Are American communities deteriorating?

The Pew Research Center recently surveyed people from 24 countries, asking them whether they felt very/somewhat close to people in their country and/or people in their local community. The United States fell dead last when it came to a sense of solidarity with countrymen: Only 66 percent of Americans said that they feel close to others in their country, while the median for all the countries surveyed was 83 percent. Hungary had the highest rates of this sense of national belonging, with 93 percent reporting this kind of closeness.

The U.S. didn’t fare much better when it came to the strength of bonds in local communities. Only 54 percent of Americans said they feel close to people in their local area—giving our nation a second-to-last ranking, beating out South Korea by only 4 percent.

Americans’ sense of isolation varies across demographics. In general, younger American feel more disconnected from fellow Americans than older Americans do, perhaps because younger generations have grown up in a technologized world that’s far more ideologically divided than their grandparents’ was.

There are also differences along party lines, with Republicans being more likely to feel bonded to their countryman (75 percent) than Democrats (60 percent). The same pattern plays out when it comes to religion: 73 percent of U.S. adults with religious affiliation feel close to others while only 51 percent of religiously unaffiliated adults do.

The pattern seems clear: The more religious and conservative you are, the more likely that you feel fellowship with fellow Americans. It’s interesting to note, too, that Hungary—one of the most conservative countries in Europe—has the highest rates of solidarity and unity.

Why would it be the case that more conservative, religious folks are more connected to others? We’ve reported before here at ITO that those embracing left-wing social justice ideology have lower rates of happiness and higher rates of anxiety and depression. As I noted then, the neo-Marxist influence on the modern Left’s ideology suffuses it with a preconception that society is unjust. This belief in the inherent injustice of society, I theorized, leads to anxiety, anger, and sadness.

It’s possible that similar reasons underpin the higher rates of isolation among Americans with liberal ideologies compared to those with conservative beliefs. Left-leaning politics increasingly operate on a worldview predicated on the mechanisms of power, oppression, and victimhood.

Left-wing intellectuals from Marx to Freud to Foucault to Derrida have fostered attitudes of suspicion, discontent, and distrust. For many of them, all the functions of everyday society are merely masks that hide hidden forms of tyranny. This mindset in no way promotes feelings of trust or solidarity among citizens. Left-wing ideology carries in it the signature and seed of divisiveness.

Traditional conservative values, on the other hand, are concerned with restoring and preserving connections: between husband and wife, parents and children, politics and morality, education and truth, culture and beauty, past and present. In fact, a decent definition of a traditional conservative would be one who wishes to conserve the connections and integrations of human life bestowed on us by our predecessors. Similarly, true religion encourages charity, sacrifice, and solidarity amongst its practitioners. So it comes as no surprise that conservative and religious people feel more united.

All that said, why might Americans in general feel less connected to one another than people from other nations?

The answer may lie with our famous American individualism, along with the historical contingencies of our nation’s development. America is a young country, made up of a vast number of differing cultures, traditions, and peoples. We do not have much for a single, longstanding, shared American culture. And what commonalities we did have are being broken down by increasing political polarization, as I suggested in the wake of the Trump assassination attempt. Thus our lack of solidarity may be for the same reason that—as Michael Pollan argues in The Omnivore’s Dilemma—we struggle more than most countries with our eating habits: We are deeply multicultural and have not received a single set of customs, values, or heritage that is agreed upon.

Our feelings of distance from our local communities can be traced to similar causes, with the additional ones of globalization and big agriculture, which tend to disrupt or destroy local cultures and communities.

This lack of cultural, religious, and ideological unity naturally makes it harder to feel united as a people. Relationships are, at their most basic level, built upon common beliefs, shared experiences, collective goals. This we seem to possess less than many other countries. Perhaps, however, rediscovering our shared values could once again bring unity, community, and fellowship among Americans.

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