He has described the reduction in all the forms of in-person social intercourse upon which Americans used to found, educate, and enrich the fabric of their social lives. He believes this undermines the active civil engagement a strong democracy required from its citizens.

The societies quickly degenerate because no one has any incentive to invest in infrastructure beyond what they can use in the next 10-15 years. They care about the functioning of the society to the extent that it affects them directly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/opinion/28brooks.html

I'd say it's more dangerous to not know your neighbors. If you're ever in trouble in your neighborhood (where you might logically spend a lot of your time) you can rely upon them. If they don't know you, they might be less willing to help in a situation involving actual danger.

(I was going to say "you must be new here", but clearly you are not)

The reason it turned out this way is not hard to explain: unless you are a landlord or are buying a house and participate in a "cohousing" venture, there is almost no way in American to choose your neigbhors, and it is difficult and expensive to put distance between yourself and a neighbor (because moving is difficult and expensive).

Note that a large part of human communication is "signalling" by which I mean making oneself appear as virtuous as possible and making oneself appear to have the character traits that people want in a friend or a coworker.

And note that the way I would signal virtue or good character traits in this conversational thread is to say that I always get along with everyone and that I love all my neighbors.

But I did not do that. Instead, I intentionally chose to risk leaving the (false, IMHO) impression that I might be hard to get along with in order to counteract what I see as the overly rosy picture painted by our society about the value of warm relationships with one's neighbors (relative to warm relationships with non-neighbors) -- and in order to give some of the younger people reading this the benefit of my life experience. (I am 49.)

It is of course often extremely beneficial to live with someone who loves you, I should add -- and that is worth going for because it is much less expensive to choose your housemates or apartment mates than to choose your neighbors.

People can be less involved in their community if they can just escape to like-minded havens on the internet rather than fixing the real issues going on around them (see al3x's post about fleeing to Portland for reference: http://al3x.net/).

If you want to be a better entrepreneur, you are probably going to find an older entrepreneur who has some experience to teach you something, not one in your peers. Well, if you constantly surround yourself with those similar to you, how are you going to be challenged to grow as a person?

Edit: I am not trying to be snide, but you don’t actually have to talk to people to get an understanding of their viewpoint. Try reading some books from the far left and far right in the US and you will start to see how the other side thinks. Heck even tuning into Fox News, NPR, and the BBC in the same news cycle is useful.

Now if you want to learn something that a large number of people don't already know then goes treasure hunting. But, suggesting people need to talk with a wide range of people to grow as a person is simply untrue.

>But, suggesting people need to talk with a wide range of people to grow as a person is simply untrue.

Learning how to get along with people that are not like you is a deeply transformative, and I think valuable, experience.

In my opinion, San Francisco is a beautiful place for creators.

I say it's odd because the startup culture is be all about opportunism.

Is accountability/sane governance that intractable of a problem that people would rather move than meet the demand?

For most people, the world just won't stay saved, so they begin to wonder, why keep going to the effort to save it?

The world is a garden and it requires constant maintenance.

Sisyphus, from greek mythology, is a metaphor for this inescapable curse. Modern man would probably decide that it's much better for the rock to be at the bottom of the hill, as it were, but that strikes me as choosing to be a part of the problem.

I have a job and bathe regularly. Yet I walk through the ghetto every day, and find that folks there are still unemployed and smelly. They're just not following my example like they should!

My criteria for a place to live definitely include "there are fellow HN readers within a ten-mile radius".