Being community-focused, knowing one’s neighbors, and being helpful to others should be instinctual and a common part of our daily lives rather than occasional and worthy of praise. While it is undoubtedly not the case that we have to be best friends with our neighbors or have them over daily for coffee or meals, we as a nation need to make a better effort to know our neighbors and connect with our communities; a facet of life which is missing from our daily lives nowadays.
It is worth remembering that civic-mindedness and the connection to others have historically been part of our nation’s core identity. A central point in Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” is the very fact that the United States had a unique tradition of local support structures and social capital where individuals come together to address community needs and foster a sense of shared responsibility: “America has a long and rich tradition of generosity that begins with simple acts of neighbor helping neighbor.”
Contrary to most of Europe, Tocqueville was surprised by the breadth and depth of these localized connections, which he saw as a key building block of democratic society, and wisely recognized that these connections promoted not only a sense of belonging but civic responsibility and the ability to address common challenges collectively as well.
With the advent of numerous changes to American life over the past decades, our connections have attenuated and Americans are facing crippling loneliness and barely know their neighbors.