Three on American Social Problems Just Beyond Politics and Employment: Is This Where We Are Now?

Our country is in pain.  There are plenty of perspectives from which we can say that, with the most obvious our political polarization, widespread opioid abuse, and the seeming reduction of civil discourse.  Yet there are more, as three authors have pointed out.

The first is Arthur C. Brooks, president of the conservative think-tank American Enterprise Institute, in the November 23^rd New York Times “How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart.”  He called that an “epidemic,” saying that it is shown by almost half of our country-people claiming that they “sometimes or always feel alone or “left out.””  Last year I wrote a three-part series on one large component, insufficient access to sex, but Brooks wrote on something more encompassing.  In reviewing a new book by Nebraska senator Ben Sasse, Them:  Why We Hate Each Other – and How to Heal, he said that instead of from general civic life “people find a sense of community in the polarized tribes forming on the left and the right,” and named “the changing nature of work,” where jobs provide far less togetherness than in the past.  Brooks’s and Sasse’s recommended solution of finding a small-town-like place with plenty of community is, though, hardly an answer for tens of millions of lifetime city dwellers. 

Second, in the April 7^th USA Today, we heard from Warren Farrell, a long-time freethinking author on the rights of and relationships between the sexes.  In “’Boy crisis’ threatens America’s future with economic, health, and suicide risks,” he defined another problem area, “a global crisis… particularly egregious in America.”  He saw it as evident in education (males well behind females in school achievement and falling), mental health (he cited the stunning statistics that, despite much press on the pressures on female adolescents, 15 to 19-year-old men and boys kill themselves at triple the rate of same-aged women and girls, which goes up to 4½ times for those 20 to 24), “shame,” with “boys feeling that their masculinity is toxic” (about time somebody mentioned that!), and “economic health,” with technological changes hitting men’s jobs much harder.  Farrell considered the real problem to stem from boys not having involved fathers, or fathers present at all, which, as an effect as well as a cause, leads us to the hardly-valuable conclusion that prosperity is good, and to me the judgment that much of what he discussed is an ultimate result of not enough jobs and commensurate devaluation of people who would otherwise be stabilized through working. 

Third was a piece which I expected to get much more attention than it did.  David Brooks’s February 18^th New York Times “A Nation of Weavers,” revealed the author and columnist’s other activity, working on “Weave:  The Social Fabric Project,” a comprehensive attempt to build and strengthen communities nationwide through the nonpartisan Aspen Institute think tank.  After along with Sasse and Arthur Brooks blaming “social isolation,” reminiscent of George H.W. Bush’s Thousand Points of Light David Brooks lauded those with involvements from teaching boxing to visiting hospital patients and a teenage-activity-provider for saying she did things not for or to people but with them, and said they comprised “a movement that doesn’t know it’s a movement.”  He named the real problem as how to “change the culture” and thereby to “change behavior on a large scale,” and said those who “assault and stereotype a person” have “ripped the social fabric.” 

Can we realistically hope to become “a nation of weavers”?  In decades maybe, but not now, for several reasons.  First, our political alliances are too fixed, and civic improvement efforts in almost all cases do not appeal to the Trumpist tribe, as accepting lying, distrusting community, and assaulting and stereotyping vilifying political opponents are, sadly, planks of their platform.  Second, too many efforts are rejected – I for one could name a half-dozen community-building efforts for which I had both interest and ability to help or even lead, which the beneficiaries simply did not want – and armies of potential “weavers” have since become discouraged.  Third, as David Brooks wrote it, the standards for public benefactors are just too high, if indeed “Weavers are not motivated” “by money, power, and status” – there is plenty of room for people seeking such achievements to help where they live as well.  And fourth, Brooks’s piece is generally too vague, with its overall idea, that we should do something to build our communities, not showing a clear path toward action.  

Yes, this is where we are now.  These are real problems.  All have possible solutions, but none are easy.  They may be helped someday by the iGen, who will understand the limitations of technological connections more than any other cohort, or their children.  In the meantime, if we want to improve our lot as human beings and Americans, it is up to us to change – individually.