People are more depressed than ever, more socially stunted than ever, more anxious than ever and the marriage and dating rates are plummeting and I'm sure it's all just because people aren't talking to each other any more.
All modern entertainment (TV, videogames, music, the internet) is solitary, online shopping means people don't even need to leave the house any more, and when they do leave the house they encase themselves in soundproof steel cages and hurtle down a giant asphalt track, surrounded by hundreds of people but talking to none of them.
What are some books that talk about the causes and consequences of our hyper-individualist, isolated society?
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Bowling Alone.
Thanks bros
>it’s another doomer, west has fallen thread isn’t it?
from a far right perspective america is a degenerate shithole, a mall parking lot filled with shitskins soon to be brazil 2.0, the conservative party has conserved nothing.
From a far left perspective america is a racist, imperilist, capitalist, shithole that was started by slave owners
basically no one believes in the american dream anymore
Once the boomers are dead and gone you are going to see some shit
Centrists love it and are having a blast. They've secured friendships at their jobs at FAANG or the big 4 accounting firms, and the dating app algorithms have secured them the ideal mate. This couple in particular is a benchmark and paradigm for centrists. They've taken it upon themselves to have as many children as possible because they love society at this point in time and want it to remain just as it is. Their three kids (so far, they want more) are called Torsten, Octavian and Titan Invictus. They wont be bullied, because the kids who are supposed to bully them are not in the high-quality private school they will go to, they are having their brains permanently fried by tablets in a public school that is closer in essence to a for-profit prison than an educational institution.
You're surely repulsed. You might rave about how söy they are. They don't care, they're just going to keep breeding and pumping out centrists babies whereas their political opponents are going to kill themselves, die of diseases of despair, or die alone withouth progeny.
You have no idea how bad things really are.
then why are they all on SSRIs?
Because it is adaptive and it works for them.
Other people find it insufferable to turn into zombies, centrists love it.
>Because it is adaptive and it works for them
Can you provide any evidence for either of these assumptions?
they're more successful?
So you're saying there's a correlation between SSRI ingestion and success? What do you mean by 'success'?
they seem wealthy and happy, willing to have more kids, etc.
idk man but it seems like NOVA and Bay Area libs have it all figured out. they've got a thing that works for them. no wonder they hate the rest of their country for trying to disrupt their little utopia.
>they seem
Why didn't you phrase it like this from the beginning?
>idk man but it seems like NOVA and Bay Area libs have it all figured out.
Let's say you're right. Does that make the other Anon's original criticisms invalid?
>they seem wealthy and happy, willing to have more kids, etc.
Bankers who use cocaine SEEM wealthy and happy too. Does it mean we should all take coke?
They have one kid max who'll grow up fricked up from having a phallic mother and a eunuch father. It's not evolutionary sound. The country is fricked let's face it.
The parents just reproduce little versions of themselves who grow up to live happy, productive, and accomplished lives, just like their parents. They're just fine.
>The country is fricked let's face it.
The people outside of this bubble are fricked, yes.
I still still it's conservatives that have it best. Ted Cruz types.
Even though his daughter tried to kill herself? Maybe everyone's fricked.
Gavin Newsom. He seems to be doing well, and he's masculine and leftist yet not a commie.
Dont forget the rise of all these comedy shows and sitcoms. People look for happiness since they lack it.
This is nonsense.The bourgeois cattle barely have any children, especially compared to the poor and the criminal. You're just a lying/delusional moron.
Centrists are.
They are succeeding in this society, having children, not killing themselves, and not spending their time crying about the state of things on the internet.
The very definition of a centrist is that they want to retain the status quo, with insubstantial and vague "progress" vis-a-vis homosexuals, blacks, and so on. They want to retain the status quo because they are happy with it, whereas rightoids want regression to an earlier state, and leftoids want a change of the economic system.
No, there is no correlation.
As for success, I mean thriving, by self-perception and self-report, in the current system. By definition, centrists do, because they want the system to go on as it is, without anything fundamentally changing.
No fricking clue what this is supposed to articulate.
>Centrists are.
This is just not true.
>They are succeeding in this society
Repeating yourself for no reason.
>having children
Almost any group selected along any dimension can be described as 'having children' as long as there are at least two individuals who have had children in it. Why is this meaningful? They're not the group that has the most children, nor can they be proven to be having more children than the average.
>not killing themselves
Again, how do you know? How do you know they're not killing themselves more often than the average user here for example?
>not spending their time crying about the state of things on the internet
This is just outright impossible to know.
>The very definition of a centrist is that they want to retain the status quo
This is not so. But even if it were, arguing by definition is meaningless.
>with insubstantial and vague "progress" vis-a-vis homosexuals, blacks, and so on
Insubstantial according to whom?
>thriving, by self-perception and self-report
Neither of these can be trusted.
>Your own action causes negative consequence to you. This has nothing to with other people, it is entirely your problem.
This is both untrue and contradictory of the stated definition of 'fault'. If an individual that is not me takes an action that makes it more difficult for me to achieve my goals, they have impacted me adversely.
>More choice is always great
This statement is completely incorrect. It is in fact beneficial to have fewer choices with a higher average yield(for example) than more choices but with a lower average yield.
>I think the idea of certain people being "introverts" is completely crippling half of society. I used to confidently think I was an introvert, now I don't even believe introverts exist.
Glad to see your anecdotal experience has managed to disprove both the social and the scientific consensus.
>This is both untrue and contradictory of the stated definition of 'fault'. If an individual that is not me takes an action that makes it more difficult for me to achieve my goals, they have impacted me adversely.
Other people minding their own business and not wanting to be disturbed cannot be considered as taking (a negative) action towards you. If you initiate a conversation you are the one taking action, if other person does not engage then they have done nothing to cause you damage or loss. If you still feel wronged then that is not the fault of others.
>Other people minding their own business and not wanting to be disturbed cannot be considered as taking (a negative) action towards you
You're just moving the goalpost. Also 'minding their own business' is a phrase that's both nebulous and highly context -dependent - which benefits your argument.
Also, it's irrelevant how I feel, not sure why you brought that up.
Well I certainly wouldn't trust what she reports to me if I ask her. But either way, your analogy is completely invalid. First of all, she's one person, not a group. You're also using the word 'unhappy' to conflate a wide range of emotional states and then conflate that with a wider and more global definition of happiness. Finally - I never said the alternative to not trusting your senses is calling up scientists or whatever the frick. That's all you.
I am not, if a person has taken no action towards you, how can you blame that person for your own failure or some negative consequnce towars your goals?
>action towards you
Define this.
>how can you blame that person
I'm just adhering to the definition. It's also functionally irrelevant whether I'm blaming them or not. The outcome is still the same.
>A single action or series of actions, a prolonged behavior that results in negative consequences, damage or injury or loss to other person
I do not see how other person not reacting to you and not taking any action toward you, consequently not causing you any damage or loss to you falls under the definition
>any action toward you
Again, what does this mean? And how is an action that's taken 'toward' me meaningfully different from any other action?
That is different, however from previous example 'NOT taking any action toward you' and 'taking action that has no effect on you' have from your perspective are the same because both cases have no effect on you
>That is different
Don't get what you're referring to.
>taking action that has no effect on you
Okay, can you define this or at least give me a couple of examples? Also what do you mean by 'effect' here?
>>That is different
>Don't get what you're referring to.
Action taken towards you will have a direct effect on you, any other action should have no effect on you (direct or indirect)
What is an effect, in context of fault, it is negative effect, a loss, damage or injury to you.
>Action taken towards you will have a direct effect on you
Okay, let's say someone tries to punch me and misses because they're moronic. Is that then an action that's not taken 'towards me'?
>What is an effect, in context of fault, it is negative effect, a loss, damage or injury to you.
By that definition it still fits. But that doesn't even matter. Let's say people would react to my appearance by putting on their headphones and taking out their phones. The effect is still the same - or similar enough, regardless of whether the action is direct or indirect, taken towards me or not, etc etc
>Okay, let's say someone tries to punch me and misses because they're moronic. Is that then an action that's not taken 'towards me
at the very least they are acting towards you in a threating manner, going out of their way to threaten someone (you in this case) is an action directed towards you.
>Let's say people would react to my appearance by putting on their headphones and taking out their phones. The effect is still the same - or similar enough, regardless of whether the action is direct or indirect, taken towards me or not, etc etc
what effect? If people react to you taking out their phones, that means people react to you by doing nothing to you, taking no action towards you, therefore there is no effect.
OK Demarshaun
Look at how afraid that baby is.
They're a new subspecies. We're witnessing the beginning of a Morlock/Eloi split. These people are adapting to the new environment; the rest of us are anachronisms and are going to be driven underground.
>the bourgeois love it and are having a blast
where I have heard this before
>They wont be bullied, because the kids who are supposed to bully them are not in the high-quality private school they will go to
You have no idea about private school man. The most advanced bullies are in the best private schools, Titan Invictus doesn't stand a fricking chance
Both sides are correct. No one believes in the American dream anymore because it doesn't exist anymore (I say this as an Australian, it's not hard to look at your country and see this.). I would say that it's hard to believe in something that isn't real but religiontards exist sooooo....
>the conservative party has conserved nothing.
the purpose of a conservative party is to conserve their wealth and old andclong established economic policies that are favorable to them.
That's the purpose of all career politician
It's really hard to understate just how many people are miserable right now
You mean it's hard to overstate, moron.
Atomised by Michel Houellebecq
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
McDonaldisation by George Ritzer
people always think alienation is reserved for people who are outsiders to society like NEETs, the homeless, etc, but we all suffer from alienation, nobody knows the person sat next to them on the train, most modes of expression towards each other are heavily scripted
>What are some books that talk about the causes and consequences of our hyper-individualist, isolated society?
Undoing the Demos by Wendy Brown
i know what it is op, it's because people aren't religioous anymore! if you bastards would get back in mass and lick the popes boots we would all be happy god damn it! boring thread i've seen a thousand times. can you just post bowling alone, revolt of the elites, and why liberalism failed already and it get it over with.
>People are more depressed than ever, more socially stunted than ever, more anxious than ever and the marriage and dating rates are plummeting and I'm sure it's all just because people aren't talking to each other any more.
It's because society has walked away from God, they don't know the joy of the Lord, they don't have the rest of Jesus Christ or the weekly rest, marriage isn't founded upon a mutual faith and it isn't seen as an everlasting covenant before God-- it's just a means to an end for many people or something to do for convenience or tax status, so much so that people think the same sex can be married despite being an institution created by God.
>All modern entertainment (TV, videogames, music, the internet) is solitary
It's practically all anti-God and anti-Christ, promoting all manner of sin which brings pain and suffering into one's life. They'll show you materialism and mammon and how that makes the characters happy but once you try that, you need more and more and it's never enough, it never satisfies, it never fulfills you.
>What are some books that talk about the causes and consequences
The Bible (Authorized Version).
No, religion won't make you happy or give you any joy. It may satiate your lusts and desires like the rest of this world, or might give you a sense of community, but you need a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ and you don't need any priests or rituals to do that.
because we live in the age of wonders, we have cpus with billions of transistors in them, we have spacecraft that flies to the moon and mars, the technology is constantly advancing.
I do not want to live a mundane life in the village, rising at first light and going to bed at sundown, I do not care about the village community, and that trad nonsense, going to church on sundays etc.
I look towards the stars, not to some shitty and boring life in some backward community.
Instead of being outside right now doing fullfilling work, helping out the local people and talking to girls in the village you are sitting in your bedroom, alone, using 10 billion transistors to send meaningless messages to people you will never meet in your life.
How wonderful.
I have hope at least, you on the other hand have your very boring and mundane life planned out for you.
>I have hope at least
No, you just have some weird escapist fantasy
Having your brain so fried out by media consumption that normal, natural human existence seems "mudane" to you isn't something to be proud of
You will only find true happiness once you can appreciate the little things in life. When you don't need anything to be happy other than what already exists in nature.
you could go outside and talk to girls right now if you so chose to do so. the fact that you believe you are only able to go outside and talk to girls if you were a 19th century russian serf is probably an indicator of moderate mental illness.
These
Science fiction is boring, soulless trash. I want to live in the mundane earth that we have right now.
What stars? You can't even see them anymore.
>I look towards the stars
moronic homosexual
Shut up, Faustian.
The problem with that is most people won't ever experience the things you dream of even if they want to. The hedonic treadmill marches on.
Literally more delusional than religious people.
The only place you can see the stars is in these villages.
You won't be able to within the next hundred years probably.
Based. You made the trads seethe.
Shock revelation
>people don't talk to people that suck
>memetrads get mad because no one wants to be friends with the corny homies
I hate you stupid, needlessly grandiose faustian homosexuals and your insipid worship of innovation for innovation's sake.
>I look towards the stars, not to some shitty and boring life in some backward community.
Look at this image and bask in your corporate surroundings
behold, the post that broke IQfy. good job fren.
All lowercase samegay.
i'm not a phonegay, yes.
also the painting i added is kino innit
No, you're a pretentious illiterate hipster moron. How do you not know how to type?
We aren't going to space, and we aren't going back. We're only going inside until there's nothing left outside.
there is no extraterrestrial place you could travel within your lifetime that is not either extremely hot, extremely cold, irradiated, toxic/suffocating, desiccated, subject to extreme gravitational forces, or some combination thereof. the earth is the nicest place you will ever see, and you'd find that mars is very much in the back country except that there's nothing outside.
Guy Debord - The Society of the Spectacle
Jean Baudrillard - Simulacra and Simulation
Herbert Marcuse - One-Dimensional Man
>People are more depressed than ever, more socially stunted than ever, more anxious than ever and the marriage and dating rates are plummeting
sauce?
Ana walled hard. Keep coping.
its AI, you mongrel
You live under a rock? Every imbecile can see this phenomenon happening.
Yeah, me and my siblings are fricked in the head, spend a fortune on therapy, have anxiety and depression.
My grandpa who grow up in a village is happy as a clam.
We were never meant to be exposed to such massive amounts of information and stimulation, while being closed off from other humans for so long. We still have hunter-gatherer brains calibrated to life in a small tribe.
>people are more autistic in the west than ever
>hmm what's the correlation?
People living in a slum in Rio are not atomized. They have a genuine community.
The reason we are atomized is because we can afford it.
Keep in mind that marriage rates and birth rates are plummeting all across the so-called First World.
This is most pronounced in Japan and China, but is pretty bad in Europe and the U.S. also.
I don't think it's because technology is separating us...there are plenty of dating/hookup apps with a lot of users.
The problem is that we have no future to look forward to.
Governments everywhere get more and more oppressive, which is not only bad for us, but consider what will happen to our children.
A young lady in an article I was reading about China's plummeting birth rate said it best: "I'm not giving birth to a hostage."
>Keep in mind that marriage rates and birth rates are plummeting all across the so-called First World.
>This is most pronounced in Japan and China, but is pretty bad in Europe and the U.S. also.
>I don't think it's because technology is separating us...there are plenty of dating/hookup apps with a lot of users.
>The problem is that we have no future to look forward to
It is exactly the opposite, we now have a futute to look to, that is why children are becoming less and less relevant, because we are the future not out children. In the past there was no future, no vision to look forward to.
yeah I have a dream, you are such a simpleton all you think of is farmwork.
>I don't think it's because technology is separating us...there are plenty of dating/hookup apps with a lot of users.
Men and women used to actually go outside and talk to each other
Now you're supposed to sit in your room and swipe on pictures of some woman 50 miles away, who will then scrutinize your looks and hobbies and then give you a 5% change of having the priviledge of sending her messages on a screen. If you can pass her tests for 2 hours only then will she allow you to meet up face to face and talk together as two human beings.
Yes, dating apps cause seperation. They are probably one of the worst offenders. They are socially isolated by design.
You don’t have to use dating apps. Most people get in a relationship from in person contact
birth rates dropped way before dating apps
it's female emancipation it happens every time
Authoritarianism and extreme capitalistic mentality. People dont live in symbiosis with each other anymore, but try to exploit each other as much as possible.
Madness and Civilization
shut the frick up and go outside
Yeah man, suburbs and cars are the evil things, to be not lonely, you need to live in an APARTMENT where you can LISTEN to your neighbors and see REAL CULTURE and PEOPLE at the neighborhood bodega.
Suburbs and big cities are two sides of the same coin.
cars are killing the planet yeah
it's actually cows sweaty try to keep up
Do you actually know any normies?
This, affluent conservative churchgoing normies. But they're heading downhill too. Their kids are getting Black personized and stumbling into the same problems as the lower classes
he's the slimiest sleaziest sociopath alive
Yeah cows too
>Do you actually know any normies?
I'm not talking about normies, I'm talking about the run-of-the-mill elites who follow the model for success and prosper because of it. They're elite normies you could say. And yes I know plenty of them.
Anglo beta male versus the
LATINO INDIAN BVLL
Do you even drink liquid courage, cabron maderchod?
that's a israelite
Yes like I said Anglo mutt silver israelite bastard I typed
A N G LO
not German
The suburban American you worship is directly responsible for pics like this.
>suburbia is why I can't get laid
Ever wonder why pics like that didn't exist before the hippies and the sexual revolution and feminism but suburbs did?
After Virtue
People are atomized because they prefer it that way. If you aren't forced to be socialized with people who are naturally on a completely different frequency, you won't have a shared group identity that makes these relationships worth it. And these days, people are throwing away these complex relationships in pursuit of chasing their own little projects, finding completely like-minded people they can keep at an arm's length, or even just wanting to be left alone. The only thing more miserable than being atomized is being surrounded by people who you don't like who infringe on your privacy and don't even let you breathe.
this is an interesting point but there has to be an Aristotelian mean. i doubt people want to be this isolated and alone
>i doubt people want to be this isolated and alone
They chose this way life during their revolutions. If they don't like it they should have prevented the fall of feudalism.
Now they have to deal their own brand new religion, ie atheism: it has symbols, priests, oppressions, lies, dogmas, creation myth, hierarchies, social rules and so on. It has also a theology, but it's atomized (ie the rats believe in self determination in order to be compatible with the propaganda of the human rights). The only novelty by atheist rats is that they say ''atheism is not religion, it's an ideology'', because those dimwits deeply believe that if they change the words they use, reality will change.
reminder that contrary to the atheist propaganda, there is no several flavors of atheism. The truth is that there is only one atheism but atheists keep making up various flavors, like social liberalism, nationalism, communism, to keep people running in circle among all the atheist religions. In other words, atheists use their fantasy of market to balkanize their own religion in order to keep people trapped in it while thinking they become free thinkers when they explore the various flavors of atheism.
the bourgeois created atheism and their revolutions precisely to remove any theology bigger than society, so that the wageslaves can ''create their own goals'' , ie self determination, and be an active ''citizen''. This was at the time of the bourgeois invention of ''nationalism''. Nowadays the bourgeois manages the other side of its self-made individualism with the exact opposite (equally controlled by the same bourgeois), ie perennialism, internationalism , interdependence ie ''being a citizen of the world''.
You have to understand that in a balkanized atheist supermarket of political sides, the bourgeois control all sides, all the narratives. It's the bourgeois who choose what narrative is trendy and what narrative will be frowned upon through the bourgeois means, ie mercantilism and legalism.
>You have to understand that in a balkanized atheist supermarket of political sides, the bourgeois control all sides, all the narratives
Yes, because Christianity has famously never been balkanized and there have never been multiple political sides
it's like a chemical reaction to me, most people aren't willing to overcome that initial barrier, the "activation energy", without being forced to by life conditions, even though the final state afterwards is much more meaningful than the initial state.
a lot recommendations here are good.
But also "Entertaining Ourselves to Death" is great for the intellectual decline.
Why don’t you just move out of the suburbs instead of making this shitty off topic thread every week?
Because the country is where the suburbs were a decade or two ago. The problem is in how we engage and organize society now, it is endemic.
>All modern entertainment (TV, videogames, music, the internet) is solitary
>What are some books
lel
It stems from economics. It's no longer even attainable for the average citizen to raise a family in a reasonable way. No family, no kids, why bother doing anything other than shallow hedonism? Andrew Yang's book The War on Normal People actually examines this issue really well, if you look at places like Youngstown after the manufacturing shuttered, crime skyrockets, men go on disability support, divorces climb, abuse climbs, everything you could imagine gets worse. Why? Because men are expected to earn enough money to support their family. This is both an external and an internal expectation, so if the economy outsources everything so more and more people have to compete for fewer and fewer jobs, by definition it means your society will produce more "losers", men who themselves are frustrated and thus act out, and also men who women and society at large judge as inferior, thus exacerbating the problem. Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty First Century is another good one for examining economic trends. Also, I found Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations to be informative as well in terms of outlining the driving motivations of capital. If left to itself, centers of capital will collude and conspire to contrive any excuse to raise prices and lower wages. Unless there is a strong national identity and community focused government, capital takes over all of society and reduces the citizens to wage slaves, to be paid as close to bare subsistence as possible while being manipulated to work as much as possible. Cheap electronics and crappy food work as bread and circuses so the common rabble think they have it pretty good even though 50 years ago their grandparents were earning literally double the buying power with their wages on average compared to now.
Marx's Grundrisse
john zerzan covers this, albeit a bit more indirectly.
Which of his books should I start with?
A lot of weird butthurt replies itt. Not everything in society is a matter of choice. The replies saying shit like just move or go outside are really missing the big picture.
For better or worse the atomization is a product of living in a free market liberal society, wherein individuals are untethered from any social unit like the family, a clan, or community.
No one chose to live in a society like this it's the product of simply living in a modern advanced civilization.
In a funny way these replies reflect the underlying ethos of modern culture, wherein the answer to any problem is perceived as individual in nature, is as simple to solve as buying something off Amazon.
If you lived in most any other epoch of human history, your frame of reference would be your clan or extended family who you would be dependant on for protection.
It's funny how you tie it purely to material conditions and then start to talk about a human thing like ethos. The fact that we have liberal markets can never be proven to be the ultimate cause. What we actually do see on the surface, which might be all that matters, is that people belong to a culture with certain norms, values, beliefs, i.e. an ideology that shares differs in many ways from the society of the past.
Liberals of the past used to be much more communal.
>It's funny how you tie it purely to material conditions and then start to talk about a human thing like ethos.
I see no contradiction. And i did not in fact tie it purely to material condition. The thrust of my reply referred to modern culture, which is not material but exists in some relation to material realities like technological developments.
>What we actually do see on the surface, which might be all that matters, is that people belong to a culture with certain norms, values, beliefs, i.e. an ideology that shares differs in many ways from the society of the past.
National culture barely matters anymore. You living in the 19th century or something?
>Liberals of the past used to be much more communal.
Not at all true unless you're going way back to before the term existed beyond its adjectival use. The glorification of the individual, of self reliance, and the freedom or the individual from external constraints by the state or other groups has always been the claimed value by liberals since at least John Stuart Mill.
The observation that people try to disprove the detrmimental effects of an individualist society on a person by telling them that they're the problem and need to fix themselves is pretty funny - I'd never seen it like that before.
I agree with personal responsibility up to an extent, but there's definitely a point where society as a whole is sick and it's out of control of the individual.
If I go outside to try and talk to people but everyone is buried in their phones, has airpods in or is just completely closed off socially then is it still my fault?
>If I go outside to try and talk to people but everyone is buried in their phones, has airpods in or is just completely closed off socially then is it still my fault?
all those thing you listed objectively aren't really bad or harmful things. It's no ones fault because there was no fault to begin with.
Yes, nothing is anyone's fault. What a meaningful and productive argument.
That's not what said. If there is no fault then it cannot be attributed to anyone.
Can you define 'fault' for me?
A single action or series of actions, a prolonged behavior that results in negative consequences, damage or injury or loss to other person
By that definition, the people choosing to look at their phones and wear earpods are in fact at fault.
What are the negative consequences in people looking at their phones?
The fact that it makes the hypothetical attempts to talk to them or otherwise engage them socially less efficient and less effective.
Your own action causes negative consequence to you. This has nothing to with other people, it is entirely your problem.
>all those thing you listed objectively aren't really bad or harmful things
So sick of these ridiculous deconstructionist arguments. "Uhmmm dude how can you be so sure that human beings enjoy socializing, maybe everyone is actually happier being completely zoned out and isolated from each other".
Watch this and tell me if you think this situtation would be enhanced by every single person being buried in their phones instead of talking to each other
How can you be so sure that people are happier socializing instead of being zoned out? In history of our species we have been forced into that community based lifestyle by external factors, we had to constantly socialize to survive, only now quality of life has improved, there no external factors, we don't have to constantly rely on local communities for protection, housing and food to survive, we have invented tools that allow us to zone out, we have a choice now and some people still choose socializing but many others choose to zone out. Wait another thousand years for enough data to accumulate, then compare the human happines levels before and after modern technology, only then you can say for sure which specific lifestyle made majority of the people happier.
Because humans are social animals. You get more done as a group
mo people mo problems. and you can always do atomized socialization (networking, business, etc.)
Have a nice suicide
It's because the working environment was always biased towards group work, nowadays with all the available technology not so much.
There is sufficient data to prove that clogged arteries are bad. We have only had social media and smartphones for a few years, you cannot compare few year of data to entire recorded history of pre technology humans.
Now a days it's easier to do more in a group too
More choice is always great, those who prefer to work alone can now work alone, those who prefer groups can work in groups.
I am diagnosed autistic and I used to think I "preferred to work alone" for years.
Until I realized I was just socially stunted and crippled by social anxiety.
It wasn't that I got drained by being around other people, I was being drained by the fact that I absolutely sucked at socialising.
Then I spent a year pushing myself to say yes to every social opportunity, learning social skills from other people, and now I much prefer working with others because I'm actually able to connect with people and have positive experiences.
I think the idea of certain people being "introverts" is completely crippling half of society. I used to confidently think I was an introvert, now I don't even believe introverts exist.
Everyone feels good after having positive social interactions. It's just that some people are too anxious, or unwilling to learn social skills, that they never get to the point of having positive interactions.
>now I much prefer working with others because I'm actually able to connect with people and have positive experiences.
I prefer to get the work done.
>now I don't even believe introverts exist.
Yeah youre autistic alright
Not everybody suffers from social anxiety. I don't really care about my interactions with other people. And I even like my interactions with most people. I just don't care to keep on yapping on and on and on. I get tired of it eventually, relatively quickly with people I don't care for, and after a while without breaks with the people I do care for.
>Source? Can I get source? Yeah, I'm gonna need at least 5 peer reviewed studies showing that a pure lard diet is bad. Otherwise we just can't know. Until then I'm gonna keep eating lard.
In all seriousness, your original post wasn't about social media but suggested that people may be happier not socializing. There actually is plenty of data showing loneliness to be detrimental to health, so that disproves your claim entirely that people may just be happier "being zoned out". In any case if you have any doubts go visit a solitary confinement unit in a prison.
You remind me of a man trapped in a prison questioning whether or not the walls are real.
As for the cause of increasing self-report of loneliness, it is correlated to the rise of social media, smartphones, and the internet everywhere, but plenty have speculated about a variety of causes. Including people having smaller families, capitalism & globalism requiring workers to be hyper-mobile, the decline of organized religion, etc.
>There actually is plenty of data showing loneliness to be detrimental to health, so that disproves your claim entirely that people may just be happier "being zoned out". In any case if you have any doubts go visit a solitary confinement unit in a prison.
No it doesn't. Zoned out (on your phone or computer) does not mean solitary confinement.
Okay you're just being deliberately obtuse for the sake of wanting an argument.
No more (yous) for you
Also smoking cigarattes and tobacco at one point was considered healthy and even recommended by doctors, no? so yes now we know that pure lard diet is not healthy but we only know because of existing data that tells us that
>How can you be so sure that people are happier socializing instead of being zoned out?
Exactly, and while we're at it how can we be sure clogged arties are really bad for the heart, maybe I like my arties clogged. Did you ever think of that?
>we have been forced into that community based lifestyle by external factors, we had to constantly socialize to survive, only now quality of life has improved, there no external factors, we don't have to constantly rely on local communities for protection, housing and food to survive, we have invented tools that allow us to zone out, we have a choice now and some people still choose socializing but many others choose to zone out
But you're still being influenced, just less obviously and by a different set of entities.
>which specific lifestyle made majority of the people happier.
I think you'd be wise to remember that first of all, happiness and pleasure are different things and second that people generally can't be trusted to be truthful on this matter - not just because their own perceptions are flawed, but because they're not aware of the alternatives.
>people generally can't be trusted to be truthful on this matter - not just because their own perceptions are flawed, but because they're not aware of the alternatives.
yes, so just let each person decide what kind of lifestyle they want to have, because (if you are right) then we never know for sure what really makes other people happier, so we each mind our own business and only concern about ourself.
>How can you be so sure that people are happier socializing instead of being zoned out?
homie do you really think in 70 years the average person is going to lie on their death bed, and upon reflecting on their life and the happy memories reach the thought of: "Ahhhh... June 6th 2024 when I sat alone on my bed for 5 hours and mindlessly scrolled through tiktok videos... now that was a good day"
If all it takes to determine statistical results of peoples happiness, is one persons random opinion then what is the point of mathematics, statistics and scientific method.
>what is the point of mathematics, statistics and scientific method.
To produce models that are useful - but certainly not infallible. In fact, no model - scientific or otherwise - is completely descriptive of reality.
Those models produce data and results that are countless time more accurate than a single anons random opinion
>I don't trust my own human senses of the happiness of other humans around me, unless some guy in a labcoat can give me a precise statistical measurement - of something completely intagible
lmao
Why the frick would you trust your senses? Are you a child? Even if I did, could I also trust them to know their preferences perfectly? And their future preferences? And the complete implications of their actions? No.
'They seem happy, therefore they're happy ' is mind-blowingly moronic statement.
>Why the frick would you trust your senses? Are you a child?
If your wife looks unhappy do you call up a team of 3 scientists and 5 statisticians to come into your house and conduct a scientific analysis on her emotional state before you'll allow yourself to conclude that she's unhappy?
That's exactly right. My senses may be inaccurate or hold some bias that I am not aware of, the only way to make sure if what my senses tell me is correct is to compare it to data measured by scietific instrument.
>10% on SSRI's
>10-12% on benzodiazepines
>12% on adderall/amphetamines
>only now quality of life has improved
>90% not on SSRI's
>88-90% not on benzodiazepines
>88% not on adderall/amphetamines
>the result is that quality of life has improved
A controlled group does not necessarily reflect on the entire population of a country. The numbers in reality can be higher or lower. It also depends on the size of the research.
society was more free market liberal in the past and less atomized
it's really just diversity and social engineering, this is covered in bowling alone
>society was more free market liberal in the past and less atomized
The end goal of liberalism is atomization, not as an unfortunate byproduct, but as an ideal--the individual completely untethered and undetermined by any irrational, prejudicial social forces.
As to what extent the market today is or isn't free from intervention by the government compared to the recent past, I'm unsure as I don't know that much about economics.
But I connected atomization to liberalism in the sense that individuals today have an unprecedented freedom to choose what groups they wish to join.
An individual can, for example, treat religions like a supermarket choosing whichever one matches his preferences because he or she is born into a society that valorizes individual freedom/autonomy as primary. The ideologies exist inside the mall domesticated and cordoned off from each other. The mall provides the framework within which they exist, the ideologies themselves do not provide the framework/edifice.
Even defenders of liberalism and/or modernization acknowledge that this freedom carries the flipside of anomie, a sense of nothing being exactly sacred.
>Bowling Alone
Yeah, no way some moronic book from the fricking 80s will capture any semblance of what life is like in 2023.
Another issue I don't see anyone addressing is the fact that the liberal 'liberation' is in fact illusory. If you don't want to be influenced by other people and choose to stay home and play vidya all day - you're not actually free, just subject to a different master - a faceless corporate one. You can in fact never be free, you'll always be subject to some institution.
I don't know what you expected posting this here, half the "people" on this board are basically like guy in this picture
Mom's basement looks like my friend's mom's basement. Smells the same too
Great discussion in this thread
But to avoid getting completely off topic for this board, can we get some more
>BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
please
> be atheist
> smugly rejecting all forms of religion
> thinking I'm so woke and enlightened
> suddenly realize I have nothing to fill the void left by spirituality
> start desperately searching for meaning and purpose in life
> realize I'm just a tiny, insignificant speck in the universe
> trying to cope with the overwhelming feeling of emptiness
> realize that atheists have no hope, no faith, and no purpose
> realize that theists have something to live for and something to die for
> realize that atheists are just lost, confused, and without direction
> realizing that there's more to life than just rejecting religion
> anyone else?
>Discovering theism is the ultimate cope
>Needing a cope for existing
If you don't find meaning and purpose in your own family, community, relationships, etc. then something has gone very, very wrong. Are you on SSRIs?
during feudalism the people were happy, now they are unhappy
during feudalism, people were working a few hours per week, now they work 70h/week
>the atomization of poorgays.
Fixed your thread. Now you all can proceed.
>is that comfortable middle class housing? I'm going insane!!!
Americans not having any sort of fencing between their houses is so weird to me.
they really want the public servants to walk on their properties for zero reason
More often than not they do. But usually these suburbs have so little crime that it's not needed and are usually put up for pets.
Read Ellul.
Good thread but this all has already been covered extensively by Nietzsche.
and what did he say
Books:
The Company Town by Hardy Green
Levittown by David Kushner
Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar
Who Owns Information by Anne Branscombe
The Feminization of American Culture by Ann Douglas
I read all these
excellent in giving me that reassurance of KNOWLEDGE that I will navigate our world with so much environmental awareness on the spot all the time
Book report for this small text box word limit
1 The Company Town:
There has never been a truly successful labor movement in the USA. Fat and spoiled in the short run but always without fail at the guarantee of selling out the long run for the next entrants of the marketplace. Every company town became the sovereign. Universal is perhaps the most sinister because it will hold intellectual abuse over all the internet with DRM dick moves making the entire internet a company town.
2. A communist israeli couple fights a whites only suburb about them getting a black family invited and THIS IS WHY YOU HAVE TO MOW YOUR GRASS and your picket fence must be exactly to code! All hail the ever expanding code and HOME OWNERS ASSOCIATION
3. Town? City? America? Where I only see parking. Cash flow is in parking. You never appreciate how morbid these squalors are until you see the specs of Los Angeles and Houston.
4. There have been people who took every major telephone/TV/online frustration you have had to court. They all lost. Gee willickers. Richard Stallman cameos in this book as himself with a snazzy interview. IQfyceleb. Alright!
5. Jesus was a israelite and had long girl hair and the pastor is preaching to your wife while you are away to get her to buy ~~*books*~~ basically from the funded CIA MI5 good goy best seller preapproved curated culture list. The ~~*spirit*~~ of the law is not the heroic spirit that people imagine as cold steel christ that's fanfiction. Church in the USA is an EFCA espionage plantation to promote DIVERSITY before explicitly so. Always whining of the patriarchs spooky authority. Good ol above it all girl jesus
The first black that entered (was ushered by the Weschlers) into this suburb immediately raped and murdered a local white woman within his first week of moving.
They tried again with the Myers family who were law abiding and ended up staying.
just read marx homosexual
>What are some books that talk about the causes and consequences oriental tyranny?
The Lonely Crowd: Riesmann
Bowling alone: Putnam
Marriage rates are plummeting because no fault divorce is illegal and people really be thinking marital rape is a real thing, which its not.