Busyness - one of the reasons America is socially isolating

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MattHanson1990
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Busyness - one of the reasons America is socially isolating

Post by MattHanson1990 »

The competition that divides people along with lack of authenticity are two reasons Americans are socially disconnected from one another. And here's a third reason why America is socially isolating, busyness. Notices how Americans have crazy frenetic lifestyles. They work long hours, have many other obligations, and what not. And they are forced into this lifestyle not by choice; even people who like spending time with others end up getting forced into this crazy hectic lifestyle. I even noticed in college, it was hard to have a decent social life, especially in my upperclassmen years, because students were getting swamped with homework and also worked part time jobs to pay tuition, leaving them with little or no time for socializing; and when they did have time for friends, it would ALWAYS be with friends they've known for a long time and not getting to know new people they met at the beginning of the fall semester (which explains AW preferring familiarity over novelty). In particular, girls who had boyfriends put their friends on the back burner and devoted all of their limited social life to their significant others. Busyness is also why friends drift apart; even strong friendships drift apart due to this lifestyle.

From my point of view, people getting extremely busy in America is one of the reasons we have true forced loneliness. In contrast, people in most other non-Western countries abroad make time for their friends. Even if they are busy, their lifestyles are usually nowhere near as frenetic as in the U.S., Canada, and first world Asian countries.
GoingAwol
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Re: Busyness - one of the reasons America is socially isolat

Post by GoingAwol »

I think one of the biggest reasons there is so much isolation in the U.S is because our population is so spread out. If you look at other countries most of their populations are packed into big cities while alot of Americans are in the suburbs or smaller towns. And what is different in Bigger cities? People depend more on public transportation! Just imagine the connections you could make if you rode the metro or bus everyday instead of driving to your destination in your car alone. Also... Public transport is cheap and people save money so they have more money to spend on leisure activities.
Ghost
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Post by Ghost »

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Last edited by Ghost on February 10th, 2020, 1:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
MattHanson1990
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Re: Busyness - one of the reasons America is socially isolat

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Ghost wrote:Busyness is not only a Western problem, unfortunately. I see this a lot here in China too. East Asian countries are very workaholic too, though not anti-social. I've found it very easy to meet people here in China, but that usually happens by chance and it is very hard to ever meet them. I mostly meet college students, so they are busy with studying and some have part time jobs too. The more third world countries don't have this problem as much because there is so much unemployment. They have the opposite problem - too much idle time. Where ever you go, you are likely to end up with a well defined social circle - coworkers, mostly if you work abroad, plus local friends. People are busy everywhere, but you have to consider why this is and what the opposite society would be like. Chinese people work all the time and have their own money. I doubt it is coincidental that no one in China tries to rip me off, whereas it was a near daily occurrence in Philippines.
East Asia also has a live to work mentality, especially the first world Asian countries like Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. Notice how Asians tend to be about getting into the top universities, and that's why you'll see them at good universities like Stanford or UCLA for instance. And you'll also see Asians working tech jobs in Silicon Valley and working at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Now, when I was in Mexico, I noticed that people had more leisure time than in the U.S., so they weren't busy in the same sense as Americans are. And they also weren't workaholics, unless they worked for American or Canadian companies. The Mexican girls who had boyfriends also didn't put their friends on the back burner like the American ones do. That's also a plus. In most places in Latin America, people usually aren't too busy to have social life. And unlike Americans, they don't put new people they just met on the back burner because they're attracted to novelty. So it's not true that everywhere is workaholic like America is.
GoingAwol
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Re: Busyness - one of the reasons America is socially isolat

Post by GoingAwol »

I am going to Russia to teach English and I was reading that it's a law in Russia that all workers get atleast 28 days of vacation a year. I was excited about that! Nobody gets that much vacation time in the U.S
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jamesbond
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Re: Busyness - one of the reasons America is socially isolat

Post by jamesbond »

GoingAwol wrote:I think one of the biggest reasons there is so much isolation in the U.S is because our population is so spread out. If you look at other countries most of their populations are packed into big cities while a lot of Americans are in the suburbs or smaller towns. And what is different in Bigger cities? People depend more on public transportation! Just imagine the connections you could make if you rode the metro or bus everyday instead of driving to your destination in your car alone.
I read an article recently that stated in America, 60% of the population lives in suburbs and we all know how isolating and lonely living in the suburbs is.

GoingAwol wrote:I am going to Russia to teach English and I was reading that it's a law in Russia that all workers get atleast 28 days of vacation a year. I was excited about that! Nobody gets that much vacation time in the U.S
Exactly, in America you are lucky to get two weeks of vacation a year. In Germany, people get 6 weeks paid vacation a year and 12 paid holidays a year (they also get sick days as well).
"When I think about the idea of getting involved with an American woman, I don't know if I should laugh .............. or vomit!"

"Trying to meet women in America is like trying to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics."
traveller
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Re: Busyness - one of the reasons America is socially isolat

Post by traveller »

MattHanson1990 wrote:The competition that divides people along with lack of authenticity are two reasons Americans are socially disconnected from one another. And here's a third reason why America is socially isolating, busyness. Notices how Americans have crazy frenetic lifestyles. They work long hours, have many other obligations, and what not. And they are forced into this lifestyle not by choice; even people who like spending time with others end up getting forced into this crazy hectic lifestyle. I even noticed in college, it was hard to have a decent social life, especially in my upperclassmen years, because students were getting swamped with homework and also worked part time jobs to pay tuition, leaving them with little or no time for socializing; and when they did have time for friends, it would ALWAYS be with friends they've known for a long time and not getting to know new people they met at the beginning of the fall semester (which explains AW preferring familiarity over novelty). In particular, girls who had boyfriends put their friends on the back burner and devoted all of their limited social life to their significant others. Busyness is also why friends drift apart; even strong friendships drift apart due to this lifestyle.

From my point of view, people getting extremely busy in America is one of the reasons we have true forced loneliness. In contrast, people in most other non-Western countries abroad make time for their friends. Even if they are busy, their lifestyles are usually nowhere near as frenetic as in the U.S., Canada, and first world Asian countries.
No wonder it appears so many high school friendships are shattered by high school graduation like an empty beer bottle dropped onto the sidewalk from 300 feet up! I personally have had graduate friends do that many times before; they don't just become workaholics, but they would work all 7 days a week and even upwards of 60 hours a week! In fact, in Illinois it seems, 60 hours is an average workweek for a college student, especially a college student in Illinois. Some even work 70, and even 80 hours a week! And by college graduation, they're full blown workaholics, still working 6 or 7 days a week and up to 60 hours a week. For those people, there's no leisure time at all! And I even noticed that the pace of life is fast in Chicago proper, but in Chicago's collar county area (DuPage, DeKalb, Lake, McHenry, Kane, and Will counties), the pace of life seems about ten times faster. When I think about it, it's no wonder one area of DuPage County, the village of Oakbrook Terrace, went from a city where people played and had fun straight to a restricted all-work-no-play zone. There used to be like a permanent carnival with rides and fun games where the 31-story Oakbrook Terrace Tower now stands, right across Roosevelt and 83 from the tower, there's an abandoned water park on that big hill with the billboard on top. 7 water slides and a wading pool, all neglected since 1990 and left to fall into ruin. Once, on a grassy median between two roads near the Lexington Square Nursing Home stood the Elm Roller Rink, which my mom and I used to go on the weekends, and one day we went there to find only a pile of timbers and scrapwood where the Elm should have been!

Literally, it's like as you get farther from Chicago proper and deeper into the middle and outer suburbs, the pace of life literally accelerates like a roller coaster going over a 90 degree drop.
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jamesbond
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Re: Busyness - one of the reasons America is socially isolating

Post by jamesbond »

Americans are working themselves to death that's why they have so little free time to do other things. A lot of people in the US are working two jobs so they hardly have any free time at all. No wonder why so many people in America have no social life, they don't have time for one! :shock:
"When I think about the idea of getting involved with an American woman, I don't know if I should laugh .............. or vomit!"

"Trying to meet women in America is like trying to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics."
Nailer
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Re: Busyness - one of the reasons America is socially isolating

Post by Nailer »

I think it's more a matter of putting on an appearance of being busy all the time, as a way to signal your social status. Reality is people go home and watch TV for six hours every night.
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