More on individualism. The title of 'Bowling Alone' characterized Americans as retreating from neighborhood and community. Well, how about Eating Lunch Alone ...?
The supposed 'healthy' interpretation is that lunch in one's car provides the alone time necessary to recharge because the work day is stressful and/or socializing is stressful. Really?? Is that what this world is coming to? I can not be the only one who finds this pathetic.
That is sad. Articles like this seem like a symptom of overeducated introverts taking over our mental culture. Introversion is fine, but it isn't the human default.
We need more working-class journalists to counterbalance this therapy culture stuff.
Agree with what you wrote, but just to keep thinking: There may be systematic factors occurring. Jobs may actually be more stressful than in prior decades. Focus on achievement and the stress of everyday life reduces socializing time so that people are less good at socializing.
Social media may be warping people's ability to be comfortable just sitting around gabbing during lunch with co-workers. Or social media addiction may make the lunch-in-car-with-phone more appealing than lunch with co-workers.
I think *everything* is more stressful when we don't have a culture to rely on and when people are lonely. But it becomes a feedback cycle: lonely, alienated people are more stressed and so may avoid social settings, but this only makes them and everyone more lonely as they lose basic social skills, like you're pointing out.
I don't think jobs are objectively more stressful now — working in a New England garment factory in the 1880s was surely more dangerous, more difficult, more physically stressful, etc., than pushing paper in an office, but you probably belonged to a thick Catholic immigrant neighborhood and could put it all behind you when you got home from work. When work follows you everywhere and there's no evenings of playing canasta with 17 cousins to look forward to, maybe your car does start to seem like a respite.
Hi Connor -- so many good things in here; Not enough people are willing to to call out Americans for lacking self-control. Children aren't being taught delay of gratification or working for rewards, etc. I argue that American individualism has gone too far, meaning the negatives outweigh the positives.
I just started reading the blog of this anthropologist, Elena Bridgers, who writes about parenting in America; she also notes the positives of rituals, so I'm sharing FYI. Bridgers also writes journal articles as an independent scholar. https://elenabridgers.substack.com/p/craft-and-ritual-are-ancient-facets
Completely agree that individualism has gone too far. It's not even just American, since the English were the most individualistic nation in Europe for centuries before the Plymouth colony. So we've got a lot of inertia behind us on this.
More on individualism. The title of 'Bowling Alone' characterized Americans as retreating from neighborhood and community. Well, how about Eating Lunch Alone ...?
https://www.upworthy.com/eating-lunch-in-car-real-reason
The supposed 'healthy' interpretation is that lunch in one's car provides the alone time necessary to recharge because the work day is stressful and/or socializing is stressful. Really?? Is that what this world is coming to? I can not be the only one who finds this pathetic.
That is sad. Articles like this seem like a symptom of overeducated introverts taking over our mental culture. Introversion is fine, but it isn't the human default.
We need more working-class journalists to counterbalance this therapy culture stuff.
Agree with what you wrote, but just to keep thinking: There may be systematic factors occurring. Jobs may actually be more stressful than in prior decades. Focus on achievement and the stress of everyday life reduces socializing time so that people are less good at socializing.
Social media may be warping people's ability to be comfortable just sitting around gabbing during lunch with co-workers. Or social media addiction may make the lunch-in-car-with-phone more appealing than lunch with co-workers.
I think *everything* is more stressful when we don't have a culture to rely on and when people are lonely. But it becomes a feedback cycle: lonely, alienated people are more stressed and so may avoid social settings, but this only makes them and everyone more lonely as they lose basic social skills, like you're pointing out.
I don't think jobs are objectively more stressful now — working in a New England garment factory in the 1880s was surely more dangerous, more difficult, more physically stressful, etc., than pushing paper in an office, but you probably belonged to a thick Catholic immigrant neighborhood and could put it all behind you when you got home from work. When work follows you everywhere and there's no evenings of playing canasta with 17 cousins to look forward to, maybe your car does start to seem like a respite.
Hi Connor -- so many good things in here; Not enough people are willing to to call out Americans for lacking self-control. Children aren't being taught delay of gratification or working for rewards, etc. I argue that American individualism has gone too far, meaning the negatives outweigh the positives.
I just started reading the blog of this anthropologist, Elena Bridgers, who writes about parenting in America; she also notes the positives of rituals, so I'm sharing FYI. Bridgers also writes journal articles as an independent scholar. https://elenabridgers.substack.com/p/craft-and-ritual-are-ancient-facets
Completely agree that individualism has gone too far. It's not even just American, since the English were the most individualistic nation in Europe for centuries before the Plymouth colony. So we've got a lot of inertia behind us on this.