The Loss of Reciprocity
"There used to be an expectation that friendship meant we would help one another."
Clare Ashcraft is a 22-year-old writer from Ohio. She has a BA in English from Capital University and currently works as a Media Bias Analyst and Product Manager.
At some point we stopped texting our best friend after a breakup and began texting a therapist or spilling our guts to the always-available ChatGPT. People slip advice from their therapist into everyday conversation, as if they too are a part of the friend group. We no longer rely on our friends for emotional support. That fear of bringing vulnerability into our day-to-day erodes our closeness with one another. We forget that we weren’t made to do life alone.
People let us down, rarely able to be all we want them to be. But ChatGPT or a therapist is paid not to fail us, so we get our emotional needs met within the container of a one-sided relationship in the therapy room or chat window. What are friends for anymore?
There used to be an expectation that friendship meant we would help one another. If my friend drove me to the airport, I would dog-sit the next time they were gone. If I helped my friend move, they’d cook me dinner. I’d listen to them complain about the perils of dating apps for the forty-fifth time, even if it was boring, because I knew my friend would be there the minute I had a bad date or a break up to do the same.
But now there’s a service for all of these needs. We Uber (or, God forbid, Waymo) to the airport, so we aren’t an inconvenience. We hire a moving service like College Hunks Hauling Junk. Where we used to exchange fresh veggies from our garden for our neighbors eggs, we now Instacart groceries without leaving the apartment.
America is an individualist culture that teaches self-sufficiency as success — having your own car and apartment; loving your family and romantic partner while not being dependent on them. If you do need help, seeing a therapist or nutritionist or other expert is seen as self-sufficient because you’re taking proactive responsibility for your shortcomings, and who cares about your shortcomings when you can shell out enough money to fix them? Further, why risk the rejection? When you confide in someone that you’re struggling, the worst thing they can say is: “Have you tried therapy?” or “Have you considered taking on a third job?” or “Just go on Tinder like everyone else.” They offload you as if they aren’t obligated to help you out or sit with you in the pain and discomfort. And I suppose they aren’t.
I don’t believe in unselfish altruism: I don’t believe anyone is kind without getting something out of it. Either we expect something in return or, at least, we get a warm fuzzy feeling from helping others. With that being said, I don’t think it is wrong to be selfish. It seems to me an evolutionary fact. We evolved to be kind and to collaborate with others because it benefitted our ability to pass on our genes. When we helped someone, they helped us back — that offered protection and enabled our survival. We see this behavior in primates, too: chimpanzees groom one another for insects and parasites. The grooming doubles as an indicator of social status. Higher status males receive more grooming from others, and the more they groom females in return, the higher likelihood that they find a mate.
As humans, we possess higher level reasoning, communication skills, and foresight into the past and future to enable large-scale projects like governments and healthcare systems. Some people believe these unique features mean we have evolved past basic evolutionary urges, but certain basic principles remain true no matter how much we advance as a species: one being that friendship plus reciprocity equals survival.
By reciprocity I don’t mean keeping a mental scoreboard of how many times you’ve invited your friends out and noting that they haven’t reached out an equal amount of times. In fact, that’s often the beginning of the end of a good relationship because it enables resentment. Reciprocation might appear at different times in different ways, — maybe you’re always the one to make plans, but they always buy you the most thoughtful gifts — but the expectation of reciprocity is the evolutionary foundation for why we help each other out. When we outsource that mutual dependence to single-use paid services, not only are we made lonely in the knowledge that no one has our back, but we forget how to care for others as everything becomes more transactional. We are in danger of becoming the friend who asks, “Have you tried Tinder? A therapist? ChatGPT?” — code for have you tried unloading your wants and needs onto someone who isn’t me? We forget our friends often aren’t asking us to solve the problem or provide answers, but that they are asking so as not to be alone.
Half of the people I know have a podcast, the quintessential symbol of a lonely capitalist society. A podcast is a clever way to have a conversation with the people the podcasters admire, who almost always say yes because they can use the podcast to promote their own work. What used to be interpersonal mentorship becomes a business transaction. People of all ages go on podcasts that are publicly and immediately mutually beneficial. We used to have a society in which older people mentored the younger because that was their role. Once they raised kids or established their career and finances and were closing in on retirement, they were naturally ready to give back to the emerging generation. Now, no one can afford to “give back.”
The “giving back” social contract has two main differences important to society that bear out over time: giving back isn’t one-to-one, and it involves a high level of trust. When you agree to go on someone’s podcast, it’s a one-to-one relationship between you and the host, who both benefit. In the old “giving back” model of mentorship, someone or several someones may have helped you out in your teens or twenties. When you returned the favor in middle age, it might not have been exact. You might have helped no one if your life was cut short, or you might have helped thousands, and you might have carried out that act in a very different way than when you were first helped. This uncertainty and variation helps society function long-term. Knowledge changes generation to generation; there will always be some with more to give and others with less. The waiting period required for “giving back” also requires a high-trust society. It’s dependent on everyone’s buy-in on a future in which the older generation will be willing to guide a younger one. In contrast, immediate one-to-one relationships are often short-term and indicate low trust. When both participants need instantaneous benefit, they betray that they don’t trust that some aid might be returned to them years down the line.
And why should people have that long-term trust? Technology and AI are iterating rapidly, people are increasingly using the internet and paid services instead of relying on others, and we live in an instantaneous world often dominated by doomer headlines. Trust in institutions is low and political polarization is high. In a pre-internet age, people had to rely on their tribe for security and survival, but now that we don’t need a tight-knit community to meet our basic needs, why bother? Relationships are challenging and inconvenient. We have to care enough about someone to sit with them through tough days and years. It’s logical to choose the more frictionless paid service than to navigate conflict.
But inconvenience is connection, and connection lifts us all. We must take more responsibility for each other because no one else will. Everyone thinks it’s not their burden to teach an incel how to talk to women, for example, but whose responsibility is it? Certainly it isn’t the responsibility of women, but I don’t think a twenty-year-old 4Chan bro is going to learn on his own. I’m not saying it’s fair, or easy, or that you need to befriend someone hateful, but I’m pointing out that if we take on that responsibility collectively, even when it is unfair, we create a better world.
You cannot take on the responsibility of someone else’s emotions, if they aren’t first responsible for their own — you will never alleviate all of their negative feelings in the unwinnable game. But what you can do is take some responsibility for your friends, family, and romantic partners. When they are stressed or unhappy, make it your responsibility to help them in addressing their feelings, prioritize asking what they need and making them comfortable, but do so without making yourself smaller or mitigating your own needs. You can begin to fix the reciprocity crisis by taking some responsibility for making the lives of the people around you better in small ways, making space for them, and surprising them with little treats. Then, becoming comfortable being an inconvenience, ask for a ride to the airport, or a blind date setup, or help cleaning the house. Make your relationships places where helping each other is expected and normal.
Loneliness is an evolutionary nudge telling us we’re unsafe when we’re alone. Now loneliness is solvable with free and paid services, but as psychologist Paul Bloom wrote in The New Yorker: “I do worry that many will find the prospect of a world without loneliness irresistible — and that something essential could be lost, especially for the young. When we numb ourselves to loneliness, we give up the hard work of making ourselves understood, of striving for true connection, of forging relationships built on mutual effort. In muting the signal, we risk losing part of what makes us human.” Our reliance on each other is scary — people can and will let us down — but risking trust and reciprocity is part of our nature.
In the short term, services and machines may be more reliable, but they don’t make a flourishing life. They alleviate the physical pain of loneliness the way Skittles alleviate hunger — you can survive on Skittles, barely, but you’ll be deficient in all sorts of other ways, and you’ll never be satiated. You may not actively be dying of malnourishment, but your body will rebel and fall apart. Services and machines protect from social starvation, but without strong relationships built on reciprocation, you will fall apart. When you do, it’ll be your responsibility, but it’s also not something you can crawl out of on your own. You’ll be dependent on someone willing to teach an incel how to talk to girls — someone willing to take responsibility for your emotions even though it isn’t fair for them to have to do so. The problem is that we’re in a world where everyone is surviving on Skittles and no one has the energy and patience to help someone else out. It shouldn’t be my responsibility to invite everyone to dinner and host again. It may not be fair, but that’s the deal — we have to take responsibility for one another collectively and help each other out whenever possible, even in our exhaustion. If we don’t, we all will atrophy and fall apart.
I see our social contracts fraying already. We can’t build things because we don’t trust institutions, and we don’t trust institutions because we don’t trust each other. We don’t know each other. We would rather pay for Uber drivers, therapists, and maids — for invisible people — because the return on investment is guaranteed. We’re too exhausted for obligations, so we exchange money for a service with no questions asked. So, ask your friend a question. Ask them something you don’t know about their lives, ask if there’s something you can do for them, ask if they’ve eaten more than Skittles today — and if not, bring them a meal.
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How beautifully said, made my say, thank you.