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Hey, Sibby, maybe it's not secular humanism tearing civilization apart: maybe it's just money. Greg Mankiw points us toward a study that found people given even little reminders that get them thinking about money are less helpful and more solitary than folks who aren't thinking about money:
Trivial reminders of money made a surprisingly large difference. For example, where the control group would offer to spend an average of 42 minutes helping someone with a task, those primed to think about money offered only 25 minutes. Similarly, when someone pretending to be another participant in the experiment asked for help, the money group spent only half as much time helping her. When asked to make a donation from their earnings, the money group gave just a little over half as much as the control group.
Why does money makes us less willing to seek or give help, or even to sit close to others? Vohs and her colleagues suggest that as societies began to use money, the necessity of relying on family and friends diminished, and people were able to become more self-sufficient. “In this way,” they conclude, “money enhanced individualism but diminished communal motivations, an effect that is still apparent in people’s responses today” [Greg Mankiw, "Does Money Undermine Community?" Greg Mankiw's Blog, 2008.08.24].
Boy, Sibby, sounds like we need the socialist utopia of Gene Roddenberry, where science and reason have gotten rid of antiquated concepts like currency and vanquished crime, poverty, and want.
More details and commentary for Sibby and everyone else in this Peter Singer commentary (knock yourself out on that secular humanist, my friend!).
Maybe it's not money itself, but an obsession with it, that works against community interests.
ReplyDeleteEven without a common medium of exchange, the greedy would find a way to accumulate wealth.
Seriously, calling out secular humanism as causing increased prison populations? Talk about poisoning the well.
ReplyDeleteDid the overall population in the area increase since 1979? What percentage of the prison population is religious? Has that changed since 1979?
Wow, what a zealot.
CAH:
How does being temporarily more self motivated destroy a community? The whole point of a community is to specialize out so that all can reap the benefit of that specialized skill. Also, this study isn't saying that we are less willing to help than 50 years ago. The study just says that today under certain circumstances our willingness to help is less than others.
How about a study that shows those who have to use the restroom badly are less willing to stop and help than those who don't have to go to the bathroom. Would that show that we should all never have to go to the bathroom and we should modify our behavior accordingly?
This isn't even a correlation, let alone causation.
"The whole point of a community is to specialize..." yikes! I'm about to grossly exaggerate your point, but 1000 specialists all working in their cubbyholes on their specialties does not constitute a community.
ReplyDeleteNot to take one study too far, but I can see where if the study is correct, that folks with money on their mind show a decline in community-oriented behavior, then the more often we have money on our minds, the more often we will act with less attention to community.
Change over decades? Right -- I can make no conclusion from this study about whether we are less social/community-oriented than we were 50 years ago. Let's ask our dads! :-)
I think that the biggest change over the last 50 years is human mobility. My dad's generation generally stayed in one place, but since then each generation has tended to extend further away.
ReplyDeleteI believe this is the cause of the "community-weakening". Childhood bonds are not extending through life. This has only been exacerbated by increase in college education. Kids are being taught to move away to go to school and then to move again to find a job.
We aren't becoming attached to our communities because of our extreme mobility. Without this attachment, we aren't willing to help.
Interesting discussion! Here are two more tidbits to throw into the kettle, for whatever they may be worth.
ReplyDelete(1) Native Americans did not have money as such until the White People came. As far as I can tell, Native Americans were far more community oriented in, say, A.D. 1750 than we all are today.
(2) My dad would certainly agree with Tony. He'd love nothing better than to have an extended family all around him in the same town. But his parents both emigrated from Italy to Nebraska.
Stan:
ReplyDeleteI would posit that native americans also had a tight knit family structure that didn't diverge across the country. Also, they didn't have emergency services/state sponsored support. They were required to depend on each other to survive.
As a follow up to my previous post, I also think that ubiquitous telecommunications increases the fragmentation. Family units keep communicating with each other after they are geographically separated. This tends to further reduce community involvement of those who move away from their immediate family.
Without these communications, I think people would naturally seek out others for companionship in their new geographic location leading to enhanced community participation.