Sometimes you have to zoom way out to see what’s right in front of you. It’s not easy to see patterns that span centuries, but by zooming out the lens, Robert Putnam shows us a pattern that has evolved over the course of a century. In The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again, Putnam explains how the self-focused society of the 1920s became a community of people in the 1960s and how we’ve returned to our self-focus. He adjusts the perspectives from Bowling Alone on how factors like television might have shaped our trajectory because when the perspective is wider it seems that the impact is smaller.
Individual and Community
At the heart of our struggles, Putnam believes, is a struggle between community and individual. Neither is perfect. Each has their own challenges. In times when we’re focused individually, we miss out on our fundamental human need to connect and to be a part of things. When we’re locked into tight communities, we have no room to express our individuality and our unique spirit. The argument isn’t for one or the other but rather for finding a sense of relative balance, where we can get the greatest value from community while making room for our individuality.
The metrics that Putnam uses to evaluate the degree to which we’re “I” focused or “We” focused are broad, and the trends over the course of the century are strangely consistent. There’s an inverted U that starts from the early 1900s, when we were very I focused, to the 1960s in a time of toxic conformity, and back to today, when we’re struggling to find and form communities that matter (the kind that he spoke of in Bowling Alone and, particularly, Our Kids).
In times of community, we feel as if we’re all in this together. We believe that we’re all fighting towards a common enemy instead of fighting each other to get ahead. In times of our individual focus, we believe that we can do anything to get ahead. We can earn “the American dream” even if it means trampling others. While this sounds morally objectionable when framed that way, we live our lives in the struggle, and sometimes we don’t realize the impact of our actions on others. We feel justified in demonizing those who believe differently than we do instead of having a logical, rational debate on the issues. (See Mastering Logical Fallacies for more on why character attacks are bad.)
Common Good
When we speak of community, there are benefits in terms of a focus on the common good that balance the challenges of conformity and the lack of acceptance for individuals who are different. On the one hand, we have the kind of lack of tolerance that led to LGBTQ+ people remaining “in the closet.” Even late into the cycle of I-We-I, After the Ball caused a stir as it sought more acceptance for gays. On the other hand, we know that working towards the common good – cooperating – makes groups more competitive against other groups.
Reviewing the work from Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, the work of Robert Axelrod in The Evolution of Cooperation, as well as SuperCooperators and Does Altruism Exist?, we see that sometimes the genes and ideas that replicate best are those that are the most cooperative even beyond kinship lines. Even Adam Grant in Give and Take acknowledges that those who are out for themselves fill the middle of the success ladder, while givers – those focused on cooperation and sharing – are at the bottom and the top.
Equality and Growth
There’s a debate that rages about the impact of income inequality, with some believing that growth isn’t possible during times of relative income equality, but history doesn’t bear that out. We see economic growth both in times of income inequality and in times of relative equality. However, it’s a hot topic that finds its way into a number of thoughtful works – including Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism.
Following the same pattern, income equality was large during the 1920s and shrunk through the 1960s with a return to historic highs of inequality today. A specific change that deregulated the financial services industry has been estimated to make up 15-25 percent of the impact on inequality. The financial meltdown of 2008 didn’t teach us enough about the dangers of an unregulated financial industry. (See The Halo Effect.)
Progressive and Regressive Taxes
One of the factors that helps to mitigate the income (and wealth) disparities is a progressive tax system that increases as people earn more. Generally speaking, our income tax system in the United States operates this way with higher levels of taxation at higher levels of income. However, there are many problems with this system including the definitions for active vs. passive income. Overall, however, progressive taxes shrink the gap between the high earners and the lower earners with systems like ours allowing the lowest earners to not pay any income taxes at all.
However, not all taxes in the US are progressive taxes. Our social security tax, which is a part of payroll or self-employment taxes, is a regressive tax. That is, it taxes more those people who earn less. The actual mechanism in place is a cap on earnings for the tax. After the cap is hit, no further taxation happens – thus rewarding the high earners with some income free of this tax.
Across Party Lines
Why We’re Polarized explains some of the movement away from working together, as does Going to Extremes, but Putnam’s argument is much more broad reaching and subtle. Here, he’s talking about the broader societal forces that push us away from the idea that we should try to find a way to work together. Instead of accepting people as having valid but different views, we’ve fallen into a trap of vilifying others in ways that prevent any meaningful cooperation. We’ve left with tentative compromises that seem to fall apart quickly. We’ve forgotten that “the other fellow might be right.”
Sociability in a Box
The rise of clubs connected with a growing desire for connection and community, as our moves toward cities and ultimately suburbs disrupted the rural communities that we came from. Organized clubs offered “sociability in a box.” That is, they contained a framework for the group from mottos, slogans, and procedures that could be applied quickly and easily. It was, in a sense, the Industrial Age for the development of groups. Groups could be mass produced just like “modern conveniences.”
However, this trend didn’t survive well after 1956. For organizations with members, the average fell from 111,000 to just 13,000 in 1998. What we found was that there were more organizations – but each with fewer members. Organizations like Greenpeace drove huge memberships with a large direct mail program but hemorrhaged membership when the organization decided that such mailings weren’t consistent with their values. Their membership plunged 85 percent within three years.
Not only were we joining less – but we were attending less. In 1976, sixty-four percent of Americans had attended a club meeting in the preceding year. By 2005, the number was slightly more than half that, at thirty-three percent.
Churchless
Much has been made of the decline in church membership and attendance, including coverage in Churchless and The Great Evangelical Recession. However, Putnam points out that our belief that everyone in revolutionary times were members of church is a fallacy. The curve of church membership and attendance seemed to follow the broader societal changes which led to a greater sense of “we” in the middle of periods of “I.”
One of the complicating factors is that one of the drivers for church attendance and membership is forming a family and having kids. Young adults are delaying both marriage (see Anatomy of Love) and having children. These delays appear to be further impacting church membership and attendance.
Replicating Asch
It’s a famous experiment where Solomon Asch was able to demonstrate the power of peer pressure on our perceptions. He engaged collaborators to incorrectly select a second line of equal length to the first. The result was that the actual participant seemed to change their mind to conform with the group, even though there was no doubt that the lines weren’t the same length. Subsequent research with the aid of brain scanning seemed to indicate that the person didn’t have conflict, they really saw the answer the others gave as the answer. It had warped their perception. (See Unthink and The Data Detective for more.)
However, other, more recent work has seemed to show lower levels of influence indicating that Asch’s ability to influence perception was a side effect of high levels of conformity during the 1950s when he was running his experiments.
Narcissism
Thomas Gilovich explains, in How We Know What Isn’t So, our propensity to believe things that cannot be true. Whether evaluating professors or students, more than 50% of us believe we’re better than average – which isn’t statistically possible. We’re wrong, but we’re able to keep our beliefs. Putnam uses the answer to a single statement, “I am a very important person,” to highlight the change in perceptions. In 1950, only 12 percent of people identified with that statement; by 1990, 80% of people identified with the statement. In the space of 40 years, most of us had decided that we were, indeed, important. Some of this may reflect generational differences (see America’s Generations), but the change is striking. While we may not be narcissistic, we are moving in that direction.
The Cycle
In the end, we should recognize that this I-We-I represents just a part of a cycle where we oscillate between our need for individuality and our need to be in the community. We hope we’re at the bottom of the cycle and we can start The Upswing.