Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

“I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth."---Walt Whitman

“The American appetite for loneliness impressed me, and there was something about this solitude that freed conversation. One night at a bar, I met a man, and within five minutes he explained that he had just been released from prison. Another drinker told me that his wife had passed away, and he had recently suffered a heart attack, and now he hoped that he would die within the year. I learned that there's no reliable small talk in America; at any moment a conversation can become personal.”
― Peter Hessler

(Nov 6, 2018 04:33 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: [ -> ]“The American appetite for loneliness impressed me, and there was something about this solitude that freed conversation. One night at a bar, I met a man, and within five minutes he explained that he had just been released from prison. Another drinker told me that his wife had passed away, and he had recently suffered a heart attack, and now he hoped that he would die within the year. I learned that there's no reliable small talk in America; at any moment a conversation can become personal.” ― Peter Hessler

Still hanging on to Top Ten status in the psychological desolation department. The US is supposedly #5 on the loneliness chart. Behind Sweden(1), Britain(2), Japan(3), and Italy(4). One would expect Generation-Z to provide a significant boost in ranking eventually, but iGen might internationally do the same for others, too.

. . . Gandini says Swedes don’t deny the loneliness his film presents. [...] The investigators knock, then enter the detritus-riven apartment. It is the home of a man who hanged himself, a man nobody discovered for two years because nobody came to check, and because Sweden’s ubiquitous automatic bill-pay system never stopped debiting his rent. “Sometimes I wonder why we are so unhappy,” murmurs the investigator, staring out the window. “There’s nothing to glue us together.” --How do you stop a plague of lonliness?

Busting The Scandinavian Myths

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“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
― H.L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe

“Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of you - sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever.”
― Lauren Oliver, Pandemonium

“...What you fear will not go away; it will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you. That's the world, and we all live there.”
― William Stafford

“You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

"Tell me what you feel in your room when the full moon is shining in upon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old you are, and I shall know if you are happy."---- Henri Frederic Amiel

“Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.”
― Alan Watts

“The intimate sense of self-awareness we experience bubbling up at each moment is rooted in the originating activity of the Universe. We are all of us arising together at the invisible center of the cosmos.”― Alexis Karpouzos