reply on: Can We Revive Empathy in Our Selfish World? (2019) \ stacker news ~mostly

1131 sats \ 4 replies \ @k00b 4 Mar \ on: Can We Revive Empathy in Our Selfish World? (2019) mostly_harmless

For the past four decades, psychologists have measured empathy. The news is not good. Empathy has dwindled steadily, especially in the 21st century. The average person in 2009 was less empathic than 75 percent of people in 1979.

Yikes. If this is the result of us not knowing each other well enough, are we busy knowing something else or are we struggling to know each other through our current screens? The latter seems fixable in the way the author suggests at least - we just need better screens.

By 2050, two-thirds of our species will be urban. Yet we are increasingly isolated. In 1911, about 5 percent of British citizens lived alone; a century later that number was 31 percent. Solo living has risen most among young people—in the United States, ten times as many 18- to 34-year-olds live alone now than in 1950—and in urban centers. More than half of Paris’s and Stockholm’s residents live alone, and in parts of Manhattan and Los Angeles that number is north of 90 percent.

Do we want to live alone? If so, why? If not, what's stopping us?

SN is downstream of me desperately trying to physically live with other people that weren't family, ie coliving without a natural hierarchy or order. It's never been easy to live with friends and acquaintances, so I'd guess families are what's broken now.

195 sats \ 2 replies \ @elvismercury OP 4 Mar

Do we want to live alone? If so, why? If not, what's stopping us?

It's extra-sinister because I think people have a sense that they do want to live alone; except that every process that defines us as social primates screams out that it's a terrible idea. And yet we are strangers to ourselves, and many people don't introspect properly and find out what they really want, for a more meaningful definition of really want.

SN is downstream of me desperately trying to physically live with other people that weren't family, ie coliving without a natural hierarchy or order.

Is it working out like you'd hoped?

I work remotely, and twice this weekend I've had a conversation that had the shape of: "Ten years ago being able to work my job from whatever geography I wanted, at whatever time I wanted, would have felt like the most absurd and indulgent fantasy. Now it's my actual life, and I mostly hate it."

Getting what you want is a very powerful drug. The consequences of that are an equally strong but very different drug.

1290 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 4 Mar

I think people have a sense that they do want to live alone

We have good friends who are headed for divorce, because one of them expressed that desire and couldn't put the toothpaste back in the tube, so to speak. Now his life is unraveling and his family is falling apart.

My wife and I talk about this all the time. In unshackling ourselves from oppressive cultural expectations, we removed the mechanism that guided people into lives that were more or less fulfilling, most of the time, for most people.

The average person in 2009 was less empathic than 75 percent of people in 1979.

I hadn't heard about the empathy research, but it certainly tracks. I often think about the related issue of intolerance. When we valued family, we not only tolerated but loved people who were very different from us. Now people just excommunicate relatives they disagree with.

And I'm not just sitting up on my cloud of judgement handing down lessons to all the sinners. I also take the route of avoiding family members who I don't really like, but I at least know that in a better society we'd figure out how to be closer.

290 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 4 Mar

Is it working out like you'd hoped?

I was mostly curious if it could work, I'm still curious if it can, and I hope it does. :)

I think people have a sense that they do want to live alone

I think we know the costs of living with others and we've either forgotten the benefit or never experienced them. It reminds me of @Undisciplined's great inequality summarizing my thoughts on the homeless problem:

MB_Homeless - MC_Homeless > MB_Housed - MC_Housed MB: Marginal Benefit MC: Marginal Cost

Maybe this kind of thing needs an apparentness factor, as in marginal benefit should be apparent marginal benefit, because it seems like perceptions could play some part. Like, maybe our eyes are trained away from the benefits of coliving?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Fabs 4 Mar

It's that the average peer tends to have an (often times uneducated ) opinion on everything and everyone nowadays, why would I want to engage or even care about that?