I wonder if it's a side effect of prosperity. If you're poor, you depend on your broader family and community -- when you run out of money, when your car breaks down and your uncle can fix it, etc. etc. and if you have to sleep in the same room as your extended family, you're going to have "community."
However, dealing with people is difficult and inconvenient, so when you have money you decide to leave your family and isolate yourself from other people's problems as much as possible. You perhaps gain more peace, privacy and free time, but it's harder to notice what you're losing.
I'm not going to dredge up the numbers now, but in the 60s in America, I think it's probably safe to say a lot more siblings lived in the same room, a lot more people lived in small independent farms working alongside many family members, etc. etc. People were closer together because they had to be. People in cities didn't have to be quite so adjacent, but perhaps they were closer because it was normal in society to be closer.
Speculation on my part, but it probably wouldn't be hard to find those numbers and back up the argument...
From what I've seen living a privileged community in a not so privileged country, its that culture tends to impact in a much higher degree than money or privilege. Yes, money can buy you the privilege of skipping those awkward interactions that make us human, but it is up to the person to actually want to use money with that purpose.
I know very wealthy people that keep very closed ties to their families and friends. It's true that finding real friends gets harder, but the isolation tends to be caused by a deeper cultural norm.
E.g. in Latin America the family is given a much higher importance than in the States or Europe. It is not rare to see young adults living with their parents even if they can easily afford a place of their own. Even those that live on their own tend to meet their families in a regular basis.
In the end it's all about prioritizing what is important in your life and in every society there seems to be a common list shared by it's inhabitants, if you end up in a place that values more independence than relations, maybe its time to start swimming against the current in that regard.
Well, that's true, but my argument is that cultural norms spring from necessity. In places where a lot of people must live adjacent, that kind of living becomes the cultural norm and even if you're in a position to do your own thing, you are still influenced by it.
That is, cultural norms affect people, but basic necessity also affect cultural norms. Just like your values inform what you do, but what you do also changes your values.
You're right in that we must make greater efforts to swim against the current, but so many of us must in adulthood develop tools to foster community and connection. That's hard to do, especially when you're vulnerable, there's trial-and-error involved and you don't really have a good model for what you "should" be doing.
I have a hunch than in a couple decades this issue will be amplified. The biggest problem we are seeing from the disposal of more social interactions arises from not giving it its true importance.
It may be as you say that in the past interactions were fostered mainly as a side product of the necessity to cooperate and interact with others. However as we develop and become for independent thanks to prosperity and technology we must not get rid of interaction for they are an end in itself.
The issue or even taboo is the lack of importance that is given to the interactions with others just for its own sake. Maybe we will move on from this need and become more self reliant, however in the short term it seems that we are having a hard time adapting, especially with the increase of suicides and drug use in younger generations.
-> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21650584
>in Latin America the family is given a much higher importance than in the States or Europe
I'm brazilian. I have a sister who is married to an american, and they live in the U.S. He always jokes how my sister talks to our mother in Brazil 10x more than he talks to his, yet his mother lives 15 minutes away.
This is purely anecdotal evidence for your point but I'll mention it anyways.
When I was growing up, I lived on a dead end street, in a blue collar part of town. The houses were so close together, as a kid I could almost straddle between them and touch both houses. I knew every kid and their parents names, could recite every address on my block. The kids were constantly out playing sports games of all kinds, in every season. We made up games, went to the park and played baseball together. We had summer block parties and biked to the local pool to swim and chase girls. Everybody knew everybody else. We all helped each other out when things got tight. The few elderly people we had in our neighborhood got their driveways and sidewalks shoveled by us younger kids. We collected firewood for their fireplaces, we kept watch on their houses.My extended family all lived within a few blocks so I was always close with my cousins as well. I look back now and feel like it was pure Americana. When you think of the American Dream, this was the textbook definition of it.
Then in 1996, everything changed. My dad landed a new job, was suddenly making way more money than he used to. My sister went off to college and we moved to the other "wealthier" side of town. Bigger house, pool in the backyard, in a sea of larger homes. I was an only child, started high school and you know what? I didn't know anybody in my neighborhood. To this day, I couldn't tell you the names of the people who lived on either side of our house. No more sports in the streets, no more BMX racing down at the trails at the park by my house. No more hanging with the kids who would just congregate in their yards until we had enough kids to do something fun. After that first year, I struggled to make friends and for the first time in some 17 seventeen years, I actually felt alone and isolated. It lasted for at least another year when I was a junior in HS, I finally found some friends who like to skateboard, snowboard, mountain bike and play sports like I did and things got better.
But I agree, when we were living in a blue collar town? Everything felt close and you had a tight knit community. When we moved? I just felt alone and isolated. My neighbors treated us the same way. They stayed in their house and we stayed in ours. Doing better off financially was good, but I lost a lot on the way.
Struggles and hardship also breed empathy. If you are completely independent and self-sufficient it is hard to relate to people who need help. Breaking my leg with no family around, being broke and dropping out of college, working retail for 8 years, it all sucked, but there was no option but to commiserate with people around me. Now 5 years later I have a fancy tech job and keep to myself during my commutes.
Also a simpler example of your above point, Christmas gifts: they are helpful gestures of goodwill when you're broke and strapped for necessities, but sort of meaningless tokens of ritual when everyone has everything they need already.
A major factor is government usurping the traditional functions of community. You don't need help from your local church or a fraternal society if you are getting aid from the government. And people are less likely to participate in the community if they feel that the government is handling and taxing them to do so.
I haven't done the research at all but would it be fair to say people in at least a few European countries have a better sense of community and human interaction than US (maybe the Scandinavian countries) but a far higher tax rate? Haven't looked into it all though.
>> a few European countries have a better sense of community and human interaction than US
I would agree given a lot of the European communities are smaller in size (think "villages" instead of "cities") so there are in closer proximity and share more resources. They often share more bloodlines and have genealogical ties many generations deeper. My father came from Norway and his family is like 15 generations deep. Here in the US? His family ties are only three or four generations deep.
I have seen it commented the idea that churches are some great source of immense, direct charity. If one is in need, they should simply call upon "the church" for assistance. A bowl of soup, a blanket, and some petty cash right in hand.
Is that real? Even today instead of 150 years ago? What's the regional variation on that?
Absolutely, yes. Our church collects tithes and offerings. Tithes funnel to the head of the church and there is a council that sees to their disposition. Offerings are collected monthly and stay in the local congregation for the immediate relief of members of our Church and members of our community regardless of religious affiliation. If any offerings remain, they funnel up to regional administrators. The beauty of this system is that I can give charitably and not know who is getting the benefit. I don't have to judge whether or not my offerings is getting maximum benefit because that responsibility is on the local church leader. (who is using prayer and discernment to maximum effect)
Also, my church has food distribution channels and warehouses so nobody is going hungry.
To some extent yeah. I've had members of my church get hit with sudden costs from an accident/medical bill and someone will start up a collection to help them out. Church's might also run a food bank or similar service to the wider community.
The average household size (persons) has been declining and the average house size (Sq.ft) has been climbing. The average person has certainly much more square feet for themselves.
Prosperity is generally defined as the amount of work hours you have to do to make ends meet. That number has skyrocketed. In that era you could put yourself through college delivering pizzas. In 1950 you had to work 2 days per month at minimum wage to rent a house.
I think the size of one's house is one of the archetypal measures of "prosperity" and it's been exploding over the past 50 years. More generally, the problem with these little anecdotes is that they're not normalized to anything. Anecdotes along the lines of "you could afford X on Y hours of minimum wage work," for example, ignore the fact that almost nobody earns minimum wage today: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1M09. The percentage of workers earning minimum wage or less (some workers are exempt) dropped from 15% in 1980 to just 2% today.
These anecdotes also ignore numerous other parameters. For example, households are much smaller today than before. So looking at "median household income" understates increases in income for the middle. Without adjusting for decreased household size, inflation-adjusted household income went up 16% from 1970-2010. Adjusting for household size, it went up 34%.
Likewise, people are more likely to be single parents, etc., today, which impacts economic prosperity. From 1971 to 2011, married people with a spouse present did well: https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2.... The percentage of such adults who are low income stayed flat at about 21-22%. But the percentage that qualify as upper income grew from 14% to 25%. For those who have never been married, the opposite happened. Low income rates went from 22% to 34%, and upper income rates stayed flat at 16-18%.
Are incomes inflation adjusted? The average income when I was a kid was $50k per year, about the same as it is now, except that $50k has 50% less purchasing power today. $50k today is the equivalent of $25k 30 years ago.
Here's probably a more interesting statistic. Women's labor force participation rate hit current levels around 1990-1995, when I was a kid. Since then, the median inflation-adjusted income for a married couple with two people working has increased more than 20%, from under $90,000 to over $110,000: https://fee.org/media/30584/census3.png?width=600&height=409....
However, dealing with people is difficult and inconvenient, so when you have money you decide to leave your family and isolate yourself from other people's problems as much as possible. You perhaps gain more peace, privacy and free time, but it's harder to notice what you're losing.
I'm not going to dredge up the numbers now, but in the 60s in America, I think it's probably safe to say a lot more siblings lived in the same room, a lot more people lived in small independent farms working alongside many family members, etc. etc. People were closer together because they had to be. People in cities didn't have to be quite so adjacent, but perhaps they were closer because it was normal in society to be closer.
Speculation on my part, but it probably wouldn't be hard to find those numbers and back up the argument...