yeah, that pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?
Perhaps Americans are not made for mass political organizations,
> though they are very good at building lots and lots of small NGOs. It
> may be time to think what can be made of this apparent national
> character, rather than trying to change it into something that it is
> not.
i'm replying here in part because i was really struck by both of these comments, but especially the latter. i wouldn't have expected the national character line from yoshie.
have you all seen the lates from robert putnam? (sorry if this was posted and i missed it -- i get to cruise through this list much less than i would like)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/05/news/diversity.php
never mind that the article plays the research wrong. i think it actually speaks directly to yoshie's point, which we might say is not about bowling alone, but organizing alone. lol. i crack me up.
=== Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings. ===
now, putnam urges us not to conclude from this that the effort is not worth making. that is, he's trying to say he's identified the challenge, not the refutation of the possibility of diverse communities.
but it does suggest that what we have in front of us is precisely the forging of some kind of national character. doesn't it? and isn't it really what we think we're fighting about, every day? the very idea of a diverse community is oxymoronic in a critical way, but in a productive way. productive in the sense that it presents an opportunity.
i've still not thought this through completely, and my brain keeps wanting to tie it to social networking online (which is a separate issue*), but maybe, coming back to yoshie's comment, the issue is not the american national character, but the lack of a national character (which would then constitute the national character, sort of, but you get my point).
j
* see scott gilbertson's argument for an open version of facebook or myspace. it makes sense, and they almost managed to build one, kind of: http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/news/2007/08/open_social_net?currentPage=1
-- http://brainmortgage.blogspot.com/