
Social isolation and loneliness in Canada - laurex
http://angusreid.org/social-isolation-loneliness-canada/
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NeedMoreTea
40 years since Thatcher, Reagan and the rest of the world started tearing down
everything communal, and community, giving individual "choice" instead. You'll
buy a service, seek a product, but you won't know your neighbour.

Seems to be working as intended.

With hindsight, we should have stopped after about 10 years of those reforms.

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badpun
As a counterpoint, the communist countries were extremely communal, and they
were terrible for everyone involved (except for people running things).

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NeedMoreTea
Canada, the USA, UK, and others were not communist in the fifties and sixties,
but did have many _community_ group amenities that have mostly been lost in
the 80s and beyond. Sharing stuff in groups is not communist or even require
people be in communes. Communism generally had little to share anyway.

I'm not sure how that is a counterpoint other than attempted wordplay.

~~~
badpun
Too communal approach and you're looking at ossified society with no
innovation and no efficiency - communism (socialism really) demonstrated it.
My UK friend told me that UK was already heading somewhat dangerously in that
direction right before Thatcher stepped in - it saw little economic growth,
unions blocking entire industries etc. I don't know the full brunt of the
situation back then, but it looks like people were tired enough to try a
different approach, and elected Thatcher.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
The seventies was indeed chaos on many levels. Know why? The 1973 oil crisis.
Most everything else of the dysfunctional, high inflation seventies stemmed
from that. I remember once getting 15% on a savings account! Below inflation,
of course.

Too much union power, and their political aspiration aggravated that rather
than caused it. As the economy faltered they continued to seek above inflation
pay rises driving inflation higher. Strikes could have one industry supporting
another via sympathetic strikes. Until the oil crisis and rest of the
seventies it hadn't mattered much, and no one much cared that some union had
elected an extremist. The chaos that led to Thatcher and Reagan being
necessary came from 73.

None of this related in the slightest to the many community, but not
communist, town clubs, amenities, work social clubs, social care and countless
other things that died or deformed in the reforms. Which helped push to the
little or no community we see today. Thatcher once said something like
"there's no such thing as society, just individuals".

Which is why I think the early changes were helpful, especially putting some
constraint on unions, but not neutering them completely. The other 30 odd
years of going in the same direction have been as damaging as those long fixed
seventies problems, so I haven't been especially surprised at the global
crises of mental health, loneliness and isolation we've ended up with.

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emptybits
The elderly are particularly vulnerable. I'm a Canadian and I'd like to plug
an international charitable movement called Cycling Without Age[1]. In helping
found a local chapter, I've really started to see how common social isolation
is, independent of health and wealth and even in urban density. But I've also
seen how even a single short social connection can have enduring benefit.
Unlike some afflictions of aging, loneliness is a relatively solvable problem.

Take care of your older friends and family and neighbours, and maybe even
offer to connect with a stranger once in a while. It's good for everyone! :-)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6Ti4qUa-
OU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6Ti4qUa-OU)

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aetherspawn
Well a few decades ago people used to go to church weekly and now people
don’t, and hey, loneliness and lack of companions for people is cropping up
all over the news lately (observation).

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p1mrx
That leaves an opportunity for organizations who bring people together without
propagating silly beliefs. Sunday Assembly is one example of this model.

~~~
everdrive
I'm not sure how I feel about this line of argument, but food for thought:

Is the authoritarianism and coercion a necessary part of church? Clearly left
to their own devices, people aren't self-organizing into social groups very
well. And perhaps the silly beliefs are an important marker or side effect of
social coercion, and can't easily be abandoned. Even if they're not causal,
they are a great indicator that you are truly allied with the group.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>Is the authoritarianism and coercion a necessary part of church

Speaking about religion in genera:

Authoritarianism, no. I don't see how that's related. You can have a cohesive
group without being a dick to everyone who doesn't conform to the exact letter
of every little thing.

Coercion is required on some level but unless you really don't conform to any
of the social norms of the group you should be fine. A religion can always
structure itself to have a bare minimum amount of conformity and accept anyone
above that. Being able to conform to group social norms or at leas minimize
when you can't is part of being human.

~~~
everdrive
> Authoritarianism, no. I don't see how that's related. You can have a
> cohesive group without being a dick to everyone who doesn't conform to the
> exact letter of every little thing.

I might have used a poor word. I certainly didn't mean for authoritarianism to
mean "being a dick to everyone." I suppose I meant hierarchical structure,
pressure, and control.

As a corollary, imagine the sort of social cohesion you see in the military.
With regard to the values the military cares about, there's a high degree of
coercion and authoritarianism. So, counterpoints about how you can be whatever
religion, creed, political party etc aren't really valid in my mind. You can
Muslim or Christian, but you can't ignore a salute, or a command, etc. The
values the military wishes to coerce are nonnegotiable.

There can be no doubt that the military is good at systematically building
cohesion in troops. I'm just wondering how well social cohesion can work
without any of these aspects. In other words, does strict individualism harm
social cohesion.

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microcolonel
The part where it shows the responses with regard to social interaction with
neighbours is a huge part of this. A lot of my friends have been neighbours or
people I met out and about. If you do not have social interactions with
complete strangers, and your family is disappearing from your life, you will
probably be alone.

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DigitalTerminal
Social time, no go back to your roommate filled apartment with an one & half
hour commute one way to work to be downsized, underpaid, under trained, miss
manged, and pension sold off to pay for your boss kids' toys. Why would anyone
in Canada feel isolated or lonely?

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pepsicokedew
This seems like a micro-version of whats happening in Japan. Looks like most
civilisations have a curve of social development. Japan is post-prosperity.

~~~
devoply
The idea is that all you need is money, business, and technology are not
true... but don't tell people that because they have adopted these as virtues
of some sort of new syncretic religion.

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jbarham
One prosaic explanation for social isolation in Canada in particular would be
its relatively harsh winters which make being outside uncomfortable and
unpleasant (i.e., cold, wet, dark) for much of the year, especially if you're
old. If you're cooped up inside your house you're much less likely to have
chance encounters with your neighbours or strangers.

~~~
devoply
Another major issue is immigration. You have lots of people living together
that don't share any sort of social cultural connection... and then you have
work which occupies most people's existence most of the time therefore there
is almost no time to build a new culture outside of work... and no one even
knows what that would look like to strive towards something like that. Modern
capitalist man is one dimensional isolated man whose sense of self is more or
less based on providing for him or herself and the things that they care about
whether that be people, pets, or the material things which own them such as
their financial obligations to the banks for their housing and their
employers.

Before that in the Middle Ages, Westerners in the upper classes who had any
sort of wealth were much more social living very much like people in the so-
called third world live today where they would throw parties to show their
wealth and took pride in showing off their children and their accomplishments.
When that culture was bulldozed, people forgot that it even existed... and
perhaps it never did in the frontier like Canada like it did in old Europe.
The immigrants were always busy working to be productive and industrious and
always not closely related to the people they lived near.

~~~
zed88
More than the immigrants or capitalism , I would boil it down to breaking up
of the family as the fundamental building block of society.

The 'very recent' social engineering has thrown western societies in a
depressive state.

Even in the age of plenty, we miss the family bond in our solitary lives.

~~~
devoply
Well liberation came through technology and politics where women who were
quite dependent on men became no longer dependent on men economically or in
fear of being impregnated by them. You could not escape that reality before,
and so single families proliferated alongside a legal system which encouraged
that rather than the patriarchy which forced people to stay together for the
kids even if they could no longer stand each other -- or one party was abusive
towards the other.

~~~
malvosenior
An alternative theory, and I think much larger reason for the destruction of
the family unit is that individualism was heavily marketed by mainstream media
through the 20th century. People shifted their wants and desires in marriage
from one of creating a family unit to that of finding personal enlightenment.

The excellent documentary The Century of the Self covers the evolution of
marketing, the baby boomers and the psychology behind individualism:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self)

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thomasfl
Social isolation is probably the result of too much wealth. Y Combinator
should have it on their request for startup list. Snapchat is doing something
in this space.

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aetherspawn
Friends as a service, ha :) Naturally money can pretty easily promote
companionship but I’m guessing people might need a few hints how to perform
the conversion.

Edit: Thinking about this more, it seems like there could be room in the
market for “like Tinder, but for arranging social events” (ie party, soccer,
whatever)

“John from 3 streets down would like you to play soccer this Saturday (26
people are going, you’ve met 5). Accept/Decline?”

~~~
Mirioron
> _Friends as a service, ha :)_

That's what streaming services like Twitch are, aren't they?

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zed88
Same here in NZ and I blame the winters with short daylight.

