Originally Posted by
Dahon.Steve
Working in New York City my entire life, the only people making interaction with strangers are usually the homeless asking for money! LOL. NYC is a very lonely place to be if you have no friends or family.
In general, unless you go out of your way to make interaction, it's highly unlikely people will approach you. If you're a woman, it might be different depending on what you're wearing.
Having said that, I suspect living in the middle of no where may very well invite more conversation. Simply because a town with a population of 200 hundred might view a complete stranger as a conversation piece since there is very little going on.
Georg Simmel wrote that, "
one nowhere feels as lonely and lost as in the metropolitan crowd," but I think at least part of the cause of such loneliness is the expectation of a certain standard of interaction. E.g. when you are reading a book, you don't expect to respond to what you're reading so you are content to interact with the author in an asymmetrical way, but when you read a discussion forum post, you can post a response so there is more of an expectation of interaction.
I think people long to use their energy in productive ways, but they don't really know what to produce so they seek interactive situations where they can feel their way to producing something that others will consume. 'Producing' here could mean something as simple as producing speech or writing that someone else will listen to or read, or producing an image that others will see, etc. When you are just traveling in/on a vehicle or walking, you are interacting with others because you have to look at them to steer clear of them; so there's abundant information-exchange going on even when you're not talking with anyone you're around.
Even when people are driving, they are looking at each others' vehicles and see each other through their windows. I think this is part of why people are concerned about how their vehicle looks, how it reflects their personality, etc. i.e. because they are expressing themselves with their vehicle and they want others to receive a certain message they are expressing.
This wishing to be perceived and understood by others probably has something to do with why many people don't value interactions with animals and non-living things the way they do human-human interactions. If you are walking through a forest with trees and the trees are shading you and providing plenty of clean air and water and scenery for you to look at, you could simply appreciate the living ecology around you as expressing its energy while you also express yours. All that intersecting energy can be considered like a symphony of sounds waves, light, aromas, forms, etc.; but if you narrow your standard of interaction to verbal human-human interactions, then the rest just seems like background scenery that's not interesting to interact with.