Thursday, June 29, 2006

Online Friends Don't Count

America is bowling alone, our latest social crisis. We are running out of confidants and our country is retreating into splendid isolation. Why is this happening?

We move too much.

Our extended families are all over the United States, if not the globe. If you want to talk about scattered, think of where your childhood friends now live, if you even know where they live. Our drive to find a better economic situation stresses the links of our network of trust.

This shrill is dripping with nostalgia, longing for a time when neighbors played bridge together. People still play bridge together, but online. There is little that is romantic about a ghetto, a place where people struggle to conform. And Americans are more connected than ever before.

Stoke the fire and cozy up to your favorite blog that tells all. Never in history have the lives of a people been so transparent to so many others. If anything, intimacy is overwhelming us.

Still think we don’t know enough about our neighbors?

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