The Upswing

The Upswing by Robert Putnam - Putnam seeks to answer the questions of why we are so polarized and why have been gone from a "We" society to an "I" society. There are many similarities now to the Gilded Age at the beginning of the century. We moved forward from that in the middle of the century. Inequality decreased, we achieved projects that required thousands of people working together, organizations thrived and there was trust in institutions. But in the last several decades we have regressed in many of these areas. The Upswing is a longer lens, taking a 125-year data-based view, on many of the ideas put forth in Bowling Alone. In areas like economic equality, comity and compromise in politics, cohesion in social life, and altruism in cultural values, Putnam shows the trend in an inverted U over this span. That data shows that this was more than just coming together around World War II. Acknowledging that society was far from perfect the data shows America "had been transformed into a more egalitarian, cooperative, cohesive, and altruistic nation." In 1961, Kennedy described this spirit, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." As the decade wore on this ended up being a peak moment of community and not the start of a new era. In the last four years the divisions and the "I" spirit have become more apparent than ever and it seems clear that we need to somehow find a way back to a "We" society.

Our Assessment: C+, Stick with Bowling Along, I didn’t see a lot of new ground covered in this one despite the longer time horizon

Notes:
David Brooks