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Musings Report 2021-33 8-14-21 Do You Live in a Social Capital Desert?
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Do You Live in a Social Capital Desert?
"Desert" has become a favored metaphor: food deserts describe neighborhoods with few places to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, democracy deserts describe political regions rigged by gerrymandering, and so on.
Many of us feeling our way forward to a more sustainable and healthier future talk about social capital--the intangible but very real network of connections and relationships that characterize human society.
We call this network of ties and trust "capital" because it takes time and effort to build and maintain, and it generates value.
The value generated by social capital has many forms, but the one most commonly cited is favors with an economic value. We say we're "calling in favors" when we seek help in locating clients, contractors, mechanics, employees, etc., or ask for help in childcare, yardwork, picking someone up at the airport, etc.
The foundations of this form of social capital are 1) longstanding ties to existing networks: extended families, schools, home towns or neighborhoods, etc., and 2) reciprocity, being generous with one's time, experience and expertise to one's network.
This "investment" isn't made with calculated returns in mind (though some people do offer help in the hopes of gaining something of far more value than they offered); the eventual value generated is unknown, but everything that's given--especially the trust that you do what you say you'll do--is like a savings account that adds value to your place in the network.
Put more bluntly, an unreliable person isn't going to be valued as highly as a person who commits to a task and unfailingly gets it done on time and with minimal fuss / hassle.
Unlike other forms of capital, social capital doesn't necessarily decay over time: long-dormant connections and favors can come alive in moments of necessity.
For example, one of my close friends went to extraordinary efforts to help me complete some major renovations in 2017 that were beyond my expertise and energy--I could not have done them without his help.
From his perspective, he remembered that we had put them up for a few months back in 1981 when they were building their first house--something I've always remembered fondly as a fun time and certainly not an obligation, then or now. But nonetheless, my friend considered this something still worthy of appreciation 36 years later.
In China and other Asian nations, much of what is labeled corruption in the West is more properly understood as social capital bleeding into the immense financial wealth generated by state-finance connections.
The old school/university or home-town ties that grease deals between politicians and developers is known as guanxi in Mandarin Chinese, a word that embodies a complex web of obligations, reciprocity, trust and value that are universal characteristics of human sociability and social capital.
Ancient trading networks stretching from the Roman Empire to India were built on networks of trusted contacts in Rome, Egypt (the entrepot of trade from Mediterranean ports to the Arabian Sea ports) and India. This wasn't corruption, it was simply business--often based on family and near-family connections.
It's long been observed that societies with low trust in strangers--that is, low levels of trust in the fairness and reach of the society's legal, financial and political institutions--are economically stagnant, as enterprises cannot expand beyond the trusted network of families and family-like connections.
In modern industrial societies, social capital has lost value as people have come to rely on government for income, food, child and elderly care, etc.--the resources and services that we once relied on social capital networks to provide.
Urban life tends to degrade social capital, which requires time, effort and caring that are often scarce in busy, over-committed lives. The frenetic pace limits the rewards of investing in social capital networks, as does the fast-revolving door of neighborhoods and workplaces: it's difficult to establish friendships and meaningful ties when everyone is pressed for time and people move on in a few months or years.
Investing in people who are gone in a few months yields very little, so social capital dwindles. Many urban dwellers don't have any contact with their neighbors and only limited contact with people they work with.
The ties that exist are too contingent and weak to support much in the way of trust, reciprocity, sharing, obligation, etc.
In economic terms, if the government provides income and Corporate America provides the goods and services, the traditional need for social capital evaporates.
Humans are not just rational economic robots, and so the impoverishment of social capital deserts in which few know their neighbors, share anything with others, owe anything to anyone or trust anyone is also a desert of emotional well-being.
This has spawned a number of seminal books such as The Lonely Crowd, Bowling Alone and The Culture of Narcissism, in which author Christopher Lasch sets aside the psychological definition of an individual's narcissism (hedonistic egoism) to examine what he called "pathological narcissism."
In my work, I'd call this systemic narcissism resulting from two dynamics:
1) Work/career/immediate family demands so much of individuals now that they have little time or energy to build or maintain social capital networks.
2) Given the general dependence on the Savior State and corporations for all of life's necessities, there is little need to maintain social capital beyond the immediate family circle.
In other words, the individual has no economic need to invest in social capital because all the essentials are provided by the state and corporations.
In traditional economies, producing goods and services in the home and sharing with a social network were essential to survival; there was no Savior State providing money to buy everything.
As for the emotional well-being value of social capital, the simulacra of social media and brand-identity fill the void imperfectly.
In my own experience, social capital develops organically in stable organizations bound by faith, purpose and values. These include faith-based groups and non-profits organized around specific values and purposes.
Some enterprises can foster social capital, but the demands to maximize profits every quarter make enterprises poor soil to grow social capital.
In an economy that optimizes time spent earning money and buying everything, very few people have much to share: they have very little free time, their career demands maintaining specialty skills over activities that generate surplus goods (hobbies, crafts, gardens, etc.) and the financial pressures to maximize income set the priorities of life.
In other words, social capital deserts don't just lack trust and connections; they lack goods and services that have value in a society in which everything is store-bought.
For example, people who don't have time or interest in preparing meals with fresh ingredients will not value gifts of home-grown fruit and vegetables, and so one of the fundamental forms of reciprocity throughout human history--exchanging home-grown food--has little value.
Which brings us to the last redoubt of social capital, family networks. These too have frayed as people have lost connections to any "home" locale and moved far from each other. Since there is no need for social capital to meet most of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, there is very little "necessity" glue to bind people together.
Over the past few years, we've returned to my wife's "home-town" island (where I lived in the 1980s), which remains the home of much of her extended family. The culture of rural Hawaii remains traditional in ways which enable maintaining social capital for those with an interest in doing so. Many places in the U.S. and world retain this traditional social fabric.
In Hawaii, the need to maintain home gardens and social capital has 100-year old roots in plantation communities in which the workers weren't paid enough to buy everything they needed. Home gardens weren't a luxury, they were essential because what little money that was available was needed to buy staples such as rice.
Children went barefoot because there was no money for shoes.
What's changed is what is essential. In today's world, earning enough income to buy everything is what's essential, and social capital is non-essential. In living memory, social capital and home food production were essential, as having enough money to buy everything was out of reach for the vast majority of households.
We're lucky to have old friends here, good neighbors and a stable, trustworthy, generous extended family. I am humbled by the realization that there is no way I (a self-described 'professional hermit') could assemble a hundredth of this social fabric myself.
But I can help provide the means of reciprocity, the goods and services (time invested in aiding others) we can offer those who have been generous with us.
A modest example is the harvest of our two mature lychee trees. Not everyone likes lychee, but many people do, and those who don't favor the fruit likely know someone who does.
We've harvested about 400 pounds (almost 200 kg) of fruit, sorted it down to about 350 pounds, and distributed it to over 30 different households over the past two weeks. Many of the recipients distributed the fruit to other friends and family. (One 20-pound box was divided up amongst 10 friends/relatives).
The value generated isn't entirely replaceable with store-bought fruit. People know we put a lot of effort into growing, harvesting and sorting the fruit, and delivering it to them to enjoy.
The monetary value of the 350 pounds of fruit is modest, but the social capital value is meaningful beyond any financial measure. I'm guessing our lychee filtered out to around 100 people / households, gaining value through each additional sharing. That's how social capital works.
I don't want to give the impression that this was generosity; it was reciprocity -- fulfilling obligations to others who have given us food and help in the past. Recently, the cornucopia gifted to us included (all home-grown): pumpkin, green beans, foraged bamboo shoots and fiddle-head ferns, pineapple, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, eggs, tatsoi (Chinese vegetable), fiddle-head salad, baked goods and fresh-caught fish.
Social capital can't be bought, it takes significant, sustained investments of time, energy and caring. In a society obsessed with financial measures of value, it's little wonder social capital has atrophied to the point that it is a non-factor in many lives.
The value isn't in being willing to accept something of value, it's in creating and sharing something of value without calculating a financial return. The return isn't financial, it's far more valuable than that.
It's an open question as to whether social capital deserts can be made to bloom. The soil may lack the requisite nutrients. For households hungry for sociability and social capital, it may be easier to move somewhere with fertile soil rather than to try to turn hardpan into a verdant garden.
That changes if a self-sustaining, self-organizing, like-minded group assembles around a value-purpose driven project. But that's asking a lot of people stretched for time and energy, and of people like me who are joiners, not founders or leaders.
Necessity is a magnet, and perhaps as what's essential in our lives changes, social capital will start sprouting, even in the most unlikely places.
Highlights of the Blog
Video:
Gadfly Interview with Charles Hugh Smith (Host Carlos Gonzalez, 22 min)
Posts:
Inflation: Keynes, the Gold Watch and Everything 8/13/21
Dear Fed: Are You Insane? 8/11/21
The End of Global Tourism? 8/9/21
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
After many failures, it seems we might actually have some healthy green bean seedlings... fingers crossed.
From Left Field
'WE ALL QUIT': How America's Workers Are Taking Back Their Power
The Next Big Thing: Distributed Generation
The insect apocalypse: ‘Our world will grind to a halt without them’
Sorry Twitter. It Wasn’t Personal. It’s Political. Leaving the Playground of Our Times.
What’s wrong with the cultural elite? (via Brandon R.)
Development In A Wealthy Montana Boom Town Is Fouling A World-Class Trout River (via CNF) -- wealthy destroy their desired "getaway" destination...
Hou Yifan and the Wait for Chess’s First Woman World Champion
U.S. Population Growth, an Economic Driver, Grinds to a Halt
Through the Eye of a Needle: An Eco-Heterodox Perspective on the Renewable Energy Transition
Mining of Minerals and the Limits to Growth video (14 min)
COVID-19 Vaccines Don’t Really Work as Hoped
How Will the Coronavirus Evolve?
"Any person of conscience in America builds up a sense of dread." Daniel Hale
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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