[saimiam]

Just like you aren’t in traffic, you are traffic, you aren’t part of the society, you are society.

Every idea like “let’s have icecream socials at..” started as one person’s pipe dream which they then acted on and executed. No one is coming to rescue us. There’s no secret hand guiding humankind.

You definitely can’t solve loneliness for society but you can solve loneliness for your immediate circle by organising activities and that’s already a huge improvement.

In contrast, sitting back and saying this needs to be solved at a higher level does nothing at all.

[maerF0x0]

the parent's comment was what I have been thinking about though... The advice to not be the traffic is kind of just like saying "just try harder"...

I am thinking of a chain of causality like:

People do not plan things, or they flake on events because they're tired. Theyre tired because theyre working too many hours and are obese. They work/obese because because they consume too much. They consume too much because we're a spiritually empty society. (Just to put up an initial draft hypothesis).

I'm thinking if we can solve some of the nodes closer to the root we can have a higher impact than just burning ourselves out trying to deal with the leaf nodes.

[saimiam]

Is it true that people are working harder because they consume more?

For me, the chain of events was like this.

I had disposable income > i had no social network or things to do > so i went out and joined a running group and made friends like that.

Others probably choose gaming or something else they can do alone in the third stage.

I doubt there are many people who spent on gaming without first going through the “I don’t have things to do” stage.