8 ms·

The American Dream convinces people loneliness is normal

113 points by elorant 3y ago

dhbradshaw 3y ago
Interestingly, cowboys didn't work alone. They had teams of real people that they had to work with and trust along with their horses and the cows themselves. Even homesteaders would typically pull together for building, digging, playing, dancing, harvesting and more. The west was colonized by people with active social lives working together and depending on each other.
- krapp 3y ago
  Yeah, the modern idea of the frontiersman as a rugged individualist who answered to no law but God in his heart and the gun at his hip is a fantasy, like the noble knight or honorable samurai. Actual cowboys weren't nomads because their fierce independent spirit couldn't be tamed by society and its rules, but because their job was moving herds of cattle from place to place and of course they didn't do it alone. And many of them weren't even white - "buckaroo" is a corruption of the Spanish vaquero. But you wouldn't know any of that from any American cowboy movie or tv show.
MisterBastahrd 3y ago
No it doesn't. The American dream has always been about bringing the family unit up with you as you ascend, because for most of this nation's history, it was impossible to achieve any real success without the help of family members around the home.
- munk-a 3y ago
  That was correct once - but now living with your family is an extremely rare decision. The "cool" thing to do is to move out when you're 18 and occasionally visit your family before moving them into a snazzy retirement home. Co-living is hardly ever portrayed in pop-culture outside of immigrant families where it's usually played up for laughs.
- tokyolights2 3y ago
  As a gay person that will probably not end up having a traditional 'family unit' in my lifetime, I question whether or not the family is enough to stave off lonliness. I see a lot of nuclear families that spend what I think is a toxic amount of time with each other. To be able to thrive we need to be a part of a larger community, not just codependent on a spouse. Even worse is when I see people hanging all of their hopes and happiness on a child. When a mother says that their child is their best friend, I don't know if I should worry more for the mother or the child.
tokyolights2 3y ago
I spend so much of my time intentionally trying to cultivate community. In some respects, it is the over-arching theme of my adult life. I find community is very hard to come by so if I have to be the one to make it, so be it. I pay a pretty penny to be a member of a coworking space so I don't spend my workday alone. Three times per week I go to regularly-scheduled events (a game night, running club, and roller-skating night). I'm every week I try to coordinate events between friends that I have made through these groups. I've learned to be an even planner, match maker, (second rate) therapist, baby sitter, and referee. I definitely spend more mental cycles on my friends than I do on work. The amount of work that I needed to put in was enormous. It was hard and scary at first. I was a wall-flower. Inviting people I don't know well to do something fun is not a skill that I was born with (quite the opposite). But with all this effort put in, I am finding that after multiple years of effort the value is starting to really pay dividends. I guess the over-all point that I am making is that the American Dream is that you can live how you want, so if you want community, make that your Dream and go do it. Looking back, I really feel like I am an entrepreneur of friendship, and I think that at the end of my life I am not going to regret it.
- toomanyrichies 3y ago
  "Entrepreneur of friendship"... love that.
  - 121watts 3y ago
    logged in to say the exact same thing!
- theaussiestew 3y ago
  You sound like you live such a rich life, I love it!
- cobertos 3y ago
  Do you ever struggle with giving more time to specific friendships/relationships you want to cultivate more, at the expense of others? I find when I focus on a group, usually it also comes at the expense of focus on the individuals, and the people feel less close. Unless I put a lot of focus on the group over time, then I usually get to know the individuals depthful enough, but not as deep if I had spent that time with just two or three of them instead.
munk-a 3y ago
The modern version of the American dream is an extremely toxic ideology. It promotes such an extreme version of individualism that it's threatening to tear apart all the social safety nets still existent in the US while also glorifying excessive wealth hoarding. It is absolutely bonkers that we've gotten to the point where cheating on your taxes can be viewed as a virtue.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - stemlord 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - NERD_ALERT 3y ago
    It appears that way when the richest people in the country are able to avoid them and bribe politicians to use the working class tax dollars to bail them out every time their risky behavior causes problems. When it’s actually used to properly fund public services we spend less money for better services at the end of the day.
    - zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
      Taxes are used to bail out the rich and murder and imprison the poor. And a little bit spent on infrastructure.
- rqtwteye 3y ago
  It probably started with shareholder value when companies they declared that their only responsibility is to make as much money as possible. This ideology is very appealing to sociopaths so now they dominate.
  - AdrianB1 3y ago
    You are saying this started 3-400 years ago? Then why is it visible just now?
wutheringh 3y ago
Maybe unpopular opinion but these types of articles exist to make people more dissatisfied and distract them from going after what they need. A couple PhDs don't know what you need. They can tell you to focus on friendships, but you'd probably work less, and they don't know what your life would be like if you had less money and for example couldn't afford a car, or if you became disconnected from your work friends. In general if you have a strong work ethic at something, even if it's working toward the American Dream, you're probably doing exactly what you need to be doing. The solution isn't to get distracted by lifestyle articles and try to go foraging for friends in a cliche way, the solution is to get better at what you're working on. Sometimes that means finding a new path that fills the same void, but you're going to have a hard time until that void is filled. Usually you'll find friendships fall into place when your life is in order and has clearer direction because you find like-minded people.
elzbardico 3y ago
While I am not a fan of American Exceptionalism, I think this article is more informed by the usual European prejudiced tropes about America than by reality, at least in the parallels between the traditions of rugged individualism from the Old West and the present epidemics of loneliness. The old Cowboy was based on self-reliance, he was not a loner because he couldn't connect with people, but because his adventures lead him far beyond the spacial confines of society. He was a master of his element but felt at peace and integrated with nature. The modern loneliness is born out of o alienation, learned hopelessness, lack of concrete agency on one's life, and extreme subjection of the individual to an all-encompassing (some could say even totalitarian) social-economic-cultural system that gives him no other choice than being a loner. Where the cowboy choose to be left alone when he wanted, the modern loner just can't find a place to be him/herself in modern society. It is the tragedy of utter powerlessness. And it is kind of ironic that this comes from El Pais, because for all the external appearance of happiness and permanent joy that seems to characterize spain for a tourist, Spanish society is also extremely atomized, and behind the facade of an easy life, most upper and middle-class Spaniards I've met there seemed to live a very artificial lifes devoid of any long term meaning or sense of transcendence.
- la64710 3y ago
  All the American exceptionalism and associated lone hero image was fine and dandy till the west was winning in the global stage.The urban culture got imposed on every other country of the world and in this model of development it was expected people to go as far as needed from their homes and roots in search of prosperity. It was in a way encouraged for decades and at least two to four generations of these countries grew up embracing this urban nuclear family culture and discarding their own culture of joint families and close ties. Now when the western civilization is on the back foot suddenly we are finding new love for community and close social ties. I am sure tomorrow if we find new riches in the mines of Mars and Saturn , the philosophy of the lone warrior will again be encouraged to recruit a new batch of lonesome spacemen for their decade long journeys to these planets.
  - shrimp_emoji 3y ago
AlbertCory 3y ago
"the contours of American society — that emphasis on individualism, that spreading out with impunity over a vast, sometimes outsized landscape" I hate to be boring enough to ask for citations, but this is a case where we really need them. It reads like something written by a non-American. In most of American history, people lived close to their families. Certainly in smaller towns, they did. Once there were big cities, it became more common for someone to move away from the family and go to one, but that certainly had nothing whatever to do with "spreading out with impunity over a vast, sometimes outsized landscape." People who "spread out" to the frontier nearly always brought a spouse with them, and often kids as well. Recently, there certainly has been an increase in one-person households: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2019/comm/one-person-households.html https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2019/comm/one-... but even in 1969, it was only 16.9%. I would bet that in the time of The Searchers it was way, way less.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  I am not an American and I don't see things about the American Ethos the same way the author does. Most foreigners who have lived in the USA are far more forgiving of the American society. No, it takes an east coast intelectual born in america to be so critical of American Society. And mind you, if you look at my history here you'll see lots of comments critical of American and especially its foreign policy. But this kind of stereotyping is basically wrong.
elzbardico 3y ago
As someone who was born in Latin America, I always find those stereotypes about America funny. If anything, Americans can't fucking leave you alone for God's sake. They need to smile at you in the street, give you good morning, invite you to their churches, and bring you a pie after you move to the neighborhood. Ok, this is more of a suburban experience. But this is also quintessential America.
- Invictus0 3y ago
  Please engage with the article. This is a serious issue that you're making a mockery of.
  - elzbardico 3y ago
    I don't agree with the premises of the article. For me, it is just someone trying to flag the usual ideological banner against individualism by linking it to a real problem.
  - mikecoles 3y ago
    The article deserves mocking.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  That's probably a "only non-white person for several blocks" experience, if I had to guess. Behind that "wont leave you alone" is often a sort of racial fetishism or, less sinisterly, a wish to meet new and different people
  - elzbardico 3y ago
    Not really likely. I came from German and Italian Alpine ancestry. If anything, I am probably more white than many of my former white American neighbors.
jasmer 3y ago
The 'American Dream' was that you could have a property/house (small!), maybe a one car, maybe some 'fancy' things like a diswhasher, and probably do that while only one parent was working, and your rights would be protected, you'd have political stability and participatory democracy, rule of law, a sense of national identity, and probably an 'ok retirement' - and you'd be able to do that in your 'community'.
aaron695 3y ago
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labrador 3y ago
It’s a classic example of a fundamental American tall tale — that of a nation built on notions of individualism, a male-dominated story filled with loners and “rugged individualists” who suck it up, do what needs to be done, ride off into the sunset and like it that way. I don't know where they got the idea that Americans "like it that way". American music is full of heart breaking tales of lonesomeness, "so lonesome you could die". Google "lyrics lonesome" turns up "about 7,470,000 results"
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  This. It feels like there's so little positive, upbeat music (my favorite kind) compared to mushy or depressive music. ~_~
Eumenes 3y ago
This has more to do with how vast and rural America is (Europe is 3.5x more densely populated, more homogeneous), in addition to multiculturalism, which isn't inherently bad, but we're seeing discrete populations work themselves into enclaves. Add in the average American spending 5 hours and 24 minutes on their mobile device each day (article says Americans spend 20 mins daily with friends on average ... I think its very safe to say the phone took some of that time away), coupled with divisive media and rampant hedonism, we're gonna get alot more of this. Yes - Americans have an independent streak, but this American Dream/cowboy take is naïve at best.
- robotresearcher 3y ago
  > (Europe is [...] more homogeneous You might underestimate how different Europeans feel from each other. Consider neighboring states California, Oregon, Nevada vs. France, Germany, Spain.
tmnstr85 3y ago
I am going through something right now mentally as a middle aged man and being alone every day starting at 8:30am and only coming home to the same 3 people (who i love unconditionally) is kind of driving me mad. My professional life prior to covid had me weaving the halls of an office I knew and many of the people there were very special to me. To have none of that these days leaves my mind to be pre-occupied by things hard to escape. I'm ready for a change but I don't know if that involves going back to a 9 to 5 with a commute. I really like the top post on here about creating community and understanding its an investment. I hope others benefit from this as well.
- 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
  > To have none of that these days leaves my mind to be pre-occupied by things hard to escape. So don't escape them. Go to therapy and work out why going home to your family is driving you crazy. (Hint: it's not a lack of office banter)
- qgin 3y ago
  Often in threads about loneliness, especially Ask HN threads about how to connect with people, there are some extremely terse replies to the effect of "Get married; have a family." And while I support doing that 100%, it is not the trivial solution for loneliness or lack of community. Connection to a world outside your house is an extremely important thing.
- yMPJXgDvj 3y ago
  I struggle with this too. Returning to the office and all that involves (commute, schedule inflexibility) isn't ideal, so I hope that I can keep WFH but find the community aspect with more intentional effort there. But I miss the ease of just getting that from the office environment.
giantg2 3y ago
Society is driving loneliness. Look at the demands of school (and after school activities for that college app) and work. Everyone is so busy that it's hard to schedule anything once you have a job, house, family, etc. You need two incomes now, so that's that's a big drain on time when the schedules don't match up.
- aylmao 3y ago
  I agree, though I wouldn't call it society. I'd call it "economy and policy". The USA has no safety nets. Getting sick could mean going bankrupt if you don't have a job with healthcare. With rents as high as they are in big cities, not having a job quickly drains your bank account. As you said, you need two incomes now. If you have a family, you might live in the suburbs which makes things worse. Suburbs can often be loneliness machines. Everyone is so spread-out, there's nothing to do except going to someone else's house, and you have to drive to get anywhere. I don't want people in my house. I want to meet them at a café, a bar, or a restaurant, casually. "Hey, this thing happened at work, let's chat about it over some drinks" shouldn't involve picking whose house we're meeting at, or driving, or a $XX 20 minute + 10 min wait-time Uber, and another one back.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    'I'd call it "economy and policy".' Is there really a difference? In any first world country, society seems to be driven by this, regardless of the safety nets. "Everyone is so spread-out, there's nothing to do except going to someone else's house, and you have to drive to get anywhere." This is highly variable. I've lived on suburbs were there were thing to do. It wasn't that spread out, so I could bike places. "I don't want people in my house." Perhaps this is part of the problem. "shouldn't involve picking whose house we're meeting at, or driving, or a $XX 20 minute + 10 min wait-time Uber," I think you may be confusing rural for suburb. 20 minutes to get to a bar/cafe/restaurant is not a typical suburban experience.
  - revolvingocelot 3y ago
    >I want to meet them at a café, a bar, or a restaurant, casually You're talking about the sociological concept of the "third place" [0] -- not home and not work, but a hangout elsewhere. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
0xbadcafebee 3y ago
Maybe some abstract philosophy from the 19th century isn't the reason that, all of a sudden, people are more lonely and depressed. The less I engage with America's consumerist mass media society, the less lonely I feel. I felt more lonely when I watched TV, listened to the news, read the paper, scrolled through social media. Everywhere there was a reminder of the life I'm not living, stuff I don't have, other people's lives I'm not a part of, and of course, impending doom. I disconnected from all of that and moved to the woods. 2 years later, I've never felt less lonely. I am so constantly busy with gardening, composting, cooking, chores, repairs, building things, fishing, hiking, paddling, that I barely have time to watch a show or check my phone. I feel no existential angst, no FOMO. It never crosses my mind that there's something I'm missing out on. I'm busier than I've ever been. Where others might think about politics, buying a new car, which restaurant to go out to, trying to cancel their gym membership, trying to find someone to go on a date with, or who's party they weren't invited to, my biggest concern is the weather. When it's going to rain, what temperature it is, how much sun there is. I guess mice is another big one; trying to figure out how they're getting into the heating ducts, or how to keep them out of my car. And snails; they're devouring my seedlings. So, weather and pests. I don't really know what loneliness is now. I can always open a window and listen to the birds, watch them go about their lives. I can even engage with them, feeing them, building them a home, calling them. I can dig up my garden bed to plant something new and see all the activity going on underneath. I can check out the plants and make sure they're healthy. Life is everywhere, and I can engage with all of it, any time. If I had to engage with humanity all the time, yeah, I'd probably get lonely and depressed. But like those who moved out into the wildnerness of the Old West, I have the luxury of not having to be constantly reminded of humanity. "out of sight, out of mind" is true enlightenment.
- sammalloy 3y ago
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wonderwonder 3y ago
The cookie management screen on that site is an abomination.
eternalban 3y ago
Actual source: https://apnews.com/article/loneliness-lonely-alone-surgeon-general-c44798ddbe95d9e3da1367cefd25ec93 https://apnews.com/article/loneliness-lonely-alone-surgeon-g... Actual author: https://www.google.com/search?q=TED+ANTHONY https://www.google.com/search?q=TED+ANTHONY - This is a strange article. It reads like propaganda designed to demoralize and denigrate. "“Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it ... throws him back forever upon himself alone, and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.”" & "In the age before democracy, for better and for worse, “People weren’t lonely. They were tied up in a web of connections. And in many countries that’s more true than it was in the United States,” says Colin Woodard, director of the Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Woodard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Woodard Now Colin is another author, but just a bit of googling and I'm pretty sure the Associated Press is misusing his words - note Colin actually said in this completely contextless quote "more true than it was in the United States". So apparently the dreaded disease of "democracy" (or wait, I thought it was the "American Dream") had not prevented "communities" in USA. Heck, calling UTAH and the "community" of Mormons, among a large number of such communities in the dreaded US of A. Anyway, maybe someone should ping Colin and ask him: did you really say that Democracy aka "the American Dream" was a cause of breaking of community in the US? So, dear reader, please note that "American Dream" == "democracy", And that "dream" (abhorant to 'un-lonely' "Old World aristocracies") is the cause of your modern malaise. (Much more correlated with economic regime than political regime, imo.) Now the question presents itself: Just how did these misguided Americans with their "dream" of "democracy" make it from 19th to 21st century? Apparently we were caught in the spell of "a premise based on myths" and simply didn't realize we got it so wrong! Thank you AP and Ted for clearing this up for us. Alienation & loneliness are symptoms of modernity, not "individualism". Representative democracy actually promotes creation of elective communities -- note how the designated binary teams of "red" and "blue" factions in US cling to one another .. -- whereas "Old World aristocracies" were communities of blood and soil. Has AP gone fascist or something?
- latency-guy2 3y ago
  I don't think the AP has gone fascist, I think they've gone leftist. This author appears to hate this fictional America they've invented in their mind, something lots of leftists do because they can't stand capitalism having a longevity beyond what their desired system of economic governance could ever achieve. So now it's the next best thing to take it down anyway they can, or steal the resources of America in the hopes of establishing their ideal world. It's fascinating to study these people exert so much combined effort for complete failure. By now you'd expect some of these foolish people to give it up, but they keep writing fan fiction in the hopes of getting enough people to listen to them that they'll "revolt" as they claim.
sandworm101 3y ago
The American cowboy-hero isn't about the hero being lonely. It as about heroes leaving. Wandering strangers, be them cowboys or Superman, sweep in to fix problems and then go away. They do not integrate into the societies they help. They do not take anything from the people they help. They are therefore not a sociological threat to those they help. American society is very segmented, particularly in the mythic world of "small towns" so idolized in fiction. Outsiders are welcome, just not welcome to stay. The American dream is about stability and property rights. Strangers are a threat. They need to leave at the end of the story.
- krapp 3y ago
  I would blame that motif mostly on the nature of episodic storytelling - books, comics, radio plays, television,etc, than something fundamental about American culture. It's necessary to move the character from one place to the next to tell fully encapsulated stories that can easily be serialized out of order. And thematically, it doesn't even apply to Superman or many superhero stories (maybe the Hulk.) Superman lives in Metropolis. Batman lives in Gotham. Spider Man is a quintessentially New York hero, he's a landmark. These heroes are all part of their specific communities.
  - 2-718-281-828 3y ago
    > I would blame that motif mostly on the nature of episodic storytelling - books, comics, radio plays, television,etc, than something fundamental about American culture I'd argue that American culture (and culture worldwide) is actually for almost a hundred years mostly formed by movies and movie tropes. > These heroes are all part of their specific communities. None of those heroes are a part of those communities you mention. Only their public personas are. Then they disguise and become those heroes. That concept of staying at the end of the movie would in this regard translate to a hero unveiling his identity and still be the hero. Never happens. Also OP is specifically writing about the _cowboy_-hero. Which is anyway a different category than the super hero. What they have in common though is the loneliness that OP also talks about. Superheros also always complain about that and their urges to reveal who they "really" are.
- 3y ago
bitwize 3y ago
One of these days we're going to wake up and realize that the defining characteristic of American society, economy, and politics is toxic individualism. And having named the monster, we can begin addressing it. Adopting a toxically individualist stance has made some people rich and powerful, however, and they will do anything to maintain this false consciousness.
sammalloy 3y ago
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confoundcofound 3y ago
The ultimate problem is a pervasive lack of meaning in today’s society. The cowboys of the past lived to fulfill a larger purpose: freedom, community service & prosperity, and unity with God. Today, the wells of purpose have dried up. Economic prosperity feels out of reach for many, social media has turbocharged narcissism, corporations have reduced service workers to automatons, we’ve spent decades ignoring the importance of the family unit and telling people religion is stupid without at least giving them an alternative. People aren’t lonely, they’re purposeless.
eggy 3y ago
Solitude: A Return to the Self, by Anthony Storr was a good read, but it's been over 15 years, so maybe worth a revisit. I am sociable, but I don't do much socializing. Rollerskating and motorcycles have punctuated my life with social groups and a sense of doing things with a group. I engage with people, but only if it's right there; I don't plan or reach out much. Fortunately, I have older kids, and I have some younger ones too that add all the socialization I could ever want. Family has been the key throughout my life. I do love my solitutude and reading and hiking and looking at stars though. Growing up in Brooklyn in the 60s/70s with street gangs and violence made me stay with my small group of tight friends. I've lived and worked all over the world, but I've never felt compelled to plan, attend, or create anything beyond the day-to-day life and the new MC club I am a member of (and skydiving with my older son for the third time!). Doing stuff.
chrismcb 3y ago
The American Dream doesn't convince people that loneliness is normal. Social media did that. While I appreciate social media, as it allows me to stay connected to my friends around the world. It doesn't help much with friends locally.
jmyeet 3y ago
Every culture seems to mythologize a key part of its history and it becomes core to its culture and identity. For the US, its a combination of the American Revolution but, but importantly (IMHO), the Wild West and homesteading by which the US colonized West. It anti-establishment. The American Revolution spirit is part of that mythology. The article mentions this with the "rugged individualist" but doesn't really capture how pervasive that is. So many (most?) Americans want a "homestead". It's why it's illegal to build anything but single-family homes ("SFHs") in the vast majority of the country. The automobile was about the worst thing to happen here because it enabled this suburban expansion. Mixed-use and higher density living fell by the wayside. People live in their SFH bubbles. The car allows you to travel in a bubble, ignorant of, oblivious to and disconnected from the world around you. Living in a city forces you to deal with people in a way most Americans don't have to and don't want to. That interaction leads to empathy and that lack of empathy is such a huge problem today. While I'm a big fan of remote work wherever possible, I think it'll actually make this worse because a bunch of people who are forced to deal with other people will be able to move to 15 acres in the middle of Tennessee and never have to deal with anyone outside of their family ever again. We have no so-called "third places" in this environment. Society is utterly car dependent, which is particularly bad for the elderly, poor, disabled and children as being unable to drive is severely limiting. If that wasn't bad enough, we're making this worse by making housing a commodity. Successive governments seek to make sure housing prices only go up to the point where increasingly more people simply cannot afford a roof over their heads. Thus begins a cycle of living in their cars before finally losing their cars and becoming truly homeless. It is unbelievably shortsighted and cruel.
IronRod 3y ago
The headline is erroneous and flame worthy. There is without question an issue with loneliness in the world (not just the USl but it has nothing to do with what is actually labeled the"American Dream" (the ability to put in effort and succeed). There are plenty of people who spend time alone without being lonely.
udkl 3y ago
https://archive.ph/Q8aE7 https://archive.ph/Q8aE7
friend_and_foe 3y ago
This problem is not the result of "rugged individualism", it is the result of government policy, deliberate design of systems in everyday use to make profit, the profitability of disease and disillusionment with the supposed normal everyday orthodoxy due to attempts to normalize unpopular things by force and propaganda. America is very sick, and it's not the result of John Wayne movies.
gamechangr 3y ago
I live in a midwest and rarely hear people complain about loneliness.
frankreyes 3y ago
It is normal to be lonely, when compared to human history. For a long time humans were living in farms and meeting your neighbors was a rare event.
- vraid 3y ago
  Most humans throughout history lived in close-knit farming communities where they shared their home with a large family and met their neighbours every single day. What sort of secluded farms are you imagining?

113 points by elorant 3y ago

Interestingly, cowboys didn't work alone. They had teams of real people that they had to work with and trust along with their horses and the cows themselves. Even homesteaders would typically pull together for building, digging, playing, dancing, harvesting and more. The west was colonized by people with active social lives working together and depending on each other.

krapp 3y ago
Yeah, the modern idea of the frontiersman as a rugged individualist who answered to no law but God in his heart and the gun at his hip is a fantasy, like the noble knight or honorable samurai. Actual cowboys weren't nomads because their fierce independent spirit couldn't be tamed by society and its rules, but because their job was moving herds of cattle from place to place and of course they didn't do it alone. And many of them weren't even white - "buckaroo" is a corruption of the Spanish vaquero. But you wouldn't know any of that from any American cowboy movie or tv show.

MisterBastahrd 3y ago

No it doesn't. The American dream has always been about bringing the family unit up with you as you ascend, because for most of this nation's history, it was impossible to achieve any real success without the help of family members around the home.

munk-a 3y ago
That was correct once - but now living with your family is an extremely rare decision. The "cool" thing to do is to move out when you're 18 and occasionally visit your family before moving them into a snazzy retirement home. Co-living is hardly ever portrayed in pop-culture outside of immigrant families where it's usually played up for laughs.
tokyolights2 3y ago
As a gay person that will probably not end up having a traditional 'family unit' in my lifetime, I question whether or not the family is enough to stave off lonliness. I see a lot of nuclear families that spend what I think is a toxic amount of time with each other. To be able to thrive we need to be a part of a larger community, not just codependent on a spouse. Even worse is when I see people hanging all of their hopes and happiness on a child. When a mother says that their child is their best friend, I don't know if I should worry more for the mother or the child.

tokyolights2 3y ago

I spend so much of my time intentionally trying to cultivate community. In some respects, it is the over-arching theme of my adult life. I find community is very hard to come by so if I have to be the one to make it, so be it. I pay a pretty penny to be a member of a coworking space so I don't spend my workday alone. Three times per week I go to regularly-scheduled events (a game night, running club, and roller-skating night). I'm every week I try to coordinate events between friends that I have made through these groups. I've learned to be an even planner, match maker, (second rate) therapist, baby sitter, and referee. I definitely spend more mental cycles on my friends than I do on work. The amount of work that I needed to put in was enormous. It was hard and scary at first. I was a wall-flower. Inviting people I don't know well to do something fun is not a skill that I was born with (quite the opposite). But with all this effort put in, I am finding that after multiple years of effort the value is starting to really pay dividends. I guess the over-all point that I am making is that the American Dream is that you can live how you want, so if you want community, make that your Dream and go do it. Looking back, I really feel like I am an entrepreneur of friendship, and I think that at the end of my life I am not going to regret it.

toomanyrichies 3y ago
"Entrepreneur of friendship"... love that.
- 121watts 3y ago
  logged in to say the exact same thing!
theaussiestew 3y ago
You sound like you live such a rich life, I love it!
cobertos 3y ago
Do you ever struggle with giving more time to specific friendships/relationships you want to cultivate more, at the expense of others? I find when I focus on a group, usually it also comes at the expense of focus on the individuals, and the people feel less close. Unless I put a lot of focus on the group over time, then I usually get to know the individuals depthful enough, but not as deep if I had spent that time with just two or three of them instead.

munk-a 3y ago

The modern version of the American dream is an extremely toxic ideology. It promotes such an extreme version of individualism that it's threatening to tear apart all the social safety nets still existent in the US while also glorifying excessive wealth hoarding. It is absolutely bonkers that we've gotten to the point where cheating on your taxes can be viewed as a virtue.

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
[flagged]
- stemlord 3y ago
  [flagged]
- NERD_ALERT 3y ago
  It appears that way when the richest people in the country are able to avoid them and bribe politicians to use the working class tax dollars to bail them out every time their risky behavior causes problems. When it’s actually used to properly fund public services we spend less money for better services at the end of the day.
  - zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
    Taxes are used to bail out the rich and murder and imprison the poor. And a little bit spent on infrastructure.
rqtwteye 3y ago
It probably started with shareholder value when companies they declared that their only responsibility is to make as much money as possible. This ideology is very appealing to sociopaths so now they dominate.
- AdrianB1 3y ago
  You are saying this started 3-400 years ago? Then why is it visible just now?

wutheringh 3y ago

Maybe unpopular opinion but these types of articles exist to make people more dissatisfied and distract them from going after what they need. A couple PhDs don't know what you need. They can tell you to focus on friendships, but you'd probably work less, and they don't know what your life would be like if you had less money and for example couldn't afford a car, or if you became disconnected from your work friends. In general if you have a strong work ethic at something, even if it's working toward the American Dream, you're probably doing exactly what you need to be doing. The solution isn't to get distracted by lifestyle articles and try to go foraging for friends in a cliche way, the solution is to get better at what you're working on. Sometimes that means finding a new path that fills the same void, but you're going to have a hard time until that void is filled. Usually you'll find friendships fall into place when your life is in order and has clearer direction because you find like-minded people.

elzbardico 3y ago

While I am not a fan of American Exceptionalism, I think this article is more informed by the usual European prejudiced tropes about America than by reality, at least in the parallels between the traditions of rugged individualism from the Old West and the present epidemics of loneliness. The old Cowboy was based on self-reliance, he was not a loner because he couldn't connect with people, but because his adventures lead him far beyond the spacial confines of society. He was a master of his element but felt at peace and integrated with nature. The modern loneliness is born out of o alienation, learned hopelessness, lack of concrete agency on one's life, and extreme subjection of the individual to an all-encompassing (some could say even totalitarian) social-economic-cultural system that gives him no other choice than being a loner. Where the cowboy choose to be left alone when he wanted, the modern loner just can't find a place to be him/herself in modern society. It is the tragedy of utter powerlessness. And it is kind of ironic that this comes from El Pais, because for all the external appearance of happiness and permanent joy that seems to characterize spain for a tourist, Spanish society is also extremely atomized, and behind the facade of an easy life, most upper and middle-class Spaniards I've met there seemed to live a very artificial lifes devoid of any long term meaning or sense of transcendence.

la64710 3y ago
All the American exceptionalism and associated lone hero image was fine and dandy till the west was winning in the global stage.The urban culture got imposed on every other country of the world and in this model of development it was expected people to go as far as needed from their homes and roots in search of prosperity. It was in a way encouraged for decades and at least two to four generations of these countries grew up embracing this urban nuclear family culture and discarding their own culture of joint families and close ties. Now when the western civilization is on the back foot suddenly we are finding new love for community and close social ties. I am sure tomorrow if we find new riches in the mines of Mars and Saturn , the philosophy of the lone warrior will again be encouraged to recruit a new batch of lonesome spacemen for their decade long journeys to these planets.
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago

AlbertCory 3y ago

"the contours of American society — that emphasis on individualism, that spreading out with impunity over a vast, sometimes outsized landscape" I hate to be boring enough to ask for citations, but this is a case where we really need them. It reads like something written by a non-American. In most of American history, people lived close to their families. Certainly in smaller towns, they did. Once there were big cities, it became more common for someone to move away from the family and go to one, but that certainly had nothing whatever to do with "spreading out with impunity over a vast, sometimes outsized landscape." People who "spread out" to the frontier nearly always brought a spouse with them, and often kids as well. Recently, there certainly has been an increase in one-person households: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2019/comm/one-person-households.html https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2019/comm/one-... but even in 1969, it was only 16.9%. I would bet that in the time of The Searchers it was way, way less.

elzbardico 3y ago
I am not an American and I don't see things about the American Ethos the same way the author does. Most foreigners who have lived in the USA are far more forgiving of the American society. No, it takes an east coast intelectual born in america to be so critical of American Society. And mind you, if you look at my history here you'll see lots of comments critical of American and especially its foreign policy. But this kind of stereotyping is basically wrong.

elzbardico 3y ago

As someone who was born in Latin America, I always find those stereotypes about America funny. If anything, Americans can't fucking leave you alone for God's sake. They need to smile at you in the street, give you good morning, invite you to their churches, and bring you a pie after you move to the neighborhood. Ok, this is more of a suburban experience. But this is also quintessential America.

Invictus0 3y ago
Please engage with the article. This is a serious issue that you're making a mockery of.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  I don't agree with the premises of the article. For me, it is just someone trying to flag the usual ideological banner against individualism by linking it to a real problem.
- mikecoles 3y ago
  The article deserves mocking.
phendrenad2 3y ago
That's probably a "only non-white person for several blocks" experience, if I had to guess. Behind that "wont leave you alone" is often a sort of racial fetishism or, less sinisterly, a wish to meet new and different people
- elzbardico 3y ago
  Not really likely. I came from German and Italian Alpine ancestry. If anything, I am probably more white than many of my former white American neighbors.

jasmer 3y ago

The 'American Dream' was that you could have a property/house (small!), maybe a one car, maybe some 'fancy' things like a diswhasher, and probably do that while only one parent was working, and your rights would be protected, you'd have political stability and participatory democracy, rule of law, a sense of national identity, and probably an 'ok retirement' - and you'd be able to do that in your 'community'.

aaron695 3y ago

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labrador 3y ago

It’s a classic example of a fundamental American tall tale — that of a nation built on notions of individualism, a male-dominated story filled with loners and “rugged individualists” who suck it up, do what needs to be done, ride off into the sunset and like it that way. I don't know where they got the idea that Americans "like it that way". American music is full of heart breaking tales of lonesomeness, "so lonesome you could die". Google "lyrics lonesome" turns up "about 7,470,000 results"

shrimp_emoji 3y ago
This. It feels like there's so little positive, upbeat music (my favorite kind) compared to mushy or depressive music. ~_~

Eumenes 3y ago

This has more to do with how vast and rural America is (Europe is 3.5x more densely populated, more homogeneous), in addition to multiculturalism, which isn't inherently bad, but we're seeing discrete populations work themselves into enclaves. Add in the average American spending 5 hours and 24 minutes on their mobile device each day (article says Americans spend 20 mins daily with friends on average ... I think its very safe to say the phone took some of that time away), coupled with divisive media and rampant hedonism, we're gonna get alot more of this. Yes - Americans have an independent streak, but this American Dream/cowboy take is naïve at best.

robotresearcher 3y ago
> (Europe is [...] more homogeneous You might underestimate how different Europeans feel from each other. Consider neighboring states California, Oregon, Nevada vs. France, Germany, Spain.

tmnstr85 3y ago

I am going through something right now mentally as a middle aged man and being alone every day starting at 8:30am and only coming home to the same 3 people (who i love unconditionally) is kind of driving me mad. My professional life prior to covid had me weaving the halls of an office I knew and many of the people there were very special to me. To have none of that these days leaves my mind to be pre-occupied by things hard to escape. I'm ready for a change but I don't know if that involves going back to a 9 to 5 with a commute. I really like the top post on here about creating community and understanding its an investment. I hope others benefit from this as well.

0xbadcafebee 3y ago
> To have none of that these days leaves my mind to be pre-occupied by things hard to escape. So don't escape them. Go to therapy and work out why going home to your family is driving you crazy. (Hint: it's not a lack of office banter)
qgin 3y ago
Often in threads about loneliness, especially Ask HN threads about how to connect with people, there are some extremely terse replies to the effect of "Get married; have a family." And while I support doing that 100%, it is not the trivial solution for loneliness or lack of community. Connection to a world outside your house is an extremely important thing.
yMPJXgDvj 3y ago
I struggle with this too. Returning to the office and all that involves (commute, schedule inflexibility) isn't ideal, so I hope that I can keep WFH but find the community aspect with more intentional effort there. But I miss the ease of just getting that from the office environment.

giantg2 3y ago

Society is driving loneliness. Look at the demands of school (and after school activities for that college app) and work. Everyone is so busy that it's hard to schedule anything once you have a job, house, family, etc. You need two incomes now, so that's that's a big drain on time when the schedules don't match up.

aylmao 3y ago
I agree, though I wouldn't call it society. I'd call it "economy and policy". The USA has no safety nets. Getting sick could mean going bankrupt if you don't have a job with healthcare. With rents as high as they are in big cities, not having a job quickly drains your bank account. As you said, you need two incomes now. If you have a family, you might live in the suburbs which makes things worse. Suburbs can often be loneliness machines. Everyone is so spread-out, there's nothing to do except going to someone else's house, and you have to drive to get anywhere. I don't want people in my house. I want to meet them at a café, a bar, or a restaurant, casually. "Hey, this thing happened at work, let's chat about it over some drinks" shouldn't involve picking whose house we're meeting at, or driving, or a $XX 20 minute + 10 min wait-time Uber, and another one back.
- giantg2 3y ago
  'I'd call it "economy and policy".' Is there really a difference? In any first world country, society seems to be driven by this, regardless of the safety nets. "Everyone is so spread-out, there's nothing to do except going to someone else's house, and you have to drive to get anywhere." This is highly variable. I've lived on suburbs were there were thing to do. It wasn't that spread out, so I could bike places. "I don't want people in my house." Perhaps this is part of the problem. "shouldn't involve picking whose house we're meeting at, or driving, or a $XX 20 minute + 10 min wait-time Uber," I think you may be confusing rural for suburb. 20 minutes to get to a bar/cafe/restaurant is not a typical suburban experience.
- revolvingocelot 3y ago
  >I want to meet them at a café, a bar, or a restaurant, casually You're talking about the sociological concept of the "third place" [0] -- not home and not work, but a hangout elsewhere. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

0xbadcafebee 3y ago

Maybe some abstract philosophy from the 19th century isn't the reason that, all of a sudden, people are more lonely and depressed. The less I engage with America's consumerist mass media society, the less lonely I feel. I felt more lonely when I watched TV, listened to the news, read the paper, scrolled through social media. Everywhere there was a reminder of the life I'm not living, stuff I don't have, other people's lives I'm not a part of, and of course, impending doom. I disconnected from all of that and moved to the woods. 2 years later, I've never felt less lonely. I am so constantly busy with gardening, composting, cooking, chores, repairs, building things, fishing, hiking, paddling, that I barely have time to watch a show or check my phone. I feel no existential angst, no FOMO. It never crosses my mind that there's something I'm missing out on. I'm busier than I've ever been. Where others might think about politics, buying a new car, which restaurant to go out to, trying to cancel their gym membership, trying to find someone to go on a date with, or who's party they weren't invited to, my biggest concern is the weather. When it's going to rain, what temperature it is, how much sun there is. I guess mice is another big one; trying to figure out how they're getting into the heating ducts, or how to keep them out of my car. And snails; they're devouring my seedlings. So, weather and pests. I don't really know what loneliness is now. I can always open a window and listen to the birds, watch them go about their lives. I can even engage with them, feeing them, building them a home, calling them. I can dig up my garden bed to plant something new and see all the activity going on underneath. I can check out the plants and make sure they're healthy. Life is everywhere, and I can engage with all of it, any time. If I had to engage with humanity all the time, yeah, I'd probably get lonely and depressed. But like those who moved out into the wildnerness of the Old West, I have the luxury of not having to be constantly reminded of humanity. "out of sight, out of mind" is true enlightenment.

sammalloy 3y ago
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wonderwonder 3y ago

The cookie management screen on that site is an abomination.

eternalban 3y ago

Actual source: https://apnews.com/article/loneliness-lonely-alone-surgeon-general-c44798ddbe95d9e3da1367cefd25ec93 https://apnews.com/article/loneliness-lonely-alone-surgeon-g... Actual author: https://www.google.com/search?q=TED+ANTHONY https://www.google.com/search?q=TED+ANTHONY - This is a strange article. It reads like propaganda designed to demoralize and denigrate. "“Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it ... throws him back forever upon himself alone, and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.”" & "In the age before democracy, for better and for worse, “People weren’t lonely. They were tied up in a web of connections. And in many countries that’s more true than it was in the United States,” says Colin Woodard, director of the Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Woodard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Woodard Now Colin is another author, but just a bit of googling and I'm pretty sure the Associated Press is misusing his words - note Colin actually said in this completely contextless quote "more true than it was in the United States". So apparently the dreaded disease of "democracy" (or wait, I thought it was the "American Dream") had not prevented "communities" in USA. Heck, calling UTAH and the "community" of Mormons, among a large number of such communities in the dreaded US of A. Anyway, maybe someone should ping Colin and ask him: did you really say that Democracy aka "the American Dream" was a cause of breaking of community in the US? So, dear reader, please note that "American Dream" == "democracy", And that "dream" (abhorant to 'un-lonely' "Old World aristocracies") is the cause of your modern malaise. (Much more correlated with economic regime than political regime, imo.) Now the question presents itself: Just how did these misguided Americans with their "dream" of "democracy" make it from 19th to 21st century? Apparently we were caught in the spell of "a premise based on myths" and simply didn't realize we got it so wrong! Thank you AP and Ted for clearing this up for us. Alienation & loneliness are symptoms of modernity, not "individualism". Representative democracy actually promotes creation of elective communities -- note how the designated binary teams of "red" and "blue" factions in US cling to one another .. -- whereas "Old World aristocracies" were communities of blood and soil. Has AP gone fascist or something?

latency-guy2 3y ago
I don't think the AP has gone fascist, I think they've gone leftist. This author appears to hate this fictional America they've invented in their mind, something lots of leftists do because they can't stand capitalism having a longevity beyond what their desired system of economic governance could ever achieve. So now it's the next best thing to take it down anyway they can, or steal the resources of America in the hopes of establishing their ideal world. It's fascinating to study these people exert so much combined effort for complete failure. By now you'd expect some of these foolish people to give it up, but they keep writing fan fiction in the hopes of getting enough people to listen to them that they'll "revolt" as they claim.

sandworm101 3y ago

The American cowboy-hero isn't about the hero being lonely. It as about heroes leaving. Wandering strangers, be them cowboys or Superman, sweep in to fix problems and then go away. They do not integrate into the societies they help. They do not take anything from the people they help. They are therefore not a sociological threat to those they help. American society is very segmented, particularly in the mythic world of "small towns" so idolized in fiction. Outsiders are welcome, just not welcome to stay. The American dream is about stability and property rights. Strangers are a threat. They need to leave at the end of the story.

krapp 3y ago
I would blame that motif mostly on the nature of episodic storytelling - books, comics, radio plays, television,etc, than something fundamental about American culture. It's necessary to move the character from one place to the next to tell fully encapsulated stories that can easily be serialized out of order. And thematically, it doesn't even apply to Superman or many superhero stories (maybe the Hulk.) Superman lives in Metropolis. Batman lives in Gotham. Spider Man is a quintessentially New York hero, he's a landmark. These heroes are all part of their specific communities.
- 2-718-281-828 3y ago
  > I would blame that motif mostly on the nature of episodic storytelling - books, comics, radio plays, television,etc, than something fundamental about American culture I'd argue that American culture (and culture worldwide) is actually for almost a hundred years mostly formed by movies and movie tropes. > These heroes are all part of their specific communities. None of those heroes are a part of those communities you mention. Only their public personas are. Then they disguise and become those heroes. That concept of staying at the end of the movie would in this regard translate to a hero unveiling his identity and still be the hero. Never happens. Also OP is specifically writing about the _cowboy_-hero. Which is anyway a different category than the super hero. What they have in common though is the loneliness that OP also talks about. Superheros also always complain about that and their urges to reveal who they "really" are.
3y ago

bitwize 3y ago

One of these days we're going to wake up and realize that the defining characteristic of American society, economy, and politics is toxic individualism. And having named the monster, we can begin addressing it. Adopting a toxically individualist stance has made some people rich and powerful, however, and they will do anything to maintain this false consciousness.

sammalloy 3y ago

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confoundcofound 3y ago

The ultimate problem is a pervasive lack of meaning in today’s society. The cowboys of the past lived to fulfill a larger purpose: freedom, community service & prosperity, and unity with God. Today, the wells of purpose have dried up. Economic prosperity feels out of reach for many, social media has turbocharged narcissism, corporations have reduced service workers to automatons, we’ve spent decades ignoring the importance of the family unit and telling people religion is stupid without at least giving them an alternative. People aren’t lonely, they’re purposeless.

eggy 3y ago

Solitude: A Return to the Self, by Anthony Storr was a good read, but it's been over 15 years, so maybe worth a revisit. I am sociable, but I don't do much socializing. Rollerskating and motorcycles have punctuated my life with social groups and a sense of doing things with a group. I engage with people, but only if it's right there; I don't plan or reach out much. Fortunately, I have older kids, and I have some younger ones too that add all the socialization I could ever want. Family has been the key throughout my life. I do love my solitutude and reading and hiking and looking at stars though. Growing up in Brooklyn in the 60s/70s with street gangs and violence made me stay with my small group of tight friends. I've lived and worked all over the world, but I've never felt compelled to plan, attend, or create anything beyond the day-to-day life and the new MC club I am a member of (and skydiving with my older son for the third time!). Doing stuff.

chrismcb 3y ago

The American Dream doesn't convince people that loneliness is normal. Social media did that. While I appreciate social media, as it allows me to stay connected to my friends around the world. It doesn't help much with friends locally.

jmyeet 3y ago

Every culture seems to mythologize a key part of its history and it becomes core to its culture and identity. For the US, its a combination of the American Revolution but, but importantly (IMHO), the Wild West and homesteading by which the US colonized West. It anti-establishment. The American Revolution spirit is part of that mythology. The article mentions this with the "rugged individualist" but doesn't really capture how pervasive that is. So many (most?) Americans want a "homestead". It's why it's illegal to build anything but single-family homes ("SFHs") in the vast majority of the country. The automobile was about the worst thing to happen here because it enabled this suburban expansion. Mixed-use and higher density living fell by the wayside. People live in their SFH bubbles. The car allows you to travel in a bubble, ignorant of, oblivious to and disconnected from the world around you. Living in a city forces you to deal with people in a way most Americans don't have to and don't want to. That interaction leads to empathy and that lack of empathy is such a huge problem today. While I'm a big fan of remote work wherever possible, I think it'll actually make this worse because a bunch of people who are forced to deal with other people will be able to move to 15 acres in the middle of Tennessee and never have to deal with anyone outside of their family ever again. We have no so-called "third places" in this environment. Society is utterly car dependent, which is particularly bad for the elderly, poor, disabled and children as being unable to drive is severely limiting. If that wasn't bad enough, we're making this worse by making housing a commodity. Successive governments seek to make sure housing prices only go up to the point where increasingly more people simply cannot afford a roof over their heads. Thus begins a cycle of living in their cars before finally losing their cars and becoming truly homeless. It is unbelievably shortsighted and cruel.

IronRod 3y ago

The headline is erroneous and flame worthy. There is without question an issue with loneliness in the world (not just the USl but it has nothing to do with what is actually labeled the"American Dream" (the ability to put in effort and succeed). There are plenty of people who spend time alone without being lonely.

udkl 3y ago

https://archive.ph/Q8aE7 https://archive.ph/Q8aE7

friend_and_foe 3y ago

This problem is not the result of "rugged individualism", it is the result of government policy, deliberate design of systems in everyday use to make profit, the profitability of disease and disillusionment with the supposed normal everyday orthodoxy due to attempts to normalize unpopular things by force and propaganda. America is very sick, and it's not the result of John Wayne movies.

gamechangr 3y ago

I live in a midwest and rarely hear people complain about loneliness.

frankreyes 3y ago

It is normal to be lonely, when compared to human history. For a long time humans were living in farms and meeting your neighbors was a rare event.

vraid 3y ago
Most humans throughout history lived in close-knit farming communities where they shared their home with a large family and met their neighbours every single day. What sort of secluded farms are you imagining?