Request for Statecraft – Will Robbins

The health of a society is largely determined by its cultural and social technology. While technological and industrial development can certainly mitigate problems and enable solutions, we can’t transcend the realities of civic society entirely. There’s no denying that odd things are happening in 21st Century America. Would our grandparents have expected the wealthiest, most influential nation in history to experience peak rates of depression, drug use, and loneliness? Robert Putnam noticed that we “bowl alone” in 1995, and predicted the decay of social capital foreshadowed by the decline in civic participation. The Red Cross, local Rotary Clubs, and parent-teacher associations just aren’t what they used to be. What do we make of this trend? The challenge of statecraft is as old as the state itself. In the modern era, attempts abroad to engineer culture from a top-down perspective have yielded mixed results. The Islamic world has experienced its fair share of turbulence in attempting t

The health of a society is largely determined by its cultural and social technology. While technological and industrial development can certainly mitigate problems and enable solutions, we can’t transcend the realities of civic society entirely. There’s no denying that odd things are happening in 21st Century America. Would our grandparents have expected the wealthiest, most influential nation in history to experience peak rates of depression, drug use, and loneliness? Robert Putnam noticed that we “bowl alone” in 1995, and predicted the decay of social capital foreshadowed by the decline in c