alt Hacker NewsThe book Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam is about the decline of civil society.
Church membership is down. Labor union membership is down. Parents got crushed in the pandemic with school shutdowns, daycare shutdowns, and formula shortages. It takes two incomes to afford a family's lifestyle. Someone has to take care of the kid. Two people have to do the job of three people.
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>Church membership is down.
I mean church people love to think of this as a decline of society but this is more about the destruction of the church itself as an out of date institution that was using itself as a control mechanism and that broke the moment we discovered the world wasn't made on hocus pocus.
The thing is the essence of the church could still maintain a huge amount of social control because people need to socialize.
> It takes two incomes to afford a family's lifestyle. Someone has to take care of the kid. Two people have to do the job of three people.
Being stay at home parent is one of the most lonely thing you can do. Yes, the parent who works in office and goes bowling with collagues is less lonely. But the one who is spending whole day with a small kid and no one else is much more lonely .They cant go bowling either, because they need to put kids to sleep. So, they have to try much harder to have any social contact.
Second this. Maybe also "The Fourth Turning"
It is cool to live in a place where everyone questions the roles society might impose on them, but it's too extreme lately. The cost of community is inconvenience. The price of individuality is loneliness.
So much of life is brutally inefficient without networks of trust and reciprocity.