>> Aslihan Bulut:
Hi, everyone. I'm Aslihan Bulut.
I'm the law librarian of
Congress.
Welcome. We are so pleased you
could join us either in person
or online for a moderated
discussion with Robert Putnam
and Shaylyn Romney Garrett
concerning their book,
"The Upswing: How America Came
Together a Century Ago and How
It Can Do It Again."
A limited number of copies of
"The Upswing" will be available
for purchase in the room
directly behind us.
This event is also supporting
the Library of Congress's Join
in Voluntary Associations in
America exhibit, which is
located in this building in the
South Gallery that I hope you'll
get to visit as well.
The discussion will be
moderated by Ryan Reft.
Ryan is a historian of the
modern U.S. with a focus on
domestic policy and politics in
our Manuscripts Division.
He received his PhD in U.S.
urban history from 
the University of
California in San Diego in
2014.
He oversees collections
pertaining to the law, Congress,
journalism, non-government
organizations, LGBTQ activism,
and he co-curated the 2017
exhibition,
"Echoes of the Great War:
American Experiences 
of World War I."
His work has appeared in
anthologies, academic journals,
Library of Congress blogs and
popular media, such as KCET in
Los Angeles and The Washington
Post.
And with that, I will turn it
over to Ryan.
>> Ryan Reft:
Thank you for the introduction.
Just to reiterate, obviously
this talk is to facilitate folks
to go see the joint exhibit,
which you can see upstairs to
the left of the Jefferson
Library.
And we're here to talk about
"The Upswing."
So let me introduce 
the co-author
of "The Upswing." First,
Robert D. Putnam is the Malcolm
Research professor of public
policy at Harvard University, a
member of the National Academy
of Sciences, a fellow of the
British Academy and a past
president of the American
Political Science Association.
In 2006, he received the 
Skytte Prize,
apologies if I've mispronounced
that.
The world's highest accolade
for a political scientist.
2012, then-President Barack
Obama awarded Putnam the
National Humanities Medal, the
nation's highest honor for
contributions to the
humanities. He has written 15
books, among them "Making
Democracy Work: Civic Traditions
in Italy" and "Bowling Alone:
The Collapse and 
Revival of American Community."
Both are among the
most cited and bestselling
social science works in nearly
a century, and he has consulted
with several presidents as well
as prime ministers across the
world. His most recent book,
"The Upswing," as I noted, "How
America Came Together a Century
Ago and How We Can Do It Again,"
is a widely praised study of
20th century American economic,
social, political and cultural
trends.
Shaylyn Romney Garrett is a
celebrated author, speaker and
social entrepreneur whose work
offers a fresh take on political
polarization, social isolation,
economic inequality and cultural
change. Her commentary has
appeared in various outlets such
as NPR, PBS, the BBC, Time
magazine and The New York Times.
Romney Garrett holds a degree
in government from Harvard
University and served in the
Peace Corps.
She spent six years in Jordan
working to catalyze youth social
innovation there. Upon returning
to the U.S., she helped
found Weave the social fabric
project at the Aspen Institute
with David Brooks.
She is a member of the Braver
Angels Scholars Council
and Citizen University Civic
Collaboratory.
She lives with her husband and
two young children in New
Hampshire. And with that, I'd
like to welcome you up
and let's get this
conversation started.
[Applause]
>> Robert Putnam:
Thanks for coming. Can you all
hear me all right?
It's an unusual pleasure for me
to be speaking to you in this
room. And I don't think I've
ever said that in any talk I've
given, because if that curtain
were open,
I could point you to a tree
under which I stood 62 years
ago. Most of you are not born.
And with a young co-ed,
that's the term
that was used for
college women in those years.
And we heard John F. Kennedy say
with our own ears, ask...
no, right there.
"Ask not what your country can
do for you,
ask what you can do for your
country." I'm 82.
I was then about 20, and the
hairs on the back of my
neck are rising because I'm now,
I don't look like it, but I'm
now that adolescent
thinking back to how that
changed my life right there.
Oh, and by the way, that young
coed is sitting right there.
We've been hanging out together
for the last 60 some years, and
so far, so good.
Yeah, she's a pretty
neat person.
So I'm glad to have you here.
America is, as my mom would have
said, in a pickle.
Raise your hand if you've ever
heard that metaphor used,
America is in a pickle.
Meaning, things are not
in great shape.
And if we can go to the next
slide here, I'll say a little
bit more about what I mean by
that.
America and now I'm being... 
I'm a data guy.
I show data and I will show you
some data here.
And if you don't like data,
it's fine.
Just settle back, close your
eyes.
And if he says anything
interesting, the person next to
you will nudge you and you can
look up to see what the picture
looks like. And the division of
labor between us is that I show
pictures and data and
Shaylyn tells stories.
That's the more interesting
part of this talk.
But you have to listen to the
data first because it sets the
stage for this picture.
And America has reached this is
what it means to be in a pickle.
America today is exceptionally
polarized, unbelievably
polarized. Raise your hand if
that's news to you that America
is very politically polarized.
Right, I thought I would have
gotten that part right.
And what you may not know is
there's only one period in the
entire history of America in
which we've been as close, as
polarized as we are now.
And that was the period 1860 to
1865.
I mean, that, well,
that's a pretty high standards.
I do not mean we're right now
in the middle of a civil war,
but we're darn close
to that period.
So we're very polarized
politically.
We're also and sort of
independently very unequal.
The gap between rich and poor
in America has probably never
been as great as it is today.
I mean, that's just
mathematically true no matter
how you measure it. And the
one close exception is a period
at the end of the 19th century,
which was called the Gilded Age.
Raise your hand if you've heard
the term the Gilded Age, the
Gilded Age. If you don't know
quite what I'm talking about, go
out to this building
actually. I think... when was
this building built? 1898.
Huh? And so if you go out there
in the main Jefferson, that
astonishing room, you will see
literally the Gilded Age.
And in that period, there was a
huge gap between rich and poor,
the rich folks living on the
Upper East Side of New York and
the poor folks living huddled
in the Lower East Side slums,
the Lower East Side. And that's
the only period in American
history that comes close to
being as divided as we are.
It's fair to say we're now in a
second Gilded Age and separately
and entirely apart from that,
the data are a little well, we
had to work hard to get data
for this, but the degree of
social connection is at an all
time low and the degree of
social isolation
and loneliness
has rarely been as high as it
is now.
So socially we're really
fragmented and separated from
one another. We barely even
know our neighbors now and last,
we're in a period of exceptional
cultural self-centredness,
I, I, I, I. That's our 
culture, not we.
And so this first part is the
talk is just say, how did we get
here? Statistically speaking,
how did we get to...
So I'm going to show you some
charts and graphs.
I'm going to go quickly over
them because this is not an
academic seminar. You better
believe I would love to be asked
a lot of questions about this
because you can click, click,
click, click, and I will get
you can't out question me with
respect to these data, but I'm
not going to force it on you
right now. So if we could have
the next slide.
We're here looking at a chart
of politics in America.
The horizontal axis is... if we
can move the laser there.
The horizontal axis runs from
1890, about
1895 is where the data begins
sort of all the way across to
today. So that's when you look
across the graph, you're looking
at successive slices of
American history over the last
125, 120 years and the vertical
axis is going to be some feature
of American society where up is
good and down is bad.
So the vertical axis here is
political comedy,
that is bipartisanship.
The degree to which we, you
know, we can cooperate across
party lines and down is
polarization.
Is that sort of basically here?
So now you've got the picture.
You can see what the history
looks like.
It's astonishing. It's this big
inverted u-curve.
We start over in the 1890s,
America is... the politics of
America in the 1890s,
well, it's a lot like the
politics in America today.
Very tribal.
If people hated people on the
other side of the aisle, they
never cooperated politically
with people on the other side of
the aisle. They certainly would
not let one of their kids marry
somebody from the other side of
the aisle.
Great political tensions,
but then you can see,
right? Beginning about 1900,
1910, that begins to change.
We're still very polarized, but
we're getting a little less
polarized, you see. And that
graph shows as you go up there
through the teens and 20s and
30s and 40s and 50s.
And now, remember, pause for
just a second.
There was a war in there
between 1940 and 1945, big war
in America that boosted our
sense of cooperation across
party lines. But we kept going
up even after the war, and we
reached a peak of bipartisan
cooperation under the aegis of a
guy named Dwight Eisenhower.
This is really a test.
Raise your hand if you've ever
even heard of Dwight Eisenhower.
That's an age test.
And he was the least partisan
president in American history
except for George Washington.
So he didn't cause this,
he was the consequence of this.
And then we still stayed pretty
a lot of cooperation in
political cooperation in that
building right over there and
across America and people
thought it was just fine.
I mean, they thought it was
dumb to ask whether they cared
about whether your daughter
married a Democrat or not.
I mean, that was bizarre.
And then, you know,
beginning of the late 60s, I
will make a confession.
I first voted in 1968
and there's a good cause
to believe I personally
triggered this, right?
As soon as I started to vote,
America fell into, you know...
pretty awful. But then down,
down,
this is simple. Down, down,
down.
Every year, less and less
bipartisan cooperation,
right? Every year, more and
more people say, "I don't know.
I wouldn't mind if my son
married a Catholic, but I
certainly wouldn't want him to
marry a Democrat."
And now that most
Americans would rather that
their child marry someone
outside their religion, but God
forbid that they should marry
someone outside their political
party. It's bizarre. I mean,
maybe it isn't to you, but for
me, it's really bizarre.
Okay, that's politics.
And now you have the basic
picture. And I'm going to be a
little quicker now and show you
that the same pattern applies
to. Let's go next to this is
economics.
The data here, the hard data
begin in 1913 because that's
when the IRS was formed.
But we do know what happened
beforehand.
And way off to the left, that
was the Gilded Age,
big gap between rich and poor,
income distribution of wealth or
income or before or after
taxes.
I mean, I'm shielding you from
all the eight different measures
of inequality that we have
here.
You can see that we were very
unequal when the
movie when the lights come up
in 1913, we were already very
unequal, but we had been even
more unequal before.
And we were... but we started to
become a little less equal.
Not a lot, but a little less
equal.
Then there's that pause in the
20s, that's the roaring 20s.
That's when the stock market
was going gangbusters and
the working class was taking it
on the chin.
But then coming out of that in
the late 1920s, even before the
New Deal, notice that even
before the New Deal, we began
moving in a more equal
direction, still not super
equal, and now I'm just
going to zip up there.
We got more equal and during
World War II, but then after
World War II, we got even more
equal.
And when you reach the peak up
there at the top, put your...
At the very top,
America was the most equal
country in the world.
You won't believe this. It's a
true fact.
The distribution of income and
wealth in America in that period
was more equal than Sweden,
socialist Sweden.
We were capitalist America, but
we had somehow contrived to like
a distribution in which there
was not huge gaps between rich
and poor. But then again, you
see begins to turn down a little
bit and I won't bore you with
the rest of it.
It just keeps going down and
down and down and down.
And if we continue, of
course, the data here ended in
2015 because that's when
Shaylyn and I actually finished
this research. But we know 
now what would it look like.
And by now put the
laser point at the very, very
bottom. No, no, no, way down at
the corner.
That's where it is now.
And that's why I say we are
unbelievably unequal now.
Okay, next slide.
Social cohesion.
Sorry, I'm an academic.
I have an academic term for
this, which is social capital.
But if you don't, if you're not
an academic, who cares what it's
called, social capital.
The question is, how
much are we connected with other
people? That's the underlying
variable here.
And it means everything from do
we get married or not?
How much you're in touch with
our extended family? How
well do we know our neighbors?
How involved are we in
community projects?
How often do we join clubs?
Sorry,
where's that? Hold up the book
about the show here.
Just join in.
That's a great show about
people joining clubs and that's
another measure that fits this
same pattern or trust.
How much do we trust other
people?
Simple. And we got lots of good
measures and they all show the
same thing, this. America at the
end of the 19th century was very
distrusting. There were... 
I'm sorry, I'm going to use
politically... what is now
politically incorrect language.
There were many, many bachelors
and old maids, people that is
men and women who never got
married, they had a low birth
rate, relatively speaking, a
low birth rate.
They didn't know their
neighbors. Shaylyn will
maybe later on tell
you why
they didn't know their
neighbors. They didn't know
their neighbors, they didn't
join anything and they didn't
trust anybody.
But then you can see again, as
the 20th century opened, that
graph, if you can move the
laser pointer over there, I
know it's boring, up, up, up.
Still, we don't trust those
people.
Notice the pause in the
20s.
I don't know how to explain
that but it keeps going up, up,
up into the past World War II.
It wasn't... this is not just
knowing our neighbors and caring
about our neighbors during the
war, up, up, up, up, up
until top point here is 1968.
I remind you, you all now
know what happened,
what important thing happened
in 1968.
Putnam voted, and immediately
we began to disconnect from
everybody else and we began to
trust people less.
Now, you might think, well, how
doesn't everybody not trust
other people? No. In that
period,
if you ask Americans, would you
say that most people can be
trusted? I'm doing the...
don't quote me on this because I
have to look at the book
actually, is what you get the
exact number, but it's about 70%
of Americans in that period
said most people can be trusted.
Sure. Of course, we don't lock
our doors,
et cetera. That figure the last
I heard, which was a couple of
months ago, that figure is now
17%. Dramatic change.
I mean, when I was growing up
in a little town in Ohio, Port
Clinton, everybody and nobody
locked their door.
Everybody trusted everybody.
And now you must think they were
bonkers in Port Clinton.
How could they live in a place?
If you live in Port Clinton
now, you lock your door.
So big changes here. Last and
I'm just about done and I'll
turn it over to you.
Yeah, I'm a little bit long,
but not too much.
Let's go to the next slide.
Oh, it happens to have the same
shape. Here we're...
I would love to spend an hour
on this one chart because how to
measure culture is a
complicated thing.
So I'm going to do some hand
waving here.
But if you have a question, be
sure to ask me because I'm proud
of how we measure this.
This is a measure of the degree
to which people feel that we're
all in this together
that's up or no, we're not all
in it together.
I'm out for me and just me.
To what extent do we think of
our country and our communities
as we're all in this together?
Boats rise and fall together?
Or to what extent do we think
I'm better off if my boat rises
because that's probably going
to mean that somebody else's
boat goes down.
And again, Shaylyn can tell
you more about what that looked
like in historical detail.
I probably don't need, do I, to
tell you what the graph looks
like? At the beginning of this
period, America was a very...
I'm going to use this language, 
a very me society.
Everything was focused on me.
And when I say everything, I
mean poetry and literature and
art and political culture too.
And then that it's boring now,
right?
That same... you see 
the same pattern.
You can see the pores in the
20s and then you can see it
rises and you can see it hits
its peak in probably 1965 or
something, and then it turns on
a dime.
And it doesn't change overnight,
but what changes overnight is
the direction. You can see that
very clearly up and then down.
And for the last, what is that
now?
60, that's almost...
Well, we know it happened just
after we were married.
There's another possible causal
explanation.
But what that means that
almost every person in this room
has never lived in America in
which things were getting
better. I mean, I don't mean
materially, not almost none of
you have lived in a
period in which America was
becoming more trusting.
And more had a sense that
we're all in this together.
This is not just something that
happened...
some people think it's related
to a recent president that I
won't name, but somehow he
brought this on.
He's a symptom of this.
He will go unnamed.
You know what I mean? He can't
possibly have caused this.
He was hardly even born when
this trend started.
So this is a bigger deal.
It's at the core of
contemporary American politics.
It's what we're fighting about
over there all the time.
But it isn't driven by
something as superficial as day
to day politics.
Does that make sense? So I'm
going to put all these together
and then I'm going to turn it
over to Shaylyn. If we put them
all together, next slide.
This is America.
That is all I've told you.
The last 125 years has been
America's I, we, I century in
many many... there are many, 
many data points that show
exactly that trend. So what 
was going on there? Shaylyn.
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett:
So we're not the first
researchers to spot the
downturn, right?
There's been a lot of
commentary about how America has
been on a downward slide for a
number of decades.
In fact, one reviewer, one
early review of our book said
this is just another
contribution to the how America
got into this mess 
genre of literature.
Apparently there's a whole
genre now.
But what I think makes this
discovery different is a couple
of things. One, it's hard to
stress.
I mean, Bob is the data
scientist, but he will back me
up on this for sure. It's hard
to overstate how rare it is to
find this many different data
points following the same
trajectory over such a long
period of time. Because you have
to understand that each of the
curves that Bob showed you
represents scores of underlying
measures.
So when we're talking about
political polarization, we're
measuring political
polarization in 15 different
ways and combining those into
one curve.
So underneath each of these
curves, we're talking about
scores and scores of different
measures of American life, all
of which chart the same path.
Not for a year, not for ten
years, but for 125 years of our
history, which means that
there's something going on here.
But what is going on here?
A lot of people would look at
this curve this I, we, I century
story and say, "Yeah, we need to
get back to that time that
supposed halcyon period in
American history when everything
was better. We need to make
America great again," right?
Because looking only at this
downturn can produce some
nostalgia for a time gone by
when things were supposedly
better. So I want to be clear
that that's not the message of
our book, nor is that the
message that I want to leave
with you today because of a
couple of things.
First of all, we know that that
peak of American we that we see
in the 1960s was problematic in
some pretty serious ways,
right? And we will be able to
touch on that a bit more
later, I hope.
But the other problem with that
is it turns out not to be very
instructive given the problems
that we're facing today.
We feel that if ever there's a
period of history whose lessons
we need to learn, it's not the
period when we were supposedly
at the peak of we, but rather
the period that looked the most
like the one we're living
through today, which as we see
clearly from the data, turns
out to be the Gilded Age. By hard
measures across scores of
different parts of our society,
we are living through a second
American Gilded Age.
That's been said a lot by
commentators, and usually
they're referring just to the
economic inequality portion of
this story. But it turns out
that the phenomenon is deeper
and broader than we ever
thought before.
So rewinding the story back to
the Gilded Age, there were a lot
of people who were pretty
concerned about the future of
America back in the 1890s.
Plutocracy, tyranny, oligarchy,
the American experiment has
gone off the rails.
These were all things that were
being talked about in popular
publications, in the press.
But we now know, looking
backward, that those
doomsday prophecies were never
fulfilled.
The American experiment didn't
fail.
Democracy didn't go off the
rails.
On the contrary, we entered a
multifaceted, multi decade
upswing. We turned everything
around, and that upswing didn't
just last for a minute,
it lasted for 70 years.
So the question is, how did
they do that?
How did we do it once before?
Because this data shows in a
crystal clear way that we have
been in a mess just as deep,
just as multifaceted, just as
challenging as the one that we
are living through today.
We got ourselves out of it once
before, and we can do it again.
So the question is how?
If we can go to the next slide,
we have a few lessons that we
want to share with you from
this period of history.
The period when the American
Gilded Age gave way to the
Progressive era.
That was when we turned our
downturn into an upswing.
Now, before I go on to this, I
want to just pause and say, when
we use the term progressive in
this context, we are talking
about capital P Progressivism.
So for the historians in the
room, you'll know that
Progressivism, as it's
referring to this period just
after the Gilded Age, is
distinct from the term that I
would call lowercase P
progressivism.
And small P progressivism is
usually how we hear the term
used today. That refers to the
left most end of the political
spectrum, right?
But capital P Progressivism was
something very different.
It was a movement, a bipartisan
movement that was so diverse as
to be barely coherent.
It included people from both
sides of the political aisle,
it included all sorts of
different members of society.
It was a really broad,
widespread movement.
So when we talk about the
progressives, we're not talking
about progressives as they look
today.
I want to make sure that that's
clear. But who were these
progressives, and what did they
do
and what can we learn from
their story?
Well, let's pause for a minute
and just remember that the story
that we came here to tell you
is a fundamentally data based
story. It's a story that comes
out of a study of trends over
time. So when you have a lot of
different trends over time that
follow the same trajectory,
particularly when those trends
start to turn in the same
direction at the same time, you
might ask yourself, "Well, which
of them turned first?"
What is what statisticians call
the leading variable?
Which thing turned first?
Because if we could figure that
out, maybe we would have some
clue as to what we should focus
on first in order to get all
these facets of our society
moving back in the right
direction. And we tend to have
a little bit of a bias in this
country. We tend to think that
economics drives everything, and
that comes a little bit out of
the social sciences, where
individuals are often treated
like economic animals driven by
incentives, right?
And so you might think, well,
of course, the leading indicator
here was economics, that we
started to fix our economic
inequality and then suddenly
that made us all feel like we
were all on the same page and
that we were all part of the
same project and that brought
us together and that fixed
everything. Turns out,
interestingly, that very clearly
from the data, that is not the
case, that economics was the
lagging indicator.
It was the thing that moved in
the right direction last.
Now, that does not mean that we
should not focus on fixing our
economic inequality.
That is an urgent and deep and
difficult problem that needs a
solution in this country.
However, what we might be
learning from the last upswing
is that there might be
something underneath the
economic policies or the
question of economic
distribution that has to shift
first before those other things
will begin to move.
So if economics was the lagging
indicator, then what was the
leading indicator?
What did shift first?
This is a little bit hard to
tell.
We have to be a little bit
transparent here because we're
looking at scores of different
measures and we're looking
really far back in the
past when it comes to data
collection, right? So you can
liken this a little bit to like
a flock of birds in flight and
you're standing 1000ft down on
the ground and you see them
moving in one direction and then
all of a sudden they shift and
move in a different direction.
You've seen that happen before?
And from your vantage point,
it's really hard to tell which
of those birds was the leader.
We're facing a similar sort of
problem with this data, but when
we pair the data that we have
with the historical record, what
emerges is a very clear picture
that what changed first was our
morality, our cultural
narratives.
First and foremost, the upswing
was about a moral and cultural
awakening. Before we fixed our
economic policies, before we
began to come together in our
communities, we began to change
the way that we saw each other,
the way that we talked about
what this country was all about.
Now, the Gilded Age was a time
in American history from a
cultural perspective that was
characterized by something
called social Darwinism.
In a period just previous to
this, Charles Darwin had
articulated a theory about how
the natural world is organized,
and that theory came to be
called the survival of the
fittest. Basically, that the
natural world is one giant
competition and only the strong
will survive.
And so a lot of social
commentators heard that theory
and they said, "Huh. Well, if
that's the way the natural world
is organized, then that's the
way society should 
be organized."
It's just one giant competition
and it's every man for himself.
And that was what social
Darwinism was.
Now it's important to note that
Darwin himself didn't really
subscribe to this,
but many Americans did.
And what that looked like was a
really cutthroat competition
ethos in our culture.
And into that cultural milieu
came a group of reformers called
the Social Gospel Movement.
This initially came out of
evangelical Protestantism as a
way of looking at the theology
and the practice of Christianity
and saying, "Hey, we're not
living up to our own values.
This is not what Jesus would
do."
In fact, the term, "What would
Jesus do?"
comes from a bestselling 1899
novel that was aimed at calling
America to repentance for the
gross economic inequality of the
day. These social gospel
preachers began to remind
Americans what this nation was
all about.
It wasn't just about
competition, it was about coming
together to achieve something
together.
And this movement started in
Christianity, but eventually
took hold more broadly in
society
and we began to have a moral
awakening as a society.
Now, when you have a moral
awakening or like a moral
outrage situation, that can
take a couple of different
forms, right? We can start to
point the finger and say it's
those people and those people
and those people who have ruined
America. And if we can just get
them out of the picture, then
the rest of us are all going to
all be fine.
Does that sound a little bit
familiar? But there's another
way that we can go about this,
which is to direct the moral
indignation inward.
In fact, the historian Richard
Hofstadter described the
progressive era as a phenomenon
of moral indignation directed
inward. People began to
recognize their own complicity
in the systems that had created
these problems, and they began
to choose to do things
differently.
And that moral shift changed
our politics,
it changed our communities,
it changed everything about
this nation for 70 years.
So one thing that we know, if
we want to see another upswing
today, we need to begin to talk
about our culture and our
morality and how that is the
basis of what is going to change
the way we see ourselves.
Another thing that we know is
that this movement was driven by
young people.
The Jane Adams's and the
Frances Perkins and the
founders of all these
incredible movements that were
part of the progressive era
were doing their most energizing
and energized work, and they
were under the age of 30.
This is because they were
living in an entirely changed
world from the one that their
parents had lived in.
Their parents had grown up on
farms and in small towns,
attending quilting bees and
Bible studies and barn raisings.
And that stuff just wasn't
going to cut it on the Lower
East Side of New York for the
millions of people who had
migrated into the cities as a
result of the Industrial
Revolution. And so these young
people knew that they had to
invent a new way to live
together and a new way to do
democracy, and they did it.
Just like today,
are we living in a changed
world from the one that our
parents were living in?
Absolutely. Changed in very
different ways. But it's
a whole different moment that
requires a youthful energy,
just as the Progressive era did.
We also know that gthe
progressives prioritized
associations, again going back
to that exhibit, right?
If you want to see how they
prioritized getting together,
joining, associating, go see
the exhibit and you can see the
multiplicity of ways, the huge
civic boom that happened during
the Progressive era when
Americans invented new ways of
being together.
They founded Rotary Clubs and
and Lions clubs and all sorts of
different associations that
were fit for a changed world.
And they began to knit together
again what had become an
unraveled social fabric.
So if we're going to see our
social fabric come back again,
if we are going to enter
another upswing, it's going to
have to have association,
bringing people together,
particularly people across
lines of difference at the
absolute core of what we're
doing.
Another important lesson of this
was that it was a grassroots
movement. Sometimes if you've
studied the Progressive era in
high school or in college, you
might associate it with all
these big national programs, the
national income tax, child labor
legislation, trust busting, all
these things that happened at
the national level, right?
But the truth of the story is
that all of that stuff was the
caboose, the energy and the
ideas came at the grass roots.
They started at the very local
level with people tinkering in
the laboratories of democracy,
fixing problems right on their
own doorsteps.
Making solutions that
transcended the gridlocked left
right political framework and
bubbled up and went viral to
change the face of the nation.
Similarly, there was no
charismatic leader who said,
"We're going to start a
progressive era and this is what
it's going to look like."
Teddy Roosevelt is often cast
as that character in this story,
but the truth is that he saw
the parade and got out in front
of it. This was happening well
before he stepped on to the
political national stage.
He really just saw a movement
happening in this country and he
became the articulator of what
this would look like in our
national politics.
So there's not going to be some
national charismatic leader
who's going to save us. We're 
going to have to save ourselves
by starting right where we are,
just as they did then.
Now, I've shared a lot of
positive lessons about these
great progressives and how they
saved America.
But the truth is that not all
the lessons from this era are
positive. There are many
cautionary tales as well.
Because the truth is that the
circle of moral concern that the
progressives created with this
moral awakening simply did not
extend to people of color and
to a certain extent, not to
women and to other marginalized
groups in this country,
right? Essentially, most of the
progressives were not all of
them, but many of them were
racist.
And so a lot of the programs
and the policies and the things
that they created, created this
legacy now of structural racism
that we are now reckoning with.
So it is indisputable that they
moved America in this incredible
upswing direction, but they did
so in a highly racialized way,
which becomes a really
important part of the story of
the downturn, which hopefully
we can get to in a little bit.
There are other cautionary
tales from this era, but I need
to open it up to
questions so that
we can have a
discussion together.
So I encourage you, if you're
curious about this, to read the
book and see a little bit more
about the multifaceted
lessons we can learn from the
Progressive era.
But these are just a few things
that if we're looking to create
another upswing today, that we
should learn from history.
If we can just go to the next
slide, I'll leave you with this
thought. Teddy Roosevelt, who
became one of the most
articulate champions of the
progressive movement, said this.
"The fundamental rule of our
national life, the rule which
underlies all others, is that
on the whole and in the
long run, we shall go up or
down together."
This is more than just a lovely
sentiment.
The data show this is really
clear.
This is a fact of how the last
125 years have borne out in
our history. This is how it
works.
We all do better when we all do
better.
If we want to see another
upswing in our country, we are
going to have to find a way to
come together as a we again.
I believe that we can do it
because we've done it once
before. It isn't going to be
easy,
it wasn't easy then and it
wasn't an overnight switch,
it took 70 years to bear out.
But we have to do it.
Nothing less than the success
of the American experiment hangs
in the balance. We've done it
once before and we can do it
again. And that's what we're
here to talk with you about
today. Thank you so much for
inviting us to be here.
We're looking forward to
hearing some questions.
[Applause]
>> Ryan Reft: And we're going to
start with a discussion here,
and then afterwards we'll open
the discussion up to everyone in
the audience, okay?
And just a little soft
promotion, the Teddy Roosevelt
papers were actually in the
Manuscript Division and the
Madison and online.
So if you want to check them
out, you can do that.
So we're going to start 
with you since we just
heard from you, Shaylyn.
Typically as a 20th century
historian, we treat World
War II as the pivot,
the key kind of event of the
20th century.
However, in this book, you're
kind of reformulating, saying
that the 1960s is kind of the
pivot point.
What does that do to our view
of the last 125 years of
America if we look at it that
way and what effect, if any,
did the Second World War have
on the move toward solidarity
that you described in the first
half of the 20th century?
>> Robert Putnam:
I ventured to say, I'm the only
person in the room who actually
does remember. I was tiny,
but by the end of the war, I
was born in 1941.
So by the end of the war, I
helped
collect tin cans, which was
part of the way in which
everybody was supposed to be
involved in the war.
It was part of that
togetherness. And World War II,
is the pivot of the 20th
century from one very specific
point of view. It's very
important, but it's not the one
we're talking about, and that
is internationally.
Internationally, World War II
is the pivot between a period in
which America was
fundamentally isolationist and
wanted to stay away from
involvement in the rest of the
world.
And World War II, which we did
until really Pearl Harbor,
but the deaths of that war
taught most Americans.
And that's still what we're...
we're in the post
World War II period, post Pearl
Harbor World now basically in
which most people think, we
can't step away 
into isolationism.
Now, there are voices in America
who think we could step away in
isolation, but they are so
far the minority view.
So from that point of view,
from that global perspective,
World War II was a pivot point.
But as you know well, I'm not
talking about, we're not
talking about international
relations.
We're talking about domestic
American politics and domestic
American economics and domestic
American society and culture.
And the first thing I have to
say is you just look at those
slides. I tried to mention this
as we went in passing through
them. We didn't reach our... 
World War II was not a peak in
equality, it was a peak...
We, kids and everybody else sort
of thought, we're all in this
together, but that wasn't the
peak of it. It kept going up
for 25 years afterwards.
You remember, I began this talk
by telling you about this talk
that I heard out here,
John Kennedy's "Ask Not" talk.
At that point in American
history,
what he said did not sound
bizarre,
it sounded like actually normal
to people.
I mean, it seemed because the
people who are listening to him
were the World War II
generation, and they thought,
that's right, we worked
together, we collaborated
we did not differentiate
between rich and poor and so on
and we should keep going.
And frankly, at that point, it
sounded like a clarion call
reveille, right?
We did this in World War II.
We're doing it now and we're
going to get even better.
We're going to send men to the
moon and we're going to start at
last, we're going to address
those issues of racial
inequality and so on.
But if you look at these
graphs, all of these graphs, you
can see he was not sounding
reveille, that was taps.
That was taps for an end of a
period, which almost immediately
after and after he was shot, I
would say
and we can talk then about what
was the role of the Kennedy
assassination, but almost
immediately after that point,
we began going down.
So the downturn did not come...
I mean, the peak is not World
War II.
That's the first thing I want
to say.
The peak, unequivocally, across
every one of these measures, the
peak is the middle 60s.
Historians know that
much of the 60s actually
happened in the 70s because the
first half of the 60s...
I'm now just saying what
most historians of the 60s say.
The first half of the 60s was a
kind of good 60s that was the
60s, the Kumbaya 60s, it was the
communes 60s.
It was frankly, the
first half of of LBJ's, the 60s
in which we were finally coming
to grips with all these problems
of inequality. And it was... and
we were that we were coming to
grips with inequality and not
only in class terms, but also in
racial terms and gender terms.
That was the first half of the
60s.
But the second half of the 60s
which begins, roughly speaking,
when almost a moment
that rosemary and I were out 
here on the lawn.
That's why I'm so vividly aware
of this was it turned into
this long, long downturn.
Todd Gitlin who...
Gitlin who's the leading
historian of the 60s, captures
this in the title of his most
important book, which is,
"Years of Hope, Days of Rage," 
"Years of Hope, Days of Rage."
And Tom Wolfe coined the term
about the... as early as
1971, Tom Wolfe said, hey,
we're in what he called the me
decade. So it wasn't just us
that noted this change.
Now, a question to ask is, I'm
going to spend a little bit of
time on the 60s. And if I say
too much about the 60s, you
interrupt me. But that's you
ask me to say, what did I think
the what role at least I
thought that you did.
What role did the 60s play in
this?
A game to play, I played with
audiences and I won't hear.
What do you think started the
turn down or what caused the
turn down? And if you're pretty
old, if you're now in your 70s,
you're likely to say it was all
started by the assassinations.
If you're that age, you know
what I mean by the
assassinations. It was the
two, Kennedy assassinations
and the Martin Luther King
assassination. And those all
happened in '63, '64.
But then there's Vietnam.
And many people think of
Vietnam,
Vietnam was an important part
of it.
It was
not the only part independently
of that. There were all the
student upheavals and the
student upheavals in the end
turned on, turned about, turned,
became involved in Vietnam.
But the student upheavals
there's...
I mean, I remember the 60s very
well. The student upheavals
began before the Vietnam crisis
came. And then there were urban
riots and the civil rights
movement and just kind of
nihilistic violence.
We're just now hearing about
the people who died, the Manson
killers, that wasn't related to
Vietnam and it wasn't related to
civil liberties, and it was not
related to women's rights.
It was itself an independent.
And then there was the pill.
And the pill didn't have
anything to do with the...
 sorry.
Do you even know what I mean?
Well, sure, we all know what I
mean by the pill because now
it's back on the front pages,
right? But when the pill was
invented that caused a sexual
revolution that changed
overnight. Unbelievable change.
I'm a data person, right?
So the fraction of all
Americans who said it was okay
to have sex before marriage
changed from....
In, let me see if I get these
exactly. It's in the book.
So you'll have I'm going to get
it approximately right. In
1964, 75 to 80% of
Americans said sex before
marriage is a no no.
Four years later, 30% of
Americans said sex was a no no.
I don't know if I can convey to
you that is an enormous change
in a very fundamental norm.
And there was a drug epidemic,
and then there was Nixon and
Watergate and stagflation and
the oil embargoes.
And I'm telling you a lot about
things that none of you actually
remember. What I'm trying to
say is the 60s was not a single
thing. There was no single
thing that caused it.
America had a nervous
breakdown.
But you can see in all these
graphs how that concatenation
of forces happen. And it even
happened in pop music.
In order to write this book, I
spent two months doing nothing
but listening to pop music.
And so, for example, in the
1965, I think of the dates
carefully. There was a famous
Newport Film Festival in which
Bob Dylan, famously the 
first half...
If you're not interested in
popular music, just turn off
what I'm saying now. But if you
are, it's really neat.
The first half of this, I think
it was June of '65, the first
half of the concert was the
old, you know, Bob Dylan and
Joan Baez and the Kumbaya 60s
and it was an actual
guitar. And he went off stage
and everybody loved it, of
course. Then he went off stage
and he came back in the second
half was the acoustic Bob
Dylan, which is cranky.
I mean, not cranky.
A crashy and the people then
at the time thought it was
terrible. But of course, what
he was doing was he was
announcing and that one moment
the move from this Kumbaya to a
more contentious and forgive
me, I would love to
do this, I won't fill it out.
I happen to be a Beatles fan.
And this is in the history of
the Beatles.
The first half of the Beatles
up until 1970 is all about all I
need is... all you need is love.
And I get by with a little help
of my friends.
And it was all this wonderful.
That's actually I remember
that.
And I love that music, that
Beatles music.
But then the pivot came,
the pivot
in the Beatles music comes in
1970 between I can almost get
these dates right, March of
1970.
George Harrison pens the last
song the Beatles ever sang
together.
And I'm going to
recite for you
the lyrics, all the lyrics of
that last Beatles together.
I, me, mine.
I, me, mine.
I, me, mine.
 I, me, mine...
That's the whole lyrics,
I, me, mine.
He was angry about it, but he
was capturing what was happening
in America and to the Beatles
themselves.
Everybody focusing on I, me,
mine and George Lennon
six months later responded to
that with his first single
in which and I'm not going
to try to sing any of these, but
this is the lyric from
that first Lennon single.
I don't believe in Beatles.
I just believe in me.
What am I trying to say here?
This was a very thorough going.
Cultural, it affected all
aspects of our lives.
I don't know what caused it.
It wasn't economics for sure.
It had something deeply to do
with the shock of this period.
And so once you see that from
whence you I think at least when
I could see in and I
haven't begun to talk about the,
you know, serious music,
Broadway music and serious,
you know, music by serious
composers and literature and so
on. This was a very
thoroughgoing break pivot in
American society. I don't mean
that everything changed in the
60s, but a hell of a lot
changed in the 60s.
And not just the stuff like
politics and economics and
so on. You may not agree
with that, but that's my story
and I'm sticking to it.
>> Ryan Reft: Sure, Shaylyn.
Kind of building off that
response, you note that for both
the civil rights movement and
feminist movements, many of the
most important games
were actually made before 1970,
despite the fact we often think
of the 70s and the late 60s as
kind of maybe not the high
point for civil rights, but
certainly for feminism
and then what followed.
afterwards, if not retrenchment,
would be described perhaps as
stasis or very little movement
in comparison.
How does this square with
the stark realities of
segregation and other forms of
exclusion that characterize the
first two thirds of the 20th
century?
So I guess ultimately, can we
really call that period an era
of progress toward racial
equality?
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett: Yeah,
that's a great question
and probably the most important
question with regard to a thesis
that says the first two thirds
of the 20th century were all
about moving toward we,
right? And it is
interesting because when we look
at the story where it
begins, where we began, the
story which is in the 1890s,
this was a period that was
incredibly bleak from the
perspective of race relations
in the wake of the civil...
excuse me, in the 
wake of the Civil War,
we had reconstruction and
there were very rapid gains on
the part of African-Americans
during this time
that then quickly reversed due
to the project of basically
white Southerners reclaiming
hegemony in the wake of
reconstruction. So there was a
lot of quick and
important gains for
African-Americans that were
completely reversed. And so
when we're looking at the turn
of the 20th century, this was a
particularly dark time in
American history from the
perspective of Black, white
racial relations, right?
And so there...
and then the legacy of that
reclaiming of white hegemony in
the South becomes Jim Crow.
That then is not just a
reality in the South,
that's the reality in the North
as well.
And so, how does that square
with this story of Kumbaya and
we and all of this sort of
thing?
Well, it's interesting because
we looked at tons of data, of
course, over the same 125-year
period with respect to this
question of were we moving
toward more racial equality or
not during this same period and
when? And there were some
surprises, I think that
particularly white Americans,
tend to have this sort of
cartoon history of race
relations in the United States
during the 20th century, which
is basically that what you
indicated, that sort of it was
all bleak and no progress at
all and all oppression and
inequality. And then there was
this sort of lightning bolt
change in the 1950s and 60s in
the wake of the civil rights
revolution. And that actually
turns out to be true for some
measures. If you want to just
go ahead one slide,
we actually prepared a couple
of slides about this
particular question. So, for
example, this is what we might
call sort of a hockey stick as
opposed to what we were looking
at before, which were these
inverted U curves.
Things got better and better
and better and then worse and
worse and worse, right? Over
this same period, there are some
ways in which particularly
measures of inclusion versus
exclusion. So this would be
things like admittance
to graduate schools or college
or the ability to have
representation in politics,
these sorts of things.
There really was very little
change over the first two thirds
of the 20th century.
But that turns out not to be
true for other measures, which
is really interesting.
When we look at the next slide,
what we can see is this is an
index of black white material
equality.
So we're comparing the material
well-being of Blacks versus
whites. And the reason that
we're only doing Black versus
white is because we're looking
at longitudinal data sets
over this 125-year period
and we don't actually have this
data for other peoples of color
or other marginalized groups
over this entire period.
So it's really hard to present
data about those groups over
this particular period of time
because of the way that census
data was collected and other
things.
So this is why this is a
focused discussion about Black
versus white. And if you look
at this graph, what you're going
to see is at the very top, you
see 1.0, that would be complete
equality between the races.
And we're talking about things
like distribution of income.
We're talking about life
expectancy, we're talking about
infant mortality, we're talking
about educational attainment.
We're talking about all kinds
of different measures of
well-being, all combined here,
income, homeownership, wealth,
right? And what you can see
fascinatingly, which is what you
pointed out, we've never gotten
anywhere close to equality,
which is no surprise.
But the majority of the movement
toward equality actually
happened before the 1970s.
Which is a story that most
white Americans are not familiar
with but most Black
Americans are mostly because the
majority of that progress was
driven by something called the
Great Migration.
So the mass exodus of Black
Americans out of the south and
into the more hospitable west
and north actually created a lot
of movement toward equality,
essentially a sort of a vast
self-help movement.
This wasn't because white
America all came together and
said, let's all make everything
equal, right?
Not at all. But it is
fascinating that right at that
turn when we started moving
from we and then back down to I,
we see what you would have
thought that in the wake of that
civil rights movement, it's no
surprise that the civil rights
legislation passes at the peak
of the I, we, I curve 
because finally
we've sort of widened the
circle of we and we're starting
to feel ready to do this on
racial terms and we
pass this legislation. But then
what happens literally 
weeks after?
So the majority of white
Americans were in support of
civil rights legislation
passing. Within weeks
however, the survey data shows
that white Americans were not
interested in implementing
those newly passed pieces of
legislation. It was a not in my
backyard.
It's all fine and good as a
concept, but let's not actually
do anything about it.
So there was this huge backlash
to the civil rights movement.
And whether that caused this
broader turn toward I or
whether the broader turn toward
I and self-centeredness caused
this backlash of, you know,
this racial backlash.
We can't say for sure, but we
do know that those two phenomena
are deeply intertwined.
And the result has been just in
the moment when you would have
expected this graph to keep
rising because the civil rights
movement just achieved all of
these gains, you would have
thought that we would have been
moving toward full equality.
In fact, we stagnate
and no progress is made.
And so when we look at things
like the Black Lives Matter
movement, one of the biggest
stories that movement was
trying to tell was nothing has
changed in these neighborhoods
since the 1960s and that's
exactly what this data says.
And a huge reason for that, we
believe, is because of the
broader cultural turn toward
looking out for number one.
Doesn't matter what you guys
are experiencing or doing,
it's all about me and what's
best for me, what's best for my
kids and my neighborhood,
right? And so we do know is
that a movement toward we
culturally speaking, is more
hospitable to creating equality
between the races than a
cultural moment of I.
It's not sufficient, though.
I believe that in large
measure, what happened with
the white backlash to the civil
rights movement was simply that
we had done the legislative
work of repairing our racial
inequalities in this country,
but we haven't done
the hard work, the work
underneath, the work inside of
ourselves to actually come into
human community with people
unlike ourselves.
And that work remains undone
today, not just for between
Blacks and whites, but between
all sorts of different groups in
this country. That is work that
we have not done.
And so if we want to see any
upswing today, we can't just
kick the racial question down
the road the way that the
progressives did. They said we
can have progress, but not for
everyone. And how many times
have the needs of people of
color or other groups been
sacrificed on the altar of
progress? We can't do that
right now because if we do that
right now, then the rest of
this other stuff won't happen.
So just, you know, we'll get
around to that.
That can't happen again because
in many ways the upswing hadn't
knit into it [inaudible] 
its own demise.
And so that's a huge part of
the story of what we saw with
the upswing and then the
downturn. It was
inextricably linked to race in
this country.
>> Ryan Reft: Thank you.
One thing we haven't really
touched on, although, Bob, I
suppose you touched on it a bit
when you talked about the
popular culture of music
was media. Obviously in the
second half of the 20th century,
we moved from a part of the
century arguably dominated by
media that was more
centralizing, network
television, radio, even
organizationally, corporate
America. And now we're in an
era that many observers have
defined by fragmentation,
social media.
There's the breakdown of
Twitter, for one example, and
the various other apps that are
popping up would just be a
current example. The decline of
network television, the rise of
streaming and other examples of
that kind of fragmentation.
If Marshall McLuhan famously
quipped medium is the message,
are we being shaped by the
medium?
Is this change in media
the explanation for our
fractures or dissolution?
What role has the rise of
social media had in fueling our
descent into what you both call
the culture of I?
>> Robert Putnam: A great 
question. Tough question.
Can I take the next one?
I'd rather have [inaudible]
 which is a... no, I'm joking.
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett: 
Pass [laughs].
>> Robert Putnam: 
But what I would like is
if you could go back to the
basic I, we, I curve.
Yeah, there.
Okay. Forgive me,
I'm just going to stand up for
a minute.
In 2000, can you see where 2000
is on the chart?
Well, down the curve.
I published a book called
"Bowling Alone."
Raise your hand if you've ever
heard of the book called
"Bowling Alone." Oh, good.
Great. Well, it was a book.
You know what that book was
about,
basically, it was one of these
four strands.
When I wrote it, I didn't know
anything about economics and
philosophy and all that kind of
stuff.
But I did know about social
connections.
And I starting around 2000, I
said, "It looks to me like we've
had a decline in social
connections in America."
And at the very moment that I
published that book, the
Internet came into existence.
Actually, it's hard to believe
that it was that recent. But
indeed, social networks had not
been invented
when I wrote that book, they 
were... Facebook was invented
basically in one of my classes.
No, it was invented at Harvard
by Zuckerberg and some friends
in 2006.
Okay. So now when after
the appearance the first, and of
course, I know very well that
Facebook is no longer the only
social media site.
Of course not.
But once the social media began
to take off, everybody said, not
everybody, but a lot of people
said, "Who cares about bowling
leagues? We can go to Facebook.
It's just as good." In other
words,
do you see what I'm trying to
speak elliptically here, but to
make an analytic point that we
don't need face to face
connections, which is what I've
been showing, had been
declining, that's fine.
But just in time, over the hill
come the cavalry, the
technological cavalry, and they
invent completely new ways of
connecting that don't involve
face to face connections, but
just involve in
clicking a button on your mouse.
And so the question this is not
the only question you're asking,
but it's one of the questions,
which is can TikTok or Facebook
or you name your, you know,
your social media, can that
replace bowling teams?
And you see what I mean?
I literally don't mean
literally bowling teams, but can
these electronic connections
replace the...
obviously, nobody denies that
the face to face ties are
declining. And so that debate
began about in the first decade
of the 21st century
and there was a great...
It's hard to now remember there
was a great
cyber euphoria in those
years.
And we talk a little bit about
this in our new book.
It's now if you read those
things, it's just amazing.
People said it's going to cause
universal peace to break out
because we're all going to be
able to have the same...
We're all going to be loving
each other on Facebook.
And so, I mean, it's just
amazing to have what people
said. It never seemed to me
that was quite true.
And the research
actually on whether
Facebook was better or worse
than bowling leagues actually
began to show that that
Facebook was not as good as
bowling. Let me just give you
I'm sorry, I'm a data guy, so I
want to give you a quick graph.
I'm going to do it with my
hands. It turns out that your
life expectancy depends upon
how many friends you have.
That's a true fact. That's well
demonstrated.
I mean, that's not actually 
if... wish we had the surge in
the most recent surge in
general.
Well, no, the current surge
 in general in the room now,
because he makes a big deal
about loneliness, he will tell
you that being socially
isolated is a terrible thing.
And so there's a graph you can
draw of.
How long are you going to live
depending upon how many friends
you have, a real graph and it
looks like, so okay, are 
you with me? Doing a little...
So here's the graph,
zero friends
you're not well off.
You don't, you know, you ought
to make sure your life insurance
is paid up. Having one 
friend increases a lot
your chances... reduces your
chances of dying, actually cuts
your chances of dying in half
over the next year.
So 0 to 1 is up and
and 1 to 2 is up
and 2 to 3 is up
and that keeps going...
Your 19th friend adds to your
life expectancy.
It's amazing. Your 20th friend,
well, okay, that's getting a
little too much.
But that trend looks like
that, it doesn't level off until
20 friends. Now, I'm going to
show you the same graph
exactly for your life
expectancy, depending upon the
number of Facebook friends you
have. I will show you that. Zero
Facebook friends, here you are.
Adding one Facebook friends,
you're still at the same level.
Adding 12 Facebook friends,
you're still at the same level.
Adding 500 Facebook friends,
you're still at that same
level. It's had zero effect on
your life expectancy. I rest my
case.
I mean, I'm not going to stop,
but that's in very real terms
face to face connections
are not the same
as electronic connections and
the academics, there's mixed
evidence, as there always is on
things like this, but the
academics had by 2020 
more or less agreed on that,
although there was a lot of
still, most people thought
that
to go back to my original
metaphor, Facebook was better
than bowling leagues,
that all changed
in, I can tell you the date on
which that consensus changed.
It was Thursday,
November 25th, 2021,
Thanksgiving. And everybody in
America realized that hugging
grandma was different from
Zooming with grandma.
Believe me, we knew that
and everybody did.
And what the Covid
did, it did a lot of things, of
course. But one of the things
it did is it brought home the
costs or the inadequacies 
of electronic connections.
And now actually, there's a lot
after the fact.
I've be getting a lot of
evidence about that.
I do not mean I'm trying to
simplify a little bit here so
that I don't spend the next
hour giving you a lit review
about all the literature on
both sides of this question.
But I think that technology is 
a less universal driver or media
technology is a less universal
driver of social patterns than
many people think.
I don't mean to be including
you necessarily in that, but
it's to some extent we get the
media we deserve.
And to some extent we tend to...
many people tend to overestimate
the media, effects of the media.
I'll give you one example.
We all think that the Internet
is a big deal.
Well, it is a big deal, but
it's nowhere near as big a deal
as the telephone. The telephone
meant that for the first time in
human life, you could talk to
someone who was not within the
sound of your voice,
right? Think about it, that's a
huge deal.
Our whole life as a species,
the only way you can communicate
with somebody is actually to be
in their presence.
And the telephone says, nope,
you can talk to people and
people then, just like people
now have these amazing views
about how that was going to
transform American society.
Because it was going to allow...
I'm almost quoting from
that literature in those years,
this is when the telephone is
in the same stage that we are
now in the Internet.
It's going to be marvelous.
It's going to bring world
peace. Same predictions.
And moreover, there's not going
to be any difference between us,
our connections to our next
door neighbors and people on the
other side of the world. That
turned out to be completely
untrue. It turned out to be
that the closer someone was to
you physically, the more you
telephone with them.
And that, by the way, is true
now.
I have lots of email all the
time.
We're doing email and so on.
But where is the
person sitting who I send
most of my emails to? She's
sitting right there and in our
home,
she's sitting in the next door,
next room.
Ask yourself, how many of your
emails go to somebody that you
know and who's close to you?
Okay, I want to make really
one final point.
Two final points. One, do you 
all know what an alloy is?
An alloy is a mixture of two
metals, two base metals, two
elements. You put them together
and you get some alloy, and then
you stir it up and you heat it
and so on.
And it has properties different
from either of the other two.
So I never remember which it
is.
But you put brass and tin
together and you get, I don't
know, bronze or something. It's
different from the other two,
right? Okay, keep in mind the
idea of an alloy.
Most of our connections, most
of our network connections,
yours and mine
and hers and yours
all of us are simultaneously
face to face and electronic.
Almost none of us communicate
electronically with people we
don't know. In fact, most of
the time the people we meet are
people... I mean, face to face
are people that we also are
very... we're connected
with them all the time,
electronically. Therefore, it's
a mistake to ask what's the
effect of this brand new
technology,
electronic connection, social
networks?
Compare that with old
fashioned face to face networks,
because nobody in the world has,
I shouldn't say nobody.
Nobody in America has that kind
of two separate things,
we have an alloy. Do you
understand what I'm
trying to say? Raise
your hand if you understand what
I mean. That we now communicate
by alloys.
That is mixtures, all the time
mixtures. So the real question
is not which is better, this or
that which is better bronze or
tin, brass or tin, but what's
the nature of the alloy?
And some alloys could be
particularly good
for building real community.
And this is the point I wanted
to get to. We have agency.
I'm sorry, agency is a
highfalutin academic sounding
term, which means we can
decide
what kind of technology we get.
What do I mean by that?
We could develop Facebook and
Facebook knows this.
Mark Zuckerberg knows this.
I know that because I was out
at Facebook headquarters and
talked to... they know that
they could set up Facebook so
that it made it easy to connect
with people that you actually
are close to. They know that
they could set up Facebook so
that it diminished
polarization.
And they know that they...
So that's one kind of alloy.
They know they can do another
kind of alloy, which doesn't
help people meet face to face
and doesn't encourage them to
help their longevity and
so on, and that they know that
they can create a Facebook that
increases polarization.
And which of those two things
do you think they've chosen to
do? This is not just me.
What was the name of the
whistleblower who testified
before, the internal
whistleblower?
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett:
Frances Haugen.
>> Robert Putnam: Pardon?
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett:
Frances Haugen.
>> Robert Putnam:
Frances Haugen.
She was saying she saw the same
data I did. They chose
to make the alloy that is bad
for our connections.
So bottom line here.
And I know I've gone on along,
but I was trying to make this
point deeply.
We both the companies out there
on the West Coast and we in our
usage can choose do we want an
internet that will bring us
closer together with other real
people
or do we want an internet that
will divide us?
That is, in my view, the
biggest question.
Don't think of technology as
something out there that's
controlling us.
Think of technology as
something we could control and
we could make America better.
Or if we make the wrong
choices, we could make America
worse. I'm sorry I went on so
long.
>> Ryan Reft: Yeah, no
problem. We're going to finish
with a slightly philosophical
question and then we'll open it
up to the floor.
Shylyn, many people 
view history as a
linear march toward progress.
If you've ever been at grad
school for history, they tell
you not to do that.
But people do.
But your book argues, actually,
it's not.
Rather, there are periods of
progress and regression.
So advancement, retrenchment.
How does this affect how we see
our history and how does it
affect... how did it affect when
you guys put this book together?
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett:
Yeah, great question, because
there is a way that you could
look at this graph, just the
graph and say, oh, well, this is
kind of a story of a pendulum,
right?
That we sort of that there's a
natural flow to history, that we
have periods where we're really
narcissistic, but then that
reaches its sort of apex and
then we naturally sort of the
gravity swings us back toward
togetherness, and then that gets
to be too much and too stuffy.
And in the 50s we hear all of
this, you know, decrying
conformity and that reaches
its sort of natural apex.
And then we swing back again
toward individualism,
right? And that is a view that
you could take of this story.
It isn't our view, right?
I think fundamentally what we
believe is what Bob just said,
which is that this is a story
about choice more than anything.
And I actually believe that
history is a story 
about [inaudible],
right? Both individual choice
and collective choice. In the
sense that I just don't think it's true
that we're sort of riding on the
waves of history.
And I don't think that the data
bears that out either, because
it's perfectly possible for
these graphs to just descend
through the floor and for us to
see the dissolution of America
as we know it today. That's
perfectly possible.
There is nothing inevitable
about us bouncing back from
this and that's a pretty
bleak picture.
Unless you understand that the
only thing that changed it once
before was people choosing to
change it.
And that's one thing that I
love
because you brought up earlier
the question about World War II.
Sometimes we look at World War
II and say,
"Oh, it was the war
that changed us," right?
"It was the war that brought us
together."
That's an easy narrative
because what it does is it
outsources our responsibility
to an event outside of our
control. And many, many people
wanted to do this with Covid.
We were giving book talks
during Covid and we got this
question asked all the time,
Oh, is this the pandemic?
Is this the thing that's going
to bring us back together?
And my answer was, this is the
thing that's going to do to us
exactly what we want it to do
to us.
And at the beginning of the
pandemic, we all thought, oh,
look at how we're all turning
toward our neighbors.
This is going to be the thing
that finally reminds us that we
all have to be in this
together. And did that happen?
The exact opposite happened.
It happened for a little bit
and then we reverted to the
exact same trajectory that we
were already on and deepened the
curve, right? And so I don't
think that there's anything
inevitable about either an
outside shock changing us or
some preordained course of
history pinging back and forth
between two poles.
I think the real story here is
that we choose.
We choose the future
both in terms of our own
choices, individual choices.
How do I choose to use
social media? Every day, every
minute, that's a choice I make,
whether I use that forum to
bring people together or
whether I use it to divide.
I, me alone. But there's also a
choice that we make as a
society. As a society,
do we choose to regulate these
social media empires in such a
way that we force them to do
the right thing?
Or collectively, do we
choose to take our hands off the
wheel and say, "Well, they're
going to do what they're going
to do." There are individual and
collective choices that drive
this story. We believe that the
data shows that clearly, because
during the progressive era,
there was no external shock.
There was nothing that made it
inevitable that this was going
to go up. Remember, I said all
of the cultural
commentators at the time
thought that it was all going to
come unglued and it didn't.
And that was kind of a shock to
everyone.
And so I really think that this
is a challenging read on
history, but also an inspiring
one because it means that we can
change it. We did it once
 before and we can do it again.
>> Ryan Reft:
And with that, we want to open
the floor to questions from the
audience. I think we have a
microphone, actually.
>> Robert Putnam:
Coming up.
>> Ryan Reft: But, you know,
since you have
your hands up, you'll go first.
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett:
We can probably hear you.
>> Ryan Reft:
Yeah. But it's for the...
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett:
Oh for the... Yep, yep.
for the livestream. Yep.
>> Ryan Reft: If you want 
to come up, sir.
Yeah, I think that's on. Is it?
>> Hello. Hello. 
I can just project. So
thank you so much, y'all,
for doing this.
You said that evangelical
Protestants started the
progressive movement.
What role do you think
declining religiousness plays in
America performing poorly on
these metrics?
>> Robert Putnam: I didn't hear
the key part. What religion?
>> Declining religiousness.
>> Robert Putnam: Oh, yeah.
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett:
So to be clear,
it wasn't
necessarily that evangelical
Protestantism started the
progressive era.
It was that the moral shift
that defined progressivism
started... those conversations
started in religious settings,
right? Particularly in
theological settings.
Preachers actually looking at
the Bible and saying, we're not
living [inaudible], we're 
living something different.
And actually, we actually see
that happening today in
evangelical Protestantism
today, there is literally a
pitched battle for the future
of that faith going on right
now. And we don't know which
side is going to win.
There are voices within
evangelical Protestantism saying
this is not the religion that
Christ wants us to live.
And there are others that are
saying, yes, it is.
And we don't know which one's
going to win.
And so that wasn't your
question.
But I do want to say that
there is an analogous situation
happening now, this debate
happening even within just that
one religious setting of
evangelical Christianity.
But the broader question was
how does declining religiosity
in general affect this story?
And it's actually huge
because it turns out that
religion, whether that's
Christian or Hindu or Muslim or
whatever it is, turns out to be
a huge religious participation,
not necessarily religious
belief, not necessarily
religious... study of religious
doctrine, but religious
participation, showing up at a
religious service or a church
picnic or at the mosque for an
Iftar,
right? That actually has a huge
effect on social capital, social
cohesion, a ton of America's
social capital, connectedness,
community connections, face to
face connections happens in
religious settings.
And so the more that we abandon
those settings, it has this
effect of further fraying our
social fabric, right?
>> Robert Putnam:
I want to just say a word about
that, because everything she
said I... together a 
long time ago.
Gosh, we were much younger
then.
Well... yeah, we worked on a
book called "American Grace,"
which was a big, huge tome.
Don't necessarily buy it, but
it was about religion in
America. And one of the things
we discovered and I'm now
actually rather proud of the
science of this we showed...
I won't try to tell you exactly
the science, but we showed
that not only are religious
people nicer, controlling
everything you like. That is,
they're more likely to help old
ladies cross the street
or more likely to to pick you
up if you fall.
They're going to church supper,
makes you do that.
That is if you increase your
involvement
and it's not whether you
believe in God, it's not even
whether you belong to church.
It's whether you go to a
church supper.
Something about that has an
almost magical effect of making
you more likely to volunteer
for the scouts.
Not just religious stuff,
more likely to contribute, not
just in the offering
plate, but in secular ways to.
So that's the first point.
I'm not trying to make you I'm
actually not all that religious
myself, and I'm certainly not
even Christian, so I'm
not trying to make a case for
evangelical.
The last thing I want to do is
make a case for evangelical
Protestantism. But I do want to
say there is something in
religious community
that makes us nicer.
That's the first thing I want
to say.
And the second thing is, there
is a connection between the
declining membership
in church.
Declining attendance at church
suppers is a real fact
and that is part of our problem
here.
But why is there declining
attendance at church membership?
Because too many churches have
gotten political.
It is they've... I'm not trying
to... many of my best friends
are evangelical Christians,
although most of them are
leaving evangelicals like
Rick... help.
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett:
Warren.
>> Robert Putnam:
Rick Warren. So
church, distancing from church
is in part a consequence of this
emphasis that some
parts of the religious world are
placing on, you know, self,
self-centeredness and it doesn't
look, we should begin
where... we should end where
Shaylyn began.
It isn't exactly the religion
that we're pushing as a key,
it's the morality.
You don't have to be
religious to be nice.
You don't have to be religious
to think that you have
obligations to other people.
That's the crucial thing.
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett:
But it's true that religious
spaces are spaces of moral
formation. And in an
increasingly secular society, we
have to ask ourselves if we're
not going to be in spaces where
moral formation is taking
place, then where is our moral
formation going to come?
I think there are some
interesting events out there
that are looking at
how to do moral formation in a
secular setting.
For example, Citizen University
who has created something called
Civic Saturdays.
A secular analogue to church
where people gather and
they listen to sermons about
what American democracy, about
what we owe to one another that
don't have anything to do with
God or any particular religious
text, but are all about a moral
formation that says our
morality is about
responsibilities more than
rights,
right? And that, I think, is
something that we have let
slide. And we thought that it
was fine to just let it go.
But we can see that it's had
enormous effects on our society.
>> Robert Putnam:
We could go on
because we really
care about this.
I'm sorry. So I want to just
give an example.
The Boy Scouts were...
Boy Scouts in America were
invented in the progressive era.
They're one of the classic
progressive era institutions,
not religious. You know, 
it's sort of summer camp.
And learning merit badges.
Do you even know what I'm
talking about when I talk about
the scouts and 
learning how to...
I learned how to identify
birds.
I had a merit badge for
birding, but what made me a
scout was the fact that I could
say, I pledge allegiance to the
flag and... no, sorry, wrong,
wrong institution.
A scout is trustworthy, loyal,
helpful, friendly,
courteous, kind, obedient,
cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean
and reverent. Come on, some 
applause for that.
I learned that 75 years ago.
And why am I able to remember
it?
Because I was being taught
morals. Think about that.
A scout is trustworthy, 
that sounds reasonable.
Helpful. Not so bad.
Friendly, courteous, kind. Come
on, these are not religious.
It's just being decent,
courteous.
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett:
It's having a we ethic.
>> Robert Putnam:
I want to admit that
trustworthy, helpful, 
courteous, kind, brave, clean.
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett:
Some might take issue
with a few of those.
>> Robert Putnam:
Yeah, I mean...
[Laughs]
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett:
That's another conversation.
>> Robert Putnam:
What I'm trying to say, what
we're both trying to say is
values really matter.
They can be inculcated in a
religious setting.
Sometimes religious settings
don't inculcate those.
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett:
Sometimes they inculcate the
opposite in the 
name of doing that.
>> Robert Putnam:
But sometimes even secular
organizations right here in
America not only could but have
inculcated those.
You can all see that, because
I'm able to say that
a scout is trustworthy,
I'm a really nice guy.
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett:
Something stuck.
>> Robert Putman: At least I'm
a decent guy.
>> Ryan Reft:
I think we have time for one
more. If you want 
to come up and...
>> Thank you for the 
wonderful speech.
I have a question for two of
you that in your new book you
mentioned, like the
individualism and community.
But my question is more about
the professionalism and the
community, because you just
mentioned about moral change and
moral change and the social
capital like Putnam mentioned.
But some political
scientists though they are not
talking about the American
situation, but they try to argue
that too much community power
will make our bureaucracy,
our officials think too much
about the community instead of
think about profession. And some
others also argue about that
the more social engagement
probably would not lead us to
the right common value like
professor just mentioned about.
Because some research has
already proved that we
are experiencing community
level polarization.
So they are worried about that.
The more social engagement in
today would lead to a
polarized the common sense.
So my question is, do we need
to worry about these two
situation? If we do, how could
we fix this?
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett:
So, yeah, great question.
And one thing to note is that
not all community is created
equal, right? Not all community
connection is of the same
flavor, let's say,
right? And Bob in his book
"Bowling Alone," made a key
differentiation between a
couple of different types of
social engagement called
bridging and bonding.
Okay? Bonding is where we have
connections with people who are
just like us and that's it.
But then bridging is when we
make connections with people who
are unlike us, right?
And too much bonding capital
has some pretty dark phenomena
associated with it. I don't
know, things like the KKK or the
Proud Boys or you name it,
right?
That's bonding capital to the
exclusion of everything else.
Bonding social capital
bonding social connection.
So really what we need
to understand is the importance
of bridging social connection,
right? And that is something
that is becoming increasingly
more difficult because of the
algorithms that we face on
social media, because of the
fact that our communities
are incredibly geographically
sorted,
right? That it's hard to walk
down the street in your
neighborhood and see somebody
who doesn't look like you
anymore. It's hard to attend a
church and see somebody that
doesn't look like you,
right? And so one thing that was
true, though,
of the Gilded Age was that that
was very much the same.
Jane Addams didn't just walk
down the street and meet new
immigrants to America.
She knew that she didn't
understand the new people that
were coming to this country
and she left her elitist
neighborhood and went to where
she could find the people who
everyone said were ruining
America and try to learn for
herself who they were and what
they were about. And as a
result of that, she brought the
settlement house movement to
America.
And the settlement house
movement can be shown as one of
the key drivers of much of the
major legislative change that
happened during the progressive
era.
And that wasn't something that
was about legislation.
It was about human connection
across lines of difference.
And so if there's one thing
that you could do today when you
leave this talk in order to be
part of the upswing rather than
part of the downturn, is to go
and figure out how you're going
to develop a relationship with
someone who does not look
like you whether it's
across lines of race,
across lines of gender, across
lines of sexual preference,
across lines of ethnicity, you
name it, right?
We have to do the work to make
those connections because the
world is making it increasingly
harder to do so.
So we have to double down on
our efforts to make those
connections across lines of
difference.
And so you're right.
We do have to be worried that
more community, more
community isn't always better.
It's making sure that we are
creating community in a mass
multicultural democracy.
We have to make our community
across those lines of
difference. And there
are incredible movements afoot
in America right now who are
doing just this sort of thing,
living room conversations,
braver angels.
There are literally hundreds of
organizations that have sprung
up locally in order to bring
people into the same space who
otherwise would not be in the
same space and help them have
hard conversations and help
them have you know, relationship
 forming conversations.
Do something like that and you
will be on the right side of
history. That's how it happened
before, and that's how it's
going to happen again.
>> Ryan Reft:
It's a fitting place to end.
There are books for sale for
the next half hour back there if
you guys want to pick it up.
I want to thank our two
speakers today for coming to the
Library of Congress. We enjoyed
the talk and we enjoyed the
discussion. Thank you.
>> Shaylyn Romney Garrett:
Thank you.
[Applause]