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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1998 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for April 10, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

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  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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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?

My strategy is being so likeable that my friends insist on dragging me out to places even when my natural inclination is to nap at home and play video games when I'm not working or studying.

Sadly most of said friends have scattered to the four corners of the globe, but I'm moving too and don't really have issues making friends, though that gets difficult when you don't have an environment like college where you're forced to spend hours together and suffer through the same shit until you end up trauma-bonding. Most of the doctors at my workplace are (or now were) more senior to me, and the people at my level too busy with their own exams to have much in the way of a social life.

But I look forward to starting afresh, I don't have issues with making friends, and my sadness was mostly from what felt like Sisyphean struggles with no clear end in sight rather than because I miss human company too much. Said boulder has now reached a nice comfortable plateau, so I hope I can get out and see the scenery and drink my sorrows away.

And of course I'm here on The Motte because there are people I enjoy talking with, it's not a parasocial relationship because I genuinely end up, if not bosom friends, close enough that there plenty of people here I can hit up when either they or I are around.

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Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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