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Robert Putnam already explained why this is happening but since it's not an acceptable answer, we march on and pretend to be mystified.
by Mountain_Skies 4y ago
Robert Putnam already explained why this is happening but since it's not an acceptable answer, we march on and pretend to be mystified.
- Forge36 4y agoCan you elaborate on what they said?
- joenot443 4y agoI assume he's referring to the book Bowling Alone, an excellent read even if its thesis is a bit dated.
- germinalphrase 4y ago“He then asked: "Why is US social capital eroding?" and discussed several possible causes.[1] He believed that the "movement of women into the workforce"[1] and other demographic changes had an impact on the number of individuals engaging in civic associations. He also discussed the "re-potting hypothesis", that people become less engaged when they frequently move towns, but found that Americans actually moved towns less frequently than in previous decades.[1][3] He did suggest that suburbanization, economics and time pressures had some effect, though he noted that average working hours had shortened. He concluded the main cause was technology "individualizing" people's leisure time via television and the Internet, suspecting that "virtual reality helmets" would carry this further in the future.[1]” Via Wikipedia
- Taikonerd 4y agoCould you spell out more what you mean?
- torstenvl 4y agoPresumably https://www.tesd.net/cms/lib/PA01001259/Centricity/Domain/1114/BowlingAlone.pdf https://www.tesd.net/cms/lib/PA01001259/Centricity/Domain/11...
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoIronic given it’s from 1995. I assume the WaPo article imagines that was a golden age
- rossdavidh 4y agoWell Putnam's book suggested that it was a longstanding trend that just kept getting worse, so each decade would be a golden age compared to what came later.
- lumb63 4y agoI’ve been reading Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society lately (1960s), and it was absolutely an issue back then, according to him.
- tarboreus 4y agoWould still like to hear the precis.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- FooBarBizBazz 4y agoBowling Alone was very well received when it came out, but there has been another thread of articles that have been more controversial. I believe a relevant title is: E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century The punchline has been that, if you are not careful, increasing diversity can lead to decreased trust in society, and with it, decreased social capital. The idea is that nobody feels really safe (in a social sense), and so you see a pattern of withdrawal. I think this is a challenge that he wants liberal societies to successfully address. It's a warning when he says it, not a call for homogeneity.
- dangus 4y agoThe key to avoiding distrust is by systemically avoiding segregation. There's nothing wrong with diversity itself.
- majormajor 4y agoSo what actions do you propose to reverse it?
- tsol 4y agoPeople don't need each other any more. Turns out need was half of what brought us together. What is there to do, really?
- happytoexplain 4y ago>it's not an acceptable answer, we march on and pretend to be mystified. On many social topics, your opinion, expressed with this attitude, is almost always not true to the implied extent. Usually it's an exaggeration born of bitterness/frustration. In this case, the significant issue is not that people "pretend" anything or are just idiots who won't accept The Truth. It's that they either disagree with a hypothesized reason for the problem, or, frequently, agree with the hypothesis but disagree with the implied or stated solution, which is much more reasonable than the person in the picture you're painting.