# data[].attributes.body
An expert in meditation explains how we can gain peace in our lives through the practice of meditation on a regular basis.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ellen Welcomes Transcendental Meditation Expert Bob Roth

# data[].attributes.body
Channing is talking about the freedom he feels by being by the sea. The waves, the wind, the clouds create a peacefulness that dazzle him.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Our boat to the waves go free,
By the bending tide, where the curled wave breaks,
Like the track of the wind on the white snowflakes:
Away, away! 'Tis a path o'er the sea.

Blasts may rave, - spread the sail,
For our spirits can wrest the power from the wind,
And the gray clouds yield to the sunny mind,
Fear not we the whirl of the gale.
_

Waves on the beach, and the wild sea-foam,
With a leap, and a dash, and a sudden cheer,
Where the seaweed makes its bending home,
And the sea-birds swim on the crests so clear,
Wave after wave, they are curling o'er,
While the white sand dazzles along the shore.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sea Song Poem by William Ellery Channing - Poem Hunter

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Our boat to the waves go free,By the bending tide, where the curled wave breaks,Like the track of the wind on the white snowflakes:Away, away! 'Tis a path o'er the sea.

# data[].attributes.body
In a world where people seem to be constantly connected by cell phones, video chatting and social media in reality increasing numbers of Americans are feeling lonely. The reasons for this are somewhat complex, but it seems to be a bi-product of increased individualism in our culture.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In an era of hyper-individualism, we should rekindle the bonds of community

He held his phone close, eyes searching for privacy. The man scarcely noticed the subway riders around him, nor the 90-year-old artist sketching his hunched frame from across the train. In the seven decades since Alex Katz first drew the outlines of commuters on New York City's early-morning trains, the chattering riders and newspapers had all but gone. In their places were people who rode alone together, the light in their eyes reflecting the glow of their phones. In his cover art for New York magazine, Katz hints at a profound change drawn across America over the course of his life, one that has profound implications for us, our communities, and our politics.

America is increasingly a lonely nation. The proportion of American adults who say they are lonely has increased from 20 percent to 40 percent since the 1980s. Roughly 43 million adults over the age of 45 are estimated to suffer from chronic loneliness. The unmarried and the uncommitted to community report higher rates of loneliness, with the causality likely being a two-way street. Prosperity has afforded our independence from neighbors and networks, as the Social Capital Project of Senator Mike Lee (R., Utah) found, but the relational and emotional collateral damage has fallen hardest on those least able to afford it. Put another way, an isolation of affluence is indelibly marking modern society.

Consider that just three decades ago, the typical American had a little over three close friends. Today, he or she barely has one confidant. Often someone's closest companion is staring at him in the mirror. It is surely no coincidence that the average household is growing smaller and older. In fact, over a quarter of Americans now live alone, up from 13 percent in 1960 and increasing especially after the Great Recession.

Friend groups, where they exist, are smaller and narrower than in the past. When Americans do confide in someone else, they are more likely to look inward to kin rather than outward to community. Social networks are increasingly folding in on the nuclear family. Yet marriage and family formation are becoming less a rite of passage and more a mark of privilege. Around half of American adults are married, down from 72 percent in 1960, and their age of matrimony is increasingly past the age at which men and women begin to lose friends, which is roughly age 25. The stability of their unions - whether they stay together or have children - is increasingly a function of income. As family formation becomes a luxury amenity, isolation is more likely to be a province of the poor.

This tide of autonomy is washing over the shoals of society. Those who shrug at faith - especially middle-aged Mainliners and unaffiliated Millennials, as Pew found - are simply going their own way rather than gathering in a community. Modern religious life, as with nearly every social institution in America today, is increasingly subsumed by an ethic of expressive individualism. And this autonomy is manifested and reinforced in myriad ways by modern American life - whether it be the three-quarters of Americans commuting alone in their cars or the personalized worlds of smartphones, social media, and video games.

Loneliness is an emotional response to a rending of the fabric of American society. Why the isolation? The reasons are complex, but the story they weave is simple: The ties that bind us have come unwound in the face of enormous change. The movement from agrarian life to industry coincided with a shift away from the family and toward the individual as the basic unit of society and the economy. Our politics were downstream of these changes and embedded a healthy tension: between a liberal individualism and a moral communitarianism, both oriented toward liberty. Now we appear to be entering a disorienting new era of hyper-individualism and radical diversity.

Today we live Spotify lives - full of options that cater to our every whim. We have liberated our desires from want of choice and given voice to our own identities. Just a glance at our phone instantly widens the horizon of our self. Yet this freedom has come at the cost of our cultural and economic order. Family, faith, and community - the reserves of liberty - have suffered tremendous losses, particularly since the 1960s and 1970s. It turns out that "You do you" is disorienting to anyone who lacks dense social networks and deep wells of social capital to draw on. The result, as Yuval Levin articulates in The Fractured Republic, is that "we have set loose a scourge of loneliness and isolation that we are still afraid to acknowledge as the distinct social dysfunction of our age of individualism."

As conservatives ponder their future, they would do well to consider America's crisis of attachment as an orienting challenge of our time. What it suggests is that the individualism that has marked the Right and Left is insufficient at best and destructive at worst to the citizen's role in the American project. A community-oriented conservatism is best placed to speak to our ills as well as to our better angels.

The liberal individualism that has been adopted nearly whole-cloth by the Right in recent decades places us above society and the institutions that give us meaning, rather than deeply enmeshing us in them. As Patrick Deneen has pointed out, the libertarianism and internationalism of the Reagan era were "in orientation profoundly opposite to the original Burkean, traditionalist, communitarian form of conservatism." Modern conservatives are often, at best, half-hearted individualists, always fighting a battle of retreat against progressivism. Today, this essentially democratic ethos is expressed through a nostalgic populism and an introverted nationalism centered in Washington. As the middle ground between man and state withers, it becomes far too easy for our political life to slouch into narcissism and nihilism.

Traditional conservatism stands athwart an unwinding social order. It sees man as a social animal - relationally oriented and networked to community. This sort of interdependence rightly orders our civil freedom toward sustaining virtue through the things we have in common: habits, traditions, and institutions. Rather than simply freeing us from the shackles of government or social constructs, this bonds us to faith, family, and community in such a way as to give meaning and purpose to our freedom. In turn, it is on these social networks, capital, and institutions that we build truly flourishing markets that work for the common good, particularly for "the least of these."

The notion that our politics could serve as a binding agent is not new. There is a rich vein of thought from Saint Augustine to Alexis de Tocqueville and Edmund Burke that conservatism has mined since its founding. More recently, everyone from the writers in National Affairs to the architects of Senator Lee's Social Capital Project have kept these ideas very much alive. It is at this moment in American history, a time when we the people are coming apart, that we need a conservatism that seeks to weave us into our social fabric.

Restoring a more traditionalist, communitarian conservatism must begin by acknowledging the limits of policy. There is no bill in Congress that can ever satisfy the longings of the human heart for fellowship. Government cannot bind us together. Nevertheless, America's diversity can be the source of its solutions for the 21st century. We can start by bringing political power closer to our communities and elevating our shared institutions. People who are empowered together are likelier to work together. Ideas should necessarily emanate upward from America's towns, cities, and states rather than downward from Washington. An urban conservatism, for instance, would be well placed to tackle the barriers in housing, entrepreneurship, and governance that prevent Americans from becoming a part of our most prosperous communities.

America's emerging startup hubs suggest the shape of thriving communities in the 21st century. A place such as Salt Lake City, Utah, is at once hyper-local and hyper-global - spawning micro-multinationals that reflect the unique character of the place from which they come. Localism is at home with mobility, and nationalism is more of a neighborhood project. Moreover, we see that dense social networks flush with social capital lie at the heart of Utah's innovative dynamism. Prosperity flows from a healthy community, just as poverty lingers in broken relationships. These are truths that conservatives should voice.

Loneliness will not disappear at the stroke of a pen.

Nevertheless, conservatism should start from the basic human desire for relationship. From there, it should seek to strengthen our bonds as Americans in the context of our local communities. We may still fear being alone, but we should not fear that our politics does not care.

Michael Hendrix - Michael Hendrix is the director of state and local policy at the Manhattan Institute.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In an era of hyper-individualism, we should rekindle the bonds of community He held his phone close, eyes searching for privacy. The man scarcely noticed the subway riders around him, nor the 90-year-old artist sketching his hunched frame from across the train.

# data[].attributes.body
Thoreau is explaining that while it is important to obey the law it is more important to behave in a way that you think is correct regardless of whether it is legal.

# data[].attributes.body
Thoreau is explaining that even though the beginning may seem insignificant that if the task is done in the right way it will be meaningful.

# data[].attributes.body
Thoreau is explaining that if something makes you rich then you will be blind to whether that something is right. You will have a bias toward something that is good for you regardless of weather it is right.

# data[].attributes.body
Several professors discuss Thoreau's life, history and inspiration. Thoreau has inspired politicians and advocates self-reliance through his philosophy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century American writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. Anti-slavery activist and passionate environmentalist, Thoreau was above all a champion of self-reliance and individualism. He was also a champion of the simple life, a lover of nature and an enemy of the modern who lived alone in a log cabin in the woods away from society. In his seminal work, Walden, published in 1854, he wrote: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." Thoreau has become emblematic of one version of American values and his work has been an inspiration to politicians and writers alike, from Martin Luther King to Gandhi, Yeats and Tolstoy. Yet in many ways Thoreau remains a mystery, a man of contradictions who advocated self-sufficiency but was happy to let his mother do his washing and cook his meals.With Kathleen Burk, Professor of American History at University College London; Tim Morris, Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Dundee; Stephen Fender, Honorary Professor in English Literature at University College London.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Thoreau and the American Idyll

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century American writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. Anti-slavery activist and passionate environmentalist, Thoreau was above all a champion of self-reliance and individualism.

# data[].attributes.body
This song is a political protest about abuses of power by political powers and industry.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
the flaming lips-the yeah yeah yeah song

# data[].attributes.body
This eccentric musician created works such as this to explain the loneliness he felt in society. This song also shows his view that simplistic or minimalist living way the correct way to live.

# data[].attributes.body
This minimalist art uses rigid panes of a single color in a geometric abstraction. This reduces the art to its simplest form.

# data[].attributes.body
In this original photo you see a path way leading to the beach. This wooden path represents that life can be as simple as one path instead of millions. Your life is in your hands.

# data[].attributes.body
In this original photo you see the sunset on the beach. This represents simplicity and meditation by filtering out all of the background noise and mess of the real world. When you see this picture you just want to sit and relax.

# data[].attributes.body
In this original photo you see Callie standing on a path way next to the creek. This photo represents the simplicity of life and that sometimes we just need to go on a walk and enjoy what nature and the world has provided us with.

# data[].attributes.body
In this photo it shows a human being with two sides. One side is the human face as everyone sees it. the other half is of nature and what is out in the world for us to adventure.

# data[].attributes.body
In this song DeGraw knows that he is comfortable with his personal background but he is trying to decide where he will go in the future. He is having an identity crisis as he try’s to discover who he really wants to be. He wants to be his true self, however difficult it is.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Gavin DeGraw - I Don't Want To Be [Lyrics On Screen]

# data[].attributes.body
In this quote Thoreau is saying that the world is like a blank canvas for us to paint on. We do not have to follow what is said to be acceptable, we get to create our own life.

# data[].attributes.body
Douthat discusses that millennials have a strong belief  in individualism. They are skeptical of  political parties and their allegiance is to a belief or ideology not any particular political party. Millennials have a strong sense of personal optimism but have social mistrust. They also have a strong sense of personal spiritual belief but widespread religious affiliation is on the decline. Society is waiting to see if their individualism will sustain as millennials age.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
One can answer "yes" to this question cheerfully or pessimistically - with the optimism of a libertarian who sees such individualism as a liberation from every form of oppression and control, or the pessimism of a communitarian who sees social isolation, atomization and unhappiness trailing in its wake.

But one can also answer "no," and argue that the human desire for community and authority cannot be permanently buried - in which case the most important question in an era of individualism might be what form of submission it presages.

This was the point raised in 1953 by Robert Nisbet's " Quest for Community," arguably the 20th century's most important work of conservative sociology. (I wrote the introduction when it was reissued.) Trying to explain modern totalitarianism's dark allure, Nisbet argued that it was precisely the emancipation of the individual in modernity - from clan, church and guild - that had enabled the rise of fascism and Communism.

In the increasing absence of local, personal forms of fellowship and solidarity, he suggested, people were naturally drawn to mass movements, cults of personality, nationalistic fantasias. The advance of individualism thus eventually produced its own antithesis - conformism, submission and control.

You don't have to see a fascist or Communist revival on the horizon (I certainly don't) to see this argument's potential relevance for our apparently individualistic future. You only have to look at the place where millennials - and indeed, most of us - are clearly seeking new forms of community today.

That place is the online realm, which offers a fascinating variation on Nisbet's theme. Like modernity writ large, it promises emancipation and offers new forms of community that transcend the particular and local. But it requires a price, in terms of privacy surrendered, that past tyrannies could have only dreamed of exacting from their subjects.

This surrender could prove to be benign. But it's still noteworthy that today's vaguely totalitarian arguments don't usually come from political demagogues. They come from enthusiasts for the online Panopticon, the uploaded world where everyone will be transparent to everyone else.

That kind of future is far from inevitable. But as Nisbet would argue, and as the rising generation of Americans may yet need to learn, it probably cannot be successfully resisted by individualism alone.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
One can answer "yes" to this question cheerfully or pessimistically - with the optimism of a libertarian who sees such individualism as a liberation from every form of oppression and control, or the pessimism of a communitarian who sees social isolation, atomization and unhappiness trailing in its wake.

# data[].attributes.body
In this Photo it shows how the human race started out. Humans were one with nature not trying alter it and destroy it.