Have a friend who was a stripper in SF, she had customers that would pay her just to sit and talk with them. I interviewed an escort once and she had similar stories.
Additionally, this is a huge part of hospice care. Incredible article recently[0] in the New Yorker about this.
We'll have a huge number of childless old people in a couple of decades. I am hoping for huge number of young immigrants who will be recruited to provide emotional companionship.
Or, you know, the childless old people can talk to each other and provide emotional companionship in an "old" way, from the previous age before all these modern economic inventions.
people need something to relate to be a companion, something to bond on. With the world getting richer and more knowledgeable, more free economically and socially; people don't have anything that ties them together. There are no wars, social struggles, economic struggles that tie people together. Culture no longer curtails people from straying far out from the line. This is bound to happen, friendships are on their way out for a reason.
So yea, old people cannot be forced to hang out with each other just because they are old.
To me your comment is bizarre. Friendships on their way out? Old people need to be forced to be friends with each other?
I can only think you are either trolling or have had a significantly different life to myself.
Plenty of things allow people (without children) to relate: sports, travel, religion, food, literature, movies, the weather, politics, technological events (man on moon), cultural events (election of the first Black president of America), pets etc. etc.
Old people don't need to be forced. 100s of millions of old people who enjoy each other company every single day.
You can add bartenders to that list. But yeah, our society is generally pretty terrible at listening to others. We're very selfish and self-centred, often the only people who listen are those who are paid to.
Oh, should add, not sure if anyone is religious or not but priests and monks are generally good listeners, and free. Sometimes short on life experience though.
Being really bad at talking to others and thus being listener only for most of the time, I have to disagree.
What will happen when you just listen is that you won't make enemies. And maybe you will make some acquittances, but not friends.
To actually make friends, you have to talk and open up, without each of you opening up and getting to know each other you can hardly claim you are friends. This is the only way how I managed to get friendly with at least few people - at my best I managed to open up a bit.
Not all priests join before they accumulate life experiences....some have their fill of life and give back by way of taking holy orders or the like. ;-)
True. I know a monk who used to be a rock musician, and a few priests who are full of life experience (and a few who led pretty vanilla/strait edge lives). But it varies by religion/order/whatever other criteria you organise them by.
Pretty interesting article. Maybe when I get sick of "Will do tech for food", I can pivot into that.
But it also happens here to. There is a kid that mows my neighbor's (who is 85) yard and he's there for three hours. 45 mins to mow and the rest of the time talking. He gets about $35 for it, makes both of them happy.
I know someone who is an Apple Tech certified consultant (don't know the exact wording but he's listed at Apple or something like that). Anyway he was telling me about some rich clients, people that pay him to come and do things as simple updating the software (you know a menu option) and it sounded to me like a version of keeping someone who is lonely and giving them a chance to talk to someone more than anything. (Not discounting some (especially older) people's fear of tech which is real, but the time he would take wasn't exactly 'get in and get out as quickly as possible'). Plus he is a super friendly nice guy (who really talks to much) so I kind of got the impression that was actually a benefit to his clients.
It's more than lonliness -- people like being connected to people outside of their circle, especially young people. One couple I did computer and odd electrical jobs for were a semi-retired power couple (neurosurgeon, big cheese at med school + big attorney) who were not at a loss for company.
I got the sense that they liked talking to young folks without the baggage that comes with interacting with their own kids. Also, many rich people enjoy paying people to do things for a variety of reasons.
When I was younger I had an older guy (who was sort of an admired quasi mentor type) that would always want to take me out to dinner. He usually had an agenda and something that he wanted to know. But at some point he said that "he really liked out interactions" and I got the idea he just liked hanging out with younger people. I didn't need the free meal (he always paid however I owned a business and made money at the time) but it felt good that someone who was older and successful took an interest in hearing what I had to say.
> I got the sense that they liked talking to young folks without the baggage that comes with interacting with their own kids
For sure. Your kids don't always realize that you are acting in their own interest (but of course there is also an agenda as well typically) whereas a non-kid-of-yours thinks you are acting in their interest.
In some places people hire "mourners" others hire other people to add "volume" to their events. But these aren't as much psychological fillers as much as devices to save face.
In America, this seems to be something only marginalized peoples do. In "Mayflower Madame," she says that some of their regular clients hired her escorts not for sex but to play their girlfriend at family events, like weddings, because they were closeted gays. In one case, the family liked his hired girlfriend so much they began encouraging them to get married, which led to them having to manufacture a dramatic breakup so this gay man would stop getting pressure to marry the call girl he had hired to play his girlfriend at family events.
Wasn't this a comedy-drama-sort of feature film where his wife doesn't know, and suspects he's having an affair because of all the secrecy surrounding his job? I could swear I saw something similar on TV a few years ago, but can't find the title of it based on the obvious keywords.
The Japanese place very high value on social cohesion. Deviation from the norm - especially emotional - is not accepted or acknowledged.
I can't say whether the Japanese are especially lonely. I can say that those who are have little means to express that among themselves.
If the topic interests you, check out the Hikkikomori phenomenon, such a the book: "Shutting out the Sun: How Japan created its own lost generation."
See also the difficulty that Japanese mental health professionals have in the country. Such places are as discreet as abortion clinics are in the American south.
That's A bit of an exaggeration. My wife is a mental health professional in Japan. She tells me that about half the people in the general population she speaks to find the topic challenging. Others are fine. Her hospital is not at all hidden away.
Haven't spent more than a month there however I always got the sense that it's 'harder' to be Japanese (same goes for Korean) than it is to be a Westerner.
Complex social hierarchies, deference to the boss, deference to family and elders, suppressing individualism and the overbearing pressure to conform.
Especially though, having to stop at every single pedestrian crossing even though the road is one metre wide and there's not a car or a cop for kilometres.
More than a few months of that and - bam - seppuku for me.
I was nearly tackled for jaywalking across an empty traffic light intersection at 3am in Shinjuku. It ended up being a 3 hour ordeal that involved 15 cops and a quick police car ride to my train locker.
Worth noting were the 10 obvious foreigners (my friends) that jaywalked ahead of me, which made me think I was singled out because I looked Japanese.
I've had similar impressions. One gets the feeling that it's glorious to be a rich old dude in Japan, but that does leave lots of other people with the short end...
I'm sure that's true, but I'm not saying that e.g. in comparison to my home country, but rather to other foreign countries where I've lived and worked. Japan just seems more like that.
In response to some of the other comments I've been here for 9 years. I see zero problems with people expressing themselves. There are so many events and so many communities for doing anything you want to do.
This idea that Weetrrns have that Japanese can't express themselves because of social norms seems like complete bs to me but maybe I'm just not seeing it
I read an interesting article (sorry, don't have the linK) some time ago about a man who cleans houses after someone dies in them. The story was quite sad. He talked about the high percentage of jobs that are old people who died alone out of neglect. He said at first he could barely handle the sadness of it. But eventually he came to feel that he was doing a service to the old people by properly taking care of them and their things after their passing. The unseen part of Japan seems very sad and lonely.
There doesn't seem much reason to think it's more lonely on the whole, but I could believe that the lonely in Japan are more isolated than other places.
Pretty much. Note the line at the beginning: "clients who would never dream of spilling their guts to a therapist or worse, their families." This is in some ways an end-run around the stigma attached to psychological treatment in Japan (and most other countries).
Entertainment & Time pass (SMS 9278131800) heroyogi123@yahoo.com Hopefully — once you’ve given somebody a massage — you will get one in return.3 (Three) Plans: (1) Social Economy Plan (2) Like Close Friends Plan (3) Blind Love of Fun & Fooling around Party for selected (M) 9278131800
Isn't this potentially just a form of talk therapy? Yes the person listen has no medical training and that /could/ be dangerous, but neither do you friends and if you have they you talk to them, perhaps some people just don't have friends or perhaps need an 'air gap' and need someone with some distance from their lives to hear them out so they can't talk things through out loud? Personally - I think it sounds interesting and potentially therapeutic.
They're like a male, extremely casual and simplified, version of Geisha (perhaps so much so to render the comparison meaningless, I'll admit). I wonder if Japan has much use for life-coaches, which also sound a bit related to this (less coaching?), but within Japanese culture and traditions this may be the way those needs are met.
Have a friend who was a stripper in SF, she had customers that would pay her just to sit and talk with them. I interviewed an escort once and she had similar stories.
Additionally, this is a huge part of hospice care. Incredible article recently[0] in the New Yorker about this.
[0]: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/11/the-work-of-a-h...