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Let me tell you, France is a mess, I mean a total mess. I was born and raised there, I spent the first 28 years of my life there and I'm looking for a time when I won't have to travel to go there to see family and the few friends left.
Out of curiosity I did a google drive ( you know you drag the little yellow guy on a map) in Japan. Wow! The country side in Japan is amazing! I had no idea how beautiful and peaceful that was and they have real mountains. Yes, I can see why anybody would consider living there. I did explore Sweden, which know a little bit, and it seems to be one of the most boring place on earth. Stockholm is interesting, but the country side is boring and these people are not socia at all! So what's left, Vermont?
I lived in Burlington, VT 20 years ago - I never really made many friends, but that was my fault. I was in my 20s and mostly looking to get drunk and meet girls. I was able to do both, but that certainly never amounted to any long term friendships.
You mentioned Japan - I lived there in 2004. Great country, but it's a hard country to break in to the culture. You may make many Japanese acquaintances (who are happy to hang out with a gaijin), but it will often feel hollow in the end.
I'm currently living in Malaysia, and whereas the language barrier isn't a problem, sometimes cultural differences can be challenging. For years I tried to only hang out with locals, but at times I felt like we often had challenges in our perspectives that made conversation more difficult than it would otherwise be with one of my fellow countrymen. It was just a different way of communicating.
But, what's nice about living in a place like Malaysia or Japan as a foreigner is there is a ready made expat/foreigner community. Most people are pretty open and it's fun to share your different experiences. The downside is that the expats are usually only there temporarily so you make friends, but then lose them just as quickly when they move to other countries.
I don't consider myself to be an expat since I've planted roots here (Malaysian wife and daughter and own condo), so that makes me an immigrant. With that, there are many long term immigrants with whom you can develop a community.
Interesting comments. When I lived in a small(er) Colorado mountain town (pop 7,000 when I moved there, triple that when I left 20 years later), I probably had a hundred friends. A dozen of whom I would consider close friends. Yet on retrospect, all were “activity” friends – skiing, biking, hiking, etc. A decade later, essentially none have stayed in touch (although I tried), except for maybe a once-a-year hello on FB. I’d love to have even a tiny sliver of that friendship community again, but I doubt it will ever happen. Even without that, and even with the VT tax/cost situation (we aren't wealthy), it seems the best option for this last stage of my life. Maybe we'll all meet somewhere down the road.
Peace and quiet is 'worth the price of admission' according to my husband. I tend to agree with him in many respects.
[quote=Phorlan;65036637]I'm aware of the tax situation in VT.
What do you consider well off?[/QUOTE/]
Well, I guess that's relative to the life-style you'd want to live, the size of home you'd purchase or build (if you can build a house here, I'd call that well off), and your disposable income after satisfying financial obligations. Living only on social security is probably not well off here.
I guess my concept of 'well off' isn't fully fleshed out. To put things in perspective, I suppose most people living in the US are 'well off' compared to many in other parts of the world.
Riley,
What you depict in your answer is what's happening in the US. This is exactly what I want to avoid. I don't feel like going back to France, I like the US, but I do have to acknowledge that most Americans have no friends, are lonely and if you do a search online you'll find out that this is becoming a huge problem. Even 60% of college students say they have no close friends!
My father in law, in his 80s, told me that was totally different in the 60 and 70s, so we're dealing with something that developed lately. I was hoping, I'm hoping VT would be different. Sure I could just stay with my friend and her close friends.
I am semi retired. Before I retired we moved to a walkable urban neighborhood. The lots are only 50 feet wide. We know all our neighbors and people interact quite a bit (in nice weather), keep an eye on each other's houses when someone is away, our neighbors even fed our koi fish when we were away. Before retirement we lived in a suburban neighborhood with 2 acre lot zoning. People would do the wave as they drove by but it was very rare to see anyone actually outside their property boundaries not in their car. We were one of the few people who would take the dog on a walk in the neighborhood yet it was a rare case when someone was actually close enough to the street to say hello. Likewise despite being a "safe" environment, kids rarely rode their bikes, played in the neighborhood, or were visibly seen outside their yards.
We also spend quite a bit of time in Florida in a high-rise vacation home. High-rise living provides many opportunities to meet people and develop new friendships. However, this type of living is not ideal for everyone as with it comes with a structure of rules, restrictions, and proximity-related issues such as noise that may not be acceptable to one's personal preferences and needs. Unfortunately, other than Burlington, I wouldn't expect that Vermont has many large cooperative/condominium associations of this type.
Vermont, by it's nature, is predominantly rural. That makes it very hard to establish relationships. The best bet is to locate in one of the denser neighborhoods in a small town with a walkable area that has diners, coffee shops and other establishments that are frequented by its residents.
My father in law, in his 80s, told me that was totally different in the 60 and 70s, so we're dealing with something that developed lately. I was hoping, I'm hoping VT would be different. Sure I could just stay with my friend and her close friends.
A sociological book called "Bowling Alone" by author Putnam, described this. Americans no longer belong to "bowling leagues", and seldom fraternal lodges such as Masons, Moose, Elk, Odd Fellows, Lions Club, Rotary international, Kiwanis, Knights of Columbus, PTA (Parent Teacher Association). Membership in boy scouts, and girl scouts, has dropped.
Americans spend their evenings taking job-related classes, watching TV sports, or addicted to electronic screens. Children no longer play informally outside, nor walk to school.
One way to make friends is to walk your dog in the park, and make conversation with other pet owners. You can also volunteer at many activities such as church food pantries, Red Cross, animal shelters, charitable thrift stores, hospitals, community choir, making scenery for the little-theater, library bookstores, attend community meetings, Sierra club, etc.
A sociological book called "Bowling Alone" by author Putnam, described this. Americans no longer belong to "bowling leagues", and seldom fraternal lodges such as Masons, Moose, Elk, Odd Fellows, Lions Club, Rotary international, Kiwanis, Knights of Columbus, PTA (Parent Teacher Association). Membership in boy scouts, and girl scouts, has dropped.
Americans spend their evenings taking job-related classes, watching TV sports, or addicted to electronic screens. Children no longer play informally outside, nor walk to school.
One way to make friends is to walk your dog in the park, and make conversation with other pet owners. You can also volunteer at many activities such as church food pantries, Red Cross, animal shelters, charitable thrift stores, hospitals, community choir, making scenery for the little-theater, library bookstores, attend community meetings, Sierra club, etc.
Interestingly enough, I actually belong to a 'senior' bowling league!! a message was posted on our Front Porch Forum discussion site looking for bowlers, and I gave it a try. Been going there since January and I love it. We are all mostly the same age, although we have some very spry 80 yrs olds in the group, and everyone is very positive, fun to be around, and enjoying life. We talk and laugh and it is such a refreshing change for me! We don't bowl in the summer, apparently, but are going to try to schedule a couple of get togethers at some of the state parks near the water this summer.
Yes, Americans are lonely. All you have to do is actually type words such as " why do people don't have friends anymore" in a google search or a Youtube search and you will be overwhelmed.
My father who died last year at 88 told me, that was not the case in the 60. People used to drop by without calling, we had parties all the time, weekend were for stuff with other people. He was a university professor in SF.
Let me tell you how I see what's going to happen to us here; the despicable spineless party called the Democratic Party won't do anything to fix SS, and of course that other party certainly won't either. If you listened carefully today we were told, without too much fanfare, that SS won't be able to pay full benefit starting in 2033, and that we''ll have minus 23% on what we should have. So if when you retire, or just a few years after you retire, SS loses 23% and the stock market display and S&P 500 at -15 as it its the case for 2022-23, some people are going to be in trouble in ways they won't remember their parents to be. The only thing that will make life bearable when, not if, when this happens, is to belong to a real, tight community with a strong social cohesion. I can assure you from having observed many communities that Americans don't know how to function with others anymore and certainly don't know how to solve problems and take care of anything without throwing money at it. Go ahead, don't bother building a community with the type of times we're heading to.
Do you know what’s the funniest and saddest sentence in the American language? “We’re all in it together!” Each time I’ve heard that, I’ve felt a series of emotions, especially violence towards the group pushing that to us. Yeah, sure, a wall street jerk and the woman from south of the border cleaning his office at night are all in it together.
Let me add that Americans are totally disconnected from earth’s realities. Most people failed to realize the artificiality of how we’ve been living in this country from the beginning of the 20th century and certainly after 1945. The 20th century has been the century of fossil fuels that enabled us to live in ways that never were possible before. Suddenly, except for a few such as aristocrats, the common guy was able to reach a level of wealth that was never reached before in any other culture. Suddenly we don’t need communities; that’s what money does, it keeps us from relying on others. People are proud to be able to actually do everything by themselves without needing anything. Good for you!
Except that this era is about to be gone soon.
It has already started in places like Europe that have no natural resources. For example France has no oil, no natural gas, no coal, no minerals. It’s more or less true of most European countries. America is blessed and cursed by a lot of oil, even though it's not the kind that is cheap to exploit, natural gas and some minerals.
Still we'll have a time, in the lifetime of people reading this, where even if we have oil we’re going to be too scared to burn it. If you are not convinced about that it means you haven’t read, as I have, the 2500 pages of the last IPCC report and you don’t fully understand what we’re in it for in the next couple of decades.
Way before 2040 we’re going to have some event, either a drought that will severely compromise our agriculture, or a heat wave combined with horrible humidity that will kill people in the Southeast, during an outage that will take AC away from them, and the world will be seen as before and after that big event. If you don’t believe this is going to happen, it’s because you haven’t kept informed. In the Northeast you should be fine as far as heat. For food, we’ll see. In anycase, the folly of not having a real, strong, tight community will reveal itself in all its horror when people, during horrible outages or some other failures of our structures, will have to rely on each other to make life “easy” but instead won’t, for various reasons. Please, note that I’m not one of those sick idiots, preppers who think that they should actually have dug out to survive the end of the world. I’m the opposite. I want a community, I don’t want to die in a rat hole with canned beans around me.
Right now we just have a mosaic of people, who think strong individualism is the only option, while it’s just an illusion from weird, unique conditions built in the past 120 years or so and that we will eventually, sooner than later, go back to what mankind used to be. Villages. I’m very sorry and sad that even people in VT dont’ get this.
As for me totally ranting and not knowing what I’m saying, just check this map here and see if you really want to move in the southeast to take that stupid job in Atlanta: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/20...dity-emerging/
A sociological book called "Bowling Alone" by author Putnam, described this. Americans no longer belong to "bowling leagues", and seldom fraternal lodges such as Masons, Moose, Elk, Odd Fellows, Lions Club, Rotary international, Kiwanis, Knights of Columbus, PTA (Parent Teacher Association). Membership in boy scouts, and girl scouts, has dropped.
As you correctly state, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnamaddresses a very major issue, the decline of civic involvement. Too much time is spent describing the phenomena and not enough in analyzing its cures and possible remediation. The books unarguable premise is that the civil involvement that Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville describes as being largely responsible for America's greatness is seriously endangered. He analyzes a variety of possible causes, such as urbanization and suburban sprawl, the growth of telecommunications and the Internet, and generational change. He assigns the greatest weight to the latter, and inadequately explains the "why" of its impact. Most satisfactory is his explanation of the role of telecommunications and the Internet.See my review of it at What book are you reading (link to post).
Quote:
Originally Posted by slowlane3
Americans spend their evenings taking job-related classes, watching TV sports, or addicted to electronic screens. Children no longer play informally outside, nor walk to school.
We bucked that trend by encouraging our children to walk to school and get around by bikes, at least our older, now 27 year old son. Our 25 year old is on the autistic spectrum but, with some modifications we did likelwise
Quote:
Originally Posted by slowlane3
One way to make friends is to walk your dog in the park, and make conversation with other pet owners. You can also volunteer at many activities such as church food pantries, Red Cross, animal shelters, charitable thrift stores, hospitals, community choir, making scenery for the little-theater, library bookstores, attend community meetings, Sierra club, etc.
Only trouble is they are also plugged into their buds and cell phones. Some indeed even think they look important by being earnestly engaged on their phones. An example is I always ask if it's OK to pet their dog. Some are annoyed, some too wrapped up in conversations to acknowledge.
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