Ya Gotta Have Relationships to Make Relationships
October 22, 2024
Arising tide lifts all boats, because boats are inanimate objects designed to float. It will drown a person who has not been taught to swim. Yet conservatives—so sensitive to the importance of institutions and relationships for human flourishing in the social context—have spent recent decades abandoning their intuitions while still expecting people to behave like buoyant pieces of plastic when thrown into the deep end of the market. We’ve just recently begun re-integrating concepts like “social capital” into our public policy, but we are not yet grappling with its implications.
In 2021, I began working with scholars and think-tankers in Washington to create the Social Capital Campaign, intended to create an off-the-shelf policy platform for an incoming president who wanted to help support America’s voluntary and private relationships. Our general, rather pessimistic conclusion was that all forms of social capital face downward pressure. Marriage rates, church attendance, volunteering, philanthropic giving, neighborly interaction, and number of close friends are all in decline. Beyond the workplace, adults have ever fewer venues to meet. More parents are sending their children into childcare facilities at an earlier age, for longer periods.
