The fundamental force behind this is individualism. Every single technological innovation has made it easier for the individual to function better alone. Every societal change has emphasized the individual right over the (real or perceived) benefit of the collective. This trend seems to accelerate and absolutely nothing that is happening in western society even remotely suggests a possible turnaround.
You can take action, like get a new hobby that is just an okay activity but the people are great. Work on becoming a kick-ass friend yourself and cook for people and all that good stuff. But you'll do all that against massive societal forces. A few decades back you'd join one of the few organizations or clubs that happened in your area, and instantly be in a reliable community (if you adapt a little - let's ignore all the downsides for a moment). Friends would hook you up with a partner who's as nerdy as you. When I was young random strangers had regularly great conversations on trains. A city street was a village, you knew everyone.
I feel like it's the opposite. This was caused by the destruction of individualism.
When people are individuals, you know the name of your butcher and which farm your wheat came from. Now it all comes from the collective and you can't participate in the process without being a drone. Working for Walmart is not the same as operating your own farm stand. You lack autonomy because decisions are made collectively by corporations and legislators, and that makes everything bland, homogeneous and fungible.
I found the parent and your comment really insightful. I think they are right that technology has aided an individual in accomplishing things they would need others for, and one can more easily stand alone. I think you're absolutely right that the global perspective of online social media has made it difficult to build an identify that is your own. There are countless examples of others doing any interest you could to a better degree than yourself. It leads to a lot of self-doubt and isolation. I'm very happy to have the online resources we have today and would choose the muck of Facebook/Twitter/Youtube/etc over not having them any day of the week. However, I do recognize it was easier for me to take pride in my own ability and grow my own expertise in an area in "true isolation", disconnected from online humanity. Online groups to share your interests with - to me - do not feel as intimate as what some would turn to church or a community center for back in the 80s/90s.
We are alone and not special. I'm trying to explore the advantages of that. I certainly find myself in less drama in a community I can readily disconnect from.
As an anecdote: I had a friend in high school who regularly said he wanted 'to be remembered', that his greatest goal in life was to have his name be recorded in history. I thought he was somewhat arrogant, but he truly wanted to become an Alexander the Great figure.
I'm considering it my own goal to be someone forgettable. I want to find comfort/success without recognition.
Artisanal products are so expensive because we make them so.
By default if you buy something in a store, add 5% to the value by improving it and want to sell it on eBay, they'll charge sales tax on the full sale price even though you already paid sales tax on 95% of that. To avoid the double taxation you have to file paperwork, which most people don't know how to do, and pay filing fees, which eat into your already-meager profits.
If you want to sell things over the internet yourself, or accept digital payments in person, how do you avoid paying a fraction of the sale price that may exceed your margin to some payment intermediary that may capriciously choose to cut you off at any time with no recourse?
If you want to incorporate, your annual fee is the same one paid by Apple, but e.g. $500 is a lot more to you than it is to them.
Keep adding things like that up and individual-scale operations are no longer viable without charging thick margins and thereby having only the affluent as customers, which is what happened.
Artisanal products are expensive because human work is expensive. You can either have a machine that produces a million bland identical tea cups a day for a cost of a dollar per cup or you can have an expert potter produce two dozen artisanal tea cups a day. Even if the potter works for minimum wage and materials are free it's several times more expensive.
If human labor is so expensive then why do unskilled laborers have such trouble making a living?
You're ignoring the middle ground, because that's the thing that was destroyed. The expert potter is still in business selling bespoke products to millionaires.
It's the one who might have done it for 15% more than the mass produced product who is gone, because we added on top of that so much bureaucratic overhead that the final price ends up being 100%+ more instead of 15% more and that exceeds what ordinary customers are willing to pay.
> It's the one who might have done it for 15% more than the mass produced product who is gone, because we added on top of that so much bureaucratic overhead that the final price ends up being 100%+ more instead of 15% more and that exceeds what ordinary customers are willing to pay.
Why would you buy a product for 15% more, unless there's a compelling reason to do so? The mass produced ceramics are high quality, durable, come in a variety of shapes, colors, sizes, etc. People buy hand-made ceramics for the aesthetics, and to have something that's more unique.
I think you greatly underestimate how much cheaper mass produced goods are than artisan made goods. Op's choice of ceramics is really good. Machines can produce thousands of plates in the amount of time it takes an artisan potter to make dozens. The potter's source of clay may be limited, or they may have to pay a lot more because they buy in smaller quantities. They have to pay more for transportation for the same reason. They have to pay more for distribution for the same reason.
Bureaucratic overhead may play a part in this, but overall it's a small one that gets lost in the scale of mass production.
The nonexpert potter can't produce two dozen tea cups a day, driving up unit costs even further. I tried, it takes me at least two hours to make a crappy tea cup.
You don't need to incorporate to sell artisanal products. If you want to register a fictitious name for business purposes then you can do that for free or very cheap in most states.
You probably want limited liability if you're selling edible(/quaffable) goods though. At least in the UK, it seems to be common for markets to require it of stall applicants, along with business insurance in excess of £x (looked into it a while ago on a fanciful whim).
If you base everything on pure monetary value we're absolutely rocking it! If you start talking about quality of life, sustainability, mental health, ethics, &c. it's a whole other story.
You’re talking about a different type of effect where corporations killed all the small players and that’s very true but has nothing to do with the ideological individualism, at least not directly but could as well indirectly but let’s be clear what we’re discussing and if they’re intertwined let’s make that explicit. Individualism discussed here leads people to lonelinese and communities to vanish around them..
The issue with the comment I replied to is that it takes individualism to mean something like isolation, which is a straw man when that position has no advocates.
Individualism is something more like individual autonomy, which is in no way incompatible with individuals entering into voluntary associations with other members of the community -- as long as no one is forcing them to. But that's the thing we've destroyed through regulatory overhead and vertically integrated monopolies which force people into associations with entities they'd prefer not to be associated with and deprive them of their autonomy.
Individuals didn't have problems achieving viable scale before collectives started imposing more fixed costs on everything than individual-scale operations could sustain.
>The fundamental force behind this is individualism. Every single technological innovation has made it easier for the individual to function better alone. Every societal change has emphasized the individual right over the (real or perceived) benefit of the collective. This trend seems to accelerate and absolutely nothing that is happening in western society even remotely suggests a possible turnaround.
I've long captured this by saying that a society based around the individual is a contradiction.
> I've long captured this by saying that a society based around the individual is a contradiction.
I don’t personally seen the contradiction here. Mutualism is orthogonal in many ways to individualism. Even the lone hermit had parents, acquired the basic skills form somewhere, and probably uses some tool(s) made by others.
Individualists can take on any number of voluntary social obligations. The ability to exit destructive obligations is a safety valve, and makes the carrying out of those obligations more meaningful in some ways.
Narratives, customs, culture, and shared interests all bind people regardless of their place on the scale of individualism to collectivism.
Believe it or not, big cities have pretty good quality of life and people who live there do actually have friends and social lives.
I grew up in the suburbs, and I've lived in big cities, urban areas in medium sized cities, and exurbs as well.
The cities aren't as different as non-urban people think. But also, they're better in a lot of the ways that most people would expect: more things to do, better food, better shopping. The only real downsides in my mind are less affordable real estate and higher local particle pollution.
By far my least favorite lifestyle of those choices was in the exurbs/rural areas. Incredibly boring, isolated, and it's not as quiet and tranquil as one might expect (you're probably near a highway where jake brakes are allowed or a 55 MPH country road).
Believe it or not, city areas seem to have better quality park space (because what most people who aren't into hardcore nature consider to be "a nice park" is usually quite heavily designed and built).
There are certain job occupations that only work when done at scale.
The ones I can point most directly to are service, retail, and healthcare. These need population densities in order to be efficient.
Unless you are looking at the classic old general store (or in the midwest - you do all your grocery shopping at Kwik Trip - the gas station), it is difficult to have a grocery store outside a city or town of sufficient size. Note that the prices and variety in the smaller stores are more than if you are able to go to a large store in a city.
Likewise, if you want to eat at a restaurant - sure, there are some that are in the "this is a restaurant located a 10 minute drive away from where you can see the window of your neighbor from your window". The norm for this, however, is in a town or city.
And then there's healthcare. Rural hospitals are failing. You don't find dentists on country roads.
These things (and more) 'conspire' to make it so that the services they offer are more efficiently done in a city and the ones in a city can out compete the ones that are located further away from others.
> But a different picture emerges when you look at per capita consumption rates — cities have the lowest annual energy use per household (85.3 million Btu) and household member (33.7 million Btu) of all four categories. Rural areas consume about 95 million Btu per household each year, followed by towns (102 million) and suburbs (109 million).
And this then leads to that the jobs for the sectors of the economy where you need to physically be present somewhere (and that is a significant portion of them) are more efficient in a city. Coupled with the more efficent use of land and power with the city, this brings down the costs and maximizes the amount that a person makes... if they live in a city (all other things being equal).
The vaste majority of high paying jobs can be done remotely. I'm referring to lawyers, programmers, accountants, etc...
Rural areas are failing because we continue to extract wealth out of them. You actually get right up against talking about it in your wall of text but then just abruptly lose the thought.
In short, equity. In longer form, a lot of people don't have the chance to leave their towns and that is in part due to opportunity, another way of looking at it is that extracting people out of their communities and consolidating them in cities isn't very equitable. Historically we've relied on colleges to give people a ticket out of where they come from. In the long term that does real damage to those communities. Instead of building them up, using that newly found prosperity, that wealth gets consolidated in cities. If we let people stay near their families, or wherever they prefer to stay, it gives people choice and creates a much more sustainable economic environment.
I think you misunderstand. Their families are already in cities. (And "cities" includes suburban areas)
This isn't 1800's America where most families are on rural subsistence farms.
People can choose to stay wherever they want, but the networks that make up the economy have to physically exist. Factories, warehouses, etc...look at a satellite view of the Chicago River from Goose Island down to Midway airport. It's a bunch of physical industrial infrastructure: warehouses, factories, railyards, etc. Do you propose these all instead spread out and get located in random middle-of-nowhere places where there are no employees, shops, restaurants, schools, etc?
Even data centers need to be near population centers. Why put us-east-1 near Roanoke and Lynchburg, VA instead of Roy, New Mexico?
We can't all just become remote knowledge worker hermits. Heck, we all saw how terrible remote learning is for children with the pandemic. [1]
My family is not in a city, I do not misunderstand. A lot more than farmers live in rural areas.
The kind of take you have isn't unusual for HN though. Most people from HN have spent their entire lives in cities or suburbs, so their empathy is short.
As a numerical fact, over 80% of people in the US live in cities and suburbs.
I am going to go back to your original comment: you think we should change the fact that most jobs are in cities and suburbs.
I’m just being realistic here: that is not possible. The human population dispersing from cities and suburbs doesn’t make physical sense. You wouldn’t live in a rural area anymore if Manhattan decided to move out and go out to towns like yours. Your town would turn into a city in its own right.
Mumbai has 54,000 people per square mile. Texas has about 110 people per square mile. If Mumbai has a similar density to Texas, it would be roughly the size of Arizona, just for one city that only represents 1% of the population of India.
The fact that most people concentrate themselves into denser areas makes your rural lifestyle possible in the first place.
I am not sure what I’m supposed to have empathy for here. I never said that rural people are dumb or bad or that nobody should live in rural areas. I have plenty of empathy for humans in general. I personally don’t prefer rural life but I also don’t have any negative feelings toward anyone who wants to live that way.
I’m just being realistic: concentrated areas where humans live in communities has been our reality since nomadic hunter-gathering was replaced by agriculture.
> I’m just being realistic here: that is not possible. The human population dispersing from cities and suburbs doesn’t make physical sense. You wouldn’t live in a rural area anymore if Manhattan decided to move out and go out to towns like yours. Your town would turn into a city in its own right.
Good that you can read between the lines. That is the goal. Bring prosperity to these areas rather than extracting from them so regularly.
> The fact that most people concentrate themselves into denser areas makes your rural lifestyle possible in the first place.
Again, another HN fallacy. Rural is not a "lifestyle". Most people don't just move to a place where there's no ambulance services out of a "lifestyle choice". That line of thinking on HN as a default needs a swift and sharp death. Usually it's economic situations. If you start to drift away from the federal definition of rural, which is incredibly specific and not accurate to the average Americans definition, it includes a lot of small towns and cities. There's a lot of overlap as to why people live in those places and, again, it's generally not lifestyle.
> I am not sure what I’m supposed to have empathy for here. I never said that rural people are dumb or bad or that nobody should live in rural areas. I have plenty of empathy for humans in general. I personally don’t prefer rural life but I also don’t have any negative feelings toward anyone who wants to live that way.
Empathy isn't just a trait you have or don't have. Not only are there different kinds of empathy, but humans practice empathy selectively based on experience (largely). I'm saying it sounds like you lack perspective based on the things you've said, which often equates to a lack of empathy. Now, if you were raised in a city or suburb and have never left then that explains it. That doesn't make you awful or anything bad, at least in my view, if that's what you need to hear.
> I’m just being realistic: concentrated areas where humans live in communities has been our reality since nomadic hunter-gathering was replaced by agriculture.
Those tribes were how big? Nowhere near the density of tech cities or any city with the appropriate concentration of jobs I referenced. My idea is to spread the population out more and make better use of land and resources.
Cities have much lower standard of living because no one can afford shelter. There’s too much traffic which means you can’t go anywhere except walking range. So there may actually be equal or less to do in the city simply because your range is so short. And crime is huge problem too, now more than ever
I used to think the same think having lived in the suburbs my whole life, but once I moved to a city (San Francisco), I came to see that while there was certainly truth to the media hooplah, a lot of it was just hype designed to polarize us.
I know you're not making those statements in good faith, but I'll still push back against the absurd generalizations. Of the top 20 biggest cities in America, what you said only applies to a couple of them at most.
Of course, crime, housing costs and traffic (caused in large part by bad urban design) are real issues in American cities to varying degrees. But it's not as if all cities are lawless slums without any way to move about.
I'll just wear myself out if I keep letting myself respond to feelings-based comments like yours with facts, like how NYC is below the national average in crime safety [1] and well below national average on obesity. [2]
I shouldn't exert myself pointing out that the average cost of a vehicle is about $5000 per year [3], which costs a lot more than the unlimited miles you can travel with a $75/month bus/train pass in Chicago. [4]
It would probably blow the minds of car-dwellers to find out that it only takes 20 minutes to walk a mile. [5]
You know in cities there's trains, buses, and cabs, right?
Especially in a city like NYC, essentially everything you need is within a mile. I live in Tokyo right now, and everything I need for daily life is within a quarter of a mile. I can get basically anywhere in the city in 30 minutes.
Tokyo doesn't really have a downtown, and what I described works for most of Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Sapporo. I think it mostly covers all 5 boroughs of NYC.
I lived without a car in SF for 10 years and I think it covers that city as well. A lot of international cities work the same way.
This is an american problem and an american choice that started with white flight in the 50s and a lack of investment into public transit to make it you don't need a car in the city. Many other countries do cities correctly, for cheaper, and far more social order. Most american cities are also not cities, except maybe the grandfathered in choice of NYC and SF somewhat.
Big cities are much more efficient - especially for the single person - than living further away.
Personal vehicles scale up to their passenger count. The single person with a car in the suburbs or rural effectively pays 4x more for the car than the family of four.
How do you get rid of the car? Live somewhere where public transportation or walking is the more efficient means of transportation - larger cities do this better than smaller ones.
Many aspects of managing a house are best done with more people. I've got a list of repairs that need at least three hands to do - but get put off because I've only got two. It would be much easier to live in a nice apartment closer to the urban center of the city.
Every other utility scales that way - more efficient to run power lines, roads, internet, water and sewage to single buildings that house multiple people than single houses kilometers from each other.
Big cities feel easier than ever to avoid the individualism trap in the US. Likely they have SOME public transportation, attract similar minded individuals, have vibrant social scenes involving food/drink and so make it easier to find friends and keep them.
> But you'll do all that against massive societal forces.
What forces exactly?
> A few decades back you'd join one of the few organizations or clubs that happened in your area, and instantly be in a reliable community (if you adapt a little - let's ignore all the downsides for a moment).
I’ve joined two different clubs. One 7 years ago and one this year. Both have resulted in good friends, outings, and even trips to other states. There are more people who want to see more of me than I have time for.
> Friends would hook you up with a partner who's as nerdy as you.
I met my wife at a friend’s party 5 years ago.
> When I was young random strangers had regularly great conversations on trains. A city street was a village, you knew everyone.
I know my neighbors on both sides and across the street, and routinely have conversations with people I meet when I’m walking my dog.
> That is not coming back anytime soon.
I don’t think it’s gone anywhere. As far as I can see there are far more groups of people doing interesting things than I have time for. Mostly I’m turning down opportunities.
I have similar experiences as the top-comment. Moved to US in 2017, bought a house in suburbs of Seattle.. have great relationship with neighbors.. meet new people through kids' school. I went to houston for a short period and met some interesting people through meetup groups. I think some of it is just individual leanings - you need to adjust to be part of a community.
Exactly. I also have some enduring friendships - the longest having now lasted 14 years or so with people I met at meetup groups.
A crucial point that gets brought up on HN time and time again, is that you need to let yourself develop interests that are outside of work, and then you can meet people who share those interests.
If you ask me, it's because humans fucking suck to be around. Myself and yourself included, along with everyone else.
Marrying? Fuck that; pun intended. Friends? I can count the number of true friends I've ever had with one hand. Co-workers and comrades? Ultimately, we're just there to make ends meet. Societal collective (eg: neighborhoods, villages, towns)? Well, we're here talking about this because such things have become pieces of history.
I crave solitude, even if in practice that solitude relies on a handful of people and organizations that enable it (eg: supermarkets, gas stations, power company). Interacting with people fucking sucks balls, the less of it the better I say. I'd sooner deal with machines or our fellow animal peers.
The way I see it, back in the old days people tolerated being around each other because that was a hard requirement to long-term survival. But that is no longer the case, and given that relinquishment and freedom, I for one am going to take full advantage of that freedom and enjoy something my ancestors couldn't.
Of course, this also means I won't have any descendants to enjoy what I enjoy (or enjoy what I couldn't), but that's none of my concern because I don't care about leaving behind offspring in the first place. Individualism baby, everyone including Mother Nature can go pound sand.
Maybe this glib cynacism has something to do with it. The world, and the people in it, aren't all that great. Both can be cruel. Maybe we have to try to see the good in it all.
* People are two-faced. There is a distinct lack of sincerity in any human interaction compared to interacting with literally anything else. I know a machine is being honest with me, I know a dog or a cat is being honest with me, and I know a human is being dishonest with me.
* The needs and desires of one will not align with those of another. Groups of people must compromise, and compromises leave noone happy. This modern age of people being manipulated into division and strife by the bigger powers-that-be make this even worse.
* The desires of some to wield power leads to awkward and harmful social dynamics. Best to not get involved at all. For individualists, this is perhaps one of the biggest sticking points to socializing. Outside of professional obligations, nobody likes being told what to do.
* People need sufficient time alone to remain mentally healthy, even those who are mega extroverts. The problem is, most people do not understand this and become nuisances in life. Worse is when certain social arrangements (eg: a family) make distancing oneself practically impossible.
I think these are all good points, but they don't really apply to people categorically; but rather to some people in some situations.
For example, if half of the group wants pizza, and the other half wants BBQ, a compromise might make everyone happier if they value eating together over eating their preferred meal apart.
I am posting this as a person born and raised in a rather small community. I personally do not yearn for the good old days when 'everyone knew everyone' and there were things to do together. We did things together, because of geographical convenience and random chance. We had no other options so we did kids things. Granted, I was lucky to be included in that particular group, because they all were much, much smarter than me, but despite relatively pleasant memories, I enjoy my current situation much more.
<< When I was young random strangers had regularly great conversations on trains.
I accept that being extrovert and/or social is(was?) the default mode in polite society, but I think we can agree that not everyone is built the same way. I certainly do not talk to strangers bar some unusual turn of events that requires cooperation.
<< Every single technological innovation has made it easier for the individual to function better alone.
Is that a bad thing? We can now individually decide the life we actually want to lead with minimal interplay between various mediators that would have been mandatory only decades ago. Should we not be celebrating this as a tremendous achievement of humanity as a whole?
It's not just leave-me-alone individualism. It's this new, belligerent "Toxic Individualism" that's taken hold, supported by recent technological change (such as social media) and recent political/cultural change (many examples). A regular individualist simply prefers to operate on their own, outside of society and ignore collective activities. This new breed of individualism is more focused on attacking society and making it harder for people to take cooperative, collective action. Regular individualists are about working for themselves, where Toxic Individualists are more about deliberately working against society. "I don't want to be part of society" has become "Society is bad and you shouldn't have it either". I don't think this should be celebrated.
It's also really easy, I'd say even more common, for people to be made a pariah because of their behavior and then blame the collective. You could say it's a hallmark of toxic individualism. Activism and narcissism is rampant in modern society now. The old guard of moral conformity no longer exists. That pendulum has already swung and the heros/villians have traded places. To be fair, its extremely rare for groups to own their bad behavior, but you can still find it in individuals. Perhaps a good example of toxic individualism is the way JK Rowling has been criticized by the LGBT community. She's the most prolific writer of today and she chose to empathize a social nuance over another. Where she deviated cause a lack of conformity to the individuals drawing their ire and getting her effectively cancelled from her own IP. This I think shows that toxic individualism empowers the few over the many based not on what is best or good for society but what the individuals deem necessary. It's frankly pathetic and needs stopped.
I hesitated a little, but I started to wonder if you are onto something in general. As defined, that type of individualist would be something like a herd of cats. They are clearly a part of a group ( with their own slang, rites and forbidden actions ), but yet manage to maintain aura of individualism.
I am not sure I agree, but I think it is an interesting thought worth exploring further.
>"It's this new, belligerent "Toxic Individualism" that's taken hold, supported by recent technological change (such as social media) and recent political/cultural change (many examples)."
I feel like this started with reality-tv which predates social media by a few years. I think reality-tv took poorly-behaved and uninteresting people and elevated them. I think this not only normalized bad behavior but even celebrated these people as special. It seems like this just primed the pump for what came after with social media. TikTok/FB/Instagram et al, seem to enable and encourage everyone to star in their own reality-tv shows where the mundane, banal and uncivil are treated as interesting and worthy of attention.
not at all. They are completely different things.
We anti-natalists see child-making as torture and murder against an innocent -- if you see someone murdering an innocent, surely it's normal to speak out against it and try to stop it. Child making is not about parents; you are free to do whatever you do with your own life, not to involve someone else by force.
I have come to believe that social interaction is like exercising or eating your vegetables. Some people naturally enjoy it; some people don’t. Either way, you will be a healthier person if you do it.
Perhaps. But what are the long-term ramifications of continuing down this track? Does a society of individuals with low cohesion survive in the long run? What motivations to pull together and overcome any adversity that might come along exists? Is it worth it for a few generations of improved individual freedom, if that society doesn't hold together longer than that due to a lack of cohesion?
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” — Abraham Lincoln.
everyone can learn to love their current situation. we are very adaptible species, but lack of interaction is also lack of opportunity and experience - sensory experience.
being guarded against strangers is a somewhat ingraned fear. but there is value to overcoming the fear , or at least it s worth knowing whether there is value.
somtimes the journey is worth more than the destination. surely it's great that we can travel faster in life and break barriers, but it often leads to lonely destinations which feel very meaningless.
I think this analysis, and the analysis of the opinion article, jumps to too many conclusions.
This article says that the trend has started since 2013. In what way has American individualism changed since then? I would say it hasn't. How could American culture shift that much in less than 10 years in this specific span? I don't buy that explanation without more thorough study.
American individualism has existed far longer than the data in this article. We've been sitting in cars by ourselves since the mid-century. I am most skeptical about easy and simple explanations like the one you're describing.
"I think this analysis, and the analysis of the opinion article, jumps to too many conclusions."
Definitely, especially because the article seems to avoid the elephant in the room. The US is amidst full on class warfare, the transfer of wealth from the poor and middleclass to the wealthy has been staggering, we never recovered from the 2008 crash, only rich people did.
The rich are grinding us to pieces and honestly I just dont think most of us have the energy to socialize anymore. Wages are less, no one has much money to spend on recreation, everybody is stressed about rent, healthcare, and their bosses being assholes and making them do the job of 3 people.
There are certainly other factors at play here but avoiding talking about this factor just torpedoes any intelligent discussion of ANYTHING related to quality of life in the US.
In short, spending time alone could also have to do with being beat down by work. Long hours, lower pay, worse benefits. Statistically, America's lower class is getting poorer.
I have to think it's easier to get together with friends and family more when you have more free time and disposable income.
But even this speculation is a jump to conclusions. I am very wary of articles like this that are quick to assign cause.
We had class warfare before, and collectivistic action (i.e. unions, strikes) was a logical and (somewhat?) successful solution to improve quality of life. Individualism as the underlying trend prevents those classic solutions and therefore individualistic solutions have to be found: Instead of just collectively asking for x% more salary, society tediously defines and articulates new instances of discrimination (which are ultimately violations on the individual level). Fixing various internal injustices leads to friction and is probably mostly a wealth transfer from different tiers of middle and lower classes. The powers that be therefore applaud and encourage individualism and thus further strenghten this trend.
American individualism has existed for a long time, but trends continue and accelerate. Recent trends to increase individualism:
- Influencers, streamers introduced and established 1-n relationships in society, somewhat replacing more organic 1-1 connections. People start mapping classic relationship-type emotions on what Onlyfans gives them.
- High quality smart phone cameras brought the selfie, the concept of frequently broadcasting a high quality picture of myself, rather than a more natural slice of life moment, picture of a group doing something, relying on another person to be available and willing to take a photo.
- continuing decline of newspapers and other general-audience media, replaced by chose-your-own-bubble media
- online dating becoming widespread, making people more selective, less patient to deal with random encounters; more random rejection, ghosting.
We are trading things and systems for social interaction; its a qualitative thing not really equivalent to how tightly coupled we are. We no longer need people at all, because we dont need (or even particularly want) to interact with a person in order to solve our needs.
> we rely on the manufacturer. We rely on electricity.
We rely on having money. And we rely on a mature economy where someone is willing to solve every problem in exchange for that money.
In an individualistic society, each person is expected to earn their own way and then pay to solve every problem they may have.
In more community-oriented societies, personal earnings are less important than a strong network of friends and family who can fulfill every need. Each person's income/wealth is contributing to the collective for whatever cannot be served internally.
This movement toward individualization correlates very strongly with the capitalism.
> In more community-oriented societies, personal earnings are less important than a strong network of friends and family who can fulfill every need.
and as this community grew, accounting for such "favours" between friends/family become more important, and thus, the need for unit of accounts - aka money. You'd end up replicating the current system when given long enough time and a large enough community.
I'm following up a bit late but I wasn't referring to communism or nation-sized communities. I was referring to societies that tend to value community (ranging from brazil to china - look for countries where it's normal for aging parents to live with their children).
These societies tend to keep those communities smaller - immediate family plus some closer relatives and family friends. Then there are broader networks with shallower ties where business is favoured but money will usually change hands.
> This movement toward individualization correlates very strongly with the capitalism.
This idea never made sense to me. Capitalism is organized around people self-organizing to form companies. One man companies don't get much of anything done. There's nothing whatsoever about free markets and capitalism that prevents or discourages people working together.
BTW, even small voluntary collectives don't work. Jamestown didn't work, the first year the Pilgrims tried a collective didn't work, the kibbutzen in Israel doesn't work (they get subsidized by the government funded by taxes on capitalists).
> We rely on having money. And we rely on a mature economy where someone is willing to solve every problem in exchange for that money. [...] This movement toward individualization correlates very strongly with the capitalism.
Money as a facilitator for the exchange of goods and services long, long, long predates the rise of capitalism.
Individuals thrive in communities. Individualism is doing your thing.
What we have in the west (and increasingly the east) is the opposite: the creation of isolated cogs, educated to be mere cogs, following mass fashions, work as replacable units, and leave no mark of their existence.
Their "individuality" is reduced to consumerism, and is sold to them through chosing among ready made brands (of gadgets, clothes, cultural products). They're "invididually" part of market groups.
Those are, as you observe, better able to function alone than in the past (e.g. no need to cooperate to get it), but they also have no support group, and often not even family and friends to support them, and help them do anything and to allow them to be able to resist (work conditions, political pressure, etc).
They're not individuals, they're cogs with cookie cutter "identities". Nobody knows or cares who they are even - because each of them is as good as any other, just a unit to get some services of.
I think another thing that's causing it is social media ... the thought of ...i want to have the perfect family too and post photos of such so I get tons of likes too for what I created (the picture of me with my beautiful family). If i cant achieve that i'll be alone.
That's just one thing yet not sure how big or small of a driver it is.
>Every single technological innovation has made it easier for the individual to function better alone
This sounds deep and wise in the abstract, but I think it's important that we're talking about is, like, because there are washing machines now, you can show up places looking presentable without there being a woman in your home dedicated to washing your clothes all the time.
Is there a problem with a woman dedicated to washing your laundry at home? Seems like women today have to go to work and do that in the evening anyways.
Yes, there is a problem with domestic labor being so demanding as to demand an entire human being's full time attention. That's why modernity is amazing.
Is it more meaningful if your labour is instead spent as a minute cog in a vast and faceless corporation? At least you can wear the clothes you wash.
Don’t get me wrong, washing machines are great, probably one of the greatest inventions ever. We now can lead meaningful and consequential lives, but newly potent sources of inconsequentiality have arisen.
It gives you better control over your life. Cause that wife was utterly and absolutely dependent on husband. There was nothing she could do to improve her life if there were issues. And if he was gone (say due to being sick, dead, in prison) she was utterly absolutely effed. If be beat her up, she was helpless. If he was emotionally manipulative she was helpless. If the marriage just sucked, both were trapped. If he was feeling responsible, he would not leave her in poverty and would stay with her despite her being jerk too.
The kind of murder where husband kills wife used to be waaay more frequent then it is now. It is one of reasons for lower murders clearance rate ... cause these were super easy to solve.
You can take action, like get a new hobby that is just an okay activity but the people are great. Work on becoming a kick-ass friend yourself and cook for people and all that good stuff. But you'll do all that against massive societal forces. A few decades back you'd join one of the few organizations or clubs that happened in your area, and instantly be in a reliable community (if you adapt a little - let's ignore all the downsides for a moment). Friends would hook you up with a partner who's as nerdy as you. When I was young random strangers had regularly great conversations on trains. A city street was a village, you knew everyone.
That is not coming back anytime soon.