"The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America"
The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in Americahttp://socialevolutionforum.com/2013/06/21/strange-disappearance/
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The title of this blog is a paraphrase of a 1995 article by Robert Putnam, “The Strange Disappearance of Civic America.” Robert Putnam is a political scientist at Harvard who over the last 20 years has been documenting the decline of ‘social capital’ in America.
Putnam has argued, in particular, that last several decades saw lower levels of trust in government, lower levels of civic participation, lower connectedness among ordinary Americans, and lower social cooperation.
This is a puzzling development, because from its inception the American society was characterized, to an unusual degree, by the density of associational ties and an abundance of social capital. Almost 200 years ago that discerning observer of social life, Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote about the exceptional ability of Americans to form voluntary associations and, more generally, to cooperate in solving problems that required concerted collective action. This capacity for cooperation apparently lasted into the post-World War II era, but several indicators suggest that during the last 3-4 decades it has been unraveling.
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One important factor, closely related to social cooperation, is the degree of economic inequality. Both general theories of social evolution and empirical studies suggest that inequality is corrosive of cooperation. As Emmanuel Saez, Thomas Piketty, and coworkers have demonstrated using sophisticated analyses of income tax returns, income inequality declined during most of the twentieth century, but it turned a corner in the 1970s and has been increasing ever since:
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A lot of people are marching about Trayvon, but it's not impacting the racism that caused the killing, not even a little. People want to tell me that more generations will take care of it, yet it has been at least a couple since things really started to change, and all I see is that racism is not not as socially acceptable, not that it has gone away very much. And as things get tougher economically, and they will, I can't for the life of me figure out how that is going to make them better.
Look at Occupy. Couldn't even get half of 1% of the population to go in one direction, decide who their "enemy" was, yet there is clear evidence in writing of the harm the greedy did to, and are doing to, directly perhaps 30-40 million people, with at least twice that many suffering from the collateral damage. 10,000 people are murdered every year, yet we couldn't get enough to get basic, common-sense restrictions on guns. A hundred million or more people do things every day, or fail to address, things that are clearly not in their best interest. And just saying in time it's a matter of time, that things are getting better, is avoiding the issue, I think
We are killing the frigging planet we live on, and we can't even cooperate enough to address it. Stupid humans.
That paper on cooperation shows a clear trend that it's not swinging back at all, despite the little islands of cooperation. They are so small as to be of little consequence. Not being judgemental or pessimistic, but the evidence says that what is being done is totally inadequate, maybe even harmful. Which means it's probably going to lead to worse, with "better" not even on the horizon.
We probably could address it, change it, but for the foreseeable future it's more like a bunch of doctors giving the patient a suppressant for a cough, while a cancer is eating the patient's liver, and all the doctors are smiling among themselves about how great their progress is because the cough is not so prevalent. For real change we have to figure out what bonded us together in the first place, and either pursue that or figure out what needs to be done differently.
That's not happening, imo. Of course, ymmv 
