An interesting review by David Brooks of a new book by Robin Dunbar called
No need to read the review if you don't have access to it. Its title is somewhat misleading. The italics below give the message
The Secrets of Lasting Friendships
If the author’s name means something to you, it’s probably because of Dunbar’s number. This is his finding that the maximum number of meaningful relationships most people can have is somewhere around 150. How many people are invited to the average American wedding? About 150. How many people are on an average British Christmas card list? About 150. How many people were there in early human hunter-gatherer communities? About 150.
I bought the Kindle Edition of the book but have not yet finished reading it. However. the chart that I have made summarizes the basic data and argument. The number of our "friends" i.e., our most important relationships, is limited by the capacity of our brains, and by the amount of time that we have available. The theoretical argument is that our brains evolved to handle social relationships. While most of our time is spent in work, i.e. hunting, gathering, farming, we are more than economic animals pursuing subsistence on our own, we are social animals that evolved to live in groups of 150 people.
The Chart below appears in the book of a set of concentric circles. I have made it into a table to include the amount of time per month. The key word here is "Friends." It stands for our most important relationships, including family and work relationships which we do not have much choice about, as well as other people (friends) whom we get to chose. The author says that "friends" can include persons now dead, and even God.
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|
Cognitive Capacity |
Monthly Time Capacity |
|||
|
Circles |
New Persons layer |
Cumulative Persons |
Hour per Person per month |
Min per Person per month |
Social Time Percent |
|
Close Friends |
5 |
5 |
8.5 |
520 |
40% |
|
Best Friends |
10 |
15 |
2.1 |
130 |
20% |
|
Good Friends |
40 |
50 |
|
20 |
40% |
|
Friends |
100 |
150 |
|
|
|
|
Acquaintances |
350 |
500 |
|
|
|
|
Known names |
1000 |
1500 |
|
|
|
|
Known faces |
3500 |
5000 |
|
|
|
Our Close Friends are a five-member support group whom we commonly see at least once a week. Over the course of a month, we spend an average of 8.5 hours (a workday) with each member of our support group. About forty percent of our social relationship time is devoted to these persons. These are the people whom we depend upon.
Our Best Friends are an additional circle of ten people who are our sympathy group. These are people whom we generally see at least once a month. We spend an average of 2.1 hours a month with each of these, e.g. a lunch, or an evening, or a small group meeting. These are people whom we expect will aid us if we need them. Only 20% of our social time goes to this circle.
Our Good Friends are another forty people, who are our extended "family" and affinity groups such as church, business, or hobby friends whom we see at least once a year They only get 20 minutes a month if we keep in contact monthly with them by phone, e-mail, or attendance at a monthly meeting. However, forty percent of our time goes to this circle. Much of it likely in group events on holidays, etc.
Ritual and Religion
In describing these circles, it became apparent to me how important ritual and especially the cycles of the week, the month, and the year are to the maintenance of the social fabric of a community of 150 people. Each of us can only do the work of maintaining family and work relationships with about fifteen important people on a weekly and monthly basis; we can also maintain another forty relationships on a monthly or yearly basis. Finally, we can maintain contact with the other hundred people of the community through events like Christmas cards, weddings, funerals.
Speaking of religion, what about God as a person in our network? If one attends church an hour each week, God clocks in at four hours per month, a best friend in our sympathy circle but not a member of our inner support group. On the other hand, if one goes to a Church whose weekend services last for over two hours, God becomes a member of one's inner circle.
If one goes to church less than twice a month God becomes just another good friend. The "Santa Claus" and "Easter Bunnies" are saying that God (or perhaps the Church) remain a part in their extended friendship network.
What about daily prayer? I have always been impressed by the fact that about sixty percent of Americans pray daily whereas less than forty percent go to church weekly. A few minutes of prayer a day really makes a difference in where God stands in our relationships. It takes only a little over 4 minutes a day (130 minutes a month) for God to be a best friend in our sympathy group. It takes only a little over 17 minutes a day (520 minutes a month) for God to be a member of our inner circle. All this can be done without going to Church. Over course if one goes to Mass weekly, it takes only an extra ten minutes of prayer a day to welcome God into our inner circle.
If one daily prays Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer from the current Divine Office (over 15 minutes each), that is at least 900 minutes a month placing God (and implicitly the Church) well within the inner circle of 520 minutes without going to Mass. Either Morning or Evening Prayer comes very close to the required 520 minutes of an intimate relationship Both priests and many religious are required to pray the Divine Office daily although they are not required to go to Mass daily.
While we should respect anyone who spends more than 17 minutes a day in prayer of some sort as an intimate of God, only those who spend more than 17minutes a day in liturgical prayer are intimates of the Church.
In pre-modern communities almost all the people numbered among our close friends and best friends would likely have been birth family members or marriage family members. With today's mobile society about half of our close friends, best friends and good friends are still blood family members. The traditional obligations of blood still seem stronger than those of choice, i.e., we might treat a close or best friend or even a good friend as family, but we don't feel obligated.
Thinking about One's Own Social Network
I came across this book shortly after I had constructed for other reasons a life-long list of "friends." Of course, my list came out to be slightly under 150 names. It was a first draft; a second draft would likely have gone over since I kept remembering some people whom I had left out.
In thinking about my network of friends, it has helped to think about this in terms of a life-long pattern of networks and also to ask myself at various times and places who were the people with whom I spent a lot of time.
As an only child, I was very close to my parents, and they certainly remained among my closest friends while they were alive even though during most of the year we did not live together. However, the several months that we did made up for lost time in other months.
Professionally, it is interesting that when I was a graduate student and post doc, that at least one and likely two faculty members would have qualified as close friends, with several graduate students or other faculty members being best friends according to the time criterion.
When I migrated to the public mental health system most years my boss and one other member of the senior management would have qualified as close friends, and several other senior management team or work subordinates would have come in as best friends.
When I served as a voluntary member of pastoral staff several of my colleagues would have been in the best friend's category. When I participated in Renew groups for several years, several of those people would have fit into the best friend's category. When I was part of the leadership team for Voice of the Faithful in the Cleveland Diocese a couple of those people became at least best friends and perhaps even close friends. With Commonweal local communities meeting only once a month, it really is not possible for anyone to become a close or best friend by participating in the community, although some may become good friends.
One of the difficulties about making new friends is that we have to give up time with old friends. For example, courtship usually requires giving up several close friends. There are however times in life, e.g. going off to college, graduate from college, change of job or housing when we have a great amount of change, i.e. giving up old relationships to get new ones.
It takes time to make friends. In a study of college friendship making, a researcher found it took 45 hours of time to move from being an acquaintance to being a casual friend, another 50 hours to become a meaningful friend, and another 100 hours to become a best friend!
Implication for Parish Communities
My local Orthodox parish has a Sunday Liturgy attendance of between 100 to 150 adults plus children. They have a coffee hour afterwards. People who attend regularly are going to have a sense of knowing the community and of being known by the community. That is very difficult to come by in most Catholic parishes which have more than one Mass.
Parishes do have programs like RENEW or Bible Study in which people, usually twice a year, meet weekly for several months. However, those are only likely to move a person from being an acquaintance to a casual friend, hardly to meaningful friendship
Choirs do meet regularly, say weekly for nine months. Again, a person might move from being a acquaintance to being a casual friend, and perhaps after several years to being meaningful friends with a few people.
There may be some opportunities for meaningful friendship, and even close friends developing by being a part of the leadership group of various ministries. That is essentially what happened to me when I become a part of the VOTF diocesan leadership.
My conclusions: Unless one becomes part of a community that spends a couple of hours each Sunday making community like the Orthodox and Evangelicals, one is likely to be dissatisfied with what is offered in Catholic parishes as community. That means we Catholics must take personal responsibility for the nature of our own social networks, carefully evaluating those that are in our present network and carefully recruiting new people. The pandemic has brought two new opportunities.
First, my project of creating a Virtual Divine Office website. During the pandemic it has been a resource for Betty and I to celebrate the Divine Office both together and separately. I have purchased an ipad which will allow me to demonstrate the website to others. Bishop Barron's Fire and Word network is going to produce a monthly booklet of Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline to compete with Magnificat, etc. beginning in June. I registered for 2 booklets at $7 a piece that will fit neatly into my ipad carrying pack. I hope to develop a network of people who pray the Divine Office with the aid of my website in their homes or elsewhere.
Second, NewGathering has held up much better than the Cleveland Commonweal Local Community both before and especially during the pandemic. I think of the cost of this blog as about a post per week plus a comment a day. Unlike meetings there is great flexibility so that one can accumulate minutes easily. This blog is very cognitively oriented which builds upon this book's insight about the importance of cognitive activity in social relationships. Perhaps a Cleveland Commonweal Blog, or a local Divine Office blog where members can network?
This classification scheme does not capture how I understand the concepts of friend and friendship. So I guess my question is - Jack, how do you define “friend” and “ friendship”? How do others define them? Personally, I don’t think that the amount of interaction time/week is actually very relevant.
ReplyDeleteFriends." It stands for our most important relationships, including family and work relationships which we do not have much choice about, as well as other people (friends) whom we get to chose. The author says that "friends" can include persons now dead, and even God.
DeleteIf I had written the book, I might have chosen a different word for his classification scheme. But I am not interested in disputing terminology.
I think what you are taking about are important positive relationships that are not determined by the amount of time. I can think of one or two out of my list of life-time relationships (both teachers) who had a long term impact on my life in comparison to the amount of time I spent with them. Maybe he deals with that in his book somewhere since I have not finished it?
The other problem with "friends" and time are the very important negative relationships, people whom you spend a lot of time with who are definitely not friends. Maybe he deals with that somewhere in his book?
I am more interested in data than in theory. I omitted a huge amount of his evolutionary biology thinking and focuses in upon what seem to me the facts that support the important role of cognitive activity and time limits in human relationships.
I had the same thought as Anne: Why are levels of friendship based on the time spent interacting with people? It seems predicated on the notion that people will naturally spend the most time with the people they like most, but that ignores those relationships defined by obligation. I spent more time with my mother than any other person, mostly because she had mental health problems. I was intimately involved in her care, but it was not any kind of two-way nurturing friendship.
DeleteIt will be interesting to see how people recover friendships from the pandemic. I have come to prefer solitude to socializing, and I find gets togethers onerous. Not that I'm afraid of getting covid. It's that being with people tires me out.
Again, that is because he is not using friend in the way that we commonly use it to define the people whom we like the most but rather in terms of importance of the relationship which he equates to the amount of time that we spend with people. For example, a newborn usually requires a great amount of time, but we usually don't regard it as a friend even though we may love the newborn very much.
DeleteJean said: I have come to prefer solitude to socializing, and I find get togethers onerous. Not that I'm afraid of getting covid. It's that being with people tires me out."
DeleteYes, Betty and I are finding that out, too. For a long time, social psychologists have been aware that the "mere presence" of others requires a higher level of brain activity. That actually goes well with this guy's evolutionary theory that our brains developed in response to increasing social complexity. So anytime the social situation increases in complexity our brains will go on alert.
My own use of the word friendship is probably more idiosyncratic that this researcher. I think my parents were best friends because they shared many more interests than are typical for a husband and wife. Once I became financially independent in graduate school, I also became best friends with my parents because we shared a lot of interests and treated each other as equals.
DeleteThis kind of segues into some thoughts I have had lately which have been a bit melancholy. I haven't done a great job of keeping up with people that I genuinely like and value. We have lived in five different communities since we have been married. Not really our preference, but the moves were necessary for job reasons. If it had been up to me we would have stayed in our hometown. But that wasn't economically possible. And to be honest we would have missed some life enriching experiences. .Unfortunately we have lost track of a lot of people. It doesn't help that I am an introvert and need a lot of re-charge time for time spent socializing.
ReplyDeleteYah, I hear you. My 50th high school reunion is coming up. No interest in going to that, but it conjures up a general sense of nostalgia for friends who have died that I miss.
DeleteI went to our 45th and 50th class reunions, after not having gone for a long time. Somewhat to my surprise it was a good experience. Life tends to wear the rough edges off of people (sometimes!)
DeleteI did not get along well with my fellow students in high school. I related to several of my teachers as peers rather than a student since I shared a lot of intellectual interests with them. So, I never had any interest in going to high school reunions.
DeleteIf the Jesuits had held a class reunion of people who were in Novitiate together, I would have gone to it. The main reason I stayed for so long in the Novitiate was that it was a real joy to have age mates (or slightly older) who were very intellectual.
Since Francis was a novice at close to the same time I was, I feel like a fellow novice made it to be Pope. I think Francis was formed in Novitiate by a lot of values similar to the ones I experienced, e.g. always give the other person the benefit of the doubt, always assume permission if you have to break a rule, go in their door in order to bring them out your door. A lot of people assume Francis is a liberal because of these values. I see him as a fellow Jesuit novice.
Out of a class of 300, 600 if you include both public high schools and the girls Catholic high, 29 people have RSVPd. At that rate, they will have to cancel because they need at least 50 people to pay for the venue. That will be sad for those who are geeked up about it.
DeleteI got along with people OK, but I worked half days in high school so I could go to college and get away from home. I got roped into the senior class play, but my head was elsewhere.
I have messaged a few people I have nice memories of to say hi, but I can't see dropping all that money and time into something that will be mildly entertaining at best.
My understandings of “friend” and “friendship” are very different from that of Dunbar and David Brooks. For me, it’s qualitative, not quantitative, and so has little to no relationship to how many minutes or hours I spend interacting with people each week or month. Perhaps the book should be titled simply Circles of Relationships. Based on Brooks’ opening paragraph, I would guess that he is an extrovert, and loves to be surrounded by people. It’s possible that he prefers quantity to quality.
ReplyDeleteBrooks - I met a woman who said she practiced “aggressive friendship.” It takes a lot of her time, but she’s the person who regularly invites friends over to her house, who organizes events and outings with her friends. What a fantastic way to live.
Sounds exhausting to me!
My closest friendships date back to when I was 11 years old. Most date back 35 -60 years. I do not see many of these friends very often, as most live a long way from here. We interact mostly by phone and email and certainly do not spend the amount of time Dunbar says that we spend on our “close” friends. I would say I have 5 “closest” friends, including one who is a “soul” friend. Maybe another dozen are “social” friends whom I might occasionally meet for lunch. The relationships are pleasant, but shallow, and once someone moves on, the relationship tends to die. I don’t consider most of the people know to be real friends – they are social acquaintances.
I recently bought a card to send to my “soul” friend (she was my roommate freshman year of college and lives in California). The card says
“A true friend is….
Someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words”.
Some of the comments to David Brooks’ column come closer to how I understand “real” friendship than do Mr. Brooks and Mr.Dunbar.
The best friends are those…. [you] don't need to see regularly to maintain the friendship. The friends whom you may not see for a while, but it always feels like you can pick up right where you left off.
Sadly, I no longer consider one of the friends I had considered to be among the small group of 5 or 6 “close” friends to be in that circle anymore. This is because of her support of trump and some racism that emerged during his first campaign that I had never known was there. For 35 years we had been close enough friends to see each other at least every week, and to talk on the phone several times/week. I thought I knew her really well. It turns out I didn’t. So I understand the next comment ..
I thought I had a great group of fairly close friends until covid happened. The majority are anti-mask and while I understand their point of view, I just can't get over what I perceive as self-centredness. And so we have drifted apart, ..
I think that our very best friendships, those that last a lifetime, are often forged when we are young. As one of my college friends said a few years ago when I was visiting her in Calif., those friendships were forged when we were still in the process of “becoming”, and were based on an essential (in the philosophical sense) connection unrelated to work, children, participation in the same activities etc. -- a mysterious connection based on who we were as people.
Another comment that reflects my experience
Some of us have lived many lives -- school in one place; college in another; jobs in multiple cities. … Thus we might have a network of friends, most of whom do not live where we currently reside. Most of my closest friends do not live where I do; …. We are in touch frequently through WhatsApp or other social networking sites. These are friendships that have endured for decades. I don't need to see them physically everyday.
And another
…I'm lucky in having a few of those friends that I don't have to keep up with. I may not see or talk to them in a year, but when I do, it is as if we never stopped. Pick it up again effortlessly.
I think the number of friends in each of the categories that Jack mentions is interesting, especially the fact that human cognition limits the number of people we can comfortably interact with at various levels.
ReplyDeleteStudents aren't friends, but as a teacher, the most comfortable class size for me was between 10 and 20 people. More than 40 and you might as well be broadcasting from a remote location.
The ability to keep "reading" faces and body language for comprehension and interest becomes harder as class size expands. In big sections, you find yourself concentrating on the front rows (where the eager beavers sit) and the very back (where the disengaged congregate), and you hope that if you're playing well to both crowds, the ones in the middle are getting it.
I figure I had about 4,000 students over the years. I have never tried to try to tally up how many of them I remember, but that might make an interesting memory exercise some afternoon.
DeleteAnne, you seem to have the same cognitive structure of relationships described in the book except that you deny they are related to the amount of time, and/or to your valuation of the relationships in that structure.
DeleteI would say I have 5 “closest” friends, including one who is a “soul” friend. Maybe another dozen are “social” friends whom I might occasionally meet for lunch. The relationships are pleasant, but shallow, and once someone moves on, the relationship tends to die. I don’t consider most of the people know to be real friends – they are social acquaintances.
It is interesting that you have included an inner circle of a “soul” friend which is described in the book but not included in my chart. Circles are multiples of about 3, i.e. 5, 15, 50, 150. If you divide 5 by 3 you get an inner circle of 1.5 persons. Men almost always have one person in this circle usually a woman, e.g. their wife. Women have two persons in this circle, usually their husband and a BFF (best friend forever) almost always another woman. When men are forced by a researcher into choosing a BFF, it is typically a drinking buddy whom they see to escape the pressures of home and/or office. Nowhere near the time or importance of a BFF in the lives of women!
Don’t underestimate the cumulative effect of small amounts of time upon a relationship. I gave the example of 17 minutes of prayer a day to place God in one’s inner circle. Ignatius actually said that for the truly spiritual person, fifteen minutes a day of prayer suffice! When I have looked at my lifetime of relationships I have found the predicted time is often accomplished in various ways.
In looking over my lifetime relationships there is one that sticks out as having a larger impact upon me in proportion to the amount of time. George, a math teacher in my public high school introduced me to Merton’s Seeds of Contemplation and began a lifelong conversation about theology and religion. He became my model for a Catholic intellection who has a deep understanding of religion even though it is not their job, or their academic training.
We did keep up that relationship through almost annual visits when I came home to visit my parents. Time wise he was only in the circle of 50, but impact wise he was in the circle of 15, maybe close to being in the circle of 5. I would say a very high quality relationship can happen in less time than most relationships.
Jack's response is to Anne's comment above.
DeleteOne comment on Brook’s review mentioned that the lifelong friendships, those we can pick up where we left off even after long periods without contact, are often those that we made when we were young. Time was a factor. The commenter observed that when we are young, we generally have more free time for just hanging out, spending a lot of time just talking, discovering life.
DeleteI mentioned that my lifelong close friends from college days were scholarship students like me. The combination of us all being “Honors” students, and our shared state of relative poverty, threw us together as freshmen. The college was very small, all women, and in a location that was beautiful, but far away from the main parts of LA. No way to go anywhere without a car. The dorm was a ghost town on weekends. Most of the girls had cars and were from the greater LA area. To avoid the midnight curfew, they went home on weekends. We less affluent scholarship students stayed in the dorm - stuck there by geography and no public transportation. So there was little to do except play bridge and talk into the wee hours of the morning. We were all assigned to a combined Honors Western Lit and Western Civ course. It was a two hour class that met 3 times/week, and was co-taught by two professors. We met in a lounge with comfortable couches and chairs, where we could drink coffee and even smoke (smoking was “cool” then. We all quit later) - a lot of class time for 10 or so students. It provided a physical and intellectual environment for really getting to know one another. Class discussions were great because there were so few of us, and were led by two really brilliant women professors. It never felt like class, just really interesting discussions. Needless to say, the discussions provided us a chance to know one another at a deeper level than most dorm talk, which tended to center on finding opportunities to meet potential boyfriends and figuring out what to wear if there was a social event. So, time together was important in cementing those friendships.
But the feeling I get from the chart is that the author believes that these closest friendships require a lot of time and attention forever - and that doesn’t seem to be the case. After college our little group scattered - across the country and one to Europe, who lived in Switzerland until 5 years ago, when they retired and moved back to the US. Yet our group has stayed close, without frequent in-person contact for more than 50 years now. When we do get together in person (about every ten years), it’s as if we are still college students, still sharing our hopes and sorrows, our dreams and our fears..
Jack, your parents were your closest friends. Obviously a lot of time spent together! My parents weren’t friends. I barely knew my father. I can count on one hand how often I saw him between age 10 and his death, when I was 37. My mother was caring, but not a friend. She was not someone I would share my innermost thoughts with. My siblings are not close friends either. We would not have become more than acquaintances if we had met one another outside of the family. My husband is in a category by himself. He is my BFF - but not my “soul” friend. He has been in my life daily for 53 years. But, in some things, my “soul” friend from college knows me better than he does. Perhaps that’s where religion comes in. She and I talk God, belief, spirituality, theology, and reveal who we are in a way that I do not do with any other person. My husband doesn’t stress over the things that I stress about- the classic “meaning of life” questions. Since you have a relationship with St. John’s Abbey, you may be familiar with The Cloister Walk, the reflections of Kathleen Norris from her two 9 month stays with the Benedictines of St. John’s Abbey. She wrote: Human relationships are by their nature incomplete---after 21 years my husband remains a mystery to me, and I to him, and that is how it should be..
PS. I don't think that I even "know" 75 people these days, including acquaintances. Those I used to know from work, from our kids' school days, from church, are no longer part of my life, and not in even the outermost circle. Maybe 30 people from "soul" friend through distant acquaintances. But then, although I am "friendly" to people, I am not "aggressively" friendly. And I am in my 70s. Many of those who were among our "social" acquaintances (dinner now and then) have died, so I don't include them in the count. My husband and I are introverts, and we learned many years ago that neither of us enjoyed events with lots of people, even Christmas parties, and began declining those invitations. Small dinner parties of 6-8 were our style. I never had anywhere close to 100 in the "friends" circle, nor 40 in the "Good friends" circle. I suspect that if I were to read the whole book I might find some areas of agreement with the author, but might mostly disagree even with his basic premises. I suspect it would be much like how I feel about Jonathon Haidt's book. The Righteous Mind"
DeleteBTW, when I come to the site to comment, I no longer see a "preview" option. Where did it go?
Not only were my parents important in my life but also both grandmothers and two aunts, one on either side of the family. The relationships with the two aunts lasted into their nineties, long after my parents had died. All these relationships were positive; family feuds were far distant. If one adds the Divine Office as another core relationship, there has been a huge amount of stability at the center of my relationship network.
DeleteI moved around quite a bit after high school, although returning often to PA for holidays and summers. At each place I would usually acquire a friend or two in my circle of five, and another friend or two in my circle of fifteen. These were important relationships; each in its own way was unique. However, they rarely lasted beyond my next move. I suspect my solid inner core of relationships enabled me to constantly leave relationships behind and take on new relationships.
Many people, like you, lack the set of family relationships that I had. It seems like your college classmates became a substitute family of origin and most of you were motivated to keep it up though life, sufficiently so that you also did not have need to form many additional strong and enduring bonds through life.
The books says that each of us tends to evolve our own pattern of relationships, and to maintain that pattern during life, fitting new relationships into the scheme as old relationships drop out.
Incidentally the number of relationships tends to diminish with time. We start out having a lot of new relationships in our twenties and then things decline through life. Perhaps that is all a function of the unique mental template that we each develop. As life goes on it gets more difficult to fit people into our social map. Again, I think the importance of this book is that we are very limited both by our mental map and the amount of time that is needed to fit in new relationships.
Betty has fitted well into my mental map not only because of her interests in the Divine Office, intellectual interests, and gardening but also because as an elderly person she fits into my life experience of dealing with many elderly people in my family.
BTW, I miss the preview option, too. It means I need to write my comments in Word, then past them here.
Interesting topic. I hear the notion a lot in my elderly-ness that old people have a harder time making new friends by "experts" in senior issues. I'd like to have someone look more into that truism because it's taken at face value as if older people had somehow lost the ability to make friends.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that there's anything about an older person's mindset that makes making friends harder, but I think that some circumstances of being elderly contribute to it--health and financial problems, difficulties with transportation and mobility. Those who are very spry and healthy may not want to get burdened with (or reminded of mortality) by those who are in worse shape.
And there's a general sense in our youth-driven society that old people are "out of it" and will "slow the rest of us up" or monopolize conversations in multigenerational settings.
Hello - to digress: the comment boxes here are considerably different now on the blog than they were before. I had to clear all my cache and cookies (which probably will cause me considerable pain at other sites) just to get to the point of being able to enter a comment. I use Google Chrome. Perhaps I am the only one here who uses Chrome? I am wondering if the BlogSpot gods pushed out a software update.
ReplyDeleteI was using Amazon Silk to type on my Kindle. It has worked okay in the past but it just flaked on me and disappeared what I was typing. Grr! So maybe BlogSpot is dinking around with their software.
DeleteAt work today our IT people had to re-load drivers for all the printers because none of our computers were able to print anything out.
I use Google Chrome and Kindle. Blogspot comments boxes function, but easy visibility and composing in the text box is limited to the first five lines of text. An inducement to make posts shorter, I guess.
DeleteKatherine, for someone who is retired, you sure use the phrase "At work today..." in a lot of your comments!
DeleteJim, I use both Chrome and Firefox on my laptop. Chrome has been a mess lately. I did clear the cache and downloaded the most recent version as suggested when I researched the problem, but it’s still wonky. I use both Safari and Chrome on mu iPad. So far chrome has continued to work properly on the iPad. But blogspot does seem to have changed, and I am now drafting in a blank email form because I use the iPad most of the time now that I am no longer working. I use the laptop to pay bills, and for financial accounts. I never do that stuff on my phone or iPad. My sons run their entire lives on their phones I think, except for work. I’ll ask my Google son about chrome. He’s not an engineer, but he still knows a whole lot more about the tech stuff than I do.,
DeleteJim, yeah, I'm "at work today" basically full time since the beginning of August. I had been retired for three years, and the guy who took my place decided to quit. They asked me to come back and fill in until they found someone. They found three someones, who were qualified for the job. I call them plans A, B, and C. They accepted the job, then decided at the last minute to accept another job somewhere else. We are now on plan D. Someone who has been with the company for a number of years has expressed interest. She only has a high school diploma, so I will be teaching her chemistry 101. It would be a steep learning curve, but she is intelligent enough if she is motivated. In her favor she is hardworking and is unlikely to quit and go somewhere else. We'll see. I would like to actually retire again, even though I like the job (except today was one of those days!)
DeleteI don't quite know what is the problem with people accepting a job and then not showing up. The company is decent to work for, and the money they are offering is good.
Hi Anne, many thanks, anything your son can report would be appreciated. FYI: as I type this comment in a newfangled comment (which looks more like a line than a box), a prompt below the "Publish" button states, "This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply." The business about reCAPTCHA never used to appear. That's why I am supposing that something about the BlogSpot platform has changed. I hope we're not going to have to identify all the traffic lights in the grid of photos, just to enter a comment.
DeleteI hope we're not going to have to identify all the traffic lights in the grid of photos, just to enter a comment.
DeleteLOL! I noticed that too. If that happens, we might have to migrate to a different platform.
My Christmas card list has about 100 names on it, and most of those cards go to couples, and some go to entire families (although, as everyone knows, nobody under the age of 40 ever sends a Christmas card, few probably read one and some may not know what one is).
ReplyDeleteI agree with Anne that I struggle with the correlation of closeness and frequency of contact.
On the other hand, maybe there is something to the inverse: the people with whom one spends the most time may turn out to be the closest friends, regardless of the perceived intimacy of the bond.
Let's agree that human relationships are complicated and difficult to define.
I've written here before that I've lived my life, especially my early years, moving from one chapter of life to the next, leaving the last chapter behind. (Maybe "anthology" is a better metaphor than "chapters of a book"; the latter suggests connection and progression, whereas the former suggests a collection of discrete, standalone, self-contained stories. A lot of friendships were severed when the family moved. There are times when I'm filled with longing to reconnect with friends from a "past life". Within the last year or so, I corresponded with the principal of my old Catholic elementary school, to find out if they ever did reunions of old students. Was hoping I might run into some of my old gang of grade school friends. They don't do reunions, which, as an aside, strikes me as a missed opportunity for a private school which probably is staying afloat from one tuition payment to the next.
Jim, I only attended a parochial school through 4th grade. When we moved to the mountains, the small public school was the only school. I didn’t keep ties with anyone from the Catholic school after moving, although I have with several people from my public elementary school ( a K-8 school) as well as high school. So I was shocked several years ago to receive an email from a classmate from the parochial school inviting me to a reunion of the class ( that school was 1st-8th), organized by the students, not the school. They must have been an extraordinarily close class! My family name before marriage is very rare in the US and even in Germany. I am related to every person in the US with the same name, and apparently even to those in Germany the same name, even though I have never met or been in contact with 99% of them. There aren’t many. The reunion organizer had remembered me fondly (nice to know) and she found my older brother’s business email online. She contacted him for my email address. Unfortunately I couldn’t go. Maybe you should organize a reunion.
DeleteI read an article several years ago that most women have about five close female friends. I was thinking that I had my mom, my mother in law, my two sisters, and a non-family close friend. My mom and mother in law have both passed away. I have a couple of other friends I consider close from church, but they don't take the place of a mother, or even a mother-in-law. My non-family friend lives in a different town now. We met when we were car-pooling kids in middle school. Which has been a lot of years ago. We are polar opposites. She's an extrovert and always has a lot of drama going on. I am low drama, but we kind of complement each other. She is one of those people whom, even if it has been awhile since we were together, it seems like no time has passed.
ReplyDeleteMy BFF is my husband. I am friends with my brothers, but it is different than with sisters.
There are several people who are "friends of friends". Some of them I have gotten close to, but I probably wouldn't have met them if it hadn't been for the mutual friend.
Katherine, I hope that you really do get to retire soon. Assuming that you really do want to!
ReplyDeleteJack -That means we Catholics must take personal responsibility for the nature of our own social networks, carefully evaluating those that are in our present network and carefully recruiting new people.
Perhaps some people aren’t interested in analyzing and evaluating their social networks. They are content to simply let matters develop naturally. So that would also mean that many people aren’t interested in “recruiting” new people unless the goal isn’t really friendship, for a more utilitarian purpose. like finding people who want to sing madrigals together.
While we should respect anyone who spends more than 17 minutes a day in prayer of some sort as an intimate of God, only those who spend more than 17minutes a day in liturgical prayer are intimates of the Church.
Well, everyone is different. But I have even less confidence that quantifying prayer time has anything at all to do with having a close relationship with God than I do in its role in creating long-term, close friendship. And if one has a close relationship with God, it really isn't necessary to be "intimate" with the church. It's nice for those who like liturgy, but not necessary for anyone.
Jack, your family experience was indeed very different from mine, as you've observed. Mine is very different from Katherine's also. My mother was caring but remote. As I said, my father was not really part of my life. Three of my grandparents died before I was born. My maternal grandmother died when I was in high school, but we were never close. Unlike Katherine, I don't consider my two sisters to be "close" friends. I consider one of them to be a friend. But not a friend I depend on when the going gets rocky. I have a couple of "close" friends here in Maryland that I turn to them when I need support. My eldest sister is almost more of an acquaintance, as is my elder brother. He lives in Arizona and I haven’t seen him in years. My eldest sister lives 20 minutes away, but the only time I’ve seen her was at the family events surrounding the funeral of the middle sister’s daughter who was murdered in 2017. My elsest sister and I have grown even farther apart because she is a trump supporter, as is my brother in AZ. We communicate occasionally by email, but I have no desire to see either one of them in person. The brother closest in age to me died when I was 45, and he was 47. I did not ever meet many cousins. Nor aunts and uncles, although they existed. Neither of my parents' families were close, to put it mildly.. So perhaps my freshman year college friends were my substitute family in a way. More than one of us came from non-Norman Rockwell families, so that might have been another reason we bonded so tightly.
Although I don’t agree with either the approach nor the conclusions of Mr. Dunbar, based on what you have shared, perhaps I would find something in it useful if I read the whole book Which I doubt that I will do. I read Haidt’s book after a friend (close to my husband at the time) recommended it and I found so much wrong with it, starting with his methodology, that I was very disappointed in it. And yet it got rave reviews.
Katherine, those of us in the college group who have stayed close throughout the years are of very different personalities and very different interests. Those things were far less important than the love and trust that grew during our freshman year and which have held us together for more than 50 years..
You are lucky that you stayed in touch with those close college friends. I had a couple of college friends that I was close to at the time, but we went our separate ways. One of them I lost track of, the other I sort of keep up with on Facebook. But she shares some pretty bad political stuff and sometimes I "snooze" her..
DeleteNow that Dad is gone it's going to take more effort to stay in touch with my siblings. I'm not worried about the sisters, even though they are much younger than me, we will stay close. The brothers are another story. Before we would meet up when we visited Dad. Now we'll have to be more intentional.
Thinking about myself as an individual: for whatever reason, I've stayed closer to my high school friends than my college friends. The one exception is my college dorm roommate, who also was a friend from high school.
DeleteBut - I also met my wife in college, so I guess that counts! And we are quite close to friends of hers from college (including, now, their spouses, some of whom also were friends of hers from college). She is smarter than I, and a much better student than I. She was in an honors program at Loyola, and her friends tend to come from that program.
Katherine, I have another group of very close friends, dating back 41 years now. This circle of 4 started when our children were 2 years old, as a playgroup. The original plan was to rotate between houses with one mom in charge so that the others could go to the grocery store or the dentist or whatever. But we all ended up staying, drinking coffee, and talking, talking, talking. We are all very different personalities, different interests, hobbies etc. But we were all moms, three of us were new moms, with our 2 year olds being our first. We could do this because none of us were working then. The children started nursery school (different schools) at 3, so we continued in the afternoons, switching from morning coffee to lunch. The next year, two of us were back at work, part-time. We both had good control over our hours (that's when I started my freelance consulting) so our lunches continued, now including younger sibs who were the 2 year olds. Even after the kids were in school fulltime we continued. I am as close to these women as to my college friends, but the playgroup moms were here, so obviously a lot more face to face time. Two moved away. I stayed and the other who is still here became a full-time babysitter to her grandchildren. I seldom see her anymore because she is either babysitting. Yet this group of friends has also stayed together, through phone calls, texts etc.
DeleteThere are a lot of memes out there about friends being the family you choose. In my case, the friends I have been blessed with in my life are actually more family to me than the members of my birth family. My friends have always been there for me, unlike my birth family - they tend to the "fair weather" friend category.
I would like to make a few new social friends. I don't expect to make new friends who will be close in the way my lifelong friends are. I don't think older people have to remain friendless as their lifelong friends either move away or die. But my hearing loss presents an obstacle to even making casual, social friends. Generally we made casual friendships with work colleagues, parents at the schools, or church, etc. But we seldom socialized with these casual friends outside of the settings where we met them - school events, sports events, etc. I still have one close friend from our sons' school. But the others moved on, as did we. However, now I can't participate in any group setting = coffee hour at church, or a book club, or other settings that might introduce me to one or two people who might like to go to a museum and lunch with me. I can't even understand what people in a small book club say if they aren't directly next to or across from me. Coffee hours at church are simply a cacophony of noise. My iphone streams to my hearing aids, so I still have conversations with my friends who no longer live here. l can handle conversations in a quiet room with 1-4 people.
Today the 48 year old daughter of my friend who once lived next door is coming to have lunch with me since she is in town for her 30th high school reunion. Her mom, my friend (but not one of the "close", small circle) died 2 years ago at 89. Now her daughters are my friends. They were here all the time when they were growing up, the sisters who didn't have brothers, and our sons who didn't have sisters. So they are part of my extended "friend" family. We are also very close to a French woman who moved to our area 22 years ago for work. She had been our son’s French prof in college while she was getting her MA – it paid her stipend. She just turned 49 and she is family. She and her partner were with us for Easter. He is 61, and German. Her mom is the exact same age as I am, but she is much closer to me and my husband than she is to her mother. She has no siblings, and has seen her father only once since she was 3 years old. She introduces us to people as her American “parents.” Chosen families can be just as good, or even better, than birth families sometimes.
I spend a lot of time in prayer, but God is not my "friend." I have very strong feelings against anthropomorphizing God or the Spirit.
ReplyDeleteRelatives as friends is an odd concept, though I know siblings who are close.
I don't think of Raber as my "friend." Marital relationships take forbearance and work. Lots more tongue-biting than with people you aren't going to live with forever and would have to pay a lawyer to break up with.
I guess The Boy sees me as a friend. But it's not a two-way street with kids.
I don;t think of God as a "friend" either.
DeleteMarital relationships take forbearance and work. Lots more tongue-biting than with people you aren't going to live with forever and would have to pay a lawyer to break up with.
Very true! Marital partners really are in a category of their own. A lot more tongue biting than with any other friend. But, I still consider my husband to be my "best friend", but with different understanding than others have in mind when referring to their "best friend". My sons are also in a category separate from the people I refer to as friends.
I think we share different things with different types of friends. I am most at ease sharing spiritual things with my husband.
DeleteIn a way God anthropomorphized Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. He isn't my friend in the same sense that I visit with my women friends. But definitely my friend in the sense of being my source and destination, and the one who has my back.
Interesting article and discussion. In my youth, I only had one or two friends at any one time. One made contact with me a couple years ago. He's had a good life and marriage but no kids for biological reasons. Was an excellent jazz pianist and played with the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra for a while. Then became a HS teacher. Glad his life was good.
ReplyDeleteI didn't join a circle of friends until I started working full time. Being single, I have a tendency to befriend them and sometimes their families. Those friendships span 40-50 years marked by mutual aid. Over the last 20 years I've made warm friendships in the dance circle. Unfortunately, due to either their age or mine, those linkages won't last 50 years on the planet.
My connections with my relatives persist despite the Trumpism. I feel sorry for them because they can't see a wider picture.
And, of course, last but not least, I enjoy my online friendships with you folks. I find this circle rewarding and special.
We're glad you are here, Stanley!
DeleteI also maintain connections with many people, including a few relatives, in spite of the Trumpism. The ones I stay connected to have other redeeming qualities that sort of cancel out the politics.
How can anything cancel out supporting a politician who ran on a platform of bigotry and hate? And got worse and worse, expressing support for white nationalists? Four of my grandchildren are minorities. There are trump/MAGA politicians who now suggest that maybe the legal status of interracial marriages should be left up to the states, not subject to national laws. If my eldest son and his wife had wanted to marry as recently as the 1960s in Virginia it would have been a crime. It was only legalized nationally by the Supreme Court a couple of years before I moved to DC. The two years before my marriage I lived in Virginia., Some of the evangelicals say that they not only won’t provide services for gay marriage, they won’t provide services for biracial couples either. It’s against God’s plan according to them. trump continuously riled up fear and hate for the asylum seekers at the border, and drummed up fear of Muslims and refugees from the Middle east refugees from the Middle East., I feel that my trump supporting siblings are betraying my family by supporting trump and all his boot licking GOP comrades.
DeleteI can't stand Trump, I think he is one of the worst things to have happened to our country in my lifetime. But a lot of people didn't vote for him because they support white nationalism and bigotry. They voted for him because they can't bring themselves to vote for anyone who isn't a Republican. The think he is a "conservative ", whatever that means anymore. Even though he isn't, in any meaningful sense of the word. It is actually possible to go quite a long time without discussing politics.
DeleteAn african-american dance partner of mine has a brother in Manhattan who is a Trumper. Figure that one out. Some possible explanations: Democrats supporting crime bills, incarceration, export of jobs. There's one "interracial" marriage in my family. The Trumpers don't care and think their kid is cute which he is. Is this all contradictory to the point of absurdity? Yes. Quite. Perhaps the problem lies in that we can only vote Democrat or Republican when the solitions lie outside those brackets.
DeleteHe’s not a conservative on traditional conservative policies such as free trade etc.
DeleteBut the racist and bigoted messages trump sends aren’t deal breakers for them. They tacitly condone it by voting for him.
"He’s not a conservative on traditional conservative policies such as free trade etc."
DeleteRight, this is very much in line with Trumpian populist "conservatism".
I think traditional conservative views like free trade and limited government don't get a lot of air time on Fox News and right wing talk radio. Those Reaganite positions are "heady" positions which don't stir a lot of hatred and fury. The populist movement is all about keeping the base whipped up against perceived progressive excesses, including on items which progressives tend to think of as matters of racial, LGBTQ and gender justice and equity. For these Trump supporters, it's all culture war, all the time.
Our state's Republican primary is this coming Tuesday. Interesting race for gubernatorial candidate this time. There is Herbster, who is a Trumper and Trump has actually campaigned for him. And who has allegations of sexual impropriety against him (surprise, surprise). And there is Pillen, who is supported by our present governor, Pistol Pete Ricketts. (Pillen is from our
Deletetown, sigh, and used to be a nice guy. More about that another time. The dark horse, who entered the race late and is underfunded, is Lindstrom, who is more or less a Reagan Republican and eschews the culture wars, saying that they actually have little to do with running state government. Some polls show Lindstrom ahead. He's getting my vote. Be interesting to see what happens.
There is actually a fourth candidate in the race, Theresa Thibodeau. She has some things in her favor, but is way behind and probably doesn't stand a chance.
DeleteI wrote, "I think traditional conservative views like free trade and limited government don't get a lot of air time on Fox News and right wing talk radio. Those Reaganite positions are "heady" positions which don't stir a lot of hatred and fury."
DeleteWhile I don't think it's wrong to describe those traditional conservative views as appealing to the head, I guess I should add that politically, the so-called Reagan Revolution was more about the heart. He exerted an emotional pull on his voters, appealing to their patriotic instincts. To be sure, the world was a different place then; Reagan was generating a reaction to what were perceived to be the cultural excesses of the 1960s and 70s. And there was still a lot of living memory of the patriotism of the WWII era.
I suppose Trump's inept slogan, "Make America Great Again" is sort of an attempt to recapture that spirit. Maybe it works for some people.
Katherine, our gubernatorial primary is in June. Our incumbent, Democratic governor JB Pritzker, is running for re-election and surely is the favorite in this largely-blue state, regardless of his Republican opponent. There are five Republicans duking it out in the GOP primary. None of them are prominent or have prior name recognition in the state. The mayor of Aurora, IL, Richard Irvin, who is Black, is well-funded, having the backing of Ken Griffin, who is said to be the wealthiest man in the state. (Governor Pritzker is a billionaire in his own right). Irvin is spending a lot of Griffin's money to buy a lot of local television ad time, positioning himself as a tough-on-crime former prosecutor. He also takes pains to declare, "All lives matter". His statement which has generated the most controversy so far seems to be, "There’s nothing the left fears more than Republicans who look like me and think like us". It's not entirely clear what that means; perhaps the most straightforward way to understand it is, 'I'm among the people of color who is not monolithically a Democrat; I think for myself.' He doesn't seem to be an obvious/overt Trumpie, so it's difficult to say whether he'll get traction with Republicans around here.
DeleteApparently, Governor Pritzker sees him as a potential threat, as he's already running commercials slamming him, even though the GOP primary is still two months away, and it's far from clear that Irvin will be the nominee. I looked around a little bit but haven't been able to find any polling on the GOP primary.
BTW, I seriously hate this new format. I frequently type on my Kindle Fire, and it makes it a nightmare to correct mispellings etc. before I hit publish. Because you can only see a few lines at a time, and not the ones that are towards the end that you are actually working on.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if there is a place to communicate with Blogspot that they've got some issues to fix.
Kindle overcorrects everything. I have found functionality on my phone is easier with the "new and improved" Blogspot.
DeleteAmbitious politicians who happen to be black are a hot commodity in the Republican Party. They may be traitors to their demographic but being in the donkey party doesn't do much more for African-Americans except for window dressing such as SCOTUS judges. This is all fine and good but doesn"t address the disproportionate disadvantages of the general black population. The GOP can apparently do window dressing just as well.
ReplyDeleteIn my personal view, the tragedy of George Floyd's murder, and its ensuing activism, highlighted a genuine set of issues, all related to unequal treatment by police and police departments. Those issues may be amenable to some governmental remedies. But somehow the policy debate got sidetracked into the Defund the Police movement, which has proved to be politically potent but kind of a policy dead end. And FWIW, the GOP candidate in Illinois, Irvin, is being slammed pretty heavily by his fellow Republican opponents for having said in the past that he supports Black Lives Matter. These culture warriors are trying to make BLM a culture-war issue, at least within the GOP.
ReplyDeleteThe violence and destruction that grew out of the George Floyd protests created another set of issues, related to how the police handle civil unrest. Irvin is trying to capitalize politically by projecting himself as tough on crime. Illinois is now experimenting with a bond system in which bail is waived; the idea (which strikes me as sensible) is that bail allows the rich guy to be out on the street while the poor guy languishes in jail. That may be a humane policy, but politically it creates an opening for tough-on-crime candidates.