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Bowling Alone ::
Is human interaction quantifiable? Is it possbile for you or I to go out and put a numeric value on our connections with our neighbors, with other people in our cities? Or in a more broad sense, is it possible to find a marked drop in all levels of community involvement over, say, the last forty years? It would seem a daunting task to show something like that, to be sure. But on the other hand, I can’t help but think that there is a strong feeling of isolation among people of my generation. People my seem to be in a constant mode of dissent, of apathy toward making connections with other people, with political movements, or even with neighborhood groups. We sense a feeling of apathy and disengagement, but it is difficult to put a number on it. With that, it is even harder to show that there has been a marked decline in the amount of time we spend with each other or working together.
Robert Putnam used his command of sociology and of statistics crunching to show that there has in fact been a quantifiable decline in the amount of time and effort we put into working and living together. He looks at everything from declining voter turnout to activism to memberships in professional organizations and churches, and he sees a marked decline in all of our areas social engagement. And as a result, he sees our Social Captial -- the fabric of our social networks and our community ties, which we depend upon for our happiness and sometimes our very survival -- diminishing significantly. And though his reasons for this decline are, in my opinion, rather unoriginal an unprofound (he talks of television, urban sparwl, financial worries, and the dominance of television and other forms of major corporate media in our lives), he does define the problem in a very clear, objective manner, which in turn allows us to actually do something about our deterioriating state of connectedness. But therein lies the challenge: now that we have this knowledge, it is left up to us to actually do something about those problems.
Bowling Alone was a hard book to get through, both because of his constant riffing on statistics and the questions I continually brought up to myself about whether I’ve done enough to stay engaged in my life, or had I allowed myself to slip into a state of apathy and disengagement that has become such a real factor in our lives today. But it’s information I’m glad to have. I hope it has some lasting effect on me.
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