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The only rational way to explain the observations and
conclusions of Robert Putnam is that he lives on a
different planet. He's a social scientist at Harvard
University, and most notably, the author of Bowling
Alone.
Putnam has made a big splash with his book. Its thesis
is that we have become increasingly isolated from each
other these days. He argues that we don't spend as much
time interacting face-to-face as we did 25 years ago. Thus
America is losing social capital,
and some horrible
fate looms.
One refutation is as close as the post office, which sits three blocks from my house. This would be a 10-minute round-trip stroll if Putnam were right about American isolation.
But on a clement day, this excursion can take the better part of an hour -- chatting with neighbors out in their yards, gossiping with other pedestrians, discussing the latest perfidies of our city government with certain citizens who share my attitude problems.
(On occasion, I have been introduced as Salida's
leading curmudgeon.
Although this is flattering, I
always feel compelled to correct it. As long as Ray
Perschbacher and Ralph Moore live here, I'm not even in the
same league, let alone a leader.)
For further evidence of how wrong Putnam is, look closely at the signs the next time you're driving on a rural highway.
You'll see dozens of Adopt a Highway
messages.
Granted, many of the highway parents
are commercial
enterprises, but there are thousands of miles of Colorado
roadside that get cleaned twice a year by civic and
volunteer groups. This is personal involvement and
interaction -- you can't clean a barrow ditch from your
desktop. Or note the Adopt a Trail Segment
the next
time you're in the woods.
This sort of thing didn't even exist 25 years ago, and yet Putnam tells us we've been sliding downhill into isolation for the past quarter-century.
The work I do -- writing -- is not a social activity, and the only organization I belong to is Friends of the Salida Regional Library. Friends is a great organization because it does not hold car washes or bake sales, or even meetings. Once a year, you get a mailed request for money, and you send them some, and that's it.
Further, my idea of a good time is sitting at home and reading a book. So I suspect that I suffer more from Putnam's dreaded social isolation than most people do.
And yet, almost daily, I have face-to-face encounters with people circulating petitions or inviting me to meetings of their organizations.
These organizations range from the Old Spanish Trail Association to the Citizens to Save the Little Cochetopa School Section. Without exception, they require many hours of that face-to-face contact that Putnam says we're losing.
Most of these groups have formed in order to advocate or oppose some government action -- that is, they are the avatar of civic involvement.
Want to prevent pumping from the Closed Basin? Join Citizens for San Luis Valley Water. Want to promote a national historic trail from Santa Fe to Los Angeles? Enlist in the Old Spanish Trail Association. Want to promote certain standards on public lands? Try the Greater Arkansas River Nature Association.
Don't want a juvenile sex offenders facility that Wheat Ridge and Lakewood don't want, either? There's a group fighting that. And a group opposed to importing radioactive waste to western Montrose County. And an alliance trying to stop the meadow outside Telluride from getting developed. And a group devoted to distilling and preserving South Park's heritage. And an organization opposing water exports from the upper Gunnison basin.
And these are just the ones that come to mind without delving through any of the piles of paper on my desk.
To be sure, these groups aren't bowling leagues. By and large, they're people who have discovered that it is impossible to trust our governments, at any level, to act in the public interest without continuous oversight and nagging.
In other words, you don't dare turn your back on any outfit from the local sanitation district board to the U.S. Congress, because the other forces -- the forces of money -- are always present.
That may say something dismal about American political culture. But it also says that Putnam couldn't be more wrong about our social interactions. If people are bowling alone these days, it's probably to relax from the hectic pace of all the meetings they attend on other nights.
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