Why there are no real friends in America

I have been surprised to find that my most important personal successes and accomplishments were ignored and disregarded the most by the people closest to me.  Only strangers allowed themselves to truly voice feelings of congratulations and approval.  This seems counter intuitive because the people closest to you should feel most empathy for you, but that appears not to be the case for me.

Here is what I think is happening:

We have been trained by the grade school system to not share in another's victory or success.  We have been trained that the only score that matters to us is our own score and everybody else in the world is a competitor that we rank ourselves against.  If you best friend gets an A on a test and you get a B then he makes you look bad and you are not happy for his success, even though you own score is perfectly acceptable.

In tribal societies and agrarian cultures, people are not trained to this experience of numerical evaluation  and competitive ranking.  Everyone of the same tribe or clan succeeds and fails together. I you have a good harvest, you all have a good harvest.  If you kill a bison, you all eat bison meat.  If you or a member of your group does something outstanding, it makes the entire group feel good and they all share in the success.

This is the essential difference between modern society and the culture that human nature was formed in.  In modern society, you are competitively ranked against every other person in school, work, and play.  You have no real empathetic and trusting friendships.  In traditional tribal or agrarian society, you were part of a group and everyone identified with the success of the entire group.  You had real friends.  You shared real experiences and real empathetic understanding.  You were not isolated from each other into optimally productive economic units and then just watched TV.

copyright (c) 2018

William Schaeffer