The Friendship Problem

It may seem counter-intuitive to say that, in the face of the profound challenges our society faces, what we most need is the deliberate cultivation of friendship. But I also find myself thinking that this conclusion is, from one angle, inescapable. At the very least, it seems to me that we need such friendships as an anchor and a refuge from the d... See more

Myself and people my age have been trained under the illusion that we can effectively eliminate any and all friction from our lives. We can work from home, Amazon prime everything we need, swipe through a limitless array of mediocre dates, text our therapist, and have a person go to the grocery store for us when we don’t feel like it, all while con

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* “The dynamic of friendship is almost always underestimated as a constant force in human life: a diminishing circle of friends is the first terrible diagnostic of a life in deep trouble: of overwork, of too much emphasis on a professional identity, of forgetting who will be there when our armored personalities run into the inevitable natural disas... See more

The dynamic of friendship is almost always underestimated as a constant force in human life. A diminishing circle of friends is the first terrible diagnostic of a life in deep trouble: of overwork, of too much emphasis on a professional identity, of forgetting who will be there when our armoured personalities run into the inevitable natural disaste

... See more

it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other, said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of N... See more