For a politics of friendship, not community

Comment published on New York Times online blog in response to opinion essay by Times columnist David Brooks, “The Difference between Happiness and Joy,” May 7, 2019:

Friendships matter, and many people don't konw what they are.

Brooks thinks friends share experiences and do things (in effect, work) together.  A project and experience define the friendship.  

Forms of interaction and being-with usually follow one of two models: the sharing of an experience, or a conversation. Sharing is now the dominant model because it does not compromise liberty, but it is also not democratic.  

Friendship can have a political character because the friends both care for common things, and these can be objects of general concern and importance, not just the privatized sharing of tastes and "likes."  

Lovers may want to change each other and be changed.  Friends respect your boundaries and care without passionate desire.  The other who is a neighbor remains "near" but is also at a distance as something of a stranger.  

Some languages mark this by distinguishing polite and familiar address. Lacking this, Americans often get wrong both friendship and citizenship.

The "political" character of friendship, recognized in ancient Greece, also involves a certain use of conversation.  You can argue with a friend, and it is even possible to do so with joy and no acrimony or unpleasantness.  By contrast, one may smile at an adversary and give him a Trojan Horse.  When people are too friendly, as Americans in their impatient good-willed eagerness often are, you suspect they are just selling you something; you suspect their gifts are Trojan Horses, concealing something they want.  

The question today is: Is capitalism destroying both our public and private life?