Another observed aspect of life in suburbia is how “lonely” it is. Even more so now than fifty years ago. People can live next door to each other, and almost NEVER even see each other. Lawn services have eliminated the need to be outside for landscape maintenance, and even garage door openers mean never having to use the front door or even be seen outside carrying groceries into the house. The days of borrowing a cup of sugar from your neighbor are all but over in most places now. Many people build their own swimming pools, and community pools have been suffering for years. Even within the house, kids are “blessed” with their own rooms, so they don’t even have to interact with their siblings and even parents that often. Can Creator comment on this?

The issue you raise is an accurate portrait and a common dilemma experienced by people almost universally. It is not a characteristic of suburbia alone. Even within the densely populated cities, many live lonely existences and lives of anguish and despair, because even though they are surrounded by thousands of others, they, too, often never meet their neighbors or develop any kind of relationship that has any true meaning or satisfaction that could be called a friendship and a source of comfort and joy to enrich their lives in some fashion. Passing people in the hall one recognizes on sight is hardly a fulfilling exchange with deep meaning to either party. In a sense, one is not truly alone in the way one would be, lost on a desert island, but in some sense frustration is every bit as real and perhaps more so, that one passes by so many others in the course of a day who will not even look them in the eye or engage in any kind of spontaneous exchange recognizing their existence—this is wholly unnatural. What is truly missing is having a core group one belongs to making it impossible to truly be alone unless one wants some solitude for inner reflection, for example, and has a blessing of an excess of friends and family in their presence so much that they might eventually feel somewhat drained. The ideal human environment is to live within a large family grouping where people feel close to one another and the true kinship of belonging that makes it rewarding to interact because each one is valued, each one has a place in things, each one has a voice, and each one has the opportunity to contribute and feel deserving of a share in all that happens. That is a truly balanced way of living that gives a feeling of accomplishment and success for each of the participants. Such groups coming through the bloodline are the most natural of all, so extended families make a superb microcosm for living kind of like a village of their own and this historically has been successfully done on a wide scale by untold millions of human beings living off the land and with the land, to work together in all that is required, through farming to provide all that is needed for sustenance. So we see the suburbs as, in a sense, a kind of fractured urban living where things are spaced out more so small family units can stay together at least and not feel crowded, but also will lack opportunities to feel a sense of shared belonging because of the fractured nature of the living arrangements, where people move to a home because it provides a shelter but not because they want to be with the particular people who live next door and may never get to know them in fact. So that is unnatural, but again is a function of the unnatural world in which you live because of its corrupted nature. You are seeing a halfway measure countering the manipulations that have driven people to accept urban living as a priority and an acceptable lifestyle, that in many ways has limitations and is unrewarding for most in major respects. The suburbs are a second-best alternative but small houses will not support the living together of an extended family, nor is that often possible when jobs increasingly are concentrated in urban areas and this forces people to accept a smaller living space to make it affordable to be within commuting distance of work, and this fragments families all along the way and creates a quite unnatural society with respect to true human needs and values.