The article mostly blames pornography and digital addiction, but I think those are symptoms of a larger problem, which is lack of belonging and community. If life sucks, you have few friends you can afford the time or money to see, and you work to make other people rich until you are exhausted, when do you have time and energy to maintain a relationship? If you feel like the world is on fire, it's hard to get in the mood.
It would help if we built third spaces that weren't centered around alcohol, which is also declining in popularity, especially with young adults.
Americans: why isn't anyone having sex anymore??
Also Americans: Abstinence only! You'll get pregnant! No abortions! STDs will kill you! Men deserve sex! We're not going to teach you how your body works!
Of course we end up with declining sex, in a country so obsessed with individualism and sex-adverse.
I do see hope though. The kids in my community are being taught age-appropriate, consent-based sex ed, and the availability of free, high-quality sex ed is improving.
I would be really interested to see if sex frequency is declining for everyone, or just for people who aren't putting in any emotional labor to learning and growing as a person when it comes to sexuality.
The decline of community is a very big deal. I think a lot of it has to do with the way we build our living spaces. Modern North American cities are rife with car-centric suburbs, huge driveways, front doors set back a mile from the sidewalk, long commutes to anywhere (not just work, even to get groceries). We're living in these metal-and-glass boxes and we only see other people as obstacles in the way of what we want, rather than fellow human beings.
It seems to me that we've built this horrible, alienating environment not by deliberate choice but through a larger collective and political process none of us could individually control. We've created rules (building codes and zoning laws) that entrench this dystopia in countless small ways which will take a concerted effort to undo.
There's something about this I think is illuminating. I don't think the social issues fall into partisan politics. It's like we've abstracted away people into something like a corporate entity. Even in large residence buildings in cities, people don't know each other right next to them. That's in contrast with small villages where everyone knows each other for generations. Another example is roads and how road rage forms as a result of dehumanizing people into entities.
So it's like the US is primarily for corporate entities to interact in predefined contractual settings that have abstracted away anything human about them. Even families are kind of like corporate entities interacting with each other. I am not sure how it got to this point but maybe something like pursuit of income at the expense of social ties and over-litigation caused it. I'm not sure.
I have lived in villages and cities in different continents. This abstraction you speak of isn’t limited to the US. Asian and European cities are the same. People don’t tend to socialize a lot with their neighbors in the cities as much as they did and still do in the villages.
Is this capitalism? Is it technology (I’m not talking about computers) induced narcissism? Is it because we reduce ourselves and others to metrics and then use yardsticks to incessantly measure ourselves on a broken scale?
It couldn't be more obvious and intuitive that the people you're around for half your waking time would be one of the bigger sources of potential partners, and also just friends/acquaintances where a partner comes from the social networks thusly formed.
This paper suggests meeting people directly or indirectly via work was second to meeting through friends around the turn of the century, though there was a wide spread of how people met so it only amounted to a fifth of couples. Then online took over....
From the HR training i got from many places, harassment is what gets you in trouble with HR i.e. persisting after your advances have been rejected. Politely shooting your shot is fine, unless the target reports to you.
You're missing the distinction. I met my wife at work but any and all propositioning happened outside the office, and not at office social events either.
You can invite a group of coworkers to an event. You can attend events established by groups of coworkers. You can invite an individual to a party you're hosting that other people are attending, or sometime when she didn't pack lunch you can offer to go grab lunch with her. The important thing is to establish a social relationship before trying for a romantic or sexual one: Don't single her out, don't ask her to be in a situation where it's just you and her in something heavily date-coded (keeping her company when she grabs lunch? good! Asking her out solo for drinks/dinner? bad!) until you're a known quantity to her, until you could confidently say she considers you, if not a friend, someone she's friendly with. At that point, and AT THAT POINT ONLY, you can casually, in a low-key way, ask her on a date in a way that makes it abundantly clear it's not going to be a huge deal if she says no, and that that wasn't the whole entire point of getting to know her.
And one way to make it clear (to her and to yourself) is to have (social) relationships with other coworkers, with other women, and to have other women in your life. That way she knows (and you know) that she's not your sole focus, your only real chance, and she knows that you're able to maintain healthy, safe relationships with women that you aren't trying to date.
The really important thing is to make sure she understands that there's no pressure on her to say yes, and that saying no will not lead to an uncomfortable workplace dynamic. A lot of this is good advice for connecting with women you'd potentially like to date in other circumstances too - the reason there's a lot of generic, overly broad 'advice' floating around about "don't hit on women at the gym" "don't flirt with women at their place of work" "don't ask women out at school" "don't ask your friends out" "don't hit on women in hobby groups" is that a lot of men are terrible at not making women feel singled out and socially coerced. If you can convince yourself that you're in that situation for more reasons than looking for a date, and if you're able to create a broader social context, you're very unlikely to fall into that trap, and vastly less likely to get accused of behaving inappropriately; and if you somehow do anyway, it'll be much easier to defend yourself as having engaged in good faith. Since you obviously did.
Uh, only if invited? I mean do you not ever get lunch with coworkers or invite them to events you're hosting or ask if they want to see a movie or concert with you that you've been into? The important thing is to establish a positive social relationship before indicating any sort of sexual interest, so they know you as "My chill coworker John" rather than "John the guy at the office who's always staring at my tits and asked me out for 'drinks' before we ever had a single conversation." It's not impossible to establish sexual or romantic chemistry before establishing social chemistry, but it's sure harder.
I was wondering if someone would jump on that. Are you genuinely curious about or unclear on the difference? Do you legitimately not understand how those two statements can be true? I'm willing to try to explain, if you're seriously interested, but if you're motivated by trying to demonstrate that I'm incorrect I won't waste my time.
I think cars and urban design are too often used as a scapegoat.
Whether living in an apartment building in a city or a house in the suburbs, I’m frequently surprised how many people never introduce themselves to their neighbors. And that has nothing to do with cars.
People want some external system to construct a social environment for them and often blame everything but themselves when they could easily arrange a neighborhood get together by passing out some flyers…
People want some external system to construct a social environment for them and often blame everything but themselves
I think this dependence on external systems, on governments, is another symptom of the problem. When people belong to a community they don't have that expectation, they are participants. Look to the Amish, for example, and their famous barn-raisings. They don't depend on government relief or insurance policies. Everyone contributes to building a new barn when someone in the community needs one.
> Americans: why isn't anyone having sex anymore?? Also Americans: Abstinence only! You'll get pregnant! No abortions! STDs will kill you! Men deserve sex! We're not going to teach you how your body works!
None of that is new in America. If anything, I'd expect that these forces were stronger 20-30 years ago, when sexual activity rates were higher.
Social media and phones with cameras has made a lot of people risk adverse. When a video can hit Twitter or TikTok or Reddit about something that can ruin your life why risk it?
I'm not sure that's it. It's a contradiction that we have social media where people share their lives and that people are risk averse to having videos made of themselves.
It's not a contradiction: people don't share their real lives, they share a curated and often dishonest version of their lives. Obviously people don't want negative videos shared publicly.
And seeing some content commented online. Even that curated part might not sell the personality. I might even say that decent chunk of people who put their lives online are less than stable or good partner material.
True. The decline has been in effect for a while, but as for recent chages losing reproductive freedom can't be helping, nor AI and legal weed as two new ways for people to opiate themselves.
I don't think any meaningful segment of the population is using AI to "opiate" themselves. AI is a useful tool but I haven't heard of it having parasocial effects on any meaningful scale.
"Meaningful" is quite the qualifier. It's possible http://reddit.com/r/MyBoyfriendIsAI is entirely one person's work of fiction but also maybe not. From there you have to guess at how many people are doing that and just not telling anybody or posting about it online. So there's no data that proves it one way or the other, and all we've got to go on is anecdotes.
Eh, having lived in many other countries - lack of reproductive freedom definitely doesn’t cut back on sex. Same with public shaming, or other coercive control.
It’s not like there are 1.5 billion Indians because no one has sex there.
I don't think the overturning of Roe vs Wade was the key driver in trends which started long before that decision, but there's a big difference between a society where girls marry who they're expected to marry and have sex with him when he expects it and a society where girls get to choose whether to hookup or not and if and when to marry but don't get to choose how they deal with the results...
Both are true in large part there, at least in the cities.
Except Indian politics are at least 10x as crazy as current US politics on the ground, and probably 10x as potentially (violently) serious if someone ‘steps out of line’, so people are better at hiding what is going on.
Spent enough months in India to be aware that hookups happen, including ones parents would be very disapproving of and ones which were illegal at the time. Pretty much everything happens in India to some degree, but we're talking about the effect at the margin here, and I don't think India has a 1.5bn population because hookups are more of a thing there than the West.
Fair point - the population numbers are largely due to the (most common) marital structure, and societal expectations around having kids.
The amount of sex though definitely includes hookups and a lot of sex outside of the acknowledged marital structure. A large number of those kids may well be illegitimate, I suspect no one wants to look too hard.
I also suspect what is happening in the US is a combination of defacto ‘strikes’ from both sides of the equation, combined with general confusion as to what to do or why. Essentially a ‘why would I want to engage with this mess? What’s even in it for me?’.
I suspect that for all the attention certain politics and niche subcultures promoting disengagement get, it mostly comes down to spending less time in mingly social environments with the opposite sex, something young unmarried Indian men frequently expressed disappointment with and is also increasingly the case in the West for a different balance of reasons. The average reason may be different, but of course the US has its small towns full of conservative parents and India has its internet addicts and workaholics.
(Not sure if there are directly comparable surveys, but I wouldn't be surprised to discover that unmarried Americans were rather more sexually active than unmarried Indians, even with the downward trend)
Hmm. Off topic, but I wonder if the reason for your second paragraph isn't your first paragraph. Sex and alcohol both are often escapes, and if you don't have time and energy for one, why would you have time and energy (and money) for the other?
Back on topic: You mention "people who aren't putting in any emotional labor to learning and growing as a person". But, from your first paragraph, who's got time and energy for that?
My own guess at an additional factor: Women's equality has made women who didn't need to depend on a man. As a result, they got a lot choosier about what downsides, flaws, and baggage they were willing to put up with.
> Women's equality has made women who didn't need to depend on a man. As a result, they got a lot choosier about what downsides, flaws, and baggage they were willing to put up with.
This would track with how a lot of dating apps, etc are described as "the top 70% of women competing for the top 30% of men"
Sex education lowers amount of sex among teenagers. Lack of it raises amount of sex among teenagers. Basically, when they know how body works, they have less sex, mostly dropping out of unsafe sex entirely. (Basically having less but safer sex).
Abstinence only education creates teenage pregnancies, basically.
You make some good points about attitude around sex in parts of the US today, and the erosion of community is a topic I was was more often discussed.
Sex ed is also something I was more universally supported. Regardless of your views on when someone should have sex, I doubt it serves anyone’s goals to have young adults getting hurt, sick, or traumatized by a natural part of growing up.
This attitude is also being forced on people through media. Modern media seems almost allergic to the concept of even acknowledging that sex is a thing people do. Then, you look at the ways people self-censor on YouTube to avoid demonetization, where they won't even say the word sex. I see young people today who are shocked by movies and HBO TV shows from the 90s, 00s, and early 10s.
I watch mostly comedies a d crime stories on Netflix and there is no shortage of sex scenes. I am not deliberately searching them out, they just are there basically randomly.
I genuinely do not know what you are talking about heremaybe except "this person is consuming wastly different media".
I recently read (and enjoyed) Casey Tanner's _Feel it All_, which takes the stance that lack of sex ed is little-t traumatic, and backs up that argument convincingly.
It's a surprisingly positive read, given that thesis. The idea that we should be tought (in an age approptiate way) how our bodies work and how to respect others shouldn't be controversial, and yet, here we are.
Even 30 years ago in East Texas we had sex ed in junior high. Abortions were legal and common. Boys had it shoved down their throats not to harass girls. I learned the biology of sex in 4th or 5th grade. While there was a common public message of abstinence the reality is most of the parents had their girls on birth control. At least all my friends were anyways.
Everything you said was more popular when rates of sex were higher, so clearly your thoughts aren't correct. On top of that, red states that push abstinence only have always had higher rates of teen pregnancy, again suggesting your ideas are not correct. Abstinence only education never stopped anyone.
> The kids in my community are being taught age-appropriate, consent-based sex ed, and the availability of free, high-quality sex ed is improving.
This has been the case in blue states for decades. I had proper sex-ed in the 90s.
I would expect it to reduce fertility because we know when you explain to girls how human reproduction actually works fewer of them are onboard because that sure looks like a traumatic experience. Oh so eventually after the other horrible side effects the parasite gets so large I have to push it out of my body through an orifice which is clearly not adequately sized for this purpose? Strong no.
But the other part sounds fun, so, why wouldn't learning about that encourage you? If you've done a decent sex ed course then a whole lot of fun possibilities are showcased, even if you think some of them are gross the others seem intriguing enough that I'd expect more rather than less will be interested in trying.
I think you are trying to come up with an individualistic argument for why sex ed should exist.
I'm just saying that observationally, traditional societies and sub-societies with worse sex ed that are less "sexually enlightened" tend to have more sex and fertility. Maybe it has something to do with breaking taboo?
Viewed through a certain lense, you could view abstinence-only sex education and denial of access to abortions is a psyop to get (young) women to become pregnant and attached and dependant on a man.
What about hookup culture and apps like Tinder, how do you factor that into your analysis? Also dating apps are connecting people which lead to intimacy. I wonder what the demographics reveal and if it’s only a subset of the population using these.
My opinion of those is what I think of as the seal out of water effect. You wouldn't think a seal as a powerful and graceful animal if you only saw them out of the water. Most people on dating apps are like seals out of water.
The inequality on dating apps is very high. Their Gini coefficients vary from 0.4 to 0.6 on most popular dating apps. Even if 100% of people were using dating apps, only the top percentiles of men would be satisfied because they can get way more short-term partners than they could without the apps.
To the extent hookups lead to relationships, it's coming from people that are willing to settle
I've had several meaningful relationships that were the results of dating apps, including my current 8-year one. And that one was from one of the "modern" apps you speak of.
But are they being given fair sex Ed that includes same sex stuff too? Because that still seems incredibly lacking even amongst the "less prude" communities for it.
Quite interesting because in my trans and poly community I have found belonging, friendship, cuddles, alcohol free spaces, and lots of very exciting and interesting consensual safer sex. I’m having (by far) the best sex of my life after being active for 20+ years. It turns out that dancing in the forest on LSD is way more fun and exciting than chugging another beer on my couch (which is exactly how I spent my 20’s).
I think one reason the trans community is so threatening to a certain ideology is that we found happiness by intentionally and deliberately discarding core components of that ideology and having done so we found something better.
I truly never imagined I could have what I have today. In finding my way through poly, transition, and finding community, I changed my life. I don’t think for everyone gender transition is the answer, but going through a serious process of contemplative evaluation and change, however difficult it may be, did so much for me.
When you have an inexplicable and paranoid disdain for a group and blame said group for the ills of everything wrong in the world, it's because the mere existence of said group disproves your worldview.
It's like a scientific discovery, a mathematical proof or evidence of a crime. The go to strategy is to get rid of that evidence, but how do you get rid of evidence if the evidence is a person?
Well they will try to ban HRT, try to ban trans access to every space they can, and if things get really bad they will turn their ICE-based kidnapping machine on trans people.
There are some very vocal right wing politicians in the US who say openly that trans people should be eliminated from society. Much like calls 20-30-40 years ago to eliminate gays from society, such an effort is impossible, but they could do great harm if they try.
Alcohol, while for some part of the population disastrous, does have a strong socializing effect on people. Recent kurzgesagt: https://youtu.be/aOwmt39L2IQ?t=567
cut - 10 minutes about alcohol being the most deadly drug on earth -
"People who drink moderately have more friendships, closer friendships and higher levels of trust in others".
We need an approved better alternative. Seriously chemistry exists, we actually have pharmaceuticals that literally are the alcohol with vastly reduced side effects. Still addictive, of course.
The messaging I've seen is the opposite "Men don't deserve sex!".
The dead bedroom is particularly popular when the boyfriend in question is, in the words of the girlfriend in question, "gentle and treating his girlfriend better than any of her previous boyfriends".
Okay, but don't get surprised if men listen to you and avoid having sex.
How can this non sense still be this prevalent nowadays?
Dead bedroom happens because people don’t solve their marital problems, generally have poor sex but are too afraid to talk about it, or to summarise communicate extremely poorly. It’s entirely unrelated to men being "too nice" whatever that’s supposed to mean.
If you are unhappy in your relationship, have some courage, talk about it, fix it or end it if it will never satisfy you. Stop playing the victim.
And to be fair, I think communication issue might be the crux of the modern lack of socialisation.
> Also Americans: Abstinence only! You'll get pregnant! No abortions! STDs will kill you! Men deserve sex! We're not going to teach you how your body works!
I don't know what time machine you arrive on, but no one has been seriously promoting abstinence for decades, except in certain religious circles, and that's where people are having the most sex and the best sex. That's not a coincidence. They more like to be engaging in it the only healthy way it can be: an expression of mutual self-giving and love, and an act of bonding that reinforces the relationship that's already there. Intrinsically entailed is its openness to new life, as that is its ultimate consummation and raison d'etre. Block that and you corrupt the act. Reap the consequences.
> Of course we end up with declining sex, in a country so obsessed with individualism and sex-adverse.
Sex averse? You must be joking. We're sex-obsessed! Creepiness has been normalized. You can't watch a movie for 5 minutes without having your face rubbed in a sex scene, or a newspaper with the latest sexual fetish looking to receive society's blessing instead of its condemnation and scorn. Advertising is heavily sexualized, contributing to the commercializing of sex. Dating culture, rather that being about courtship and getting to know someone to find a spouse, is and has been for some time some kind of dystopian and aimless sex ritual. What a mind job!
And porn use? Yeah, it is a problem and a major contributor to various disorders and insecurities. The vast majority of males (especially Gen Z) are regular consumers of pornography, which has never been so ubiquitous and easily available - you're just a typo away from accidentally tripping over a porn site. Record numbers of women are dabbling in OF-style sex work. In the case of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, they practically grew up on the stuff. Pornography is also shaping sexual norms that are disturbing. For instance, there has been a rise in the frequency at which women are choked during sex. That comes from pornography, which has been only deepening mistrust, misunderstanding, disrespect, and animosity between the sexes. The crippling effect pornography has on the ability to form and have a healthy relationship cannot be understated.
The very fact that we're even talking about people not having sex as the problem is already a sign that we have a deranged relationship with sex. It's not about sex as if it were some decontextualized recreational activity that is failing to hit quotas. It has a place, and outside of its legitimate narrow confines, it becomes an act of violence, an instrument of power, and an act of exploitation and abuse. The social fallout is incalculable. Consent doesn't wave that away.
> The kids in my community are being taught age-appropriate, consent-based sex ed, and the availability of free, high-quality sex ed is improving.
Sex ed has been around for a long time, and one of its common faults is that it decontextualizes sex, and second, doesn't and can't give you "just the facts", but actively promotes and shapes unhealthy attitudes toward what is acceptable sexual behavior. Sexual ethics is reduced to mere consent, at best. To say the problem is that we don't have enough sex ed is like saying communism failed because it didn't communism hard enough.
Sex is not a toy. It's a powerful and sacred act. FAFO. That we are not horrified by the state of sexual relations and sexual disorder is a testament to the numbing effect our disorder has. For centuries, it was known to great moral teachers that one of the "daughters of lust" (where lust is not healthy sexual desire, but one not proportioned by reason) is a darkening of the mind.
So, yes, community is important, but it needs a basis, and a deep one, but the point of a community is not to supply you with sexual experiences. If your community begins operating like some kind of sex market, it will dissolve and right so, because it will have become a seedy hive of sexual perversion, coercion, and unhealthy relations.
The sexual relationship is the glue of family and through that of society. Mess with it, and prepare for hell.
Its actually quite a bit worse than you think, but to recognize what's happening you have to understand how torture and the developing mind work to some small degree.
Thought reform, which is sophisticated science based techniques that impose stress and increase suggestability, almost to the point of mindlessness,are torture that have been imposed in varying ways to kids and teens. The entire process of centralized education embraces this through Paulo Freire's pedagogy which is most National Teachers Union members; like "Lying to Children", or by-rote teaching (two faces same coin).
When you succumb to torture, you adopt characteristics of the torturer that are reflected. The torturer can distort that reflection for purpose, and in general its a state of involuntary hypnosis. This same state can be induced through distorting reflected appraisal through media. Its not the type of torture you see caracicaturized in media. It leverages perceptual blindspots to induce psychological instability.
When the girls are taught that attractive qualities in men are unattractive or crazy, and the guys are taught the same thing; there is an age range where those core identity beliefs are adopted and crystallized to carry forward the rest of their lives. It takes great personal suffering to overcome any of these, let alone recognize them.
The behavior promoted is almost and mimics similar behaviors or mannerisms that occur in schizophrenics, and is one sign that a person may have been tortured. In addition to what you mention, this has been occuring for decades, and the economic consequences have only gotten worse, and the environment has only ever marched toward disadvantaged.
The world created by the aggregate of older adults today is a hellscape for their children, but most of these slothful (complacent) people have willfully blinded themselves to the reality of their actions.
For example dating websites where you are never matched up to someone that is long-term compatible, effectively being pigeonholed into a eugenics experiment since the strategy the company uses to guarantee profit is the same strategy the USDA uses to eradicate parasites through sterility.
Whenever these type of dynamics occur, chaos sustainably grows until the systems involved can no longer correct, as a positive feedback system. All the way to catastrophe.
Aside from food security, when you make social life unlivable and intolerable. When you deprive children who become adults, of lifes joy through conditioned indoctrination and torture. You have as a group stolen their future. The ones that did nothing are equally responsible as the ones that moved it towards that state.
There is a critical point where they will realize what has been done to them, because you can't fool everyone always. When that occurs, the law won't save the old. Absent a functioning rule of law (which we don't have), violence will be the only option to these people, and they will have nothing to lose.
Chickens come home to roost eventually. Evil doesn't need to know its evil to be evil. All it needs to do is be willfully blind. Thomas Paine said it best when he referred to "Dead Men Ruling."
Books:
Robert Cialdini (1990s) - Influence - Covers perceptual blindspots
Robert Lifton (1950s) - Thought Reform & Totalism - Detailed Case Studies of Torture
Joost Meerloo (1950s) - Rape of the Mind - Covers the broad topic of torture and thought reform; has some dating.
Chase Hughes - Ellipsis - The material in this domain is highly fragmented across many subfields, he aggregates most of the important parts of modern thought reform (1970s+) into NCI, including Cults, Cointelpro, Kubark, and others. Author was a professional military interrogator/behavioral modification expert (iirc).
Torture/Modern Thought Reform is recognized by its Elements, Structuring, and Clustering, and the last group is often addiction linked following lines of Narco-synthesis/analysis through dopamine triggering/conditioning.
Unfortunately, you probably won't see this post long.
HN has a lot of bots, automatons, or despicable people that don't want harsh truths to see the light of day. Almost without fail within 30 minutes of linking to the reference material included, the posts get downvoted to invisibility despite being science backed and true.
Mind you nothing said here changes the reality of the dynamics. It will all happen the same regardless. The hiding is only an action that prevents a general forewarning to others as preparable time ahead of the associated collapse occurring.
There are a lot of people alive today that want to destroy everyone and everything they can.
Ivan Illyin seems to have been right with regards to his refutation of Tolstoy, and outcomes of evil.
I think a lot of millennials, myself included, are "people pleasers", who push our own needs aside to make others happy. Again and again.
This works, until we burn out and crash. I certainly have - I spent most of 2024 severely burnt out, and part of it was not protecting my time and setting healthy boundaries.
There's a balance between serving others and taking time to rest. Existing in community takes sacrifice and sometimes that means setting your own needs aside. But being in community also means that others can step up to help you when you need to rest, sharpen your saw, etc. People pleasing and setting poor boundaries in the context of (American) individualism means being a jerk.
I read somewhere (can't find it now, I'm literally on an operating table) that people in more community-focused cultures were more comfortable taking alone time. Because they know that if they take time, things aren't going to fall apart without them. The community will be there to welcome them back in, and nobody will be upset for them taking the time that they need.
The whole idea of a "people pleaser" has largely arisen because people like to hear it. "Your problem is you are just too good of a person!" Attaching yourself to this label will just hamper genuine introspection and growth.
I don't think it's self aggrandizing. It points to a need to balance compassion for self and others. If you let that ratio get unbalanced in any direction it leads to bad outcomes.
All ideas exist in an evolutionary system. New ideas are being produced all the time and the ones that prosper have the best fitness. An idea like this prospers because it has multiple fitness advantages:
- It tells people they are inherently better than other people: "Other people aren't as good as you."
- It excuses their bad behavior: "Your bad behavior is not your fault, you just reached your limit in dealing with bad people. It would happen to anyone".
- It offers a false veneer of being reasonable, even when it is just a framework of excuses. As you say: "It points to a need to balance compassion for self and others."
I don't think such ideas are necessarily engineered this way, but that is why they proliferate.
I spent some time searching for this source today, I think it was an NPR article? But honestly, I can't find it. Maybe I made it up, and if so, I apologize.
Came here to say exactly this. Perhaps someday, someone will figure out how to target specific proteins in the immune memory using a modified measles virus?
I was also going to suggest that... But I imagine that the Ethernet port or antennae wire (and necessary battery to power antennae) would dwarf the size of that MCU. But thinking again, I suppose if the rules permit the MCU to be directly wired to the Ethernet cable, then could bitbang an early Ethernet standard with this MCU's pins...
But I guess the standard is 'on the public web', akin to most publicly accessible web surfers .. for that, I'd be a bit uncomfortable exposing my m5stack/magicshifter to the web, for the time being ..
My grandma always joked when I did something dumb that she could shine a light in one of my ears and see it out the other. Years ahead of the science, apparently.
I think belonging is one of the most important contributors to mental health, and anecdotally, fewer liberals and leftists "belong" to a group.
There are progressive churches out there, for example, but they see much smaller membership overall than other denominations. Evangelical conservative megachurches are designed to foster a sense of belonging and community for those who can believe their teachings. Progressive churches celebrate the questioning mind and search for meaning, which actively does not create a culture of conformity, and hence raises the barrier to allow people to feel like they belong.
We know that hazing rituals, shared uniforms and appearance, and groupthink create strong bonds, but also lead to little-t and capial-T traumas, especially for queer or neurodivergent folks who may never truly "fit in" without heavy masking or closeting. Leftists also have a problem with gatekeeping, contrast this with evangelicals who design easy paths in to their churches for folks who "haven't done the required reading"
Additionally, the active suppression of liberal/leftist and queer groups (e.g. McCarthyism), the AIDS crisis, leftist infighting, and leftist distrust of authority mean a lot of young progressives are starting from scratch or facing large headwinds in finding any sort of social group. The Internet is helping combat this, but the lack of elders, advisors, and established routes to leadership mean that there aren't many organizations to even join, and the ones that do exist are often run poorly.
Contrast this with conservative groups which have generations of experience, leadership routes, training, etc. Individual evangelical colleges matriculate thousands of students while progressive religious programs are lucky to number in the 30-50 range.
Source: anecdotes and personal experience, as someone with leadership experience in a progressive religion :)
> I think belonging is one of the most important contributors to mental health, and anecdotally, fewer liberals and leftists "belong" to a group.
> There are progressive churches out there, for example, but they see much smaller membership overall than other denominations.
You don't need a church to have something to belong to. I'm not going to believe in gods just so I can sing kumbaya with others. The whole point of belonging is that you can be yourself and be accepted as you are. That's key. If you're going to pretend you're just fooling yourself.
Also, churches tell you how to feel, what to do, what to think. Another thing that doesn't go down very well with most progressives. I don't think that this causes an extra barrier to belong though. The key part is finding a group that suits you.
Or do you mean these 'churches' are more like enlightenment classes of self discovery? In that case I wouldn't call it a church due to all the negative associations that brings.
> We know that hazing rituals, shared uniforms and appearance, and groupthink create strong bonds, but also lead to little-t and capial-T traumas, especially for queer or neurodivergent folks who may never truly "fit in" without heavy masking or closeting
As a neurodivergent kinda queer leftist, I absolutely hate hazing rituals and uniforms and authority. But it's not like I'm desperately trying to find a group to belong to. A group I belong to has to fit me, not the other way around. They're easier to find than you think. Just chat to someone wearing a rainbow band and they'll tell you what's good in the area. Or someone with blue hair or extravagant clothing. Our communities aren't strictly organised and regulated or formalized but that doesn't mean that they don't exist.
In fact that's something that conservatives tend to project on us. They think there's an LGBT or 'woke' 'agenda'. They project their own need for leadership and organisation on us. In reality this isn't the case at all. Everyone makes up their own goals. And that's great. Progressiveness is all about embracing different.
For me I have found such places such as makerspaces and more spicy places, all of which ended up being full of neurodivergents like me :) And definitely all progressive. But they share no elements of churches other than being a community.
I do think neurodivergents are often less happy because we have more difficulty in life where most others are neurotypical.
> there aren't many organizations to even join, and the ones that do exist are often run poorly.
Most makerspaces are really badly run :) But it doesn't matter. It's not about being successful. It's about making cool stuff with others.
I appreciate the response! I really enjoy talking about this stuff so please take my long response as just me thinking out loud.
I forgot to mention that I'm an atheist. I call myself "religious but not spiritual". I was super reluctant to go to anything called "church" until my partner dragged me along 10 or so years ago, and the religion I belong to now has no particular theological creed. Reclaiming religious language (like "church") and disassociating it from the baggage of conservative organized religion is something very interesting to me. It's like the word "god", which can mean a big white dude in the sky, or it can just mean the way the universe works. (Aka monotheism and panentheism).
> A group I belong to has to fit me, not the other way around
I think this is one of the major sticking points a lot of progressives have that lead to shallow relationships. Deep community often takes work, change, and sacrifice. I don't mean changing who you are - just how you interact with others, how you open up, and how/what you are willing to give.
Without buy-in (monetary, skills, helping others, etc.), it's not really a community. It's just a social interest group, and that's not going to provide the kind of psychological safety and deep connection that contributes to well being.
I'm not saying you have to go to church, or that a makerspace or spicy setting can't be a community. And I do think a lot of them can foster relationships that turn into real community. But in my (biased) experience, there are few multigenerational progressive spaces designed to encourage kids, elders, adults, etc. to connect meaningfully. Contributing further to the lack of structure, wisdom, and leadership that can allow an organization to do big work.
I too hate hazing rituals and uniforms and authority, although I'm starting to soften on that last one (authority), as I find progressive spaces that vet and hold accountable their leadership. Without a web of trust and accountability we are all just off on our own, pulling in many different directions at the same time, while conservatives have figured out how to get everyone working on the same few problems, regardless of minor differences.
I'm obviously exaggerating and using metaphor, but what else makes a good story :)
> I forgot to mention that I'm an atheist. I call myself "religious but not spiritual". I was super reluctant to go to anything called "church" until my partner dragged me along 10 or so years ago, and the religion I belong to now has no particular theological creed. Reclaiming religious language (like "church") and disassociating it from the baggage of conservative organized religion is something very interesting to me. It's like the word "god", which can mean a big white dude in the sky, or it can just mean the way the universe works. (Aka monotheism and panentheism).
Ah I see. I'm open to spiritualism. But calling something a church leads to an insta-pass from me. Which is a kinda personal hangup. But yes definining something yourself is a very typical progressive point. Try that in a conservative church, there you really have to stick with established dogma, colour within the lines. But anyway you said the same thing in different words I think.
> I think this is one of the major sticking points a lot of progressives have that lead to shallow relationships. Deep community often takes work, change, and sacrifice. I don't mean changing who you are - just how you interact with others, how you open up, and how/what you are willing to give.
> Without buy-in (monetary, skills, helping others, etc.), it's not really a community. It's just a social interest group, and that's not going to provide the kind of psychological safety and deep connection that contributes to well being.
Ok this is a point where we really differ in opinion :) I feel the complete opposite. A community where I have to change isn't really 'real' to me. Because it's not really me that is a member, it's a twisted role I'm playing. It just becomes a mindless ritual then, not something worth anything to me. I don't feel invested because I'm just playing some role.
I used to live in a pretty conservative place and it was hard to find a place to belong, but now I live in a big city and my life has become so much more full. My connection to friends is much deeper. We talk about deep personal problems and insecurities, about sex, about traumas. We really open up and show our real selves (and often bodies). I've never really had that before. Things are more fluid yes, sometimes I'm really close to one friend or group and sometimes to another, but it doesn't matter. We're all on our own journey but we travel together with the people that align with us at the time. I feel I'm really progressing in my life now and living it more fully. In the conservative place I couldn't do that because so many things were taboos or just frowned upon.
And yes we help each other too. If someone is moving house we all show up to help, if a friend has a computer problem they tend to come to me. And the others help me with things I can't do on my own. <3
Talking about some shared ideology that is set in stone (tablets :) ) or books would never bring that to me. Because I change over time too, even if I align at one point I will not later. And the world changes too.
> But in my (biased) experience, there are few multigenerational progressive spaces designed to encourage kids, elders, adults, etc. to connect meaningfully.
I have deep connections with people ranging from 18 to their 70s. Embrace different includes not allowing ageism.
> Contributing further to the lack of structure, wisdom, and leadership that can allow an organization to do big work.
See, this is the part that does not matter to us at all. Doing stuff some leader wants done is not something we care about at all. We don't have a shared agenda and we don't want one. Some organisations do, but they tend to be made up of different people over time, that align with the mission at that point in life. It's rare for them to stay in there for their whole life.
The shared goal thing is definitely a huge difference between conservative and progressive communities, as you mention. But my point is the lack of that doesn't matter. I do think it is one of the reasons that conservatism is so succesful in the world. Because they do have an agenda and the means (also financial) to push it through. Our communities are always struggling with money, but it's also because that's not a thing we find really important.
Running into this same issue. I tried to send you an email but it bounced. The error was "Your message couldn't be delivered ... because the remote server is misconfigured ... 554 5.7.1 : Relay access denied". Just FYI :)
It would help if we built third spaces that weren't centered around alcohol, which is also declining in popularity, especially with young adults.
Americans: why isn't anyone having sex anymore??
Also Americans: Abstinence only! You'll get pregnant! No abortions! STDs will kill you! Men deserve sex! We're not going to teach you how your body works!
Of course we end up with declining sex, in a country so obsessed with individualism and sex-adverse.
I do see hope though. The kids in my community are being taught age-appropriate, consent-based sex ed, and the availability of free, high-quality sex ed is improving.
I would be really interested to see if sex frequency is declining for everyone, or just for people who aren't putting in any emotional labor to learning and growing as a person when it comes to sexuality.
Just some off-the-cuff thoughts :)
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