Writes Arthur C. Brooks, the president of the American Enterprise Instituted in
"How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart/When people have a hole in their life, they often fill it with angry politics" (NYT)(citing a "large-scale survey from the health-care provider Cigna). Much of this op-ed column is drawn from the book "Them: Why We Hate Each Other — and How to Heal" by Senator Ben Sasse.
A précis of Mr. Sasse’s recommendations to America... might be this: Go where you get that hometown-gym-on-a-Friday-night feeling, put down roots and make plans to fertilize the soil.
fertilize the soil = have a cemetery plot.
That can be a tricky proposition for many of us... I have no Fremont [Nebraska, like Sasse] — not even Seattle, my hometown, which is a perfectly nice place, but one I unsentimentally left behind 35 years ago.... Is a thick community and the happiness it brings out of reach for rootless cosmopolitans like us?
He asked Sasse, who told him all he needed was "to intentionally invest in the places where we actually live." Easy for him to say! He's got Fremont, Nebraska. But Brooks accepts the facile prescription and ends:
Each of us can be happier, and America will start to heal, when we become the kind neighbors and generous friends we wish we had.
Yeah, do that.
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56 comments:
Folding to political correctness makes you feel lonely.
Sasse should join a monastery
Sasse’s idolization of Fremont has one major flaw: Fremont’s citizens passed a law that prevented landlords from renting to illegal aliens. It got tied up in federal court litigation and I can’t recall how it turned out.
Fremont has a big Spam plant and will soon have a big Costco chicken plant,
"Trouble begins when a man says 'I could be a little happier.'"
Yes, illegal aliens are entitled to all of the rights and privileges apertaining to American citizens because they are willing to work cheap and without labor protections and always vote properly.
We need a class of people desperately who know their place.
Sasse is correct in one way. A self governing people will be happier when almost all of their govt is local, and State and Federal presence is minimal and invisible. (No, I don't think that's what he meant).
Fremont’s citizens passed a law that prevented landlords from renting to illegal aliens.
Lighten up, its not like Obama sent his treasury dept out to strangle gun businesses from being able to use financial institutions. We all know the govt stripping people of their enumerated rights is required, if its for their own good.
That would work if nearly half the country, including the associated political leadership, would stop calling half the country racist, homophobic, and xenophobic.
It’s pretty ironic that the increasing prevalence of the internet over the last 10-15 years, from something available only when sitting at a computer to available 24x7 in your hand, has accompanied an epic social problem with loneliness and isolation.
It was supposed to bring us together and foster more communication and buy the world a coke and teach us to sing in perfect harmony. So are we done with this experiment yet? Do we have enough data?
Is there some wonderful yet-to-be-invented app that, unlike all those *other* apps, will actually help people instead of isolate them? I have my doubts.
Political disagreement equals pathology. That's the most common response I get from lefties.
Wrap that up with the "We gotta figure out what kind of pathology the election of Trump represents."
So, nothing new here.
Our population is aged. The Boomers are old. Old age and loneliness go together. Always have. Spouses, family and friends die.
Ever notice how these articles lamenting political violence always leave out BLM killing cops and the attack on the Republican congressmen playing softball?
"When people have a hole in their life, they often fill it with angry politics"
Marx said the same thing, but in a good way.
To paraphrase: [Community is the opium of the masses.]
Some anecdotal evidence (the worst kind) : I moved from the Milwaukee area to London, England 11 years ago for work and adventure. I don't feel like I belong here, and I doubt I ever will. When I come back to visit family, I don't feel like I belong there anymore either and I doubt I ever will. It is an isolating feeling.
My two best mates from university live within a mile of the house they grew up in. I won't say happier, but they seem more content.
In the old days, we just had books to isolate ourselves.
In the old days, we just had books to isolate ourselves.
Or you could play the piano and fill your mind with the thoughts of Beethoven, Chopin, Joplin, etc.
The great thing about not feeling as though you belong in and are tightly woven into the community where you live is that you are free to move anywhere else and be immediately up and running with the same level of the sense of being at home.
You don't have to go back to your childhood home or like everyone in your town. Sheesh. You just have to find enough people who you do like right where you are. If you can't find those people, you're looking in the wrong places, so look in other places.
We also spend a lot of public time talking about how other people should understand us-- our group, or disability, people with our circumstances, people with our race, etc-- rather than how people should just get along. We all want to be special, the stars not only of our own story (which has always been true), but also the stars of other peoples' stories (which can almost never be true).
Having said that, I will once again say that people are wonderful. If you are living somewhere or doing something that makes you believe otherwise, get away from that thing.
The underlying theme of the Times' article... that we should be living in happy political harmony... is false.
Politics is about the differing self-interests of varied constituencies.
Conflict is the natural state of politics.
I think for a some non-social people (maybe for retirees, next generation older than me) the suburban neighborhood sports bar serves the purpose that the local pub did in the UK. People go there 4/5 days a week, see the same people and get to know them, meet people through them in a pretty easy-going setting, actually make friendships, go on cruises (yech!) together, find people to golf with, etc. I know this sounds like Cheers, but have seen it in action through an older retired sibling whose new spouse and entire social life (better than mine) has been built around a sports bar. It's a lot of fun to hang out with them sometimes on an NFL Sunday.
Also, if you are new in a place or lonely in a place get a dog. They kind that you need to take out to go to the bathroom or for walks. That's how we've met so many of our friends and neighbors in our adult lives.
I'm happy where I'm at and like the people around me, but half the country thinks we are all deplorables. The funny things is I think they are the ones that feel left out. At least they are the ones demanding to be heard, which signals to me they feel left out.
"Nearly half say they sometimes or always feel alone or 'left out.' “
I’ll bet the “sometimes” portion of this is a lot bigger than the “always” portion.
For me social isolation is a feature not a bug. Especially this time of year when I actually have to socialize with people. I can understand wanting to hang around with pornstars and supermodels, but where's the attraction in overeating with family members.
Political disagreement equals pathology.
You should stop being divisive and agree with me. Because then I would feel better and because I'm right.
All the lonely people, where do they all come from, especially those lonely Americanos who rebelled against their rightful king and then had a civil war and what was up with those lonely Europeans and their world wars? Did they all meet the new friends they were looking for?
And Fremont is also divided between the Catholics and Lutherans.
Sasse is Lutheran. Fr. Daniel Hendrickson is from Fremont, about the same age and President of Creighton. Also a PhD. They didn’t know each other growing up because they went to different high schools.
Fremont has a large illegal alien population and the corporate class likes that. Cheap wages.
‘s ok, though. We always have our Facebook friends.
There's always birdfeeders.
They kind that you need to take out to go to the bathroom or for walks. That's how we've met so many of our friends and neighbors in our adult lives.
I met most of my friends in bathrooms.
It's a worthwhile idea and I pray, often, that we will stop this insane whipsaw of partisan politics that has taken over almost every aspect of our lives. I am a loyal friend and and neighbor, but I have to keep it secret that I'm a liberal open-minded constitutional conservative from almost everyone I know. Years of demonstrating that I am a good person who treats others as I would be treated goes right the hell out the window when these subjects come up.
The NYT and Ann in her own way are always deconstructing the Bible. This article is a caustic, secular exegesis of Mark 12:31 - " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself".
Always to ridicule, never for instruction. Ann is a plain old 60s Christian basher.
Feeling perfectly content traveling in my RV, I've met many more people and made more friends than had I been 'rooted'. One of the friends I met last year on the road has her RV parked in my yard right now and shared Thanksgiving with me. I visit my family once a year and keep up through phone and text messages/photos the rest of the year. My older daughter visits me here in AZ once a year.
Guess what? People are different. Their needs are different. The notions of the desire for roots and the beloved home town are false premises to many.
I don't know why Ben Sasse hates me, but I know why I hate him, and it isn't because I don't own a cemetery plot.
Professor, what response did you expect from this “virtual community” regarding an article touting the virtues of having “real community”?
hey-- how come everyone else gets to be part of this survey but not ME ?!?
But the Dems, they hate those of us who aren't Dems.
"Each of us can be happier, and America will start to heal, when we become the kind neighbors and generous friends we wish we had.//Yeah, do that."
It's so sweet.
Many of us already are "kind neighbors and generous friends." Meanwhile, we are surrounded by progs who consider us racist and deplorable, who are eager to scorch the earth and prevent any non-prog community from flourishing. Your church, your charter school, your party, your fraternity or sorority, your residentially-zoned exurban neighborhood or whitish small town, your Fremont is their target. The left is not about healing, it is about winning, damage be damned.
Example:
“We can talk about voter suppression,” Osei-Frimpong had said in the Facebook post following the Nov. 6 midterm election. “We can talk about ID laws. But all of this begins and ends with the fact that we make crappy White people. So if we are serious, we have to dismantle the institutions that make crappy white people. Their churches, their schools, their families."
Many people feel left out, regardless of race, sex (or should I say gender), ethnicity...but we're encouraged these days to identify any personal disappointment as the result of prejudice.
He doesn't get this is why the vote is turning against him and we enlisted out version of fujimori?
I gotta throw in with … what's zher name, again? … Osei-Frimpong on this one. Crappy white people.
can understand wanting to hang around with pornstars and supermodels, but where's the attraction in overeating with family members.
What if your family members are porn stars and supermodels?
Next to Flake and Mitt, I don't think there's a Pol that I dislike more that Asse the Sasse.
We don't get our "angry politics" from people being lonely. What a patronizing view of people!
And the "angry politics" is bullshit anyway. People were damn angry during the Vietnam war - was that because everyone was "lonely" and filling a hole in their lives? Did all the "Lonely People" become angry and vote for Sasse? Of course not, all the calm, happy people voted for Amnesty and Globalism.
This is just another "The natives are restless" why are they so angry? Clueless NYT Piece.
Whites are about to become a minority, and the elite demographers are all anxious because it might make them "angry" or something. So, the word has gone out to downplay and hide it, and save all the "Woo Hoo, we're not a White Country Anymore" for AFTER.
Again, what an absurdly patronizing view of average people.
But the NYT and MSM are full of this kind of crap.
America is full of people whose relatives left their friends, neighbors, and relatives in the "Old Country" to go to a new land.
We're Americans - we don't need people.
@Marek, I know the feeling. I've move a lot in my life. In just the past few years, I moved several time doing on-site contracting before settling down [again] with a full time job. For a short time in all of this, I felt only at "home" when visiting my kids (in the valley were I stayed the longest in my life and where they all grew up). But then I started realizing I didn't feel at home in that valley, nor in the new city. In short, I feel like a visitor everywhere I go--a man without a home. It's disconcerting, to say the least.
Oh, and I can say with confidence that nobody really knows me. My best friend--my only real friend--comes close, but there are parts of me about which is is unaware.
Bowling Alone, The Lonely Crowd — it’s not like this is a new insight.
Thread music.
Insol, perhaps. More likely Volsol.
"I met most of my friends in bathrooms."
Bathroom friends are the BEST friends.
I feel that alienation the writer speaks of. Of course, just being pro-freedom in the Age of Obama and the rise of the SJWs makes it easier to feel that alienation. But with me I moved (conned by someone I trusted who assured me, "This'll be good for you, kid!") from a city where I felt very at home and was probably my "place of power" (to get metaphysical about it) to a Sun Belt, philistine, Edge City where I am a pariah.
The great sociologist Robert Nizbet wrote a book covering the same subject about 60 years ago titled: A Quest for Community. I think we are social animals who have difficulty in coping with isolation.
Happiness is overrated.
The great sociologist Robert Nizbet
I would question that there is a 'great sociologist'.
"He's got Fremont, Nebraska."
I was in a road-band in the early 80s and for some reason, we played a one-nighter in Fremont NE. What I remember most, is the guy who owned the motel we were staying took us down into the basement and showed us a train set that was a replica of the entire town. Pretty neat, actually.
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