Alienation and lack of community, nowadays - thoughts? \ stacker news ~meta

Alienation and lack of community, nowadays - thoughts?

734 sats \ 7 comments \ @Signal312 15 Oct 2023 meta

Two events happened in the past few days that struck me as really illustrating the alienation and lack of community that many people experience nowadays, vs what people often had just a hundred years ago.

The first is that the daughter of a friend of mine got married.

The second is that I finished reading a chapter in the book Me and Mine, The Life Story of Helen Sekaquaptewa (fascinating first-person account of the life of a Hopi indian woman, born around 1899) where she talked about her marriage around 1919.

My friend's daughter's wedding was very minimal. I'll call the daughter Alice. Alice was married with no family except my friend who is her mom, and my friend's husband. Alice had no friends at the wedding, no other relations. She hired someone she found on the internet to do the actual wedding vows. All of the supplies (things like a little arbor to stand under, some other decorations, the wedding dress, etc.) were purchased on Amazon.

The contrasts between this event, and the wedding described in the book Me and Mine are huge. And I think the implications are troubling.

A Hopi marriage began with a number of ceremonies and traditions. Cotton (stored specifically for wedding clothing) is taken out of storage, and a portion of it is given to each household in the village. The men process the cotton, carding it, spinning it, and weaving the wedding gowns, all the while telling stories. The family hosting the wedding had to provide food for all involved, slaughtering at least 10 or 15 sheep. The women spent most of the day grinding corn and preparing meals for all the celebrants. Overall the whole process takes about 30 days, lots of ceremony and very substantial community and family involvement.

I'm not saying that a simple, frugal wedding is a bad idea. But at this wedding, there was zero community involvement, no friends, and everything just purchased on Amazon. My friend whose daughter was getting married realized this, and it was troubling to her. And that seems symptomatic of what I see more of, all the time - very alienated people, with very few or no friends, and zero community involvement. For a lot of people, things were not great before, but the lockdowns associated with covid just put the icing on the cake, in terms of causing a minimal social life to wither away and die completely.

Anyway, I don't have any grand plans for fixing things here, this just struck me and I thought I'd write about it.

What do you all think? Is this a trend you're seeing as well? Any signs of hope, is bitcoin going to fix this as well? I say that kind of tongue-in-cheek, but maybe a part of this is because of weird incentives on social media cause people to spend insane amounts of time on their phones, to the detriment of any kind of social life.

What strategies do you have, in your own life, to be socially involved and have community?

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933 sats \ 1 reply \ @Ribbit 16 Oct 2023

Future Shock (1970) by Alvin Toffler

Alvin Toffler argued that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a "super-industrial society". This change overwhelms people. He argues that the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaves people disconnected and suffering from "shattering stress and disorientation"—future shocked.

To follow transient jobs, people have become nomads. For example, immigrants from Algeria, Turkey and other countries go to Europe to find work. Transient people are forced to change residence, phone number, school, friends, car license, and contact with family often. As a result, relationships tend to be superficial with a large number of people, instead of being intimate or close relationships that are more stable. Evidence for this is tourist travel and holiday romances.

Many goods have become disposable as the cost of manual repair or cleaning has become greater than the cost of making new goods due to mass production. Examples of disposable goods include ballpoint pens, lighters, plastic bottles, and paper towels.

Simulacra and Simulation(1981) by Jean Baudrillard

Simulacra are copies that depict things that either had no original, or that no longer have an original.[1] Simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time.

Simulacra might explain the feeling you had about the wedding.

HyperNormalisation (2016) by Adam Curtis

https://invidious.io.lol/watch?v=VzqDMnUG4kk

It shows that what has happened is that all of us in the West - not just the politicians and the journalists and the experts, but we ourselves - have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. But because it is all around us we accept it as normal.

But there is another world outside. Forces that politicians tried to forget and bury forty years ago - that then festered and mutated - but which are now turning on us with a vengeful fury. Piercing though the wall of our fake world.

My dinner with Andre (1981)

See, I think it's quite possible that the 1960s represented the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished and that this is the beginning of the rest of the future... that from now on they'll simply be all these robots walking around feeling nothing, thinking nothing.

And there'll be nobody left, almost, to remind them that there once was a species called a human being with feelings and thoughts and that history and memory are right now being erased and soon nobody will really remember that life existed on the planet.

https://invidious.io.lol/watch?v=GkQD3lUE6kM

We are forgetful children led by invisible hands towards horrors without words, for reasons unknown.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Ribbit 16 Oct 2023

@brianh

133 sats \ 0 replies \ @brianh 16 Oct 2023

it just seems like loneliness and isolation is an increasing problem in our postmodern world. i literally have no clue what the fuck is causing it, is it partially because we're just buried on our devices all the time? or because people are constantly moving around to different places that it becomes increasingly difficult to put down roots into a community and be a part of it?

i put it on myself to go out there and get involved: volunteer, go out to shows/events, attend meetups, etc. it's a lot harder to find a consistent group of people you see as an adult

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @bzzzt 16 Oct 2023

Definitely a trend I see and definitely worse post lockdowns. What a terrible mistake in hindsight.

Thanks for sharing

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @xz 16 Oct 2023

Yes. The idea of mandating people to do useless things and consequently shutdown thriving economies was a complete failure of governments, In its conception, throughout, and in hindsight.

105 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 16 Oct 2023

This struck me about funerals during and since covid. I know of a few people who died recently and had no wake, funeral, or memorial of any kind. It almost seems like a collectivist attack on the individual. I realize I may be going overboard here, but I have to admit it occurred to me.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @gmd 16 Oct 2023

At least she's getting married. Its seems there is a growing loneliness epidemic and eventual like population is going to collapse with all of the people holding out for something better and glued to their phones.