Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says

[enigmatic]

Very interesting article; I thought of David Riesman's "The Lonely Crowd" while reading this...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/22/AR2006062201763_pf.html

[marmar]

1. People just seem less able to relate socially...

perhaps that's a by-product of suburbs, subdivisions, in-home entertainment centers, computers etc etc.

When I was young
I never needed anyone
And makin?love was just for fun
Those days are gone

Living alone
I think of all the friends I?e known
But when I dial the telephone
Nobody? home

All by myself
Don? wanna be, all by myself anymore
All by myself
Don? wanna live, all by myself anymore

Hard to be sure
Some times I feel so insecure
And love so distant and obscure
Remains the cure

[undergroundpanther]

2. And it will kill us

http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/cgi/content/full/63/2/273

http://204.155.170.130/artman/publish/printer_12861.shtml

http://www.jeffvail.net/2005_10_01_archive.html

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/undergroundpanther

[Snaggletooth]

3. I saw the same report on MSN...

so I came over here to see if anyone had posted it. The old divide and conquer strategy seems to be working.

I've experienced the same thing in my life. People I thought I knew well have turned out to 1) be supporting policies that are diametrically opposed to what they claim to believe in, or 2)are inwilling to address the issues because "politics is so dirty." As if they are above it or immune to the consequences or something.

For a long time, I let this make me feel lonely and isolated. Not anymore. Now, I call them on their bullshit by pointing out there inconsistancies and explaining that, without the apologists and the "head in the sand" types, no tyranny in history would have been able to get off the ground. After all, the original Red Coats had their loyalists as well. We called them Tories...as I recall, American History does not think highly of them.

Snaggletooth the Crone

[enigmatic]

4. Related: "The Lonely Crowd"

This is a good overview of David Riesman's "The Lonely Crowd"; I think we're seeing the results today of what Reisman talked about:

http://www.robertfulford.com/LonelyCrowd.html

[Hamlette]

6. reminds me of Bowling Alone

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743203046/sr=8-1/qid=1151126150/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-3063426-7197742?%5Fencoding=UTF8
which hit a nerve with me. He says in the 50s everyone belonged to a bowling league and a bridge club and socialized with people who had different religious and political beliefs. It was essential for bridging the divide as you would come to know and like someone on a different level and have enough respect for their views that it kept people from name calling (all liberals are evil, and republicans are nazis, all evangelicals are religious wackos etc.)

During the 60s European countries were concerned about the generation gap and thought about ways to bridge (no pun intended) it. They set up bridge clubs all over.

My mom in Scotland and my sister in Switzerland both joined those clubs as a way to meet people, to have a social life away from work. (We're all big bridge players. Love the game, give it a try.)

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

5. TURN ON TUNE IN DROP OUT

RECONNECT WITH EACH OTHER.

[MatrixEscape]

7. Exactly!

Unplug! Turn OFF the TV. Cancel your cable or satellite. Go cold turkey. Sorely miss some of your favorite shows for duty and humanity! Stop worshiping at that mind-altering cathode ray altar. Get your kids off the blue juice of manipulated reality.

Compare the information you are getting with what you would need to simply survive by yourself in nature. The television is a siren that beckons you into its mostly fictitious web offering information for its own sake that is not only antithetical to meaning, it is its antipode.

Once you pull the plug of media propaganda -- and it can be likened to quitting heroin as some say -- you will finally have a real and ample opportunity to discover nature as your world and as your self. You may even come closer to understanding your basic and essential organism on deeper levels and then intuit how it so intimately connects to the planet with all its lifeforms and primordial essence and structure. You might even begin to glimpse into the well hidden and ignored fact that you, in an intrinsic sense, are it and it is you and the imagined and abstract disconnect is an inculcated barrier to something you have always had and always are.

From there comes the opportunity to understand your fellows as important and actual nodes of a unitive consciousness that provides awareness of manifestation and forms reality and coalesces convention from the novelty that emerges from the irreducible relativity of the Universe in its entirety.

Reject the funeral dirge of reproduction, simulation, and hyperreal, (more real than real) enchantment, and with your sacrifice will come a strange and odd familiarity that brings a refreshing and uplifting connectivity that even permeates solitude.

We are ALL in this together. There are no real boundaries other than what the mythical mind abstracts. The mind is nothing but one, all encompassing metaphor – from religion to philosophy, to the sciences --. See it as such. Work with it in the sense that nothing it contains is anything but a reference that functions as a tool for survival, both in an existential sense, and in regards to cultural functionality. What may ensue is a far more expansive sense of reality that gradually, or suddenly, breeches the subliminal barriers, (held onto out of fear and dogma) and then blossoms into a far richer and inclusive sense of self and experience.

What is more real and tangible and accessible than your family, friends, and community? Don't you know? You are it!

[Robeson]

8. Not surprising. De-sensitivity is a hallmark of this country...

...our "leaders" have beat into the people to turn their backs on the poor, those with no medical care, the indigent, or those we drop bombs on. It is a dysfunctional philosophy, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.

[enigmatic]

9. kick n/t