I'd think that large families, clans, or tribes of the past and present, worked it out pretty well. If it's too much for 2 people, then it might be just right f

I'd think that large families, clans, or tribes of the past and present, worked it out pretty well. If it's too much for 2 people, then it might be just right for 5 or 7. That would require those people to live together, and we can't have that right now for some reason. Parents want children out of their hair ASAP, and children want to get as far away as possible as soon as they can, too. Elderly are left alone, and increasingly so once the neighbors start to die off. Visiting once a week is already too much, even for people who live in the same city. I'm very much like that myself and as I'm nearing my 40s, I started to regret it quite a bit. I started to think that the brand of individualism that we imported from you-know-where is somehow broken and dysfunctional when transplanted anywhere else. It's way too late to do anything about it, though, other than praying to Strauss and Howe and hoping the trend will reverse itself in a generation or two. Though, it might not pass, as their theory is also pretty closely tied to the environment and might depend on some factors we don't, or can't, replicate over here. To the TeMPOral sibling comment: yeah, humanity survived in those caves by sticking together. I thinks it's important, and the fact that it took half my life to realize this is, in hindsight, rather strange and sus.