I was raised in a large extended family compound in Kabul, where the concept of solitude was not known and childcare was shared among many. I live alone with cats now which is a choice. How can we get back to some level of community? What do we do beyond volunteering and saying hi to our neighbors?
This post is a balm for my soul. Identifying our growing inability to live in community with others as an abandonment abetted by capitalism seems spot on.
seb when I read this personally meaningful essay , I immediately thought of jane Jacobs and how cool it would have been for you to sit across from one another over lunch. neighborhoods , as centers of safety for the children socialization for the adults , are gone. you mentioned the stoops ! My upper west side neighborhood growing up is unrecognizable now, lined as it is with corporate offices and high-end fashion stores. We need community. we need to be able to nod our heads in greeting to neighbors on our block... but you're right : the screens have taken over and it's just going to get worse.(I wish I didn't sound like a doom sayer but if I may play the old fogey card: pick up a book!)
Thank you for another great article that gives me much to chew on especially since I' m in agreement with much of your thinking. However, I'm cursed with being argumentative and think you have generalized a bit. Take breast feeding.
When I was born in 1944, my mother was dry and I couldn't drink the formula of the time. I would have starved to death if my mother's father hadn't arranged for mother's milk to be shipped via railroad express from the Boston Mother's Milk Bank to Wilmington,De. I survived.
Fast forward to the 1980's when my children were born and it was all about breast feeding. It was great. The kid wakes up at 3:00 crying. Ann rolls over to feed her. The child goes back to sleep.I miss hardly any sleep. The downside is when the infant is only a few weeks old, you really worry about rolling over and crushing it. Ann breast fed the kids until the next one came along.
Fast forward to the 21 century and I'm spending a ton of time at the local homeless shelter. It's a 90 day shelter for men, women, and children. You really get to know the residents. With one exception the moms with infants all bottle feed. I was surprised. So I kept asking why. The common answer was not that it was healthier but rather they thought breastfeeding was gross. It had nothing to do with it being better for their infant The Baby formula industry was innocent.
The one who did breastfeed her children did so because she felt closer to her child and was racked with guilt about her previous child who lived her mother. Unfortunately, she could only feed her child during the day because CPS took her infant at night because they thought a homeless shelter was no place for her child even though other mothers had their kids there 24/7. Unfortunately, six months later on the way to the county fair with her mom and two kids, she overdosed and died.
I bring this up because I think a blanket blaming the lack of breastfeeding on baby formula industry propaganda and their greed is an error. Furthermore, if all you get is three months maternity leave, breastfeeding becomes a nonstarter for most. But going down the route of suggesting a mother give up her job in order to long term nurture her child will get you crucified.
One last thought that backs up your premise of nurturing. There are several papers on infant deaths in hospitals where there was long term care. There was a high mortality rate. The babies were cleaned and feed promptly but otherwise never held or played with. A doctor insisted that the infants be regularly held, hugged, and talked too. The mortality rate plunged.
Hi Henry, thats super interesting about holding infants in long term hospital care. Im not surprised. And as for infant formula, no one is suggesting that it doesnt have its purposes as a medical intervention for mothers who dont lactate or simply dont want to breast feed. But millions of mothers in America and around the world were dissuaded from breast feeding because they were lied to by Nestle and other manufacturers in the 1970s. In fact Nestle embarked on an unconscionable advertising campaign to convince African mothers to switch to infant formula even though its not nearly as beneficial as breast milk and obviously far more expensive. Nestle was stopped by an international boycott. Study after study has show breast milk to be much better than infant formula for the health of the child. But no one is saying that there aren't circumstances where formula doesnt save the day...
Sorry I didn't mean to suggest that formula was superior to mother milk. I agree formula isn't even close to mothers milk. But I don't think manufacturer's advertising is the reason in this country women don't breastfeed. I think convenience and perception ("It's gross.") are biggest factors.
It is interesting though the 70's were when Nestle made the big push. We had our kids in the early 80's and according to Ann there was a huge reaction to formula at that time. She claimed the push for formula went all the way back to the 50's. Human thought seems to go in cycles. You should read Anne Harrington's history of mental illness treatment.
yes i believe it was the 50s that they pushed this. and it was all part of a cultural shift away from close parenting, at least for the white middle class. Doctors were very much part of this with some extremely bad advice and bad science.
Sounds like the opioid epidemic which the doctors were fully responsible for but dodged the bullet. I don't even want to think about the negative multi generational effect that is having on our society.
We live outside of the city and are parentless adults. We looked for community outside by serving others in various community service roles. As we’ve aged, some of those avenues are no longer options. We have found a local business that has become a community hub, offering craft fairs, music by the river and occasional lectures. This is where my soul gets fed, where I fuel up the light within. It closed for a period of a year while going through a sale. I saw a shift in our community when there wasn’t a hub to help connect us all. We need each other, we need to fill up, it gives us purpose.
Your little girl was right. We need to listen, they have all the secrets.
I still vividly recall the agony I felt when I ‘confessed’ to my pediatrician that my newborn baby was sleeping with us—Dr Heiss expressed his displeasure with great gravity. Just days old, my baby was not a crier—nor particularly vocal—but still somehow made it ABSOLUTELY CLEAR that he needed to be in bed with us. And despite being riddled with anxiety defying doctor’s orders, we listened to our baby. Fuck the bassinet. (Besides, he looked so teeny tiny in that seemingly vast expanse of a crib….was it really meant for a newborn???). And it wasn’t just the pediatrician, indeed it was shocking to encounter the number of free radical opinions floating out there—people came out of the woodwork with unsolicited advice and doomsday prognostications about how I was risking my baby’s life co-sleeping: you are going to squish him, they cried! Aside from learning a little too late that I needed to shut up about the family bed, I realized I needed to do some research. I had a brother living in Japan where he and his family enjoyed co-sleeping as a matter of course (I’ve never seen apartments so small) and he talked me off the ledge. Indeed as I studied up on the many benefits of co-sleeping I slowly got more comfortable. By the time my second baby boy arrived nineteen months later there was much less turmoil over the California King Tempur-Pedic that we all slept in (a failing marriage contributed its own unique twist—but that’s another story). The family bed morphed and evolved and at times it was a free-for-all, and I am grateful for every bit of it. I just wish I had been less tormented at the time. Today my sons are 22 and 23, and I can comfortably report that they are independent fine young men. And while we no longer live in the same house we are extremely close, talking, texting, connecting most days. I’m in their lives and they’re in mine. It is good.
“The costs of mass addiction are well-known and will lead to one final abandonment: That of the Self by the Self. Without silence, we can’t appreciate sound. Without solitude we can’t appreciate others. Without a clear and uncluttered relationship with our mind, we can’t possibly understand who we are and what we’re doing here. There is a saying in trauma therapy: What you do to me, I do to me. Indeed. But then there’s this: Several years ago, I asked my youngest daughter if she knew what the word love meant. “Love means, Stay here,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.”
I am in a daily struggle to reclaim my mind from the mass distraction of my phone. Even though I have meaningful relationships with people all over the world on Instagram and Facebook through my writing, art and the politics I am involved in, these social media platforms have trained me to look for reinforcement from this little thing in my hand with its glowing light and little hearts and single comments — and to wait interminably for an answer to a single sentence — and I find myself guiltily wanting to open my phone and look at it in social situations when I should be paying attention to a conversation in real life. I have been successfully retrained as an addict.
I am rereading some of the things I posted and wrote during pandemic and it is achingly clear that pandemic sealed the deal of remote living and distance as habit, at least in my high-tech town of Seattle. People just seem to be permanently changed. I have for the most part given up on trying to get the neighbors on my block to come out of the house and have a party or say hello.
Countering that, I am very excited at the renaissance of spoken word performance and the communities that have sprung up in the city bars and bookstores to share word and song. I can go to a gathering almost every week and the groups are very supportive and warm. I think one has been gathering for over 20 years.
Another movement that offers some hope for transforming social distance here is based on saving the trees and the nature in our city and surroundings. My city’s environmental groups use social media to connect people to the cause, but we meet in person around trees, in real life gatherings. We still have bald eagles in the middle of our city, nesting in trees. To watch bald eagles circling above the hemlocks and great cedars and below them a chainsaw put on pause because of the people gathered below fills me with hope.
I was raised in a large extended family compound in Kabul, where the concept of solitude was not known and childcare was shared among many. I live alone with cats now which is a choice. How can we get back to some level of community? What do we do beyond volunteering and saying hi to our neighbors?
Just, WOW!
This post is a balm for my soul. Identifying our growing inability to live in community with others as an abandonment abetted by capitalism seems spot on.
Really a great though provoking article. Can I get a prescription for oxycontin while widowed at age 90?
What a great piece! Thank you, Sir.
Your daughter wants you home...she loves you...you are important to her life. I hope you are able to do this! Beautiful sermon today...
Also trauma makes us want to isolate.
seb when I read this personally meaningful essay , I immediately thought of jane Jacobs and how cool it would have been for you to sit across from one another over lunch. neighborhoods , as centers of safety for the children socialization for the adults , are gone. you mentioned the stoops ! My upper west side neighborhood growing up is unrecognizable now, lined as it is with corporate offices and high-end fashion stores. We need community. we need to be able to nod our heads in greeting to neighbors on our block... but you're right : the screens have taken over and it's just going to get worse.(I wish I didn't sound like a doom sayer but if I may play the old fogey card: pick up a book!)
Thank you for another great article that gives me much to chew on especially since I' m in agreement with much of your thinking. However, I'm cursed with being argumentative and think you have generalized a bit. Take breast feeding.
When I was born in 1944, my mother was dry and I couldn't drink the formula of the time. I would have starved to death if my mother's father hadn't arranged for mother's milk to be shipped via railroad express from the Boston Mother's Milk Bank to Wilmington,De. I survived.
Fast forward to the 1980's when my children were born and it was all about breast feeding. It was great. The kid wakes up at 3:00 crying. Ann rolls over to feed her. The child goes back to sleep.I miss hardly any sleep. The downside is when the infant is only a few weeks old, you really worry about rolling over and crushing it. Ann breast fed the kids until the next one came along.
Fast forward to the 21 century and I'm spending a ton of time at the local homeless shelter. It's a 90 day shelter for men, women, and children. You really get to know the residents. With one exception the moms with infants all bottle feed. I was surprised. So I kept asking why. The common answer was not that it was healthier but rather they thought breastfeeding was gross. It had nothing to do with it being better for their infant The Baby formula industry was innocent.
The one who did breastfeed her children did so because she felt closer to her child and was racked with guilt about her previous child who lived her mother. Unfortunately, she could only feed her child during the day because CPS took her infant at night because they thought a homeless shelter was no place for her child even though other mothers had their kids there 24/7. Unfortunately, six months later on the way to the county fair with her mom and two kids, she overdosed and died.
I bring this up because I think a blanket blaming the lack of breastfeeding on baby formula industry propaganda and their greed is an error. Furthermore, if all you get is three months maternity leave, breastfeeding becomes a nonstarter for most. But going down the route of suggesting a mother give up her job in order to long term nurture her child will get you crucified.
One last thought that backs up your premise of nurturing. There are several papers on infant deaths in hospitals where there was long term care. There was a high mortality rate. The babies were cleaned and feed promptly but otherwise never held or played with. A doctor insisted that the infants be regularly held, hugged, and talked too. The mortality rate plunged.
Hi Henry, thats super interesting about holding infants in long term hospital care. Im not surprised. And as for infant formula, no one is suggesting that it doesnt have its purposes as a medical intervention for mothers who dont lactate or simply dont want to breast feed. But millions of mothers in America and around the world were dissuaded from breast feeding because they were lied to by Nestle and other manufacturers in the 1970s. In fact Nestle embarked on an unconscionable advertising campaign to convince African mothers to switch to infant formula even though its not nearly as beneficial as breast milk and obviously far more expensive. Nestle was stopped by an international boycott. Study after study has show breast milk to be much better than infant formula for the health of the child. But no one is saying that there aren't circumstances where formula doesnt save the day...
Sorry I didn't mean to suggest that formula was superior to mother milk. I agree formula isn't even close to mothers milk. But I don't think manufacturer's advertising is the reason in this country women don't breastfeed. I think convenience and perception ("It's gross.") are biggest factors.
It is interesting though the 70's were when Nestle made the big push. We had our kids in the early 80's and according to Ann there was a huge reaction to formula at that time. She claimed the push for formula went all the way back to the 50's. Human thought seems to go in cycles. You should read Anne Harrington's history of mental illness treatment.
yes i believe it was the 50s that they pushed this. and it was all part of a cultural shift away from close parenting, at least for the white middle class. Doctors were very much part of this with some extremely bad advice and bad science.
Sounds like the opioid epidemic which the doctors were fully responsible for but dodged the bullet. I don't even want to think about the negative multi generational effect that is having on our society.
We live outside of the city and are parentless adults. We looked for community outside by serving others in various community service roles. As we’ve aged, some of those avenues are no longer options. We have found a local business that has become a community hub, offering craft fairs, music by the river and occasional lectures. This is where my soul gets fed, where I fuel up the light within. It closed for a period of a year while going through a sale. I saw a shift in our community when there wasn’t a hub to help connect us all. We need each other, we need to fill up, it gives us purpose.
Your little girl was right. We need to listen, they have all the secrets.
I still vividly recall the agony I felt when I ‘confessed’ to my pediatrician that my newborn baby was sleeping with us—Dr Heiss expressed his displeasure with great gravity. Just days old, my baby was not a crier—nor particularly vocal—but still somehow made it ABSOLUTELY CLEAR that he needed to be in bed with us. And despite being riddled with anxiety defying doctor’s orders, we listened to our baby. Fuck the bassinet. (Besides, he looked so teeny tiny in that seemingly vast expanse of a crib….was it really meant for a newborn???). And it wasn’t just the pediatrician, indeed it was shocking to encounter the number of free radical opinions floating out there—people came out of the woodwork with unsolicited advice and doomsday prognostications about how I was risking my baby’s life co-sleeping: you are going to squish him, they cried! Aside from learning a little too late that I needed to shut up about the family bed, I realized I needed to do some research. I had a brother living in Japan where he and his family enjoyed co-sleeping as a matter of course (I’ve never seen apartments so small) and he talked me off the ledge. Indeed as I studied up on the many benefits of co-sleeping I slowly got more comfortable. By the time my second baby boy arrived nineteen months later there was much less turmoil over the California King Tempur-Pedic that we all slept in (a failing marriage contributed its own unique twist—but that’s another story). The family bed morphed and evolved and at times it was a free-for-all, and I am grateful for every bit of it. I just wish I had been less tormented at the time. Today my sons are 22 and 23, and I can comfortably report that they are independent fine young men. And while we no longer live in the same house we are extremely close, talking, texting, connecting most days. I’m in their lives and they’re in mine. It is good.
I loved this particular passage:
“The costs of mass addiction are well-known and will lead to one final abandonment: That of the Self by the Self. Without silence, we can’t appreciate sound. Without solitude we can’t appreciate others. Without a clear and uncluttered relationship with our mind, we can’t possibly understand who we are and what we’re doing here. There is a saying in trauma therapy: What you do to me, I do to me. Indeed. But then there’s this: Several years ago, I asked my youngest daughter if she knew what the word love meant. “Love means, Stay here,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.”
I am in a daily struggle to reclaim my mind from the mass distraction of my phone. Even though I have meaningful relationships with people all over the world on Instagram and Facebook through my writing, art and the politics I am involved in, these social media platforms have trained me to look for reinforcement from this little thing in my hand with its glowing light and little hearts and single comments — and to wait interminably for an answer to a single sentence — and I find myself guiltily wanting to open my phone and look at it in social situations when I should be paying attention to a conversation in real life. I have been successfully retrained as an addict.
I am rereading some of the things I posted and wrote during pandemic and it is achingly clear that pandemic sealed the deal of remote living and distance as habit, at least in my high-tech town of Seattle. People just seem to be permanently changed. I have for the most part given up on trying to get the neighbors on my block to come out of the house and have a party or say hello.
Countering that, I am very excited at the renaissance of spoken word performance and the communities that have sprung up in the city bars and bookstores to share word and song. I can go to a gathering almost every week and the groups are very supportive and warm. I think one has been gathering for over 20 years.
Another movement that offers some hope for transforming social distance here is based on saving the trees and the nature in our city and surroundings. My city’s environmental groups use social media to connect people to the cause, but we meet in person around trees, in real life gatherings. We still have bald eagles in the middle of our city, nesting in trees. To watch bald eagles circling above the hemlocks and great cedars and below them a chainsaw put on pause because of the people gathered below fills me with hope.
Fascinating read, thank you.