In my experiences of living in suburbs for 30 years, I’ve seen the default is to ignore neighbors.
I don’t really get this. Our communities have so much in common and so much overlap, we shop at the same stores, go to the same parks, get stuck in the same traffic, our kids are at the same schools,our neighbors care for us medically, teach our kids, maintain our dwellings, work on our cars, and contribute to our local municipalities through property tax. We vacation at the same places.
We have so much in common but we put our heads down and duck into our homes ignoring our neighbors. To be honest it makes me really sick to think about. Like the internet has allowed us to live these parallel lives, highly dependent on our neighbors but completely isolated from them. We smile and nod then go to the ballots and kick our spite up to the federal level (in the US).
To me, we have the majority of our lives in common.
Social media and the political engines preys on our differences making them the focus of our interactions ignoring the fact that 90% of our day-to-day lives are overlapping and our concerns are similar: health, wealth, prosperity, safety, education and recreation.
It’s not much, but as I get older I’m making a point to slow down and talk to my neighbors, have real conversations with them, many of them fly political flags that are contrary to my political beliefs but I find out we have so much In common because we have such similar day-to-day lives and experiences.
> we shop at the same stores, go to the same parks, get stuck in the same traffic, our kids are at the same schools,our neighbors care for us medically, teach our kids, maintain our dwellings, work on our cars, and contribute to our local municipalities through property tax. We vacation at the same places
I think this is only true if it's true. If you have a neighbor who doesn't have kids, doesn't shop at the same places you do, doesn't vacation at the same places you do, and doesn't work on their car, how do you think they feel about you characterizing the neighborhood that way?
After growing up in a small town, I knew I didn't want to spend the rest of my life explaining that no, I don't have kids (and hearing them say, "oh, I'm so sorry,") no, I'm not fascinated by how my car works, no, I don't want my lawn to be a perfect uniform shade of unnatural green. I feel much more comfortable in the city, but I'm aware that it's only because I fit my liberal city neighbors' assumptions much better than I fit the assumptions in the small town I came from.
To me, being on good terms with my neighbors is work. It's sometimes pleasant and almost always worth the effort, but it's work, and I'm always aware that I'm participating in the same game that felt so alienating and excluding when I was a kid in my hometown. The only differences are that the gap is a lot narrower and I've become more pragmatic about it. I skip past questions that uncover differences. I help guide the conversation towards commonalities. I try not to think about how it feels for people who have to paper over bigger differences than I do.
This experience fits me as well. I'm older, no kids, don't spend a lot of time outside. The neighbor on one side is nice and friendly and he gets to have all the apples and plums off of my trees as he wishes. The neighbor two houses down gets red in the face angry at me if I wave at him as I drive by. Apparently, just keeping my lawn mowed regularly but not perfect is enough for him to hate my guts with a surprising amount of passion. The neighbor who shares a line of property with me (but lives on the street behind me) I've talked to twice the summer I moved in in '99. Both times he berated me about my lawn while I tried to just say "hey, I'm your new neighbor, nice to meet you!" He put up a fence high enough so he couldn't see my lawn before I managed to tame it back to the "not perfect, but not crazy" state it's normally in now.
It's amazing to me that not keeping my lawn looking like it's part of a fancy golf course is my biggest hurdle in making friends with my neighbors.
You would be surprised how little in common you can have with your neighbors. You likely don’t shop at the same places, don’t frequent the same restaurants, bars, parks, etc.
It’s not even politics related, people just don’t like the same activities. Some people cook, some people eat out, some people buy in bulk, some people hit farmers markets.
Easy transportation, internet shopping, etc make it trivial to have zero overlap with your neighbor’s day to day, regardless of city or suburb.
> In my experiences of living in suburbs for 30 years, I’ve seen the default is to ignore neighbors.
This rings really true for me.
My last house was in a small gated set of 16 townhouses.
I knew everybody's cat or dog's name, but only on of the human's names.
Most people I knew by descriptive tags. There was saxophone lady, federal drug cop, potsmoking couple who lived on the other side of federal drug cop and who's pot smoke I could smell if I opened my back doors, there was ski boat guy, Harley riding girl, there was shouty dad and annoying child.
I still live nearby, and I passed an older couple from there in the street a while back and greeted their dog by name, and they said "No, this isn't Oscar, he died a few years back, this is (new dog name that I've already forgotten)."
Part of it is politics. Totally correct about everything in common, and yet in the multicultural fabric we call society, politics could be vastly different:
Neighbour 1 cares about Trump, neighbour 2 about Ukraine, neighbour 3 is focused on Palestine, neighbour 5 about public transit, while I might not care about any of those. All of them are going to seek like-minded people who are unlikely to be their next door neighbours. It wasn't like this in the past, where economic mobility was relatively limited.
Multiculturalism coupled with economic mobility means often neighbours and you don't really have much in common. As an example my next door neighbour: He's a major, I'm in the sciences. We travel in different circles. I have a dog, he doesn't like pets. We both have kids but they are of different ages, don't go to the same schools and basically don't know each other. We met a few times then realized that we have very little in common and stopped interacting. There's nothing binding us beyond a shared geography.
That's okay. You may still benefit from knowing each other when you run out of milk and shops are closed, or whatever favor neighbors can provide via the valuable indirect social graph connections (need a reference for a job or to enter a good uni, ask a neighbor who is a Harvard alum; or just let a kid interview a Republican neighbor for a school essay, or...), so it's good you sounded each other out.
Not everybody has to be best buddies with their direct neighbors, but in my experience in a one-mile radius from you, whereever most of us are, there are some interesting folks nearby that are worth knowing, and they would say the same about you.
Because of TV, social media, computer games and gadgets, we forgot how to socialize well, but if we (enough of us) care enough, we can re-learn it.
only the most onerous of neighbors are going to launch into tirades about politics before getting to know them anyway. these people will already have their giant TRUMP flag on the lawn.
I don't discount anything you have said. But my experience is different.
One of my neighbors I lived next to for over thirty years, was so nosy, passive aggressive, and judgmental, I avoided them like the plague. They finally moved and the new people called the city on us because my dog barked for more then ten minutes during the daytime, on the second day after they moved in! (She was only outside for an hour.) On the other side of us is a car on jacks and 'stuff' in the front and back yards.
I've learned to keep my head down and not worry about them.
My neighbors are fucking assholes. We don't shop at the same stores, or see each other at the park, we don't have kids, or work on cars. One neighbor doesn't like me because they don't like dogs and I have a dog. The other is just a mean, bitter, old lady. Not everyone is nice and friendly dude.
I suppose the trick is that these people won't come out and drink coffee with you! The people who do come out will be more fun and social, and these two you mention would just stay home like usual.
I don’t really get this. Our communities have so much in common and so much overlap, we shop at the same stores, go to the same parks, get stuck in the same traffic, our kids are at the same schools,our neighbors care for us medically, teach our kids, maintain our dwellings, work on our cars, and contribute to our local municipalities through property tax. We vacation at the same places.
We have so much in common but we put our heads down and duck into our homes ignoring our neighbors. To be honest it makes me really sick to think about. Like the internet has allowed us to live these parallel lives, highly dependent on our neighbors but completely isolated from them. We smile and nod then go to the ballots and kick our spite up to the federal level (in the US).
To me, we have the majority of our lives in common.
Social media and the political engines preys on our differences making them the focus of our interactions ignoring the fact that 90% of our day-to-day lives are overlapping and our concerns are similar: health, wealth, prosperity, safety, education and recreation.
It’s not much, but as I get older I’m making a point to slow down and talk to my neighbors, have real conversations with them, many of them fly political flags that are contrary to my political beliefs but I find out we have so much In common because we have such similar day-to-day lives and experiences.