What has driven alienation in America? You could make the case for hyper-individualism and that plays a big part. The way our cities are designed also plays a role - mostly they're designed around the automobile which doesn't afford us opportunities to run into people we might know as we walk around. Cars are privacy bubbles that allow us to be isolated as we travel around. Look at a European city. There are often people just chatting on a corner or in a piazza - interaction happens much more often in those contexts because those cities tend to be set up in such a way to allow it to happen.
Finally, I think the American fetishization (for lack of a better word) of work plays a role. We Americans tend to define ourselves by the work we do to a larger degree than people in many other parts of the world.
Given the isolation that was already there in American culture, along comes social media and initially it kind of looked like it was going to help be an antidote to that isolation - I think a lot of folks wanted out of the isolation and thought that was going to be a way out. But it ends up often making it even worse - and definitely exacerbates the division between tribal groups. Our alienation causes us to want to identify with these tribal groups for a feeling of belonging and these tribes end up "shitting on" other tribes not aligned with them.
+ kids who can't drive suffer
I'm the only person in my extended family who has an artistic/creative personality. Fitting in in a small midwestern city was not an option. I find a few friends in college for a while but graduation separated us.
Fortunately, the internet made finding a community to belong possible. Since joining the furry fandom, I haven't been wanting for a place to belong.
So, I'm hoping you are not a white male, as I don't think we can have the tiniest inkling of what it feels like to be a minority. Even travelling in Asia, where we're clearly a minority, I feel like we know on a global scale that even though we may not be the majority of the population, we hold the majority of influence.
So, I don't think we will ever know what it's like. I have curly hair, and I remember my young nieces and nephews being terrified of me. They had never seen curly hair before (well, not a huge afro like I've got). That was my tiny sliver of a taste of being different. But I know, that is nothing, and we still have no idea.
You’re completely talking past the parent and telling them that they are wrong to feel alienated.
“You’re privileged so buck up son,” is all I hear, and it’s a ridiculous sentiment.
> So, I'm hoping you are not a white male, as I don't think we can have the tiniest inkling of what it feels like to be a minority.
So GP is suggesting that everyone feels isolated, regardless of race or gender.
You reply with "hoping you are not a white male" to this observation.
We all know that if GP is a white male, his comment borders on white supremacy. He's saying we've lost what makes America great, and it's all because we opened our borders and gave up cultural homogeneity. What a racist xenophobe! Good on you for calling him out!
But if GP is a woman of color, the US being a hostile place makes so much sense. And of course she's trying to figure out who the country is really for, because her experience makes it feel like it's not built for her. It's so brave to be asking these tough questions and challenging the system.
Also, are you a white male? Why do you even feel that it's ok for you to weigh in on this topic?
The way I see it, your "hoping you are not a white male" comment is culturally expected, and you said it anyway, even though we both know it causes acceleration of conflict.
Maybe you're a right-wing accelerationist, but I suspect you're not, which makes your comment even worse, because you're reinforcing their narrative unintentionally.
I think that is why IAmWorried is actually worried.
The idea is to destabilize society by accelerating disruptive societal change.
At the far extremes, this looks like mass shootings or bombings with manifestos attached.
On the right, the theory is that a white ethnostate will surely emerge to bring order if the country is thrown into chaos along racial lines.
On the left, it looks very much the same, except what will surely emerge is an egalitarian utopia once those white fascists are out of the picture.
In practice, a lot of these ideas successfully filter into the mainstream because they're being pushed by propaganda networks that seek to damage western democracy.
Importantly, if the propaganda can convince otherwise well meaning people to subtly ingrain "white male == bad" into the language and attitudes, that benefits accelerationists.
White supremacists want you to say that white people are the problem. It legitimizes radical ideas like "replacement theory".
It's also why things like the Rittenhouse trial are so volatile. If he's acquitted, one side will further radicalize. If he's convicted, the other side will further radicalize.
Even if you honestly believe that white males are the source of all the world's problems, labeling it as a white male problem will produce further radicalized white males.
What else can you say of a clown parade where the prosecution witnesses all corroborate the defense's position and the prosecution decides to insinuate that silence implies guilt. Or, with the spirit of Jack Chick watching over him.
>“Isn’t it true when you would hang out with Dominic Black you’d play Call of Duty and other first-person shooter video games?” prosecutor Thomas Binger asked Rittenhouse on November 10. “And those are games in which you use weapons like AR-15s to pretty much shoot anybody who comes at you, right?”
Only the identity police do. Most of us don't care.
I'm not my race, sexuality, or gender. I'm what I aspire to, what I enjoy, what I dream about, and who I associate with.
Turn off Twitter, social media, and the pessimistic news. They're toxic vortices that thrive off negativity and create a distorted, untrue picture of the world.
America is still strongly individualistic.
And I don't have the time to tell you how much that sucked. You are stuck in whatever place you happened to be, especially as a child or not having much money. If you can't find folks to accept you, you are just cast aside.
I*m not sure how walking in sunshine was supposed to help me when folks assumed I was lesbian and freaking avoided me (they were half right, but I didn't deserve this). Or followed me around laughing, saying "She's soooo stupid!". And so on. Every. Single. Day. I finally made friends, and people would ask them why they were friends with me.
But yeah, I'll go off and walk in sunshine and everything will be OK.
On the other hand, I got older and found folks on the internet that accepted me. I could finally talk to people while being myself. I am in a stable relationship thanks to this (and moved countries: While some folks are anti-immigrant, more accept that I'm a bit weird and/or will explain social norms if I mess up).
You can keep your sunshine.
My post above was general advice for dealing with media negativity. It seems to have attracted folks with serious issues who may/not need professional help. If y'all thought a walk was supposed to magically fix that level of adversity, well… unfortunately you're mistaken.
That said, perspective is more powerful than your post allows.
https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherma...
Walkable neighborhoods exist as well.
>> "Walkable neighborhoods exist as well."
Even all the highly-paid (but still not enough) people I know are struggling to compete for houses in them. I don't have a chance.
s/cowboy/tough guy/This is where I think you're wrong. America is creating and exporting cultural hangups.
I mean, immigrants believe in the American Dream, not weird French theory or whatever.
<raises hand>
> does anybody NOT feel alienated in our current society?
I do not feel alienated.
> Does anybody REALLY feel like they belong in America?
I do.
> what exactly is this country FOR?
It's for people who want their fundamental rights guaranteed so they can do whatever they choose to do, like be a rock star, build rockets to go to Mars, race motorcycles, write poetry, etc.
It's not for people who want cradle-to-grave security and want someone else to make all the decisions for them. Nor is it for people who want to run other peoples' lives.
We have a huge and growing poverty problem, one the Democrats and Republicans seem to be ignoring, we have to ratchet down misery level, a failure to do so imperils our democracy in the long run.
If people don't have resources all the freedom of choice in the world does little good, because you have too few options to chose from, too few paths to take.
The US has never had more opportunity for people than today.
Example 1: anyone can get an MIT education for free on the internet.
Example 2: anyone can reach a worldwide market, for free, via the internet, and using Amazon.
Example 3: anyone can make a movie, and distribute it to the world on youtube, for free.
Example 4: anyone can start a band, make their own music, and distribute it worldwide for free on several platforms.
Hundreds of thousands of destitute people are trying to get into the US to take advantage of American opportunity. What do they know that Americans don't?
The US does indeed have tons of opportunity, I'm a high school dropout, who is now an engineer. Thats an American success story. But I'm luckier than most because I got real lucky in the intelligence department. For a long time, I thought I was an average guy, no smarter than anyone else, then I went out and did complex system design, and then had to write the training material and train the users when I was done, and only then I could see something I hadn't before. I'm frankly smarter than half of the population (and so are basically 100% of the people who use hacker news). People like us will find some form of opportunity when there isn't any obviously available.
I'll rebut your answers:
Example 1: to make use of that free MIT education, you must be of above average intelligence, more importantly, you must have time not consumed by meeting your daily essential needs.
Example 2: you must have some product to sell, one that you can make and sell in volume, there are other sites that allow handicrafts, but its hard to make a living off of handicrafts, and its a big leap to go from individual production to serial production in a factory without capital.
Example 3: you must have talent for doing something worth watching, otherwise it doesn't make money.
Example 4: same as example 3, though, perversely, if you're really really bad, you can actually make money, but being that level of awful is a talent unto itself, and most people are not willing to subject themselves to that level of humiliation.
We have massive issues with access to the legal system by the poor, we've extended the cult of personal responsibility to the extent we now just blame the poor for being poor. We also treat debt like a sacred obligation, if your wealthy its easy to discharge debts thru bankruptcy, not so much if you're poor.
I wrote a huge paper about this with a friend of mine last summer. Please take the time to read it, and I think you'll understand more about why I feel so passionately about this.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Bfu3pw1pid_2HcDYeAlSyj21...
Talent is way overrated. Talent is good for 1%, the rest is training to upgrade your skills. Of course, if you never try, failure is 100% guaranteed.
BTW, I know some very successful people who aren't that smart. Being smart just means you learn faster. Not being smart doesn't mean you can't learn skills that are in demand.
No, you don't. I was involved in competitive ballroom dancing when I was young. I have way below average talent at it. I only learned the stuff very slowly. But over time, with a lot of time spent practicing, I actually did get tolerably good at it.
Then there is singing. Neil Young, Stevie Nicks and Astrud Gilberto are talentless, but hugely successful, singers. I remember the scorching reviews Nicks got when she burst on the scene, with her "raspy", "unpleasant" voice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1uEy-n4IsU
P.S. I love all three of those artists' works.
P.P.S. Fred Astaire can't sing, either, but his songs are marvelous. There's that famous early review of him: "can't sing, can't act, balding, can dance a little".
Gilberto is quite talented, both in delivery and as a composer, but her delivery is amazing, and she has songwriting skills, mostly, she had the advantage of being pretty, and a very capable singer, and someone who was novel.
Neil Young is a talented songwriter, and a master guitar player, his vocal skills are secondary to his skills as a songwriter, and guitarist.
Nicks does have an unconventional voice, but with a phenomenal power to her voice. That's just natural.
And Astaire? No one would call him a great singer, but he was one of the best and most talented dancers of his era, the same goes for Gene Kelly, while they were stylistically very different, they were fantastic dancers, their singing abilities were secondary to their abilities as dancers.
The key for all of these, if you have a radio face, and a great voice/talent, you're probably not finding commercial success (not in the modern era - thought there are exceptions), if you have an average voice/talent and a really pretty face/body, you might find commercial success. If you have an average voice/talent and an average face, you're more than likely, not going to find success.
All four examples you listed had something extraordinary about them.
Giberto, Beauty - and an average talet, Young, an extraordinary talent and an average face, Nicks, a unique voice, and an extraordinary face. Astaire, a multi-talent, and a handsome man too.
They are not talented singers, but they were able to compensate for that.
Fred Astaire, handsome? I don't think so. He's short and very thin. But he is very elegant and charming, which more than made up for it. He is very aware of his body language and uses that to maximum advantage. If you passed him on the street, you'd never conclude he was handsome.
P.S. I've encountered a few hollywood celebrities off camera. The surprising thing is how ordinary they look without the hair, makeup, lighting, costume, etc.
> a phenomenal power to her voice
Oh come on.
> a unique voice
You may not remember her early reviews - "raspy", "unpleasant". I do. Her first album was a complete flop. The only reason Fleetwood Mac took her on was because the band was on the ropes and Buckingham demanded they give his girlfriend a spot.
> had something extraordinary about them
They all worked their ass off, which you confused with talent.
When I eventually got tolerably good at ballroom dancing, people who didn't know me called me "talented". ROFL.
But I find it interesting that two of the people you highlighted as having no talent are known for being songwriters as much as performers, or actors as much as dancers. In any case Nicks songwriting talents helped propel the groups success, and her vocal abilities were a pivotal component of their sound, and quite arguably a driver of their success.
Incidentally, most great male dancers are shorter, its an aid in becoming great at dance. Both Kelly and Astaire were under 6', 5'7 and 5'9 respectively - yet both were considered handsome men by the standards of their time, in part yes, because of movie magic.
And yes, I grew up near Los Angeles, when Angelia Jolie steps out to Starbucks, she while pretty, does not look like a great actress of the screen, she looks like a nice looking woman stepping out for coffee.
A singer with great range and control would be Whitney Houston. You won't see Nicks covering her songs, either.
A singer with natural talent is Karen Carpenter. She had little training, yet became a much loved singer.
x + 3 = 5
If, instead, she wrote:
_ + 3 = 5
Agreed, Abstraction for example, is really really hard for most people, like harder than most technical folks realize.
How do you know this?
Regardless, they apparently believe that there is opportunity in America, and you don't.
How do you draw the conclusion that I believe there is a lack of opportunity? My parent comment says I believe there is tons of opportunity, if you have the right innate skills.
If you'd read the document I linked, you'd see that my concerns have nothing to do with a lack of opportunities, but rather that we don't provide sufficient tools to people to take up those opportunities. Furthermore, we put structural barriers in front of people based on their income level to achieving a modicum of financial security.
I know personally many immigrants to America arriving here with nothing, not even knowing English, and yet becoming successful businessmen, and many became independently wealthy.
As you requested.
>It's not for people who want cradle-to-grave security and want someone else to make all the decisions for them. Nor is it for people who want to run other peoples' lives.
America is only for people who agree with your politics, gotcha.
But whenever the income divide comes up in personal discussion otherwise smart people imply the working poor wants the private island, rockets, lambos, and yachts of billionaires and that could destabilize society.
Am I rich? Arguably, yes. Am I richer than my neighbors? Not sure. But if I were, then we move to, Am I richer than anyone in my city? State? Country? World? When you climb, when you get to the point that you win the comparison game, you realize that you were only comparing yourself to a subset, and there's a bigger pond to play in... in which you're currently one of the losers.
What quantile of the population do I belong to? Still a comparison, but you set the bounds early. If you have to do the damn thing, whether by quirk of personality or impulse, at least make it explicit.
I mean, that's still better than when America was just white men shitting on everyone else.
Or to put it in less snarky terms, this is what happens when all of the demographics in a society have the ability to express themselves and wield social and political power, rather than just one.
All the insanity is _literally_ in the big cities. There are minorities out here and we all get along just fine.
It's political groups and the media that get people whipped up into hatred for each other, not individuals or communities.
The times have changed, and the media and agitators (no better term?) that don't want to admit they are part of the problem.
- Reactionary politics were born in rural America, urban America is just catching up these days.
- The value system of rural America is dismissive of nerdy/intellectual pursuits, and so it drives out talent that was already enticed by the opportunities present in cities.
- More broadly there is a kind of pride in being very separate/distinct from the other parts of America, but it seems pretty shallow to me -- the emphasis seems mostly to be on the material trappings of "ruralness" (being a farmer, having a big truck, wearing camo patterns), and not on the values themselves.
- And perhaps rolled up in politics, but I feel the need to call it out because I sense it on display in your comment: An eagerness to play the victim to the rest of America. "It's just those city folks that cause all our problems."
I've lived all over, including LA, east coast, south, Chicago, near the border of Mexico (I worked with illegals there even in sweat shops).
Rural America is garden of peace and contentment compared to the urban areas.
Your views are admitedly from a visitor... and there is no way you can compare them equally that way.
Ignore Foxnews & CNN and get to know rural America before condemning it.
Sure, there was open space and generally it was green or pale yellow from the corns, but it was a terrible place for a young mind. I didn't like football or wrestling and I didn't love confederate flags on pick up trucks. The general take was that I was an outsider not to be friends with. Eventually, I made friends but I can still hear the "he is okay, he is like a white [insert minority]" from adults and people at school.
This was in the late 90's and early 2000's before Fox and CNN doubled-down on extreme views. People in rural America hated immigrants just as much then as they do know.
People can be unhappy anywhere, but also people can learn to get along anywhere too... unless there is a riot side your house, or a shooting next door. These are outside your personal influence.
I wonder if we talked to minorities in rural communities if they would agree with your assessment.
I have found that people that don't like being questioned/challenged have something to hide like a con-man or someone selling fake luxury goods.
Look, everything is contextual -- your rural area may be superior in some respects to the ones I've been to. But you also shouldn't assume that your experience is universal.
Edited to add: if you haven't been to a big city in a while, you should take a trip. They're not generally the hellholes you've been led to believe by right-wing news media.
Never once came close in rural America, ever.
I wish I could alleviate their fear. Given the opportunity, people are people, good & bad do not stratify in any meaningful way along the arbitrary lines that get drawn.
Cities usually kill people by ignoring them until they die. Exceptions are so rare that they become the stuff of history books.
The big upside of cities is that nobody cares enough about you to actually hate you. If you're running away from something, that can be pretty inviting.
I think it's a bit reductive to put all that on social media and the web. People are packed together in cities, sometimes you smell piss while going to and getting back from your job, sometimes people make noise when you want to sleep, it's hard to see nature, it's hard to be alone, it's hard to escape the noise and the light, public transportation can feel suffocating, the air isn't clean, it's very hard to have space to grow some food or practice some hobbies.
Most of it is "normal" in that many people live like this. However, I feel like all that I mentionned has a negative impact on my mental health, and on the mental health of the people around me. One that could translate to people being more aggressive, more tense in general.
With very few exceptions, there’s nothing healthy or normal about living in chaotic, densely populated urban areas with high crime and endless noise, air and light pollution. In addition, there’s nothing natural about needing to work a bullshit job just to survive.
People ought to really start asking what is being afforded exactly when it comes to making city life “affordable”.
That's how I feel too. The only difference is that where I live the crime rate here is not that high. But the rest is the same.
Is it New York?