I don't believe the digital revolution "did this to us". I think it's simply a mirror and and amplifier what was already there.
On social media, for example, we get to see the projections of what people want to be and the underlying darker sides of their personality (narcissism, selfishness, etc). This was always there but latent or hidden... stuff that happened behind closed doors that only families knew about. Now it's public...
Meanwhile the alienation or isolation... as a European, what freaks me out every time I'm in the US is the dependence on cars for everything. That in many places it's not possible to walk to the grocery and get fresh air... That you're in a permanent state of semi-isolation, breathing air-conditioned oxygen with the only human contact being with people that are paid to smile. Contrast that with visiting a city like Kiev where, in the evening after work, the city parks are filled with families enjoying the sunset (when the weather is warm).
I've have the theory that Internet adoption has always been fastest in the US, compared the the rest of the world, because it's the only way to get any kind of "real" connection to other people. The driver - loneliness - was always there, the product of car dependence, television and an entrepreneurial culture that tends to want to monetize any kind of human interaction, even friends (Amway, pyramid marketing).
Ultimately I think it's a good thing, that this stuff is becoming visible and we're realising there is a problem. That's the first step to find the solution.
I am an American citizen, and I think you are spot on about isolation in this country. The dependence on cars is truly awesome and terrifying. It's something that is so dominant that I never considered it until I was diagnosed with epilepsy. I was disqualified from holding a driver's license, and so years ago I decided that I would try to live in the USA without a car. I did not consider that to be an absurd idea, but it has been very, very difficult, and sometimes not in the ways you would expect.
You'll see a lot of people disagreeing with your observation here, and they characterize it as an opinion, but it simply is not. The USA is insanely dependent on cars. If you live in the wrong place, it would be practically impossible for you to walk to a friend's house or to get groceries on foot. But I don't want to get bogged down in the obvious infrastructure issues; I think the more interesting disorder is the mental dependence that Americans have on cars.
Years ago I moved to a very temperate area. Low humidity, plenty of parks, lots of places within walking distance. I walked everywhere I needed, or, if it was out of the way, I'd take a bus. I would talk to people about my daily activities and found that everyone seemed to be repulsed by my stories of walking just a few kilometers. Friends offered rides non-stop and seemed very concerned that I would be walking for 20 minutes in 15C weather.
Live in your house, get in your car, drive to a strip mall, go into a business, come back out, get back in your car, repeat. These days, I can't help but view the typical car-bound American as a terrestrial astronaut who has to embark on Extra Vehicular Activities to survive. He manages, but every second outside of the conditioned environment of his ship, he is scared to death of the vacuum of nature.
> I don't believe the digital revolution "did this to us". I think it's simply a mirror and and amplifier what was already there.
You saying the same thing and its exact contrary.
Of course it's always been there. That's not the point. The point is that the so-called revolution/empowerment is promoting the worst out of us collectively and individually, instead of taming the beast, and helping the best.
Taming the beast, the destructive human passions, for the common good, which is the very point of "civilisation".
Edit:
> and we're realising there is a problem
It's been thousands of years we've realised, we know there is a problem. People have discoursed/written about it so much in the past.
Yea, but if we're going to follow the logic of the article, the Harris Poll’s Alienation Index had American alienation at 29% in 1966. Car culture and the general structure of most towns were already mature at that point. I think the reliant of blaming car culture in America is a red herring to point away from not just the digital revolution but also the 90s media blitz. Late 80s and especially the 90s saw a real rapid change in the way we consume just about anything and everything. The VHS tape really came into power in the 90s, meaning most people didn't have to go out and sit in a large room of strangers to see hollywood movies anymore.
While I do understand (and personally do like) places being close together so I can walk around. Don't pretend that city life is the perfect solution. There's the Rat Park experiment that showed utopian cities are not the answer and it plays out in the human psyche as well. People who live in cities are not necessarily happier than those in rural communities. There's a few NGOs that do happiness surveys across the globe. While living in a city may make you richer and maybe even technically healthier in some aspects, very few are happier than their rural counterparts.
Just saying, it's definitely more complicated than just "car culture".
This is a little aside from the topic at hand but do you have any links or literature to expound on the 90s media blitz you mention? I was born in 87 and so grew up with only a faint impression of the 80s through what was lingering into the 90s. From talking to people older than me and looking at various media I can't help feeling like society took a hard turn in the 80s and through-out the 90s to where we are today. I've largely thought that it was due to a combination of technology and corporations/consumerism but I've never read or heard anyone else make that link until your comment.
Well, I think it's probably that we live in an economy that has been exponentially expanding for centuries. Workers are producing more, information is flowing faster, and everything is just moving more quickly.
I think what we have is the result of trying to optimize for sales and profits. You must always sell more this quarter than last quarter. It's just picked up, year by year over the decades.
Besides, I've always heard that society took a hard turn after WWII. All those factories had to keep producing something, so they reconfigured to producing consumer goods.
Oh, sure, I mainly meant I felt how isolating car culture is, too.
I pretty much have to live somewhat near a reasonably busy running trail. Sometimes, I think I go running just to see other human faces even if we have no interaction. It was especially true when I had an 100% remote work job.
I like to live near cool hangouts in the city where people regularly walk by, not because I leave the house that often, but because as a classic introvert I feed on other people's happy vibes.
Yea, I'm not picking on you about the car culture thing (sorry if it seemed so). I'm just getting irked by it because I've been seeing that comment so often the past year as "America bad because America likes cars, car culture bad". There's just way many to these issues than just cars.
And, I agree, maybe too much reliance of cars in this country. I can totally agree we should focus on increasing the walk-ability of many communities. But, you can't deny having the ability to say at any moment, "I feel like going 30 miles somewhere, at my choosing and route" is a bad thing. I've been through 3 different public transit systems, (Portland, Seattle and Denver). Portland was the best out of the three. But knowing you are wasting 15 minutes waiting for public transit, then another 10-15 minutes of time to get there due to stops and general traffic (25-30 min) for essentially a 10 minute car ride... yea... It's great in plenty of situations, but is annoying as hell in just as many. The fact that my mobility is not dictated by someone else, yes, to me, is worth the extra monthly cost in comparison of daily use public transit tickets.
Yeah, it's a backlash from all us millenials who felt trapped growing up in the suburbs and moved to the city at the first chance we got. It's important to have nuanced views on things, though.
I get that, I'm 32, a millenial as well. I tried the urban lifestyle because... well, I guess I was supposed to. It was fun at first, and then I hated it. Three different cities and, just not for me. I like having a backyard (I like to garden) but I also don't like having to pay two to three times the price for living.
I don't need to hit downtown everyday. I'd rather invite friends over to grill/drink. While owning a car might be "more expensive" than using just public transit, the general lifestyle of not living urban is far cheaper. That and if we all pass out on the floor, it's not frowned upon when at someone's house. It is when you're at a bar. It's sort of like when people in some of the big Cali cities complain it's impossible to own a home or save enough money. No, where you live is terrible. There was an NPR story a year or so ago about a couple selling their home in san fran, then buying a bigger home in cash in Michigan (I think), paying off some debt and still had a savings left over, which they never could do before. They took "pay cuts" compared to their old jobs, but they were living far easier, with a savings in comparison to cost of living.
Personally, it took me way too long to realize salaries are not created equal depending on location. 60k in a place like San Fran or Seattle, does not equal 60k in let's say Tampa, FL. You can live far better in Tampa on 60k than you ever could in Seattle. That's something I think a lot of people aren't quite picking up on. There's a cost/benefit to location. You want to live urban? There are things you have to sacrifice (like a savings account unless you work finance or make a shit ton of cash). Don't want to sacrifice that? Then you can't live there. Simple as that. There are other places to live... with trees. I like trees.
Also, it's quiet away from the city. I get far better sleep these days.
This has nothing to do with “millennials”. See, e.g., the Rush song “Subdivisions”, which describes exactly that dynamic, and was recorded before any millennials were even born yet.
Common good and individual freedoms are often opposed, as it's very unlikely for us to succeed in taming just the destructive sides of human passions, without taking away a bit of creative and positive passions and freedoms too. Societies always oscillate between the two, and unfortunately it seems that we're now past the first half and in the phase where people get scared into giving away individual freedoms in exchange for more safety and sense of control.
I get what you are saying but this is a very narrow and uninformed view American life. Americans don't spend all their time in cars for god's sake. The digital age aside, there is and has been plenty of socialization at home, in neighborhoods, at church, and at the grocery store.
There is little socialization at home - when's the last time (outside Christmas and Turkey Day) most families hosted a large gathering?
Hypermobility in the service of jobs has broken a lot of that cohesion. You usually don't live next door to your parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts any more. This gets worse the more urban the area is - rural areas still have some of that cohesion.
Neighborhood socialization? Not in any apartment complex I've ever seen. Walk down the floor, eyes straight, avoid even basic salutations. It's slightly better in suburbia, but not much.
In the grocery store? Have you been to a large grocery store? It's not socialization just because there's a lot of people. What meaningful interactions are there in a grocery store?
This leaves church. And as it turns out, that's not everybody's cup of tea.
American's may not spend all their time in the car. They do spend exorbitant amounts of time in their care. They do have much less opportunity to socially engage than most Europeans experience. What social experience there is often needs large quantities of alcohol - and while I haven't seen any studies on the subject, I'm still holding the belief that at least a good chunk of that is due to needing to deal with the anxiety of an extremely uncommon situation.
As I said above, many of these factors are somewhat lesser in more rural communities, but they experience a large flight of the younger demographic towards cities, curtailing cross-generational interaction.
And that's not just an "uninformed view". I've spent several decades inside and outside the US, and seen a few cultures in the process - and that view holds. But let's dismiss that as anecdote, too, and look at actual data, time spent visiting friends per day[1]. The US is way down that list.
It's very likely car culture is far from the only reason for that, but the US is a country that seems fairly isolating.
> when's the last time (outside Christmas and Turkey Day) most families hosted a large gathering?
Very very often. Maybe every month? And large neighborhood get togethers at least every week. Perhaps you are overly generalizing from your experiences. Large families/neighborhoods that meet regularly are not a foreign concept in the US. Although HN probably caters to the sort of people who do not go to these things.
> There is little socialization at home - when's the last time (outside Christmas and Turkey Day) most families hosted a large gathering?
Can you support this assertion as a blanket statement? I don't see much evidence of this in my own personal experience. I grant that it may be the case in certain areas and groups, but across the board? I'm not seeing it.
"Neighborhood socialization? Not in any apartment complex I've ever seen. Walk down the floor, eyes straight, avoid even basic salutations."
I recently moved into an apartment in manhattan, and I know my neighbours, and smile to them and they smile to me. One even let me borrow their toolbox.
No, it’s probably just a result of local variation. Some buildings or low-density neighbourhoods are super friendly, some buildings or low-density neighbourhoods are unfriendly. There’s a lot of reasons going on, it’s dependent on individuals.
In super-friendly neighbourhoods I’ve found it’s often one person who’s doing all the work to keep everyone connected.
Not OP, it was a bit of caricature I believe. But there are stark differences he also mentioned - many times in US I couldn't walk to a store, unless walking on the road and risking getting hit / stopped by police. Some shops I wanted to visit simply didn't have pedestrian access at all. Or stuff like the need to walk 45 minutes in a big U shape to store that is 1km away. Replace store with any other destination.
This reflects a bit different reality in US. You might not even see it anymore, but for many Europeans its a bit shocking when first encountered.
It's disorienting when I visit family back in Texas each year after living in Germany for the past 15, and especially now that I've given up our second car because I realize I wasn't driving enough for it to make sense, it really irritates me that I have to have a rental car the whole time I'm visiting.
Since I'm a respectable-looking, middle-aged white lady, I just get stopped and politely asked if I need a ride or to borrow their phone when I'm walking between shopping centers. It's not as universally pleasant for people who do not look like me. My sister-in-law thinks I'm nuts for wanting to walk a couple hundred yards to the other side of a large shopping center rather than get back in the car and drive there.
What you are describing has only been my experience in suburbia. Major cities are a lot more walkable as far as getting to a grocery store or convenience shop or whatever. I'm currently in Chicago and the entire city has a grid layout, no weird U shaped routes anywhere and every street has a sidewalk for pedestrians.
> What you are describing has only been my experience in suburbia. Major cities are a lot more walkable as far as getting to a grocery store or convenience shop or whatever.
The problem of course, is that almost all American cities outside of a small handful are effectively a tiny downtown core surrounded by what amounts to suburbs. Only a few cities such as NYC, Boston, Chicago, etc. really qualify as "city living" in the sense you write above - being able to quickly and easily take care of your day to day needs within the neighborhood and thus resulting in a wildly different lifestyle/culture than the suburbs.
I've lived in a number of places, Chicago is where I currently call home. The lifestyle of living 2 miles from downtown Chicago vs. the Chicago suburbs is a night and day difference. Living 2 miles from downtown in Minneapolis is effectively no different than living 30 miles out in the exurbs, even with sidewalks and grid layouts.
As I get older I see "suburbs" to be a lifestyle more than a description of urban density. While not perfect, my quick rule of thumb is that if the average person requires a car to effectively participate in society - it's a suburb, not a city.
The more time I spend living in European cities really drives this point home to me. Sprawl has totally, completely, and irreversibly changed American culture for better or worse in very deep and subtle ways.
I was fortunate to grow up during the last-gasp era of print media where tabloids had their place and were distinguished from the reputable periodicals and the blossoming online world by the topics and perspectives they portrayed.
Tabloid reporting is now the standard low quality information diet they choose to feed the masses (MSM) and it is only in small groups (isolated, segmented, segregated, seperated) do many find and share the best of humanities intangibles in an environment where data integrity is accountable and desirable (amongst other things).
It takes a special something to misalign desperation with motivation as a social experiment, but its just as perverse as it sounds. Its funny how that all worked out for the 20th century.
You are 100% right that the analog world is a cesspool of good intentions, but instead of the uneducated having access to the world of the educated on the Internet (ie. information super highway), the reality/irony is that the educated are getting bombarded and inundated (force fed) an uneducated narritive 24/7 (ala super capacity public sewage pipe).
We should all take a moment of pause and laugh about that. This bodes well for the comedy that is AI that is yet to happen.
I think the medium shapes the message and we now have a lot of mediums that people use that incentivize trite, shallow, negative, outrageous, and even simply false information over other information.
I've been in plenty of conversations where someone has said literally "I disagree" to an idea or opinion being forwarded. It's not done rudely and it seems perfectly normal to say you disagree with something someone said as long as you have the consideration to explain why and be open to them responding to your opinion. I would find it more weaselly, disingenuous, or even offensive if someone didn't agree with something but pretended they did and then began underhandedly attacking the position.
You can do it in class when you have been given a chance to reply to a direct question. It's less often that people know what they want to say straight off, there is a time and a place for it though.
>If we were not on an anonymous website, we would probably not start the conversation with “I disagree.”.
This reminds me of an Abraham Lincoln story (I think I read it in How to Win Friends and Influence People)...anyway Lincoln used to pen anonymous writings attacking people, and in one instance he was found out and challenged to a duel. The men squared off with long swords but called a truce prior to the start...Lincoln never penned a negative thing about a person again.
Not necessarily, and that is the interesting thing about culture. Almost everything is offensive or extremely offensive somewhere in the world. Americans learn this when certain free-speech activities prompt riots in the Middle East.
I feel that the readers interpretation of what you say change it more on the net, even if you write those things (and more), it's often the case that people will misread or misrepresent what you say. Especially if the gist of what you say is against somekind of group think e.g. cars pollute, public health care is robbery, fascims is good.
Further I believe you get the "I disagree" on platforms where you know one another.
"I disagree" is actually a very polite and distinguished way to start off a response argument.
You don't really see it on sites/forums other than where users have some degree of commonality and mutual respect, sort of like Usenet of old.
Alternatives:
1) Yes, but from the perspective of the user.... (beating about the bush)
2) You are retarded and probably shouldn't breed (we know what forums harbour this communication style)
Gentlewomen and men can disagree and still keep talking gently!
> If we were not on an anonymous website, we would probably not start the conversation with “I disagree.”.
What leads you to think that? This has been a common way to respond in substantive real-world discussions for my entire life, even predating the internet.
"I disagree" is not, after all, some sort of attack or insult.
I start a replies with "I disagree" in person quite a bit. When people routinely use the phrases you listed I assume they are being deceptive or manipulative.
At least for me I feel like it sets an expectation.
I disagree.
Here is why.
Rather than someone just rambling on about something that might be just talking outloud and you miss what they think actually the difference is or that there is one.
You could say that it was “already there” when reality tv started in the 90s. The normalisation of attention whoring was quiet but universal ever since and Sociopathic behavior became an aspiration. Social erosion is a natural outcome of empowering the individual. social media identities do replace the old collective identities — there is only a finite amount of attention that they both share. This is not some temporary crisis either, its the new human condition , and friction occurs because our political systems have not adapted to the new realities.
> You could say that it was “already there” when reality tv started in the 90s.
And those reality tv stars were aping the behavior of the pop stars that came before them. The whole 20th century was focused on moving towards individual gratification.
> Contrast that with visiting a city like Kiev where, in the evening after work, the city parks are filled with families enjoying the sunset (when the weather is warm)
Or any large American city with residential urban neighborhoods? I don't think it's fair to compare a European capital with nameless American suburbs. Thinking back to one of my favorite apartments I lived in Chicago, I had: an independent grocery store 2 blocks away, numerous small locally owned shops, bakeries, and restaurants on the main commercial thoroughfare, and large park (~1/2 sq mi.) less than a mile away, filled with families on summer evenings.
There is a stark difference between the lifestyle in American and, say, European cities. There are less public places or specific establishments for people to hang out. Sidewalks are small and restaurants rarely offer seating outside where you can just people-watch. Few pedestrian zones, and if there are, they are frequently tourism hell-holes full of chains.
I cannot speak for rural life, which is likely extremely different, but in cities in the US everything is designed to extract money out of you and every public place is heavily regulated (for example, the concept of a public park or beach "closing" at dusk is a baffling concept for me).
This is merely an impression by me though, so take it with a grain of salt.
I'm sure there is a lifestyle difference, but I don't think it's as great as everyone seems to think it is. Granted, I've never lived in a European city but I grew up in the third largest American city and my experience doesn't match the preconceptions of American living I keep hearing about. In fact, in my experience, those preconceptions are a far more accurate portrayal of American suburban living.
Internet adoption was fastest in the US because we had the disposable income to afford it, and because future leaders attending elite colleges were given free access to it.
Some tools are better for some things than others. Our digital tools included.
An extreme example is the Simpsons episode where Homer buys a gun, and then when Lisa asks him to get her basketball down from the garage roof, he shoots it. It falls to the ground, deflated, and she says, with a sad irony, "thanks".
I have spent significant time being car dependent and not owning a car at all, and I don't think it had any effect on my levels of isolation. Walking around strangers didn't make me feel less isolated than driving around them.
Also since when did the US not have city parks filled with people?
I quit social media after divorce, recognizing that no one could have had any idea we were struggling as a couple. I found our projected persona to be sharp-edged and inhuman. Such tools create more isolation that they appear to alleviate.
Sharp edged is the right phrase! I used to think appearance could get you somewhere until all the preening and signalling behaviour went online. Now it is too sharpened to be useful except for selling stuff. There's some at the tip of the blade making hay while the sun shines, with a lot of people getting cut on the way down.
Yes. All that aggressively postured success creates feelings of alienation, not only from your friends but the whole society. The people doing it don't understand how it looks on the outside. To rediscover the joy of people, I had to leave those places they built.
> I don't believe the digital revolution "did this to us". I think it's simply a mirror and and amplifier what was already there.
I believe the tools accompagning the digital revolution enabled alienation and isolation.
The more I think about your point the less it makes sense.
According to your rationale: Because we loved reading books, with the advent of TV it was foreseeable that we will spend a sizeable portion of our time watching dead dump TV shows?
Using your analogy you cock the ox behind the plow
I'm not sure which parts of America you visited. Down south, I regularly interact with strangers in public, and occasionally make new friends that way. On the other hand, in Europe, it's always seemed that others don't appreciate being bothered. I'll admit that here, the rise of air pods et al. have increased the isolation in normal public places, but people still seem more outgoing.
>Meanwhile the alienation or isolation... as a European, what freaks me out every time I'm in the US is the dependence on cars for everything. That in many places it's not possible to walk to the grocery and get fresh air... That you're in a permanent state of semi-isolation, breathing air-conditioned oxygen with the only human contact being with people that are paid to smile. Contrast that with visiting a city like Kiev where, in the evening after work, the city parks are filled with families enjoying the sunset (when the weather is warm).
You realize that it's possible to drive or take a bus to a park, right?
I live in a bit more of the country where yeah everyone is dependent on cars.. and in the summer people are out enjoying the beaches, hiking, swimming, boating.
However this is indeed the internet, where it's a requirement to bash the US at every opportunity, so carry on.
On social media, for example, we get to see the projections of what people want to be and the underlying darker sides of their personality (narcissism, selfishness, etc). This was always there but latent or hidden... stuff that happened behind closed doors that only families knew about. Now it's public...
Meanwhile the alienation or isolation... as a European, what freaks me out every time I'm in the US is the dependence on cars for everything. That in many places it's not possible to walk to the grocery and get fresh air... That you're in a permanent state of semi-isolation, breathing air-conditioned oxygen with the only human contact being with people that are paid to smile. Contrast that with visiting a city like Kiev where, in the evening after work, the city parks are filled with families enjoying the sunset (when the weather is warm).
I've have the theory that Internet adoption has always been fastest in the US, compared the the rest of the world, because it's the only way to get any kind of "real" connection to other people. The driver - loneliness - was always there, the product of car dependence, television and an entrepreneurial culture that tends to want to monetize any kind of human interaction, even friends (Amway, pyramid marketing).
Ultimately I think it's a good thing, that this stuff is becoming visible and we're realising there is a problem. That's the first step to find the solution.