To many of us believe we can live the individualistic dream and be part of a collective without subtracting from either one. This is not possible. Being part of a collective often means we cannot do what we want, the way we want, when we want and with whom we want. Being part of a collective can be messy, challenging and uncomfortable. But it can also be fulfilling, cosy, safe and home.
To become collective we need to carefully look into ourselves and ask us: What is it that makes individualism our comfort zone, what are we afraid of, what makes us insecure?
On top of that finding the actual collective might be harder than ot was back then. In the past you had no choice, you were thrown into the world and into a collective. That could be good or very, very bad. My mother had 6 silblings and she hated it, she was never happier then when she got a distance. In times of the internet we could potentially even choose our collectives. But who is willing to do that in this day and age beyond hippies, squatters, artists and similar people?
The thing is, nothing stops any of us to build a community of actual people right now. Living together might even reduce rent.
While I agree with you on some parts[1], I somewhat doubt that distant relationships (not necessarily romantic ones) work out well.
The lockdown measures took a heavy toll on my mental wellbeing. I imagine other people had similar experiences.
1. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-8...
I'd think the relationship will be less strained when they do not see each other every day because they live next to each other. At least one of them will feel bad. They may not show it, especially back in times when it would have been hard to get away, they may 'keep it all in' but they won't be happy.
It seems like in your parent poster's case, not being together and having a close relationship allowed both sides to be happier. Potentially to the point where meeting each other for like 3 or 4 holidays per year was tolerable and they could work it out but where seeing each other every day would have been miserable for at least one side or potentially openly hostile for a very long time.
It doesn't mean not having any relationships but just because you're family doesn't mean you have to be constantly present in each other's lives.
> It doesn't mean not having any relationships but just because you're family doesn't mean you have to be constantly present in each other's lives.
You have a point, for sure. I can imagine being this the case for people who can socialize well.
Say you have only 2 options between living in a dysfunctional family environment and living completely by yourself with no friends, what then?
It appears that solitary confinement, damages your brain[1]. I wonder if that applies to social isolation as well.
It seems to be the case in prisons that you need to be around rapists and murderers to keep your brain somewhat engaged. (If you don't have any other option.)
So maybe it is wrong to equate solitary confinement as "loneliness". Solitary confinement is much more taxing, I imagine. However, I think it is better to be around people in a physical sense. (Even if that means living with some unpleasant circumstances.)
Gabor Mate implies that modern society is sick, and therefore we get sick. But it is the only society we have, I suppose. So it might be better than nothing.
I am not disagreeing with you at all here. I can see your point. Nevertheless, I just wanted to bring up the case where people have social difficulties and if the family stress is somewhat manageable, then maybe it is better to be around them. And also keep in mind that I have no clue if the prison context is applicable to "free individuals".
1. https://academic.oup.com/book/35060/chapter-abstract/2989955...
Just because you are not close with your birth family does not mean you do not have friends or your own family. You can hate being with your brothers, sisters and parents and want to be as far away from them as you can and have a loving relationship with your spouse, two or three kids or your own, maybe you are actually on good terms with your in laws and like being around them better ;)
But you still can tolerate x-mas, Easter and Thanksgiving with your birth family well enough.
This was not my point. We can use the Internet to find offline communities as well. I grew up on the country side and without the Internet I would have had to settle with the type of people I had in my vicinity and those people were definitly depressing me. With the web I could not only find out something else exists, I could also get to know different people and form an image of the kind of people I could imagine spending more time with. So the Internet must not be the connection, it can be the tool that brings people together in a literal, geographic sense. So instead of having it only be for communication, it can also be for discovery.
But to your original point: I also happen to live with a women that I had 4 years of (changing) long distance relationship with, we are happily together now for more than a decade¹. One of my best friends I got to know each other on a musicians forum. I first met him after having known him for 4 years. We are still besties despite him living in a different country now². Next year I am invited to the wedding of yet another person I am only in contact with online.
The Internet is not (or should not be) the end goal for your own personal community, but it can help to build and sustain relationships despite physical distances. If you are young it can help you figure out
-- ¹ I agree however that long distance relationships are not for everybody and it is crucial to know why you are having one. Many people e.g. have long distance relationships because they are secretly afraid of the real deal. Most have that kind of relationship out of necessity and there are few who can make it work. A long distance relationship can be a stress test for a relationship, and some relationships will not survive that test. Arguably these relationships might have fallen apart on a different occasion for a different reason just as likely tho.
² It would still be better to see him in the flesh more than once every two years or so tho, but it does not hurt the friendship one bit, we have enough shared memories for a lifetime.
Why has this changed?
So leaving that community was not something people easily did. But they did, because of resources and money, people migrated from their rural communities into the cities, families torn apart, the industrialization brought with it a faster flow of information. People got to know the world outside of their communities and realized that they liked it more. So instead of huge family clans we had small atomic families now, with grandparents living in their own atomic household, often somewhere else. Young people who went to find themselves in the cities lived alone or in loose collectives or flat shares with strangers (usually with the goal to get your own thing as quick as possible).
In western societies that new freedom and individualism then (like so much else) got hijacked by capitalism. Ten people living together only need one hairdrier, ten people living seperated need ten hairdriers (insert any other appliance/product you can think of here). People living alone is good for capitalism, which is why it has been marketed as a dream. Be yourself! Fuck the others! Get your own hairdrier! Live alone and die alone!
Like fish in water we internalized these values so much, that we don't question them. In the US especially those values have become architecture to a degree, your literal world took the shape of this individualism [insert suburbia.gif] – how to start living a collective life in a individualistic environment, where without your personal movable 8m² of space you are cut off from any meaningful function society provides you with?
Especially in the US people live in spaces that favour individualism to such an degree it is the simple comfortable default. If you want to change that you have to work against the forces that exist.
I hear that. I was born in '88, and although I played plenty of video games growing up, I remember playing a ton of card games with friends and family as a kid. After college, I pretty much stopped playing video games entirely and did all of my socializing in person. 10 years later COVID happened, and facing the prospect of being locked in my house indefinitely, I decided to get my very first gaming computer. It's honestly been a wonderful distraction from the stress of life, but a part of me feels dirty about playing video games so frequently. Although COVID is effectively over and everything is open again, I still find myself preferring the comfort and convenience of Discord + games over doing things physically in the world.
Part of the problem is that internet isn’t not a full substitute for in person. It never well be.
This is coming from someone that is chronically online and has more friends that live in different states than in person. It isn’t healthy to be online as much as I am.
Does anyone else remember the days of playing Halo with your 3 friends in your living room? That was way better than “Thursday night warzone” that we have nowadays, and I believe it is in part because of the fact that the couch coop was far closer to a real community (like what humans have had for thousands of years) than something as wildly intangible as being online
We as people in modern society have spent our whole life around the idea that we need to have fun and enjoy everything, if not directly than indirectly.
I made some friends by hitting up some people I went to high school with like 6 years after graduation. They love offroading. So we now take turns taking out the big jeep and mudding. Once a month we bring a bunch of alcohol and have one person be the DD and drive around a bunch of drunk people in the thick mud, rough terrain, and underbrush.
Is that my idea of fun? Hell no. But because I’m doing something with people that I can get along with, I can enjoy aspects of it. And that led me to be ingrained in part of “their group”, so I have a small community.
Break out of your shell in ways that you think are dumb or weird, and try and make it fun despite the “weirdness”. You might find that it helps you feel community!
There has been for a while (20+ years) a decline in enforced third places (e.g. declining religiosity/church attendance) in many parts of the Western world with little else taking that space. I know Sunday Assembly [2] exists in some places and I hope works for the communities it supports.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Assembly
The “metaverse” is no more healthy to humans than Discord+Gaming. It is literally the same thing: the illusion of community.
Our attention used to be on each other, now it predominantly rests on pieces of plastic, glass and metal.
I read a very complete account of my grandfathers early life (before he joined the military during WW2) and the kinda shit he did living of a farm is stuff of fairytales.
When someone in the 20 mile radius needed a barn built, LITERALLY EVERYONE came to help. When you were off work for the night, you would sit with your whole family and read the newspaper or play cards, or travel to your grandmas house 3 blocks away.
Now the whole world is split up. My nearest family is over 600 miles away. My friends would rather play video games on discord than go and play cards in person. Work is a 9-5 and then you forget about it.
It seems like there is no community anymore outside of online spaces, and that just isn’t the same. In my opinion, burnout is synonymous with lack of real world, in person community.