I can get along well if I have to, but I was responding to a comment that talked about these forced dinners being good for society. I get drained enough getting along when in day to day life, which is minimal because I have built a life where I can be very secluded and avoid social interaction unless I want it. Now stick me in these forced dinners and I'll lose a lot of mental health, just like working in an office is a significant and constant drain on my well-being (hence why the pandemic and lockdowns have been the best times of my life, by far).
I've worked in these sorts of communal environments for the past six years and never had a problem. I happen to have friends and family who I have occasional disagreements with too. It's just eating together. Can't make it one day? It's not a mandatory meeting or something.
None of this seems to apply if you don't have children. I've never had this kind of stressful meal (on a recurring basis) with friends, housemates, colleagues, conference friends, customers or other work people, or significant others. Sure, maybe one-off unpleasant conversation or something ("we need to discuss the production outage which affected our site last week"), but not on a repeated basis.
Whether you cook from scratch, make some kind of prepared food or leftovers, have take-out/delivery, or go out to eat seems irrelevant by comparison.
The opposite, I love WFH and as an introvert i'm revelling in lockdown. I miss having a dinner with some friends maybe once a month or once every two months but we keep up through various Whatsapp groups and for the most part i'm happy with it
Sharing meals is a cornerstone of human society. Nobody cares if you personally don't want to involve yourself, but the idea that it's the result of some social pressure is absurd. It is society or part thereof.
Honestly one of the most saddening comments I've read.
When you eat with someone multiple times a day, every single day, for decades, sometimes eating is just a utilitarian task you are performing to fuel your body and to not be hungry. Why does it always have to be social? When I was a kid in the 80s, we often would just get plates of food and go back to whereever we had been doing whatever we had been doing.
I am someone who grew up to hate notifications: my phone is on silent; and when I am present with you having an actual meal, you have my 100% attention in a way no one else I know does anymore. I say this to make it clear that I didn't grow up to dislike social dinners: if anything, I grew up to love them as they were never forced on me.
I would like to present a counter point to your generalization. I am interested in this. I work from home on a own business. Do not suffer social anxiety, however my social outgoings are limited due to work from home alone. I would suggest that this type of random dinner would not be very appealing for people who suffer from social anxiety.
I always skip catered meals for the same reason. I cannot stand forced socialization. Brain must turn off for a bit, and socializing is hard work (for me).
> I can handle a group meal, but if I'm alone in a room, listening to one or two people eating, it drives me nuts.
Hell yeah, my experience exactly. When I'm eating meals with family, I need there to be a conversation going, or at least a TV or radio running in a background - if there's only silence and sounds of eating, I'm starting to go crazy.
Well, I do see people, I do go places. In fact, I do it probably more willingly as I know I won't get covid, or flu, or anything that will ruin my time. Yes, I know, people love eating together - that's primitive like wolves or lions devouring an animal they've killed. People can socialize in so many ways and eating is probably the worst kind.
Captive audience. Everybody is forced to work/socialize 24 hours/day for as long as the retreat lasts.
Sure, cooking for a group might be less expensive, but I have serious doubts that's a primary reason for using a rental home vs hotel/conference space.
And as an aside, as somebody with dietary restrictions, being forced into dining with people who don't share my diet is very off-putting. Add in my co-workers who are vegetarian, vegan, or completely boring (bland, beige American food is all they'll eat) and it's a nightmare. No thanks.
Every group of people, no matter how much they like or respect each other, will have serious disagreements. How you resolve those disagreements is what matters. There has never been any "at each other's throats" here.
Eating together facilitates communication and understanding with a group, which makes it more likely that conflicts will be resolved in a productive manner. Again, this is what works for us and yes, we hope to attract people who find this kind of culture compelling. Appreciate your taking the time to discuss these topics with us.
I think it’s the fear of being trapped with people you might not like and not being free to speak your mind.
In a restaurant you can leave at any point with very small excuses; you can safely blame the cuisine if you don’t like it; and it’s a large environment with distractions, where one can simply “blend out” if he wants to. At somebody’s home the attention on each other is more intense, it’s a small and quieter environment, you can’t tell the host that his lasagna is terrible or his background music is atrocious, and it feels a bit offensive to leave early.
This sort of thing is not an issue if people are close friends who can safely slag each others’ off, but in an increasingly globalised and atomised society the ratio of friends to acquaintances has decreased significantly, so gatherings probably tend to feel more formal.
I hope this doesn't go anywhere, to be honest. People need more human connection, not less, and the rituals of preparing food, eating together, cleaning etc are one of THE fundamental things that makes us human.
Replacing fast food with healthy food is good, but we should all be trying to cook more, and be with our loved ones (or hell, even roommates) _more_, not less.
No one is forcing you to invite such people over for dinner and cook for them. I'm sure they'd be happier not spending time with you, based on this short interaction I've had with you.
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