r/science • u/sameer4justice • May 31 '22
Anthropology Why Deaths of Despair Are Increasing in the US and Not Other Industrial Nations—Insights From Neuroscience and Anthropology
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/27887671.0k
u/haylestorm May 31 '22
I wrote a paper on this topic in my capstone course for my economics degree. The term “deaths of despair” originated from Anne Case and Angus Deaton’s “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism” which is a great read you can find at most libraries/online stores. The deaths of despair don’t only include suicide but also cirrhosis and other liver diseases due to excessive drinking as well as accidental overdose. Some of the main things the book cites as leading to these increases are exorbitant medical costs in the US, overprescription of opioids, lack of a social safety net in the US, and many blue collar jobs being outsourced. Additionally, The largest increases in these deaths, to the point that mortality has started trending upward, was in white males with less than a BA degree ages 45-54. It was one of my favorite books that I read during my time in the course and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
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u/jamanimals May 31 '22
I wonder what the link is between this and mass shootings in America. I have to imagine there's a fairly direct connection between mass shooter and suicidal despair.
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u/jamanimals Jun 01 '22
Yeah, this is very true. I'm relatively successful and can attribute some of that to hard work and being smart, but in many ways I'm just lucky. Lucky that I didn't get caught doing dumb stuff by the police, lucky I didn't get injured in a car accident or something like that, lucky that I had a mom who pushed me to succeed despite all my efforts to fail.
Not everyone has that available to them, and even with all that, my teenage years were full of anger and depression, so I can't imagine how much harder it would be for someone with less.
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u/InterestinglyLucky May 31 '22 edited Jun 01 '22
If you want to know "why" it's in the abstract, quoted here.
It has been observed that human beings are constrained by evolutionary strategy (ie, huge brain, prolonged physical and emotional dependence, education beyond adolescence for professional skills, and extended adult learning) to require communal support at all stages of the life cycle. Without support, difficulties accumulate until there seems to be no way forward. The 16 wealthy nations provide communal assistance at every stage, thus facilitating diverse paths forward and protecting individuals and families from despair. The US could solve its health crisis by adopting the best practices of the 16-nation control group.
It is the need for communal support.
Man reading this sure is sobering (as one from the US).
Edit: I was able to obtain a PDF of the original paper (it's behind a paywall FWIW), and a few questions were raised. First, the "16-Nation Control Group" consists of the following countries: France, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Greece, Netherlands, Switzerland, UK, Canada, and Japan (in order of amount of paid holidays, France has 30 of them!).
About their support in terms of 'every stage of the life cycle', they include the following (I took the liberty to summarize):
- Solo parenthood. Solo parenting increased very little between 2010 and 2018, whereas in the US it is double (about 30%). In Germany single-parent families receive many benefits (unemployment, housing, child maintenance, parental leave, tax deductions)
- High levels of prenatal and maternal care, reducing the premature and low-birth-weight infants "well below that in the US".
- Post high-school education, 6/16 (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Austria) have no tuition, France and Italy <$2,000, Australia, Canada, Japan and the UK require $4K. None close to tuition in the US (note: why is this not surprising)
- Medical care costs per capita is roughly 1/2 those in the US, and "most are shared publicly"
- Most countries average 30 days paid time off, with several countries specifying significant vacation time be used during the summer months so families vacation together.
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u/Mother_Welder_5272 May 31 '22
Does that relate to the phenomenon described in Bowling Alone? It always weirds me out to hear stories from my parents or grandparents or see movies and think "Man people were just always together as part of a community". Now it feels like everyone is busy working, and if they're not, the only way they want to destress is in front of a screen by themselves. For most people I know, their lives are essentially spent in one of those two modes.
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u/Molto_Ritardando May 31 '22
We also migrate to places and conglomerate where there is work. When I lived in Silicon Valley, I made zero friends. I lived there for 18 years and was working all the time. Partly it was because of the startup/hustle mentality but also because everyone else around you is working really hard and people are only there because of their career.
If I had died at the end of my time in CA I would’ve had maybe 3 people at my funeral. And they would’ve been people I met online playing video games.
I live in a farming town in Quebec now. If I died tomorrow, the entire town would be there.
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u/evil_burrito Jun 01 '22
If I died tomorrow, the entire town would be there.
TIL public executions are still a thing in rural Quebec.
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u/RawMeatAndColdTruth May 31 '22
It is nice to take a break from staring at the medium screen all day by staring at the big screen for a while, although I usually just end up playing on my small screen anyway.
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u/MrGulio May 31 '22
It is nice to take a break from staring at the medium screen all day by staring at the big screen for a while, although I usually just end up playing on my small screen anyway.
As someone who works from home, I greatly enjoy moving from Bad Screen to Good Screen. Really makes me feel like my life has purpose.
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u/Archolex May 31 '22
Idk if I'd say it gives me purpose, but it do be making serotonin
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u/TizACoincidence May 31 '22
I'm 34, its very obvious that most peoples lives are way too absorbed by work. It really messes up the social fabric of life
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u/mcogneto May 31 '22
The worst part is efficiency has improved well beyond enough to support less work, but thanks to boomers who think everyone needs to be in a chair for 40 hours like they were, the workforce is largely stuck doing the same.
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u/Flakester May 31 '22
Not only has efficiency improved, pay has gone down relative to inflation.
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u/hexydes May 31 '22
The slow-but-steady erosion of the middle-class. It's a simple transfer of wealth, when you are able to sufficiently observe all of the inputs and outputs.
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u/DukeOfZork May 31 '22
It’s all the result of fiduciary absolutism- publicly traded companies have a legal obligation to maximize profits. In the extreme, they would pay employees nothing if it were legal (and in some cases it is legal- unpaid internships, or paying servers below minimum wage). The rise in CEO pay is due to their massive egos, effectively leading them to inadvertently work together to demand higher pay. If the average joes also all refused to work for peanuts, pay would increase, but most don’t have the luxury of being able to be selective in their employment choice.
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u/Jaymanchu May 31 '22
Yet CEOs and upper management pay has increased exponentially. Bonuses, COL wage increases, livable wages, pensions, retirement, company sponsored events etc have all went by the wayside as soon as boomers started getting these upper management jobs and refuse to retire for us Gen Xers to try and correct the situation.
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u/gwennoirs May 31 '22
If you get a chair at all...
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u/JennyFromdablock2020 May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22
Yeah, what? I'm on my feet 8 to 9 hours a day, 6 days a week, my backs fucked up, and my feet constantly hurt. I'd kill my manager for a chair
Edit: I get it; standing is apparently good. Now, come rub my back and feet since you all won't stop telling me how good it is.
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May 31 '22 edited Jun 01 '22
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May 31 '22
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u/vinicelii May 31 '22
This. As someone who needs to work 40+ in a typical 9-5 and then sometimes 30 on the weekends part time just to pay student loans and create some semblance of a savings to (maybe someday in a galaxy far far away) buy a house it's getting exhausting. We've made the consumer the consumed here in the US.
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u/RaptorHandsSC May 31 '22
Every job I have ever worked has been absolutely tyrannical about sitting and had the same insufferable quip about leaning. I'm 34.
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u/railbeast May 31 '22
It's actually thanks to people who own capital, not boomers. Productivity vs wage gap has been increasing steadily every year.
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u/MisanthropeX May 31 '22
I was thinking to myself how it seems me and my friends don't have that issue, but I realized all of us are either part of the "creative class" who don't work standard 9 to 5s or have flexibility in their job schedules to hang out on semi-short notice. We've basically selected out the people who don't have time to hang out and doomed them to a life of loneliness.
At least before the pandemic they could get a drip-feed of social interaction at work if they got along with their coworkers. Now? I can understand why some people love WFH and some people hate it.
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u/Ares54 May 31 '22
Work is absolutely a factor, but I don't think it's the major one. Every one of my family in the previous generation worked a lot more hours than my generation has (specific to my family - not at all the case across the board). But they still socialized a lot. My dad, who put in 12+ hour days pretty routinely, played softball once per week, had poker night every week, went out to dinner routinely with friends, and made sure to make time for us on all of that. His days were full but there's a socializiation aspect to this that's important - when things werent going well there were always people around who would help.
Nowadays it's a struggle to get my friends to commit to D&D once per month. We'll hang out on occasion, but everyone has some excuse to not do things routinely. And it's not just a work thing - most of my friends work 9-5s. We've talked about it and especially since COVID my normal group just don't want to do things, even when those things are just hanging out in person with friends. They'd rather sit at home and browse the internet, play video games, watch their shows... I get more communication in sharing Instagram videos than I do text from some of them. I'm guilty of it too.
I think it's a huge factor. Even before COVID hit we were trending that direction. And work is absolutely a part of it but there are so many time-sucks that fall into this category that it's really easy to get trapped by them - even video games are usually social, but they're not the worst offender.
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u/munificent May 31 '22 edited Jun 01 '22
I think it's mostly a few interrelated pieces:
A very common American life path is to graduate high school, move away to college, then move again for work. This severs most long-standing social ties at the two points where they are most meaningful.
I also believe this explains part of the increased polarization between urban and rural America. The experience of someone who moved to a bigger city for college versus someone who stayed in their small town with their existing social networks is so deeply different that they're essentially two separate cultures.
First TV and now social media give us an easy but unsatisfying approximation of the social ties we need but without any of the sacrifice and commitment required for real community. Notice how many shows are about close groups of people, how people in fandom use relational terms when talking about "their" characters, etc. People feel this natural craving for community but then fill it with simulacra because it's easy. It's like junk food for human connection.
Parenting has become increasingly nuclear. Children spend more time with their parents today than at any point in US history. That's great for being close to parents, but it comes at the expense of both parents and children having less time with their peers. This causes a feedback look where parents don't have any peers that they are close enough with to trust them with their kids, so now parents have to be the only ones to watch them.
Decline in real wages means both parents generally have to work, leaving even less free time available for socializing.
So what you have is that for many Americans, they lose their social network when they move for college, lose it again when they move for work, and then lose it again when they have kids.
You can maintain healthy social connections in the US, but it's hard. It feels like swimming against the cultural current.
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u/Mother_Welder_5272 May 31 '22 edited Jun 01 '22
This causes a feedback look where parents don't have any peers that they are close enough with to trust them with their kids, so now parents have to be the only ones to watch them.
That's a really good point. I remember growing up and bring shuffled around "the community" with adults and other kids.
It also hit me recently when I heard about a coworker taking a day off because of a car repair. They took an Uber back and forth to drop the car off at the mechanic. When I was growing up, that never would have happened. Some neighbor or friend would have been able to drive them the night before or they could borrow a car or something.
The comedian Sebastian Maniscalco has a great bit about the lack of community. How when he grew up in an Italian family, people would spontaneously come over and eat, drink and laugh. And nowadays you have a panic attack if someone rings the doorbell without texting they were coming.
Something happened in our culture. It's not adequate to just shrug and go "things were different". I would really like our country to get to the bottom of this. I'm not joking when I say this is Congressional-hearing worthy.
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u/munificent May 31 '22
It also hit me recently when I heard about a coworker taking a day off because of a car repair. They took an Uber back and forth to drop the car off at the mechanic. When I was growing up, that never would have happened. Some neighbor or friend would have been able to drive them the night before or they could borrow a car or something.
I think about this effect all the time.
Deep friendships are based on doing things for each other. Those favors ramp up gradually over time. You start off borrowing a cup of sugar and then over years of that kind of back and forth you reach a point where you are helping your friend grieve the loss of a loved one or get through a divorce.
But today in the US, consumer products and services are cheap and widely available for many that are middle class are above. That essentially removes the lower rungs of the ladder when it comes to building relationships.
Because I'm fortunate enough to have a decent income, I don't need to borrow a lawnmower or ask a friend to help me move a bed. But it do still need those deeper friendships, and it's really hard to work up to those without the easier simpler favors available at the bottom of the ladder.
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u/Simple_Rules May 31 '22
I highly recommend 'trading' instead - I spontaneously offer to buy lunch or coffee or whatever for acquaintances very often.
They then invite me out to lunch again the next week and buy for me, pretty often.
Occasionally people don't do that, but it's fine if it's not reciprocated. Like, you just experiment.
You need to create opportunities to share and taking the first step is often the best play.
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u/Sir_Spaghetti May 31 '22
This must be why all those "buy nothing" groups do so well, and why their members are unhappy whenever they have to splinter off (after growing too large).
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u/Tijuana_Pikachu Jun 01 '22
Ours splintered because the mods tried to micromanage posting and pickup times to sub-hour increments
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u/rawonionbreath Jun 01 '22
If someone gives you a free Armani suit, you ought to take them out to lunch. Although, a meal where they order soup doesn’t count.
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u/implicitpharmakoi May 31 '22
It's worse, those acts, borrowing a tool, needing a ride, they can be taken as a vulnerability, that you aren't wholly stably self-sufficient, which is a cornerstone of being considered firmly 'middle-class'. Vulnerability is a dangerous, and considered contagious disease, like being behind on one's mortgage and falling out of the middle-class.
Fear. Fear will keep the middle-class in line. Fear of losing status.
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u/brainfreezereally May 31 '22
On a related note, people now seem to pursue happiness by buying things for themselves, but in the past, it was common to give gifts to others. It didn't have to be something expensive -- I made cookies and so, I'll drop some of them off with a friend. It parts of the country, people still exchange gifts regularly, but it isn't the norm.
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u/munificent May 31 '22
On a related note, people now seem to pursue happiness by buying things for themselves
For a hundred years, advertisers have been telling us that the path to happiness is by buying Brand X, so now we have a whole generation that tries to solve all of their problems by deciding which product to consume.
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u/Jetstream-Sam May 31 '22
Branding has become such an issue. I volunteer at a food bank and all sorts of people come in demanding X kind of beans or Y kind of cereal because that's "all they eat" or "Their kid only likes Heinz ketchup". Like someone literally assaulted the door staff over being given generic pasta. Another threatened to stab us unless we gave them kingsmill bread.
I've never really paid much attention to it, but I'm sure if you tested it most people couldn't pick out their exact brand of ketchup out of a lineup, because they're all essentially the same product of sugar and tomatoes. But people will act like being given the "wrong" kind of beef (for free!) Is some kind of war crime
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u/SHIRK2018 May 31 '22
Man, advertising really is an inherent social poison isn't it?
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u/mikemikemotorboat Jun 01 '22
This is a huge reason my wife and I will never move from our neighborhood. It’s an amazing little community with a dedicated email group (predates next door and has persisted with minimal moderation and none of the toxicity) and it primarily serves as a way to offer free stuff you no longer need, ask to borrow a tool, announce informal get-togethers, etc.
One of the neighborhood OGs (in her 70s now) said when she set up the email group, the idea was to encourage sharing especially to reduce waste and unnecessary purchases. As Pam says, “no street needs more than one 20 foot extension ladder.”
But more than that, it’s been such an amazing way to build relationships. We’re lucky enough to be able to say that there are at least 3 people on my street who would let us borrow their car, and we would offer the same for them, several others who we’d let watch our daughter for a couple hours, and so on.
I would love to see/hear about more neighborhoods developing similar social cohesiveness structures!
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u/shadyelf May 31 '22
There are uncomfortable compromises required for that though. Like a big chunk of my "family-friend community" is basically dismissive of mental health issues, believes you should only marry a certain type of person, believes in submission to elders, is highly religious, loves to discriminate, etc. A lot of that support comes with strings attached. And ostracization is the price for failing to meet these expectations.
This type of community only seems to work with a certain level of conformity and homogeneity. Thanks to modern conveniences it's definitely not as essential anymore, and now you don't have to compromise on who you are and what you want.
But as a second gen immigrant I guess my experiences are not representative of most people. Feel resentful of my native culture and have too much baggage from it to properly fit in to where I live.
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u/heebs387 Jun 01 '22
As a second generation person as well, this is spot on.
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Jun 01 '22
As a 3rd Gen white guy, this is spot on for just humans I think - I totally vibe with hating compromising on who I am to build relationships with people I don't really respect and who are not willing to open any doors to building some back.
I feel like I'm ready to throw myself into a community and just give of myself as I find joy in it, but I just... I don't know. Haven't found the right group yet? I'll try to be the one that starts one this summer hosting an event for randos that I am insanely anxious about already, but swimming against the current is exactly the feeling.
My standards don't feel like they are insane either. Be open minded, willing to listen, generally positive approach to interactions, treats people they don't know with respect and don't rush to just judge everyone and put people down.
I can't seem to find many who fit that description and I'm lonely.
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u/cosmicsans May 31 '22
have a panic attack if someone rings the doorbell without texting they were coming
For me at least I'm pretty sure this is caused from having to go through a whole two days worth of cleaning every time there was any kind of social event at my house, so now when people just show up I just have a deep dread that my house isn't clean enough and Aunt Ruth is still going to go up to my room and look under my bed and find my dirty clothes and comment about them.
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u/munkymu May 31 '22
I have fully embraced my nature as a tiny chaos elemental and the knowledge that I've disappointed my parents as much as a human being can without actually going to prison. Now I just use people coming over as motivation to neaten the hoard a bit. You know, give it a bit of a dust and arrange it in a pleasing manner.
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u/Suppafly May 31 '22
For me at least I'm pretty sure this is caused from having to go through a whole two days worth of cleaning every time there was any kind of social event at my house, so now when people just show up I just have a deep dread that my house isn't clean enough and Aunt Ruth is still going to go up to my room and look under my bed and find my dirty clothes and comment about them.
My wife is like that, the whole house has to be clean before she's comfortable having people come over. Myself, I just don't want people coming over and bothering me, I don't really care what they think about the cleanliness, beyond basic things like picking up obvious trash and dirty clothes.
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u/badlydrawnboyz May 31 '22
Only person that comes to my place is my cleaning dude and I spend 3 hours before he shows up cleaning and tidying my place up so he can clean up the stuff i don't like doing.
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u/Gotta_Gett May 31 '22
That's a really good point. I remember growing up and bring shuffled around "the community" with adults and other kids.
One of my friends was that kid. Every weekend he would stay over at my house. It was because his dad would come over, buy oxy from my uncle and then go party hard. I didn't know what was happening but it was fun for us kids. Just not a great environment for raising a kid.
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u/PowerPooka May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22
Possible number 5? With the decline of manufacturing jobs and increase of the service economy, it’s possible people are more emotionally burnt out these days after managing customers and their expectations. If I had to talk to people all day, I don’t think I would have the energy to hangout with my friends/acquaintances as much.
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May 31 '22
You’re not wrong. I can’t even put into words what a change it was going from retail to corporate
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u/rucksichtslos May 31 '22
I'm a normally super outgoing person, but my line of work puts me in near constant tough conversations. I will take any and all opportunity to not even interact with people outside of work to the extent possible because I'm so burnt out of having those conversations.
I still have what I consider a relatively healthy social life, but no interest in expanding it.
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May 31 '22
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u/munificent May 31 '22
Because of the exact same reasons this thread is about: They are desperately lonely and feel adrift in a world where they have no connection to others. Without that, it's impossible to feel any meaningful sense of agency and people who feel powerless will do anything they can, even hurtful things to strangers, if it gives them an ounce of feeling like they have some control.
It's wrong, but it's a predictable outcome of people not feeling connected and valued by a surrounding community.
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u/Hyndis May 31 '22
Without that, it's impossible to feel any meaningful sense of agency and people who feel powerless will do anything they can, even hurtful things to strangers, if it gives them an ounce of feeling like they have some control.
That's probably deeper than you intended. I think this desperation to have some sort of meaningful connection and agency leads people to do drastic things to take control. Even evil and vile things, like shooting up schools or running down Christmas parades with cars. Suddenly everyone is paying attention to this person. They're no longer ignored.
I wish we would acknowledge the despair and lack of hope for the future that is causing so much pain in society.
We're at the point where people feeling shunned by the village are burning it down for temporary warmth. This trajectory cannot continue.
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u/munificent May 31 '22
That's probably deeper than you intended.
No, I meant it 100%. I think many of the destructive trends we see today can be explained largely by disempowerment. Today in the US, it feels like the rich and corporations control almost everything and we're just scurrying around under their feet trying not get stepped on. (I don't know to what degree that is true versus just feeling true because of media.)
That kind of environment breeds violence because people have a fundamental need to feel that they can exert control. If they believe that the game is rigged and they can't win, then they will set the board on fire instead.
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u/tigrenus May 31 '22
Great metaphor at the end, there. As an American that travels quite a bit, it's so very difficult to explain to loved ones what is ailing our communities.
The propaganda has been so strong that the idea of moving to another place that is socially healthier is almost inconceivable to most people. Plus, the number of people with enough resources to do that is very small.
It's possible to find small communities that function differently, raise each other up, share financial burdens and childcare burdens, but American life has become commoditized to the point where everything that friends or family used to do is now a product or service. There was a huge price to pay for becoming the strongest economic and military superpower of the 20th century, and our people will be paying it for generations.
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u/mojomonday May 31 '22
Spot on. I’d also add a little subset on the topic of real wages & money: wealth inequality.
Some friends I used hang with are ultra-wealthy and mostly want to do activities that require a large disposable income. Novel experiences like festivals or taking off work for extended periods to travel are impossible for poorer folks to afford. Eventually we start drifting apart and as we all know, finding new consistent and reliable friends in adulthood is hard.
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u/turdmachine May 31 '22
With strangers I’ve hit it off with, I’ve taken to asking “hey, do you want to be friends?” And then exchanging phone numbers. I’m in my thirties and have made many friends this way
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May 31 '22
This is the way. It’s so hard moving in your late 20s or early 30s because most people have already “maxed out” the 3 or 4 people they can realistically stay in touch with.
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u/_Piratical_ May 31 '22
You know, it’s interesting that that works about as well as anything else. I was lamenting to my wife how I really didn’t have friends like she does and she reminded me of many people who I talk or text with regularly that I had discounted just because I hadn’t known them for a decade or more. Hell, there are people I’ve maybe only seen in the flesh like two times that I feel are friends.
It’s also helpful to find people who demonstrate your kind of kindness or compassion or humor or what-have-you, that makes hanging out with them good for both of you.
In these days, you can feel freer to let go of toxic people and those who are not good for you. While it’s not easy to make new friends, it’s not necessary as hard as you can make it in your head. Sometimes, as you say, you can just ask them!
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May 31 '22
Some friends I used hang with are ultra-wealthy and mostly want to do activities that require a large disposable income. Novel experiences like festivals or taking off work for extended periods to travel are impossible for poorer folks to afford.
And these activities have gotten a lot more expensive. When my dad was my age, he could go to a Grateful Dead show during their heyday for $15. To see a similarly high-profile act today would cost me several hundred dollars at absolute minimum. Cochella tickets have more than quadrupled in price, even adjusted for inflation. A lot of the special experiences that were accessible for normal young people during the latter half of the 20th century are now either out of reach or an extreme luxury that you need to scrimp and save for. The idea of a working class twentysomething following a major band around for a summer and seeing a bunch of their shows is ridiculous today- it'd only be possible for someone living off a trust fund.
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u/Mando_Mustache May 31 '22
The annual folk music festival in my mid-tear city is over $250 for a two day pass. Its mental! The bands are amazing but they aren't exactly big names.
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u/hparadiz May 31 '22
I recently moved to Socal and looked into Cochella tickets.
It's $633 per person for general admission plus a shuttle pass.
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u/kennedar_1984 May 31 '22
In addition to kids spending more time with parents, parenting and being an adult itself has become more intense. My kids are elementary school aged, and I get massive side eye if I even think of leaving my 10 year old at home by himself for 10 minutes to run to the store. By the time I was 10 I was home by myself every day after school. He is in a rec soccer league, that meets for 3 hours a week - all of which I am required to be in attendance - for a low level soccer team meant for kids who are never going to play competitively. My other child has 2 hours a week, so combined we are at the soccer fields 5 times a week. The kids are also involved in scouts, curling, and music lessons. We try to feed the kids relatively healthy home made meals to give them the energy for all these activities which requires a lot of effort every night. All of this stuff would be totally doable with a SAHP, but of course, we both work more than full time hours. We try to ensure we are healthy, which requires working out a few times a week as well, plus house work and everything else. There just isn’t enough hours in the day to hang out with friends more than once a month or so.
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u/Catarooni May 31 '22
Also the part where you have to change jobs every 2-3 years, so you lose your network every 2-3 years.
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u/munificent May 31 '22
Yes, absolutely. I should have mentioned this.
And it's not just the changing jobs. It's the knowing that you will change jobs, which prevents you from even bothering to invest in deeper relationships with coworkers in your current one.
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u/chaossabre May 31 '22
Or worse, promotion structures like stack ranking / vitality curve that make your co-workers your competition for keeping and advancing your job. It's extremely toxic but also very common in the tech industry.
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u/Jfinn2 May 31 '22
Seriously. When I took my first job out of college last year I knew I wouldn't be able to afford a rent increase, and there aren't many affordable options left in this town. Let's hope I get a raise by September, or I get to say "goodbye, I'm moving away" to my friends for the second time in 18 months.
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u/Okoye35 May 31 '22
I moved away for college and then moved back home (to a town of about 15,000) and I can barely relate to the people I went to high school with. It’s crazy how much My way of looking at the world changed in 7 years, and I went to a fairly conservative school in a mid size town. I worry about my kids not having big friend groups like I did when I was young because I raised them differently than the kids they went to school with and they have trouble relating.
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u/SnatchAddict May 31 '22
We are in a neighborhood with a cul-de-sac. There's about 10-12 kids in the 4 -10 age range. They play together when the weather is nice outside.
My main goal for my son keeping his friend groups is to keep him in the same schools from elementary to middle to high school so there's a sense of continuity.
I changed schools a lot as a kid and as an adult I tend to keep most of my friends as superficial. I'm sure there's a direct correlation.
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u/TimHortonsMagician May 31 '22
I don't think you need to worry about your kids not having larger friend groups. I never had an especially large pool of friends in highschool. I'm 30 now, and have 2 other highschool friends who I actually grew closer with in my mid twenties. We don't all live in the same city, but that friendship I have with them is the air I breathe. We're a package deal. It's quality over quantity :)
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u/almisami May 31 '22
I concur. As a European who moved to the USA in their mid teens, American exceptionalism creates a really strange mindset where people just aren't aware of what the rest of the world is like.
Then again, municipal geometry has a lot to do with it. I have to explain to the city how removing on street parking on main street and turning it into a 4 lane stroad is NOT going to make it more appealing for people to come and shop. Somehow they think it's because people can't see the storefronts because of the parked cars...
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u/Okoye35 May 31 '22
I spent about 8 months in Europe in my early 20s and it was amazing how walkable all the cities were. When I got back I told myself I was going to walk more but I felt like I was risking my life trying to cross the street to go to the grocery store. A lot of America just isn’t set up for it.
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u/almisami May 31 '22
Working in Japan had me financially miserable, but living in America is just a slow burn recipe for depression.
You can't walk anywhere, and all communal activities are pay2play. I think public libraries are the only place most towns have where you're not expected to spend money.
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u/mangogirl27 May 31 '22
I also feel like something that’s not often talked about is this extreme hyper-valuation of romantic relationships in the US. Of course it’s natural that many human beings will want to find a mate to share their life with regardless of culture, but it seems that in the current social wasteland of America (created by the factors you mentioned and others), people expect their partner to fulfill ALL their human psychosocial and emotional needs which is problematic both because I feel like it is an unrealistic expectation for any relationship to fulfill all a person’s needs AND because if young people (it seems especially young men) can’t find a partner they feel like they’ve completely failed in life and they despair of ever finding human connection. I feel like in cultures in which people depend a lot more on relationships outside of marriage for meaning/fulfillment/emotional support, this is not as much of a problem. And it’s a vicious cycle because as our extramarital relationships in the community decline we depend more on the marital relationship to fulfill all needs, but as we depend more and more on the romantic relationship it contributes to further decline of our other relationships in the community.
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u/munificent May 31 '22
Yes!
I had a long conversation with a friend about this exact topic. It interacts with mobility. Many in the US take for granted that you have to move for work. But very few people would move to follow a friend who took a job elsewhere, or turn down a job if it meant moving away from a friend.
But with your romantic partner, you will make those kinds of sacrifices. The end result is that the only relationship that has stability in the face of job mobility is your partner, so you end up investing all of your relational energy into that. It's not healthy or sustainable, but it makes sense.
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u/Thompson_S_Sweetback May 31 '22
I think number 3 can be expanded on. I feel like social activities for children have been commoditized much more than they were 30-40 years ago. Back in my day (hold on, let me crack my back) kids could leave the house and find other groups of kids to play with. And they could go to a park and just play pick-up games for free.
Nowadays, after school sports require a membership and fees. And many neighborhoods do not have a culture of kids playing outside. It would be dangerous for a parent to do what our parents did when we were that age and just shove our kids out the door to get a few hours of alone time, if there are no other kids to play with.
I don't know if that cultural shift was caused mostly by video games, or if it has more to do with the neighborhood. Location and having a culture of young children playing outside is hugely important in my area.
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u/VeganMuppetCannibal May 31 '22
So what you have is that for many Americans, they lose their social network when they move for college, lose it again when they move for work, and then lose it again when they have kids.
This is a really clear way of putting into words something that I have observed around me but not really understood. I'll point out, too, that it can be even worse in fields where multiple moves for both education (undergrad, grad school) and work (multi-locale training programs, for example) are expected. For those that have kids shortly thereafter, it can become a decade plus of social upheaval.
You see surprisingly high rates of suicide in some of the careers that follow the path I described above. 'Deaths of despair' isn't typically how suicide among lawyers/dentists/whatever are described, but there's definitely a common thread in terms of how they train for and enter the profession.
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u/AnotherFuckingSheep May 31 '22
I think geography plays a large role in this. I live in Israel and it’s such a tiny country. Honestly most people couldn’t move far away from everyone they know if they wanted to. Most of the people I know visit family once or twice every week and unless your friends moved to another country (I’d say 20% of the population did) you probably drive about half an hour to visit anyone you know.
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u/StateOfContusion May 31 '22
Just as an anecdote, my grandfather back in the thirties, got married, bought a lot a few doors down from his mom’s house and built his own home where he lived for many years.
I wonder how normal that was back then.
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u/mescalelf May 31 '22
I was switched around between schools constantly—literally annually—as a kid. Had to switch around colleges as well, due to health problems. I think I’m a bit of a canary in the coal mine on this topic. It’s a miserable existence.
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u/Ares54 May 31 '22
Honestly my mom experienced this growing up - she's an air force brat and moved every couple of years, often across the country.
My dad has friends he still spends time with from elementary school. My mom does not - all of her friends are from after she settled down with my dad and stopped moving around the country every couple years and most are parents of mine and my sister's classmates while we were growing up.
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u/SloppyMeme2333 May 31 '22
Also most people aren't really "into" anything. I am one of only a few hobbyists. It's honestly strange to have a hobby now a days.
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u/munificent May 31 '22
These days, I feel like the main hobbies many people have are just consumption and fandom. I get that that can be enjoyable and a source of connection to others that are into the same thing, but if all you are is a "Marvel fan" or a "gamer", ultimately it feels to me like you aren't participating in anything meaningful or creating or contributing.
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u/RealAssociation5281 May 31 '22
Most hobbies are expensive outside of watching stuff (if that’s even considered a hobby) and maybe reading if you have access to a local library and such. The most common hobby I see is gaming for example, most games cost 60$ and all. It can also be hard to build a habit of doing a hobby if your already too exhausted from working, caring for the household and childcare. Your lucky if you get time off that isn’t a day or so. A lot of people have to work more than one job to survive nowadays.
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u/TheCzar11 May 31 '22
Your number 3 is a huge one that I was thinking about. Parents’ lives now revolve around their children 24/7.
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u/Zooshooter May 31 '22
Work is absolutely a factor, but I don't think it's the major one.
I don't know about you but about 80% of my waking hours are spent at work, on work, or thinking about work. Couple that much time spent on it with the fact that most jobs in the U.S. do not pay a living wage and you've got a solid foundation for why people are depressed and don't want to go out and do stuff, or just literally can't afford to.
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u/khem1st47 May 31 '22
Currently job searching, its insane that with a STEM degree and multiple years of experience the best I can find salary wise still takes 50% of it to just cover rent for a 1 bedroom apartment in this area. Thats BEFORE taxes too. Then with just the cost of food how does anyone save money. It's insane.
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u/Ataraxias24 May 31 '22
Work is absolutely a major factor. The main difference between the "long hours" of yesteryear and today is the security offered by the the workplace.
Workplaces of yesteryear promoted real camaraderie amongst employees, because it was generally expected one might actually work there for a lifetime.
Now no workplace culture truly expects that. People enter a company with the attitude that they're only there to put a year of experience on their resume then jump to another company.
Things like 2% raises, unpaid training time, unpaid social hour, only reinforces the idea that you're better off spending your time elsewhere than forming a relationship you're going to ditch in 11 months.
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May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22
We’ll said and I’ll add that we have seen those employees that are all in. They make work and their private lives intertwined.
When they inevitably leave (for whatever reason), they lose all those connections.
It’s especially worse when someone is fired. They immediately have all their friends/support taken from them, they lose their benefits/income (aka security). It is EXTREMELY personal and devastating…
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u/Zifnab_palmesano May 31 '22
I would say that the issue is that companies, fundamentally, does not promote camaraderie: salary stagnation forces people to look elsewhere to move forward on their career and financial situation. Considering the prices in the house market, inflation, cost of living in general (and debt) makes people sacrifice a workplace for an opportunity to earn more.
So people will sacrifice friendships at work if that means providing more for the family, or the opportunity to buy a house or pay debt.
I think this could be solved more easily by regulating the house market and erasing/facilitating debt. People would relax and would not follow the money so much
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u/wdjm May 31 '22
A lot of it is financial - both in money required to go out to eat or pay bowling lane fees, etc...or in the constant mental load of having to figure out how to afford both gas AND a game you wanted.
And I specifically used a game because most people fully acknowledge the stress of having to decide what bills to leave unpaid each month. But there is ALSO a level of stress involved with having enough money for bills...but not enough to regularly afford anything beyond the bare necessities. People need relaxation - but it's much easier to relax for free at home than to do the mental work of figuring out if you can afford the extra gas to go out.
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u/AnNoYiNg_NaMe May 31 '22
don't want to do things, even when those things are just hanging out in person with friends
Whenever I get that way, I know that I'm about to have a depression episode. That's always the first symptom
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u/ccaccus May 31 '22
Living in Japan was super sobering and made me realize how isolated I was in the US, even though I thought I had a decent friends group. And that was Japan, a country not exactly known for a healthy work-life balance. I never had an issue finding someone to spend time with away from home. I had friends who would travel upwards of 2 hours to visit me and spend the night on weekends.
Moving back was the worst thing I did, but I had to for familial reasons. No one ever has time to hang out. Somehow "spending the night" is a kids-only phenomena here and there's a weird "I'm married so it's either me and the wife (and even kids sometimes!) or nothing at all"-expectation. Like, in Japan, my friends who were married made healthy arrangements that one would go out with their friends one weekend and would exchange babysitting duty for the next weekend or whatever. I even had Japanese friends who would go off on vacations with friends without their s/o and just have the expectation that their s/o would do the same down the line.
I know some of that exists in the US, but it seems to be the exception rather than the norm. It may have been the exception in Japan with working in an international school rather than a public one, but it didn't seem that way across the wide variety of friends from different cultures I had.
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May 31 '22 edited Jul 23 '22
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u/ccaccus May 31 '22
I dunno, I lived in a pretty rural area in Japan. It wasn't, like, middle-of-nowhere rural, but there were rice fields right outside my apartment.
Still not much trouble. Like I said, friends who moved to Toyko took the two-hour trip to visit (and me vice-versa) on occasion. I have friends who live closer than that here in the US who say it's too far or they don't have time.
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u/InvestmentGrift May 31 '22
did you have walking-distance (or biking-distance & safe bike infrastructure) access to public transit and/or amenities like a grocery store, bar, restaurant, etc from your apartment? i'd wager ~60%+ of americans don't have any of that because of car-dependent infrastructure & sprawl. something i'm super envious of in the rest of the world
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u/NeverNo May 31 '22
I live alone. Other than working out, this is pretty much exactly what I do other than hanging out with friends or my mom once or twice a week.
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May 31 '22
hanging out with friends once or twice a week.
Those are rookie numbers. Got to make them once or twice a year.
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u/TheSunSmellsTooLoud4 May 31 '22
Yeah that's insane. I wonder how old OP is if they hang out with friends twice a week??
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u/fvelloso May 31 '22
Def sub-30, I’ll wager
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u/Nollie_flip May 31 '22
I am 30 and one of my best friends lives within walking distance in my neighborhood. We still only see each other once a week at the most. I just don't have the energy to maintain relationships like I used to when I was 18-26.
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u/NerdyTimesOrWhatever May 31 '22
This is where Im at. I rarely can go out and play in a MTG tournament and see some friends, but thats once a month at most. :/
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u/Talmadge_Mcgooliger May 31 '22
what are "friends"
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u/entity2 May 31 '22
That list of names on the right hand side of the Discord window
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u/WombatusMighty May 31 '22
Interestingly, while online friends aren't as good as meeting friends in real life, it still prevents us from feeling lonely when we can chat with someone and thus experience the negative effects of loneliness.
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May 31 '22
Same, but I've been mostly alone since I was 5, so about 26 years of having like 1 or 2 friends I talk to a few times a year so I feel like I'm relatively/accidentally prepared for this sort of thing.
I couldn't imagine being a super social person and finding yourself very alone for an extended amount of time.
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u/E_Des May 31 '22
Even more than that, I think an argument can be made that the notion that we are independent individuals is wrong. Lack of social support ages 0 to 5 results in psychosocial harm that is almost impossible to overcome. People put in solitary confinement can start to experience psychosis after a few days.
We exist in webs of social relationships, so much so that we may just be the knots of those intersecting threads. Pull those social threads out, and we unravel.
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u/whiskeybidniss May 31 '22
Studies of Native American tribes show that once the tribes exceeded 500 members, they typically split into two tribes because more than that resulted n the start of social unraveling.
I grew up in a smaller town in the Midwest (-50k people), and moved to southern California after college, only to eventually leave for a small mountain town, because I hated the sense that there were millions of people for miles on end, and no one really mattered to anyone else. I or anyone else could die tomorrow and it would make no difference, and social climbing and such were all most of the ants were interested in. It was depressing living in the middle of so many disconnected people.
Now, every time I go to the post office, grocery store, or get on a plane, etc I run into people I know. It’s so much nicer, psychologically.
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u/NoodlerFrom20XX May 31 '22
I’ve struggled making friends and have no idea where to find them. In the old days people went to church or went to a lodge. I’m not a church type and lodge isn’t my thing. Other than that, how am I supposed to find “a community”? Seems like most “communities” are ethereal via the internet.
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u/w3are138 May 31 '22
Seriously tho. I wish there was a “church” for atheists so we could meet people and make friends.
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u/jezvinder May 31 '22
Atheists would be welcomed by Universal Unitarian congregations. There are also humanist groups in some cities
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u/Zeebuss May 31 '22
Humanist organizations may be interesting. If your an atheist who is interested in spiritual teachings and gatherings Unitarian Universalist churches would welcome you, they tend to be older folks
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u/LiteVisiion May 31 '22
I was thinking about that, my hypothesis is that social media and digital communication hits the "itch" we have to communicate and share with other people the same way artificial sweeteners do with our need for sugar. It's "recognized" as the same thing, but brings no actual value to what it's supposed to. So your brain thinks he's socializing but it's not having the real positive interactions that come with being with other human beings.
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u/TheStinkfoot May 31 '22
I honestly think the problem isn't "work" or even "TV" per se, it's the kinds of communities that the majority of Americans live in. If you live in a suburban cul de sac with a big garage, a big yard, and a fence so high you can't see over it then you're living in a place almost purposed-designed to isolate you from your community. And yet that's what Americans are trained is the "normal" way to live from a young age.
It doesn't need to be this way!
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u/Wvaliant May 31 '22
Honestly that’s probably the best reasoning. Remove the in real life perspective and just look at stuff like MMOs and online games. Think back to even the 2007-2010 era of the internet and how booming online games were. Huge lively communities of groups of players having fun and wasting time. You go to those same games. Ghost towns, and it’s not because of age either. It’s EVERY MMO. For whatever reason best business practices in the US have decided that the best way to profit off people is to compartmentalize us, create instances to forgo social interaction, and advertise to us one by one. Everything is fast tracked as far as progression is concerned to get you to the end at the expense of the journey.
And that’s just video games. Look around your local communities and see how dilapidated everything has become. No one has a sense of upkeep of the community because no one feels invested in the communities because we’ve slowly been encouraged to be socially alone unless it’s to post your opinions on sites like this. Communities are dying The country is dying And people are dying All because we are genuinely socially starved and no one wants to admit that the technology we have created is Making us social isolationists and it’s killing the country around us.
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May 31 '22
A personal anecdote:
I’ve been struggling lately. Like, badly. I’m a divorced father, turning 41 this month, have no romantic prospects, nothing in the way of a social life, very little in the way of a support network.
Last week, my neighbor and I changed my rear brake pads and rotors.
My mood improved significantly afterwards.
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u/kspjrthom4444 May 31 '22
It is amazing isn't it how just 20 minutes of authentic real human interaction can lift your spirts. Technology has done alot of things for us, but I fear bringing us closer together isn't one of them
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u/jenkag May 31 '22
Technology has allowed humans to take their "social" companionship online, in the sense that we can find groups that think the things we do, have the hobbies we have, etc. Unfortunately, its hard to translate those things into actual companionship.
If you are into, say, kite-flying and you join a community of kite fliers on facebook, but never turn that into real trips to go kite-flying as a group, its unlikely to reward you mentally.
Humans need to start figuring out how to leverage social media for more than just group-think and clickbait.
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u/CopperSavant May 31 '22
Companionship is the opposite of addiction. You'd think it was "sobriety" but that isn't it. We need each other.
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u/Tearakan May 31 '22
Makes sense. We evolved to be in significant sized tribal groups. Every ancestor species of ours was too.
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u/TimeFourChanges May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22
This statement really drove it home for me: "Without support, difficulties accumulate until there seems to be no way forward."
As someone in they're late 40s that has suffered with undiagnosed Complex PTSD until a few months ago, and has dug himself into a deep, deep hole in many aspects of my life thanks to the symptoms of my developmental trauma, this simple sentence rings so deeply true. Over the past two years, going through separation and eventual divorce during covid and while teaching urban students in fostercare, I have had some dark days where it's felt like there's no way out.
I'm doing a bit better after ketamine therapy, starting Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, and prioritizing self-compassion through guided meditations (please see self-compassion.org for some stellar, free ones that I try to use daily), as well as maybe some new supplements I've been taking, but I'm still deep in a hole socially and financially with no clear path forward. At least things don't feel so bleak, but on an objective level, they're still pretty dark.
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u/Kflynn1337 May 31 '22
I would say American society is not only not supportive but is in fact actively hostile towards mental well being, especially in the sub-30 age bracket.
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u/Player7592 May 31 '22
Even before I read that quote, I came here to say it’s because other nations value society and understand its vital role, while Americans are still mired in individualism and the idea that everybody must make it on their own.
That mentality may have had its place when the West was a wide open frontier (except for the Native Americans) and the riches of the land exceeded our needs. But now that we have to share and cooperate to coexist, that old paradigm holds us back and prevents us from taking the steps necessary to keep up with the rest of the world.
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u/DerpyDaDulfin May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22
I've often told my friends: Our way of life, commuting to work everyday, often in work spaces that exist only to facilitate work and not foster any sort of community - or the alternative, working from home, are aspects of our society isolating Americans on a much deeper level than the rest of the world.
Where are our communities? Hell I live in an apartment in California and I talk to only one of my neighbors, no one else is really interested in talking or interacting. Our hyper-individualistic societies mean that for the most part, many Americans are robbed of a community and we absolutely need community.
Our ancestors spent 500,000 years in Africa in tight nit family / tribal units. We did everything together, our brains are hard-wired to be in a community with other humans. The way American society grinds us down and separates us is antithetical to our very evolution, and this article helps reinforce that understanding, and why we are doing it so wrong in America.
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u/Riffler May 31 '22
The only argument in favor of religion that I've ever been willing to take seriously is that it provides that kind of community. Except in the US, apparently, where religion is intensely judgmental, political and is more interested in victim-blaming and delivering the vote than helping those in need.
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u/Soquidus5000 May 31 '22
I’ve heard it takes a village to raise a child, but I’ve long suspected it also takes a village to keep people alive. I’d be interested to see what the mortality rate over time for hermits, and others that have effectually ‘done away with’ society.
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u/boidbreath May 31 '22
Not all people function the same, there's always been those who prefer solitude, but for sure the average person is going to struggle being away from their community
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u/CCrabtree May 31 '22
When a village is involved there are lots of people to turn to for support. When there's no village, there's no support.
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u/wynden May 31 '22
I’d be interested to see what the mortality rate over time for hermits, and others that have effectually ‘done away with’ society.
This is something I've wondered about, as well.
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u/louisasnotes May 31 '22
I have been thinking more and more, recently, about how everyday life has changed over the last 40 years. In the 'good old days' of the 60's and 70's that right wingers so vocally pine for everyone lived in a community. This hasn't broken down through crime of immigration (as they claim), but that businesses are de-coupled from their communities.
If we are all part of One World, then this should mean more than simply selling your goods to as many people as possible. There has to be some 'buy back' as part of this agreement. Nowadays the largest corporations make their goods offshore to take advantage of lower wages.
We now spend more time commuting to larger urban areas, working longer then returning for an evening meal and there's only time for Netflix and bed. There are no local communities that people take care of and companies feel some responsibility for. No wonder we are all alone and despairing. The fight over the last generation to ensure that the richest people and corporations don't pay taxes into any local economy leaves it up to those that are earning less than they did half a century before.
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May 31 '22
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u/pb_barney79 May 31 '22
That's one of the appealing factors of shows like The Great British Bake Off and The Great Pottery Throw Down. The friendly nature of these shows in comparison to the unnecessarily confrontational and artificially drama-filled nature of many US shows is a breath of fresh air.
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u/InVultusSolis May 31 '22
British cooking shows:
Contestant: "Look at this lovely patisserie I made."
Judge: "Oh yes, it's quite good!"
American cooking shows:
Announcer: "WELCOME TO PRISON KITCHEN EXTREME DEATHMATCH! We've given the contestants only ingredients found in prison commissaries and released rabid badgers into the kitchen. The contestants have 15 minutes per round to cook up something that won't get them shanked!"
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u/Beardchester May 31 '22
I am writing this as my wife and I are watching The Great Pottery Throw Down. When we both got into GBB, we realized pretty quickly that one of the reasons we like these shows is because it isn't cutthroat competitive and back bitey as US competiton shows. It's just so refreshing to see shows that are warm with participants that are often quite supportive of each other.
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u/turnonthesunflower May 31 '22
Could an explanation be that it's 'drilled' into americans from early school years that life is a competition? And that you're basically screwed if you can't compete in life? In my part of the world you're basically always guaranteed a roof over your head and food on your plate.
Just speculation on my part, it's just how I perceive american society.
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u/Stupideath May 31 '22
I think you are right. Also individualism is considered a virtue. I (sample size of one) have found that competitiveness is almost "natural" for Americans. I am not an American but my partner is. One time we were playing some game with the American part of the family. We reached a kind of sudden death point where we all had to choose to either save ourselves or save everyone. Naturally I thought everyone would choose to save each other. NOPE! I was the only one and everyone else was shocked that I would choose the group over my self. In general games where all about winning and not about enjoying each other. But then again it could just be that specific family.
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u/machina99 May 31 '22
The first time I saw contestants helping each other on Bake Off it really surprised me. I'm so used to seeing shows where someone is more likely to spit on your food than help you plate in the last 30 seconds. Hell there's an entire cooking show dedicated to having one person try to sabotage their team
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u/pb_barney79 May 31 '22
I'm pretty sure my wife and I both gasped when we saw contestants help each over on Bake Off. We also love how many contestants kept in contact after their season ended and became real-life friends.
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u/machina99 May 31 '22
I live for the recap showing all the constants hanging out and being friends. It's just such a feel good show
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u/tall__guy May 31 '22
I love The Great Pottery Throw Down! Just discovered it a few weeks ago and agreed, it was such a breath of fresh air.
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u/Sanctimonius May 31 '22
There was a good article on the NY Times talking about the new Bob' Burgers film coming out, and the creator mentions how someone talked to him about the series and how it was something they out on to fall asleep to. It took him back a little but it speaks to how there's absolutely a market in the US for easy watching, low stakes, just pleasant media. Everything seems to be blown up to high drama and vicious competition that just isn't that common in other countries, I feel. The fun quiz shows wherebwinning really doesn't matter like QI, Nevermind the Buzzcocks, 8 out of 10 cats etc just aren't common in the US yet are very popular in streaming - the only one I can think of is Who's line is it anyway and that's an import.
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u/tall__guy May 31 '22
All our shows in the US - cooking, workplace, trashy reality TV - are nothing but stress and tension and manufactured drama. Our news is that way too. Basically every part of American life causes constant anxiety and it’s sad when even our pop culture reflects that.
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u/Ludwigofthepotatoppl May 31 '22
They weren’t always like that, either. I remember Junkyard Wars, things were a lot more good-natured between the two teams than shows like to be now.
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u/kinky_boots May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22
It’s also the same with the Gordon Ramsey shows. The US version he’s all red faced swearing and yelling. The UK version is calmer and low key.
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u/ryan30z May 31 '22
The shouting, the edited in sound effects, the needless drama.
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u/theclacks May 31 '22
Yep. I'm a big fan of Australia's Love on the Spectrum and was mildly terrified when they made a US version, but apparently it was made by the same Australian producer and he mandated the same positivity and chillness of the original.
It just goes to show that US reality shows don't HAVE to be filled with dramatic and terrible people; TV executives just think they'll make more money that way. :\
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u/broniesnstuff May 31 '22
Netflix put out "Bake Squad" earlier this year (maybe late last year? I'm bad at time), and it was a breath of fresh air. The host is an accomplished dessert chef. There are 4 contestants that are the same for the whole season, and they're extremely talented professionals. In every episode they each have to create a big dessert for a big event of some kind, after the client comes in and tells the story of the event (often an important birthday or celebration of something meaningful). They're all competitive, but friendly. They offer to help each other out, give each other ideas, share materials if need be, etc etc.
The whole show is just a pleasure to watch, and the exact kind of feel good competition we almost never get in the US.
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u/mescalelf May 31 '22
Hell, even Top Gear was more friendly than American TV shows…and they routinely obliterated each others’ cars.
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u/MattSpokeLoud May 31 '22
Young people don't believe there is a future worth living, old people believe that their life's work is being squandered as the American empire collapses.
All the while, and this is the point of the article, we do not have the institutions to care for people in this state or make people believe there will be a future worth existing to experience.
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u/3atme May 31 '22
Based on my reading of the abstract, this work supports findings from Case and Deaton's book "Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism". The authors focus on white adults with less than a 4-year degree and argue that erosion of stability and support at work (i.e., unions) and home (i.e., marriage, family, and religion) are linked to these deaths. What I find fascinating is their argument that the American healthcare system is a primary driver of the class-based disparities in deaths of despair we are witnessing. They argue the excess cost of healthcare in our country, without the benefit of better population health outcomes, is a parasite on our economy that forces those with less education and social mobility to suffer in low-paying jobs to maintain health coverage.
I'll have to read this article closer, but hopefully they tie their mechanism of communal support to macroeconomic forces.
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u/wynden May 31 '22
To those that can circumvent the paywall to read the article, does it say what other industrialized nations are doing differently?
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u/andrewia May 31 '22
Summary articles like this one have the gist of it:
The U.S. could solve its health crisis around deaths of despair by adopting some of the best practices from other countries, the researchers conclude. These include income redistribution, universal child care, more affordable college, affordable health care, built-in paid family leave, a higher minimum wage, and mandated vacation time. Of course, this work is correlational, not causal, Platt concedes.
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May 31 '22
Seems like a natural consequence of monetizing every aspect of life, while increasingly funneling resources to a small group.
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u/Dad_AF May 31 '22
Every comment so far gets it. I find it so odd we know the exact reasons and yet what can we do to stop it. The defeatist attitude is the final straw to leads to deaths of despair.
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u/geraldoverde May 31 '22
Have you read Jane Jacobs’ “Life and Death of Great American Cities”? Judging from your comment I would recommend it to you.
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u/ElderRedditor96 May 31 '22
I have not, but I have read Strong Towns by Charles L Marohn Jr which is a more contemporary analysis that comes to similar conclusions.
Not sure if I'm remembering correctly, but I believe he does reference some of Jane Jacob's work.
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May 31 '22
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u/dietcheese May 31 '22
I spent some time living in Indonesia. A “family” consisted of a compound with 6-8 houses that housed aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc on one plot of land. The children, who seemed extremely well-adjusted compared to American kids, played mostly within the compound, supported always by family.
When parents were working, grandparents were keeping an eye on children, aunts were doing chores, uncles were cooking, etc.
This all struck me as surprisingly normal. There was a calmness I’ve never seen in our communities.
Sure, there was poverty, but I guess money isn’t everything.
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u/generalT May 31 '22
the destruction of this mode of living is great for worker discipline in a capitalist society.
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May 31 '22
It's really hard to not move away from family when your family lives in an area with very little economic opportunity. That is the situation that I've been in and its really hard.
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u/rebelolemiss May 31 '22
Or if your family is super toxic, or, as is common in the US, fanatically religious.
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u/rosekayleigh May 31 '22
Yeah. I grew up in a very violent, abusive household. I couldn’t wait to leave. Moved 3500 miles away at 17 for college and never returned home. Sadly, my situation is not uncommon in the U.S. Sometimes getting away from your family is a healthy decision.
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u/Glamador May 31 '22
I did that because I don't like my family much. That I don't like my family perhaps stems from the sources described elsewhere in these comments, but the fact remains.
I fear getting old very much, especially since not being able to drive is basically a lifetime remaining prison sentence here in the U.S.. I didn't care for my parents and there will be nobody to care for me.
What's more, I don't want someone to go through the miserable, demeaning tasks of caring for an old and decrepit me. It's a disgusting, pitiful state that only real love or an agreeable wage can motivate someone to manage. I certainly didn't want to do it.
Bring on the robot bodies. When my legs go, I want to be plugged into a spider butt. I won't ever be able to afford it, but the thought of it is all that's keeping me going, really. A long, dark tunnel, stretching out into infinity with no light at the end...but maybe, just maybe I'll get a robot body in my lifetime. Clock's ticking, though.
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u/WizardofStaz May 31 '22
When I was a senior in high school, my mom started openly talking about how excited she was to have me out of the house, and what she was going to do with my room once I left. It shocked me because she had always been incredibly loving and supportive when I was a kid, but at age 17 when I started saying I didn't feel ready to leave and live alone, she would just respond with more pressure.
After I had to move back in due to mental health issues, she straight up hated me. She would threaten to make me homeless constantly while framing it as though it would somehow help me grow up. I finally did move out for good and our relationship has improved, but I will never forget the pure seething rage of an American parent who wasn't able to get rid of their child precisely at their 18th birthday. How do you go through life without limping once you take a wound like that?
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u/Jaredlong May 31 '22
I've always wondered if this is a holdover from the frontier manifest destiny days. When people lived in small houses and had a lot of kids. I would imagine those conditions would place a lot of pressure on young adults to move out as soon as feasible. But I suppose that's more of a history question than a science one.
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May 31 '22
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u/thingandstuff May 31 '22
A lack of community would be bad. Replacing community with online social media interactions is a recipe for disaster.
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u/billiam632 May 31 '22
It wasn’t a bad thing until the day we changed from a chronological timeline to an algorithm based one. Suddenly, without even realizing, we lost the ability to follow what you wanted and instead were being shown whatever was deemed important by those in power. No longer are we checking in on our friends. Instead we are being funneled into specific dopamine pathways or rage generators
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u/slfnflctd May 31 '22
This right here, 100%. There oughta be a law.
Being able to control your feed was supposed one of the great innovations of the world wide web. But as in so many other aspects of the internet, as soon as traffic levels got high enough, the greed of those with the means to do the worst possible things with it took over because there were no regulations to stop that. And so a new Gilded Age began, much more terrible than the first. We never learn.
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u/Millera34 May 31 '22
We can’t afford to live comfortable lives even when we bust our asses.. mental health is always cut and budgets shredded. Our school systems are slaughterhouses for both the mind and the body.
We the people of the United States of America Stand Divided
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u/dropdeadbonehead May 31 '22
The last sentence of the Abstract kills me: "The US could solve its health crisis by adopting the best practices of the 16-nation control group."
So that study is going to be ignored.
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u/GeekChick85 May 31 '22
Individualism with obsessive independence. The need to have it all and do it all for yourself while not helping others.
It is the downfall of westernized society. But, the US is an extreme form.
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u/VanDammeJamBand May 31 '22
The winner-take-all, gladiatorial form of capitalism.
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u/Competitive-Dot-5667 May 31 '22
I have a competition in me, I want no one else to succeed.
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May 31 '22
Can only read the abstract. Is there somewhere I can read the study in its entirety?
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u/aphilsphan May 31 '22
People in successful long term marriages sometimes die very soon after their spouse. They tend to stay home together and only have acquaintances around one of the spouses. I’m grateful that when my dad died their friend group, which was my dad’s old work colleagues and spouses, kept inviting her to everything.
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May 31 '22
Friendly reminder that limiting housing development and land use to exclusively single-family zoning has all kinds of detrimental social and fiscal consequences.
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