[jmcgough]

The biggest problem with our society is that no one knows or helps their neighbors anymore. I work in the emergency department and maybe a third of the patients are more in need of a good support system than medical treatment.

Met a guy whose elderly wife isn't strong enough to lift him when he falls out of bed, so once a week they call EMS or the fire department to get him back in bed. So many things that you used to call on your neighbors for help with, but life for many Americans in 2025 is isolating and lonely.

[nosianu]

Did that ever work, except maybe in tribal societies?

Anything I read about middle ages or later was even worse. At best, they put such people into poorhouses.

A big family under one roof helped the best I guess? But in any less ideal situations I doubt even the children would have gone out of their way to devote their lives to the care of the elderly or the disabled. Examples from primitive societies: https://www.international.ucla.edu/cnes/article/113384

[dsign]

> Did that ever work, except maybe in tribal societies?

Maybe I don't understand your comment, but I think our societies were/are tighter in many places and epochs. Maybe it's not so in cities and suburbs in the modern West, but, I think it used to be different in Medieval Europe and before, in villages at least. Neighbors were your support community. I know there are parts of the world where it's still the case.

I'm not that old and I was raised by my neighbors, because both of my parents were working. When my dad was dying last year, I couldn't be there because I was their only economic support, working abroad, and I don't have any wealth to be so if I'm not working. There was more family, but the neighbors were the ones day to day helping my mom with shores and the care of my dad.

>> But in any less ideal situations I doubt even the children would have gone out of their way to devote their lives to the care of the elderly or the disabled.

It was the children, in most sane cases. Not that I argue it's a good thing to bring children to the world to take care of you when you are dying.

[markus_zhang]

Capitalism makes us more atomic, not a surprise.

[rmah]

It's not capitalism, per se. It's a society that overvalues individualism and devalues family. IMO, of course. One part of the social compact used to be that in return for parents taking care of you as a child, you took care of them when they were old. It worked for literally 1000's of generations.

[nosianu]

> It worked for literally 1000's of generations.

Did it?

There is an interesting discussion for a picture on reddit's //r/wtf right now: https://old.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/1ioz5xy/carved_ivory_c...

Basically, it looks like a significant propaganda effort was used to get people to act that way. That means it wasn't automatic at all.

It works best when the parent/child relationship is pretty good, and when the child is not under a lot of pressure him- or herself.

It was the ideal, sure, but how much of it is actually true IRL? There seem to be plenty of bad parents, in which case the children would require quite a bit of pressure and/or brainwashing to take care of them I would think.

[johnnyanmac]

Given that the framing here is based on accounts of the most extreme cases, I would trust this reflects their society as well as Ripley's Belive it or Not does.

And you're too focused on families. This society relied on villages that were all somewhat connected. Modern 3rd world countries still have an arguably richer social support than the US because overall their burdens are not theirs to share alone. They pitch in the care for children, provide food, maintain housing, and much more. Having a big family can simulate this clan feeling but the scale is still a magnitude smaller than a village working together.

>in which case the children would require quite a bit of pressure and/or brainwashing to take care of them I would think.

In the same way kids are "brainwashed" to get kicked out at 18 and make a life for themselves in America with minimum support, sure. Any upbringing can be framed as "brainwashing" if you don't agree with it.

[johnnyanmac]

You only need to go back 50 years. Have we already forgotten "it takes a village to raise a child"?

Even in my childhood I had remnants of this. My uncles or not-grandma grandma neighbors could be trusted to take care of my when my mom or grandparents weren't around. Nowadays that dynamic is spending $30+ on a credible babysitter. Those are the sort of dynamics that have recently weathered away.

>I doubt even the children would have gone out of their way to devote their lives to the care of the elderly or the disable

1. Yes they did and do. Many people still love their parents and want to make sure they are taken care for.

2. It isn't really that deep for neighbors. It's just a matter of checking up in them every few days. It isn't full time care. Of course if they get hurt they can either help out in minor cases or call emergency if it's more than minor.

These days you may sadly accept dying alone and not being discovered for weeks if people don't regularly contact you. What does that say about modern society?

[thaumasiotes]

> Anything I read about middle ages or later was even worse. At best, they put such people into poorhouses.

No, in the middle ages that job would have been done by the guy's son, who would have been living in the home.

[nosianu]

That is similar to the many family movies today: It shows the situation of specifically those where this ideal idea of family actually works. I doubt that was common in the middle ages. It worked best for those who owned something, like craftspeople or land-owning farmers, and then for their first heir who would inherit it all.

[thaumasiotes]

Landowning farmers is a gigantic chunk of the population, far bigger than you seem to be imagining. (Technically, many of them "rented", but "renting" land in medieval Europe was a stronger form of ownership than "owning" it in the modern United States is.)

[rafram]

Going to need a source for that. Pretty much everything I've read on the subject (ex. [1]) contradicts that.

[Yeul]

A poorhouse would still be better than freezing to death in a tent.

[yibg]

Homelessness isn't totally solved any where else but if we look at comparable countries (Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc), the magnitude is much lower. Not to mention other issues like healthcare, crime, education, life expectancy etc. But there seems to be a huge resistance to doing things in the US how it's done in other places.

[presentation]

Nobody knows or helps their neighbors here in Japan or any number of places on earth and yet it’s not like it is there.

[johnnyanmac]

Third places and overall closer proximity plays a factor too. Do you have a place you can just "meet people" without needing to pay in?

[presentation]

Tokyo is also well known for needing to pay to be practically anywhere except public parks which are relatively few. Yet the homelessness problem is near nonexistent. I don’t think this is the reason either, though it doesn’t hurt to have.

[Yeul]

Look Americans just hate it when poor people get things for free. Despite the fact that the US economy can afford it- certainly better than the Japanese economy nowadays.

It is perversely CHEAPER to give someone a flat and 1000 eurodollars per month than to have them roam the street, using drugs and being a nuisance. This is the wisdom that all first world countries have learned. Pay people money to shut the fuck up. The bread and games of the Romans.

[throwaway2037]

    > Nobody knows or helps their neighbors here in Japan

What? In a big city, maybe. This is not true in rural areas.

[presentation]

So, not the majority of the country’s population.

[throwaway2037]

I would repeat the same for all highly developed countries.

What are you trying to say in your response?