Conversation

Hypothesis: few people actually *want* a full-blown community past about 25. They just think they do. It’s a lot of time and work to be involved in “community” in the sense of shared beyond-family communal daily life (meals etc) and weekly parties, seeing friends everyday etc.
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Most people are introverts and just want a trusted emergency contact or two within driving distance, and the occasional lunch with friends you see once every few weeks at most. At most a weekly tennis or running buddy. Anything more is for extroverts stuck in college-headspace.
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A typical paycheck workplace gives you vastly more, like 10x more, but you don’t need it. Half the people in an office typically have no interest in happy hour etc
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I do know people who hang out with friends beyond family for hours everyday (not counting work), but it’s surprisingly rare and in older people is often a sign of unhealthy codependency etc.
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I suspect after age 22 people next want community only at like 66, Ie heading into retirement. I see retirees being almost as social as kids.
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I think this might be true for very narrow professionally-minded group, but far from the case for most people. When you stack all the avenues people participate in for community, most folks engage in community (and want to engage) with daily and weekly activities
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If child-rearing were less confined to nuclear families and more communal do you think the trade-offs might be likely to be appealing enough to keep parents as interested in community in twenty-somethings and sixty-somethings?
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