I have spent my entire life making friends. I grew up in a physically and emotionally lonely environment. I never knew what to say. So when I became a young adult, I took classes on how to talk to people. I joined groups with causes, co-op preschool, connecting with my neighbors by helping them, and book clubs, just to name a few of my attempts. I reckon I made one or at most two lifelong, devoted friends per decade, the kind of friend you can call day or night for help. Now, at seventy, the lesson I learned was that making friends takes a lot of effort, a willingness to go out of your way to help them when they need it, and time and kindness. Most of the time, people you'd like to have or want as friends won't reciprocate. But when you find someone who is as happy to have you for a friend as you are to be friends, it is a gift to be repaid with loyalty and compassion, and acknowledgment.

The insight that club/group activities should be fun is an important point to emphasize. I think sometimes people talking about loneliness can have a bit of a hectoring tone, making it sound like we have to join groups as a chore, and people get defensive about being told to do boring chores. But good communities are never boring, they’re something you’re excited about!

Reading Putnam's "Bowling Alone" years ago, I worked even harder at connecting people. I worked both as a coordinator of events like TEDxLincoln and more recently The Nebraska Storytelling Festival. Then I read "The Upswing" and focused even more on ways I could personally be involved in connecting through my membership in Rotary here in Lincoln, Nebraska and around the world. I encourage you to connect through a service club in your community and grow the bridging social capital in our world.

An atomized society without a social fabric is actually beneficial for industries selling crap to fill that void, it also makes political organization extremely difficult which is a nice bonus for the elites.

If you're reading this and are also trying to create community, just keep doing it. It works. I read "Bowling Alone" two years ago and started a pilot project of "civic education + fun workshops" in Panama. I am sure it will work and that we'll see the positive effects in the coming years. Don' stop on your journey to create community. We're doing what we can in our little corners of the world. We must keep lighting up these little beacons that will eventually make America, and the world, shine again.

"Bridging" and "bonding" and common sense. Thank you professor Putnam, very insightful.

As another commenter said without discussion of criticism of capitalism and immigration politics the solutions will only incorporate bootstrap politics

I tried different clubs for years in my twenties and never felt any belonging. My neighbours aren't friendly, therapy never helped, the one support group I found that I liked stopped meeting a few months after I joined it. There is something bad happening socially in the WEIRD countries.

I got mine, screw you, every man for himself, is the mantra and mission statement of this country, Sad 😢

what’s fascinating here is that binding social capital may be good for ameliorating loneliness-but his point about bridging social capital is really important.

28:00 That’s a really sad yet interesting point. Things don't necessarily fail due to a lack of trying, but it shows how much we are at the mercy of systems and the landscape. Urban planning very much feels like the next iteration of addressing isolation, but from a larger systemic level. It's hard to connect when it's hard to get to people in the first place or you're stranded because you don't have a car. The part on natural disasters is extreamly relevant right now in Houston. The city doesn't suck because it does what other cities do, but because it is so darn spread out. 1-2 hours that can balloon to 3 getting from one part of the city to the other which left communities cut off from one another in a dire time. Clubs are especially tricky here because of the catering to a specific part of town because it's so annoying to go across town.

I must be living in a very special region, because it’s almost impossible NOT to end up joining a lot of organizations here. I moved here in 2018, and before I had even finished transporting all my belongings, I popped in to attend a service at the local Episcopal Church, and someone grabbed my arm and introduced me to the choir director. Once I was singing in the choir, some members got me to come along to the local community chorus rehearsals, and another got me going to the “Newcomers’ Club”. I dropped in at the local Democratic Party headquarters and started volunteering there, which led to being invited to lunch with the “Blue Hens” once a month, where the conversations veered into a lot of non-political subjects. I attended a free talk on native plants sponsored by the local master gardeners’ association and ended up signing up for their course. One of the master gardeners (who also sang in the community chorus-you may be noticing a pattern here) nudged me into joining the local herb guild. I’m really not the most sociable person in the world. In fact, when COVID hit, it was in some ways a relief that I had a little involuntary solitude. Now, I frequently have chance encounters in which I and another person look at each other and say, “you look familiar-where do we know each other from?” We usually come up with at least one possible or definite connection.

I wonder if he thinks pickleball may turn things around, such a social game and people are joining together to play by the millions; my wife and I have met dozens of new people in the last few years. Running clubs are another great example our local club is Huge and puts on dozens of races/activities.

Christians, (though I no longer embrace it), do still "join" - the church. Even some move churches b/c it is still important to them even when the change address. That group seems to have that "optimism." On the other hand, media sources play up the division. Maybe it's not as intense in the streets as a protest might suggest, but I don't really know. I _feel_ it too.

Robert Putnam should have a conversation with John W. Dean (author of Conservative Without Conscious) about the authoritarian follower personality.

Without incorporating a meaningful reading/criticism of capitalism, Putnam's (important) work is limited to chasing social epiphenomena. His denial that people can be too busy to develop social capital made me wince. Talk about speaking from a place of unacknowledged privilege.

It’s hard for me to be lonely. I have a different man over every night 😞

The presenter is completely wrong and nefarious in her reasoning. It’s not about “trusting the government”, it’s about trusting other people.

Try TimeBanking and similar mutual aid groups. Neighbor to neighbor. Credit unions. Little Free Libraries. Men's and women's groups. Yes, pickle ball. Places where kids and grandparents and parents can be together for fun. Yoga. Sharing hobbies. Community gardening. One to one tutoring for reading...or a second language or anything. Sitting on benches. Talking with strangers. Deal with local businesses and causes. Bridging as well as bonding.