The Science of Making Friends
WRT the decline with age, I've always felt like a lot of it is 'ego based', for lack of better terms.<p>I've found that as time goes on, people are far more concerned with doing things by the book, projecting an image, etc. rather than just 'being', enjoying life in the moment, doing things just because.<p>I've certainly been guilty of this to some extent because it seems impossible to avoid.<p>Personal anecdote: At age 16 it was fun to hang around at a bus stop or street corner or whatever and just chat bollocks. Move forward a bit and in college we'd hang out in someone's dorm room or flat or equivalent.<p>Now everyone is off at work, spaced out all over the place. You might be able to get one or two people to do something, but it'll probably mean some sort of sanitized commercial experience (go and get pizza at a restaurant, pay to commute there, pay to commute back, etc).<p>And it's all because we've sort of decided that working all the time is more important than being social.<p>I think that's sad. I often wonder if it's how we end up with such warped political environments. No-one just relaxes, any more, it's all 40 hour weeks and 'scheduling appointments' months into the future.<p>You grow up, and what were 20 kids, become a banker, a lawyer, a janitor, a policeman, a nurse, a dropout, a homeless guy, and so on. And it just doesn't work, because of all these rules we've made up, status games, location, whatever. Why can't we just go to the park again?<p>And no, this isn't just about childhood friends moving away. It's the same story up and down the scale, in my experience. Everyone is busy, everyone is pushing.<p>The community takes a back seat to economic needs, it seems. Something like that. I'm not sure. I know we still got stuff done back then, I have a bit of paper with a hologram on it that proves it. But it wasn't all consuming, somehow.