There was another far-ranging conversation in a session today, but something came up that I don't think I have written about directly before, but have referenced here and there over the years. We were talking about the differences in behaviours of children today and ourselves when we were young, as well as the difference in teachers, and parents. But the thing that came up was about friendships.
Most of our lives are now heavily curated, where we are constantly choosing what we are going to consume, or have it chosen for us based on our past choices. There isn't much random. However, I also think that due to this, there might be more compartmentalisation of social activity over time. When I was a younger, friends had all kinds of different hobbies, activities and interests, yet we were friends regardless. Nowadays, it seems that people tend to have topic-based friendships based on a period of their life or some interest, and I wonder what kind of effect this has on our wellbeing.
If we were to go back in history a little, we would find that families were larger, people moved less and not as far away and a community was filled with people who knew each other across generations. But the more closed behind screens we have become, the weaker our community connections, the less people know us, and the narrower our mix of interactions.
Yet, we are social animals that have evolved from what was until relatively recently, in the company of small tribes of a few hundred people at most. And, those few hundred people would be together "for life", however long that life might have been. This is not the case today though, and instead we have people searching for identity in other people's eyes. This is what drives social media creators today.
The approval of strangers.
But it is also interesting to think that when I was a kid, my parents had no interest in being my friend. They were my parents. My dad played something occasionally, my mother did not, but that was just the way life was. And teachers, well, there was a whole range of them, from the lovely ones dedicated to their work, to the terrible ones who liked to punish and of course, the weirdly always very strange technical teachers, who always seems to have some kind of personality disorder. Kids had to interact with many different kinds of people.
Now though, that is not the case, as parents seem more interested in being their kids friends than parenting, and teachers have had their authority limited to the point that they all have to be much the same. The pool of interpersonal interaction has been curated. And even when problems arise, like arguments or bullying, it is no longer up to the children to sort it out amongst themselves, they are taught to go and get an adult.
A lot of younger workers these days have an expectation that their workplace is also their social place, meaning that they expect to have friends at work and they can get quite socially clingy. However, at the same time, they have little commitment to the workplace itself and will move every year for a pay rise, walking into the new job expecting it to replace the social circle from the last. This obviously creates a rotating door of people coming in and out of their lives, but there is very little consistency.
No one knows me.
And I wonder what happens to our wellbeing and how we feel about our experience when we get older and we don't really have anyone around. Smaller families mean less siblings, disconnected social lives mean less friends, people are staying out of long-term relationships and having less children themselves, and we are constantly reducing our social footprint as we hide behind screens and between headphones. We don't have "our tribe" through life today, and we feel very little responsibility to the communities in which we live.
Are we stronger as individuals because of it?
I don't think so. But I am sure there are many people who would think otherwise, because people are messy, and it is far more convenient to sit behind the screen consuming the endless stream of curated content, rather than deal with the problems of others. Because that is what having real friends means - being there for the bad times, as well as the good.
Good times never last.
No matter what we do in life or how good (or bad) we have it, nothing lasts forever, including good times. This means that if we are only going to be friends with people during the good times, we are going to constantly have to make more friends every time our current ones get into some trouble and we leave, or we get into trouble, and they leave. But making friends is time-consuming and takes energy and effort, which is why so few people are spending time actually making friends these days. It is more convenient to just avoid people altogether.
But we have our nature.
We try to bury "who we are" under a thousand labels, but at the core, we are still those social, tribal, face-to-face people that we have evolved into over the space of the last two million years, and especially the last few hundred thousand years. Our wiring is made to develop not only social connection, but long-term social connection where we invest ourselves into others, and they into us in a relationship of reciprocity.
We can keep ignoring ourselves.
But I don't think it is working out well.
Taraz
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There is a close connection between the times we live in and the answer to the question about people choosing friends with similar ideas.
In my personal opinion, this has to do with human nature, which has evolved with the advancement of technology, and which has become inclined toward minimal effort in everything, always taking the shortcut without effort. This, of course, is not necessarily healthy; quite the opposite.
We live amidst a web of relationships, but its threads are now made of light, not warmth.
Just tonight over dinner, snaklsteps and I were discussing the dangers of taking shortcuts. Rarely are they beneficial long term. But as you said, it is all about ease and convenience now.
Heard of Epicurus the philosopher? He studied happiness and believed friends played a major role in it. matter of fact for several centuries Friends came together in a single large building to form what they called 'epicurean societies'.
Every human certainly needs a handful of reliable friends. With the decline in families and religiosity, perhaps epicurean societies might just make a comeback
That would be interesting of they did. I guess online forums are similar, but is it really friendship?
my dad wud often tell me.. I am your dad, NOT your friend. that would hurt my feelings. but now that I am older and a dad myself.. I get it. :)
and yes, I chose hive. I choose to be friends with u and other hivers. damn FB and google who try and tell me what to read or even what I want..
The incentives of the mainstream media is definitely not aligned to building healthy social circles!
yes 😉
I was talking to my niece who just had a baby a bit ago and she was mentioning how her and her daughter are going to be best friends. I pointed out that she needed to be a mom not a friend, but it didn't go over so well. It's definitely a totally different mindset these days.
Too many people have been watching TV shows like the Gilmore Girls, where parents are friends it seems. They don't understand they are doing their kids a disservice in real life. It is not that parents can't be friends with their kids, but the relationship has to have the parental aspects too. That book I mentioned the other day "born Lucky", the dad was his best friend. His dad was also *very hard on him and made sure he lived to a value standard.
I think as you get older it does turn more into a friendship, but when they are kids, there definitely needs to be clearer boundaries. That seems to be falling to the wayside now though. As I said in one of my older posts, people have this you should do what you want kind of mentality. The rules don't really matter as long as you aren't hurting anyone. I'm not sure how we got from there to here.
I used to have a friend, but we grew apart and then I moved to America. Here I had a few almost friends, guys that were co-workers and we used to workout in the gym together. One got fired and we lost contact and one quit and moved to Hawaii so we also lost touch. Now I don't have any friends, so it is a non-issue for me :)
But yeah, nothing lasts forever... so why would friends last forever?
This is exactly the problem with all the young people only having work friends!
They don't - but changing every couple years has its drawbacks for our wellbeing too. :)
Of course digital distractions are mostly to blame for this. Friendships has been redefined in this our time. People find it easier to make social connections online than offline, yet doing it offline is the best way to do it. It seems the technology we created to better our lives is now making it worse and we seem not to realize.
Sound social interactions are necessary for our mental and emotional well-being and with people being more and more socially disconnected, people's emotional health are crashing and giving rise to all sorts of psychological disorders which they try to treat with drugs and therapy and still return to the screens that caused it in the first place. It's like taking painkillers for malaria only for it to return. So sad a situation.
I reckon what people have called "friendship" now is a bit like calling fentanyl a fruit. :)
That’s such a thoughtful reflection, and it really hits on something true about modern friendships. Real friendship isn’t just about being there when everything’s easy — it’s about staying connected even when life gets messy. Sadly, many people avoid that effort nowadays because it takes time and emotional investment. But the friendships that survive both the highs and the lows are the ones that truly matter and last the longest.
I have seen people literally step over an old man after he fell and was bleeding in a shop, without helping. It is a messed up world we live in.
That’s truly heartbreaking to witness. It’s sad how some people can be so indifferent to others’ suffering. Moments like that really show how much compassion the world is lacking.
You made such a great point about how friendships today feel more temporary and surface level. It is true we have traded real connection for convenience. I miss the kind of friendships that lasted through both good and bad times. Maybe it is time we start building our own small “tribes” again.
You're supposed to do that after failing to sort it out yourselves. And then the adult is supposed to help you sort it out yourselves.
having been guilty of being final arbiter myself I understand it's a lot easier in the moment especially if you're short on time and just want them to go away but it creates a lot more problems thanb you're solving right now
I've known a couple of people (including a current friend who is older than me) who are like that. I'm not sure about the other people were always like that or ended up like that but I do know that the older friend ended up like that because the job took up a lot of time but it was something they were very passionate about anyway so the friendships formed within the workplace were a lot easier to maintain than the ones outside. They have also been at the same workplace for a couple of decades though which is weird these days apparently XD
Some workplaces don't seem to give payrises beyond whatever they're forced to. J has moved jobs multiple times over the years because as he gained experience and was supposed to be "moving up" the employers basically fully expected he take on more and more and more responsibilities/work but didn't want to bump the pay accordingly. He's happy with the current job (they did actually try to bump him to management recently but he doesn't want to do management) because they let him work from home and is apparently at the stage where lifestyle is more important than bigger pay packets so has actually been not applying for other ones which might have higher pay.
I don't even know if that's a recent thing or a thing that started ages ago as I remember said ages ago one of my aunties was switching jobs to something that paid better and had apparently done that a couple of times and one of the other relatives commented about how she had "no company loyalty", but what those relatives didn't get was that the companies they were working for took really, insanely good care of its employees and not all of them were like that.