Reddit reviews Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
We found 38 Reddit comments about Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Touchstone Books by Simon & Schuster
in fact there is evidence that ethnically diverse areas have less social trust and cohesion.
http://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046
We have been brainwashed for years into thinking diversity is good, but where is the evidence? In general people often self-segregate into ethnic communities because they like living near people who are like them. That is just the ways humans tend to be.
As for Muslims, is there any country on earth with more than, say, 15 or 20% Muslims that isn't plagued with civil war? Yugoslavia? Lebanon? Perhaps our leaders should have considered this before importing millions of Muslims into the West.
Social networks especially for men have been on steep decline since the 70's. A highly accredited academic wrote about it a while back and he got shit for some reason because he partially blamed multiculturalism. Even if you dismiss the multiculturalism angle which I do his research was very well done and shows a bleak picture of the American social landscape. Charles Murray also wrote about this stuff in Coming Apart.
https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046
https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/dp/030745343X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1518974854&sr=1-1&keywords=coming+apart
I will add that the reason men have struggled more with this is because men's groups are exclusive rather then inclusive. Or rather the inclusiveness is based on some metric. I.e we all lift, or we all ride bikes together, or we all enjoy climbing. Female social groups are inclusive. You're welcome here no matter what you do as long as you don't do anything to rock the boat.
Surprisingly both groups are still hierarchical. Female social groups rank hierarchy by the most social person that distributes rewards with equal allocations. Male social groups reward the man that gives out the most the equitable shares.
Explained more simply women give each person in the group an entire pie and the most popular is the one that finds the pie shop. Men work together to make a pie and the leader is the one who carves up the pie and gives it out fairly. I.e. the males that contributed the most ingredients or more involved in preparing the pie get bigger pieces. Men that take the pie all for themselves or give up the pie to others are considered too dominant or too weak.
This goes all the way back to male apes going on hunts while female apes stayed back and waited for meat to be brought to them.
Our modern society is shifted to favor the female schema over the male one and men will suffer until more balance is reached.
Well, what you're discussing here I make a living out of studying (theoretical political science). Just about all technology so far has been good technology, and anything in the not-too-distant future is going to be good technology, and anything in the way-distant future will probably be good technology.
The problem is not with technology, but the dissonance-gap created between the technology we develop, and our behavioral implementation of these technologies into society. Medicine was a good technology, and we've basically implemented it well (some states don't get common medicines, but overall we've been good with Medicine). Radio was a good technology and we've developed it well. Flight is a good technology and we've developed it well. The internet and miniaturized media devices? well, that's a complex one. Obviously it's a defining good of our age, and we could go on all day discussing how good it is for our society in various aspects. But, it's also bad in many -- again, not bad in itself, but in how we as a society have chosen to implement the technology of mobile media and the internet.
This will probably be my dissertation, so suffice it to say these technologies have driven us towards a more democratic political atmosphere (that's little-d democratic as in non-representative, not the party). Referendums, Senate election reform, 24hr. news cycles, daily polls, all serve to pressure elected officials as the democratic citizens pressure them for more instant results. The result is, effectively, an antagonist environment of partisanship, bickering, no-compromise, and misinformation. The evolution of immediacy-technologies (this includes flight, I suppose) has changed the pace of our world beyond what is responsible for most of us. To put it simply, what we have developed in terms of social-accessibility this past century is slightly beyond what we as a people are capable of working with maturely. Infotainment butchers credible news channels, misinformation and bias runs amok, fringe party movements dominate national election, the few qu'ran burning crazies grab headlines. This trend is not a result of human evolution, but a lack of. Our technology has improved and we haven't.
This goes beyond civics though, ironically we can socially flounder because of social media technologies. Just look at all the forever-alones on reddit/the internet, or when you go out with your friends for a drink and they all tap away on their smart phones texting other people instead of enjoying the real moment with eachother. Robert Putnam basically made this his focus of study which can be summed up politically here and more socially analyzed in his book Bowling Alone.
Fortunately, we've grown accordingly with technology where it really matters - international conflict and the nuclear bomb. We haven't had any nuclear winters because we were able to adapt to the new international atmosphere of Mutually Assured Destruction - we were smart enough to put aside our antagonistic nature towards our perceived enemies, and cooled our heads well enough to prevent a nuclear war for 60 years (and still into today!). There have been no major world-wars since we've developed mass-mobilization capabilities, and no crazy biological warfare (of course there are incidents like Hussein and his Kurds, or WW1 gas weapons, but those are regional events or in the case of WW1 an example of us toying with a new technology before truly understanding it)
So, thus far there's no real evidence that we've hit a breaking point where we've gone too far in terms of technological development. But we're getting pretty close. Historically there have been moments of technological development, and moments of social development. During the renaissance we began developing philosophy, human rights, and justice while simultaneously making huge strides in technology (industrial revolution anyone)? Maybe one sparked the other, maybe one allowed for the other, either way we and our technology grew together. I only hope that if we wish to continue our exponential push to singularity, we're able to kick our behavior/cognitive development along with it.
>Should your wages go up three time because of nothing you did? Why?
I'll let Richard Wolff, a Phd economics professor elaborate why, and maybe... just maybe... you'll see the big underlying picture he's trying to convery. So pucker up that sphincter hole my friend:
From 1820 to 1970 the following sentence is true: The average level of wages ─ real wages what you actually got for an hours worth of work rose every decade for 150 years. There's' probably no capitalist country that can boast a record like that. It's absolutely stunning and unusual. even in the great depression, real wages went up because even though peoples money wages went down prices fell even more, so you ended up being able to buy more even though you had more dollars in your pocket, because prices fell.
What did this mean? It meant that Americans began to believe, and you know that how deeply that is in our political language, that we lived in a really blessed place. God, if you believe in that, must really like us, something magical about America: You came here, you worked hard, and amazingly, you got more. You could imagine to live in your own home. You could even dream at one point of sending your children to college. To have a car all your own. To wear nice clothes. It was amazing every family thought that it would live better than the generation before in the next generation better still. Parents got into the habit of offering their children to provide them with the education and the support that would make them have a better life.
And the irony here the United States and the marvel was that it was true... millions of people, the ancestors the most of us in this room if we're Americans came to the United states hoping to cash in on this operation, willing to work hard expecting that their life here would reward them with a higher standard of living then they would have gotten if they'd stayed where they came from, and mostly they were right. And it becomes part of the American culture in the American imagination. This is the place where if you work hard you get more pay. Yea... the work may not be pleasant. The work may be difficult, but the reward is at the mall. You'll earn more money and you'll buy more stuff.
Try to imagine with me what it would mean to a population that for a hundred and fifty years internalizes that image, that hope, that expectation if it were suddenly to stop being true. And I ask you to imagine that because that's what happened.
In the 1970's the rising real wage the United States came to an and, it has never resumed. The real wage of the American worker today, the average amount of goods and services you can buy with an hour of your labor is no greater today than it was in the 1978. You may be working harder. You may be working longer You may be working more efficiently because you work with a computer and all these other things. And indeed you are: You are delivering more goods and service per hour of your work to your employer. He's very happy about, but he doesn't pay you one iota more. This is an astonishing change, a sea change, a dramatic alteration in one's circumstance. It's all the more power in our country because it's unspoken. Because in the 1970's or 80's and 90's or to this day, nobody talks about this. Nobody confronts this. No one asks, "why did this happen?" "What do we do about it?" Instead as good Americans, we pretend that it isn't there. We imagine that if it's going on it's just about me and my job and my circumstance rather than a social process. And we imagine that it's not a social problem just my particular problem then I can solve it.
How did the American working class solve the problem. Two things they did, starting in the 1970's and right up until the crisis, and those two things are part of why this crisis happens which is why I'm gonna tell you about them now. The first thing Americans did is conclude,
>"Okay, I'm not getting anymore wages per hour, I know what, I'll do more hours."
Smart move.
>"And not only me the adult male in the house... but my wife. She's gonna go out, she may have been at home, she may have been a housewife... no more of that. She has to go out because we have to sustain the the family standard of living rising. And the old people have to come out of retirement and take at least a part-time job. And the teenager ought to do something on Saturday's at least, don't you think?
Here's a statistic to think about: the average number of hours worked per year by an American right now average, is 20% more than the average number of hours worked by a Swedish, French, German, or Italian worker. Think about it. For every 6 hours you work, they only work 5 or something like that. Some of you go to Europe and you enjoy lovely dinners with wine in an alfresco setting in an Italian town, and you say to yourself, "These people know how to live." And you imagine it's a matter of their culture they just love grapes. It isn't got much to do with culture:
What they have is... TIME.
They don't work like we do. They have time for long dinners. We are the country that invented fast food, and now you know why. It's a necessity, we don't have time to sit down. We need jobs to run by one of those takeout windows and yell something out at a disconsolate teenager who yells something back and hands you something you shouldn't put in your body in any case. And so Americans went to work most importantly the women. In 1970, 40% of American women worked outside the home for money. Today, double 80%. An absolutely fundamental change: those women had to do that. They merely thought of it as women's liberation and it certainly had those dimensions. They wanted to help the family, the point in fact is if the family was going to continue to consume to give its children what it had promised to live the American dream., since husband wasn't gonna get anymore wages ever again. She had to go out. But when the wife goes out all kinds of things change: Women in America, household women held together the emotional life of our society. They did the emotional work. They provided the solace. When that woman has to go out and do 8 hours of work and get dressed and do the travel and back home, she can't do it anymore. She may face that fact, but she can't.
Starting in the 1970's, the United States became the country with the highest rate of divorce, the relationships couldn't survive. We have 6% of the population in the world and consume over half the psychotropic drugs, the anti-depressants, what's going on? Are we crazy people? I don't think so. I think we are under extraordinary pressure. We work the longest hours on the face of the earth. We do more hours per average worker than the Japanese. That's saying something. And our families are stressed, deeply stressed, as anyone who has studied the situation knows. Our behavior has changed under the pressure of this extra work, and one way to describe it to you is to mention a book some of you may know. A Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam, wrote a famous book with a funny title, Bowling Alone, he studies Americans participation in anything other than making their life hang together.
• Bowling leagues used to absorb millions of Americans. No more.
• Trade unions used to be centers of collective life. No more.
• Community organizations used to get lots of people. PTA's did too. No more.
Americans turned inwards in the last 30 years, and it's not some mysterious cultural phenomenon. It has to do with you're working too hard, you're stressed out of your mind. Your relationships are falling apart. Your intimate life is a disaster. But you don't want to see it in terms of wages and the job, and that's what I'm gonna stress.
So the American people ever resourceful did something else which further traumatized them. To keep the consumption going to deliver the American dream to their children, they went on a borrowing binge the likes of which no working class in the history of the world ever undertook before. Starting in the 1970's the Americans savings rate collapsed. We stopped saving money, but much worse than that, we BORROWED money. We invented a new way to give everybody debts. It's called the credit card. Before the 1970's they didn't have that. only the rich people had an American Express card. After that we developed the American Express card for the masses, it's called Master and Visa, and you all have them, you have lots of them. You collect them. You max one out, you get another one. And you keep hoping that this Russian Roulette will not get you. And so in 2007 we came to the end of the line for the working class. They couldn't work anymore hours, they were exhaust, they were stressed beyond words. and now they were overwhelmed by having violated what their parents have told them, "Save money little boy." "Hold something back little girl for a difficult time. For a rainy day. For a special expense. For an illness." Not only did we not save anything, but we're in a hock up to our ears.
That sort of toxicity has permeated pretty much all discourse in the US. Everything about politics, race, sex, sexuality and equality. Much of it comes from alienation, much from lack of exposure to other viewpoints. The end result is that people tend to use inflammatory language to denigrate opponents. I could write a long essay about this sort of issue, and folks have written whole books on the subject.
A lot of the issue is lack of empathy for "the other side". If they aren't human, then it doesn't matter how they get treated/killed. This is one of the first things done in warfare - dehumanize the enemy. You can see it when the media has such intense coverage about beheadings in Syria or the riots in Ferguson - the intent of the media is to make the audience feel that those people are rabid animals who have to be put down. No coverage of how they got there, why the folks do what they do, nothing about their families - just horrible coverage to inflame the audience to support overwhelming and crushing violence against them.
> actually addressing the issues and engaging in good-faith discussions
To begin with, not everyone agrees that X is a problem, let alone that it should be "fixed". Or even that it is a bad thing. You can see that in the political debates over global warming.
Some books on having intelligent conversations (in no particular order) include:
Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole. Helps identify BS in conversation/debates.
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Explains how different people come to different political philosophies based on their values.
How to Disagree Without Being Disagreeable. The author has written a number of books with "gentle art of verbal self defense" in the title. Most are about how to identify verbal attacks and to side-step them.
Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language. Gives lots of examples of bad rhetoric.
Wie man mit Fundamentalisten diskutiert, ohne den Verstand zu verlieren. How to have a discussion with a fundamentalist without losing your mind. In German, I think I should do a translation of the book.
The formal subject of making arguments to convince others used to be called rhetoric. And it has been taught since the days of Plato and Aristotle.
Robert Putnam has done a significant amount of research related to racial and ethnic diversity. He published an article and later a book by the same name, entitled Bowling Alone wherein he discusses the detrimental effects of a multiracial society. The following is a quote from the above linked Wikipedia article:
>In recent years, Putnam has been engaged in a comprehensive study of the relationship between trust within communities and their ethnic diversity. His conclusion based on over 40 cases and 30,000 people within the United States is that, other things being equal, more diversity in a community is associated with less trust both between and within ethnic groups.
The more homogeneous the population, the more social capital that population has. Diversity is not a strength but is, in fact, a weakness.
I have found a lot of good discussion and support for men at /r/MensLib/
I've also heard about the term "social infrastructure" and how we have lost a lot of it which contributes to a lack of spaces for people to connect with one another. The historical "social infrastructure" for men have been bars, bowling alleys, VFWs, etc. but they have fallen out of favor as places for meaningful social interactions.
I haven't read it, but have heard the book 'Bowling Alone' mentioned alongside similar conversations. https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046
In a broader sense of community impact, the podcast 99% invisible has a good episode about social infrastructure. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/palaces-for-the-people/
I remembered the term wrong it is third place which is why google didn't bring anything up when you looked into it. Here is the wikipedia article on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
Here is how I would describe it.
Third Place is a concept of a place that we spend a lot of time socializing and enjoying ourselves at that is neither work nor home. The Cheers bar, bowling alleys, cafes, coffee shops, book shops, heck even hair salons or anywhere you can socialize with people you get along with. Due to economic changes which means less money to spend and people more likely to work less set hours, the internet, and having less free time in general third places have disintegrated which has caused a lot of harm to socialization.
This is the primary book on the subject.
https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046
>Strangely, those with an active vibrant spiritual life tend to be people with large amounts of leisure time and excess income (ie, rich people and the elderly).
It's also that if you attend church, you have a large social circle of like-minded individuals, for which humans are hard-wired. This is a lament I tend to hear from my atheist friends that in America there are few networking opportunities as thorough as attending a church. A good book about this is "Bowling Alone" about the decline of American civil society (outside of churches, but church attendance is also declining).
How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Bowling Alone.
The principle of Fürherprinzip is mostly organic. Humans naturally look towards strong leaders. And while the Third Reich was not completely organic, it was a substantial improvement over the liberal Judeo-Capitalist Weimar Republic. Adolf Hitler's long-term plans for Germany would have fully brought about the National Socialist ideal.
\>Have you had many bad experiences with people outside of your cultural background?
Yes, I went to a high school full of Negroes and mestizos, but that's purely anecdotal evidence, no? I'm intellectually honest, so I'll give you something more substantial. It's a study by Dr. Robert Putnam, entitled Bowling Alone. In it, he initially set out to prove the axiom that "diversity is our greatest strength", but quickly discovered quite the opposite. While studying the great cities of America, he found that ethnic diversity is strongly correlated with loss of social cohesion, diminishment of social capital, and a decrease in overall community engagement, not just between ethnic groups, but within them.
This is the book. I can't find a free PDF anywhere, but I have no doubt that you'll be able to find a torrent of it somewhere.
This last point addressed your other queries, too. The reason society must be organized along racial and ethnic lines, without getting into the spiritual side of things, is that human nature ensures that that's the only kind of organization that WILL work.
You know, I don't have an answer. Most of the selections so far are from before Wallace's prime. (Quick aside: Philip Roth's best books are his latest, but who he was to the world was always the man who wrote Portnoy's Complaint. His worldview never changed. Rather he grew in his craft, and his later characters were various iterations of Portnoy getting old, perhaps with the great exception of American Pastoral.)
Anyway, I don't have an answer because Wallace arrived at a deadlock in American life that we have not yet overcome. He was a prophet of America's decline. What I believe Wallace wanted was certainty and authority in a time where it wasn't granted him.
Politically conservative (he voted for Reagan and admired John McCain), he was desperate for a sense of civic life that was already in decline, and he wanted badly to be led.
Raised by atheist academics, he sought out the comfort of the Church. He wanted unironically to believe in "the sub-surface unity of all things" but couldn't get himself to do so, conceding instead that, "You get to decide what to worship." His message, instead, was existential: life is what you make of it, so pay attention. But he wanted more. He sought "redemption" through literature and contemplation, seeking something of substance to soothe his "inner sap." Perhaps he found it in glimpses, but his long-time depression betrayed dissatisfaction. He searched endlessly in mythology, folklore, and collective subconscious imagery, only to catch his own tail in a Kafkaesque cat-and-mouse chase with himself.
In love, he was a bachelor, who one time contemplated murder over jealous love. He was a womanizer who held his manhood cheap, retreating to books to "feel less alone."
Like Hal in Infinite Jest, he found no authority, neither from his wild, filmmaking father, nor in the life-sucking entertainments of his time. Instead, Wallace found solace among the meek, the addicts, and the defeated (he himself suffered from alcohol abuse). Deep down, it wasn't enough. Deep down, beneath his giant brain, down in the bones of his Anglo-American stock, he knew something was wrong in America. He lamented our cafeteria democracy of boring politicians. He lamented what he called the "death of civics." Look at us now: government in chaos, the waning of religion across the West, an epidemic of addicts, no closer to cultural wisdom or unity, individuals still atomized and community still broken. (As an aside, I believe these premonitions sparked his interest in Quebec's secession movement. There, at least, people were fighting for something.)
In short, Tl;dr: Wallace was perfectionist born in a time that he couldn't perfect. What we have of him is a glorious attempt to surmount the chaos and fragmentation he felt in his heart and in the world around him. The reason I don't have an answer to your question is because I don't think anyone else got as close to articulating that as he did, and I think his fictions and his essays will be read in the future with great pity because I believe that we will rise to the occasion—in politics, in art, and in society—in due time. We always do.
No. While there may be many things wrong with American society, there is absolutely no valid historical parallel between American society in 1960 and American society in 2011 that would predict the emergence of mass social movements. The causes for the New Left and the sixties were many, and almost none of those causes are shared today:
The current climate is far different.
While I certainly agree that much has to change, you make the fundamental errors of assuming that it will change, that it will change rapidly, and that it will change as the result of people waking up and realizing what is going on.
EDIT: wanted to expand some more on what I said.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0743203046/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505517403&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=bowling+alone&dpPl=1&dpID=51GpVT7tYoL&ref=plSrch
Boomers rejected a lot of previous cultural norms. See Bowling Alone for more on how American society has rejected Freemasonry and other kinds of "social capital."
Bowling Alone
The downside of diversity
As for increased crime, hard to find the data since we don't always track it well. But there is some out there, you can find it. Or just look at the Most Wanted criminals in Texas, New Mexico, etc. When you have unrestricted immigration, you're not selecting for the best people. Of course you're going to get lots of criminals.
Depressed wages? Explain how you can import millions of undocumented illegal workers who are willing to work cheap for cash, and this WON'T depress wages for the native low-skilled workers.
That's a great question. I'm not a sociologist, but even many researchers will tell you there isn't a single answer for the definitive rise in social isolation. To make some sweeping, general claims, it largely has to do with:
And right! The study you reference might be the General Social Survey from U Chicago. It's really astounding that it's hard to talk about loneliness publicly, considering the former surgeon general labeled it an epidemic. Hard to believe there can still be a stigma about something affecting so many people.
If you're interested in this, two great books I recommend are The Village Effect and The Lonely American. Both have excellent theories and explanations.
> Points 1 and 3 in the summary I quoted apply to measures of income regardless of whether you're counting household size or individual income.
Okay. Taken together, the following issues would tend to make me question my men's wage example:
One resolution could be that we are looking at the wrong time frame (30-45 years vs. 8 years). EDIT: Here is an article from five thirty eight, looking at a 15 year time frame. There is some sense in attributing the rise of Trump to things that happened recently as opposed to 45 year trends.
It's also possible that what is "lost" can be not just economic but social or cultural ... e.g. Putnam #1, Putnam #2, Cahn and Carbone. This would still relate to loss aversion, it would just be a loss of a more intangible sort.
> where exactly was the break in society between "i'm going to handle this shit myself like a boss" and "keep the blinds closed, honey, let the police handle it" who then ignore the situation until they have to come out for a third call in which they shoot the man in the chest in front of his kids?
Bowling Alone
I'm not decrying the end of that kind of mob justice, because we also have to remember that these little informal acts of vigilantism also helped keep many a minority down, but we certainly have swung pretty far in the opposite direction.
Believe it or not, up to about the 1990s it was perfectly acceptable to take a woman bowling on a date. There are simply many better entertainment options now.
There's also this phenomenon - https://amzn.com/0743203046
For those interested in new reading material, I highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743203046
Well anyways, here's a NRx reading list I'm slowly making my way through...
​
Introduction
The Dark Enlightenment Defined*
The Dark Enlightenment Explained*
The Path to the Dark Enlightenment*
The Essence of the Dark Enlightenment*
An Introduction to Neoreaction*
Neoreaction for Dummies*
Reactionary Philosophy in a Nutshell*
The Dark Enlightenment – Nick Land*
The Neoreactionary Canon
The Cathedral Explained*
When Wish Replaces Thought Steven Goldberg *
Three Years of Hate – In Mala Fide***
****
The Decline
We are Doomed – John Derbyshire*
America Alone – Mark Steyn*
After America – Mark Steyn*
Death of the West – Pat Buchanan***
The Abolition of Britain – Peter Hitchens
****
Civil Society and Culture
Coming Apart – Charles Murray
Disuniting of America – Arthur Schlesinger
The Quest for Community – Robert Nisbet
Bowling Alone – Robert Putnam
Life at the Bottom – Theodore Dalrymple
Intellectuals and society – Thomas Sowell
****
Western Civilization
Civilization: The West and the Rest – Niall Ferguson
Culture Matters – Samuel Huntington
The Uniqueness of Western Civilization – Ricardo Duchesne
****
Moldbuggery
Mencius Moldbug is one of the more influential neoreactionaries. His blog, Unqualified Reservations, is required reading; if you have not read Moldbug, you do not understand modern politics or modern history. Start here for an overview of major concepts: Moldbuggery Condensed. Introduction to Moldbuggery has the Moldbug reading list. Start with Open Letter series, then simply go from the beginning.*
****
​
It's amusing to see how people like OP are overreacting at recent events when similar shit reared its face during GWB's tenure. Then attitudes rolled back and went the other way during the Obama administration. This isn't new - stop pretending like all this shit has went away when it hasn't: people just bottled it all up.
Go read a book, OP. Here's Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam.
And a description of political pendulum swings..
>It's shocking that a Marxist even has this view about capitalism.
Marxism is a result of looking at capitalism and what it does. It's not like I'm trying to find fault with capitalism because I "just hate" capitalism for no reason.
>society seems to be alive and kicking around here
Which city do you live in? It's just that I keep talking to Americans who observe the same things e.g. Robert Putnam spelled out in Bowling Alone. Atomization of society and destruction of social cohesion and social capital are neither my nor Marxism's invention. These are widely discussed issues. Maybe these things are just absent from your little filter bubble?
It was well on its way before cell phones came into the picture.
Regarding social isolation, check out Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
> Single black mothers are merely hero victims in US society deserving of redistributed wealth and services when they should be villains... they are essentially dooming their offspring to failure
I agree with the spirit of your remark here, albeit in a different vein. If the Democrats (and I'll use that instead of 'Left' or 'Socialists') really were concerned about disadvantaged children and minorities, etc., then they would actively encourage two-parent, intact families. Discourage premarital sexual behavior. Initiate cultural programs in the black community to drive academic achievement and success. Undermine a black subculture that makes it acceptable to look and behave like the black equivalent of a redneck, etc. And again, all of this was demonstrated in Robert Putnam's work (and he's a liberal academic who conducted the largest study in American history on the state of our civic culture and communities).
> Socialists here literally look at black women like animals who are wholly unresponsible for their situation... They go so far as to say that black people can't even help but procreate because rich whitey doesn't properly train them not to or give them condoms and they're just following an innate urge to fuck that they can't resist.
(You had to say Socialists, didn't you?) I'd ascribe that more to the lunatic SJW fringe than anything else. Though, yes, I'm sure I could find some self-identified socialist asshole that thought this.
The best thing would be to knock on doors and not talk about the candidate beyond inviting the person to a [fun event] put on by local Elizabeth Warren Supporters. At the same time hand over a brochure for them to read describing the event with time and date along with some quick bullet points about her. Most people are desperate to meet others as was covered in the book from a few years back called Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
> What the fuck do you guys have against diversity
Read Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. The downsides to diversity vastly outweigh any supposed upside.
Again with the insults. You guys can't have an argument, you just say "nuh uh, [insult]".
What are the benefits of diversity? (without mentioning food)
Made me think of this... Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
Bowling Alone
I haven't read this but I'm betting this draws on the same concept as this renowned work by Harvard Professor, Robert Putnam.
I recommend Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046/
Here is a good book on the subject
I think that might have been taken from this. It's a good book.
A book you would find interesting: https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046
Yeah, everyone I've known that had alcoholism or drug issues had a degree of misery before the addiction got bad, and it spiraled from there. Our culture, our politics, and certainly our technology aren't helping anyone get more fulfillment out of life. This book describes the problem pretty well in my eyes:
https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046
But I don't know what the solution is, for our society. I grew up a liberal atheist, but I've begun to see the value in spirituality as I've become more conservative (classical liberal really), noticing progressive policies causing more societal disharmony rather than less. I sometimes envy those on the right that enjoy Christianity, but I find most of them aren't spiritually fulfilled by it either. r/taoism is where I get my fill - meditation helps. I started delving into buddhism as my first foray into spiritual fulfillment, but ended up resonating with Taoist philosophies more.
So I might not be familiar with all the different fields in social sciences. I only have a 203 level understanding of the field to be honest. I like to think that I’m a well read individual and I read a lot of literature on the subject. Here’s another example: https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046/ref=nodl_
550 pages about the decline of social capital. A fancy way of saying we don’t gather at bowling alleys anymore. You disagree that someone is OVER ANALYZING the topic a bit?