By Robert Putnam
This was my nomination for the personal development book club. It is not really a personal development book. I chose it partly because of that. Other writers/thinkers have more harshly criticized the whole genre of self-help. Putnam only mentions it briefly in a couple points but it is to highlight the swing from “we” to “I.” There’s the idea, not entirely unfounded, that consumption of self-help material is a reflection of narcissism. People are turning inwards and concerned primarily about themselves and not about the people or world around them. It’s not a binary good or bad. There’s certainly value in people getting their own shit together before going out into the world. The popular metaphor is putting on your oxygen mask before trying to help others when a plane’s cabin loses pressure. The Upswing is for me, a reminder that after you put on your mask, you should still be looking to help others. It would be a waste of all that personal development work to stay isolated in one’s own little space. Both for one’s own fulfillment in life, and for one’s greater contribution to the world, one needs to interact with other people.
Beyond a brief redirection from the self-focused personal development, I was drawn to this book initially because I could personally use a dose of hope. The world seems to be in a bad, scary state right now and it’s easy to project that it will keep getting worse. Only time will tell what actually happens, but it was nice to have historical context to show that we’ve been here before and that things improved from that awful state, they didn’t continue worsening until a total collapse. That provides hope that we can pull out of this funk and do it again. With the peak in the book happening in the 1960s, that means that everyone in my generation has lived only on the current downslide. Even my parents were young during the peak and so most of their life and memories are also of the downward trend. It’s easy to see then that the world is just a downward spiral. That ignores that there was the front part of Putnam’s graphs that started in a place like our current one and improved over decades.
Another reason why I like this book for the book club is that Putnam’s writing contrasts with some of the less data-focused authors that we’ve encountered. A few of them (Lean Learning, Never Dine Alone) were heavy on personal anecdotes. “This worked for me, so this is the answer.” I have a hard time trusting that. I understand that Putnam’s data isn’t complete, and surveys can be misleading for various reasons. It’s possible that his research has missed important factors or that his conclusions aren’t completely accurate descriptions of our world. Still, I appreciate the extent that he tried to tie all of the data together, explain the limitations of data, and acknowledge some parts of the data that don’t fit the pattern that he was describing. Whether it’s all scientifically “true” is one thing, but I at least receive it as being intellectually honest and thorough. For many subjects where the data is imperfect, this may be as good as we can hope for.
I’ve also read and made some notes about Bowling Alone. Bowling Alone is even longer and with a narrower focus. It really goes deep on his study of the social metrics and civic engagement. I appreciated that. There were some other criticisms of Bowling Alone (what about minorities?) which were reasonable, and addressed to the extent that they could be in The Upswing, but the primary bonus of The Upswing is that it ties the challenge of social capital to other measures of societal health. It’s not simply that we use our leisure time differently and play Call of Duty instead of joining a bowling league. The changes go along with political polarization and economic inequality. There are other reasons, but Putnam’s work on social capital is a significant driver in my campaign to get people away from screens and back into the world. We need to show up for each other and with each other in physical shared spaces. I really believe that. I appreciate that the book club is such a space.