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mirgro on 25 March 2010
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twesterm said:
mirgro said:

My goal when I left home wasn't "I'll mingle with people," it was just "it's early/late and I want to get to work/home." While I exchanged random words with people on the days I was in a good mood, those were very rare. The two cases I mentioned earlier were just pure coincidence. A late metro once followed by a coicidential run in/conversation, and a stop unroutine stop at a coffee stand outside the metro. In either case I wass not even remotely trying to be actively looking for people for me to know down the road.

I ever said that what I did will work for anyone else. All I said wass that there is a miniscule random chance that you will get to know any person you meet. In Europe you meet people by the thousands by simply doing your routine, not so in the US. By increasing the number of occurrances the chance of an outcome is increased. If you play to lottery and you play it thousands of times, you have a much greater probability of having a winning ticket in those thousads than if you have bought only several hundred.

Yeah, but again, that's because you're just a social person, not because of where you live.  I'm sure if you drove home every day you would find some way to go out and talk to people.

I would not say I am a type A personality, if that's what you mean. At the same time I rarely go out with the goal of meeting people in mind. I just go to work, to eat, or to entertain myself. I have had really good conversations with totally random persons and if I meet them recurrently we would get to know each other better. If I keep running into the same person on the way to work, I will probably talk to them. There is no cahance of that happening in my car. I understand there's Starbbucks, and McDonalds, and other eateries in the US as well, but they also have a drive-thru. In fact, very few working people seem to take the time to sit down and eat there at all.

I have noted how huge churches are in the US too, and even if a person doesn't believe or not so much they still go. I was wondering about that until I noticed just how social people are at churches. There are people, and this goes for Europe too since I actually know a woman like that in Barcelona, that just go to church so they can see and meet people, so they can socialize.

I think this whole thing comes from when people are just kids. In the afternoons, I will maybe pass dozesn and dozens of children playing on the streets in residential areas in Europe. Meanwhile in the US neighborhoods will have a small group of kids playing or riding a bike. The rest are dependent on their parents to take them to far away parks. Same thing with teenagers. They have serious troube getting around in the US, they can't drive and the transportation system is a pain in the ass, meanwhile in Europe they can go wherver they want and aren't restricted by their parents' ability to ferry them around in their cars.

It's no wonder why so many people think so fondly of their college days, it seems like those are the best days most people in the US see, between the imitationss they have as children/teenagers and the repetative and unsatisfying driving to/from work alone in a car, it would make sense that the time of their lives was where they are in an environment that encourages unrestrained, passive, socialization.