1) chatting people and finding each other interesting
2) going through difficult shit together and thus bonding, building camaraderie (see: battlefield or sports team friendships)
If your social life lags and 1) is not working, try 2)
My two best friends come from a) surviving a “deathmarch” project that was downright heroic (worst week was over 100 hours logged) together b) going to a university preparation course, both get picked on by the teacher who did not like us, and then both failing the entry exam in a spectacular way.
Questions:
a) correct?
b) how do you intentionally put yourself into difficult shit with other people so that you can bond and build camaraderie?
I am now imagining someone engineering a great disaster or battle solely so they can make friends, who will, naturally, turn on them once they discover what happened.
I’m given to believe that going through lots of fun things together can be friendship-building, if not quite the same as going through lots of difficult things together.
Things can be both fun and difficult, and that category seems to be the obvious kind to look for when you want to intentionally put yourself through it. The problem then is that with most such things, people attempt difficult-but-fun projects or adventures with people they’re already friends with to at least some degree, so you’ll have to look for such an opportunity or create it yourself.
Well, it is not that bad, thankfully. Just imagine a friendly soccer match between two village’s teams. Putting in your damndest to win it is already a significantly more difficult thing than everyday life and creates bonding between team members.
Since life started to get too easy for some people—and for some people, that was really long ago - they started to generate artificial difficulties to make things more exciting, sports, games like poker, gambling, and so on.
Then what am I even asking? I am mainly just confused by choice and return on investment. Suppose I have not much interest nor time to invest in learning hobbies, yet would be willing to pay this tax for bonding, and would be looking for a team activity that feels difficult and uncertain enough to generate bonding. The kind of thing people later brag about. What would be the most effective one, I wonder.
Interesting! Practically an artofmanliness.com in German? I didn’t know this exists. I actually like it—I thought our European culture is too “civilized” for this. Also useful as language practice for me—I am a textbook “kitchen speaker”, perfectly fluent but crappy grammar. Thanks a lot of this idea. I was asking around on Reddit about interesting German language blogs years ago, and generally I got boring recommendations, so if you have another a few, please shoot. I think the German language blogosphere and journalism suffers from a generic boredom problem esp. in Austria, I have no idea who reads diepresse.com or derstandard.at without falling asleep. I think the English-language journosphere is better at presenting similar topics in more engaging ways e.g. The Atlantic.
Various initiation rituals of fraternities use that mechanism.
There is a time and place for those, such as universities, either the American “Greek letter culture” or the old German “putting scars on each others faces with foils” kind. I don’t think similar organizations compatible with family fathers approaching 40 exist. However, I hope once I get good enough at boxing to be allowed to spar full force, I will make some marvelous friendships through giving each other bruises, same logic as the face-scar fencing stuff.
It seems people make friends two ways:
1) chatting people and finding each other interesting
2) going through difficult shit together and thus bonding, building camaraderie (see: battlefield or sports team friendships)
If your social life lags and 1) is not working, try 2)
My two best friends come from a) surviving a “deathmarch” project that was downright heroic (worst week was over 100 hours logged) together b) going to a university preparation course, both get picked on by the teacher who did not like us, and then both failing the entry exam in a spectacular way.
Questions:
a) correct?
b) how do you intentionally put yourself into difficult shit with other people so that you can bond and build camaraderie?
Mountaineering or similar extreme activities is one option.
I am now imagining someone engineering a great disaster or battle solely so they can make friends, who will, naturally, turn on them once they discover what happened.
I’m given to believe that going through lots of fun things together can be friendship-building, if not quite the same as going through lots of difficult things together.
Things can be both fun and difficult, and that category seems to be the obvious kind to look for when you want to intentionally put yourself through it. The problem then is that with most such things, people attempt difficult-but-fun projects or adventures with people they’re already friends with to at least some degree, so you’ll have to look for such an opportunity or create it yourself.
Well, it is not that bad, thankfully. Just imagine a friendly soccer match between two village’s teams. Putting in your damndest to win it is already a significantly more difficult thing than everyday life and creates bonding between team members.
Since life started to get too easy for some people—and for some people, that was really long ago - they started to generate artificial difficulties to make things more exciting, sports, games like poker, gambling, and so on.
Then what am I even asking? I am mainly just confused by choice and return on investment. Suppose I have not much interest nor time to invest in learning hobbies, yet would be willing to pay this tax for bonding, and would be looking for a team activity that feels difficult and uncertain enough to generate bonding. The kind of thing people later brag about. What would be the most effective one, I wonder.
Those two factors do matter, but the don’t go to the meat of the issue.
Given that you speak German I would recommend you to read Wahre Männerfreundschaft (disclosure: the author is a personal friend).
Various initiation rituals of fraternities use that mechanism.
Interesting! Practically an artofmanliness.com in German? I didn’t know this exists. I actually like it—I thought our European culture is too “civilized” for this. Also useful as language practice for me—I am a textbook “kitchen speaker”, perfectly fluent but crappy grammar. Thanks a lot of this idea. I was asking around on Reddit about interesting German language blogs years ago, and generally I got boring recommendations, so if you have another a few, please shoot. I think the German language blogosphere and journalism suffers from a generic boredom problem esp. in Austria, I have no idea who reads diepresse.com or derstandard.at without falling asleep. I think the English-language journosphere is better at presenting similar topics in more engaging ways e.g. The Atlantic.
There is a time and place for those, such as universities, either the American “Greek letter culture” or the old German “putting scars on each others faces with foils” kind. I don’t think similar organizations compatible with family fathers approaching 40 exist. However, I hope once I get good enough at boxing to be allowed to spar full force, I will make some marvelous friendships through giving each other bruises, same logic as the face-scar fencing stuff.