JEdwardWoody
2mo ago
How did it get started?
JEdwardWoody
2mo ago
I’m actually in a pretty similar situation.
Most of my days are spent with my coworkers (mostly all men) and then my wife, daughters, and nanny.
Next most time spent after that is with my family and at my tennis club.
People I would consider close personal friends I only spend time with maybe once or twice a month.
I’ve tried going to church a few times but it’s hard to get started. I’m a Catholic and it’s been a long time since my grandparents would take me with them as a kid.
JEdwardWoody
2mo ago
What strategies do Mottizens follow for a good social life?
Much has been written about the so-called “loneliness epidemic”.
Pew documents the decline in the number of close friends:
There’s an age divide in the number of close friends people have. About half of adults 65 and older (49%) say they have five or more close friends, compared with 40% of those 50 to 64, 34% of those 30 to 49 and 32% of those younger than 30. In turn, adults under 50 are more likely than their older counterparts to say they have between one and four close friends.
Similarly, Fast Company reports the decline of social clubs:
In his 2000 book Bowling Alone, Robert Putman makes the case that in addition to all of the social changes in America, technology played a big role in encouraging people to leave clubs. Television and the internet, for instance, encouraged people to spend their leisure time on their own, rather than with other people. Social media allows people to feel like they are in a kind of community, but they don’t actually have deep relationships with them.
I chose that excerpt because I think it’s closest to the root cause. People back then had to choose between socialization and boredom. Now we have very good solo entertainment. Many would agree that something important has been lost in the exchange.
I’ve tried to fight this trend in my own life, with limited success. Even if you personally resist, your friends still need to choose to hang out with you, over, say, bingeing the latest TV show. As the decline of social clubs demonstrates, we social-seeking individuals now have fewer options.
One potential option is to embrace technology and socialize on the internet. I spend so much time on Twitter because I like talking to people.
What do you guys think?
JEdwardWoody
5mo ago
your family tree is more predictive of how long you will live than actuarial stats
Not looking good for me, then.
Avoiding the big ones like heart disease or cancer and you can reasonably expect to live to 95+.
Or you do everything right and die from a mystery illness. Unlikely I guess, but I don’t see how I’ll personally ever be able to look at life the same way.
JEdwardWoody
5mo ago
It may be a skill issue, but have you lost a direct family member?
Because I didn’t know I had a skill issue until it happened to me
JEdwardWoody
5mo ago
In my unfortunate new experience, what you say is good for coming to terms with mortality.
But acute grief is more about the imagined future you’ve lost, and the sense of unfairness and senselessness
JEdwardWoody
5mo ago
I have a child. And am a child of the departed. It’s certainly some consolation.
JEdwardWoody
5mo ago
Yeah, I could tolerate it too, but can no longer deny now that it’s happened to someone I love
JEdwardWoody
5mo ago
They say man plans and god laughs.
I think I’ve been pretty in-tune with the techno-capitalist zeitgeist.
Any philosophical framework needs to address death—as much a constant of life as the sun setting each day.
How does the rat-diaspora do this? Rationally of course! With statistics. But the lower parts of our brains don’t understand statistics, so the real message is this: if you’re 64 you’ll get another 16 years according to the actuarial tables. If you’re completely healthy, run daily, have a highlighted and annotated copy of your medical records—if you’re literally doing everything right and within your power to take care of yourself—you can shade that up a couple years.
But that’s not true—you can do everything right and be perfectly healthy and suddenly die anyway, as the statistics tell us.
Have you ever experienced real “denial”? When the facts tell you “1+1=2 and also fuck you” and you just shake your head and think “no, that can’t be right, maybe 1+1=3 and my life is still good.” The power of rational thinking vs the surge of more primal, ancient ways.
So how do I cope with this? Our thinkers seem to prefer to avoid it, or throw Hail Marys on radical life extension tech. The modern way would be therapy. The traditional way, which got my ancestors through innumerable tragedies, is the church.
But I need something—I don’t think it’s healthy to live in a cold, unfeeling world ruled by randomness. (After all, that’s not how the West was won, was it?)
JEdwardWoody
9mo ago
If you’re gawking (slyly), what happens after five drinks?
Part of what made the situation feel so scandalous to me was that so many of us were married or otherwise spoken for.
When tragedy struck my family, and really struck me for the first time in my life, I looked to tradition to guide me. The Catholic Church has historically encouraged a mourning period of about six months for the loss of a parent. So, I told myself I’d mourn and hurt for six months, then steel myself emotionally and put the past in the past.
Which brings us to today. Six months went by shockingly fast. I cried harder than I had in a while today, looking through some photos of my dad and me, shortly before his death.
I thought I would do a better job of coming to terms with things. But there are still moments where I forget he is dead. I still don’t know what he died from—he was fine one day and gone the next, and the doctors still can’t agree on what happened (they’re even still ordering tests.) His affairs aren’t wrapped up, though we’ve made considerable progress. I don’t know what my widowed mother’s future looks like. I still resent anyone older than me with both living parents. I still resent everyone who lives to enjoy their retirement.
I resent the fact that he lived more years without me than with me. I resent that my daughter won’t remember him, and my future children will never know him.
I resent doctors and medicine and Steven Pinkeresque arguments about how much life and technology are improving. I loathe health and longevity advice—how can I take that shit seriously after watching a lifetime runner die of a cardiac mystery event in his early sixties. The last time I saw my dad we ran a five mile race together.
Oh, and this guy (I discovered…) highlighted parts of his test results and took notes in the margins when he reviewed with his doctor. So I resent the implication that being an active participant in your healthcare does anything to deter or delay the ultimate end.
I’m 30. If I live as long as my dad, I’ll live another 34 years. If I live as long as my grandpa, 38 years. Great grandpa, 12 years. Anything and everything I want to do I need to do with a sense of urgency. I resent the time that others have, or feel they have, to enjoy and grow and waste before gracefully aging into the next phase of their lives.
Where does that leave me? My career feels like a game. I still take my profession seriously—I am after all a professional—but “saving for retirement” is a joke. I don’t much care about making more money because I have enough and my dad was the only person I felt it was both fun and appropriate to brag to.
My kids are real and my marriage is real, so I know what I need to do and who I need to be in the years ahead.
But shit, it’s a bitter bitter pill to swallow.
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