Love and Loyalty: Are They Becoming Extinct?

[jimrich]

Originally Posted by EmilyDuck

....and if someone spends a great deal of time looking at their phone while Im eating with them, I distance myself and focus my attention elsewhere...

LOL, a band member and his daughter were eating at a diner with my late wife and I and they were engaged in a one to one private discussion with each other that completely left my wife and I out so I loudly started a private conversation with my wife which did NOT include the other couple. Suddenly they stopped and looked amazed that we were no longer sitting their like their captive audience but were now engaged in our own, separate little conversation so they soon got into our talk and we happily included them with us. The other two were obviously victims of very bad parental social conditioning in which they did not realize how selfish and RUDE it is to sit with others and hold a private, exclusive conversation while the others are being treated like a silent, captive audience and I was not going to be treated like their silent audience any longer.

[Faith33]

Hi Jim...:)
I am standing at what you said about parental social conditioning...
In that respect, on social affairs, my husband and I have instilled the same values to both our sons, yet one is a social butterfly and will give you his undivided attention and the ither is liable to stay in his room all night and not greet our guests if not get a "get your behind out there" from me. Yes, he's a teenager and is going through a difficult phase, but good manners are very important in this house and rude behaviour isn't tolerated without discussion .
My said son is wired differently and through detailed conversation I am trying to find that happy medium with him... it isn't easy. What I am babbling on about is that it isn't always the parents' lack of fundamentals....
(Always on my phone and difficult to type... hope i made sense)

It's often about shyness and the corresponding difficulty of making small talk so
people retreat. I'm not much good at small talk - hardly better at medium talk
and certainly no use at big talk, so I kind of understand their situation.

But it is good to engineer a situation to broaden their awareness and remind them
of things Dale Carnegie said in his famous book - be interested in people!

♥

[jimrich]

Originally Posted by Lorelyen

It's often about shyness and the corresponding difficulty of making small talk so people retreat.

I "retreated" because it was just to dangerous to talk with or to my parents about anything, least of all the problems in our family. I had no problem talking with my cousin, older brother and some kids at school but NEVER my own parents!!!!
And they had no problem ordering me about and threatening me but would have NEVER bothered to talk WITH me about anything at all. So much of my early "education" of how to be and talk came from my parents more than any other source up to about school age.

I'm not much good at small talk - hardly better at medium talk
and certainly no use at big talk, so I kind of understand their situation.

I understand their situation, even though so little has been said about their side of this. The kids have been programmed a certain way and the effects of their conditioning is now showing up in their teen years.

But it is good to engineer a situation to broaden their awareness and remind them
of things Dale Carnegie said in his famous book - be interested in people! ♥

IMO and experience, the ones who need to be reminded of things are the parents who are engineering and programming their kids to be aware of the things that Dale Carnegie said. Our parents did a lot of "social engineering" of us kids but unfortunately it was rarely like anything that Dale Carnegie ever taught. I have since undone much of the damages from my parents and now can truly appreciate what Dale Carnegie said.

[Faith33]

Gosh, Jim...you sure do know how to dissect. Lol!
I am not tech savvy, therefore will try and reply to the best of my limited ability :)

I never claimed to be a flawless parent, I'm FAR from flawless, but have and am still doing my very best to be the parent I, too, have always wanted mine to be.
Firstly, thank you for sharing such intimate details about your upbringing and parental traits during that time. Allow me to say that my own upbringing was similar to what you've described, aside from the part of my mother...she did whatever she could, despite my father's rage and negative behaviour.

Secondly, yes, my boys have expressed their perception of my and their father's parenting skills and went a step further as to make a list of do's and don'ts for us, haha.
I've actually taken a year's worth of seminars when my children were very young, taught by two child psychologists and I have to say it helped tremendously in the years that followed. I became a mother at the age of 22 and have been doing this "job" for almost 24 years now....I've learned a lot along the way.

My thoughts are scattered at the moment, as my time is limited, but i will return to the topic once I'm out of my brain fog...

Thank you for your contribution, Jim.

[A human Being]

Originally Posted by Faith33

Haha, AHB!
I was smiling so stiffly, almost broke a tooth! How many "awwws" can one muster up in one night?!
People need to be more aware of their surroundings and less self absorbed, that's for sure.
My son is on an amazing trip to Crete and upon leaving, I advised he only use his phone to contact me and take pictures! It would be such a waste to be in such a beautiful place but not see anything because of facebook. *sigh*

Hahahaha I think most of us have been there at some point! Completely agree with what you said about needing to be more self-aware and less self-absorbed - I've been hanging out with mates and there have been points during the evening when I look around and every bugger's staring at their phone! I'm sat there thinking, 'You know we could've stayed at home and done this, it'd have saved us all a drive!' It's a sad reflection of our culture... although maybe it's just a sign that I need new friends

Good advice to your son, btw, it certainly would be a shame

[ocean breeze]

Originally Posted by Faith33

my husband and I have instilled the same values to both our sons, yet one is a social butterfly and will give you his undivided attention and the ither is liable to stay in his room all night and not greet our guests if not get a "get your behind out there" from me. Yes, he's a teenager and is going through a difficult phase, but good manners are very important in this house and rude behaviour isn't tolerated without discussion .
My said son is wired differently and through detailed conversation I am trying to find that happy medium with him... it isn't easy. What I am babbling on about is that it isn't always the parents' lack of fundamentals....
(Always on my phone and difficult to type... hope i made sense)

I agree. The parents can only do so much. Some people are just wired differently and a lot of outside influences also play a huge role.

Your kids remind me of me and my brother. My brother was the kind, friendly, talkative one, who got good grades. While i was a lot more reserved, rude, and troubled kid, who didn't do well in school. My parents aren't perfect, they make mistakes but they really did the best they can with me. They sent me to therapy a few times to see what was wrong but it didn't help. I had a lot of internal things going on but didn't know how to express them. I felt rather ashamed and embarrassed about them. And yes, there were outside influences that provoked such feelings. The only person to blame was myself. My parents were there for me. I was just really messed up and confused and didn't know who to trust and how to express what i'm feeling. I kept everything bottled up inside.

[Clover]

Hello all,

I think this thread got a bit derailed, let's return the subject back to the original question thank you

Originally Posted by Frozen Ghost

Has anyone else noticed how love and loyalty are so rare and fragile in the present age we live in? People we thought we knew betray us or just fall away from our lives like withered autumn leaves. Friends we've had for years become like strangers overnight, and never speak again as if they never shared a bond. New friends have become hard to find because everyone hides behind a screen they can type on, and no one seems sociable anymore. The word "family" has almost become a byword, because to many, water has become thicker than blood.

Has anyone else observed the erosion of personal relationships and deeper bonds between people in our world today? Have the bodysnatchers taken over, is humanity becoming less social, loyal and caring? Or is the world undergoing a spiritual crisis... what's going on?

[A human Being]

Edit: Oops, never mind, I agree with Clover - let's get it back on track

[SerpentSun]

As an overly-analytical introvert with a passion for anthropology, biochemistry, and evolutionary psychology, I've examined the topic of social interaction from SO many levels. I'll try to keep my thoughts as brief as possible, but good luck with that. Maybe I'd socialize more if folks discussed philosophy instead of just gossiping....

There are innumerable factors influencing human (animal) behavior, many factors that our little primate brains will never comprehend. Everything is connected. Nature, the way we evolved to behave instinctively over thousands of years, versus nurture, they way circumstances beyond our DNA condition our behavior. There is a great deal of overlap.

We are a type of primate known as an ape. Like orangutans, gorillas, chimps, and bonobos. They are our closest cousins. Among many things, apes are social animals who sleep in groups for security. They also frequently forage and hunt together.

But other apes don't just sleep with anyone, nor do they continue accumulating in larger groups within a smaller swathe of land. Most pack animals have evolved to live in certain size groups within a cerain size territory. There can indeed be great variation; for example, wolf pack sizes have been kniwn to range from just 2 to about 100 individuals. But in general, pack animal populations usually remain stable. Unless, of course, they don't.

Mammals with brains the size of ours can only socially track 50-150 individuals. That's basically our "love and loyalty" limit. The few remaining indigenous hunter-gatherer groups live in bands approximately this size, and archaeological evidence suggests our Paleolithic ancestors also shared a similar social structure for hundreds of thousands of years. Just small little camps or villages.

Each band of 50-150 would then prowl a territory of about 50-150 square miles. One whole square mile of wilderness to feed each person, if only we had less people. But unlike other apes, who are endangered because of us, the human population has spiked in only a few centuries due to "life-saving" technologies. That's the real social danger of the Digital Age: our population has surpassed our "love and loyalty" limit.

Humans, chimps, cetaceans, canines, hyenas, and lions can all be loving loyal individuals. To their close family and friends. But as the population grows, we live more densely packed together, and we're exposed to more people than we can socially track. We evolved for millions of years to see no more than maybe a thousand other humans in our lifetime.

Now we live in cities with thousands if not millions, and everyone (not me) is connected through Facebook and Twitter. Even I won't deny the joy I feel in meeting like minds on forums like this. But being expected to "love" more folks than we evolved to only leaves a few options: only care about close family and friends (my personal pick) and seem like a jerk to everyone else, OR wearing yourself thin trying to "like" everyone because "it's the right thing to do". But is it?

If space and natural resources are dwindling, what do other territorial animals do? They fight to the death to feed their own babies. And if resources are very scarce, they even eat their own babies. It isn't out of malice, just a simple way to regulate supply and demand. But us humans always assume an ulterior motive.

This is off-topic, but what is racism? An illogical dislike of any ethnicity. Usually a race besides one's own, although there is self-racism, and the "hate" usually extends beyond one race. But what if racism is neither illogical or hate? What if it is simply instinctive distrust of another tribe?

Not that I condone racism, I hate everyone equally, and I'm sure there are other factors besides "kin" versus "them". But my point is that simple overpopulation can make folks seem unloving and disloyal, simply because we can only care about so many individuals. And a lot of people spend too much of their limited love on Facebook.

Jimrich keeps insisting that any social dysfunction is due to parental failure, nothing to do with technology, society, or government. But if parents have always done such a horrible job raising their children, how did humanity survive for millennia in small, stable, peaceful, balanced populations? If parents only recently started doing such a shameful job, surely something must've nudged them on the wrong course?

Our current digital/industrial social structure, overpopulated "walking dead" with their heads in the "cloud", serves a select few influential people. Maybe....oh I don't know, about 50-150. They are the politicians and corporate giants who tell us what to think. It benefits them for us to keep breeding, growing sicker and stupider, like just another crop to farm.