Most people suck. I suck, you suck, we all suck. Modern western society does not improve matters, where many of us are uprooted from more local, traditional so

Most people suck. I suck, you suck, we all suck. Modern western society does not improve matters, where many of us are uprooted from more local, traditional societies where there are strong community traditions that provide easy social defaults and a fairly limited, consistent group of other people to interact with. Most social groupings are formed out of blood or forced closeness - small towns, religious groups, schools, the workplace, housemates, etc. These are people you spend a large percentage of your time with, and they tend to be non-transient factors in your life - i.e. continued social interaction with them is likely over a non-trivial timespan. You can count on these people being around in the future, so the investment of effort in cultivating relationships with them has a high expected payoff. Compare this with the modern, post-collegiate experience for most 20-somethings. Seeking gainful employment often means leaving behind the familiar contexts one was born and raised in, abandoning familiar social nets, to move to more economically dynamic areas, with larger and more diverse populations. Turnover in employers and fellow employees is vastly higher than it was a generation ago. Tied with this, long-term home ownership is less of a realistic proposition, so the community of locality that comes with living with and getting to know one's neighbors is diminished. Other people are more transient and disposable in this world, and the general uncertainty makes it more difficult to focus the effort on building relationships, particularly when you are trying so hard just to get by, day to day, week to week. I don't really have a solution, but this seems to me to be the problem.