LITTLE ROCK — Author Robert E. Hall and I share a common (and regrettable) view of our increasingly disconnected society. I wish I didn’t see what we’ve so willingly accepted as our culture. Yet it’s downright unhealthy to deny truths when they are smacking you in the face.
Hall penned the book The Land of Strangers: The Relationship Crisis that Imperils Home, Work, Politics and Faith, in which he documents how we have steadily become a nation adrift whose citizens aren’t anchored in much that endures. From our relationships to our jobs, families, politics and even our organized faiths, words nowadays often trump our actions.
“We speak in the poetry of relationships—home, family, friends, community, colleagues, customers, fellow citizens and even brothers and sisters in faith,” Hall explained. “But we increasingly live in the prose of divorce, single-parent families, transient community, alienated employees and customers, partisan political discourse and religious divisiveness.”
He cited varied studies which show:
Over the past 50 years, divorce has risen by 50 percent and marriage is down by the same percentage.
For the first time, over 50 percent of children born to parents under age 31 will be to unwed mothers. This sad figure coincides with a two-decade trend that finds the number of our closest friends has dropped by a third while those with no go-to friends has tripled.
The number of respondents to a national poll who quit doing business with a company because of a bad experience rose to 86 percent, up from 59 percent just four years ago.
A third of workers planned to leave their current employer by the year’s end.
Political parties continue to hemorrhage members with key swing states, losing over 200,000 party members over the past four years.
Those unaffiliated with organized religion have increased from 15 percent five years ago to 20 percent.
We of the baby boomer generation who were teenagers as this downsliding of American society became visible have the perspective to see what’s been happening before our eyes.
I asked Hall, 63, to elaborate on what he believes lies at the root of the trend to isolate ourselves and the resulting denial and disillusionment. Beginning with politics, he said those who view themselves as being extreme has increased from 29 percent to almost 50 percent over 40 years. “The growth and dominance of more extreme groups with their highly oppositional stances—has led to a massive flight from political parties.”
When it comes to matters of faith, Hall said a similarly bitter divide has triggered a growing stampede from religious affiliation. That has had dual consequences. “The growing religious divide simply adds to the relationship carnage already accumulating . . . across our land,” he said. “Second, by becoming a big part of the relational problem that also bleeds over into politics, it undermines . . . the hopeful helpful role of healing and reconciliation. For many, faith and even secular belief has lost its voice and authority as a force for peace—when we most need it.”
He continued: “We don’t have to guess about what Christ thought was the highest priority. Asked the greatest commandment, Christ said: ‘Love the Lord . . . and love your neighbor . . . all the law and the prophets hang on these.’ ”
Hall said that message puts loving relationship at the center of our lives and the laws and prophets as the means to our relational ends. “Mostly today we have flipped that on its head. Our heated debates promote the law by putting it at the top and demote . . . relationships to a lesser position.”
I asked for his three most glaring examples of our decline in relationships.
First, he said, the “extreme consumerism” we’ve embraced promotes self-absorption. A recent study of college students showed 30 percent more of them displayed elevated narcissism when compared with those studied in 1982.
Secondly, “extreme commercialism” has led us to put intangible aspects of life such as our reputations, influence and even our word up for sale. These are things “that have no business being monetized,” he said. “A purchased reputation isn’t reputable and purchased credibility isn’t credible.”
Finally, Hall said our society has rushed pell-mell to worship at the altar of technology, saying it’s “a false god” with which we are obsessed. Today, children between the ages of 8 and 18 spend an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes a day on various technological devices, and homes with Internet connections average 70 fewer minutes a day interacting with their families, he said.
While he said that technology is a great enabler of communication, Hall noted that the American Academy of Pediatrics coined a medical diagnosis known as “Facebook depression,” caused by social isolation; the Menninger Clinic has officially diagnosed technology addiction as an impulse disorder.
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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com.
Editorial, Pages 21 on 11/24/2012