alt Hacker NewsYes, managing relationships needs time, but there is another problem I see nowadays. When I was young (I'm in my sixties), it was normal to have friends who could be very different from you. They might have had qualities you didn't like at all, but you could still be very good friends. If I look my students (highschool and college level) now, they are extremely intolerant for differences compared to what I remember from my youth. One "I don't like it" problem is enough to dump any relationship. Why? I guess it's because of a lack of practice – you don't really need to interact with so many different people nowadays and interacting with people who are very different from you is just plain terrifying for many.
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>Why? I guess it's because of a lack of practice – you don't really need to interact with so many different people nowadays and interacting with people who are very different from you is just plain terrifying for many.
It’s not any more or less terrifying than in previous times, but as you wrote “you don’t really need to interact with so many different people”.
I would shorten that to “you don’t need so many people anymore”. Another factor is you can easily find more agree-able people (or bots) to spend time with, such as on this website rather than a neighbor.
I’m curious if you think viewpoints have also gotten more extreme in this period. It feels like the gap in political ideologies has widened a lot since I was younger.
Depends? Are those more narrow one’s better and people have a better idea of what ideal looks like?
I’m kind of horrified at people saying they had/have to work at their best friendships as with my best friends, everything is seamless.
There are no misunderstandings. We never have to forgive each other. We never even need to clarify things for each other much, as we are that well aligned.
Granted it may not be possible, but ideally go find a better match in a friend.
I see this exact thing right now to me and some (former?) friends, we’re all in our early to mid-40s. And, yes, it does involve politics, and more generally how one sees the world, but I personally find it quite baffling nonetheless. It’s like people really do feel the need to continue living in their intellectual bubble-balls, no dialectics involved, no contradiction, and hence no real (intellectual and not only) move forward.
I can’t and don’t see an easy solution for it, to be honest.
It may be terrifying, but it's also terribly important. If the friendship can't survive differences, you're going to silently censor any points of differences (real or imagined) and soon you're just pretending to be the people you think the other expects you to be. No depth of connection, no growth.
You want someone to be friends with you, as you actually are. And that means you need to be friends with them, as they actually are, even if you worship different brands or vote for different movies.