Emile Durkheim first described this kind of social disconnectedness as “anomie” in 1893; I was a teen when I read about it and felt it in my own life. (Well, of course, I was a teen--feeling sorry for myself was in the job description!) But I’d also read about how life had been so joined before, in a wonderful book titled Life is with People: the Culture of the Shtetl, by Mark Zborowski. Clearly we’re meant to live in groups larger than the nuclear family. I’m old now, and housebound by disability for years before the pandemic, but this article just hit me. Take us out of nature, isolate us in our boxes, wire us up--and we live busily productive, empty lives, with no one to ask to feed the cat. (Lucky for me, my adult children live with me.)
As someone who just went through a friendship breakup (and hence that entire group of friends now caput), I think it's more complex than any one issue. And, sometimes, it's a lot of issues piling up on top of one another until it's too much. That said, maybe it all boils down to mutual respect and kindness, which seem to be in short supply in recent years (and have a lot of think pieces written about that problem). To me, the bedrock of a good friendship is mutual respect and kindness. If someone is too self-involved and callous, that's not much of a foundation for friendship (whatever the impetus for their callousness being).
Emile Durkheim first described this kind of social disconnectedness as “anomie” in 1893; I was a teen when I read about it and felt it in my own life. (Well, of course, I was a teen--feeling sorry for myself was in the job description!) But I’d also read about how life had been so joined before, in a wonderful book titled Life is with People: the Culture of the Shtetl, by Mark Zborowski. Clearly we’re meant to live in groups larger than the nuclear family. I’m old now, and housebound by disability for years before the pandemic, but this article just hit me. Take us out of nature, isolate us in our boxes, wire us up--and we live busily productive, empty lives, with no one to ask to feed the cat. (Lucky for me, my adult children live with me.)
As someone who just went through a friendship breakup (and hence that entire group of friends now caput), I think it's more complex than any one issue. And, sometimes, it's a lot of issues piling up on top of one another until it's too much. That said, maybe it all boils down to mutual respect and kindness, which seem to be in short supply in recent years (and have a lot of think pieces written about that problem). To me, the bedrock of a good friendship is mutual respect and kindness. If someone is too self-involved and callous, that's not much of a foundation for friendship (whatever the impetus for their callousness being).