Going it alone Americans have tuned in and tuned out
McCarthy, Abigail
ABIGAIL MCCARTHY
GOING IT ALONE
Americans are no longer joiners
At last, it seems to me, responsible professionals are beginning to concede what anyone with plain common sense recognized long...
...Of course, there have been many changes in our society over the past forty years...
...The move you read newspapers, the more trusting you are...
...They were in Washington...
...At the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in September, Harvard Professor Robert D. Putnam enjoyed a respectful hearing of his thesis: that the surge of television watching in the 1950s did much to bring about a precipitous decline in social trust and group participation...
...There are very few advocacy groups outside....Not one of those flaunted, vaunted advocacy groups forever protecting the interests of the children and the helpless and the homeless...
...None are here...
...The decline in participation has been precipitous but we have only, little by little, become aware of its effects...
...Such association-building was so much a part of American life that it used to be jokingly said that when more than two Americans got together they formed a committee...
...And, of course, that is behind the deterioration of the political dialogue, the deterioration of public debate...
...Why single out TV...
...He now argues further that democracy-the form of the state on which we are globally agreed-depends on a "healthy and dynamic civil society," as does capitalism...
...ble demanders...
...In joining such groups, Americans reached beyond the family, learned to trust other people, to know other people, and to work with them, thus becoming more public-spirited...
...Putnam's research shows a steady decline in the percentage of people joining groups-from political and fraternal groups to hobby groups and bowling leagues...
...I can recall the extraordinary energy that went into any change in the welfare system thirty years ago, twenty-five years ago...
...No more...
...His essay "Bowling Alone" evoked national interest in the decline...
...The more you watch television, the less trusting you are...
...Earlier, Fukuyama, a social scientist, had argued in The End of History that the centuries-old debate over the ideal form of government has been decided in favor of democracy allied with capitalism...
...One group was in Washington yesterday, and I can speak with some spirit on that...
...Families owning television sets went from 10 percent of the population to 90 percent in only eight years...
...Fifteen years ago, if there was a proposal to take forty dollars out of some demonstration project here on the Senate floor there would be forty representatives of various advocacy groups outside...
...Let us heed Senator Patrick Moynihan's heartsick cry on the Senate floor after the vote on the so-called welfare reform bill: "Why do we not see the endless parade of petitioners as when health-care reform was before us in the last Congress, the lobbyist, the pretend citizen groups, the real citizen groups...
...ABIGAIL MCCARTHY GOING IT ALONE Americans are no longer joiners At last, it seems to me, responsible professionals are beginning to concede what anyone with plain common sense recognized long ago-television has ripped apart the social fabric of the nation...
...Most serious is the decline in the numbers of those who vote, which has resulted in the election of extremists intent on dismantling our social safety nets for health care and the alleviation of poverty...
...Nobody else...
...The importance of this social fabric, "the social capital" on which democracy depends, is elaborated in Francis Fukuyama's Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (Free Press...
...He sees a direct correlation between the hours spent watching television and the number of groups a person joins...
...In an interview with Washington Post (September 3) writer Thomas Edsall, Putnam elaborated: "The social fabric is becoming visibly thinner, our connections among each other are becoming visibly thinner...
...Many of the positive elements of our society have depended on the art of association-the labor movement, the women's movement, the civil rights movement, even political parties-and we have scarcely been aware of it...
...Putnam says not...
...And where are the groups opposed...
...None of the great marchers, the great chapters, the nonnegotiable demanders...
...Groups can and have been formed for purposes alien to the common good but they are easily differentiated by the fact that they weaken rather than strengthen the social fabric...
...Isn't it possible that the decline in trust and participation was caused by a combination of high divorce rates, women leaving the home to join the work people living in one place (the suburbs) and working in another, middle-income workers being transferred from one part of the country to another, etc...
...Interestingly enough, it is different with newspapers...
...They were here...
...He blames the sudden intrusion of television into the life of the nation in the 1950s...
...The decline set in, according to his research, before these changes began...
...We don't trust one another as much, and we don't know one another as much...
...Alexis de Tocqueville saw these as good for democracy...
...All of these also depended on a basic optimism and good will engendered by the dynamic of people sharing an effort...
...One of the most noteworthy characteristics of American society in the early years of our republic was the proliferation of associations-charities, choral groups, church study groups, book clubs, etc...
...This was a group of Catholic bishops and members from Catholic Charities...
Vol. 122 • October 1995 • No. 18
