Today I’m introducing a groundbreaking bill - the National Strategy for Social Connection Act.
It creates a federal office to combat the growing epidemic of American loneliness, develops anti-loneliness strategies, and fosters best practices to promote social connection.
https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1681350024200962053
This is a good thing, but I have a free suggestion: it’s the cars, stupid.
The US has been building it’s spaces in a cars-first fashion for over seventy years now. Many Americans don’t even know what it’s like to live in a world where walking and biking is the norm. In the rest of the world, in urban and suburban areas, community third spaces are easily (and by easy, I mean convenient and safe) accessible by bike or foot. In the US, there’s almost nothing that’s a safe, enjoyable walk from my home, and that’s a pretty typical suburban experience by design. If I want to go do something or be somewhere where other people are, I practically have to drive. I hate driving, so I try to avoid it if I can. That usually just translates into not going out. I think that’s how it is for a lot of people; being outside in the US’ built environments just kinda sucks.
On the other hand, I’ve had a few exchange students from Europe and Japan, and consistently the biggest culture shock for them is how car dependent (and isolated) we are. The kids really feel the difference because they can’t drive, and they go from being able to use bikes and mass transit to go places and hang out to being fully dependent on being driven around to go anywhere. As for Third spaces serve the important role of being the space set aside just for socializing. I’m sure everyone has seen/heard the grievances between the genders of how women can’t work/shop/exist without being approached romantically, and men begging the question of when they can approach women, then. I am confident this is largely a US phenomenon, because we have pitifully few third spaces, where romantic approaches generally tend to be more acceptable. You want to fix loneliness? Start by making our cities not suck for humans, and start adding more third spaces like parks and stuff.
The problem in Portland is that we decriminalized most drugs, so now potential third spaces are over-run with homeless tents and drug use.
From my house I have either a 1/4 mile uphill walk to a major busline, or a 3/4 mile downhill walk to one. Either way isn’t particularly safe, and the bus lines themselves aren’t particularly safe.
https://www.koin.com/news/passenger-violence-increasing-at-trimet-during-severe-staffing-shortage/
yep, same up here in Seattle, many green spaces are fenced off - now no one can enjoy the parks because the local authorities wont do anything about the homeless trash smoking fentanyl in the streets. every time I have to go downtown I have to plot a route from the bus stop through the zombies. it’s ridiculous.
Many Americans don’t even know what it’s like to live in a world where walking and biking is the norm
Been there, done that, and it fucking sucks. I’ll take having to drive any day over it.
I guess? I’ve lived in places where US style zoning didn’t exist and you had little shops in the neighborhoods. It was so nice to be able to just pop down the block and buy some milk or bread or whatever basic thing you needed from the little neighborhood store. Driving sucks, though. You’re free to do a lot more while you’re walking or biking than driving, not to mention that it brings you into contact with a lot more folks. Basically the only thing you can do while driving is drive and listen to some podcasts, I guess, and the only people who want to talk to you while you’re driving want to say things like “nice turn signal, asshole!”, Or “Sir, did you realize you were doing 70 in a school zone?”
I’m not arguing for car dependency, and it is component to the loneliness epidemic, but it’s not the sole cause. More than 1 in 10 Europeans are lonely, so car dependency can’t be the only factor.
This widespread loneliness has really only hit its stride in earnest in the last decade or so. And what hit the scene about 10 years ago? Social media, ironically. The thing that is ostensibly designed to connect us has pushed us apart.
We can’t have an honest conversation about this without identifying who it affects the most: young men. As a crude metric, /r/ForeverAlone has literally an order of magnitude more users than /r/ForeverAloneWomen. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the latter subreddit literally banned male users because the female users were getting asked out on dates … literally this meme.
Which brings me to dating apps. They have insanely lopsided demographics that make half of all men who use them persona non grata. They have a greater matching inequality than the economic inequality of Venezuela. This is not a comfortable conversation to have, but ignoring it won’t help solve the problem.
Speaking of the economy, that sure isn’t helping either. What limited opportunities for real-world social interaction still exist are becoming less and less accessible when more and more people have to spend more of their time earning piss-all income just to scrape by.
The loneliness epidemic is a coalescence of these, and other factors, that have been accumulating over decades of consolidating organic social opportunities into overorganized spaces with inherent and high barriers to entry.
This honestly just reads like a way to make some cushy DC jobs for the bastard morons of some mega donors.
Yeah, I don’t doubt Murphy’s heart is in the right place - he’s been a big advocate of mental health legislation since his House days, and he was the congressman for Newtown when Sandy Hook happened - but I’m skeptical that the sorts of techniques we use to combat smoking or obesity would work on loneliness; it’s more of a symptom of a larger problem than a problem in its own right.
The problem in Portland is that we decriminalized most drugs, so now potential third spaces are over-run with homeless tents and drug use.
From my house I have either a 1/4 mile uphill walk to a major busline, or a 3/4 mile downhill walk to one. Either way isn’t particularly safe, and the bus lines themselves aren’t particularly safe.
https://www.koin.com/news/passenger-violence-increasing-at-trimet-during-severe-staffing-shortage/
Crazy idea: if drugs are decriminalized, what if we had two versions of public spaces: one that disallows use of drugs, and one where drugs were allowed and handed out for free? Like if you were a drug addict, would you really want to go to that boring “sober” library where you might get hassled when you could get unlimited drugs at the library across the street?
Drugs are fucking cheap if you control the means of production. For less than $10 a day you can keep homeless drug addicts off your buses, out of your train stations, out of your libraries and playgrounds and out of tent cities in middle of town, simply by luring them to a no-strings-attached watering hole out of your line of sight.
Because people who are out of their minds on drugs typically aren’t aware of any sorts of public restrictions. That’s currently the problem in Portland:
We can’t get them to comply with relatively basic requests like “don’t block sidewalks”. You honestly think they’ll stick to “keep your drugs in the beer garden”?
Why would they take the drugs and leave elsewhere, which takes time, when they could consume them right there on the comfy beer garden lounge chairs?
if all drugs get decriminalized, society will fall apart even more rapidly than it is now. better to exile all of the addicts to somewhere no one wants to go (wyoming) and fence them in - then let them inject/inhale to their hearts content.
Concentration camps, huh? When this doesn’t solve the ills of society you claim it will, who’s next on the “then they came for” list?
A huge part of the problem is that people just don’t have enough money to go out and do things.
Holy fuck thats a lot of government overreach. Hope this hack gets voted out of office soon
