Disconnect: Why Americans Don't Understand the World and How We Can Learn

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Contents

Introduction: What the Obama Presidency Means for Global Civil Society...........................vii1: What's Our Problem?...........................................................................12: Sister Schools: Writing Plays, Shooting Baskets in Chicago and Casablanca.....................223: Sister Cities.................................................................................484: Their Sisters' Keepers........................................................................765: Ethnic and Religious Identities...............................................................916: Hidden in Plain Sight: The New Immigrants.....................................................1127: Dreamers......................................................................................1348: Making Connections............................................................................1649. Conclusion: Athenians and Americans...........................................................187Bibliography.....................................................................................192

Chapter One

In February 2003, I noticed an article on the education page of the Boston Globe describing the Blue Pack Project, whose purpose was to deliver a backpack of school supplies to individual children in Afghanistan. An accompanying photo showed three smiling girls proudly holding their packs, standing before a larger group of children. The plan was to raise $2 million, which would fund 200,000 packs for Afghan children at ten dollars each. The national project was almost half completed, and some money had been raised locally - $500 from middle school children in Wareham, a small community near the Rhode Island border, $1,000 from Brandeis University, and some from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester.

I thought this was an outstanding idea. The United States, having occupied Afghanistan, ought to contribute to its civic and educational future. Contrary to the famous post 9/11 headline that asked "Why Do They Hate Us?" I felt confident that Afghans probably hated the Taliban and would welcome the arrival of peaceful Americans bearing a Marshall Plan. In the press, experts were pointing out that if the United States turned its attention away from the place, the Taliban or traditional war lords would re-emerge, just as they had done after the Russians left in 1991. The notion that American students should help their Afghan friends go to school seemed to be just the right idea.

I was puzzled, however, by the timing and modesty of the project. What had taken so long to initiate it? The invasion of Afghanistan had begun in October 2001 and was finished by the end of the year. Now, over one year later, President Bush was beating the drums for the invasion of Iraq that would begin the following month. Afghanistan had been out of the news for months. And why was it left to the non-profit Academy for Educational Development to promote the campaign, rather than the United States Department of Education? How did they come up with a $2 million goal? That's a fraction of one American community's school budget. Why 200,000 bags? Wouldn't Afghanistan, a country of 26 million people, have about four million school age children aged six through sixteen? And what explained why, among the scores of school districts in the Boston metropolitan area, some participated and others did not?

In the days after the airplanes crashed into the towers, I imagined that the government would appeal to every American, even first graders, to help rebuild Afghan society. Was this the plan?

The article listed a web site. Through the website, I got in touch with the local office. I explained that I wanted to volunteer, and made an appointment to visit at a downtown address, which turned out to be an advertising agency. What might I do as a volunteer? The young woman project director looked at me blankly. What did I mean, "volunteer?" Her incomprehension suggested to me that she thought I was acting inappropriately for my age. I was old enough to be her father, but not a retiree, and she already had a boss. I said I'd do what the other volunteers were doing. There were no other volunteers, she explained. I pointed out that the newspaper article listed a website for those who wanted to get involved. What were the other people who responded doing? Well, she said, nobody had responded. She just seemed mystified by my behavior. We agreed that she'd get back to me after speaking with her boss. She never did. I e-mailed again, a few times, inconclusively, and finally gave up.

What made our response to September 11 so misguided? How did we fail to rebuild Afghanistan and instead invade Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the Al Qaeda terrorists? Why do we ignore the crippling world poverty that constitutes the moral challenge of our times? The answers lay both in rapidly changing recent developments and in cultural traits rooted deep in our past.

Apparently, my failed effort to volunteer for the Blue Pack Project was typical of a wider problem. I had inadvertently wandered into a late Twentieth Century phenomenon famously described by the Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam. In Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Putnam argued that the fabric of American civic life had worn thin during the last third of the century, and that this diminished political democracy and social life. We are abandoning community for individualism. Political scientists, sociologists, journalists, philosophers and others have worried about this general trend for some time. Many describe themselves as "communitarians," and while they often disagree among themselves, they agree that American community life is deteriorating.

Putnam made an enormous media splash. He chose as a symbol of the times the seemingly unimportant statistic that membership in bowling leagues had declined. We are still bowling, he found, but we are bowling alone. We are therefore losing "social capital" - the ability to find meaning and connection through voluntary association. Putnam dramatized this situation with an anecdote. He told the story of a man who donated a kidney to a friend whom he had met through their bowling league. One of the men was white and the other African American. Without the bowling league - metaphor for an activity through which we develop social capital - they would never have met in our segregated society.

Putnam postulated that various areas of communal life were weakening. He showed that the percentage of voters had dropped from 63% in 1960 to 49% in 1996. According to public opinion polls, in 1966 only 34% of the public agreed that "the people running the country don't really care what happens to you," but by 1997, 57% thought that was true. The mood of cynicism affected civic life too. Despite the attention paid to the new political energy of religious conservatives, Putnam found that mainstream religious activity was declining. Union membership had drastically shrunk as well, not only because of economic factors, but also due to the growth of individualism. While Americans doubled their contributions to charity between 1960 and 1995, as a percentage of income, the relevant statistic, it had gone down. There were some countervailing trends but these were overshadowed by breakdowns in every form of social...