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The newest issue of the Atlantic contains an article about our increasing social isolation titled: The Anti-Social Century (You can get behind the paywall here). The author of the article blames our information technologies: TV and more recently cell phones, destruction of third spaces like libraries, parks and neighborhood bars, national and international mobility, and a culture that chooses convience over forging genuine connections over time. In terms of solutions, the author posits that we need a national culture change towards a more skeptical attitude towards new technology like AI and deliberate attempts to be more social. He cites the rapid growth in independent bookstores and board game cafes as a cause for hope in this kind of change.
I'm directionally on board with the diagnosis and prognosis offered in the Atlantic article, but I worry about the vagueness and naivity of the solution. I had similar worries after reading a similar piece, the book Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, which highlighted the deleterious effects of phones on our attention spans. Hari spends a summer phone free in Provincetown, MA which he really enjoys, and manages to recover much of his attention span. However, upon returning to the "real world" he finds himself sucked right back into the vortex. Hari rightly recognizes that this is an issue he cannot tackle alone, and advocates for collective action on a national or international level. He draws inspiration from movements like women's suffrage, the fight for gay rights, and the campaign against CFCs. Perhaps I am cynical, but I find this level of optimism to be hopelessly naive for a number of reasons.
Firstly, those examples which I just listed were examples in which the forces of capital were neutral (CFCs, gay rights), or in fact in favor of the so-called revolution (women's suffrage). In this case, like that of the fight against climate change, or degrowth, capital is fundamentally against a system that would free our attention, as such a system would reduce profits.
Secondly, I'm not sure democratic change will actually work in this scenario. As we saw with prohibition & the failed war on drugs, people like their vices. I'm not sure my generation would be in favor of something like banning TikTok. Hari even states that his first week on Cape Cod was pretty difficult psychologically without the soothing mind-wipe of scrolling. Faith in democracy also misses the forces of capital arrayed against the interests of the common people who have so clearly been gaming our electoral system since the Civil War. If we can't stop Big Pharma from price gouging insulin, what makes the author think that we could upend the entire media ecosystem?
I think change fundamentally has to come from a level in-between the individual & the state (or global culture). I think many cultural critics miss the very existence of this level of culture, possibly because it has almost totally vanished from our world as an element of social change. I'm talking here about the family, the local community, and to some extent, the parishes/church.
Yet I think this new Atlantic article, and my experiences over the past few years has revealed how frustrating trying to affect change at this level can be. There might well be an explosion of board game bars and independent bookstores, but at least where I live in the US, even thriving institutions have problems with inconsistency and high turnover on the scale of years which makes it very difficult to build real community. A couple examples from my personal life might be helpful.
1). I'm pretty involved in the running community here in Baltimore and in some senses the running scene has never been better. Races are packed and the casual running clubs are seeing more people come out than ever. But the more serious running teams are doing very poorly. We can't get people out for organized workouts, or for important team races. It's very hard to build team camraderie or real friendships in this kind of environment where everyone is a flake.
2). With my local church the problem is similar. Plenty large mass attendence, but people my age aren't interested in the other ministries that the church offers: working with soup kitchen, church garden, and food pantry to help feed the homeless, book clubs, or even social events, many of which take place right after mass. In addition to the flakiness present in the running scene, there's also a geographic transience: many people are here for school or temporary work, and are not inclined to work towards any kind of more permenant community.
There are similar vibes in many of the other hobbies I take part in: gardening, swing dancing, reading: a trend towards pick-and-choose attendence of events, rather than attendence out of any sense of obligation to a particular community. I'm clearly guilty of this too: I would probably be a stronger running club participant or parishoner if I didn't have so many hobbies, although I like to think I lack the worst of the scrolling/TV vices.
I'm kind of at a loss about what we can do about all this. A big part of the problem is clearly the phones,which hopefully the upcoming Tik Tok ban will help with, but I think there's also a large element of constant geographic mobility at play at here too. I grew up in Chicago, went to college in Boston, and currently am doing my PhD in Baltimore. At each stage of life I built or was part of a community, which, in the case of the first two, I have gradually lost. The thought of the same happening with my friends here fills me with dread, but staying in Baltimore is not a rational economic prospect, and also requires that most of my friends here don't leave themselves. But if not going to stay, why would I ever want to sink my roots in deeper?
Any thoughts/advice appreciated. I also think there's a lot of value in online communities that I have found here at the Motte, in my philosophy book club (university friends), and on Substack, and I'm immensly grateful for their existence, but I don't think they can even come close to fulfilling many of the needs that meatspace does. But that's a whole seperate post.
I grew up reading the kinds of novels that are popular with homeschool girls. Ann of Green Gables, Little House on the Prairie, George Macdonald, the Bronte Sisters, the kind of novel where the girl's only friend is a horse, and it's not even her own horse. Solitude seems intrinsic to whatever culture it is my family belongs to. It's the class of pastors, teachers, and the kind of farmers who moved to the Western US. When I read novels and hear accounts from older relatives, it sounds like people were mostly reading books in their leisure time. My father recounts playing wall ball with himself in the sweltering summer heat, but mostly reading Tarzan novels that summer. My mother recalls trying to learn to write in Elvish. She didn't have school friends, due to bussing, despite the city not having black kids or ghettos. My grandmother recalls reading Les Miserables in elementary school. Maybe according to the article they weren't alone, because it would be two or three teens and their mother silently reading in the same room.
This is interesting. Why do these alienated, lonely people want more "me time?"
Was going to a theater ever actually social? I used to go to movies, and the norm was to sit there quietly, and not engage with anyone, even the people you came with, in a dark room. It's more social to watch TV in my house with my family. We talk to each other and interact.
My grandparents didn't go to restaurants alone because they couldn't go to restaurants more than once a month, and it was an occasion. Take out was an occasion, even when I was a kid. I can't think of anyone I knew in real life who met up in bars.
Because I'm from a long line of bookish but high openness introverts, it's unsurprising that I'm posting on my online culture war club instead of arranging play dates and attending potlucks.
My parents still keep in touch with their five college friends, even though they've all moved to different cities. I just met up with a friend from youth group I haven't seen in four years, and it was nice.
As I write this, my husband has been talking to me about joining a lapidary club, and taking our kids to look for local rocks at a nearby wash. It has taken me most of an hour to write this post, as I made cookies, put the kids to bed, and discussed going to the mineral show.
I'm not saying that there isn't a problem, but perhaps it's a recurrent problem. Or a problem that's always with us.
Solo dining is more of a city thing, and I think it's largely due to small apartments and a decline in public spaces.
If you live in a 300 square foot unit, you're going to want to get out of the house to eat. Cooking and eating alone in a tiny space is depressing. The "me time" response is just a poor classification of the problem. Trying to schedule things with friends every time you leave the house is a huge amount of work. No one ever did that all the time. Prior to cell phones it was basically impossible.
Due to the difficulty in scheduling everything, striking up conversations with random people was way more socially acceptable.
Also people would pick up location based hobbies like bird watching and just chat with the other bird watchers.
I suspect that packing a meal and eating it in the park was more common in the past. People in the park were able to beat up anyone harassing picnickers without the police getting upset. Police carried batons and used them to deal with small problems without the courts getting involved.
Old homes have front porches because prior to TV people would just sit there in the evenings. Watch their kids play, chat with neighbours.
Kids playing with each other in the street depends on there being a group of kids to play with, which in effect means a high enough fertility rate in a concentrated enough area. Front porches used to be great for watching kids play and chatting because there were kids to watch play and of course you’re going to chat, there’s people there.
I suspect hitting the park is similar- kids love the park, packing a picnic and bringing the kids there is a perfectly normal thing to do. But there was always stigma to just sitting around in the park.
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Kind of a tangent but I think there's a widespread problem with people ignoring their locale and imitating the activities of other locales. People who live in the mountains want to be surfers, people who live in the city want to keep a farmyard menagerie, people who live surrounded by pine forests want to make mahogany furniture, etc.
Instead of people grouping around the opportunities that are present and available you end up with people separating and going to lengths pursuing aspirations that aren't present or available. That's fine in moderation but it can diminish the base until there's not enough people to sustain the local activities that require that kind of group.
I feel it's parallel to how people continuously opt for breadth of experiences, whether that's foreign travel or high cuisine or multiple partners, and then lament a lack of depth in their lives when they come to a rest.
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