please i'm dying to know
ok and we're back to books having the craziest amount of vocab
does going to an ivy just automatically make you use big words? honestly i dodged a bullet getting rejected from penn then ngl
Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam laments the loss of community that has occurred in America starting somewhere with the baby boomers and has not stopped even after he published the book. Although many members of my generation may feel a sort of knee-jerk disgust at this take, I found hearing him out to be very enlightening. After reading it, I've found that I agree with the central takes as well as with a ton of the sub-arguments he crafts throughout this thicc book. Thus, I have a feeling this write-up might be a bit shorter than the others. Really, opposition to something does truly give you the most content, huh. (not like anyone reads these...)
The other two books my boy Ross recommended me mention the loss of community that has occurred, with one talking about it the context of the American upper class another discussing how liberal democracies in general have a "lack of commitment" from their citizens (which I frankly think is BS, but this isn't about that book). Bowling Alone manages to put cold hard numbers on the arguments I've seen two times already, and god are the numbers convincing. Assuming he didn't cook the books or mess up any statistical analysis, Putnam paints an extremely convincing picture portraying the loss of American community. Before we get started, I should probably carry over from the book is "social capital", which in his words,
refers to the connections among individuals— social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them.
It's basically how well-connected you are.
But before I get into the nitty-gritty, allow me to point out that the blurb on the back and Putnam himself make a big deal about the decline in league bowling (what the hell is that, anyways?) being a microcosm of the general loss of community in the US. Putnam then procees to apply the bowling metaphor a total of two, maybe three times, throughout the entire 400-page book. I suppose the metaphor does make for a catchy title, but maybe follow up on your title a bit more? Or is this just the meta among social commentaries that use catchy titles?
But anyways, onto the actual content of the book. The book is pretty thick, clocking in at a previously mentioned 400 pages. The thing is a lot of it is just Putnam going through every single possible measure of social/civic engagement or every single possible cause of the current levels of societal disengagement that he argues is prevalent. I suppose it is necessary to be rigorous, but it sure as hell doesn't make the book interseting. One benefit to the rigor of Putnam's arguments in contrast to the anectodal examples provided by Brooks or the philosophical arguments by Fukuyama is that you simply can't argue with any of what he says. I praised Fukuyama for walking the reader through his arguments like a mathematical proof, but Putnnam uses actual math, which is much harder to argue against.
I also see evidence of his arguments in my personal life. Even though everyone came to the general Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) meeting where the officers hyped everyone up about the bajillion subcommittees in the club, no one actually came to the meetings where you programmed. I think at one of the AI workshops, the officers outnumbered the actual participants, which either funny or sad: I'm still not sure which. There was even a training session for a programming contest where literally no one came. That was just sad. This could be blamed on the club just not being interesting, but I've noticed the same thing happening at a bunch of other clubs as well.
One thing I was itching for him to address is that stronger community bonds are intuitively contradictory with personal liberties and mutual tolerance. If everyone is so close-knit, then one would think that any deviation from the general views of the group is going to be met with insult, derision, and possibly even ostracization. The great thing is, Putnam actually addresses this in chapter 22! Churches aside (for obvious reasons), Putnam noted a surprising positive correlation between social capital and acceptance of unpopular political opinions. But come to think of it, if people are closer together and do more things together, it's only natural that they'll be supportive if one of them voiced a wayward opinion or came out as whatever. If you game with a friend every week, you're much more likely to accept them if they told you they wanted to transition because you know them so goddamned well. Again, churches are the one exception to this, but tons of other forms of social bonding exist.
Another great observation Putnam makes is that internet groups are united primarily by common interest instead of personal connection. In a Discord server dedicated to say, Geometry Dash, people are probably only going to talk about Geometry Dash. It's a bit hard to make friends through these servers because nearly all interactions you have with other people have to be through that common interest, and many servers actually ban "off-topic" conversation.
My agreement with Putnam is tainted by one flaw I've found in the book. It occurs in section three, where he attempts to link greater social engagement with good things like child welfare, education, and even the very fate of democracy itself. Now, given that social capital has supposedly been declining over the past couple decades, we would expect these things to be declining as well. However, only in the chapter about health does he support his argument by presenting a simultaneous decline in the health of Americans as well as their social capital. In no other chapter about the benefits of social capital does he mention a sort of decline in the later 20th century. Sure, he throws a ton of studies that show a positive correlation between social capital and whatever benefit the chapter is about at us, but he does not mention that said benefit has been decreasing as well. Perhaps benefits might be correlated when you sample across multiple locations at once, but not when you sample one location across a long time? Maybe there just isn't evidence gathered on this, but Putnam usually makes notes of any lack of evidence in the other chapters. I would really like to believe that he's correct, but this striking omission makes me doubt this entire section about the impacts of social capital.
Also, like with Fukuyama, there's a certain humor in reading the predictions and goals he makes at the end of the book knowing what happens in the next quarter century. It's even funnier that he lists the exact year he wants them to happen. 14 years after the deadline for his goals, let's see how some of them hold up! Since there's so darn many, I'll just give two of them:
Let us find ways to ensure that by 2010 America's workplace will be substantially more family-friendly and community-congenial, so that American workers will be enabled to replenish our stocks of social capital both within and outside the workplace.
At the time of this writing, Amazon still exists and Elon Musk is trying to restart the concept of the company town. I don't think workplaces have gotten any more friendlier. Maybe I'm having a reading comprehension moment by only focusing on they lives of blue-collar workers, but I feel like they take up a large enough fraction of the American populace for my points to render this goal as failed.
Let us find ways to ensure that by 2010 Americans will spend less leisure time sitting passively alone in front of glowing screens and more time in active connection with our fellow citizens. Let us foster new forms of electronic entertainment and communication that reinforce community engagement rather than forestalling it.
Two words: Tik Tok.
I think it's safe to say that this goal failed miserably. Or maybe we actually did achieve it in 2010, only for it to backslide horrendously. Ever since COVID, online content really has only gotten more and more infested with brainrot and meaningless drivel since the early 2000s, both of which probably don't foster mush social capital among the masses. With the advent of generative AI, I'm really starting to believe in that dead internet theory people talk about.
8/10, although its takes are great, listing off statistics does get a bit boring at times