Community: Reality of the Present
The Emotional Pandemic
Rise of isolation and loneliness:
In the last podcast on community entitled “Lessons from the Past,” we looked at what the concept of community used to be like, and how it gradually evolved out of mutual togetherness, interdependency, and commitment. Today, we look at what community exists as of today, and ask ourselves, have we progressed? If what I read is any indication, we are facing a troubled time. For example: It wasn’t too long ago I was reading a book in which the author made the claim that today’s young people struggle a great deal with the issues of loneliness and anxiety. Sometime later, I ran across another article affirming pretty much the same thing. The second article was by Tyler Vanderweele, Ph.D., who leads the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard which longitudinally follows various age groups from year to year and measures their sense of “flourishing.” His recent review demonstrated that young people between the ages of 18 and 25 had less of a sense of well-being than in the past. This sudden decline was a new finding. Their concerns contributing to their loss of flourishing fell into two main categories: one was that of financial security reflected by their concerns regarding the economy, personal debt, and future employment; and the other was their concern regarding personal development. This was reflected by an admission of several issues: a decreased sense of happiness, less personal meaning in life, and having difficulties with character development…all resulting in further difficulties in forming personal and meaningful relationships.
Common sense causes one to ask whether there might be a relationship between the amount of time spent in isolation… predominantly interacting with digital media and the difficulty in developing meaningful and encouraging interpersonal relationships.
If that isn’t enough, here is some additional data to consider from an article in the Washington Post, November 23, 2022, by Bryce Ward.
• Our social lives were withering dramatically before Covid-19. Between 2014 and 2019, time spent with friends went down (and time spent alone went up) by more than it did during the pandemic.
According to the Census Bureau’s American Time Use Survey, the amount of time the average American spent with friends was stable, at 6½ hours per week, between 2010 and 2013. Then, in 2014, time spent with friends began to decline. By 2019, the average American was spending only four hours per week with friends (a sharp, 37 percent decline from five years before). Social media, political polarization, and new technologies all played a role in the drop. (It is notable that market penetration for smartphones crossed 50 percent in 2014.)
• Covid then deepened this trend. During the pandemic, time with friends fell further — in 2021, the average American spent only two hours and 45 minutes a week with close friends (a 58 percent decline relative to 2010-2013).
• Similar declines can be seen even when the definition of “friends” is expanded to include neighbors, co-workers, and clients. The average American spent 15 hours per week with this broader group of friends a decade ago, 12 hours per week in 2019, and only 10 hours a week in 2021.
• On average, Americans did not transfer that lost time to spouses, partners, or children. Instead, they chose to be alone.
• No single group drives this trend. Men and women, white and non-white, rich and poor, urban and rural, married and unmarried, parents and non-parents all saw proportionally similar declines in time spent with others. The pattern holds for both remote and in-person workers.
• The percentage decline is also similar for the young and old; however, given how much time young people spend with friends, the absolute decline among Americans aged 15 to 19 is staggering. Relative to 2010-2013, the average American teenager spent approximately 11 fewer hours with friends each week in 2021 (a 64 percent decline) and 12 additional hours alone (a 48 percent increase).
• “.. we have now begun to cast off our connections to each other.” – Bryce Ward
• A Pew Research Center survey made public in August 2022, suggests that Covid might have changed us permanently — 35 percent of Americans say that participating in large gatherings, going out and socializing in-person have become less important since the pandemic.
• This paints a sobering and startling picture of future generations and of American culture; for these will be the next era of engineers, doctors, teachers, and laborers of all kinds. What will be the nature of their character? Will they be able to adapt? Will they be able to relate? Or, will decisions be left to the algorithms of technology?
Causes and Consequences:
Neither study determined the specific causes of such a decline, but a few have been suggested. Here are some to reflect on:
1. Decline of family structure and interactions
2. Decline of faith-based values
3. The centralization of power and wealth in government agencies, mass media, and corporations, causing the individual to feel isolated and impotent.
4. Ascendence of the predominant and influential role of digital sources in society, especially in our vulnerable young people who tend to listen to and believe in the tunes of contemporary themes.
5. An increasingly critical, harsh, and untrustworthy society characterized by cancel culture, gas-lighting, trolling, deceit, and division witnessed in the projections of media and politics, and in some cases, even education (bullying). One must remind themselves that prominent narratives do not mean those narratives are true.
6. The movement from factual and rational basis for attitudes and actions, to those of personal emotional and arbitrary preferential ones.
7. The movement from genuine relationships characterized by empathy and cooperation to those of isolated individualism.
I’m sure you can add others.
Rise of digital and social media diversions:
A legend is told that a long time ago in the 1300’s, the small German town of Hamelin had a problem. The town was being overrun by vermin, by rats. They had tried everything to rid their homes and village of rats, but nothing had worked; and the people were becoming very frustrated with their mayor and council, demanding an immediate solution.
By happenstance, a stranger entered the town, a piper he was, dressed in bright colors of yellow and red carrying his small flute; and claiming that he could remove the rats from town with a tune from his magical flute.
The mayor in the council quickly offered him 1000 guilders if he would be able to remove the rats from the town, which is a huge amount to offer, but they were desperate. They were throwing money at a problem. The Pied Piper promptly placed the flute upon his lips and began an odd but alluring tune, drawing the rats from the houses, the marketplace, and throughout the small town…following the Piper to the nearby river Weser, jumping in and drowning.
As expected, the town was overjoyed, but upon reentering the town and requesting his reward, the Mayor and the Council reneged on their offer, stating it was only a joke. But they would pay him 50 guilders instead. To no one’s surprise, the Piper became quite angry and threatened retribution for the town’s deceit and dishonesty. Still, the Mayor and Council refused.
At this, the Pied Piper put the flute to his lips again and began another alluring magical tune, upon which all the children of the town, except three, began to come out of their homes and willingly and joyfully followed the Pied Piper out of the town, up into the nearby mountain cave, entering it, never to be seen again. And not one family intervened or opposed the Piper’s tunes as he led them away, for Hamelin was not a genuine community. It was simply a crowd, a town of gathered people, naïve and unaware, living delusionary lives, denying consequences for their actions.
In the most simplistic terms, it is said that the moral of the story is to keep your promises, but I think it speaks to far more than that. Though various versions of the legend have different endings, the gist of the morals of the story are in its body…
• Failed leadership: The greed and deceit of the Mayor and Council – empty promises. Do you know of any government or corporation seeking only their own power or wealth? Who only throws money at problems, rather than working cooperatively to solve them? Those who believe in a top-down authoritarian approach to problems?
• The desire for immediate gain or benefit without consideration of the eventual consequences. – Do you witness decisions made upon the desire to have what one wants, now, irrespective of its ultimate consequences? Does delayed gratification, in order to acquire a more beneficial result, still exist?
• It’s their fault: lack of personal responsibility to solve problems, placing the blame on others. It’s an easy out.
• What holds one’s attention? The allure to the children of the magic of the piper. Consider the attraction and addiction to digital media today amongst our young people. The average amount of time on the digital media today for those 13-18 years old is 9 hours/day; not including time spent using media for school or homework. (a study by Common Sense Media). Not only this, but consider the allure of narcotics, peer acceptance, gender fluidity, artificial intelligence, virtual reality… the allure of conformity, to dance to the music of the prevalent tunes.
• Lack of family care and concern for their children: lessons of restraint, caution, and forethought. The children’s abandonment from their families for the immediate emotional gratification of an alluring and mesmerizing tune. Is family interaction being sacrificed for entertainment and immersion of the internet? Where are the parents to say NO to intoxicating and violent video games which intoxicate and desensitize?
• Actions have consequences: Sometimes actions result in a sad end, or disappointing consequence. Does one choose to live in a delusionary sphere… mesmerized by the magical music of media and modem?
(Immortalized in the poem by Robert Browning (1812-1889) “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.”)
The legend has a sad and tragic ending, which has been softened by political correctness to an ending in which the piper returns the children to the town (Disney modification). But I grew up remembering the original harsh ending in which the children never returned. There’s nothing wrong with harsh endings, for they contain a warning, not that all will be made well again, but that there can be serious consequences, even tragic consequences to our decisions and actions. Harsh endings teach us about the reality of life, its experiences of disappointment, loss, injury, and even death. This awareness of reality and warning of consequences create the foundation of caution and restraint that protects each one of us, and especially our children from harm. It provides a lesson that all cannot be made well again, and it causes one to face the reality that some decisions can never be rescinded, some events can never be restored, and some consequences cannot be undone. They are final.
Rise of Polarizing Attitudes and Actions:
1 – Building Meaningful Personal Relationships: Community is not the Crowd.
Humanizing
The “Crowd” is not Community:
The point worth emphasizing is, to be perfectly clear…groups, tribes, teams, and meets are not community. Instead, they are employment, personal interest, or entertainment “experiences.” I once read that today’s adults, “Shop on Amazon, entertain themselves with Netflix, and work on Zoom.” Is there any wonder why they might be lonely and alienated?
Community, on the contrary, is something much different. So, what exactly is community and what are its benefits that we are perhaps missing today? What responsibilities does the community have in protecting our youth? Think about it a bit: Who is teaching values, teaching empathy and compassion for others, providing beneficial opportunities, encouraging and affirming personal growth and character within a safe environment? The government, the schools, businesses? Put another way, to whom do you trust your children’s well-being?
Without free and emotionally healthy relationships, any concept of genuine community degenerates into nothing more than a crowd. Here a warning stands. There is a vulnerability. A danger always exists in a crowd of individuals without the benefits of principles to guide them, without the relationships of others to counsel them, without the moral grounding of family or faith upon which to stand… Without these underpinnings the “crowd” becomes nothing more than “mob formation.”
Without a sense of a true community that engenders beneficial values and consisting of strong, healthy relationships, the “crowd” now becomes little more than a group of isolated and naïve individuals exposed to the dangers of social and political manipulation. Consensus of doctrine is promoted by those of power and influence, think Big Government, Big Tech, Big Money, or what is currently known as the “Great Reset” of powerful individuals and organizations forming globally. The nidus of political correctness soon matures into the realities of “group-think” or “mass formation” being used in nefarious ways to manipulate our culture and country, increasingly infringing upon individual liberties… If unchecked, history tells one that this trajectory can eventually result in some form of authoritarianism and oligarchy. If you think this is too far-fetched, read the book, 1984, by George Orwell for an eye-opener. One soon realizes that the circumstances described there are not so far away from those within current culture.
In his book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, Mattias Desmet outlines the four conditions which he feels lead to mass formation. See if you notice any similarities with our current cultural leanings today. He says of the first condition,
“The first condition is generalized loneliness, social isolation, and lack of social bonds among the population. The Enlightenment is characterized by an emergence of this phenomenon, but today the scale has grown to such an extent that the US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy began referring to it as the loneliness epidemic, and Theresa May in Great Britain actually appointed a Minister of Loneliness. Not insignificant to my argument, loneliness is strongly associated with use of social media and communication technology.” [1]
For those curious, the remaining other three conditions Desmet describes as 2) “a lack of meaning in life,” 3) “the widespread presence of free-floating anxiety and psychological unease within a population,” and 4) “a lot of free-floating frustration and aggression.” [2] Do any of these sound familiar to our current societal condition?
Key distinctions between community and crowd:
Genuine community preserves the integrity of the individual; the crowd absorbs it. Genuine community is generated by means of free individual choice; not by intimidation or coercion. Having individual identity in community provides for responsible action based upon true first principles; not an excuse derived from a narrative of victimization. The value of a person in community in some fashion grows as one contributes to the “common good,” rather than existing in a crowd which values only personal acquiescence to an authoritarian ideology.
Genuine community embodies, reminds, and teaches these lessons to our children. It should be the repository of values of well-being. Then how best can meaningful relationships for adults and for our children be developed, maintained, and encouraged to thrive and flourish?
1. Develop a clear definition/concept of true community, not the crowd. (Warning: see mass formation discussion in the psychology of totalitarianism.)
2. Remember: an internet group or following is a special interest social group, not a true community, and cannot adequately serve as one. Limit internet and social media use. Search for alternative sources of information and entertainment. (i.e., reading good literature, listening to good music, learn a new instrument, talent, or language)
3. Develop meaningful personal face-to-face relationships
4. Focus on character development: Start small. Choose an aspect of character that you would like to work on and focus on developing it. (Gratitude, affirming others, etc.)
5. Strive for the “common good,” by respecting the personality and character of the individual, with the goals of protection and provision for each person.
6. If using social media, be genuine and affirming; avoid comparisons with others and harsh critique.
“You can help reverse these trends today without waiting for the researchers and policymakers to figure it all out. It’s the holidays: Don’t skip Thanksgiving with your family. Go to that holiday party (or throw one yourself). Go hang out with friends for coffee, or a hike, or in a museum, or a concert — whatever. You will feel better, create memories, boost your health, stumble across valuable information — and so will your companions. Put effort into building relationships that you can count on in good times and bad because, as the song goes, that’s what friends are for. Besides, you just might have a good time.” – Bryce Ward
This is how things stand as of today. It paints a stark picture, does it not? I wonder what the future holds.
In the next podcast of Maugs Musings, we will discuss what the future of community might look like. What can be done to build helpful structures of relationships which engender trust and commitment for one another? How can one assist our young people in developing the character and skills required to live a well-balanced life of friendships and purpose? What is the reason for one’s hope?
Join us then for the next podcast of Maugs Musings entitled, “Community – Hope for the Future.”
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[1] Mattias Desmet, “The Psychology of Totalitarianism,” (White River Junction, VT, London, UK: Chelsea Publishing, 2022) p.94
[2] Ibid. p.94-95