The Art of Manliness - #176： The Vanishing Neighbor

00:00:00.000 Rhett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:18.120 So in the past 20 years or so, there's been an increasing number of research by sociologists

00:00:21.920 and other academics about the declining sense of community, community life in America.

00:00:27.300 There's research showing that Americans are joining civic organizations less than they

00:00:30.960 used to, things like Civic Club, PTA, even bowling leagues, like people aren't really doing

00:00:35.620 that anymore.

00:00:37.200 In fact, there's research showing that Americans really don't know who their neighbors are anymore.

00:00:40.720 They can live in a neighborhood for 10, 15 years and not really know much about the neighbor

00:00:44.840 across the streets, complete strangers to them.

00:00:47.260 And there's been a lot of theories about why that is.

00:00:50.220 Well, my guest today makes the bold case of what we're seeing right now is a transformation

00:00:54.980 in the way Americans organize themselves socially.

00:00:59.520 His name is Mark Duckelman.

00:01:00.680 He's the author of the book, The Vanishing Neighbor, The Transformation of American Community.

00:01:04.780 And in it, he argues what's going on with this transformation, why it's happening, and the

00:01:09.560 effects that it's happening, that's having on institutions like government, public schools,

00:01:14.860 even business in America.

00:01:17.160 Really fascinating topic.

00:01:18.300 And today on the show, we're going to discuss why we're seeing a declining sense of community

00:01:23.460 in the traditional sense that we think about it, and what's replacing it.

00:01:26.900 Really great discussion.

00:01:27.960 And without further ado, Mark Duckelman and The Vanishing Neighbor.

00:01:35.640 All right, Mark Duckelman, welcome to the show.

00:01:42.000 Thanks for having me on.

00:01:43.020 Your book is The Vanishing Neighbor, and it's about the changing ways Americans are organizing

00:01:48.760 themselves socially and interacting with each other.

00:01:52.380 I'm curious, what led you to the research in the writing of this book?

00:01:55.380 Was it a hunch you had or a personal experience?

00:01:58.380 I mean, what was it that said, I need to look into this a little bit more, what's going on?

00:02:02.280 Two things happened to me almost simultaneously.

00:02:05.120 The first was that I'd been working in Washington for several years.

00:02:10.480 And I was sitting around with a bunch of old poobahs who were kvetching about how Washington 1.00

00:02:16.440 didn't work anymore.

00:02:17.740 And they were going through the whole litany of reasons that we hear about all the time.

00:02:23.120 Too much money in politics, gerrymandering, the filibuster, too many lobbyists, goes on

00:02:30.600 and on.

00:02:31.640 And I would have this experience where I was living in Washington, but my family's in Buffalo.

00:02:36.040 I'd fly home, and I'd land at the airport.

00:02:38.140 My father would pick me up, and we'd be driving home, and at some point in the course

00:02:41.440 of the conversation, he'd turn to me and he'd say, Mark, what the hell are they doing

00:02:45.720 down there in Washington?

00:02:47.540 And I would try out each of the explanations that I'd heard the poobahs talk about. 1.00

00:02:51.000 I'd say, well, it's a filibuster.

00:02:53.660 And my dad, who's a pretty smart guy, would say, well, Mark, the filibuster rules haven't

00:02:57.860 changed since the 70s, so why is it they're filibustering more now?

00:03:01.320 And I'd sort of be left dumbfounded.

00:03:03.220 And then the next time I'd fly home to Buffalo, he'd get me up, and I'd complain again, and

00:03:08.660 I'd give him another explanation, like, it's gerrymandering.

00:03:12.400 And he'd say, Mark, gerrymandering is named after James Madison's vice president.

00:03:17.020 So how can that be?

00:03:18.180 And you go through the whole list of common explanations, and they are all, you go through

00:03:25.800 all the old explanations.

00:03:27.260 They all existed in areas where government seemed to work, or at least it seemed to work

00:03:32.280 better than it does now.

00:03:34.300 And so I began thinking, something else has got to be going on.

00:03:37.940 Second thing happened was I began thinking more and more about the holidays that I'd spent

00:03:41.600 as a kid.

00:03:42.580 My family was from Cincinnati.

00:03:44.840 I grew up in Buffalo.

00:03:46.120 And we would go back to Cincinnati every holiday season, and we'd drive up and down the street

00:03:51.720 where my father grew up.

00:03:53.040 And he would look at each house, and he'd tell me the story of each family.

00:03:55.840 This guy, you know, went, it was a lousy student, but then got into a good college, you know.

00:04:01.280 This woman did this. 0.97

00:04:02.780 This guy invented the electric toothbrush and sold it to Procter & Gamble for a zillion dollars

00:04:07.200 in the 1950s, whatever it was.

00:04:09.820 And I realized that back in Buffalo, I didn't have that experience at all.

00:04:13.320 I was delivering the Buffalo news to my neighbors four years into having moved, and I couldn't

00:04:20.620 have told you the name of any of the people, save for the few kids that went to my elementary

00:04:25.100 school.

00:04:26.220 And I think if I'd bumped into my next-door neighbor at the grocery store, Wakeland's,

00:04:29.980 I would not have been able to recognize them.

00:04:33.040 So I began to wonder, is there some connection between what's happened in Washington and what

00:04:38.300 I was experiencing in Buffalo?

00:04:40.020 There's some connection.

00:04:42.620 And that sort of got me off on a whole jaunt of research that ended up with this book.

00:04:47.360 Okay.

00:04:47.940 And I think what's interesting is that a lot of people can probably relate to that second.

00:04:52.460 I think most people can agree that, you know, the government, Washington is sort of like

00:04:57.780 out of stancil and a lot of gridlock.

00:04:59.560 But also that second hunch or that feeling you had that just like something, like there's

00:05:03.840 not a sense of community that people used to like, we're very nostalgic for it.

00:05:08.400 It doesn't exist anymore.

00:05:10.140 So I think a lot of people resonate with that.

00:05:11.960 I know I do.

00:05:13.780 But before we get to why, why there was a change between you, your experience growing up and

00:05:19.860 your father's experience growing up, I guess we could do a lot of groundwork here.

00:05:23.760 So let's talk about this.

00:05:25.400 What are, you argue there are three ways that, or three rings of social organization that humans

00:05:30.980 organize themselves with.

00:05:32.360 Can you explain what those three rings are?

00:05:34.040 Or, yeah, so my argument is that if you imagine your whole social world on a diagram that looks

00:05:44.120 like the rings of Saturn, where you're the planet and the people, everyone you know is

00:05:48.560 organized along the ring.

00:05:49.760 So the most intimate contacts, your spouse, your best friend, your children, your parents

00:05:55.600 are in the sort of innermost ring.

00:05:57.420 And then moving out are to people who are less and less intimacy to the point that you

00:06:02.260 get to the barista that you spoke to for five seconds when you ordered a latte or whatever

00:06:10.620 several days earlier and you'll never see again.

00:06:13.460 So if you think about the time and energy you have each day, you get to choose where

00:06:18.620 you're going to invest your time and energy.

00:06:21.780 The sort of innermost rings, I call them the inner rings, are the people who are really,

00:06:28.080 really close to you.

00:06:29.360 So this is generally 10 or 12, 15 people who you know really well.

00:06:33.620 It varies from person to person and from culture to culture.

00:06:36.420 But generally, those are the people that you know almost everything about you or know the

00:06:43.360 most about you.

00:06:44.060 So on the very outside rings are people that don't know you at all, except for some, you

00:06:50.240 have to share some single interest.

00:06:53.180 So I am one of about three dozen Cincinnati Bengals fans in the world.

00:06:58.400 And unfortunately, I think we've lost a couple since that loss of Pittsburgh.

00:07:02.640 But I know a bunch of those people just because I look on blogs about Cincinnati Bengals and follow

00:07:09.580 them.

00:07:09.840 But I have no real tangential connection with them or no substantive connection with them.

00:07:16.760 In between those inner and outer rings are what I call the middle rings.

00:07:20.580 And those are people who are familiar but not intimate.

00:07:24.420 They are people that you would know well enough to ask them about something that's important

00:07:29.180 in their lives if you bumped into them on the street.

00:07:31.220 They know, I know here your father was sick.

00:07:33.400 How's he doing?

00:07:34.540 I hear, you know, your business is growing like gangbusters.

00:07:37.820 Are you going to open another store?

00:07:39.840 You know, you would know enough about them to have sort of a real conversation.

00:07:45.440 These are the kind of conversations you would have from a familiarity that would grow maybe

00:07:53.680 when you were talking to someone over the donuts at the back of the PTA meeting or while you

00:08:00.080 were waiting for your chance to bowl in a bowling league or when you were at a Rotary Club

00:08:07.320 meetings, whatever it was.

00:08:08.860 Those are the social conversations that sort of happen in the background and you develop

00:08:12.740 a connection.

00:08:13.900 And the sort of the core thesis of my book is that over the last several decades, we've

00:08:19.480 taken the time and attention that we each control and invested it much more heavily in

00:08:24.440 those innermost rings, our most intimate connections, and much more heavily in the

00:08:28.040 outermost rings.

00:08:28.600 You know, I could not, I live in Providence, Rhode Island, and it would be very hard for

00:08:32.000 me to know Cincinnati Bengals fans 40 years ago.

00:08:35.200 But now I can know a bunch of them because of all sorts of changes in technology.

00:08:39.220 What's been lost in the wash are the middle ring connections.

00:08:43.100 We have very few connections or fewer connections than we once did with people who are familiar

00:08:48.140 but not intimate.

00:08:49.260 Okay.

00:08:49.820 So before we get to why that is, why we've made this transition to focusing more on the

00:08:55.000 inner rings and the outer rings and less on the middle ring, let's do a little, let's

00:08:58.300 backtrack, let's do some history.

00:08:59.840 So Utah Art make the case that this focus that, I guess I think all of us have this nostalgia

00:09:06.140 for, yeah, there was a time when everything was sort of Norman Rockwell, neighbors, new

00:09:09.280 neighbors, they talked to each other.

00:09:10.460 People went to church and did, you know, cake walks and, you know, or cake bakes and whatever

00:09:15.620 and went to PTA meetings and this idea that we have, the sort of ideal of community in

00:09:22.500 America, you argue got its start all the way in when the colonies first organized themselves.

00:09:28.760 So how did colonial Americans organize themselves?

00:09:33.160 How did that differ from their European contemporaries?

00:09:39.080 It's sort of a fascinating, it's a fascinating story.

00:09:41.860 The, the, um, when, when people came to the new world, the old social hierarchies that

00:09:55.360 had existed in Europe for the most part, couldn't exist in quite the same way.

00:10:00.560 There just weren't enough people.

00:10:02.180 So you lived in a town, you got to know people across really what I call the middle

00:10:07.300 range, whether you were of a certain, certain, uh, standing, if you had a certain religious

00:10:12.740 background, if you had a certain, uh, point of view, it's, it's not to say that, that it

00:10:17.560 was entirely diverse, but there was a, a standard of, uh, of community organization that Tocqueville

00:10:25.980 talked about in the 1830s that differed from what existed in the, in the, in the, in Europe,

00:10:32.280 in the sense that if you had a problem in the community, in your town, in your village,

00:10:36.060 in New England, in the 1700s, everyone got together and tried to figure out a solution.

00:10:42.140 Um, you could have hated the guy down in the corner.

00:10:44.860 You could have disliked the family.

00:10:46.320 You could have disagreed on everything.

00:10:47.500 But on some level, you had to develop some sort of mutual understanding because you needed

00:10:51.760 one another to survive.

00:10:53.420 That didn't exist in the much more bifurcated European society where people were much more

00:10:59.420 split along, uh, class lines, uh, hierarchies, royalty, the whole bit.

00:11:05.020 And so there was sort of a, a, sort of a core way of, of organizing your community that made

00:11:10.980 it look much more like little house on the prairie versus in Europe, they had sort of a, a, a,

00:11:16.940 uh, in Europe, they organized themselves much more like Downton Abbey, where you had a sort

00:11:22.020 of a central manor, powerful family, and then, uh, a class of the people below it.

00:11:26.820 There was a much more egalitarian orientation in the United States or, or in the colonies

00:11:32.380 at that point.

00:11:33.360 Um, and what's fascinating is that that sort of core building block of American, uh, community

00:11:38.720 existed in, in colonial villages and frontier towns.

00:11:42.560 It existed even in, uh, in, in urban suburbs at the turn of the 20th century and in, and

00:11:49.180 then in the, in the beginnings of, of suburbs.

00:11:52.380 Um, and I think that it's only now for the first time that that core building block, what

00:11:57.760 I call township community is beginning to fly apart.

00:12:01.940 Okay.

00:12:02.020 And in this, this township community, I mean, how did this township model of community organize,

00:12:06.100 organizing ourselves socially, how did that affect like American political organization,

00:12:11.220 not only in government, but also sort of civic organizations and, um, uh, non-profit, I

00:12:17.440 guess what you'd call non-profit organizations, I guess, what are you, would you call them?

00:12:20.520 Mutual beneficial societies, whatever.

00:12:25.840 Um, let's think of how to, how to, how to answer that.

00:12:30.000 Um, every institution is built on a certain foundation.

00:12:36.900 There's like a house is built on a foundation, an institution is built on a foundation.

00:12:40.220 And you would build your house to, uh, to the specifications detailed by the foundation.

00:12:47.140 If you had a, uh, a foundation that was cracked, you'd need to find some way to either fix the

00:12:52.240 foundation or build a house in a different way.

00:12:54.640 The foundation for American institutions of all sorts, the way we governed ourselves, the

00:13:00.480 way we took care of ourselves medically or through healthcare, the way we educated ourselves,

00:13:04.500 the foundation in each case was this building block of township community, where people

00:13:10.320 who didn't know one another intimately well, but knew each other to a degree of familiarity

00:13:16.480 that they could understand where the other was coming from, came together and discussed

00:13:21.380 their ideas and, uh, negotiated and, um, uh, traded back and forth what they wanted, what the

00:13:28.980 other people wanted, tried to accommodate, uh, one another in a way that that, that didn't

00:13:34.000 exist in other societies.

00:13:35.700 And so the, the sort of, the, the unwritten part of the American constitution is that we

00:13:43.840 expect that the voters will, uh, have some experience with the people on the other side.

00:13:50.760 So even if they feel strongly about one party or another, or if they feel strongly about one

00:13:55.800 position or another, the presumption is that in the course of thinking about who they're going

00:14:01.380 to vote for, that they will have some appreciation for the other point of view, that they'll have

00:14:07.240 some, uh, sense that maybe they don't agree with what Sarah Palin says, or maybe they don't

00:14:11.560 agree with what Bernie Sanders says, or whoever it is, that they will at least have some appreciation

00:14:16.520 for why they, why someone else would feel strongly passionate about supporting that candidate.

00:14:24.520 Um, and so we build a, the, the whole system of American government presumes that voters

00:14:30.220 will have that sort of tendency to accommodate various points of view in mind when they are

00:14:38.440 selecting people at the ballot box.

00:14:40.680 And that, that, that, that sort of one example, but that exists across the span, uh, of American

00:14:46.460 institutions.

00:14:48.000 Gotcha.

00:14:48.280 So why has the, this township model of a community organization, why has that been in decline in

00:14:55.920 America for the, the past, you know, several decades?

00:14:59.040 Cause I mean, it's interesting, you talk about in the book how, you know, it was founded in

00:15:02.780 sort of this frontier idea of America, uh, with the colonists where they had to rely on

00:15:06.780 each other, but it even survived, uh, the industrial revolution, but something changed in the past

00:15:12.700 40, you know, 50 years that, that, that it's no longer surviving.

00:15:16.880 Like it's being replaced by another form of a social organization.

00:15:20.680 So why the decline?

00:15:22.920 Yeah.

00:15:23.240 I like to think of this as a classic sort of whodunit.

00:15:27.540 So you've got, you've got to figure out the motive and the opportunity.

00:15:30.860 The opportunity is probably pretty clear to most people who listen to this podcast.

00:15:34.300 We've got many more opportunities to, uh, interact with people of our choice than we did,

00:15:40.640 uh, than our grandparents did.

00:15:42.560 Right.

00:15:43.460 You can now, as I said, I'm a Cincinnati Bengals fan and I can be in touch with other

00:15:48.080 Cincinnati Bengals fans.

00:15:49.600 Alternatively, on sort of in the inner rings, when I travel for work now, probably three

00:15:55.280 generations ago, I would have been really bored.

00:15:56.960 There would have been three channels to watch on the television and, and I couldn't have been

00:16:00.840 in touch with my wife or children.

00:16:02.160 So I would have, uh, gone down to the hotel bar and had a conversation with somebody I didn't

00:16:06.080 know.

00:16:06.340 So now when I get to my hotel and it's, uh, it's seven o'clock, I can order room service,

00:16:11.280 watch any movie I want, uh, read, you know, good night moons to my children over, over FaceTime.

00:16:17.580 Um, and there's no reason for me to, to go to, to go downstairs.

00:16:21.780 So, so like there you're seeing how opportunity, our opportunities to invest our time in the

00:16:27.780 outer and the inner rings have grown dramatically.

00:16:30.820 Um, no matter what your particular instance, maybe you're really into knitting or maybe you're,

00:16:36.320 or into a different football team, or maybe you're very interested in, in bike lanes.

00:16:40.080 Um, whatever it is, you can find your people in the outer rings and also spend more time

00:16:45.420 with the people who you're closest to.

00:16:48.120 The, the question then is, are we motivated to take those opportunities?

00:16:53.340 Are you more motivated?

00:16:54.820 Are you more interested when you get to your hotel room while traveling to check your blog,

00:17:00.040 to FaceTime with your family, uh, watch it, watch a movie by yourself, or you're more

00:17:04.300 more motivated to go downstairs, uh, and meet people you don't know?

00:17:08.260 I had a long conversation.

00:17:09.740 I don't know if you'll remember 20 years ago when people had Palm Pilots.

00:17:13.680 Uh, I had one.

00:17:15.400 Yeah.

00:17:16.720 There was a, there was an app on the Palm Pilot called Vindigo.

00:17:19.480 And Vindigo was this really cool app at the time where you could type in the intersection

00:17:24.560 where you were in most major cities and ask for a certain cuisine.

00:17:29.240 So if you wanted a bowl of pasta, you'd put in Italian and Vindigo would tell you where

00:17:33.800 the closest Italian restaurant was.

00:17:35.520 I thought this was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.

00:17:37.060 My grandfather, who has since passed away, I showed it to him.

00:17:40.760 He went white as a ghost.

00:17:42.200 And I didn't know why.

00:17:43.140 I said, what's, what's the problem?

00:17:44.280 And he said, Mark, let me tell you, when I was a traveling salesman, I lived in Cincinnati

00:17:48.620 and I would take a train down to North Carolina, uh, to, to, to talk with, he was, uh, in the

00:17:55.020 hosiery business, uh, and he'd get out of the train station.

00:17:58.460 And, uh, if he was hungry, he'd go and say to somebody at the train station or somebody

00:18:03.660 that looked like they knew what they were doing.

00:18:05.360 Hey, I've got a question for you.

00:18:06.600 I'm new to town.

00:18:07.380 Is there a place where I can grab a bowl of pasta?

00:18:10.320 Or is there a good steak restaurant?

00:18:11.900 Or whatever it was.

00:18:12.520 And the person would, they'd have a conversation and then maybe they would go to dinner together

00:18:17.380 or maybe he would go to the restaurant and he'd develop a conversation with the people

00:18:20.540 who, who were there.

00:18:22.000 But that was the norm.

00:18:23.620 He desired the opportunity to, to talk to people like that.

00:18:27.540 And my grandfather's reaction when he saw, my grandfather's desire when he saw Vindigo,

00:18:35.000 my grandfather's fear when he saw Vindigo was those sorts of conversations, which he thought

00:18:40.320 had sort of added such value to his life, expanded his experience, sort of widened his understanding

00:18:48.420 of how the world worked, would be lost because we would no longer have those sorts of random interactions.

00:18:54.580 And that's sort of an indication of how the technology and, and, and desire have changed.

00:19:01.440 But it's, um, uh, it's sort of a broader phenomenon as well.

00:19:06.600 One thing I've noticed is that the, the, and there's some scholarship on this as well,

00:19:11.220 the very word neighborly has changed in America over the past, course, the past several decades.

00:19:17.180 It used to be that being neighborly meant that when someone moved in next door, you brought

00:19:22.260 over a plate of cookies or you, uh, uh, you, if you needed milk, uh, in a pinch, you could,

00:19:28.660 you can walk next door and, and, and grab a gallon.

00:19:32.500 Today, the word neighborly has been turned on its head.

00:19:35.620 Today, neighborly means that if you're living in an apartment building and you hear a couple

00:19:39.400 have an argument through the wall, when you see them in the lobby the next morning, you

00:19:43.980 don't say anything.

00:19:45.500 Neighborly has come to mean something that is much more about, uh, uh, boundaries between

00:19:51.640 people than it is bringing people together.

00:19:53.660 And so the, the, the confluence of those two elements, the fact that we have, have more

00:19:58.240 opportunities to make different sorts of, of, of, uh, connections with people and the fact

00:20:04.320 that we are, we don't desire, we're more, we're more tethered to our privacy than

00:20:09.400 to our sense of connection to the people who live next door.

00:20:12.660 But those two things have compelled people to invest their time and attention in different

00:20:16.760 sorts of relationships.

00:20:18.460 Gotcha.

00:20:18.680 So, okay.

00:20:19.020 And just recap.

00:20:19.480 So it seems like it's technology had a lot of effect, right?

00:20:22.100 Cause we can communicate with, or associate with who we want to associate, not necessarily

00:20:25.420 are not confined by geography and the technology in a way changed our motivations to like, okay,

00:20:33.160 I'm just going to focus on that.

00:20:34.680 Is that my understanding correctly?

00:20:36.700 Yeah.

00:20:37.460 I don't know whether, whether I'm sure that the technology has necessarily been the sole

00:20:43.280 factor in changing what we desire.

00:20:45.220 I think that that, that there are a whole series of factors that, that, that play some

00:20:49.600 role in explaining who you want to spend time with.

00:20:53.100 Um, uh, there's evidence now that narcissism is up in American culture.

00:20:58.240 That's a few decades old.

00:20:59.620 Um, uh, but I think that at, at root, you have to ask yourself, what is it that I want

00:21:06.360 to get out of my social interactions?

00:21:08.660 And the truth is that middle ring interactions with people who are familiar, but not intimate

00:21:12.600 are the most difficult to maintain because inner ring react relationships with your family,

00:21:19.960 with your best friends, those are people that love you implicitly.

00:21:22.300 You can say something crazy.

00:21:23.560 Uh, you can say something that they disagree with and they're going to love you no matter

00:21:27.220 what, or at least that's what you hope.

00:21:29.120 The outer rings, those are relationships that if someone says something that you disagree

00:21:33.160 with, you just, you just abandon the relationship, right?

00:21:35.600 If, if I'm talking to somebody about the Cincinnati Bengals on a blog and it turns out that they're

00:21:40.840 a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, I just abandon the relationship.

00:21:43.220 Like I don't really want to talk to them anymore.

00:21:44.860 And it's very easy to do.

00:21:46.560 Same is true if you're, uh, on a whole range of, of outer ring relationship.

00:21:51.660 It's sort of the nature of it is you, you, you, you've connected over a single common

00:21:56.360 interest.

00:21:56.920 And if you don't share the common interest, you don't maintain the relationship.

00:21:59.580 In the middle rings, it's a very different situation.

00:22:02.600 The middle rings are people that you're going to see the next week at the PTB or at the bowling

00:22:06.120 league or at the little league game, wherever you see them, you're going to see them on

00:22:09.560 the street.

00:22:09.940 Like you can't afford in the moment when they say that they support a candidate that you

00:22:15.440 think is crazy, or they announced that they've got religious beliefs that you think are,

00:22:19.660 uh, are, are, are totally out of line or, um, or, or they, uh, they disparage your favorite

00:22:27.120 football team, whatever it is, you need to maintain that relationship.

00:22:30.660 Like that's the moment where you can't lash out.

00:22:32.520 You can't argue back.

00:22:33.500 Or if you do, you need to do it in a, in a collegial way that maintains relationships with

00:22:37.680 and you don't both go away mad and abandon it, abandon it.

00:22:41.100 For some reason today, we've got limited time and attention.

00:22:45.980 We don't necessarily want to spend our time and attention on people who don't share our

00:22:50.860 common, uh, we don't want to spend our time and attention talking to people with whom we

00:22:56.660 need to sort of, uh, we don't want to spend our time and attention talking to people who

00:23:04.960 don't share a certain core set of beliefs.

00:23:08.740 We'd re we'd rather spend it with people that love us implicitly or the people that

00:23:12.260 already agree with us.

00:23:13.220 So there's that, that's a sort of a, a fundamental change in motivation that would spur us to

00:23:19.680 abandon middle ring relationships in lieu of, uh, having tighter inner and outer ring relationships.

00:23:25.640 So you bring up a great point.

00:23:27.160 Cause I think, uh, I mean, like I know I do this.

00:23:28.920 I, I, I definitely am nostalgic for the days of, you know, tight knit communities, uh, sort

00:23:34.340 of Norman Rockwell-esque pictures of community, but then you forget that it is exhausting, right?

00:23:39.340 There's all these benefits of having a township idea of community, but like you forget that

00:23:42.900 it's really exhausting.

00:23:43.900 And if you look at, I mean, you can even read diaries and, uh, you know, letters from like,

00:23:48.620 even like Marcus Aurelius kind of complained about people.

00:23:51.440 They're just like, Oh, they're just so annoying.

00:23:52.640 And it's a lot of hard work, but I have to like put up with them because that's part of

00:23:55.920 my social duty as, as, as a human being is to interact with people that I don't necessarily

00:24:00.200 agree with.

00:24:01.060 So I guess one of the downsides of a township, it does, it does require a lot of, uh, energy

00:24:06.120 and like mental bandwidth to manage.

00:24:09.900 Absolutely true.

00:24:11.480 More than that, you know, it sort of cuts against the Norman Rockwell view of America.

00:24:17.080 The truth is that the institute that we think of middle ring institutions, rotary clubs

00:24:22.140 and church choirs and little leagues and, uh, PTA associations, uh, all of those are truly

00:24:31.560 middle ring institutions and there's value in them, but gangs are also middle ring institutions.

00:24:39.420 The Klan was a middle ring institution, right?

00:24:41.420 Those were people that knew each other fairly well.

00:24:44.060 So it's not that they are, uh, uniformly for the good of America, uh, there are advantages

00:24:49.900 and disadvantages for the institutions of all sorts.

00:24:52.840 So what is replacing the township?

00:24:56.000 So if we had township for the first 200 odd years of our, of our country, what is replacing

00:25:01.260 it?

00:25:01.560 Well, the, the, the, the, I think networks, I mean, sort of in a word, networks are replacing

00:25:09.120 townships.

00:25:10.160 And what I mean by that is that now, if you're a, an ophthalmologist, uh, in, in Oklahoma,

00:25:18.320 uh, it used to be that your community was still the people who lived around you.

00:25:23.580 But if you've got, if you're an ophthalmologist and you want to be now be in touch with ophthalmologists

00:25:27.980 all around the world, you can't, right?

00:25:30.820 There's going to be a breakthrough.

00:25:31.980 They did some research in Brazil.

00:25:33.420 Uh, they did, uh, there's a, there's a horrible case that is really instructive that's happening

00:25:37.920 in South Carolina.

00:25:39.120 You can be in touch with people who are talking about that all the time and you can develop

00:25:43.760 a real sense of, it's, it's not the sort of intimacy that you might've had otherwise,

00:25:48.460 but it, but you can develop, uh, a sense of community that is at arm's length with those

00:25:54.760 people who are sharing your interests, uh, share your concerns.

00:25:58.700 Um, the, the, the example that I use in my book, which I think is a pretty powerful one

00:26:03.700 is World of Warcraft, right?

00:26:06.240 That these, these, these, uh, uh, games that are online that allow people, one who lives

00:26:13.260 in Hong Kong, one who lives in California, one, uh, who lives in Europe to coordinate the

00:26:18.240 moment that they're going to storm a castle.

00:26:20.260 And those are, those are by some stretch real relationships, right?

00:26:25.400 They're coordinating their strategy, they're coordinating their timing.

00:26:28.620 They're all, uh, wrapped up in the same, uh, the same adventure.

00:26:32.580 The question is, do, are those relationships that come to the depth of if one of those players,

00:26:38.500 their, their wife gets sick or their kids in trouble, or they're very sad about something,

00:26:45.020 or they're extremely excited about a promotion at work.

00:26:47.280 Is that necessarily something that they're going to, uh, that they're going to, that

00:26:50.960 they're going to interact with those folks about, or is it really just about World of

00:26:55.200 Warcraft?

00:26:55.660 Is that relationship, uh, really centered around one, one single, uh, shared interest?

00:27:03.220 Um, so I, I, I mean, obviously in both of those examples, you see real advantages.

00:27:08.400 People are really into World of Warcraft, people are really interested in their professions.

00:27:12.240 They can dive much more deeply into those interests with people who share, uh, share those interests.

00:27:19.160 But the downside is that the auxiliary benefits of having local or, or middle ring oriented

00:27:27.000 relationships, um, uh, there's something lost as well.

00:27:30.680 Gotcha. And it seems like it, it fractures the individual in a way, right? Cause you're

00:27:34.120 like, you had to put on your world of Warcraft face on and then like, that's it. Like, then

00:27:38.720 you go off into it. You have like another aspect of your life that you focus on. Like people,

00:27:42.160 when you interact with people in these different little nodes in your network, people aren't

00:27:46.620 really concerned about your other aspects of your identity. It would seem, or maybe I'm

00:27:51.620 exactly right. Okay. I, I, I sort of tell a hypothetical example, uh, in, in my book about,

00:27:56.940 uh, uh, a bigoted guy who lives in Kentucky, who, who, uh, who wants to sell a vintage baseball

00:28:01.840 card. 40 years ago, he has to go to a baseball card convention and actually have a face-to-face

00:28:07.380 interaction with someone or he has to go to a local store or whatever it is. And, and you

00:28:12.160 know, when he's wearing, uh, uh, his, his, you know, his, his white power t-shirt or whatever

00:28:17.660 it is, people know what he's about. And that's going to affect who he sells to today. That same

00:28:22.780 guy could anonymously sell his card to someone who's also anonymous, who happens to be a woman

00:28:27.560 who owns a small business, who's African-American in Oakland, California. And the two of them

00:28:31.860 today are now doing commerce together, right? There used to be that they were separated from

00:28:35.360 one other because they would never, never interaction. They were never in the same circles.

00:28:38.360 And so they were, they were sort of an economic division between the two of them because of

00:28:42.320 their, uh, various, uh, identities. Today, those people are now interacting, but not in a

00:28:48.680 substantive way, right? There's going to be no exchange of ideas. It's not that it's not that

00:28:52.420 he's going to glean any sense of wisdom, uh, from her about where she came from or, or, or what she's

00:28:57.920 about. Same. I don't know if she'd want to glean anything from him, but, but, but, but there'd be no

00:29:03.600 flow of information the other way. There's something valuable in having people who have different

00:29:08.520 points of view, even if they disagree, actual, actually having interactions. Um, that's how good

00:29:14.360 ideas come from. Like they come from the fact that people who have, uh, different

00:29:18.460 bits of expertise, take an idea from one sphere of the world and apply it to another.

00:29:24.840 That's actually, frankly, that's what, where, how Gutenberg came up with the, with the printing

00:29:29.240 press. It wasn't that it was a stroke of a genius. It was that he sort of lived at this

00:29:34.240 nexus where he knew people who, uh, had figured out how printing presses, uh, how, how presses

00:29:39.520 worked, how movable type worked, how ink worked, how paperwork. And he put it all together in

00:29:44.080 sort of an interesting way and developed this incredible technology of the printing press.

00:29:48.460 That sort of interaction happens every day. How are you going to figure out how to get

00:29:53.600 your kids between, uh, all these different activities? Have you had a conversation with

00:29:57.800 other parents who are doing the same thing or people, people who have, uh, a different

00:30:02.520 ideas about how you're going to manage your sales force? Uh, this is how we did it. This

00:30:07.100 is how, you know, good ideas come when people who have different points of view come together

00:30:12.120 and share ideas. And if you're only interacting with them on, over the plane of World of Warcraft

00:30:17.820 or only interacting with them, um, uh, because you're selling something to them on eBay,

00:30:22.060 you're losing the value in those interactions.

00:30:25.900 Well, and going back to the baseball card, uh, aficionados, you know, one's black woman, 1.00

00:30:31.260 another one's sort of, uh, you know, uh, white power, white supremacist type guy. And you make, 0.70

00:30:36.280 make the subtle case in your book, uh, point that maybe this is one of the issues with why we're having

00:30:41.260 a problem with race in America today. Cause on the one hand, like, we're not, it's not like the 0.58

00:30:45.480 overt racism that was existed. Um, like in the, you know, in the early part of the 20th century

00:30:51.700 in the 19th century, but because of these sort of this community or network community that we have

00:30:56.560 now, we can sort of take out some of the friction because you can associate with people who are,

00:31:00.340 who are like you and you can interact with, with people who are not like you on a very superficial

00:31:05.060 level. But when you reduce that friction, you reduce the opportunities actually talking about

00:31:09.980 the substance of an issue on a very, uh, in-depth way to actually solve the problem.

00:31:16.020 I mean, I think, I, I, I think you've, you've hit it exactly that, that there is, uh, we've made

00:31:21.320 enormous progress, particularly on the, the legal, uh, the legal barriers that separated communities

00:31:27.280 of different races. The question now is, and this sort of gets back to the sort of issue of,

00:31:32.100 of a mode of an opportunity. We now have the opportunity to interact with people who have

00:31:36.840 different points of view and come from different communities. The question is, are we actually

00:31:40.320 choosing, uh, to take advantage? Are we motivated to spend our time and attention with people

00:31:44.860 who are different from us? And in too many cases, it seems to me, there's, there's too much

00:31:52.180 at risk, right? That you're going to say something wrong, that you're going to offend somebody else,

00:31:56.520 that you're going to somehow come off, um, uh, having exposed some, uh, inner prejudice,

00:32:02.620 um, to the point that that risk that, that, that you're going to say something wrong in many cases

00:32:08.340 makes it so that you don't actually reach out. What a shame that is, right? What a shame it is

00:32:13.040 that the people who have different points of view are not actually having interactions that we're

00:32:17.200 learning from one another. Um, and that we prefer in too many cases, uh, to spend time, uh, with people

00:32:24.480 who share our point of view. Um, and that's, I mean, that's not just about race. That's all sorts of

00:32:29.180 issues. That's, you know, people who support Donald Trump and people who don't support Donald Trump

00:32:32.740 or people who, uh, who think we need a single payer healthcare and people who don't. Are they

00:32:38.040 actually having interactions so that they have some depth of mutual understanding? You know,

00:32:44.720 one's a liberal college professor who, uh, who really believes that we need to break down all

00:32:51.300 sorts of social barriers. One's a, an independent business woman who runs a coffee shop and is 0.96

00:32:55.100 completely bogged down by all the regulations that come from the local government. She gets

00:32:59.580 four pieces of mail from the department of business regulation every, every day. You can't

00:33:04.120 figure out what any of the means. That's a, have to hire a lawyer and, uh, it might put her out of 1.00

00:33:08.200 business. If the two of them have a conversation, a substantive conversation about what the other's

00:33:15.200 point of view is, it may be, it may not be that they end up voting for the same candidate,

00:33:19.620 but at least when their candidate wins and goes to Washington or goes to the state house or goes to

00:33:24.800 city hall and starts reaching out to the other, other side, they're not going to think that

00:33:29.500 they've abandoned, you know, the voters that sent them, right? They're not going to say, oh, well,

00:33:35.400 you, you, you, you, you've, uh, you're reaching out to somebody else. You clearly have no principles.

00:33:41.780 No, they've got principles, but they are trying to accommodate somebody else's concerns as well.

00:33:46.900 Um, if you're not able to do that in your own life, it's much harder. You're not taking the

00:33:51.480 opportunity to do that in your own life. If you're not taking the opportunity to do that in your own

00:33:55.520 life, it's much harder for you to stomach the idea that your guy or your, uh, Congresswoman would go

00:34:03.300 to Washington and actually do it themselves. Um, and so that, that is sort of right at the core.

00:34:09.300 That's not about filibustering or gerrymandering or money in politics. That's just about what it is

00:34:15.060 that the average American wants their member of Congress to do. Gotcha. So this goes back to this,

00:34:21.080 it goes back to your original hunch, right? About, uh, why you started researching this book is

00:34:25.800 basically there's a Mitch mismatch, um, between the way Americans are starting to organize themselves

00:34:31.380 socially and sort of these networks and these institutions that we have that were founded when

00:34:36.620 we were based in sort of a township model. That's the problem or one of the problems.

00:34:41.440 Yeah, no, I think, I think that is the core of the problem. And, and so when my father,

00:34:47.780 I would get in the car with me and I would explain that the, uh, the, the filibuster in the Senate was

00:34:52.520 the reason, uh, the Washington was broken was because these crazy senators were, uh, stopping up

00:34:57.860 pieces of legislation. And he said, well, the rules haven't changed. Why are they filibustering more

00:35:02.260 often? The reason is because on some level, it's smart politically to filibuster, right? It's,

00:35:07.660 you want to be seen as a purist and not as a principal politician. You want to be viewed as

00:35:13.400 carrying a banner and, uh, you're unwilling to back down. We have this sensitive people would

00:35:19.480 just stick to their, stick to their guns more frequently. We would get more, more out of

00:35:23.580 Washington. Well, in fact, the whole premise of American democracy is that you're going to have

00:35:27.860 factions who have different interests and different ideas and different, uh, points of view. And the

00:35:32.980 magic of American democracy was that Washington was a place, uh, that would, uh, would try to

00:35:38.400 accommodate as much of that as possible. And that there would be, that you would get more from the

00:35:42.580 sum of the parts, uh, than you would have if, um, uh, if, if everyone, uh, just went their own way.

00:35:48.940 And that the, the premise in each of those cases was that the members of Congress or the politicians

00:35:55.040 writ large in the United States would, um, uh, would reflect the community's view

00:36:02.420 that there are a whole variety of points of view and we need to accommodate it. We need to sort of

00:36:08.880 harness the magic of that diversity. And if, uh, and so the, the, the problem today, more than the

00:36:16.480 sort of traditional litany of, of explanations, money in politics and filibustering and sharing

00:36:21.420 measures, the real change is that people in their own experience aren't reached across the

00:36:27.800 proverbial aisle. They aren't having interactions across the middle rings. And in the absence of

00:36:32.400 those interactions, they're not willing to support politicians, support leaders who are interested

00:36:38.760 in trying to meld the diversity of opinion. Right. And going back to, I mean, this is even

00:36:42.960 on a personal level for the politicians. So going back to that opportunity motivation, I mean, you

00:36:47.520 talk about how in the book it used to be because there, it was so hard to get to Washington, right?

00:36:52.020 You had to take trains or carriages or whatever to actually do the voting and do your work. You'd like

00:36:55.720 live there, right? Like politicians would move to Washington DC. Um, and because of that,

00:37:00.600 they got to interact with other politicians, they'd go to dinner with each other, the families

00:37:04.880 would get together. But now, uh, going back to now, people are motivated to focus on those

00:37:09.660 inner rings. They're more likely to not live in Washington. They might sleep in their office

00:37:14.760 and then take a plane back to their homes, hometown to be with their family during, on the weekends.

00:37:20.340 So there's not that, that mixture that once existed before.

00:37:23.300 So it's certainly, that's certainly true. That's certainly true.

00:37:26.960 Okay. So, I mean, what's the solution then, right? Uh, so this is the, the trend we're going

00:37:32.700 to, we're going towards, uh, networked communities. And I'm sure you talk about in the book, this

00:37:37.200 isn't like a complete transition. Like there are still townships that exist in America, pockets

00:37:42.000 of it and where you see it, but we're, there's the trend is toward this network community.

00:37:46.540 Um, do we try to push back against that? So like, you know, they're in the past, I guess,

00:37:51.440 20 odd years have been a lot of books written about that. Um, Robert Putnam, the book comes

00:37:54.720 to mind about, we need to do a lot to bring back these middle rings that we're all bowling

00:37:58.560 alone, et cetera. And we should do things to, uh, encourage these middle ring communities

00:38:03.480 or should we try to adapt our institutions and organizations to this new reality?

00:38:10.720 I don't, I don't have a clear answer to that question. It's a terrific question. And frankly,

00:38:15.780 I think people, readers, uh, well, let me say this. I think that people who have listened

00:38:21.180 to interviews with me have gotten frustrated that I don't sort of have a single, uh, uh,

00:38:27.140 silver bullet answer to what we ought to do. Um, I will, uh, say this, I think on the opportunity

00:38:35.320 for us, there's nothing much to do, right? Our opportunities have expanded. People have

00:38:40.420 more choices about how to invest the limited fund of time and attention that they each control.

00:38:45.800 Um, we're not going to make it so that people can't play World of Warcraft. We're not going

00:38:50.060 to make it so that ophthalmologists can't interact with one another across the world. We're not going

00:38:53.400 to make it, uh, so that, uh, I can't, uh, FaceTime goodnight moon to my daughter when I've traveled

00:38:59.580 across the country. In each of those cases, we prize those opportunities and, uh, we are, uh,

00:39:05.940 we're not going to give them up. The thing that we can begin to look at is what motivates us

00:39:11.180 not to join the PTA. It's not that we shouldn't spend time with our children. It's not that we

00:39:15.800 shouldn't find time for people who share our particular interests, but what would motivate us

00:39:21.800 not to be afraid to spend more of our time and attention in the middle rings? What would make it so

00:39:28.520 that we're more inclined, uh, to invest our time and attention in, uh, in middle ring interactions?

00:39:34.880 My experience is that the sort of single determining factor that is, uh, most powerful

00:39:42.480 in helping us to decide is what sort of a series of educated, education, uh, uh, researchers have

00:39:50.800 called grit, which is the ability to, to thwart an impulse. So if you're in a, in a conversation

00:39:57.580 with somebody that, you know, fairly well, a middle ring connection, and they say something

00:40:01.460 that you think is really crazy, uh, they support a candidate that you think is, is nuts, or they,

00:40:06.940 they, they are supportive or they're on, on one side or the other of a gun control debate or

00:40:11.860 whatever, you've got sort of a few, uh, options about how to react, right? You could, you could say

00:40:18.240 you're an idiot, uh, and walk away. You could just end the conversation right there. You could offend 1.00

00:40:23.920 them. You could, uh, you could, you, you, or, or you could just sort of abandon the relationship

00:40:28.820 altogether. The question is, are you able to develop some sort of reply where you say, you know,

00:40:35.420 I'm not sure I totally agree with you on that. This is what I think. So that you're actually

00:40:39.060 continuing the relationship. Are you able to withstand the impulse, uh, to lash out or to, or to,

00:40:47.520 to, to walk away? To my mind, that, that sort of single, uh, determining factor, that, that sort of,

00:40:56.880 that sort of issue is it's sort of entirely personalized. Do you have the grit to handle

00:41:01.820 a disagreement? That's something that has diminished, uh, in many cases in American

00:41:07.940 community today or within American individuals, that because you, you, you, you are, uh, less

00:41:14.500 inclined because, because you, you're angered by what the other person had to say, or you're,

00:41:19.200 you, you, you'd rather spend time with people who love you implicitly, who, who agree with

00:41:23.880 you, uh, you, you decide you're not gonna, you're not gonna stick it out. I think that

00:41:29.180 the most powerful thing we could do to reconstitute middle ring relationships is to teach future

00:41:34.940 generations grit. Um, and we're right, actually, we're the sort of, if you, if you read the

00:41:40.600 education of journals, we're sort of right on the cusp of being, being able to develop a

00:41:45.060 curriculum that encourages people to develop grit at a young age. There's this fairly well-known

00:41:51.760 in certain, in certain circles, a fair known test called the marshmallow test, where you

00:41:55.460 put a four-year-old in front of a marshmallow and you say to him or her, you can eat this

00:42:00.400 marshmallow at any point. I'm going to walk away. I need to run an errand. When I get back,

00:42:04.320 if the marshmallow is still here, I'll give you a second marshmallow and you can eat both

00:42:08.620 of them. And what they found is this started in the sixties. They found that 20 years later,

00:42:13.740 the kids who were able to withstand the impulse to eat that first marshmallow and waited for

00:42:17.740 the second marshmallow were light years ahead in all sorts of facets of life. They were less

00:42:23.320 likely to be incarcerated, less likely to be, uh, addicted to a substance. They earned more

00:42:28.960 money. They were more likely to have gotten a college degree. They, the, across the span of

00:42:34.920 life, you do better if you've got, uh, the, the grit to control your impulses. And I think

00:42:43.180 that that, that we rarely connect that idea of impulse control to community. But the truth is

00:42:48.380 that sort of, that is the core competency when it comes to building a middle-ring relationship.

00:42:53.780 The core competency is being able to deal with a disagreement in an agreeable way to maintain a

00:43:00.460 relationship, even when there's some ideological disagreement. Um, and if we were able to build

00:43:06.640 the next generation of Americans to have additional grit, to have that impulse control, they'll be much

00:43:11.980 more likely to invest their time and attention in those sorts of relationships that have been lost.

00:43:16.460 That's awesome. And, and even for our listeners who are, you know, not children, you have, you know,

00:43:20.680 if you have parent, if you have, if you're a parent, you can start doing that. But like,

00:43:23.880 you know, this is the art of manliness podcast. This sounds like, you know, developing middle ring

00:43:27.820 relationship is like, you know, throwing your hat in the arena, like Teddy Roosevelt style,

00:43:31.900 like seen as a challenge and not, not shying away from it.

00:43:34.560 I mean, I think you couldn't, you couldn't put it any better way.

00:43:39.040 I love it. Well, Mark Dunkelman, where can people learn more about the book and your work?

00:43:44.580 Um, well, I've written a bunch. Uh, the, the, the, the book is, uh, the vanishing neighbor,

00:43:51.600 the transformation of American community. It's sold wherever quality books are, uh, are, are on offer.

00:43:56.900 Um, and, uh, uh, Google my name. You'll find all sorts of interesting stuff. I hope.

00:44:03.620 Awesome. Well, Mark Dunkelman, thanks so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:44:06.120 Take care.

00:44:06.920 My guest today was Mark Dunkelman. He's the author of the book,

00:44:08.860 the vanishing neighbor, the transformation of American community.

00:44:11.760 You can find that on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

00:44:17.980 Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

00:44:22.580 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com. And if you enjoy this

00:44:26.140 podcast, I'd really appreciate it. If you give us a review on iTunes or stitcher, as always,

00:44:29.840 appreciate the support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay madly.

00:44:56.140 you

00:45:01.840 you

The Art of Manliness - February 10, 2016

#176： The Vanishing Neighbor

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript