In the early 1830s, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville came to America under the guise of studying America’s prison system. What he really wanted to know, to help his own country, was how America thrived as a democratic society without falling into tyranny. He documented his observations in his classic work Democracy in America.
One area he famously highlighted was how Americans spontaneously cultivated civil associations: Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small. Through these associations, Tocqueville believed, Americans learned to practice and thus protect their freedoms.
Even more, as he put it, a key result of living out freedom in this way is that “the heart is enlarged, and the human mind is developed.” This way of life was, in other words, formative. Had this visit happened today, Tocqueville may have been struck by the loss of strategic associations.
As Catherina Gioino recently wrote in Fortune Magazine, America is seeing a massive number of closures of what sociologists call “third places,” places outside of home and work, such as coffee shops, movie theaters, libraries, museums, recreation centers, and restaurants.
Certainly, the rise of online shopping and streaming, along with residual effects of COVID-19, are reasons for these closures, as well as the popularity of “virtual reality.” Altogether, the result is that fewer people want to leave their homes. However, this trend dates before the pandemic or even the internet. Nearly 25 years ago, Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam noted in his book Bowling Alonethat more people were bowling, but alone instead of in bowling leagues.
His concern was not for the future