Bowling Alone
I recently found an interesting new book called Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community from a professor at Harvard (just up the road... sounds a little weird...) about how North American communities are becoming increasingly disengaged:
"In a groundbreaking book based on vast new data, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and our democratic structures-- and how we may reconnect. Putnam warns that our stock of social capital - the very fabric of our connections with each other, has plummeted, impoverishing our lives and communities. Putnam draws on evidence including nearly 500,000 interviews over the last quarter century to show that we sign fewer petitions, belong to fewer organizations that meet, know our neighbors less, meet with friends less frequently, and even socialize with our families less often. We're even bowling alone. More Americans are bowling than ever before, but they are not bowling in leagues."
And there's more:
"The change is most obvious in the sphere of politics - voting, political knowledge, political trust, and grassroots political activism are all down. Americans sign 30% fewer petitions and are 40% less likely to join a consumer boycott, as compared to just a decade or two ago. But the declines are equally visible in non-political community life: membership and activity in all sorts of local clubs and civic and religious organizations have been falling at an accelerating pace. In the mid-1970s the average American attended some club meeting every month, but by 1998 that rate of attendance had been cut by nearly 60%.
Equally striking is the fraying of our informal ties with friends and neighbors and relatives. In 1975 the average American entertained friends at home 15 times per year; the equivalent figure is now barely half that. Virtually all leisure activities that involve doing something with someone else, from playing volleyball to playing chamber music, are declining.
Although we are more tolerant of one another than were previous generations, we trust one another less. Survey data provide one measure of the growth of dishonesty and distrust, but there are other indicators. For example, employment opportunities for police, lawyers, and security personnel were stagnant for most of this century - indeed, America had fewer lawyers per capita in 1970 than in 1900! But in the last quarter century these occupations have boomed, as we have increasingly turned to the courts and the cops to make others keep their word.
You might want to take a look at the list of survey questions they used to ascertain "community engagement" here. While all the figures are for the United States, I would bet a significant amount of money that the trends in Canada are essentially the same.
I find the last point of the quote above particularly fascinating - "although we are more tolerant of one another, we trust one another less". This quote in particular brought to mind (in an incredibly tangential way) a terrific article by Andrew Coyne that I read a couple of weeks ago regarding the possible connection between Canada's policy of multiculturalism and the recent terror-related arrests in Toronto (I couldn't agree more with his main point below):
"The problem is not that immigrants are not absorbing Canadian values. The problem is that there we have provided them with so few Canadian values to absorb. We are the country of the notwithstanding clause, the country that exalts the virtues of pragmatism and compromise before all. We do not take a stand, we split the difference."
Here's the connection between these two items as I see it: how can we build a cohesive society if we don't have any unambiguous and commonly-held values to strive towards? And, if we refuse to engage in our communities to get to know who our neighbours are by working/playing side-by-side with them, how can we possibly develop these shared values and goals which we need to function as a country?
