladvasiliu 4y ago
While I agree that being somewhat physically close can help, I disagree that high-density cities are a solution. I live in an apartment in such a European city. I wouldn't be able to recognize my next-door neighbor in a crowd. I've never made any friends because they lived close to me. It's always been through places where people would get together anyway: school (lived in the suburbs at the time), work, other activities. Density brings its own issues. When there are so many people around, a sense of anonymity sets in. No one cares about any one given person when you cross paths with thousands every day. People rarely, if ever, randomly strike up conversations in the metro. > it feels good to know that humans are within 10 meters rather than 40. No, it does not. Because people are not only positive, many are extremely annoying. It's horrible when you can't get away from it even for five minutes of respite. They are noisy. I hate with a passion my upstairs neighbor who thinks it's fine to blast his TV 24/7. Yes, even at 3 in the morning. Yes, I can go complain. No, he doesn't bother opening the door to listen to me (although I wouldn't bet he can actually hear the doorbell). They don't care about other people's things (try parking a car on the streets of Paris for two days – and I'm not even talking about theft or willful vandalism, though that's an issue, of course). In some places, they really don't care about public cleanliness. And with the point above about anonymity, social pressure works much less well to force people into behaving properly. The places where I've seen the most "community spirit" is where people were not overly densely packed together, just "close enough".`
- dazc 4y ago
  I agree with all of this. I spent some time living cheaply in Spain a few years ago, in high density housing, and I would describe it best as a living hell. Slamming doors, multiple barking dogs on every balcony, conversations held at such high volume as to sound like people were murdering each other, etc. On the positive side, everyone would smile at me and wish me a good day if our paths ever crossed leaving or entering the building. As a kid I lived in a middle class suburb where everyone knew each other and, at the time, I was fairly happy with this. As an adult though, I would find it uncomfortable. I guess there is an ideal balance between loneliness and being suffocated that isn't easy to get right.

elvis10ten 4y ago

The flip side of this will be if you are an outsider (immigrant or born into an unlucky family), you will feel more lonely because people are not gonna be as eager to find new bonds?

nicbou 4y ago
This is a problem that many immigrants have in Germany, especially in villages. I heard the certain cities are particularly closed to newcomers too. It's not necessarily xenophobia. People just grow up together and don't accept new people into their circles.

Eleison23 4y ago

The family in the West has been attacked and decimated and denigrated and deprecated. I am not sure whether it can survive. Women's/universal adult suffrage damaged our family unit by saying that the single voice/vote for a household is insufficient and the household must have many separate voices, thus dividing a house against itself. President Lincoln knew the perils of this. Divorce and worse, remarriage tore into the family by saying it wasn't necessarily permanent. Abortion, same-sex marriage, gender ideology, gang culture, public schools, all sorts of things have chipped away at family unity and said that individualism and personal sovereignty is king. Well, I'm sorry but that's just not how human beings can live. Homelessness and poverty in general are real problems for families. Because families are unwilling to tolerate living with a relative or supporting a relative who is unwilling/incapable of supporting himself, they turn that relative out into the world and force him to fend for himself. Others live off public assistance. Public assistance is a scourge of an anti-family society that doesn't have enough religious charity to support people. The rise of the welfare state is a shameful travesty, a knock-on effect from the failure of Christianity and the family. I've said in prior threads that there's no real poverty in these United States except where you work for it, but the true poverty, the devastating poverty, is to be alone, and isolated from one's family, and to feel rejected and unwanted. The rising culture of incels is a symptom of the family's failure to nurture and value blood relationships. It's a shame that so many people are growing up abused and/or neglected, but that's not the fault of the abusers, it's a systemic, generational fault in society.

mustaddon 4y ago
> It's a shame that so many people are growing up abused and/or neglected, but that's not the fault of the abusers dude...I don't even know where to begin I guess you think hitting your wife is just "correcting her"? https://www.un.org/en/coronavirus/what-is-domestic-abuse https://www.un.org/en/coronavirus/what-is-domestic-abuse
reillyse 4y ago
Is this satire/sarcasm ? Cause if it is you need a little more humor in it so we can recognize it. So I have to assume this is for real. I'm going to have to just say this is 100% not what I am talking about. First off when I say "family" I mean extended family that you are related to including cousins, grandparents, in-laws etc. But also seriously, I think I disagree with almost every sentence you've written.

watwut 4y ago

Statistically however, majority of Americans stays close to where they have been born. There are subgroups where traveling is common (to Sillicon Valley, for military). But overall, average American stays around where he or she came from.

brightball 4y ago

The problem entirely boils down the size of the US and how normalized it is for people to relocate entirely away from their family for work. I have a very large family that was stable in one city for a very long time (100+ years). I moved away for work (not even very far, only 3 hours drive) and it's very different from my cousins who came back. I've always assumed since there are so many other countries smaller than many US states (geographically) that this would be a less common problem. Not to go all conspiracy theory either, but the involvement of politics in activities that routinely brought communities together have certainly had a noticeable impact as well. It's happened so much in the last 15 years especially that it seems intentional.