Social Diabetes

I really enjoyed the Jonathan Rauch column I reviewed because it gave an answer to my favorite question: what caused the decades-long decline of social capital? All forms of civic engagement—working for a political party, going to church, volunteering for Kiwanis, even bowling—require trust in an institution, in some type of structure that asks for buy-in from its participants.

Even bowling in a league requires people to become a "member" of the league and follow its rules.

The Atlantic ran a story about how the end of the landline is affecting modern families. The more telling tale is the rise of viewing devices; each house having multiple flat screens, smartphones, tablets, and laptops for each family member to watch their own show.

TV monoculture is over because producers no longer have to create shows that appeal to everyone. Family viewing—itself an institution, featuring two dictators (the parents) determining what is best for the proletariat (the kids)—is a thing of the past. Each member has their own device and can watch their own type of show.

The atomization of the family unit is moving people toward more private and individual lives, and away from the structures that invite people into public life, or even the family room.

Helicopter Parenting
The authors of The Coddling of the American Mind, the author of iGen, and websites like Let Grow blame a lot of the problems with today's youth--like anxiety and depression--on helicopter parenting. They say it is important for kids to have unstructured unsupervised play and parents are not allowing that.

But what if it's not that simple? What if kids are leaving the house less because they don't want to, because they like the quality of entertainment at their disposal and don't feel compelled to leave the house to make new friends of have social interactions with current ones?

The average family is also smaller, so there is less experience with compromise. They don't have the necessary experience for negotiating public life and working through conflict.

Social Diabetes

Here's what I don't get: why does it feel good to do something that is bad for us?

Why does it feel better to read a book on philosophy in a quiet room than to attend weekly Mass?

Why do I enjoy sitting on my living room couch, scrolling through my Twitter timeline, putting a show for my son on our TV, and putting Netflix on our laptop for my daughter, as opposed to picking something we all can watch?

Why do I write blog posts about how disappointing I find our politicians to be instead of volunteering for the campaign of someone I believe can do better?

Eating I understand. Sugar is rare in the natural world, and our bodies need it in small amounts, so we have adapted traits that tell us to load up when something tastes sweet, knowing we might not find it again for weeks.

We understand that high levels of sugar are bad for us and are at least working on it. I feel like we understand the harmful effects of pulling away from public life, but we're not too concerned about it. There are public campaigns about opioid abuse and suicide, but not about their root causes: loneliness and isolation.

People choose personalization over sharing and compromise when given the choice. We choose to unite over a common enemy rather than work on a common project. The upshot is that this is terrible for society. It brings out the worst in our tribal impulses. We have no experience sharing in our personal life and expect democracy and society to be the same.

We're all coming up with Type II social diabetes but we're okay with the tradeoff because the saccharine personalization of entertainment tastes so damn good.

It could be that we've just never had the opportunity for personalization in human history, so we don't know how to deal with its externalities. But I'm growing less confident that we'll get to a point where we realize how bad this is for all of us and actually do something about it.