Rethinking Lifestyle

I enjoy face to face interactions, so when Covid shut that down, I looked forward to and anticipated resuming after the pandemic receded. Unfortunately, the groups that I belonged to did not rebound and some have disbanded or are considering it because of lack of participation. This led me to try to understand why there is such a decline in civic engagement (social connections). In the search, I found Robert Putnam, a political science professor at Harvard University. He has studied the decline in civic engagement for many years and published his work in a book called Bowling Alone in 2000. He blamed the decline in civic engagement or a loss of social connections on the rise of TV and the internet. We are herd animals, needing other people to engage with. Obviously, many people are getting enough socialization from social media sources.

More recently Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Grant published a book called The Upswing where they explain that we have been in this mess before. By mess they mean we are politically polarized, economically unequal, socially isolated, and culturally self-centered. The good news is that we have been here before, but it was way back during the days of the civil war in the United States. In their book they show through extensive research over many years that from a bad situation with respect to the four factors (politically polarized, economically unequal, socially isolated, and culturally self-centered) in the 1860’s, we made vast improvements in all four factors by the 1940’s before the decline began to happen again by the 1980’s.

The question is, how did we fix things? Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Grant both say that we should not try to go back to the way things were from the 1940’s to the 1980’s because there were many flaws back then; the biggest one being that the great times did not include everyone.

They suggest we try progressivism. Progressivism seeks to advance the human condition through social reforms based on advances in science, technology, and social organizations.

The authors of The Upswing list several factors to consider in bringing us back to a healthy civic engagement. The most important factor is a shift in moral and cultural values. This was previously led by the church in their preaching of the “social gospel” as in the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King until his untimely death in 1968.

Economic reform, a factor we might think should affect our civic engagement, does not, at least not initially.

Improvement in civic engagement being led by the youth is another factor. Max Planck says that change happens one funeral at a time.

Associations springing up is another factor. The Rotary Club is an excellent example. Starting very slowly in 1905, the goal of the Rotary Club was to allow professionals of diverse backgrounds to exchange ideas and form meaningful relationships which turned into livelong friendships. Their mottos “Service above Self” and “One profits most who serves best” are as valid today as they were when they were first articulated. The Rotary Club of South Eastman meets at the Mennonite Heritage Village every Wednesday at noon.

The final factor is that the improvements in civic engagement will be grassroots led, not top down. This reminds me of the Overton window which says that ideas start as unthinkable, move to radical, then to acceptable, then to sensible, then to popular, and only then to policy. Policy makers (politicians) do not typically lead; they follow the popular ideas that have been developed by tenacious thinkers who can tolerate ridicule and don’t have to be elected every four years.

When we develop the innovative ideas that will eventually lead us out of this mess we are in, let’s hope that the “we” is inclusive of everyone in the society.