My favorite amateur sociologist, David Brooks, wrote a column in the last few weeks about how as a society we’ve tipped over. In the piece, he wrote:
“But something darker and deeper seems to be happening as well — a long-term loss of solidarity, a long-term rise in estrangement and hostility. This is what it feels like to live in a society that is dissolving from the bottom up as much as from the top down.”
To make the case that we’re coming apart, David listed a number of facts and statistics. Here are some of his mixed with some of my own:
— The number of monthly hate crimes in this country — the number of attacks on African Americans, Asian Americans, LGBTQ people, Jews, and synagogues — is at record levels.
— The number of monthly gun purchases is also at record levels.
— The number of Americans who give to charity is steadily declining.
— We live in a deteriorating political and social climate in which polarization, hatred, anger, and fear are all on the rise.
— The country is experiencing high rates of depression, drug abuse, alcoholism, loneliness, suicide, and deaths of despair.
— Drug overdose deaths have shot up in the last decade.
— For the first time ever, life expectancy in the U.S. is declining.
— The U.S. has the world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households, and the highest rate of child poverty in the developed world.
— In recent years, Americans have been acting in fewer pro-social and relational ways, and in more anti-social and self-destructive ways.
— The number of miles Americans drove during 2020 fell dramatically while the number of traffic deaths rose sharply. (On the road, we’ve witnessed far more speeding and reckless driving since the start of the pandemic.)
— The number of disruptive incidents in schools is way up, and mass shootings at schools continue at a level no other country approaches.
— The number of altercations on airplanes — between passengers and crew and between passengers — has exploded.
— The murder rate is surging in cities across the country.
“This is what it feels like to live in a society that is dissolving from the bottom up as much as from the top down.”
