Originally Posted by
MJZiggy
Warning: Philosophical thinking--I've been trying to wrap my brain around a concept for a future blog post at work. In America, our society rewards people by making them more isolated, further set apart from the social fabric. For example, when we get promoted at work, we move from the cubicle sea where we can hear each other and throw things over the cube walls (depending on the attitudes in your workplace) to an isolated office with a door to close people out. The more we move up, the more real estate we occupy by ourselves until we're in the huge corner office and everyone's afraid to even speak to us. (As I've worked the last several years with top management, I have seen this phenomenon first hand). We move up in the world and into a huge house on an acre lot with neighbors who we have never talked to.
This results in loneliness which society does not allow us to admit to. If you're lonely, it means you have no friends, ergo you are a loser. So we "stand tall" and go to therapy and persist in the notion that our privacy is so paramount that others should not be allowed to intrude. Yet humans are social animals and actually live longer, happier lives when we have a social network that we can spend time with and we can count on in times of crisis.
I work in a company that, compared to many others, is very social. We have learning lunches and pot luck socials on the first Friday of every month. There will be a bowling outing coming up, a St. Patrick's Day party, take your kids to work day, bike to work day, etc. We used to have a Friday happy hour until concerns about driving under the influence caused those to be canceled. I realize that employers bear no responsibility for the social lives of their employees, but I wonder if encouraging social behavior among employees is a way to increase loyalty and engagement, with the side benefit of increasing their interactions. Otherwise, how do we get back to the social systems that our grandparents had? Where if someone went "missing" for a couple of weeks, someone was there to check on them?
Thoughts?