Bowling Alone

ACCORDING TO THE HARVARD school of sociology, the American citizen has, on average, one friend fewer than a generation ago. Furthermore, the American community has been in a state of decline over the last third of the twentieth century, and the first tenth of the twenty first. Membership in organizations across the board has fallen significantly. Far fewer people attend PTA meetings. Bowling leagues are in decline. All manner of civic organization have suffered a severe decline in membership, including political parties, and local as well as national organizations. Traditionally, America has been a culture of joiners. when Alexis de Tocqueville visited the U.S. in the 1830s, he remarked that everywhere we went, he found Americans organizing into groups; professional, service, social. Nobody seemed to be a loner. That's what living in an untamed wilderness will do to a person, perhaps. This trait adhered until the 1960s. Then, the bottom dropped out, and is still dropping. When Napoleon Bonaparte took power in the wake of the turbulent French Revolution, he observed that France had become, as he put it, "atomized"; reduced to its smallest component parts. He considered this a problem for national morale, which is always of paramount importance to dictators. Thus he established the Legion of Honor, and numerous other organizations to spur a rebirth of community. America's situation may be attributable to various factors, including the invention of the internet and television, the rise of suburban life, and the increasing mobility of Americans, as they move here and there around the country, usually for reasons of employment. The most comprehensive study of this phenomenon is the monograph "Bowling Alone", by Harvardian sociologist Robert D. Putnam. Putnam decries the trend, but suggests that not only is it reversible, but that it should be reversed, because a well connected society, with high social capital,networks of connected people, enhances the functioning, efficiency, and well being of any society. But it may well be that the trend will get worse before it gets better, and will become permanent. We can hope not.