Forces that fuel friendship
American society at least is highly fractured these days, along all kinds of lines, and this seems to have resulted in high levels of distrust across those lines - ideological, economic, racial, gender, and probably a host of others.<p>This tends to push people into clusters where they all share the same ideological viewpoints, which is a depressing situation.  My idea of a great party has always been one where a group of people from widely different backgrounds are put together in a big room and 'forced' to interact with each other, but these days I'm afraid that would lead to a bloodbath of some sort.<p>To quote from Frank Herbert, on the subject of limiting your relationships to those who share all your identitarian tick-marks, <i>"I can think of nothing more poisonous than to rot in the stink of your own reflections."</i><p>As far as "close deep meaningful relationships that you can rely on through thick and thin, a friend who will always come to your aid in times of trouble, and to whom you will always offer support" ...  that sounds more like a military alliance between independent city-states in ancient Greece than your average human friendship.  Don't expect too much, in other words.<p>Here's a related (novel?) concept: don't try to leverage friendships for personal economic gain, for access to a job, for growing your multi-level marketing business, etc.  That's called 'networking', not 'friendship'. I suppose it has its place, humans being human, but don't confuse the two.