The decline of community is a very big deal. I think a lot of it has to do with the way we build our living spaces. Modern North American cities are rife with car-centric suburbs, huge driveways, front doors set back a mile from the sidewalk, long commutes to anywhere (not just work, even to get groceries). We're living in these metal-and-glass boxes and we only see other people as obstacles in the way of what we want, rather than fellow human beings.
It seems to me that we've built this horrible, alienating environment not by deliberate choice but through a larger collective and political process none of us could individually control. We've created rules (building codes and zoning laws) that entrench this dystopia in countless small ways which will take a concerted effort to undo.
There's something about this I think is illuminating. I don't think the social issues fall into partisan politics. It's like we've abstracted away people into something like a corporate entity. Even in large residence buildings in cities, people don't know each other right next to them. That's in contrast with small villages where everyone knows each other for generations. Another example is roads and how road rage forms as a result of dehumanizing people into entities.
So it's like the US is primarily for corporate entities to interact in predefined contractual settings that have abstracted away anything human about them. Even families are kind of like corporate entities interacting with each other. I am not sure how it got to this point but maybe something like pursuit of income at the expense of social ties and over-litigation caused it. I'm not sure.
I have lived in villages and cities in different continents. This abstraction you speak of isn’t limited to the US. Asian and European cities are the same. People don’t tend to socialize a lot with their neighbors in the cities as much as they did and still do in the villages.
Is this capitalism? Is it technology (I’m not talking about computers) induced narcissism? Is it because we reduce ourselves and others to metrics and then use yardsticks to incessantly measure ourselves on a broken scale?
It couldn't be more obvious and intuitive that the people you're around for half your waking time would be one of the bigger sources of potential partners, and also just friends/acquaintances where a partner comes from the social networks thusly formed.
This paper suggests meeting people directly or indirectly via work was second to meeting through friends around the turn of the century, though there was a wide spread of how people met so it only amounted to a fifth of couples. Then online took over....
From the HR training i got from many places, harassment is what gets you in trouble with HR i.e. persisting after your advances have been rejected. Politely shooting your shot is fine, unless the target reports to you.
You're missing the distinction. I met my wife at work but any and all propositioning happened outside the office, and not at office social events either.
You can invite a group of coworkers to an event. You can attend events established by groups of coworkers. You can invite an individual to a party you're hosting that other people are attending, or sometime when she didn't pack lunch you can offer to go grab lunch with her. The important thing is to establish a social relationship before trying for a romantic or sexual one: Don't single her out, don't ask her to be in a situation where it's just you and her in something heavily date-coded (keeping her company when she grabs lunch? good! Asking her out solo for drinks/dinner? bad!) until you're a known quantity to her, until you could confidently say she considers you, if not a friend, someone she's friendly with. At that point, and AT THAT POINT ONLY, you can casually, in a low-key way, ask her on a date in a way that makes it abundantly clear it's not going to be a huge deal if she says no, and that that wasn't the whole entire point of getting to know her.
And one way to make it clear (to her and to yourself) is to have (social) relationships with other coworkers, with other women, and to have other women in your life. That way she knows (and you know) that she's not your sole focus, your only real chance, and she knows that you're able to maintain healthy, safe relationships with women that you aren't trying to date.
The really important thing is to make sure she understands that there's no pressure on her to say yes, and that saying no will not lead to an uncomfortable workplace dynamic. A lot of this is good advice for connecting with women you'd potentially like to date in other circumstances too - the reason there's a lot of generic, overly broad 'advice' floating around about "don't hit on women at the gym" "don't flirt with women at their place of work" "don't ask women out at school" "don't ask your friends out" "don't hit on women in hobby groups" is that a lot of men are terrible at not making women feel singled out and socially coerced. If you can convince yourself that you're in that situation for more reasons than looking for a date, and if you're able to create a broader social context, you're very unlikely to fall into that trap, and vastly less likely to get accused of behaving inappropriately; and if you somehow do anyway, it'll be much easier to defend yourself as having engaged in good faith. Since you obviously did.
Uh, only if invited? I mean do you not ever get lunch with coworkers or invite them to events you're hosting or ask if they want to see a movie or concert with you that you've been into? The important thing is to establish a positive social relationship before indicating any sort of sexual interest, so they know you as "My chill coworker John" rather than "John the guy at the office who's always staring at my tits and asked me out for 'drinks' before we ever had a single conversation." It's not impossible to establish sexual or romantic chemistry before establishing social chemistry, but it's sure harder.
I was wondering if someone would jump on that. Are you genuinely curious about or unclear on the difference? Do you legitimately not understand how those two statements can be true? I'm willing to try to explain, if you're seriously interested, but if you're motivated by trying to demonstrate that I'm incorrect I won't waste my time.
I think cars and urban design are too often used as a scapegoat.
Whether living in an apartment building in a city or a house in the suburbs, I’m frequently surprised how many people never introduce themselves to their neighbors. And that has nothing to do with cars.
People want some external system to construct a social environment for them and often blame everything but themselves when they could easily arrange a neighborhood get together by passing out some flyers…
People want some external system to construct a social environment for them and often blame everything but themselves
I think this dependence on external systems, on governments, is another symptom of the problem. When people belong to a community they don't have that expectation, they are participants. Look to the Amish, for example, and their famous barn-raisings. They don't depend on government relief or insurance policies. Everyone contributes to building a new barn when someone in the community needs one.
It seems to me that we've built this horrible, alienating environment not by deliberate choice but through a larger collective and political process none of us could individually control. We've created rules (building codes and zoning laws) that entrench this dystopia in countless small ways which will take a concerted effort to undo.