Things fall apart

This is not an individualized form of loneliness; it’s a structural aloneness rooted in the adult transition, with the college degree as the dividing line.

today’s emerging adults who do not attend four-year colleges and do not join the military often completely miss out on a collective experience of the adult transition. They may attend community, commuter, or for-profit colleges that are predominantly for part-time students and lack a cohort experience. They may get full- or part-time jobs immediate... See more

Social connections created outside of a shared institution — such as work, school, or church — require greater resources to build and more intentionality to maintain. Belonging and trust are more slowly earned, more tenuously held, and more easily broken

In a recent report, “Disconnected: The Growing Class Divide in American Civic Life,” we found that nearly a quarter of Americans without degrees report having no close friends, compared to 10 percent of Americans who completed college.

thing we do most, which is shop and browse. These privatized solutions fit into that consumptive way of being more than what we don't practice — going to a new place, creating our own mechanisms for connection, encountering a lot of unknowns, and having to talk to people we don't already know. Those are not practices that we’re literally spending h... See more

The two biggest threats with the privatization of community — which I see as any effort that paywalls a social experience, like a club, friendship bootcamp, or any product or service that promises connection for a fee — are that it creates monocultures and enables people to profit off of loneliness

our avenues for participation have narrowed as professionalization, specialization, and technocratization have expanded.

“... careerism tends to undermine democracy by divorcing knowledge from practical experience, devaluing the kind of knowledge that is gained from that experience, and generating social conditions in which ordinary people are not expected to know anything at all. The reign of specialized expertise … is the antithesis of democracy.”

- Christopher Lasc... See more

solidarity without proximity, civic renewal without economic renewal, and democracy without participation.