There was an interesting article recently about teens and social networking, and insight of the article was that teens want to socialize IRL, but there is nowhere for them to go without parental supervision.
I would argue that this approximately true for adults, American cities don't have pedestrian-only town squares,
the public transit is abysmal (because long ago they ripped out all the streetcars, which led to the destruction of many social places, like Excelsior Amusement Park and Wonderland Amusement Park),
[warning anecdotal evidence]
The few dynamic social spaces I've known have been
Paved (Hidden Beach),
Pushed out due to rent increases (Loring Bar, Little Nikkis Cafe, CyberX),
Turned into a Bank of America (Filter in Wicker Park),
Out of business due to the smoking ban (The tobacco shop next to Filter in Wicker Park)
Purposefully destroyed by fake art to prevent gatherings
(That little area next to the Subway on State Street in Madison, WI (where I used to play hackeysack))
Not to mention that we destroyed all the beer gardens during WW2 (this really happened), because that was too German, you can't drink a bottle of wine in a park like the French do, because I guess the drunks would abuse it, and the parks we do have generally don't also have any commercial activity whatsoever, not even a little kiosk where you can buy a coffee.
That's not even considering the destruction of ethnic neighborhoods by intersecting them with freeways (the old Catholic neighborhood [that no longer exists] that used to surround the Basilica in Minneapolis)
You know we're doing something wrong with urban design (which I argue is directly related to loneliness), when you see statues of children playing and not actual children playing.
Further reading/viewing:
James Howard Kunstler: The ghastly tragedy of the suburbs
James Howard Kunstler: Geography of Nowhere
The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing
Streets for People: A Primer for Americans
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community
I would expand your hypothesis: the goal of business is to take away all of our abilities to take care of ourselves--whether it's socialization, food, shelter, or anything else--so that they can sell those things back to us.
Our culture, increasingly dictated by commercial interests, is taking this strategy to the extreme. The result is a world which appears humane to the wealthy.
I was speaking informally. To be more specific, I'm talking about the goal of Capital.
(Capital being not a person or an organization, but a different species in the world that is outside of our control. The emergent effects of the existence of capital. Which itself is the result of widespread enforcement of property laws.)
I spent most of my youth "ruled" under extremely restrictive parents in a suburb that offered nowhere to go without a car, that my parents would never let me use. I was very lonely as a kid and even after I got to college, it took me a while to develop the social skills I needed to make myself happy. I ended up developing a strong hatred for the suburbs in my youth and have embraced the urban city. Wherever I end up living when I have kids, I'll never subject them to the loneliness that I grew up with. I want my kids to be able to have peers as a refuge away from me as a parent.
Don’t Blame Social Media if Your Teen Is Unsocial. It’s Your Fault
If kids can’t socialize, who should parents blame? Simple: They should blame themselves. This is the argument advanced in It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, by Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd. Boyd—full disclosure, a friend of mine—has spent a decade interviewing hundreds of teens about their online lives.
What she has found, over and over, is that teenagers would love to socialize face-to-face with their friends. But adult society won’t let them. “Teens aren’t addicted to social media. They’re addicted to each other,” Boyd says. “They’re not allowed to hang out the way you and I did, so they’ve moved it online.”
It's a relevant point she brings forth - albeit a false one. Microsoft just as Google is much too biased in this debate and so is Danah Boyd. It is not just the parents fault, the upbringing and social life of a child is composed of many factors. It is not unreasonable to assume that most regular children at the age of ten are in possession of a smartphone and have working parents. At least half of the kids' days will be spent outside of parental jurisdiction and under the influence of other players. These players are - from most real to most virtual: Geolocation, Government, School, Teacher, Classmates/Clique, [...], Mobile device, Software company (Google, Microsoft et al). It is not just a mistake to blame parents, it is the deliberate attempt to throw off any kind of debate that needs to be had about the responsibility of tech companies. If kids learn that likes matter, they will behave accordingly.
I haven't read the book yet, but based on my knowledge of what boyd has said over the past decade, I'd hazard a guess that she actually means that parents should stop trying to defend their kids from nebulous external threats and recognize that their own behavior is a significant part of the issue.
Last I checked, Google wasn't a daycare service. I'm not really sure why you're trying to insist that it is.
My suburb used to have an arcade/bowling alley, but my parents didn't want me to go there (I did anyway), but then even that closed down. I guess I was one of the lucky ones.
Consider the following, most parents are driving their children to sports, therefore the children are not playing in the neighborhood, therefore if you are a child and not in sports there is no one to socialize with since all your peers are "at hockey" or whatever.
I fondly remember organizing football, basketball and baseball games with kids from the neighborhood as a child. I'd get 2-4 people together at a time and we'd have a blast! Small, suburban, rural neighborhood.
well I think you missed out on playing video games together with friends in any of their available houses? playing multiplayer halo and just hanging around were some liberating times away from home growing up for me.
I would also argue that the spread and popularity of "social" networking, and the cliquey nature of American undergraduates (which is the stage in their late teens) also heavily contributes to this.
Over-supervision by parents leads to college students around in a coffee shop working, hooked to their iDevices, staring into their Macbooks while they "like" the last 20 items their "friends" posted on Facebook. They go to the supermarket for most of their needs, but are almost surprised if anyone actually talks to them. They don't get to interact with basically anyone outside of their tiny little group of (real) friends [although they have tons of Facebook ones that provide limited mental satisfaction], and thus are often awkward and lonely when they move away for work.
The only solution I can see for this is for parents to
a) let their children be outside, unsupervised for longer periods of time, and
b) to intensely monitor their online activities at a younger age, and not give them access to smartphones.
This will act as a forcing function for simple social skills, like talking to a stranger without going goggle-eyed.
Also worth a read is 'A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction' if you're interested in an architectural look at how humans might live together better.
Thanks, that was great! I've only very recently started exploring urban design - I spend my days building software. I have this vague notion that living in a city could be nicer, so I'm trying to familiarize myself with what the people who know what they're doing say about it. I'll look further into Ingels and BIG. Are there any other starting points you'd suggest?
I think the number 1 thing that the US is missing is a pedestrian only square, with cafes and restaurants lining the perimeter. The children can run around the square, while the adults socialize.
I love that book. Just browsing through it brings relief to the soul. Imagine if all buildings were alive like that!
Alexander's critique of modern architecture is devastating, but his later, hugely more ambitious work is somehow less compelling. Perhaps I should give it another chance.
Interesting article, but I can't help feeling that for the author the feeling of loneliness is a symptom of something underlying. Which makes the loneliness itself much less interesting.
The reason I say this is, because it affects reaction and treatment. If someone complains of persistent leg pain, you don't delve too deeply into the nature of the pain and whether society is sufficiently kind to leg-pain-sufferers, if it turns out their leg is caught in a bear trap.
The Stephen Fry quote makes that particularly clear. If a well-loved public figure, by his own admission possessed of good friends and many social engagements, can feel tremendously lonely - and if the post author, who can discuss feelings of tremendous loneliness with friends and counsellors yet still feel lonely, then it doesn't seem worthwhile discussing "public discourse on the cultural ramifications of technology" or "our growing dependence on technology to communicate" as the article does. Because the author, actually being in a state of depression, might well feel just as lonely if those things were totally different.
There is no 'right way round' for so-called symptoms or so-called 'underlying' conditions, because these things are subject to feedback. Positioning in social contexts affects brain chemistry, brain chemistry affects behavior, behavior affects positioning in social contexts. To name only a few of the causal lines that can be drawn. As a long time sufferer of all of these things, I've found the illness model of depression to be very nearly useless, sometimes harmful, except during short-lived acute manifestations. I'm aware that the mileage of others varies.
Comparing the brain to other parts of the body doesn't work. It's like trying to reason about a CPU by studying a USB port. With other organs, it's relatively easy to understand function and dysfunction. With the brain, it's not as clear cut what constitutes normal functioning. Is it normal to be happy or content in a world where, objectively, there is a lot to feel hopeless about? What if this brain has been in solitary confinement for eight months? Do we still expect it to be functioning normally, or look to the chemistry of the brain to fix the situation? A human is embedded in a society and culture, and it's very hard to treat the organ that is so profoundly affected by that embedding in isolation. Not that it is never appropriate to treat it that way, but I do think the current prevailing attitude does that too much.
I am a bit confused about terms. It seems like the discussion is about two related but separate things.
First, there is lonelyness, the social state. This involves not talking to people, not going to meet new people, and not talking about things you find meaningful with those people. This is a set of actions: it is either done by choice (not a problem) or due to some other underlying problem, like a lack of time/effort, depression, fear of social vulnerability, anxiety, or a lack of interpersonal skills. The reason we call these things underlying is because they represent tangible actions that can be taken by the victim of loneliness or someone else to fix the problem
Then there is loneliness the emotion, which might exist separate of the actual lack of socialization described above... existential loneliness perhaps... but most often is cause by the above.
Thank you for the very interesting post. You are quite right that these things are tremendously complicated - after all, as you say, even figuring out a 'normal' amount of happiness people should feel leads one immediately down a dozen philosophical and ethical rabbit holes.
I don't have the logical background to explore this space without a great deal of feeling my way in the dark, and I certainly don't have any medical insight into the matter. But I remain quite mystified by the original article - it seems so clear-cut that, although what the author experienced was feelings of loneliness, they weren't caused by solitude or isolation, and therefore debating whether the modern world causes solitude and isolation is thoroughly beside the point.
There is no 'right way round' for so-called symptoms or so-called 'underlying' conditions, because these things are subject to feedback.... I've found the illness model of depression to be very nearly useless...
It's good to see someone else who describes these things in terms of feedback rather than simple cause and effect. This is a model of neurology and physiology that needs to become more widespread.
Related but an off-shoot question, people who are "settled down," in your late 20's/30's/40's/50's/60's, have families and various obligations, how do you deal with loneliness?
As someone who is on the precipice of turning 30 (27 currently), speaking strictly for myself - I've found that loneliness for me and my older peers is different from the angst of adolescence a la Holden. Tbh, younger people tend to think in more black and white terms and very ambitious but most haven't gone through the "test" of one's vulnerability and limitation. Unfortunately, we also live in a marketing society that sells products and dreams on the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) that exploit the impressionable young people (e.g., the "MTV" high school memories with the "Coke" concert experience with friends; the "Ivy League" class room experience, the "Liberal Arts" self-exploration, the "Sexy-Times" with la-femme-de-Zooey Deschanel and "Peter Thiel/Steve Jobs entrepreneur" iconoclasm).
Whereas I was a jack-ass when I was 21, thinking I was special and therefore deserved and expected external tokens of accomplishments at every stage in my life (I was crestfallen at age 21 after being rejected by YC because I couldn't post a smug post on FB to snub all of my classmates and friends; and most importantly, have that as a validation to my insecure self-worth; a loneliness stemming out of FOMO). My loneliness nowadays is more centered around the splintering of between mine and my friends and acquaintances' goals and vision.
Some of my friends are still going at it with early twenties vision of grad school, startups and traveling, albeit with some bruises and splints. Some of my friends have fully "embraced" adulthood, complete with jumbo mortgage loans and X month into pregnancy and parenting books and diapers. Friendships/liasons have changed from one-on-one interaction to couples or single "dating" another couple or single. But most alarmingly, how much less I care and am affected by my peers' ideas and vision because how much I've fully embraced my own vulnerabilities/personality and focused fully to vest on my own ideas.
People who have past their 20's, how do you deal with loneliness? Do you focus on your family or really close friends after twenties, or do you focus on pursuing your own ideas with a community of likely-minded people, or do you come up with some kind of philosophical reconciliation?
I'm 31. I was 25 when I got married, which was also the same year the company I co-founded hit the skids and eventually a brick wall. That first year was really rough on us (we started with 1 child and had another in the middle of that year), but we survived and watching that company burn was one of the most valuable life lessons I've ever had. We've had another two kids since then, and I've learned a few other things along the way.
Before I was married, all of those fears and anxieties ruled my life. I think that's partly what attracted me to the startup world and ultimately to starting that company. I wanted to chase my ambitions and fight that feeling of loneliness. However, the great lesson I learned from that company, and ultimately from the last few years of marriage and kids is that you won't be alone when you choose to value the people you love over achievements you earn, stuff you buy, or even just stuff you work really hard on. I poured it on with the 90 and 100 hour weeks the last 6 months of that company and in the end the company crumbled and my hard work left me with nothing but bitterness toward my creation (I eventually got past the bitterness). Today I invest that time in my wife and my kids, and they are my world to me. They're my best friends. There's no earning their love, but the time I spend with them is never wasted. I don't get through the week, having prioritized them over other things, and think to myself "man, I really wish I'd spent an extra 20 hours on that personal project" that will never do anything for my personal fulfillment beyond some temporary ego boost.
Now. That's not to say I don't still love the startup and technology world. I do. And I still have those personal projects. And that professional community. I also love working hard on stuff that pushes the envelope. But the funny thing is that ever since I put that part of myself in a bounded box I've enjoyed it more and been more productive. There isn't the sense of having to keep up, and yet I'm still able to. Consequently I'm happier at work and since I don't draw my personal worth from it, I can take setbacks and move on and still enjoy it.
I don't know that everyone should get married, but it seems to me that, based on everyone I've ever known, that you best fight loneliness by surrounding yourself with people who will stick by you regardless of job, religion, social status , health, or anything else. To me, the question to ask is - if the world fell apart right now, would the people you prioritize still be with you?
Thanks so much for sharing your perspective. You've put words to some half-formed thoughts I've been having since a recently failed relationship. Live and learn
> As someone who is on the precipice of turning 30 (27 currently), speaking strictly for myself - I've found that loneliness for me and my older peers is different from the angst of adolescence a la Holden.
Absolutely. Also I think it varies by age. When you are in your 60's, retiring, kids have grown and left, etc. I think that's one of the most lonely times in the lives of Americans. I watch my wife's grandmother who lives with various children as is convenient for them, and she may not have a permanent home or a lot of stuff of her own, but she is happier than most Americans I have seen in retirement. Having watched my own grandparents struggle with loneliness in retirement despite the fact that we have a reasonably close family by American standards is one of the reasons why I am relatively adamant that independent retirement is not a good thing. But having lived in both kinds of cultures, I don't think most of my fellow Americans are ready to make the tradeoffs that this would involve.
> Do you focus on your family or really close friends after twenties, or do you focus on pursuing your own ideas with a community of likely-minded people, or do you come up with some kind of philosophical reconciliation?
Yes to all three. But I think there is also a feeling when you are in your 20's that if you find that special someone you won't be lonely anymore. Well, that never really happens. So you start having a family, your social life constricts, and you find you are still lonely. What you have to do is find communities of like-minded people who you can work with, and you also have to come to terms with the fact that having other people may be necessary to prevent loneliness but it is not sufficient, and at some point you have to learn to focus on what you have instead of what you don't.
Do make sure to keep a few of the closest relationships current, despite the growing obstacles. Make the time, find the resources, ignore the inconveniences.
Instead of surface-level 'interactions' of liking their picture on facebook, spend a focused afternoon or weekend together even if it now takes, say, 100+miles of driving. If your life or their lives have changed - adapt. If one of you is single and another has a few kids, this will mean a very different focus in everyday life - but if that causes your relations to fade away, you all lose in the end, so ensure that it doesn't happen.
If you can't maintain quality relationships with X people anymore due to changes in your lifestyle and time availability - prioritize. If you let things just go their own way, it will result in shallow relationships with X people (and you'll feel lonely as the orignal article states), but you should rather have deep relations with X/2 people instead, you just have to choose.
Me, I just accept the suffering. With my interest in entrepreneurship and technology I have drifted apart from most of my friends (who spend their time with kids and hobbies nowadays) and never really became close with anyone in the startup community - everyone seems too busy with their own stuff to pay attention to others.
And just wave away, via cognitive dissonance, the fact that the kids you produce are likely to be badly fucked over by climate change and an overpopulated world in their lifetime?
There have been several mass extinction events in the last 500 million years that resulted in the disappearance of the majority of animal life. We're here today through the virtue of our (500 million years of) ancestors who picked up, moved on, and got right back to fucking. They probably weren't enjoying half-starving and watching their children die, but they kept at it. Biological imperative doesn't give a shit.
I up-voted you. So many people -- including people prone to gloominess -- seem to reproduce without thinking of the fact that they are forcing another human into existence who may not enjoy life very much.
My first year or two of university were somewhat similar, with periods of significant loneliness, which I can now, many years later, compare to grief in its intensity and debilitating effect (knowing full well that my recollections of those affects is hazy at best).
Part of this was the feeling of isolation caused by being in a new place without the "support network" I had in high school.
"Putting myself out there" didn't help much (I was involved in several groups, including drama productions, where one literally puts one's self out there).
What helped immensely were one or two intimate relationships, in one case a summer romance (yeah, I know how cliché that sounds) between second and third year and in the other a sometimes rocky and difficult two year relationship over my last two years (fourth and fifth).
Thinking about these relationships Vs friendships Vs acquaintancies prompts me to speculate that there is a strong positive correlation between the amount of time one spends with another person and one's sense of well being: Acquaintances were little blips of goodness that drained away quickly when the other left (minutes, say?), the feeling of goodness from being with a friend could last hours or even a day or two, but with highs and lows, but living together had me feeling good about myself all the time, even after a bad fight, with amount of time spent with the person directly related to the depth of the relationship: You don't spend as much time with your acquaintances, even if you want to, because they have other acquaintances and friends and lovers, and they want to spend time with them; you spend more time with friends, because you are their friend too; and you spend so much more time with lovers because that is the choice you have both made.
In 20/20 hindsight, I am quite glad we didn't have the Internet (it would one year after leaving U that I learned to spell TCP/IP and another year before I got my first email address) and that phones calls were so expensive: If I had had "anchors" elsewhere that I could easily reach and hold on to, I don't know that I would have stayed where I was.
As it was, I had to "bear down" and "barrel through" until better times came by. Sure, a different path could have led to just as good a life, but I'd hate to travel back and take that chance: Things are good, very good.
Because nothing could be accomplished without avoiding constant distractions which comes from society. When Sartre said his famous "the hell is other people" he probably meant this too. Others, like Mishima, Rand, Nabokov, Hesse also emphasized if not loneliness but certain safe distance from so-called society. It is perfectly ok to be alone from all that socially constructed reality they created for themselves. Like Tibetans said "the hell is a not a place, but a consequence of behavior of inhabitants".
So loneliness is required, at least it is more bearable and natiral condition for those who is labeled as by society as "introvert" or "autist" or other words they cannot understand. Introversion is an effect, not a cause, and with good books, like "Catcher" cited by OP one is never alone, and it is a better condition than being "social animal" before TV set, or with a bottle on the street.
or just view things as a spectrum rather than a two-state decision. even tibetan people who have to live in remote areas in order to farm can still get together with friends and race horses and so on every year. similarly, software development might require extended periods of focused time, but that doesn't mean you ought to be socially isolated all the time.
All generalizations are wrong, this one is no exception. Let's say that it is more correct for "individualism" centered Western cultures and makes less sense for "community" centerd cultures, such as Tibetan's and most of Asian's. I difenitely could survive without a bunch of selfish assholes, maintaining a minimal enough interaction with society, while in Tibet, where they live in clans of relatives and tribes, so you have to be part of your small, isolated community. But in a broad sense the idea to isolate oneself from pop-culture and media and construed by it shared social reality, to see things as they are (to very limited extent, of course) is good one, and all the good writers, like Pamuk or Marques told us how good it is.
This is an interesting article. I found myself agreeing with it most of the time. At the same time, as someone who has overcome a lonely path, I can't help but put a lot more emphasis on culture than on the others.
American culture is a lonely culture, as my wife is always pointing out. We send our kids to college alone. We retire alone. We look at social problems like poverty as if they are held by the individual alone. Loneliness is the price of freedom but it is also the price includes lack of real social and physical support.
When I moved to Indonesia two years ago, things went downhill with my marriage fast. My wife was always threatening to send me back to the States (every couple weeks) and I couldn't develop a sense of place in the midst of the uncertainty. I felt like I was half-way around the world from anyone who cared about me except for the kids. It was a very dark, depressing, and crippling place to be (business-wise, personally, and more). And so things continued for most of two years. Eventually we did overcome our problems (in no small part due to me eventually deciding I had to ignore her threats).
Here's the basic thing. It doesn't take many people to combat loneliness. Quality matters far more than quantity. Getting out there and meeting people is a smallish part of the battle. A much larger issue is building real friendships with a small number of people.
Having two or three close friends makes a world of difference.
Sounds like if your spouse is threatening to "send" you out of the country a more significant problem than loneliness might be an emotionally abusive and dysfunctional relationship. I only say this (as a reality check) because I've been there, and one can become so numb and codependent that you cease to be aware that this type of behavior is not loving, not normal, and not what you deserve.
One thing one has to learn in an intercultural relationship is how culturally defined abuse actually is. Additionally one has to understand that far from what we like to think, patterns in interpersonal relationships are more cybernetic in nature (i.e. arising from feedback systems) than anything else and when you cross cultural barriers it takes a lot of work and effort to make things work.
Was it dysfunctional? Absolutely. Is that a good idea to break up the family where there are three kids and separate everyone by the diameter of the planet? Not so much.
What I can also say though is that for all the problems I have learned so much I could not have learned otherwise by being willing to work on understanding a perspective of another culture. The cost has been great but the rewards have as well.
I think we're mainly lonely because we learn to value sex as the primary goal in interpersonal relationships, thereby devaluing everything else. There is a linear relationship in western culture between the rise of emphasis on sex, which at first seemed "liberating", and the decline in feelings of connectedness with other people. Read some of the older literature which seems "repressed" by today's standards, and you will see that people had a better appreciation for life's other blessings, placed a higher value on friendship, and had more substantial friendships with other people. I don't think it has much at all to do with technology or the "pace of life", or even materialism; it's mainly about sex and where it lives in our value system. We don't want to go back to being repressed, but our current value system needs some adjustment, which will be difficult because it is a form of addiction. Like other addictions, it gradually drains meaning from the rest of life. Ironically the epic glut of pornography could help turn the tide, as people just overdose and realize how empty the whole thing really is. The recent rise of mainstream sadistic fantasies like 30 Shades suggests the end of the line for this kind of thing; what would be next?
Loneliness can't be addressed easily via social networks as you are not really authentic self when you are on them. When you are on Facebook, you want to project a positive image of yourself so you can get more Likes as a 'way to go'. On LinkedIn it is professional you and you have to be careful how you brand yourself there to be viewed by potential employers or customers. Twitter is not expansive enough to form meaningful connections though it can be done over time with a small group of people. The best way is still connecting in person seeing the person's face and body language. 'Find better people' is the advice to live by.
I think it's a very interesting and well-documented article. Everything is actually summarized in the 4 minute video half-way through the article, if you're short on time. Basically our need for self-actualization and the lens that our social platforms offer (idealized)is killing our social experience, by emphasizing quantity (connections and likes) over quality (content)and an easy excuse not to admit you're lonely: but I have x-amount of friends on...
I began feeling very much like the author describes in my late high school years. I was nothing like the unpopular guy stereotype though. Yes, between my passion for programming and my introversion I was not exactly a lollypop, but I wasn't the nerd that everyone hated. I was a drummer trying to start a band, occasionally rebellious towards the teachers, and while I wasn't quite the most popular person in the school, my girlfriend was. I went out regularly and thought I had a lot of friends.
Truth is, though, I didn't. I felt increasingly lonely and trapped and misunderstood. My passion for programming was regularly getting at odds with my social life and I felt stigmatized for not giving my friends the attention they needed. Instead of talking to them, I gradually moved my coding sprints later and later in the night which, coupled with some problems I had with my parents, destroyed my sleep schedule (which has actually been messed up ever since).
I gradually shut every door I could shut, in everyone's face, until the loneliness I felt was matched by the lack of human contact; my social life became bleak, my love life pretty much ended as I gave up fighting for a five-year relationship that I was, by then, considering hopeless, and got stuck in a complicated relationship with someone who was about as mentally disturbed as I was (and, to some degree, still am).
Professionally, things weren't bad, but intellectually, I thought they were. Initial good results made me hopeful towards a career in academia, which contributed even more to my reclusiveness, as I spent most of the time I didn't spend on my undergrad courses doing hopelessly narrow-topic research. However, I felt my mind degrading every day, perpetually trailing what I could have achieved if I'd have been, you know, like every normal person. Having your line of thought interrupted by suicide plans every couple of hours is not exactly conducive to steady intellectual improvement. About five years into this, I was battling depression first-hand, and my aversion to therapy meant I avoided seeking help like the plague. I started smoking and began drinking more and more heavily every day. I gave up heavy drinking, but I'm still stuck with the nasty pipe smoking as an occasional relief. I still went out a lot, but almost always alone, to the extent that the owner of the bar I became a regular client of got a small table in a corner, with a single chair, only for me.
"Better people" doesn't sound cliche to me now. Most of my then-friends haven't spoken to me in a long, long time now, but some of them stayed, even as I was shutting doors in their faces. Some of them felt powerless to help me and kept a polite distance from me, and I was hearing from them only on anniversaries or the occasional gathering when I felt strong enough to bear human presence. But they never got away, and stuck by, even though they did all the friendship work by themselves. I never asked them out, rarely asked how they felt and never called them to see how they were doing (so yeah, in retrospect I was an asshole!); but somehow, every few months, I'd still see them for a drink. I still got invited to New Year's Eve parties and, when things were going really rough, someone who I hadn't seen in months popped up with a good word.
My love for programming also brought me close to good people. Between my low self-esteem and my disdain for flipped meritocracy, I was sure I could never get a job (low self-esteem) in a large, well-established company, and I was sure I'd end up hating it even if I somehow managed to trick them into hiring me. I got my first real job in a startup; my programming and electronics skills were, apparently, good enough for my colleagues to respect me professionally, and their kindness and good-temper also meant we ended up getting along as friends -- to the extent that, a long time after the company got disbanded and we no longer work together, we still go out for drinks.
I don't think I will ever come back to my pre-depression self. I always feel it lurking in the back of my head, like a shadow that dangles over me, and it tainted so many things that I no longer see the world like I saw it before. On the other hand, I'm pretty much a functioning individual now. Some things are still hard for me, like going to large parties with people I don't know, but I can do it without breaking down when I get home and spending the rest of the week hugging the pillow and crying myself to sleep on and off. A lot of things helped me here; getting back to my old hobbies again, getting a job I loved, but none of these were as incredibly important as being surrounded by honest friends was.
What's most incredible is that many of these guys didn't even think they did anything grand. They were genuinely surprised when I told them how much they helped me. Many of them felt somewhere along the lines of "I actually felt bad for calling you so rarely and thought you didn't want to hear too much from me because I'd been kind of an asshole". To "normal" people, it probably feels this way, but to someone whose phone rings for weeks at a time only because of SMS spam and payment reminders from the operator, an SMS with "so what's up dude?" is incredibly important.
A whole lot of what you said resonates with my experience. The whole workplace being the place where you find genuinely honest "friends" seems to be a paradox. But its really true.
Socializing on the other hand is a hit and miss thing. Its like random sampling. You may get a bunch of honest friends but a whole lot of the people at gatherings are busy doing their own piece in the grander social dance.
On a sidenote, social networks as they exist are flawed. But there are certain micro-interactions out of the realm of a regular social network that sometimes have more meaning. Take for example your comment. Striking the same chord at the least makes me feel its not just me :)
I have been lucky enough to have interacted virtually with a bunch of people online (irc,quora, HN) which has turned into fruitful friendships. There is no pressure of constant communication but whenever we interact, it starts from the point where we left last time. Its almost like a breath of fresh air. So i wouldn't outrightly saw virtual interactions are futile.
BTW that SMS bit is so true. you hit a nerve there :)
This advice is far better than it sounds:
> “Find better people,” he replied.
That was exactly my reaction on reading that phrase. IIRC, pg says something similar in "Why Nerds Are Unpopular": we all want the approval of our peers, but one of the advantages of being an adult is that you can choose who your peers are.
I would argue that this approximately true for adults, American cities don't have pedestrian-only town squares, the public transit is abysmal (because long ago they ripped out all the streetcars, which led to the destruction of many social places, like Excelsior Amusement Park and Wonderland Amusement Park),
[warning anecdotal evidence]
The few dynamic social spaces I've known have been
Paved (Hidden Beach),
Pushed out due to rent increases (Loring Bar, Little Nikkis Cafe, CyberX),
Turned into a Bank of America (Filter in Wicker Park),
Out of business due to the smoking ban (The tobacco shop next to Filter in Wicker Park)
Purposefully destroyed by fake art to prevent gatherings (That little area next to the Subway on State Street in Madison, WI (where I used to play hackeysack))
Not to mention that we destroyed all the beer gardens during WW2 (this really happened), because that was too German, you can't drink a bottle of wine in a park like the French do, because I guess the drunks would abuse it, and the parks we do have generally don't also have any commercial activity whatsoever, not even a little kiosk where you can buy a coffee.
That's not even considering the destruction of ethnic neighborhoods by intersecting them with freeways (the old Catholic neighborhood [that no longer exists] that used to surround the Basilica in Minneapolis)
You know we're doing something wrong with urban design (which I argue is directly related to loneliness), when you see statues of children playing and not actual children playing.
Further reading/viewing:
James Howard Kunstler: The ghastly tragedy of the suburbs
James Howard Kunstler: Geography of Nowhere
The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing
Streets for People: A Primer for Americans
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community