{"id":452,"date":"2026-09-20T13:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T18:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/?p=452"},"modified":"2026-09-20T13:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T18:36:12","slug":"our-disintegration-prologue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/?p=452","title":{"rendered":"Our Disintegration &#8211; Prologue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With every passing year, I become more convinced that Robert Putnam\u2019s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/478.Bowling_Alone\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/478.Bowling_Alone\">Bowling Alone<\/a><\/em> might be the most important nonfiction work of all time, and I so dearly wish it wasn\u2019t dreadfully dull to read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019ll give you the Cliff\u2019s Notes.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Every passing decade since 1960, Americans have become less and less socially connected.&nbsp; Fewer people join clubs, become active in their community, or hang out regularly with friends and neighbors with each passing year.&nbsp; Bowling is used as one example: we shifted from a majority of bowlers bowling in clubs, to mostly bowling alone (thus, the title), over the course of about 30 years.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After analyzing the data in a few different ways, Putnam found something interesting about the nature of this isolating trend.&nbsp; Individual people, over the course of their lives, were <em>not<\/em> becoming less socially connected over time.&nbsp; Rather, generations of well-connected people were \u201caging out\u201d (dying) and getting replaced with a generational cohort that was a little bit less social.&nbsp; Then, that generation was replaced with one even less social than that.&nbsp; So on, and so forth.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think that analysis is crucial to understanding why the loneliness epidemic is so hard to crack despite everybody appearing to want things to be different.&nbsp; You\u2019re not talking about people who knew how to live in a well-connected world, and stopped.&nbsp; That would be easier; just a matter of reinvigorating an existing skill set.&nbsp; Instead, we\u2019re dealing with a generational cohort who has never known what rich social capital means.&nbsp; We\u2019re trying to solve this crisis by asking people, often children, to speak a language they never learned.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Putnam spends most of the book searching for the root cause of this slow deterioration of social trust and cohesion, and frustratingly never comes up with one single clear answer.&nbsp; I can\u2019t speak for all of society, but I have a decade of lived experience as a parent that gives me a few ideas.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I had started working on this post years ago, and find myself turning back to it in times like these.&nbsp; Over time, it morphed into something too big for one sitting.&nbsp; I want to do more than complain, to contribute something beyond adding another voice screaming into the void.&nbsp; I want to construct a series of lessons to be learned from individual experiences when viewed as part of these larger trends.&nbsp; Having done so, I\u2019ll circle back, pulling the lessons together and hoping the pieces complete some soft of puzzle.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I do not know if this is going to amount to anything coherent or actionable, but there\u2019s no such thing as a failed experiment.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I invite you to come along with me.&nbsp; I do appreciate it.&nbsp; It\u2019s lonely out here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With every passing year, I become more convinced that Robert Putnam\u2019s Bowling Alone might be the most important nonfiction work of all time, and I so dearly wish it wasn\u2019t dreadfully dull to read. I\u2019ll give you the Cliff\u2019s Notes.&nbsp;&nbsp; Every passing decade since 1960, Americans have become less and less socially connected.&nbsp; Fewer people [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":453,"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions\/453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}