Do you make plans with someone knowing that you will wind up making up an excuse to get out of it? Do you double-book yourself, knowing you will inevitably have to ditch your other obligation when the time comes? Do you say you’ll be at your friend’s party with the intention deep down in your heart of hearts to go, then flake at the last minute because you’re worried you won’t know anyone there?
I know, I’ve been there too. After all, it’s so easy to flake when everyone around you is doing it too. It has become so ingrained in the rhythm of our social norms that we’ve built communities of flakers who don’t hold each other accountable: When you ditch friend one, friend two is waiting there unjudgmentally for you. They get it — sometimes, you just have to #protectyourpeace.
But this flakiness epidemic is representative of how individualism and insecurity is ruining our generation’s chances at real community. People have forgotten how to be considerate. People have forgotten how to be good friends. People have forgotten how to care — and that is going to be our downfall.
Sometimes, we are flaky because we are scared. The prospect of a new connection will always be appealing to our human nature, but a new connection also means being vulnerable with someone.
The uncertainty of the effort of a new friendship means we risk failure, thereby facing the omnipresent loneliness of the human condition: What if it’s awkward? What if that awkwardness depletes me of my precious energy that could be used for something else, like maybe doing work — what capitalism tells us is the most valuable usage of time? Or, what if this person makes me feel even more misunderstood than before I ever talked to them? What will that do to my self-worth? Ultimately we convince ourselves that maybe we’d be better off just spending time with ourselves, because we know we will never let ourselves down, and of course, it’s easier.
Other times, we flake because we just want to do something else, and because we don’t consider our impact on others: Yesterday I thought I would want to have lunch with friends, but right now I have to finish this paper due tomorrow; my academic goals, and therefore my individuality, come first. Life is short, and human beings are, after all, self-interested.
While backing out on something here and there when something serious comes up is understandable, repeatedly not showing up for the people in your life, even in trivial instances, shows them that they can’t rely on you. The daily praxis of care is the foundation of a relationship, and your flakiness reflects your inability to make sacrifices for them in times that they might need it the most. Framing friendships as emotional labor denotes them as barriers to our “success” instead of pivotal to our wellbeing, upholding the competitive scarcity-based mentality that capitalism wants us to embrace.
At this moment in history, we need to rely on each other. It is a matter of life and death, as morbid as it sounds. We have become too scared to be wholeheartedly vulnerable with others and have gotten too caught up in our individual goals to notice that people are dying. People are disappearing into government funded detention facilities. You genuinely never know when you might get shot. Healthcare is being stripped from people simply because of their identity and health is a privilege more than ever.
The reciprocity of community can be life saving; one small “sacrifice” here and there for someone can mean them saving your life in the future. The communities that we build from being reliable friends and comrades give us the resilience to build a future of equality and justice that we dream about. The Civil Rights Movement, Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter are just a few of the grassroots movements founded on community engagement.
It isn’t completely our fault — individualism has been deeply ingrained in American ideology tracing back to our colonial histories on the frontier. White Americans started as self-reliant cowboys battling over Native land under an ideology of God-given entitlement and superiority. With the United States’s rise as a global superpower, it is inevitable that Americans are going to associate self-determination with success in the modern world. It’s how White Americans have acted for generations and continue to amass their power today.
Similarly, it is getting easier and easier to stay in our comfort zones. We can have anything we want at our fingertips (Amazon Prime Same Day shipping) and don’t have to take on the terror of small talk with a cashier (contactless grocery stores). With the creation of Google Duplex, an AI assistant is able to call places to make reservations meaning that we no longer have to talk on the phone. We can ride home in silence with no effort, basking in the privilege of Google’s self-driving cars.
The country’s rapid industrialization gives us more and more time to focus on maximizing our productivity and succeeding in our capitalist economy. We don’t have to face our insecurities that surface with social interaction. We don’t seem to need other people anymore.
But, we can’t forget that the economic success pushed by industrialization and capitalism means nothing if we don’t survive through it — something that can only happen if we show up for each other and retain our collective solidarity.
Capitalism relies on us suppressing our care for each other and only looking out for ourselves; it forces us to use resources that fund billionaires who shamelessly capitalize off of our struggles and wouldn’t care if we died instead. It relies on making us averse to any sort of inconvenience to the point that we forget how to make sacrifices for the people around us, and sets us up to neglect our loved ones in times of need.
Even if you don’t know how much your presence is actually wanted, erring on the side of caution and committing to what you signed up for is an active resistance of individualism: A value that the capitalist model needs to make space for. You are proving to the people around you that they can count on you.
There is so much collective power in community, and that starts with simply being a good friend; this means sticking to something you agreed to and agreeing to things you might not always want to do, but will still do as an act of love and reciprocity.
Nothing changes if nothing changes. Show up to your friends’ parties.
Nicole Teh SC ’27 is from Hong Kong and has lived in Southern California for six years. To her, friendship and love are the meaning of life.
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