[Deep Thoughts] Sweet Caroline

[Kyle]

Why are there so many people who are lonely? Why is it so hard for people to make real connections when almost everyone wants to make real connections?

[Iantha]

We've lost a sense of shared community, of commonality. During WWII there were so many people who were pitching in for the war effort at home, supporting so many who left our shores to fight abroad, that it really tied our country together with a common thread. Everyone rationed or lost a loved one or Since then, we've become more fragmented with commonalities being less apparent. It's not that they aren't there; it's that we have to look harder to find them and people in general aren't always willing to work at finding common ground.

[Phoebe]

Totally agree with what Iantha just said. My husband and I also discuss this often, and it's pretty obvious to us what's wrong in our social lives, and maybe for many people in our phase of life: we have no blocks of time to invest in actual social activities that would bring us closer to real people in real life. My parents and other older people I know are always doing things together in the evenings. We're doing Work or Kid Event #1 or Grandparents or Kid Event #2 or Pass Out Exhausted or whatever. The younger people I know resort to social media because they're so busy with working two part time jobs and going to school - I think they just trade sleep for a social life. When do we get to just sit around playing cards with our friends, or drinking lemonade and grilling stuff?

Unfortunately, we aren't good friends with any of our kids' friends' parents at the moment, which is one easy way to cultivate meaningful friendships. (Also, having friends IN your town helps... sighhhh. Sob!) Back when that was true for us, we had a lot more social activity organized around kid soccer games and other such events - it's a lot easier to do things like meet up for lunch or invite people to come over for a cookout when you're already seeing them for some reason and there are low expectations about being dressed up, prepared, and so on. Now if I want to hang out with people, I need to either set up a lunch (which sometimes has that "professional networking" feel that makes further connection not automatic), or block off a whole night where we can have people over and the house is all readied and kids accounted for and... just a lot of action to make all that happen. We end up investing that time in family events instead.

We have tried to institute some things like "people over for drinks" or "pizza/game night" to get a more regular stream of people in the house hanging out. It is hard to get over a hump of "we are work friends" to "we are actual friends", and while work friends can disrupt your loneliness, they also aren't people with whom you can bond in a greater sense that might make you less lonely.

Social media really sucks because it does a great job of filling the cracks and crevices - but your social life cannot resolve a deeper desire for friends when it's happening mostly while you wait at doctors' offices and for your kid to get out of soccer practice, with people you probably have no hope of seeing in person anytime soon. At some point you need time spent with people. We want surplus dollars so we trade having a social life for work that brings in surplus dollars, frankly. That's the plan because our world is stressful. There's always a huge What-If we lose health insurance, and how do we pay for college. So work more, tweet with your friends, never see them... it sucks.

[Stan]

Along the lines of what Iantha said, for the last ~200 years, the world that people grow up in is not the same as the one their parents grew up in. The rate of change has been especially great for the last 30 years. Because of this, cultural norms and structures are always trying to play catch up to reality. This creates stress, societal fragmentation, and dating sites.

[buckett]

A good film that explores these questions is Blade Runner 2049 dir. Denis Villeneuve (2017)

[Phoebe]