Bertie has the book that tells why you’re too busy to be bothered

THE ripples of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s 10th anniversary interviews continue to cause little waves of coverage not only here in Ireland but even abroad.

His declaration that he was “one of the few socialists left” generated international coverage last week in newspapers as diverse as the New York Times and the Scotsman. However, one aspect of the interviews which has attracted surprisingly little comment, even here at home, was the Taoiseach’s remark in one of the interviews that he has twice read Robert Putnam’s book, Bowling Alone. Some cynics may dismiss even this throw-away remark as part of his repositioning, but I suspect it is genuine.

The themes dealt with in Putnam’s work have been reflected in many of Bertie Ahern’s recent speeches. Robert Putnam is a Harvard-based sociologist who published this book in 1995. It caused a sensation in the US.

The book’s full title is Bowling Alone - the Collapse and Revival of American Community. This reflects Putnam’s basic thesis about community breakdown illustrated by the fact that years ago thousands of people were involved in bowling leagues, but now, although more people than ever are bowling in America, most are doing so on their own.

In a nutshell, Putnam argued that Americans have become increasingly disconnected from their families, neighbours, communities and even from the political system itself.

He attributes this to a number of factors including increased urbanisation, the collapse of organised religion and the dwindling of a commonly shared view of society, all of which coincided with the coming to adulthood of the first generation raised on television.

The privatising effects of television, Putnam estimates, have caused about 25% of the decline in social and civic engagement. The rest, he argues, was caused by the stresses, commutes and individualism that are now such a dominant feature of life in western societies.

Putnam argued that this trend should worry America and its politicians because it undermines what he calls “social capital” and poses a significant threat to the fabric of American society, and even to its democracy. Although recent trends of increasing evangelical Christianity and intense politics in some part of the US makes one query some of Putnam’s thesis, his conclusions are grounded in a mountain of data. In minute detail he lays out statistics illustrating declining engagement in almost every aspect of American community and social life.

The book includes dozens of charts and graphs, from one illustrating everything from falling participation in parent/teacher associations to another showing how Americans are now less likely to take Sunday picnics together. Nearly a decade after Putnam catalogued these trends in America, the same concerns are beginning to exercise political leaders here.

That’s why Putnam’s book has pushed its way to the top of Bertie Ahern’s reading list. Of course the Taoiseach is not alone; President Mary McAleese has made society and community a central theme again for her second term. Enda Kenny has also turned his attention to these themes over the last year or so and, more recently, even the Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, has been exercised on the issue.

Perhaps not to the same extent and perhaps somewhat later, but in a very real way this breakdown of community is now apparent here in Ireland.

This week a report was published which claimed that growth had been a bad thing for Ireland because of the extent of damage it had done to our society and environment. This piece of work even went so far as to describe the Celtic Tiger as a “cancer” on Irish society. This is clearly absurd.

I, for one, have no nostalgia for the “good old days” before the Celtic Tiger when Ireland suffered large unemployment, wholesale emigration and economic decline. Nothing damages society like the loss of self-respect that long-term unemployment generates and the heartbreaking consequences of emigration for families and communities.

So I say, thanks for the Celtic Tiger.

That doesn’t mean we can’t accept that our changing society has problems - some of them new. TV culture, two-career families, suburban sprawl, long commute times and generational changes in values are causing the same problems for Ireland today which they have caused for America over the last couple of decades.

Here in Ireland these difficulties are compounded by a rapid decline in religious practice and, in particular, the decline of the once dominant Catholic Church.

FOR all its faults - and they were many - Catholic practice inspired much community charity and voluntarism.

In rural parishes, and even in new sprawling city suburbs, the church was at the centre of much community life for decades. The school management committee, the tidy towns committee, the youth club - indeed nearly every community fundraising or development drive - was led by the parish priest or at least convened around the kitchen table of the parochial house. Some may have seen this as indicative of an unhealthy level of power which the Church had in Ireland but, in fact, it reflected the absence of any alternative focal point or tradition of civic community or social activity.

Is it any wonder that most of the priests questioned for a recent survey said they would welcome no longer having responsibility for national schools or other parish duties not of a direct religious nature. Now as the Catholic Church’s personnel age and dwindle, the impact it had at community level is waning, too.

The same patterns are repeated in other areas of society. Increasing housing densities mean we live closer together but we now know fewer of our leaders. Families eat together less. While more people are going to soccer or football or hurling matches than ever, players are scarcer and even the GAA is struggling to find club administrators or managers for under-age teams. In schools, secretaries are now hired to do much of what was previously done by parents or teachers in their spare time.

In fact, one of the reasons why there was such a negative reaction to the cutbacks initially proposed in community employment schemes - and now reversed by Enterprise Minister Micheál Martin - was because in many communities these schemes were filling some of the roles previously filled by voluntary activism.

Of course there are many striking examples of community and voluntary achievement in this country in recent years. The ten of thousands who volunteered for last years Special Olympics is the most obvious. However, maybe these exceptions are celebrated precisely because they appear to be bucking a general trend.

It may seem strange to suggest this, but it is our political system which will be required to respond to this problem. It is a good thing that our political leaders are reading and talking about these problems.

Finding and implementing solutions will be more difficult.