Its why we moved to cities as soon as we mastered agriculture and specialization of labor.

When we invented suburbs, we discovered the worst of both worlds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxuEr_p8Z4o

It’s a collection of cliques which are impossible to break into, the school run clique, the church clique, etc. The town lives in the dark ages, e.g at a social event married couples all sit together and single people are actually told it’s a married only table and are ostracised. Thankfully this doesn’t extend to the younger generations who could certainly teach the adults a thing or two.

I’ve heard it many times over the decades, and I still don’t quite know what it means, but it has given me comfort.

We seek community. I had it when I worked, from my colleagues. Today, I am not close to anyone except my wife. My few remaining relatives live hundreds of miles away. The last time I recall knowing a great number of people who also knew one another was when I was a student. I miss that time, and I know why. I had a tribe.

This is not a healthy social environment for highly evolved primates. But we have the Zone…

We evolved over thousands of years in small bands, of at most a few dozen members, mostly family. We’ve been living in cities for only a small fraction of our species’ time on this planet. And we have relied on electronic communication for only a few generations. Its only a matter of time before the inevitable neuroses start popping up.

Comparison is the thief of joy and all that but you can see so much more in the way of people socialising, even during a pandemic, when you have the internet and not just the neighbours.

I’ve seen similar cabins to those you describe on many Scottish islands that were victims of the clearances, or perhaps a success depending on your point of view. Mingulay is a good example.

I think about the people that lived there, a hundred years ago, out in the desert or up on the high passes and how they spent their days. Or their nights, far from family, deciding how much candlelight could be afforded for comfort while penning a letter to loved ones that would not be read for months, if ever.

We are lucky to have this and other internet interfaces to communicate and be less alone. Imagine having the pandemic and no internet? Our grandparents did that.