Chicago999444 had a great comment on the lady being dead for six years post. It deserves its own post.
There was a case very much like this in MA about 10 years back- a woman’s bones were found in her kitchen, and neighbors had not seen her for 4 years. She had apparently died in her kitchen, and since the remains were reduced to bones, it was impossible to determine the cause.
There are millions of reclusive people like this in this country, with no known relatives or friends, who are unknown even on streets on which they’ve lived for decades. But, then, maybe that’s because the neighborhood has turned over a dozen times in 40 years, and there’s no one there who has been there for more than a couple of years. This is a very common situation in Corporate Transferee Ghetto suburbs like Naperville, IL, where a client of mine came home from vacation to find that his entire house had been moved out by a burglar in his absence. Only a sock and a hairpin remained. Why had not the neighbors noticed a moving van parked in front of his place? Because no one would notice a moving van in a suburb where no one knew anyone and where people moved in and out nearly every month.
Our excessive mobility has not only sundered communities, but is most likely a much bigger factor in breaking up marriages and families, than any other social trend of the past 65 years. For one thing, before WW2, you were much more likely to marry someone who you had known your entire life, the proverbial girl or boy next door, and the families of the couple probably knew each other for at least a couple of generations back. These days, you are much more likely to mate with someone who grew up 1000 miles away, in a totally different milieu, and who is many years older or younger than you.
There is much less basis for trust, and less attachment. Meanwhile, your extended family has probably scattered hither and yon over the past 50 years. Families that could, as little as 30 years ago, trace their families back 6 generations in their cities and even their neighborhoods, live in places 1000 miles from their nearest relatives, marry someone from far away, and have kids who have no idea of their cousins. Never mind old friends, and old friends of your parents and grandparents, or neighborly associations, or local businesses owned for the same family for 4 generations.
Since WW2, more and more people have grown up with no particular attachment or loyalty to any particular place or group of people, and take transience for granted. Thus, they do not even try to form associations with neighbors, and often go to great effort to avoid them. Additionally, most of us were raised in a “mind your own business” ethic- in the neighborhoods in which I have lived in St Louis and Chicago alike, it is almost considered bad form to be too “forward” in trying to get to know your neighbors.
You have to be around for a long time, at least 5 years, to feel at ease casually dropping in on someone just to see how she’s doing, or to see if the old guy upstairs needs help. And some people have much more of a knack for this than others, while others are very shy and reticent. The shy ones would have no problem in a community where their family had resided since, oh, 1875, but in some bedroom suburb sitting in a place that was a cornfield in 1975, or some 60 story downtown high rise where half the building turns over every year, a person like this will get lost in the shuffle.
The effect the shredding of our communities has on our families and marriages has never been properly studied, but I believe that it is probably a much more important factor than any of the usual bogeymen (or bogeywomen!!) that social critics usually trot out, such as feminism or “loose morals”.
An old friend of mine has stayed with her husband of 40 years despite the complete lack of any romance between them for more than 30 years, simply because of old family loyalties that make the failure of their male-female relationship seem trivial. She may not be interested in him, but she and he are still committed to each other and would not think of divorce because they grew up together in the same small community, and their parents and grandparents grew up together their and were lifelong friends. They know each others siblings and cousins almost as well as they know each other.
They understand each other in a way that would be impossible with someone who, after a couple of decades or more, still remains partly a stranger to you because you and he come from different backgrounds, grew up 2000 miles away from each other, and in a different time and, often, were raised in a different religion or ethic; and they also have a powerful incentive to stay together and look out for each other, in that two large stem families- a whole universe of siblings and cousins and nieces and nephews, would be affected by a split between them. Most of all though, while it may no longer be romantic at all, the relationship is cozy and reliable.
This is also how people are in the Asian community here in Chicago- many of these people go back together countless generations in the old country, and half the clan has resettled here in Chicago, where they’ve all picked up exactly where they left off in their village in China. People from the same village in China will all move into the same apartment building or buy into the same townhouse complex here,and the youngsters marry people from families well known to their own natal families, often for 50 years or longer.
Marriages are much more than just a romance between 2 people- they are alliances between clans. And nobody, even people who live alone, is unknown to his or her neighbors. Everyone is known to at least a dozen other people, and people get out and “shop” in the neighborhood just to see each other. The bakeries and tea rooms are always packed with groups of old men sitting around playing cards, and there are always groups of old women hanging out together in the little grocery stores.
Americans cherish their mobility, and staying in your old neighborhood or city has almost come to be seen as the mark of a loser. You’re supposed to be moving ever upward and onward, to a better house, a better neighborhood, a better city. We have seen this as a major social advance, never counting the cost, which is ruined cities, abandoned small towns,increasing numbers of blighted suburbs, and tens of millions of lonely, disconnected, “alienated” people.
Yes, it was a great post.
Chicago999444 really puts in a LOT of thought, time and effort in her posts. We all appreciate it. Three cheers for Chicago999444, a Mighty Fine TBP poster!!
[img]https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/3397155072/h1DB92BB1/[/img]
Also, Admin, nice job breaking it up into smaller paragraphs.
“You have to be around for a long time, at least 5 years, to feel at ease casually dropping in on someone just to see how she’s doing, or to see if the old guy upstairs needs help.” ——– from the article
My parents have lived in their home since 1965. To this day they have NEVER spoken a single word to the family that borders our back yard — who have been there just as long. They neither hate nor like each other … just total indifference on both sides of the red picket fence. This is amazing to me.
Speaking of separate posts …
I do NOT mean to hijack this thread. I am only looking for thumbs up or down votes. No other discussion is necessary.
I read on Drudge this morning —- ” ‘NOAH’ Director: ‘I’m More Concerned With Getting Non-Believers Into Theater”
I’ve been thinking of doing a “Noah” thread for some time now. My point of view that it is a literally impossible feat. If I do it it will take several hours worth of work. I don’t want to invest that time if there is no interest. Help me out, and TIA, regardless of the vote.
Thumbs Up = “Do it”
Thumbs Down “Not interested”
Thanks for the compliment, Admin, and the edit didn’t hurt either.
Stucky, my mother bought her suburban St Louis house in 1971, in the same suburb in which she was raised. Her childhood home was less than a mile away. After 43 years of residence, she knew perhaps 3 families in the neighborhood, those being the 3 other people on her street and the next one over who have been there as long as she was. And only 1 showed up at her memorial service.
The attitude of most of the neighbors toward each other in this upper-middle-class area with its tree lined streets and gracious older home, is, like in your parents’ area, total indifference.
This piece really hits home. This relates to my 5 cent theory that what makes something good is also what makes it bad. And just as every spot on Earth gets the same amount of sunshine over the course of a year, the good and the bad of a thing or a place average out in most cases. You take the good with the bad. The good thing about America is that its vastness encouraged the frontier spirit that served us well in bringing about technological and business developments. That vastness also results in the fragmentation that Chicago999444 writes of. Sometimes (actually almost all of the time) I think this country is just too damned big. Someone born and raised and living peacefully in Denmark or Austria or Norway is less likely to have their family dispersed to the four winds, and for that they’re lucky. On the other hand, we haven’t yet been invaded by NAZIs. Even those who are most comfortable with this rootlessness would probably love to go to a 500 year old family restaurant in Switzerland (and Tweet an Instagram photo of the their food), but they don’t realize that all tradition and attachment to place can’t happen without successive generations staying in place (like “losers”). Yuppies (do we still call them that?) love their artisanal cheeses from Italy and wine from France, but they wouldn’t be satisfied being that 10th generation cheese maker. While much of the world fights to the death over some barren territory – because it’s home – a lot of Americans will abandon a perfectly good home (which is probably about 95% of the country) in search of somewhere barely incrementally “better”. It’s amazing what gets thrown away in this country.
As of 2012, about 68% of married mothers of children under 18 participated in the workforce. I believe the loss of moms at home has also increased the sense of anonymity that pervades our communities. Whole neighborhoods sit empty and lifeless all day while parents work, and kids are at school and then daycare. During vacation periods, the kids spend all day being cared for out of their homes.
Moms were once the glue that helped attach folks to each other. They kept an eye on each other’s kids and forged bonds around the PTA at the neighborhood school. Today’s soccer mom is a different breed: she works hard at her job and then expends a great deal of energy making sure her kids have opportunity to participate in sports and other extracurricular activities. These have largely replaced the informal structures that bands of neighborhood kids would construct for themselves in bygone eras.
A thousand little cuts are destroying our culture, and the lonely neighborhood is one of them.
I submitted the post about moms.
I know most of my immediate neighbors. The most interesting one is a tiny little Laotian dude who helped rescue downed American pilots during the Vietnam police action. Of course he was hated and hunted like a dog by his own govt. AND left behind and forgotten by the American govt for his efforts. Despite this he still wanted to come here and be an American!
The fact that I know all my neighbors is amazing when you consider that my natural disposition is to be a hermit. I love solitude and will probably end up like the lady in yesterday’s story if I outlive my wife.
I_S
Great comment, Iska Warren,
I have often thought that this country is just much too big.
But more often, I’ve thought that we are too obsessed with “possibilities” and with novelty for it’s own sake. I also think we became much too rich, much too easily, and much too fast- too fast to appreciate the fantastic bounty of space and natural resources that fell into our laps 200 years ago.
We couldn’t burn and waste through it all fast enough, and the incredible ease of it, thanks to the unbelievably plentiful and unexploited resources of this continent, birthed an ethos that most people in most places, long overpopulated and short on resources, find very strange. For these past two centuries, we built a society based on transience and the kind of “progress” that means always leaving the “old” behind and building something bigger, better, and newer, somewhere else. Move up, move on, leave the tired old neighborhood and city behind. And leave the tired old people- the spouse you’ve “outgrown”, the siblings and cousins and old associations that are just handcuffs keeping you from being everything you can be (so people think), the old businesses, the old manners, the old ideas, behind.
What’s left are exhausted resources, ruined cities and neighborhoods, and tens of thousands of miles of sprawl stuffed with garbage buildings and houses built to last one generation, a sad record of 4 generations of architectural fads that lasted a moment, full of people who don’t really care to build anything better, or form durable associations, because they’re just passing through on their way to the Next Big Thing.
Great article, shows just how thin is the veneer of what we call “society”. Families don’t mean much anymore, women are free to run off and commit serial marriage while collecting entitlements from former husbands. All these problems are the result of the break-down of the family. Neighbors are adversaries, not allies. Our society is rotting from the inside out. Anything goes, and nothing matters. Kids come from broken homes, deeply wounded and scarred, and create more broken families. The millennials are saying “enough is enough” and not getting married and participating in the joke of marriage. Good for them, the legal system and boomer values have destroyed the sanctity of marriage and family, and the socialists running the country have wiped out what’s left with a piss poor education system and “family services”. It didn’t always used to be this bad….
The grandson asked his grandmother what she thought things in general.
The Grandma replied, “Well, let me think a minute. I was born before television, penicillin, polio shots, frozen foods, Xerox, contact lenses, Frisbees and the pill. There was no radar, credit cards, laser beams or ballpoint pens.
Man had not invented panty hose, air conditioners, dishwashers or clothes dryers, and the clothes were hung out to dry in the fresh air, and man hadn’t yet walked on the moon.
Your grandfather and I got married first – and then lived together. Every family had a father and a mother. Until I was 25, I called every man older than I, ‘Sir.’ We were before gay rights, computer dating, dual careers, daycare centers, and group therapy. Our lives were governed by the Ten Commandments, good judgment, and common sense. We were taught to know the difference between right and wrong, and to stand up and take responsibility for our actions.
Serving your country was a privilege; living in this country was a bigger privilege. We thought fast food was what people ate during Lent. Having a meaningful relationship meant getting along with your cousins. Draft dodgers were people who closed their front doors when the evening breeze started. Timesharing meant time the family spent together in the evenings and weekends – not purchasing condominiums.
We never heard of FM radios. And I don’t ever remember any kid blowing his brains out listening to Tommy Dorsey. If you saw anything with ‘Made in Japan’ on it, it was junk. The term ‘making out’ referred to how you did on your school exam. Pizza Hut, McDonalds, and instant coffee were unheard of.
We had five and 10-cent stores where you could actually buy things for five and 10 cents. Ice cream cones, phone calls, rides on a streetcar, and a Pepsi were all a nickel. And if you didn’t want to splurge, you could spend your nickel on enough stamps to mail 1 letter and two postcards. You could buy a new Chevy Coupe for $600, but who could afford one? Too bad, because gas was 11 cents a gallon.
In my day, ‘grass’ was mowed, ‘coke’ was a cold drink, ‘pot’ was something your mother cooked in, and ‘rock music’ was your grandmother’s lullaby. ‘Aids’ were helpers in the Principal’s office, ‘chip’ meant a piece of wood, ‘hardware’ was found in a hardware store, and ‘software’ wasn’t even a word. We were the last generation to actually believe that a lady needed a husband to have a baby. No wonder people call us ‘old and confused’ and say there is a generation gap.”
This was an excellent comment, worthy of it’s own post.
I just want to add that much of this “isolationism,” if you will, has been the result of technological developments. Back when people couldn’t buy their food in boxes and cans from a grocery store, you knew the people who produced it. And they knew you. When you had no machines that did laundry for you, you hung it out to dry alongside your neighbor’s. Before cars, people walked or took public transportation to work and shop. Before television or radio kept people in their living rooms, you sat out on the steps or took walks to the park in the evening. It was hard to not notice people in your vicinity, let alone never speak to them or interact with them.
But as technological advancements let us spend more time inside the home or shuttled us from place A to place B without interacting with others, we developed a hermit mentality. Then technology evolved further, giving us global access to others with the same viewpoint. Suddenly, everyone who didn’t fit your worldview became “crazy” people or even threatening strangers. ‘Friendship’ became people who linked to you on social networks. It felt good to people, since humans naturally want to segment into tribes. But none of it is real.
I can only imagine, as technology evolves further, how it will impact how humans interact with one another. The 1993 movie, “Demolition Man” hints at some of that, as have many other futuristic films. Or, perhaps, we’ll experience some kind of relapse (though that has yet to happen) that will drive us back to those pre-technology days when everyone relied on others in their community, everyone had a role in an integrated society and it all felt kinder, gentler, than what we have now.
Time will tell, I guess.
P.S. — not blaming technology there, just saying how society has reacted to it has caused this. We still have the ability to get out and know our neighbors, we just don’t.
I grew up (and continue to live) in the same, small, rural New England area my grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins continue to live. I live next door to my father’s sister and across the street from my cousin.
My parents retired and moved to SC, but every summer they come back and stay for 4 months.
I worked in a local restaurant that was owned and operated by the same family for 50 years. I saw the same people on the same nights. I knew what they drank and ate. I knew their kids and grandkids. I worked their anniversary parties and birthday parties. I even went to some of their funerals.
This was normal and usual for most people where I live. However, as the the baby boomers grow older and move away, and as their grandkids go away to college and don’t come back, this is starting to change.
My husband is from Georgia where everyone is a transplant, his family is scattered all over the country (a lot of military) and it blows his mind how I know someone everywhere I go in a tri-town area and more!
It does make for stronger communities, in my opinion, and when the SHTF I would rather be here where everyone knows me and would turn me in to a FEMA camp (and actually the police wouldn’t either, they have all been on the force forever, are from town, and now their kids are too!).
People tend to be more civic minded here, and want to make sure the elderly are taken care of.
That is a great post, thank you. I suppose there are all sorts of reasons for people to not interact. I know I’ve got a neighbor that just hangs out (boomer-ish age) and thinks anyone who steps outside to get shit done is fair game for gossiping and chit-chatting. Sometimes it is, but for some its just shit I gotta get done, you know? But sometimes I don’t want to share information with anyone other than the NSA, not just that one guy, but others too. Sometimes I do. Small towns are sometimes on the other end of the spectrum. Fuck, everyone knows what you’re doing….if you forget mid-task, just go ask a neighbor what you were doing, they’ll have you back on track in a jiff. Sometimes, you can say something nice or neutral – a month later its been re-told a dozen times and you are asked why you hate somebody or some shit. Makes a guy just not want to talk. Go to a small town church that says they’re welcoming new members……bone chilling cold, you’ll have to stick your head the fridge to warm up.
Anyway, great post – got me thinking about the real reasons, so thank you.
Stucky ,pls do your religious post.One of the major problems causing the collapse of the
Family is the collapse of religious beliefs in America.The God conscience has been removed from American culture and it has been replaced by a liberal godless pop culture.
The story about the woman is sad but many older people have no one to take care of them or they don’t want to be a burden to anyone so they die alone.I know most of my neighbors but most are retired and getting up in age.I’m not sure what I’m going to do during the SHTF.It Is a safe neighborhood for now
Chicago999444 said:
“I have often thought that this country is just much too big.”
I think it all goes back to humans not being meant to live in large groups. Once a group becomes so large that it cannot keep track of its own idiots, it’s too big.
And I agree with your “possibilities” and “novelty” comment. Just because you can do something or because you can having something does not mean you should. When is enough enough? We have determined that enough is enough when it’s all gone and that applies to resources, freedom, liberty and common sense.
I_S
Wow, that was a great post, Chicago! And that was a great thread to start. I think it’s obvious the E-device revolution, TV, and video games have all helped kill the social life. I believe the decay of our culture, the evisceration of faith, the hardening of politics, and the collapse of the economy have all helped to drive wedges between us. I don’t see it improving any time soon, except I have one thought. As things go from bad to worse, I believe religion will experience a resurgence nationwide and may help to unify people. At the same time, we may find unity in the things that divide us. Race, nationality, class, gender, creed, etc may all become very important in a world where there are few reliable institutions and no one left to trust. Aaaand if those groups can’t be trusted, and they may not be, there’s always the family upon which to fall back. So in the end, it could be the family and the tribe will become vital in the long run. Have you ever heard of the Arab proverb, “Me against my brother, I and my brother against my family, I and my family against the tribe, I and my tribe against the world.”