The conclusion is clear—American cities are built for cars, not people.
I find it interesting how many posts here bemoan the lack of community in their lives when so many people live in isolated areas. For some reason the solution that comes to mind is more church instead of rethinking our housing priorities.
> lack of community in their lives when so many people live in isolated areas.
Isolated areas, or at least small towns, tend to have much stronger communities than I've found in cities. Anytime I've lived in a city most "communities" that evolve tend to revolve around work.
Live in a small town for a few years and you'll likely be part of multiple small communities interested in different things. I used to live in a pretty isolated smallish city and knew almost all of the owners of every restaurant I ate at and store I visited. I was active in a range of different communities with many different interests.
If you live in some extremely isolated area, like out in rural Maine, you'll likely be at least acquaintances with literally every person in town. The grocery store clerk and the owner of the town lumber yard will know something about you, at see you as part of their community. When you go grocery shopping it's rare to see only strangers.
Every apartment I've lived in in cities I've only vaguely known my neighbors, but in my first move to the suburbs I was instantly greeted by everyone around me, we exchanged numbers and had a small party.
My experience is that, generally speaking, community increases with the distance from the city center. One particular exception would be a dead zone in certain mass produced suburbs (the ring of death around Denver CO. being a good example).
> My experience is that, generally speaking, community increases with the distance from the city center.
My experience has been the opposite. Moreover, in a large city, I get to choose my community as opposed to being forced into being in one due to mere proximity.
This is a key, in a city you need to be proactive about it, or if not interested you can fully avoid any interaction and no one cares. In small places, you have to interact at least a little with people around you, or you'll be labeled as a weirdo. And also you're more often in need of someone helping you with something, as not everything is around the corner and readily available like in big cities.
Anecdotally, Texans as an example like their privacy, more 10/12 foot fences I’ve ever seen. The father you move into the suburbs, the more people value privacy in Texas is seems.
In general, American suburbs infrastructure-wise were built more for cars than people or other transit mechanisms.
I live in Texas and recently went to Missouri, I was absolutely flabbergasted that there were almost literally zero fences! Whole neighborhoods were just house after house and lawns in between. Was quite a refreshing new experience for me.
12 foot fence? That's got to at least double the cost. It’s hard for me to understand people who go to such tremendous lengths to hide from the world. Like my old neighbors who closed every blind in the house the day they moved in and never opened them again. I don’t care what people do in their house... but that’s weird.
People love fences so much, In 2015 Dallas made 9ft the maximum, Houston is 8 ft. In both the more wealthy suburbs can get permit exceptions for 10ft. Fort Worth you can see 12ft and 10ft more so, due to no restrictions.
Austin seems to care about this a bit less, but I think it might be due to terrain. In general a fence increases home value usually in most Texas cities.
I really should have clarified since I was thinking of my bias view of Fort Worth where we don't have city ordinances that prevent fences over 4ft in the front yard and 9ft in back yards like Dallas.
I lived in cities all my life and never lived in suburbs, but can't imagine cities being much better, as there's literally almost no community at all in cities either. People just don't do stuff with their neighbors or largely don't even talk to them. The older ones, who've been in the building for decades, at least know the names of the other older ones and maybe a little bit about them (where they work, what's their family structure etc.). Younger gen is mostly completely isolated though. At least that's my experience.
Indeed, but this is not new. There is plenty of literature about one of the main allures (and perils) of moving to the city: being free from your neighbours’ judgement and relationships. For many, this is still a desirable characteristic. Arguably, there might have been recent developments that removed even the last shreds of compulsory relationships, but we already were 90% of the way there.
When it comes to relationships, cities just work on a pull model, where small towns worked on a push model.
Interesting idea, but most cities I’ve lived in have even closer compulsory relationships via homeowners associations. Even if you rent it’s hard to get away from your neighbors if you want that.
I grew up in a block in Europe. The equivalent body met once a month at best, you could even delegate someone to attend for you. I don’t think that’s anywhere near the sort of web you end in when growing in a small town, particularly if your folks have been around for more than a generation.
I live in the city and can’t agree with this at all. Prior to the pandemic our building hosted mixers, Halloween parties, winter and summer parties. Our building is 70% renters / 30% owners. The tenants are constantly bemoaning the lack of community. But rather than engage their community most would rather drive back out to the suburbs and spend time in that community.
BTW, I was just about to agree with you. But I just realized that we’ve been social distancing for almost a year. It felt like centuries ago since I had more than a 5 minute conversation with my neighbors.
Except for a couple of years spent in apartments, this is not all my experience, either of cities or of suburbs. In my childhood and teens in the suburbs, kids would gather in a yard or a drive to play games--tag, hide-and-seek, kickball, touch football, basketball--and so one got to know them and their families. Now, in a city, and on a block mostly of free-standing houses, I know by name somebody or everybody in most of the houses on the street, and know some of them pretty well.
Agree. Lived in an apartment building in Chicago. Never knew anyone's name but the doorman. I could count on one hand the number of times I encountered a neighbor in the hall. It was like living in a hotel.
I like your suggestion but for many people, such as myself, church is probably not a solution.
It's not that I don't think that religion provides community or a decent ethical foundation. I just don't believe in the supernatural or any belief system that requires the breaking of the Second Law of Thermodynamics without any explanation of how.
Still the social aspects of religion are interesting. What does "more church" look like if you're an atheist? More participatory sports clubs maybe? Or, more things you can walk to and do regularly with the same people in general?
Churchgoers get moral guidance and philosophical discussion, communal introspection, and everyone knows they should go on their best behavior, bringing love to the congregation. Those things are fairly unique to places of worship, but there needn't be actual worship of God for them to exist, and that's something atheists tend to miss out on since not many other social groups/clubs have those qualities.
If you really want to get to know your fellow church goers, you’ll have a hard time passing as an atheist for long. Sooner or later you’ll be asked to lead a prayer, give ‘testimony’ to when you ‘got saved’, be tested on your working knowledge of the Bible in some way. And at a catholic church, there’s generally less close community beyond glad handing, but there’s a lot of ritual and recitation you’re expected to follow along with. On some level true believers will always be pinging you to determine your authenticity.
Maybe it's just me but I tend to lose interest in sports. That presents a dilemma. Either you have to attend something you are not interested in, or you stop hanging out with the people.
Like most things in life: You must be motivated by a need or really enjoy it. As you, sport do neither for me. As you get older working out will be more of a need and you find a good group of workout buddies and maybe a friend or two.
In Britain, Humanism was an early 20th century movement to try to bridge between the social benefits of church to - what was increasingly obvious to most people - the fallacies of legacy Christian doctrines.
It wasn't a total failure, but humanism never reached the mainstream.
Agreed, there is something unique about church. Maybe the spiritual and emotional aspect is too intertwined to separate. It is very easy to confuse emotions (i.e. feeling good about something) with spirituality when the two are very different.
Arguably humanism was an intellectually-driven pursuit. So it never crossed the chasm.
Growing up in Manchester, I found it was football that fulfilled the emotional and tribal needs of many of my peers.
Many people assume Britain and USA are the same. In many respects, that is true. But as to church and religion, they are poles apart. At least that was true in the nineties when I lived in USA.
I had been to a service, I think at a unitarian universalist church, which was accepting of atheists. As I remember it, it can still be a bit awkward with references to God being common, but you wouldn't be unwelcome on principle.
Having grown up in the Unitarian church, It’s more that Unitarians don’t tell anyone what to believe and everyone in a UU church might have different ideas.
I don't know how it might be called in the US but in the town I spend a good part of my childhood, we had a sort of hub for clubs.
Sports, craft, games, etc... it hosted scheduled activities like workouts, helped organize event like trips, there was a room with a piano where lessons were held but was otherwise freely accessible, a small library, a bunch of chessboards from the chess club, again, freely accessible, etc... A lot of activities were aimed at kids but it spanned all age groups, including elderly.
Of course, it created a strong, unreligious community. Unfortunately, as it is often the case with these organizations, the few key players lost interest and no one took over, so while it still exists, not much remains.
I get a kick off how consciousness is simultaneously fungible, able to react to stimuli without a nervous system, and ephemeral, with no ability to quantify any of that at all
Even the unorganized religions rely on this trichotomy without any explanation or coherence
I would be open to any outcome, just quantify the rules and mechanisms
There are some secular church equivalents as well. For example https://www.sundayassembly.com/ for people who want some celebration and community, but don't care about the religious aspects.
Otherwise as you mentioned, some hobbies are my church. Local coworking is my church too.
Soup kitchens? Many are run by religious institutions but you don't necessarily have to subscribe to all the ceremonies and such (there may be a perfunctory prayer at the beginning of the shift).
Plenty of secular NGOs. User groups (Linux, BSD). If you're into photography: photo walks.
> I just don't believe in the supernatural or any belief system that requires the breaking of the Second Law of Thermodynamics without any explanation of how.
Like the spontaneous generation of life that continuously grows more and more complex?
That’s not a violation of thermodynamics at all, since the earth is not a closed system, and it’s also about averages. You can have local fluctuations.
Well my fellow fluctuation of highly organized atoms, take luck. Let me know when somebody can explain how everything works without positing a magical thing we can't see, measure, or touch.
Hmm, I’m not sure I understand your point. Scientists explicitly try to avoid positing magical things, and even when things get into the realm of untestability at our scale, it’s hedged:
“Here’s a cosmological model that might be true given our current data”
Vs
“Here’s a magical anthropocentric religious explanation for anything I can’t immediately explain”
You’re revealing your ignorance of modern physics, as well as some pretty astonishing hubris. You’d compare dark mater, which has numerous possible explanations all of which are in search of empirical tests, to the panoply of human religions?
No. I'd compare faith to faith. One of which declares that there is something above this universe (God), while the other declares without proof that there isn't. (And then large numbers of proponents of the latter posit that we are living in a simulation, thus demonstrating that... they believe there is something above this universe. lol.) Either way it's faith.
Entropy must increase in a closed system (which is the bit that everyone conveniently forgets). Earth is not a closed system, receiving a significant daily energy input from a near-by star.
Sad to see the truth in this conversation buried so low.
Whether you're in a city or a suburb, there's plenty of community to be found or made if you put the effort in. The problem is our culture is being eroded away with each minute spent using the internet.
I struggle with this problem daily - as a web developer, my job is to fight for people's attention. I strive to build as good of a UX as possible and serve interesting content to users in the name of getting more clicks, more ad impressions, and more revenue. This is happening at a global scale, with ever more companies fighting over the individual's attention span to make a buck. Attention is a finite resource. If we capture 2 hours of your day, then you lose 2 hours you could have spent making friends at a local volunteer group while improving your community. I feel like we're cannibalizing society.
All that being said, I think online communities are a wonderful thing, but psychologically, they lack something important. People feel lonelier than ever while having more access to new communities of like-minded people than ever before.
I'm hoping VR/AR helps bridge this gap, but this in-between phase we're in is just kind of depressing.
1) I don't know how young people meet each other in real life when both men and women self-isolate with earbuds now.
Unless taking your earbuds out is a signal you're interested?
Maybe somebody can fill me in.
2) I knew a young IT graduate who wore earbuds at work. He had the chance to listen and discuss many topics with world-class software and IT engineers, except he couldn't hear them.
The earbuds in are a suggestion you're not interested in conversation. Many people also are not interested in random conversation... ever. As much as I'm happy to meet people in social environments, I don't want anyone to randomly start talking to me on a street. And I'm not even "young people" anymore.
Your IT graduate made their own choices - maybe they wanted to do their job and go home rather than discuss with world-class people. Or maybe they had problems with concentration or noise.
Some people are introverts, or have busy life you're not a part of and never see, or just have different priorities. It's ok.
I understand that you don't want to talk to random people on the street, but I disagree strongly with "just doing your job" mentality. If you have any sort of creative output job where you work within a team (engineering, academia, some artistic endeavors), things are different.
Companies often pay for their employees to attend professional and technical development workshops or go to conferences, because part of your job is to improve your skills. Casual water cooler talks do the same thing; they improve your skills, and help initiate creative ideas that ultimately help build better things.
In my own PhD, I saw supervisors demand their students attend department get together, bar hangouts at conferences, and even casually talk to other people in the dept. If I was a manager of creative types, I would absolutely rate someone who didn't "waste their time" at work lower, because if your job description is to create, you need to do reasonable things to improve your creative skills and outputs.
As with all things, there's a time, place, and situation where it can be more suitable or less suitable.
Several of my employers issue staff with noise cancelling headphones on day one on the job. The employee is supposed to make the suitable judgement call on when they're suitable (needing a few hours of uninterrupted concentration) and when they're not.
The alternative is giving people offices so they can actually isolate, or understanding that people who operate on 'maker time' will not be productive with regular interruptions.
I think we are in complete agreement. Creative employees must have the right to direct their own work day (especially their uninterrupted deep work hours), and the responsibility that they fulfill all their formal and informal job requirements. One aspect of the latter is casually exchanging ideas with coworkers they don't usually work with.
People don't always have to be improving themselves at work. At a certain level of skill (say average), just doing your job is enough. Now sure, if you want to get ahead at work, then it's a good idea to go the extra mile, but not everyone cares about that or needs to care about that. They have other aspects of their life that they want to focus on at the expense of their work life.
AirPods Pro are often used as hearing aids in “transparency” mode. Do not make the (lazy) assumption that someone wearing them cannot hear every word you say.
Furthermore, I think if I had to listen to self-proclaimed “world-class” engineers all day, I’d wear earphones too. And not on “transparency” mode.
Maybe the dude have enough social contact as is, so he does nor have to rely on watercooler chat. Work is not the only place to be with people. Since people change jobs fairly often, it is less of place to form long term community.
I mean this 100% seriously: when you have community outside of work you spend less time chatting at work.
The stereotype is you live in the suburbs and know all your neighbors. Maybe even have block parties 2 or 3 times a year. Where as the stereotype for cities is you live in an apartment building closer to way more people than in the suburbs but know none of them.
No idea how much it holds but it fits my experience.
I live in a smaller german city and I know my neighbours. Before I lived more suburban (though 10 minutes with the train into the city) and I knew none because most were old I was a student sharing a home with other students. Some complained about us being loud after 10pm.
The stereotype is meant as something positive, but I associate something negative with it. I grew up suburban and I just can't imagine ever moving back. It's so boring, dull and while there's more proximity, you are so bound to you environment. If you don't fit in the you have a problem. I didn't fit in later in school, I didn't get bullied or anything, but I just lacked people with the same interest. I found them in the city in the 10th grade, so I started to commute by train into the city every wednesday after school and on the weekends. They were weird, looked weird and interested in music, art and protecting the environment. I regularly feel asleep saturday night on the central station because I missed my train and had to wait hours. I understand the positive association but the only thing I associate with it is being locked in in an environment you have no control over because it is not by choice but by geographic proximity. I don't want parties with people on my block, I want parties with my friends. Preferably every weekend until the sun starts to rise again and I am exhausted but happy.
Writing this was very interesting for me, I never really tried to reflect why I so strongly despise the idea of moving again into something suburban.
My experience is that neither of those two "groups" have parties with their neighbours. I think it might be too hard to generalize about things, the most sociable place I've lived in was Sopocachi in La Paz a high density walkable area, but I've never experienced anything like that anywhere else so it might be an outlier.
I would rather like to see more enjoyable activities such hackathons, festivals, contests etc. Church/religions are outdated and most of them(i.e the major ones) just exploit your fears.
Fearing God is important in Christianity, but let’s think about what that means?
If “God” is the label we place on the force/spirit of creation/life in this world, then “fearing God” means to respect and subject yourself to the truth about this creation rather than considering yourself above it. The most concrete example is understanding that attempting to break the laws of physics by “flying” off a cliff is unwise. Among Christians it’s also common to interpret it as recognising that going against the “will” of this force that created us (concretely natural selection as well as however the universe and life of earth came to be) will bite you in the arse, such as rejecting family (life) for vanity for example.
If one instead fears judgement from fellow men in church, you should disregard the fear and forgive those who judge you - because standing above a fellow man is the sin of thinking you’re of a higher intrinsic value which also is not fearing God.
It’s not expressed in precise scientific language but rather colourful, poetic, narrative, and philosophical language, because it is ideas older than Newton, but it does not require supernatural claims, not is it about fearing other people.
Not trying to change your mind or person - but encourage you to continue discovering philosophy and religion
You have an excellent point of view on religion. Recently I’ve come to the same conclusion that religion isn’t supposed to be supernatural mumbo-jumbo, but rather ancient science — previously known as “natural philosophy“.
> Recently I’ve come to the same conclusion that religion isn’t supposed to be supernatural mumbo-jumbo, but rather ancient science
Science calls for the use of data, and constantly modifying and updating knowledge based on data.
Religion, or at least all the implementations of it that I know, are not about throwing out the old if new, conflicting data is discovered.
As far as I can tell, religion is a relic from tribal days, and still serves much of the same purpose today. It can assist in societies without formed legal systems and can help foster higher trust within its members.
Humans have insufficient time to evaluate all of the motivations and priorities of others, and religion provides a nice framework with all the various social events and traditions for the tribe to coalesce around.
Growing up, I learned that plausible deniability is very important for humans. For the same reasons that flirting is a thing, it’s not beneficial for someone to walk around with an explicit list of people/tribes they value over others, in push comes to shove scenarios. But it is beneficial to signal it implicitly, and going along this line of thought gets into politics.
>> religion isn’t supposed to be supernatural mumbo-jumbo, but rather ancient science — previously known as “natural philosophy“.
But it's full of supernatural mumbo-jumbo. Of course that would not be an issue if it wouldn't claim to be the undisputable truth. Science calls for verification. Religion does the opposite.
>> Fearing God is important in Christianity, but let’s think about what that means?
It means to believe and do absurd things due fear such Abraham offering his son as a sacrifice/killing him. Most important it means to fear questioning "god's will" or the authenticity of religion.
>> The most concrete example is understanding that attempting to break the laws of physics by “flying” off a cliff is unwise.
Religions like very much to enact "laws"/opinions on things they don't understand or don't fit their model. The history is full of this. Usually people get hurt. Just look at what poor Isaac was about to get. The old book is full of such crap. Hate, war, and discrimination seem to get a respectable place as well. To make your example more religious you should put a punishment on that: i.e if you try to fly you will rot in hell and even if you escape the fall the good people of the church will burn you at the stake.
>> Not trying to change your mind or person
You can't. I went full circle on it. Once you get rid of the fear you see the religions for what they truly are: a mix of old politics and some cheap philosophy.
>> but encourage you to continue discovering philosophy and religion
>> You can't. I went full circle on it. Once you get rid of the fear you see the religions for what they truly are: a mix of old politics and some cheap philosophy.
Hehe this was me younger discovering pre Christian philosophy and r/atheism. I especially considered myself Epicurean. Good times :-). Take care and keep on reasoning!
> Among Christians it’s also common to interpret it as recognising that going against the “will” of this force that created us (concretely natural selection as well as however the universe and life of earth came to be) will bite you in the arse, such as rejecting family (life) for vanity for example.
This is just one of the possible interpretations. If you are a Christian then you believe the New Testament has a priority over the Old one, and you know that someone already asked Jesus the question what is most important, and the reply was, briefly, "love". So, logically, if you follow love (not fear!) in your life, trying to be kind to others and helping them within your means, this should be understood as living perfectly within the spirit of the teaching of Christ, even if you have nothing to do with any Church.
The church building made of stone or wood is made by man, and the priest too is just a man.
The character/person Christ is described as “logos” made flesh. That means the ideal man embodies in this world the ideas of universal ethics and as you say love for their fellow brother and sisters the children of creation.
I like you interpret it as a personal philosophical/spiritual thing, and the church being a physical place to remind yourself of and celebrate this. Thank you for your insightful comment :)
As a former agnostic now churchgoer (who converted when I got married) one of the things I observed is that, perhaps by happenstance of history, organized religion is a key part of how Americans transmit their cultural values.
I was raised without religion but as Bangladeshis we have a pretty rigid culture apart from religion. This is the “what do you teach your kids about stuff.” Here in the United States it seems like most of that is just whatever is transmitted through the Disney Channel and movies. And frankly a lot of that is pretty garbage culture. It teaches people to be self-centered assholes.
Obviously there are many moral people who aren’t religious (and many religious people who aren’t moral). But you can take away religion but you still need some moral framework in its place. And in the US that seems really hard. We don’t have ready-made frameworks for “here’s what you should teach your kids.” Many parents do a fine job improvising, but it’s a lot of work to do it on your own from scratch.
While you may be accurate, the cultural values transmitted are often not only at odds with scripture, but just repulsive in general. Homophobia, racism, intolerance, misogyny and hypocrisy are just some of the "values" I've personally witnessed in both Episcopalian and Lutheran settings over 5 decades.
While many tout the Judeo-Christian foundations of the US, most of that is just a thin veneer. Kind of like the Horatio Alger myth that you can simply pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you really really just try hard enough.
Scripture definitely teaches a traditional view of marriage and gender roles. You might consider that “repulsive” but I think there’s a lot of room for debate on that. Less than half of Americans believe that “changing gender roles have made it easier for women to live more satisfying lives.” https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/10/18/wide-partisan-gap.... That includes less than 60% of Democrats.
Scripture also teaches the centrality of procreation to marriage and society. I happen to agree with the Obergefell approach, which relied on relatively recent research (based on the 2010 census) showing the astounding number of same-sex couples raising children together. I think it’s no surprise that views on same-sex relationships have shifted quickly as people came to understand that it’s compatible with traditional understandings of marriage’s societal function. (That research, by the way, was not available 5 decades ago. The scientific research on homosexuality being an immutable characteristic really got going in the 1990s, and became widely acknowledge among the public only around 2010.)
I will point out that the western world is almost entirely dependent on immigrants from societies that have traditional religious views on these issues for their population stability. Western social liberalism has many positive attributes, but it hasn’t proven to be self-perpetuating. Maybe it’s adherents should be a little circumspect before calling other attitudes “repulsive.”
I didn't say that there was a scriptural basis for racism:
"the cultural values transmitted are often not only at odds with scripture, but just repulsive in general."
>Maybe it’s adherents should be a little circumspect before calling other attitudes “repulsive.”
Which of the values I criticized as repulsive do you think I should be more circumspect about? Racism? Homophobia? Misogyny?
>I will point out that the western world is almost entirely dependent on immigrants from societies that have traditional religious views on these issues for their population stability. Western social liberalism has many positive attributes, but it hasn’t proven to be self-perpetuating.
I think the Western world will do just fine without embracing the repulsive values I've listed.
> organized religion is a key part of how Americans transmit their cultural values
The abandonment of religion and culture more generally has been a giant exercise in ignoring Chersterton's fence.
Culture is a basically "here is how we act so we don't die." People grow up in it, and they realize that some of it is perhaps outdated or inaccurate. That isn't by itself much of an issue.
The trouble comes when those people have children and grandchildren who were never immersed in the culture and so didn't have the backing of "here are our mutual stories" to know what to keep and what the get rid of.
It's basically burning down a library because, "Well I only read three or four of those books anyway"
That's a foregone conclusion. The problem has been discussed ad nauseam. This article/book is more valuable than yet another rehash: it covers extant solutions to the problem.
Yet many people here don't believe the problem actually exists, so it's far from forgone. The idea that a third place should be a central part of one's life is not a very common perspective, and such a place is rarely planned for. Take any thread on HN about housing and you only see housing being considered for (1) square footage or (2) how it advances one's career.
As a car owning suburbanite, I can’t shake the suspicion that people who complain about lack of community, in actuality just have a lack of social skills. I know all my neighbors, and talk to them on a daily basis. I know all the people who own or work in the local businesses that I frequently go to. I know many of the people who frequently go to the same coffee shops and bars that I frequently go to. I know all the people who work at the butcher, and at the fish market, and at the grocery store that I frequently go to, and always have a conversation about something with them when I go in. All of that feels a lot like community to me. Yet I have the very strong suspicion that if somebody who likes to bemoan a lack of community moved in down the road from me, they’d probably just keep on bemoaning it.
I agree. I live in the suburbs. Have lived in urban and rural in the past. I like the suburbs. Plenty of green space. Plenty of privacy. Lots of interaction with neighbors and lots of families with similar aged kids to play with.
All amenities are close by (but beyond where I would walk). Sure i have to drive, but its 3 minutes and its easy.
To each their own on what they choose as a lifestyle. Stop hating on mine.
I suppose suburbs are not the most efficient way to live. My priority is quality of MY life, which I find is higher in the suburbs. So i am willing to not be optimized because thats not what provides value to me.
> the butcher, and at the fish market, and at the grocery store
Those are all just commerce that you commute to, though. As someone who worked in the service industry for years, 99% of the people I met at work (the "regulars", the overly chatty parents who haven't seen an adult this month, etc) I would never consider part of my community.
How many conversations do you have with members of your community that you're not buying something from?
I mean, I worked retail too and I get what you're saying. However, just because you don't have a deep, meaningful relationship with someone doesn't mean they aren't a part of your community. Hell, I've probably chatted with my mailman 3 times in the past 3 years, but we recognize each other and say hi and ask how each other are doing.
Just because I wouldn't call him if I needed a kidney doesn't mean he's not a part of my (the) community.
Most of them... a majority of them would be other people who go to the same places I go.
That said, most relationships in a community of people are going to be at least somewhat superficial, because nobody can maintain deep personal relationships with hundreds of people.
The idea that the whole thing is just a cynical commercial racket is silly though. Building a real relationship with your community is the whole point of small local business. A lot of those relationships are genuine friendships. The owner of my local coffee shop invites my wife and I over for dinner every so often, and vice versa. I had my local butcher over a couple of weeks ago because he wanted me to teach him how to make beef rendang.
Even if commerce underlies the relationship, it can still be entirely community based.
I'm not saying it's a cynical commercial racket, that would be silly.
What I am saying is that you should have connections with the other people in your community at the shop, not the person hired to interact with you. The relationship with the store owner has nothing to do with whether you drive a car or not.
The relationship you have with others, the other folks at the store shopping, etc are much harder in a suburban geography literally because of the lack of interactions. Drivethu's are the extreme of this.
It's my hypothesis that having a relationship with your local butcher or coffee maker has little to nothing to do with your car, but the relationships you have with others merely due to their proximity to you is the beauty of community. Digital or physical.
> What I am saying is that you should have connections with the other people in your community at the shop
I don’t think this is an essential element of community at all, but as I said “ a majority of [the other community members I interact with] would be other people who go to the same places I go”
> It's my hypothesis that having a relationship with your local butcher or coffee maker has little to nothing to do with your car
I’d say you’re right. But I’d also say that the comment “cities are made for cars not people” is equally as insightful as the comment “footpaths are made for shoes not people”, “cycle lanes are made for bicycles not people” or “rail lines are made for trains not people”. Because at the end of the day, shoes, bicycles, cars, buses, trains... are all made for people. I would suggest that a persons perception of their local community has much more to do with how they interact with it than it does the form of transport they use. I’m also certain that there would be a large number of people who live in the same community as I do, which I find to be particularly vibrant, who spend their time not socializing with anybody, and then go home at the end of the day to take out their phone and complain about lack of community.
> “footpaths are made for shoes not people”, “cycle lanes are made for bicycles not people” or “rail lines are made for trains not people”.
Only one of those literally puts a glass and metal wall between every single person, and I think it's a significant difference in how social you can realistically be, as all time spent traveling is no longer occurring within a social context, but a private one.
Having travelled to many different cities that have many different styles of public transport, I can very confidently say the cities of the world are firmly divided into two camps on this topic. One where you don’t talk to other people on the bus/train because you never know who’s going to turn out to be a violent drug addled lunatic, and another where you don’t talk to people on the bus/train because it’s impolite.
There is literally no city in the world where people are interested in the social experience of public transport.
Well, this year I've met two friends at the store because we were buying similarly weird produce.
But it's just a reply about the car making your interaction with your community almost exclusively commercial. I've met far more friends at the park, usually when I'm walking through with my dog.
> I know all the people who work at the butcher, and at the fish market, and at the grocery store that I frequently go to, and always have a conversation about something with them when I go in.
I guess it could be if you wanted it to be. But if you just wanted a coffee with no social interaction or sense of local community, you’d be better off going to a Starbucks over a local shop.
Any human behaviour examined from the correct perspective can be attributed to an egoist motive.
I like and enjoy a good and friendly commercial transaction.
I just don't consider it a real friendship, and I think this is potentially dangerous thinking. Your counterpart is being paid to form that connection with you, and you are in a specific position of power over them in that situation.
It's nice, in the moment, to be given service - by someone working in a service industry (this is certainly not unique to the suburbs) - but I find it odd that you seem to describe this as a satisfying personal relationship. You will likely never see that person again, whenever they stop doing that job. Your connection and their connection is to the transaction, which includes a personal element at your behest.
If you had said: and I often see them outside of work, then I would consider that slightly differently.
But I’m not talking about having “real friendships”, I’m talking about community. A community is just a type of social unit, and people who deride a lack of community tend to be talking about the lack of that social dynamic. There is not much socialization involved with placing an order at Starbucks and waiting for my name to be called out. There is a much greater level of socialization involved when I go to my local coffee shop, where I know the staff, and we talk for a few minutes about how our lives are going before I head off again. That’s even more true when I stop and talk with some of the other regulars that I’ve gotten to know. That’s just typical community social interaction.
That said, I do have “real friendships” with a number of people that I’ve meet in these settings. Because, perhaps unsurprisingly, a nice local community can be a good place to find new friends.
See this is exactly it - everyone overthinks everything.
Everything has to be "Real friendship" What does that even mean? You're just talking to others to be a decent human being. Not everyone has to be your wife/husband/BFF for ever.
I've seen plenty of people after commercial transactions. In fact, many times I remember people and they remember me for pleasant interactions - they aren't my best man but it's still really satisfying to me.
The point the OP way back when is making is you can be social in suburban circumstances.
It just goes back to the common theme these days - everything is something or someone else's fault. No one ever just says " man I'm feeling lonely, maybe I should join this club, or start going to this coffee shop and just strike up conversation."
No we have to "blame the suburbs" and "blame cars." No one wants to just take responsibility for themselves, they just want to complain about everything else causing their problems online.
When you talk to the butcher once every couple weeks, and enjoy the interaction every time and think “that person is all right”, you have a solid foundation for empathy and understanding. One week you pull up to the butcher shop and see them get out of their car and it has a political bumper sticker different than yours. Instead of thinking “that person is other, an abstract concept that I am supposed to fight against” you might say to yourself “huh didn’t expect joe to be a ___”. But you most likely don’t start disliking joe.
Obviously there are many other benefits of regular friendly small interactions with people, but this one has stood out in my mind over the last couple polarizing years.
> I can’t shake the suspicion that people who complain about lack of community, in actuality just have a lack of social skills.
Along with social skills I think it's the lack of other hobbies or interests. I have friends from local bars but I also have ones from various sports clubs and other activities. Whether it's churches, the local chess club or sports a city will provide a lot more of these niches for community.
Community doesn't just happen, you have to go out and get involved in them, then you have to talk to people instead of sitting on your phone.
"Built for cars, not people" is a bit of silly premise. It's "built for people who want cars, not people who don't want cars".
I lived in Singapore for a while and there was a very strong demand for cars. This is despite a world class public transport system and very high fees/taxes on owning a car. The point is, having a car is a luxury that many people desire. Even with public transport alternatives.
I have spent my life in Europe and when I visited Chicago a few years back I thought the extent to which the city was built around car-use was grotesque. There's little outdoor, organic urban life, and it's horribly difficult to just walk the city.
There are nice string of parks along the lake, but the loop area as a whole constantly sacrifices nice outdoor space in exchange for a bit more driving room. That’s starting to change but we’re still a long way away from a European style city center.
You're talking about Europe as if it's one city, like Chicago is. There are upwards of 30 countries on the European continent, a subset of which are in the European Union. They certainly have more than one city between themselves; some even have many cities!
Singapore is hot and humid all year long. Locals might be used to it but in my time there, a short 10 minute walk to the station means I'm covered in sweat by the time I get there. So I can certainly see why people would prefer cars.
That said I loved Singapore and I love it's awesome public transportation and its abundant taxies that were easily reservable long before Uber existed.
I think not. The cognitive scientists are eager to point out that that people who are members of religious/spiritual groups are doing actually better in many indicators of a “good life”.
Someone was once quoted as having said that mankind will not truly be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest; while I don't generally condone violence, I am of the opinion that they might indeed have been on to something.
There's a difference between religion and church as an organisation with structure. As much as I grew up with catholic church all around and hope it goes down at some point, I don't mind people having the related religion. You don't need any priest to tell you what beliefs are correct or not.
Kings and priests are machinations of man, they exist not as external adversaries, blights unto who would otherwise be naturally enlightened, but a salve to our deep, innate need for surety, protection, charms against the fear of the unknown.
If it's true that mankind won't be truly free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest, mankind won't truly ever be so, because it'll invariably be the last one to die who is the king, and the one before, the priest. We might as well make peace with it.
The "god of the gaps" is because people can't handle the uncertainty that comes from the answer "We don't know yet", which is what science offers.
"Why do we (humanity) exist?" "Because our species evolved to this state."
"Yes, but why are we capable of asking why do we exist?" "Because our species evolved the intelligence necessary to understand our existence."
"Yes, but why did our species evolve with the intelligence we have?" "Because it was an adaption to our environment that made our offspring more likely to survive."
"Yes, but existentially, why does all this exist to the point where we evolved to that state?" "Life evolved on Earth, we don't know how that process began. We have some theories, but nothing proven."
"That's not good enough!" "Sorry, that's all we've got so far."
I believe this philosophy go even further back into the various Vedas of ancient times too, which also discussed multi-dimensionality and everything consisting of frequencies / vibration. The Gods are really encoded symbols and personifications for various aspects of Cosmos (creation, maintenance, destruction, etc).
Some people seek into the mystical. Other people seek into science. Some people don't seek, and for them there's less logic. Logic though, can also be something that binds you to falsehoods. Revisiting first principles again and again is healthy, but really tough work.
Science and meditation should go hand in hand. Being brilliant is no safeguard against personal angst and delusions.
We don't know yet, is the perfectly fine answer. It's OK to seek too, which is how people find new solutions.
"More church" is not what's happening, unless you focus on the Evangelicals, which are actively repellent to many people. Mainline Protestantism, for example, is in decline: Mainline Protestant churches represented the "default" Christianity for generations of moderates, and by moderates I mean both moderate in religion and moderate in politics.
These days, they're losing members to a growing irreligion, people who can find everything they need without joining any religious faith and, perhaps more importantly, can remain irreligious without suffering a serious social disability. (There are still places where the first icebreaker question is "What church do you go to?" and not having a good answer is not really an option if you wish to get along.) Therefore, expecting the old standbys to pick up the slack isn't going to work.
> "People are either being intentionally and intensely religious – like really active evangelicals, or conservative Catholics, or yada yada – or they're leaving the more moderate churches that we've always seen as holding down the middle of religious life in this country," he said. "We've ended up with two trends that appear to be related. We're losing moderation in the political space in American life and we're losing moderation in the religious space, as well."
> The political implications of these trends are complex, he said. But there does seem to be a Big Idea at the heart of it all: Millions of Americans, especially young adults, have decided that "religious" equals "Republican."
> Burge put it this way on Twitter, describing how doctrines can affect public life: "There is no religious group in the U.S. that places itself halfway between the political parties. Instead, every religious tradition has a 'baked-in' political preference now. Nones favor Democrats. Christians (by and large) favor the GOP."
I find it interesting how many posts here bemoan the lack of community in their lives when so many people live in isolated areas. For some reason the solution that comes to mind is more church instead of rethinking our housing priorities.