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Articles about Jews and numbers. Are we getting bigger or smaller? Which groups are growing and which are shrinking and why?

Keywords: Affiliation, identify, self-identify, practicing vs. non-practicing, generational, rise/fall,

Other keywords:  Pew report, demographers, longitudinal, intermarriage/intermarry, assimilate/assimilation

Optional keywords: "making meaning" / meaningful, religious, denomination, Chassidic, secular, liberal, orthodox, Conservative

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Articles about the psychological cost of NOT being part of an interconnected group.

Keywords: isolation, depression, mental health, loneliness, alienation.

Other keywords: aggression, anxiety, violence, crime, suicide, unhappiness, meaninglessness

Optional keywords: prison, teens/teenagers, Netflix/Video Games, increasing/decreasing, America vs...???

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Articles about what happens when "everything" is for sale and what can go wrong when "everyone" gets whatever they want, whenever they want.

Keywords: commodification, trafficking, industry, environmental, human rights, commercialization, dehumanizing,

Other keywords: sweat-shops,  environmental degradation, commercialism, spirituality/love/community for sale

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Articles about art / examples of art: about the human condition of extreme individualism

Keywords: isolation, loneliness, alienation, separation, the Urban landscape.

Other keywords: modern art, contemporary art, youth artists, 21st century art, dystopic art

Optional Keywords: Hopper / Munch, Pink Floyd's "The Wall," Sylvia Plath, meaninglessness

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Articles about the disappearance, growth, or value of groups/communities that try to maintain unique identities / ancient traditions in the modern world

Keywords: cultural diversity, subculture, diminishing numbers, indigenous, living traditions, dying languages, last of ___ speakers, extinct cultures, extinct languages, dying religions

Other keywords: tradition, chain of tradition, break in chain of tradition, disappearance of ancient knowledge

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In memory of Charles S. Liebman Hosting Mikhail Gorbachev at their first summit in Washington, D.C. in December 1987, Ronald Reagan regaled his guest with a description of a mass

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A Quick Overview of the State of Mental Health in the USA

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A Quick Overview of the State of Mental Health in the USA

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Mental Health America (MHA) is committed to promoting mental health as a critical part of overall wellness. We advocate for prevention services for all, early identification and intervention for those at risk, integrated services, care and treatment for those who need them, and recovery as the goal.

We believe that gathering and providing up-to-date data and information about disparities faced by individuals with mental health problems is a tool for change.
FILL OUT THE FORM BELOW TO DOWNLOAD THE PRINTABLE VERSION OF THE REPORT.
2022Key Findings

In 2019, just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 19.86% of adults experienced a mental illness, equivalent to nearly 50 million Americans.

Suicidal ideation continues to increase among adults in the U.S. 4.58% of adults report having serious thoughts of suicide, an increase of 664,000 people from last year's dataset. The national rate of suicidal ideation among adults has increased every year since 2011-2012. This was a larger increase than seen in last year's report and is a concerning trend to see going into the COVID-19 pandemic.

A growing percentage of youth in the U.S. live with major depression. 15.08% of youth experienced a major depressive episode in the past year, a 1.24% increase from last year's dataset. In the bottom-ranked states, up to 19% of youth ages 12-17 experienced major depression.

Over 2.5 million youth in the U.S. have severe depression, and multiracial youth are at greatest risk. 10.6% of youth in the U.S. have severe major depression (depression that severely affects functioning). The rate of severe depression was highest among youth who identified as more than one race, at 14.5% (more than one in every seven multiracial youth).

Over half of adults with a mental illness do not receive treatment, totaling over 27 million adults in the U.S. who are going untreated. In Hawaii, the bottom-ranked state, 67% of adults with a mental illness did not receive treatment. Even in Vermont, the top-ranked state in the U.S., 43% of adults experiencing a mental illness were not receiving treatment.

The percentage of adults with a mental illness who report unmet need for treatment has increased every year since 2011. In 2019, 24.7% of adults with a mental illness report an unmet need for treatment.

Over 60% of youth with major depression do not receive any mental health treatment. Even in states with the greatest access, nearly one in three are going without treatment. In Texas, the bottom-ranked state for this indicator, nearly three-quarters of youth with depression did not receive mental health treatment.

Nationally, fewer than 1 in 3 youth with severe depression receive consistent mental health care. Even among youth with severe depression who receive some treatment, only 27% received consistent care. In Tennessee, the bottom-ranked state, that rate is as low as 12%. 65.6% of youth in Maine (ranked 1st) received consistent treatment, which is 16% higher than Vermont (49.7%) which is ranked 2nd.

Both adults and youth in the U.S. continue to lack adequate insurance coverage. 11.1% of Americans with a mental illness are uninsured. There was a 0.3% increase from last year's dataset, the second year in a row that this indicator increased since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). 8.1% of children had private insurance that did not cover mental health services, totaling 950,000 youth.

Rates of substance use are increasing for youth and adults, even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. 7.74% of U.S. adults and 4.08% of youth had a substance use disorder in the past year. Substance use increased 0.07% for adults and 0.25% for youth over last year's report.

This year's report includes spotlights on two of MHA's policy priorities in 2021-2022 - the implementation of 988 as the national three-digit suicide prevention and mental health crisis hotline and increasing mental health education and supports in schools, particularly for BIPOC youth.

Suicidal Ideation and 988 Implementation: With the passage of the new 988 number for suicide prevention and mental health crises, there is an opportunity to create a continuum of crisis care with adequate funding that ensures mental health responses to mental health crises and prioritizes equity, particularly for BIPOC individuals. However, Of the 13 states (ranked 39-51) with the highest rates of suicidal ideation among adults, only four have successfully passed state legislation for 988 implementation: Utah, Oregon, Indiana, and Colorado. Of these, only one currently includes user fees.

Disparities in Mental Health Treatment for Youth of Color: White youth with depression were most likely to receive mental health treatment, and Asian youth were least likely to receive mental health care. Youth of color with depression, particularly Native American or American Indian, multiracial, and Black youth, were most likely to receive non-specialty mental health services in education settings. To create healthier communities, and to better serve students of color who may only receive mental health services in educational settings, schools need long-term financial support to build up sustained and sufficient school infrastructure.

Explore the web-based report using the links provided on the left or download the printable report.
The State of Mental Health in America
In the above links you will find a Collection of Data across all 50 states and the District of Columbia answering the following questions:

How many adults and youth have mental health issues?

How many adults and youth have substance use issues?

How many adults and youth have access to insurance?

How many adults and youth have access to adequate insurance?

How many adults and youth have access to mental health care?

Which states have higher barriers to accessing mental health care?

Our Goal:

To provide a snapshot of mental health status among youth and adults for policy and program planning, analysis, and evaluation;

To track changes in the prevalence of mental health issues and access to mental health care;

To understand how changes in national data reflect the impact of legislation and policies; and.

To increase dialogue and improve outcomes for individuals and families with mental health needs

Why Gather this Information?

Using national survey data allows us to measure a community's mental health needs, access to care, and outcomes regardless of the differences between the states and their varied mental health policies.

Rankings explore which states are more effective at addressing issues related to mental health and substance use.

Analysis may reveal similarities and differences among states in order to begin assessing how federal and state mental health policies result in more or less access to care.

This publication was made possible by the generous support of Alkermes, Otsuka America Pharmaceutical Companies, and Neurocrine Biosciences.

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Mental Health America (MHA) is committed to promoting mental health as a critical part of overall wellness. We advocate for prevention services for all, early identification and intervention for those at risk, integrated services, care and treatment for those who need them, and recovery as the goal.

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Everyone's at it right now-isolation, that is. These artworks, selected by the Elephant team, each delineate isolation in its many challenging, introspective and piquant states of mind.

As Corona chat replaces weather-based small talk, galleries (along with pretty much everything else) are closing and supermarket shelves are stripped bare, self-isolation has become familiar to us all. Isolation has presented a naturally rich subject for artists throughout history, and it is a theme that haunts everything from photography to paintings, graphic novels to sculptures, and much more. The word itself is multifarious: ranging from a calming sense of solitude or quiet moments of contemplation to its darker counterparts-depression, despair, loneliness and existential ennui.

The Elephant team has chosen a few iconic artworks across multiple disciplines that express isolation in bold, brutal, innovative or moving ways-from Emin's poignant messy bed, to Ren Hang's vibrant, red-hued backdrop with a lone face blowing bubbles, to Edward Hopper's ubiquitous depiction of a solo diner in Nighthawks. Maybe they'll inspire those with cabin fever, or at the very least, show those currently self-isolating that they're far from alone in their aloneness.

Photography: Ren Hang, Untitled

What could better capture self-isolation than losing yourself in a long hot bath? In this distinctive shot by Ren Hang, the murky water becomes a cocoon from the exterior world, emphasised in the Chinese artist's preferred colour palette of deep red, accompanied by black hair and bare skin. He made no secret of his struggles with depression and mental health, and took his own life in 2017 at the age of twenty-nine. Surrealism and sexuality come together in his photography, which captures an erotic freedom of the body that goes beyond gender. "I don't want others having the impression that Chinese people are robots with no cocks or pussies," he once declared.

Emin 's Bed has gone down in history as possibly the most tabloid-baiting piece in Turner Prize history, which does the brutally raw, emotive installation something of an injustice. The piece reeks of heartbreak-perhaps there's a faint glimmer of recognition in seeing despair as a catalyst for catatonic, bed-bound filth. The piece was apparently created when Emin spent four days in her bed, coating it in menstrual blood and the detritus of a break-up-used condoms, fag butts, empty vodka bottles... this is isolation summed up in a single domestic mess.

Sculpture: Alfredo Jaar, The Garden of Good and Evil

If any artist sums up isolation in its most horrific form, it is Alfredo Jaar, whose series of metal cells read as modernist sculptures, while also calling to mind the simple boxes that are used to contain and emotionally torture prisoners. Ten cells are currently situated throughout Yorkshire Sculpture Park, nestled in the trees and, in one case, half submerged in the lake. "You just get the most horrible, dreadful feeling of somebody being underwater in a cell," Clare Lilley, YSP's director, previously told Elephant magazine. The works reference US "black sites", which are secret detention facilities managed by the CIA around the world.

Graphic Novel: Daniel Clowes, Ghost World

Is there a time in your life that feels more isolating than your teenage years? It's all too easy for petty frustrations, bitter squabbles and a whole lot of heartache to run riot in classrooms full of hormonal adolescents, and no one has conveyed it with such bittersweet accuracy as Daniel Clowes in his now-iconic 1997 graphic novel Ghost World. Best friends Enid and Rebecca experience their lives as if they were outsiders looking in, consumed with an ironic detachment that situates them as loners on the outskirts of the throngs of life. Bored and with only each other for company, the minutiae of their day-to-day suburban lives take on the tone of a series of adventures, with every encounter observed in painful detail.

Painting: Edward Hopper, Nighthawks

Its incredibly rare for such a ubiquitous image to retain such potency, but no matter how many million times you've seen Hopper's Nighthawks, the palpable sadness of the lone figure in the foreground never seems to diminish. He sits opposite a beautiful couple, apparently having a lovely time, a contrast that heightens his own aloneness even amidst a crowd. Alone but not alone, he is striking in his bleak despondency. Hunched over his drink, he appears purposeless, lonely and lost in thought.

Gillian Wearing 's silent video piece exemplifies that sense of aloneness that many of us have felt, in spaces that are far from desolate or unpeopled. But it's not sad; it feels joyful and defiant: the artist, standing in the middle of a shopping centre in south London, really is dancing like no one's watching-and despite her confident abandon and arm-flailing, to the sound of nothing but a wall of chattering noise, no one really does bother to watch. She busts out moves that are usually the preserve of the bedroom or dark dance floors, and by situating them in an incongruous context demonstrates a strange disconnect as the personal becomes very public.

Photography: Todd Hido, Homes at Night

Todd Hido has long explored the isolation that can exist in the middle of a densely populated area. His images of suburbia are often chillingly devoid of human form, and life is only suggested by the odd light emanating from a steamy window, or by a rows of cars parked on a frosty street. Homes at Night captures the present moment remarkably well; in these works, empty roads have an eerie feel, while the yellow glow coming from inside homes suggests a certain warmth-albeit, with a sense of solitude.

Music: Joy Division, Isolation

An obvious choice, perhaps, but Joy Division's Isolation, released on the album Closer posthumously, following frontman Ian Curtis' suicide, is a testament to his writing and performance skills. The harrowing lyrics belie an almost jaunty bass line and synth parts, tempered with an excruciatingly plaintive, fatalistic delivery. The album artwork for Closer's exemplifies the Factory Records aesthetic, pioneered by Peter Saville, united by subtle graphical elements such as typography combined with uniquely fitting imagery. This sleeve, designed by Saville with Martyn Atkins, using a photograph by Bernard Pierre Wolff, of the Appiani family tomb in Genoa's Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno in 1978.

Stay the Fuck Home

Our special series offers creative approaches to the long days of self-isolation during this global crisis.

EXPLORE THE SERIES

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The Artworks That Perfectly Capture Isolation - ELEPHANT

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Everyone's at it right now-isolation, that is. These artworks, selected by the Elephant team, each delineate isolation in its many challenging, introspective and piquant states of mind.

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Loneliness, Isolation and Negative Impacts on Physical and Mental Health

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Loneliness, Isolation and Negative Impacts on Physical and Mental Health

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Overview

CE credits: 1

Learning objectives: After reading this article, CE candidates will be able to:

1. Identify the effects of social isolation and loneliness on physical, mental and cognitive health.

2. Explore how loneliness differs from social isolation.

3. Discuss evidence-based interventions for combating loneliness.

For more information on earning CE credit for this article, go to www.apa.org/ed/ce/resources/ce-corner.

According to a 2018 national survey by Cigna, loneliness levels have reached an all-time high, with nearly half of 20,000 U.S. adults reporting they sometimes or always feel alone. Forty percent of survey participants also reported they sometimes or always feel that their relationships are not meaningful and that they feel isolated.

Such numbers are alarming because of the health and mental health risks associated with loneliness. According to a meta-analysis co-authored by Julianne Holt-Lunstad, PhD, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, lack of social connection heightens health risks as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or having alcohol use disorder. She's also found that loneliness and social isolation are twice as harmful to physical and mental health as obesity (Perspectives on Psychological Science , Vol. 10, No. 2, 2015).

"There is robust evidence that social isolation and loneliness significantly increase risk for premature mortality, and the magnitude of the risk exceeds that of many leading health indicators," Holt-Lunstad says.

In an effort to stem such health risks, campaigns and coalitions to reduce social isolation and loneliness-an individual's perceived level of social isolation-have been launched in Australia, Denmark and the United Kingdom. These national programs bring together research experts, nonprofit and government agencies, community groups and skilled volunteers to raise awareness of loneliness and address social isolation through evidence-based interventions and advocacy.

But is loneliness really increasing, or is it a condition that humans have always experienced at various times of life? In other words, are we becoming lonelier or just more inclined to recognize and talk about the problem?

These are tough questions to answer because historical data about loneliness are scant. Still, some research suggests that social isolation is increasing, so loneliness may be, too, says Holt-Lunstad. The most recent U.S. census data, for example, show that more than a quarter of the population lives alone-the highest rate ever recorded. In addition, more than half of the population is unmarried, and marriage rates and the number of children per household have declined since the previous census. Rates of volunteerism have also decreased, according to research by the University of Maryland's Do Good Institute, and an increasing percentage of Americans report no religious affiliation -suggesting declines in the kinds of religious and other institutional connections that can provide community.

"Regardless of whether loneliness is increasing or remaining stable, we have lots of evidence that a significant portion of the population is affected by it," says Holt-Lunstad. "Being connected to others socially is widely considered a fundamental human need-crucial to both well-being and survival."

As experts in behavior change, psychologists are well-positioned to help the nation combat loneliness. Through their research and public policy work, many psychologists have been providing data and detailed recommendations for advancing social connection as a U.S. public health priority on both the societal and individual levels.

"With an increasing aging population, the effects of loneliness on public health are only anticipated to increase," Holt-Lunstad says. "The challenge we face now is figuring out what can be done about it."

Who is most likely?

Loneliness is an experience that has been around since the beginning of time-and we all deal with it, according to Ami Rokach, PhD, an instructor at York University in Canada and a clinical psychologist. "It's something every single one of us deals with from time to time," he explains, and can occur during life transitions such as the death of a loved one, a divorce or a move to a new place. This kind of loneliness is referred to by researchers as reactive loneliness.

Problems can arise, however, when an experience of loneliness becomes chronic, Rokach notes. "If reactive loneliness is painful, chronic loneliness is torturous," he says. Chronic loneliness is most likely to set in when individuals either don't have the emotional, mental or financial resources to get out and satisfy their social needs or they lack a social circle that can provide these benefits, says psychologist Louise Hawkley, PhD, a senior research scientist at the research organization NORC at the University of Chicago.

"That's when things can become very problematic, and when many of the major negative health consequences of loneliness can set in," she says.

Last year, a Pew Research Center survey of more than 6,000 U.S. adults linked frequent loneliness to dissatisfaction with one's family, social and community life. About 28 percent of those dissatisfied with their family life feel lonely all or most of the time, compared with just 7 percent of those satisfied with their family life. Satisfaction with one's social life follows a similar pattern: 26 percent of those dissatisfied with their social lives are frequently lonely, compared with just 5 percent of those who are satisfied with their social lives. One in five Americans who say they are not satisfied with the quality of life in their local communities feel frequent loneliness, roughly triple the 7 percent of Americans who are satisfied with the quality of life in their communities.

And, of course, loneliness can occur when people are surrounded by others-on the subway, in a classroom, or even with their spouses and children, according to Rokach, who adds that loneliness is not synonymous with chosen isolation or solitude. Rather, loneliness is defined by people's levels of satisfaction with their connectedness, or their perceived social isolation.

Effects of loneliness and isolation

As demonstrated by a review of the effects of perceived social isolation across the life span, co-authored by Hawkley, loneliness can wreak havoc on an individual's physical, mental and cognitive health (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B , Vol. 370, No. 1669, 2015). Hawkley points to evidence linking perceived social isolation with adverse health consequences including depression, poor sleep quality, impaired executive function, accelerated cognitive decline, poor cardiovascular function and impaired immunity at every stage of life. In addition, a 2019 study led by Kassandra Alcaraz, PhD, MPH, a public health researcher with the American Cancer Society, analyzed data from more than 580,000 adults and found that social isolation increases the risk of premature death from every cause for every race (American Journal of Epidemiology , Vol. 188, No. 1, 2019). According to Alcaraz, among black participants, social isolation doubled the risk of early death, while it increased the risk among white participants by 60 to 84 percent.

"Our research really shows that the magnitude of risk presented by social isolation is very similar in magnitude to that of obesity, smoking, lack of access to care and physical inactivity," she says. In the study, investigators weighted several standard measures of social isolation, including marital status, frequency of religious service attendance, club meetings/group activities and number of close friends or relatives. They found that overall, race seemed to be a stronger predictor of social isolation than sex; white men and women were more likely to be in the least isolated category than were black men and women.

The American Cancer Society study is the largest to date on all races and genders, but previous research has provided glimpses into the harmful effects of social isolation and loneliness. A 2016 study led by Newcastle University epidemiologist Nicole Valtorta, PhD, for example, linked loneliness to a 30 percent increase in risk of stroke or the development of coronary heart disease (Heart , Vol. 102, No. 13). Valtorta notes that a lonely individual's higher risk of ill health likely stems from several combined factors: behavioral, biological and psychological.

"Lacking encouragement from family or friends, those who are lonely may slide into unhealthy habits," Valtorta says. "In addition, loneliness has been found to raise levels of stress, impede sleep and, in turn, harm the body. Loneliness can also augment depression or anxiety."

Last year, researchers at the Florida State University College of Medicine also found that loneliness is associated with a 40 percent increase in a person's risk of dementia ( The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, online 2018). Led by Angelina Sutin, PhD, the study examined data on more than 12,000 U.S. adults ages 50 years and older. Participants rated their levels of loneliness and social isolation and completed a cognitive battery every two years for up to 10 years.

Among older adults in particular, loneliness is more likely to set in when an individual is dealing with functional limitations and has low family support, Hawkley says. Better self-rated health, more social interaction and less family strain reduce older adults' feelings of loneliness, according to a study, led by Hawkley, examining data from more than 2,200 older adults (Research on Aging , Vol. 40, No. 4, 2018). "Even among those who started out lonely, those who were in better health and socialized with others more often had much better odds of subsequently recovering from their loneliness," she says.

A 2015 study led by Steven Cole, MD, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, provides additional clues as to why loneliness can harm overall health (PNAS , Vol. 112, No. 49, 2015). He and his colleagues examined gene expressions in leukocytes, white blood cells that play key roles in the immune system's response to infection. They found that the leukocytes of lonely participants-both humans and rhesus macaques-showed an increased expression of genes involved in inflammation and a decreased expression of genes involved in antiviral responses.

Loneliness, it seems, can lead to long-term "fight-or-flight" stress signaling, which negatively affects immune system functioning. Simply put, people who feel lonely have less immunity and more inflammation than people who don't.

Combating loneliness

While the harmful effects of loneliness are well established in the research literature, finding solutions to curb chronic loneliness has proven more challenging, says Holt-Lunstad.

Developing effective interventions is not a simple task because there's no single underlying cause of loneliness, she says. "Different people may be lonely for different reasons, and so a one-size-fits-all kind of intervention is not likely to work because you need something that is going to address the underlying cause." Rokach notes that efforts to minimize loneliness can start at home, with teaching children that aloneness does not mean loneliness. Also, he says, schools can help foster environments in which children look for, identify and intervene when a peer seems lonely or disconnected from others.

In terms of additional ways to address social isolation and feelings of loneliness, research led by Christopher Masi, MD, and a team of researchers at the University of Chicago suggests that interventions that focus inward and address the negative thoughts underlying loneliness in the first place seem to help combat loneliness more than those designed to improve social skills, enhance social support or increase opportunities for social interaction ( Personality and Social Psychology Review, Vol. 15, No. 3, 2011). The meta-analysis reviewed 20 randomized trials of interventions to decrease loneliness in children, adolescents and adults and showed that addressing what the researchers termed maladaptive social cognition through cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) worked best because it empowered patients to recognize and deal with their negative thoughts about self-worth and how others perceive them, says Hawkley, one of the study's co-authors.

Still, some research has found that engaging older adults in community and social groups can lead to positive mental health effects and reduce feelings of loneliness. Last year, Julene Johnson, PhD, a University of California, San Francisco researcher on aging, examined how joining a choir might combat feelings of loneliness among older adults (The Journals of Gerontology: Series B , online 2018). Half of the study's 12 senior centers were randomly selected for the choir program, which involved weekly 90-minute choir sessions, including informal public performances. The other half of the centers did not participate in choir sessions. After six months, the researchers found no significant differences between the two groups on tests of cognitive function, lower body strength and overall psychosocial health. But they did find significant improvements in two components of the psychosocial evaluation among choir participants: This group reported feeling less lonely and indicated they had more interest in life. Seniors in the non-choir group saw no change in their loneliness, and their interest in life declined slightly.

Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia have also found that older adults who take part in social groups such as book clubs or church groups have a lower risk of death (BMJ Open , Vol. 6, No. 2, 2016). Led by psychologist Niklas Steffens, PhD, the team tracked the health of 424 people for six years after they had retired and found that social group membership had a compounding effect on quality of life and risk of death. Compared with those still working, every group membership lost after retirement was associated with around a 10 percent drop in quality of life six years later. In addition, if participants belonged to two groups before retirement and kept these up over the following six years, their risk of death was 2 percent, rising to 5 percent if they gave up membership in one group and to 12 percent if they gave up membership in both.

"In this regard, practical interventions need to focus on helping retirees to maintain their sense of purpose and belonging by assisting them to connect to groups and communities that are meaningful to them," the authors say.

To that end, cohousing appears to be growing in popularity among young and old around the world as a way to improve social connections and decrease loneliness, among other benefits. Cohousing communities and mixed-age residences are intentionally built to bring older and younger generations together, either in whole neighborhoods within single-family homes or in larger apartment buildings, where they share dining, laundry and recreational spaces. Neighbors gather for parties, games, movies or other events, and the cohousing piece makes it easy to form clubs, organize child and elder care, and carpool. Hawkley and other psychologists argue that these living situations may also provide an antidote to loneliness, particularly among older adults. Although formal evaluations of their effectiveness in reducing loneliness remain scarce, cohousing communities in the United States now number 165 nationwide, according to the Cohousing Association, with another 140 in the planning stages.

"Older adults have become so marginalized and made to feel as though they are no longer productive members of society, which is lonely-making in and of itself," Hawkley says. "For society to be healthy, we have to find ways to include all segments of the population, and many of these intergenerational housing programs seem to be doing a lot in terms of dispelling myths about old age and helping older individuals feel like they are important and valued members of society again."

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Evidence links perceived loneliness and social isolation with depression, poor sleep quality, impaired executive function, accelerated cognitive decline, poor cardiovascular function and impaired immunity at every stage of life.

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Edward Hopper: the artist that evoked urban loneliness and disappointment with beautiful clarity

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Edward Hopper: the artist that evoked urban loneliness and disappointment with beautiful clarity

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Edward Hopper: the artist that evoked urban loneliness and disappointment with beautiful clarity

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The realist painter’s brand of Americanism was a counterpoint to the country’s optimism. Fifty years after his death, his legacy lives on

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A Life Apart: Introduction - 1/5 - POV | PBS

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American Jews Face a Choice_ Create Meaning or Fade Away - The New York Times

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CBS quickly backpedaled after an announcement about " The Activist," a new reality TV series it planned to broadcast, drew widespread backlash.

The show was going to pit teams made up of activists and celebrities against one another. They would be competing to see who could raise the most awareness for a cause connected to health, education or the environment. Winning teams were to advance to the G20 Summit in Rome to get world leaders on board.

Critics panned the show without seeing any footage. Many said the premise embodied performative activism, devalued grassroots activism and was cringeworthy.

On Sept. 15, 2021, less than a week after announcing the five-part series, the network and its two co-producers admitted that the concept was flawed. They said they had canceled it and would turn the show into a documentary.

It isn't clear yet what role the celebrity hosts - Usher, who founded a nonprofit that supports under-resourced teens in 1999; Priyanka Chopra, a UNICEF ambassador; and Julianne Hough, who has helped raise awareness about endometriosis - will play in the documentary.

Chopra and Hough immediately felt the need to apologize to their fans and voice their concerns. Usher has not spoken out.

That a major broadcaster would expect a show linking celebrities and activism to garner viewers and that the concept would implode didn't surprise us. We research what happens when celebrities get involved in activism in tandem with corporations. Quite often we find that while celebrities may be well-intentioned in their efforts, the machinery behind their activism may undermine the causes it purports to support.

Enticing the public

Starbucks, TOMS shoes and other companies often try to turn compassion for suffering strangers, from Congolese farmers to Peruvian kids, into a commodity. Celebrities are brought in as spokespeople to widen the appeal of corporate responsibility efforts and sell more products.

To be sure, we find that some celebrities, including Meryl Streep and Angelina Jolie, are more serious about leveraging their influence burnished through their professions. However, we often see that many celebrities don't invest enough time and energy to gain the credibility and expertise required to make a difference.

Celebrities have engaged in this high-profile advocacy for decades. Movie stars like Audrey Hepburn were performing public roles in the mid-20th century as good Samaritans. Because of their fame, celebrities can entice regular people, along with politicians, wealthy philanthropists and corporations, to embrace a cause.

Fans eagerly lap up news about celebrity accomplishments as well as about their private lives and charitable inclinations. Because familiar faces can shine the spotlight on their pet causes, humanitarian agencies and nongovernmental organizations often tap celebrities to draw attention to advocacy campaigns.

For example, the United Nations enlists hundreds of celebrities as messengers of peace, goodwill ambassadors and advocates to communicate with the public. The ENOUGH Project promotes NBA star Luol Deng, the model Iman and other famous people as what it calls " celebrity upstanders " to raise awareness of crises in Africa and support efforts to quell conflicts there.

Likewise, corporations get celebrities to promote cause-related product lines, such as (Red), a project which has worked with Elton John, Scarlett Johansson and Gisele Bündchen to raise money, initially to fight HIV/AIDS and now also to deal with COVID-19 in African countries.

The risks of celebrity activism

Whether the goal is slowing climate change, fighting bigotry or improving access to health care, when celebrities engage in activism, excitement over the celebrities can overwhelm the activism.

The Save Darfur campaign, which at its height brought together more than 190 religious, political and human rights organizations, is a good example.

The campaign eventually collapsed. And yet the people of Darfur today are still in crisis.

Despite research showing that celebrities catch but fail to hold our attention, humanitarian agencies and nonprofits like UNICEF and Oxfam International compete to secure celebrity ambassadors.

When we interviewed aid workers in the field, we learned that visits to crisis zones and refugee camps by celebrities can be extremely disruptive to humanitarian operations. Without the stage management of celebrity ambassadors and control over their media appearances, it's hard to avoid gaffes that risk becoming debacles. One example: actress Elizabeth McGovern mixed up Dakar, the capital of Senegal, and Darfur when she went to Sierra Leone with World Vision as its "ambassador."

Those mistakes that occur and the hassles that arise when famous people show up can defeat the purpose of celebrity engagement. But since these celebrities often come with corporate sponsors - meaning cash - aid workers and local people put up with them.

Celebrity activism as an industry

As demand for star power surges, the machinery behind celebrity activism has become more corporate and professional, we explain in our new book, " Batman Saves the Congo."

Today, most major charitable organizations have full-time celebrity liaisons to manage dozens of celebrity supporters. There are philanthropic consultants, like the Global Philanthropy Group, which help celebrity clients find causes to represent.

We have tracked dozens of celebrities who have their own nonprofits, suggesting long-term commitments. But these organizations are sometimes founded on shaky premises that ignore local needs and can benefit the celebrity more than the cause.

Consider Ben Affleck's Eastern Congo Initiative. We looked at how, in partnership with Starbucks, it claimed to transform the coffee sector in Congo to advance peace and development. Unfortunately, the initiative had no expertise in coffee production and little knowledge of rural development.

Despite professing to serve up a " cup of hope," research later showed that this collaboration made hardly any difference for the farmers it was supposed to help.

Also, it was Affleck's search for meaning in his own life, aided by highly paid consultants, that led him to start this organization, not the Congolese.

Celebrities and consumer activism

Many celebrity-led organizations include corporate partnerships in the form of cause-related marketing lines. Now would-be activists are encouraged to "shop to support" Damon's water.org by buying a Stella Artois Limited Edition chalice.

Or, to sustain Christy Turlington Burns' Every Mother Counts, you can " shop gifts that make a difference" and purchase a Stephanie Freid-Perenchio Orange Rose Necklace.

For celebrities to promote splurging as activism risks distorting how causes can be addressed more successfully through collective action, grassroots engagement and direct donations.

A boon for the rich and famous

Without any accountability, we have seen these efforts generally do little to help the causes or beneficiaries they are championing.

After studying this pattern for years, we want to know: What does celebrity activism accomplish?

It makes an impact, but not in the ways you might expect. We've observed that getting celebrities to back a cause may bring greater visibility for the celebrity and profits for corporate partners.

Celebrity activism can soften or rehabilitate a celebrity's reputation, as in the case of Madonna and Jolie.

[ Over 110,000 readers rely on The Conversation's newsletter to understand the world. Sign up today.]

It can also lead to higher album sales or more downloads. That's what happened for many performers, including British rock band Pink Floyd and the pop singer Robbie Williams after the Live 8 concerts. The point of those widely televised concerts, held at venues across the world in 2005, was to increase aid to low-income countries.

Even as a canceled TV show, "The Activist," is destined to spotlight the unaccountable power stars possess, far more than the causes than it's supposed to be about.

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'The Activist' reality TV show sparked furor, but treating causes as commodities with help from celebrities happens all the time

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CBS quickly backpedaled after an announcement about " The Activist," a new reality TV series it planned to broadcast, drew widespread backlash. The show was going to pit teams made up of activists and celebrities against one another. They would be competing to see who could raise the most awareness for a cause connected to health, education or the environment.

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The Case Against Personal Brands

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Sheryl Sandberg, noted author and Facebook's Chief Operating Officer, was recently asked how business people should manage their personal brands.

Her answer was unexpected.

"You don't have a brand," she responded during the question and answer session at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in May 2017.

"I get this question a lot, and I shudder every time. Crest has a brand. Perrier has a brand. People are not that simple. When we are packaged, we're ineffective and inauthentic."

What we each have is a voice, she added, which can be complex, contradictory and sometimes wrong. Her advice? "Don't package yourself." Just speak honestly, factually and from your own experience.

"Crest has a brand. Perrier has a brand. People are not that simple," says Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (Credit: Getty Images)

Sandberg is one of the most powerful figures in social media, and it's social media that's has helped make the idea of personal branding so ubiquitous. So, has this phenomenon had its day? Sandberg may be ahead of the curve in rejecting the idea as absurd and dehumanising.
Self and self-promotion
The concept of building a personal brand dates back decades. In 1997, Fast Company published an article titled "The Brand Called You" that popularised the concept, arguing that it wasn't just CEOs or celebrities that needed to carefully craft their image. It was everyone.

The rise of self-promotion and branding partnerships on social media means that it's now second nature for people to build a personal brand: to put some thought into the image they project online and the impression it gives to friends, clients, colleagues and even potential employers or sponsors.

That emphasis on presenting a strong public image is especially pronounced in these uncertain economic times; a growing, fiercely competitive "gig economy" has made digital profiles a crucial part of grabbing work opportunities. Freelancing has risen by 43% in the UK since 2008, according to an IPSE survey, and a report by the software company Intuit predicted that 40% of the United States workforce would be made up by independent workers by 2020.
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"Personal branding is now being taught in Kazakhstan, Egypt and even Cambodia. All around the world, job counsellors are telling people to come up with three to four words that reflect their authentic self," according to Ilana Gershon, an associate anthropology professor at Indiana University Bloomington.

Traditional branding paints a picture of products that are flawless and consistent - think of famous brand slogans from "Never knowingly undersold" to "The best a man can get." Humans don't work that way, as Sandberg acknowledged. We are complicated and fallible. There's a risk that creating a "perfect" personal brand comes with enormous pressure to live up to it.

Social media's made it easy for people to curate and share aspects of their life which are in keeping with the image they'd like to project (Credit: Getty Images)

There has always been some unease with the idea that humans can be packaged, and personal brands often come under fire for being artificial portrayals of self-indulgent people. In 2012, the satirical online newspaper The Onion mocked the trend with the headline "' I Am A Brand,' Pathetic Man Says."

The story goes on to describe "a sad, pathetic local web developer" who "sees his worthless daily blog posts, endless Facebook status updates, and aggravating Foursquare check-ins as 'extensions of his brand name.'" The point the writer is making: no-one cares that much about the message we're trying to project. We'll be valued at work by doing a good job, not by attempting to project a consistently perfect image.

Self-promotion can also be exhausting.

"When people are trying to create a personal brand... they must be always on," says Ilana Gershon, author of Down and Out in the New Economy. This might mean updating social media feeds several times a day with carefully curated content, palatable to the people they may want to socialise or work with.

This, she says, "introduces a new way of constantly policing yourself. It forces you to be far more instrumental about your personal life, seeing yourself as a perpetually performing for a business-driven gaze."

Competition to outperform rivals is made more acute by the fact that it's relatively cheap to buy artificially generated Facebook likes, Instagram followers, Twitter retweets, and all the other metrics of social-media success.

The British author Ella Woodward, who runs the healthy-eating blog Deliciously Ella and has more than a million Instagram followers, has spoken about her social-media burnout in interviews. "It's easy when you work in a digital world that doesn't stop, to never stop," she told the marketing magazine Campaign, "and therefore share every aspect of your life. You can get quite exposed, and the bigger you are, the more you're going to attract criticism."

Against this backdrop, Sandberg's opinion of personal branding could signal the death knell of the concept.
Communicating 'you'
Others, however, believe the idea has merit.

Jennifer Holloway, a personal-branding consultant who lives in the Yorkshire Dales, says the criticism is based on a misunderstanding. "It's not fakery," she says of creating a personal branding strategy. "It's 'What brand am I already?'"

Holloway sees the process in practical terms. People form an idea of you based on what you say, how you act and what you look like, anyway. Why not spend some time thinking about your best qualities and idiosyncrasies, so that your online profiles are warm, genuine and positive, and you have a clear answer to questions like, "What do you do?"

Her key advice: "Do not try to second guess, 'What kind of person would this employer like and how do I become that?' Don't expect to have a personal brand that everybody loves. It's about subtlety and authenticity." She also advises against going overboard, saying that it's better to stick to one social-media platform and do it well than to stretch yourself too thin.

It's easy to start sharing every aspect of your life, but beware of over-exposure, says Ella Mills, author and founder of Deliciously Ella (Credit: Getty Images)

Molly Crist and Katerina Clauhs Dhand have figured out how to strike this balance. Two millennial-age sisters from Philadelphia in the US who launched a boutique travel company, Onward Travel, in 2014, they share some of Sheryl Sandberg's scepticism about personal branding while realising that they can't avoid it completely.

Visitors to the website can watch a video of the sisters eating pho, drinking margaritas, and describing their upbringing on a farm in Pennsylvania, where their mother and grandmother had been running cookery classes since the early 1990s. "It could be much more polished," Dhand says, "but it shows who we are, it's a little silly. I hope it communicates that we're real people and that inspires trust."

Crist acknowledges that "it's important to communicate our story and ourselves to our customers," but says it's not worthwhile to push the personal branding past a certain point. For example, Onward Travel is on the usual social media platforms, but, Crist explains, "it's not our number one priority. We have learned that they take an incredible amount of time and thought to manage, and neither of us are overly inclined to share online in the first place."

She's glad that, unlike some influencers or life coaches who are reliant on self-promotion, "we are ultimately selling a guided tour, we're not selling ourselves."

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Building a personal brand has become common practice in the business world - but what if you want to get ahead without curating and sharing a particular version of yourself?

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Cultural diversity: Why we should respect other cultures

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With approximately 190 countries and 7 billion people on earth, it is not hard to imagine that many diverse cultures exist. Here in the U.S., our...

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Vaccine Pits Individual Liberty Against Common Good

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Vaccine Pits Individual Liberty Against Common Good

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LOS ANGELES - In Anaheim, California, Disneyland worker Judy Hart, 62, says she'll never get the COVID-19 vaccine because it's "experimental."

What about masks? Hart wears one while working retail sales at the most magical place on Earth, but nowhere else. "It's against our freedoms," she says. "And I'm not some religious weirdo who thinks it's the mark of the beast."

After more than 18 months of a pandemic, with 1 of every 545 Americans killed by COVID-19, a substantial chunk of the population continues to assert their own individual liberties over the common good.

This great divide - spilling into workplaces, schools, supermarkets and voting booths - has split the nation at a historic juncture when partisan factionalism and social media already are achieving similar ends.

It is a phenomenon that perplexes sociologists, legal scholars, public health experts and philosophers, causing them to wonder:

At what point should individual rights yield to the public interest? If coronavirus kills 1 in 100, will that be enough to change some minds? Or 1 in 10?

Today, millions of U.S. residents shun vaccines that have proven highly effective and resist masks that ward off infection, fiercely opposing government restrictions.

Others clamor for regulation, arguing that those who take no precautions are violating their rights - threatening the freedom to live of everyone they expose.

In an online dialogue about the friction between liberty and the greater good, Clare Palmer, a philosophy professor at Texas A&M University, agreed that exercising a freedom to go maskless creates "catastrophic threats to the well-being of others."

"How much should government constrain citizens' otherwise rightful activities to lower the risk?" she asked. "We may be entering a period ... when countries will need to reassess their willingness to use the law to protect the most vulnerable and to advance the common good."

No matter where one stands, it puts a new spin on the famous line delivered at America's founding by Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty or give me death."

'An act of defiance'

Seldom in the nation's past has a culture boundary been so clear-cut, or the clash between personal rights and public welfare been so polarized.

COVID-19 is now killing more than 2,000 Americans each week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, with new infections topping 60,000 a day for the first time in more than three months. Nearly two-thirds of the nation's counties are reeling from substantial or high transmission rates as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Against that backdrop, a striking paradox has evolved: About 99% of America's COVID-19 deaths today are people who did not get shots. Yet, the unvaccinated - who are more susceptible to infection and more likely to spread the disease - also appear to be most resistant to wearing masks.

While the scientific research is evolving and medical messaging has been muddled, the vaccine has worked beyond expectations - "a huge celebration of effectiveness," as Johns Hopkins notes - with limited side effects recorded so far.

That means getting shots saves lives.

It also means vaccines could prevent the mutation of more virulent coronavirus strains while hastening a return to economic and social normalcy. So, why do so many turn down the shots and shun masks? Is it a social syndrome that puts self-interest above the common good? Is it a stand for principle? Is it something else?

Michael Sandel, a Harvard professor of government who teaches a course on ethics in an age of pandemics, noted in the university's gazette that mask-wearing has emerged as " a new front in the culture wars."

While covering one's face is not difficult, mask opponents are driven by another concern: They don't want government dictating their behavior. Put simply, Sandel said, the resistance is not about public health: "It's about politics."

"Even as the pandemic highlights our mutual dependence, it is striking how little solidarity and shared sacrifice it has called forth," he noted. "The pandemic caught us unprepared - logistically and medically, but also morally. ... (It) arrived at just the wrong moment - amid toxic politics, incompetent leadership and fraying social bonds."

"It's an act of defiance," said Steven Tipton, a professor of sociology and religion at Emory University. "'You can't make me.' And I will enact my own freedom even if it kills me and others around me who I love.'"

Tipton co-wrote the book "The Good Society," describing how America's institutions have fallen from grace. He is among many who trace this viral distrust a half-century back to President Ronald Reagan's quote: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

As economic inequities mushroomed and social isolation festered, Tipton said, average Americans came to feel betrayed by government, the marketplace and so-called elites. For them, rejecting science and spurning authorities is a statement of moral outrage rather than an act of selfishness. And that sentiment is encouraged in a social media echo chamber that bonds the disconnected.

In the end, however, COVID-19 has no politics or ethical code. The virus, acting on a principle of proliferation, has killed more than 4.2 million people worldwide - especially now those who didn't get shots.

The moral, Tipton suggested: "Being a good citizen is being mutually responsible. If you believe in the gospels, wear your mask."

Mixed messages, lies and confusion

During World War II, the Greatest Generation forged unity with common goals. Americans tended victory gardens to overcome food shortages, volunteered for national defense and made personal sacrifices for the good of the country.

Today, in the face of a pandemic that already has killed more U.S. citizens than the Big War, we block one another's Facebook pages, stage anti-vaccine protests and in some cases attack one another for requiring or wearing masks.

To be sure, public confusion and discord have been abetted by muddled messages from government and science, compounded by lies and disinformation spewed via social media.

The miscues are legend:

Early in the pandemic, President Donald Trump declared a premature victory over COVID-19 as his chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned against opening the country too soon. Fauci and the CDC have issued guidance in favor of masks, then against them, and then for them again - in part because the virus itself has morphed.

President Joe Biden last week applied a carrot-and-stick approach, urging local authorities to pay $100 to unvaccinated people who get the shots while announcing that federal employees will face strict testing requirements if they are not vaccinated.

But in the absence of authority or fortitude to impose public health policies, federal leaders have largely deferred to state and local government. The result: a bewildering and inconsistent panoply of policies that vary from one jurisdiction to the next, and may change overnight.

"There's just been such tremendous inconsistency in communications about this," said Corey Basch, chair of the public health department at William Paterson University in New Jersey. "I can understand why there are pockets of the population who really don't want this mandated, and (they) feel distrust."

A tale of two counties

Consider Los Angeles and Orange counties in California, sibling hotbeds of COVID-19 that form the nation's largest metro area.

In May, after the Orange County Board of Supervisors announced plans to offer a digital record for residents who have been vaccinated, hundreds of enraged people - leery of a new vaccine -jammed a meeting and denounced what they mistakenly believed was a mandatory COVID-19 passport system.

Jeanine Robbins, 60, of Anaheim, who attended that event, noticed that nearly all the people opposed to vaccination were also maskless. "I think they're just taking advantage, and they're putting other people at risk," Robbins said. "It's selfishness."

By contrast, Michael Thomas, a 62-year-old accountant in San Clemente, said he doesn't believe masks work and he won't be getting shots because "a person's immune system will either fight off COVID or it won't."

Asked whether his decisions endanger others, Thomas shook his head. "It's a personal right to do what you want," he said. "A God-given right."

Thomas volunteered that he sees COVID-19 as a "war crime," adding, "The guy who made it - the people who developed the virus - should be brought to justice."

Asked who he believes created and spread the disease, Thomas said, "I understand Dr. Fauci was intimately involved ..." He would not identify his source for that allegation.

According to The Associated Press, a picture circulating on right-wing social media sites, which purportedly shows Fauci with then-President Barack Obama at the Wuhan, China, lab in 2015, was actually taken at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C., during 2014.

In conservative Orange County, plans for digital vaccine recordkeeping were canceled, and there are no generalized mask requirements. But late last month, Disneyland reinstated a mask mandate and announced mandatory coronavirus shots for most employees.

City of the Angels

Barely one month after Gov. Gavin Newsom ended most COVID-19 restrictions in California, declaring that the state was "turning the page on this pandemic," viral caseloads in Los Angeles County had increased sevenfold.

On July 16, in a push for public safety, the Board of Supervisors reinstated indoor mask requirements. Sheriff Alex Villanueva promptly announced that his deputies would not enforce the measure because it is "not backed by science."

In the shadow of downtown skyscrapers, Steven Nuñez, 35, mulled the question and allowed that public leaders had no choice but to impose mandates. "We've already seen what happens when it's voluntary," he noted.

Nuñez, a minister with the International Buddhist Meditation Center, said his theology calls for a balancing of compassion and wisdom, with action based not on personal interests but the welfare of others. "I don't wear a mask in public because I'm afraid," he stressed, "but because doing that might keep someone safe."

'Typhoid Mary'

In the early 1900s, a domestic cook for wealthy families named Mary Mallon unwittingly infected hundreds of people in New York with the Salmonella typhi bacteria before medical investigators identified her as a superspreader.

Mallon, nicknamed "Typhoid Mary," refused to be tested and fled from authorities, only to be captured and quarantined. During two years of confinement, she sued the health department. Upon release, she violated an agreement not to resume cooking and worked at a maternity hospital in Manhattan where more people were infected and died.

COVID-19 may be caused by a novel coronavirus, but the legal-ethical issues are not new. And just what constitutes the common good has always been a matter of disagreement.

Plato advocated conduct that promotes social harmony. His student, Aristotle, promoted action allowing individuals to fulfill their human purpose. Thus, the debate proceeded.

When the United States was founded, a Bill of Rights got locked into the Constitution to ensure that personal liberties were protected from a coercive government.

But those freedoms are not limitless. One person's right to throw a punch stops at another's nose. If you scream "Fire!" in a crowded theater, it could be a ticket to jail.

"Keep in mind we have seat belt laws," noted Jessica Berg, law school dean and a professor of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. "We have speed limits."

When inoculations for smallpox and polio were first mandated in the past century, backlashes erupted, eventually dying as shots eradicated two of the world's worst scourges. Yet, Berg noted, some batches of the early polio vaccine had devastating side effects.

The question is not whether government should constrain personal liberties in the public interest, she concluded, but when and how. With face masks and vaccinations, Berg allows that constraints should result in the least possible loss of choices and the most respect for liberty.

For example, rather than threats of jail or fines, those who refuse to take precautions might be banned from crowded venues or required to undergo regular testing. The point, Berg said, is to allow for a stand on personal rights by letting people make choices.

"I think if we want to accept the benefits of living in a society," Berg added, "we also have to accept there are some constraints on individual liberty."

Pamela Hieronymi, a UCLA professor who specializes in moral philosophy, said COVID-19 has revealed the "trickiness of freedoms." She described various schools of ethical thought, noting that if someone asked four philosophy professors whether vaccines and masks should be mandated, there likely would be four different answers.

Then she mentioned a book - "Assholes: A Theory" - by colleague Aaron James, which argues that American culture is producing a swarm of annoying, self-righteous people who behave as if they are so special that normal rules do not apply.

More than a lack of civility, Hieronymi said, "we've lost sight of the common good."

Near downtown Los Angeles, social worker Alexandra Sheehy, 37, said she gave birth during the pandemic. As a combat veteran who served in Iraq, she understands that fighting a contagious disease requires a "collective and collaborative effort."

But she also worries about how conflict, anger and stress are wounding society and individuals. "I've learned you can't control everybody," Sheehy said. "You can only control how you react."

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The COVID culture war: At what point should personal freedom yield to the common good?

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LOS ANGELES - In Anaheim, California, Disneyland worker Judy Hart, 62, says she'll never get the COVID-19 vaccine because it's "experimental." What about masks? Hart wears one while working retail sales at the most magical place on Earth, but nowhere else. "It's against our freedoms," she says.

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Think of any decade in the past century and before long, a myriad of images will flood into your mind of said period's accompanying subcultures. A Google Image search of the 80s will bombard your retinas with images of Mohicans and studded leather. If you ask Alexa about the 1950s she will describe the intricate curl of a Teddy Boy's hair. But when thinking of our current decade, it's harder to pinpoint the subcultures that define us. And perhaps that's because they no longer exist.

This demise of these once-pioneering fashion movements stands out as an anomaly particularly in a time in which we proudly claim to be more accepting than ever before. We are continually told how diverse our society is so surely, daring trends should be flourishing more than ever. So, why is this not the case?

It is undeniable that there is a correlation between the disappearance of subcultures and technological advances. In today's society, young peoples' identities are carefully curated online rather than through becoming part of a movement. The importance of one's online identity now often surpasses their perception in the real world, a concept known as the sharded self, which reduces the amount of time spent cultivating one's real life persona through a social tribe. Alongside the growth of technology also came the ability to download and stream music with ease. Historically, underground movements were inextricably linked with music, however with the ever-increasing simplicity for young people to freely listen to music they are exploring genres more widely than in previous generations. As a result, many young people feel less of an affinity to one musical style and are therefore not as committed to submersing themselves in its accompanying community.

One notable example however is, the recent rise (and rise) of Grime music. Which is one of the closest movements in recent years to resemble a subculture. However, it also acts as a very clear example of how technology has put an end to the grass-roots origins of subcultures of old. Like many beginnings of underground cultures in the Internet Age, Grime was too easily discovered, commercialised and marketed to the masses, quickly becoming too mainstream to ever be viewed as a subculture again.

This issue of commercialisation preventing subculture development also highlights how the evolution of the fashion industry changed the subculture landscape. The birth of fast fashion in 2007 saw the pressure to produce garments at a rapid rate increase so greatly that trend cycles sped up to an unprecedented rate. As this happened, clothes began to be sold for cheaper and cheaper prices, enabling more people to buy more items, more often. As a result, people no longer found themselves tied to one style due to financial investment. Whereas in the past a punk's affiliation to their tribe was intensified due to the £60 they forked out on platform boots, people nowadays are now able to alternate their style frequently at little expense. So called subcultures in 2017 encompass this ever-increasing desire for more and the fluidity between trends. 'Haul Girls' of Youtube's entire existence is based around buying as much as possible and posting it in a video for people to admire. Their success in influencing the young and their behaviour is undeniably indicative of a youth culture movement. However, none of the classic unifying elements of subcultures such as music, political views and style are well defined by fickle tribes such as this.

In the early noughties, although underground movements were already beginning to dwindle, we did witness the rise of one social tribe during the years of the Internet's infancy. The emo tribe became a target for a great deal of animosity and even hate crime, despite already considering our society to be more tolerant by this time. It was only 10 years ago that Sophie Lancaster was attacked with her boyfriend Robert Maltby for being dressed as Goths. She died as a result of her injuries. Although a rare occurrence, atrocities such as this are a shocking reminder of how intolerant and unaccepting of difference our so called progressive society can be. The targeting of Goths and Emos gives a stark illustration of extreme reactions that stepping outside of fashion norms can generate, helping to explain the the current dominance of homogeneity.

The Emo subculture was not even a new one; their emergence actually began in the 1980s, but it was just after the millennium when the movement witnessed wider popularity. The rise of the Emo tribe in the noughties

was an example of how 'retromania' emerged in conjunction with the growth of the internet. Young people were able to look back on previous generations in more detail than ever before. But perhaps so much referencing the past has hindered the evolution of genuinely new subcultures. Are we are too busy admiring the icons of the past who dared to be different to be breaking our own new ground now?

We are a society obsessed with diversity but in truth, the continuing rise of the middle-class has led to an unavoidable homogenisation of people and the failure of sub-cultures to launch. Perhaps our defining sub-cultures are the 'Haul Girls' of Youtube or the beanie-clad Hipsters or the LADs who drink protein shakes during the week and jager bombs at the weekend. But can these groups really be considered a sub-culture? Do they stand for anything or for that matter against anything? In the past politics has played a part in uniting and strengthening sub-cultures. But maybe pressure on young people today is so great that there is not the time or inclination to take the risks that formed essential parts of sub-cultures of the past. A skinhead may be too high risk for a rise up the career ladder, and already burdened with student debt and soaring house prices, young people today simply have too much to lose. Continually plummeting statistics of teen pregnancy, alcohol and drug use are evidence of the increasing sensibleness inflicted on the young generation today, and speak of a generation too scared to become part of something other than what they have been told is acceptable. The internet should be a place for sub-cultures to flourish; for similar niche interests to connect globally. However, whilst pressures on young people are so intense perhaps we are stuck with the continued rise of the accepted middle ground of fashion.

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Think of any decade in the past century and before long, a myriad of images will flood into your mind of said period's accompanying subcultures. A Google Image search of the 80s will bombard your retinas with images of Mohicans and studded leather.

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Continuity Requires Content | Sapir Journal

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American Jewish leaders never made the claim publicly, nor in all likelihood did they ever articulate it to themselves. Yet in retrospect, ...

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In 1964, Look magazine, in an article titled "The Vanishing American Jew," predicted that there would be no Jews left in the United States by the rise of the 21st century.

Now, with the dawn of the third decade of the 2000's, we can rest assured that Judaism remains alive and well in America, at least for now. But what will it look like in 20 years? We asked local spiritual guides, Jewish educators and residents to weigh in on their vision of the future of the Jewish community in 2040. Thoughts ranged from denominational disappearances to technological innovations and population shifts. Whether the ideas shared prove to be actual prognostications or guesses gone wrong only time will tell.

"By 2040 I think that Jewish life will be more global and less local, which has already been a trend," said Rabbi Amy Bardack, Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh's director of Jewish Life and Learning. "I think there will be an influx of Jewish Pittsburghers who are not from the area - people seeking Jewish life in contexts that are different from our current offerings and institutions."

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Those who come here, and those presently in Pittsburgh, will certainly access Jewish life in new ways, predicted Rabbi Aaron Meyer, of Temple Emanuel of South Hills.

"Legacy organizations, including my synagogue, are in many ways, the taxi cabs of Jewish life," he said. "We don't know what our communities' Uber and Lyft are going to be, but we know that if demographic and engagement trends continue, that level of disruption will happen. I think organizations unable to both adapt and ultimately encourage that type of ingenuity are simply going to cease to exist."

The future doesn't bode well for some elements of 20th century Jewish life, said Rabbi Danny Schiff, Federation's Foundation Scholar, who predicted a collapse of denominational identities like Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist.

"There will, of course, be some pockets of strength that will remain here and there, but for the most part they will be gone."

Schiff pointed to comments he shared with the Chronicle five years ago: "Only those persistent, consistent and focused enough to have a reasonably robust connection to Jewish practices or activities will remain a part of Jewishness in any way that counts."

Homestead historian Tammy Hepps also thinks portions of Jewish life will vanish by 2040.

"I don't think there is a future for non-Orthodox Judaism as we know it today, but I do think there is a future for non-Orthodox Jewish people identifying strongly as Jewish," Hepps said. "I'm trying to imagine what that would look like here, based on a comparison with other communities like Israel today or interwar Poland. I'm trying to guess what is possible in a community without the grounding those communities have/had in Jewish languages and culture, as well as what can develop in a place at such a distance, both geographically and culturally, from today's centers of Jewish creativity."

Of course, any discussion of a Jewish future has to include Israel, said Alan Menaged, a 2019 Carnegie Mellon University graduate.

"I think that especially with rising anti-Semitism in both Europe and the United States, a lot of Jews are going to turn to Israel as a place of safety and comfort," he said. In turn, Israel "will adjust its policies to be more open to connections with the global Jewish community."

Menaged, a Carnegie Mellon math major who works as a technology analyst at Roivant Sciences in New York, noted Israel's impact will be evidenced by the number of people who move there and the reaction of remaining Diaspora residents.

"I think there are definitely going to be some communities that if a significant group makes aliyah will end up looking more like Pittsburgh, in terms of building closer connections between Jews of different backgrounds and Jews of different streams," he said. "Shared experience, either through connection to Israel or anti-Semitism, will bring these disconnected groups together."

Technology will serve a similarly unifying force, predicted Danielle Kranjec of Hillel JUC.

But how that will happen is "the key question that we're all struggling to figure out," Meyer said. "On the one hand, we understand that individuals can connect in a decentralized way on their own time and form niche groups specific to their interest, and at the same time Judaism shows us the meaning of relationships taken offline, and that the concept of a minyan in prayer translates to many different activities throughout Jewish life.

"And so whether we'll see people being willing to step back from a completely online engagement and re-engage with communities, or whether there will be technology we haven't even thought of that further changes the game it's anybody's guess."

If history is any indicator, technology is likely to mirror or to build upon some current uses, like those of OneTable - an organization that uses a digital platform to build community around Friday night dinners. But "Judaism is very special in that there are some traditions that go back thousands of years and there's no reason they will change," said Menaged. "The ways that Jews connect to Jews and each other is very ingrained, and by 2040 I can't imagine a lot of that changing."

The difference will be "multiple onramps to Jewish life beyond the current organizations and institutions we have," said Bardack.

So many unknowns remain as to what will be in 2040, but current signs point to a promising future, she continued: "There is every reason for this area to remain a cohesive Jewish community and a Jewish community that continues to grow and evolve."

Rabbi Yossi Berkowitz, of the Kollel Jewish Learning Center, agreed.

"Based on my experience here in the last eight years, I see a lot of growth in the Jewish community remaining connected and remaining strong," said Berkowitz. "There's a vibrant Jewish life in Pittsburgh that bodes well for a good future." PJC
Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

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In 1964, Look magazine, in an article titled "The Vanishing American Jew," predicted that there would be no Jews left in the United States by the rise of the 21st century. Now, with the dawn of the third decade of the 2000's, we can rest assured that Judaism remains alive and well in America, at least for now.

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What Happens When Everything is For Sale?

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What Happens When Everything is For Sale?

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Credit Credit Tim Enthoven

Opinion
The constant pressure to sell ourselves on every possible platform has produced its own brand of modern anxiety.

By Ruth Whippman

There is something about the consumer madness of the holiday season that makes me think of my friend Rebecca's mother. When I was in middle school, she had a side hustle selling acrylic-rhinestone bug brooches. The jewelry was hard to move on its merits - even for the 1980s it was staggeringly ugly. But what she lacked in salable product, she made up for in sheer selling stamina. Every sleepover, school fair or birthday party, out would come the tray of bejeweled grasshoppers and stag beetles, glinting with Reagan-era menace.

Presumably someone was making money from this venture - some proto-Trump barking orders from his tax haven - but it certainly didn't seem to be Rebecca's mother, whose sales pitches took on an ever more shrill note of desperation.

Soon she had given up even the basic social pretense that we might actually want the brooches. The laws of supply and demand morphed seamlessly into the laws of guilt and obligation, and then into the laws of outright malice, mirroring the trajectory of capitalism itself.

At that time, when naked hawking to your friends was still considered an etiquette blunder, the sales pitches by Rebecca's mother felt embarrassing - as gaudy and threatening to the social ecosystem as a purple rhinestone daddy longlegs. But 30 years later, at the height of the gig economy, when the foundation of working life has apparently become selling your friends things they don't want, I look back to that raw need in Rebecca's mother's eyes with something terrifyingly approaching recognition.

As a writer, I am part of the 35 percent of the American work force that now works freelance in some capacity, either as a main source of income or as some kind of side hustle. This number is growing constantly - 94 percent of the new jobs created in the last decade or so were freelance or contract-based.

When we think "gig economy," we tend to picture an Uber driver or a TaskRabbit tasker rather than a lawyer or a doctor, but in reality, this scrappy economic model - grubbing around for work, all big dreams and bad health insurance - will soon catch up with the bulk of America's middle class.

Major companies now outsource many of even their most skilled jobs, ditching their in-house lawyers and I.T. support teams in favor of on-demand contractors, paid by the hour. More than 18 million Americans are now involved in some kind of direct sales or multilevel marketing scheme, shelling out hundreds of dollars on vitamins or juicers or leggings, then frantically attempting to recoup the money by flogging them to friends and neighbors. Economists predict that by 2027, gig workers of varying descriptions will make up more than half of the work force. An estimated 47 percent of millennials already work in this way.

It certainly feels familiar. Almost everyone I know now has some kind of hustle, whether job, hobby, or side or vanity project. Share my blog post, buy my book, click on my link, follow me on Instagram, visit my Etsy shop, donate to my Kickstarter, crowdfund my heart surgery. It's as though we are all working in Walmart on an endless Black Friday of the soul.

Being sold to can be socially awkward, for sure, but when it comes to corrosive self-doubt, being the seller is a thousand times worse. The constant curation of a salable self demanded by the new economy can be a special hellspring of anxiety.

Like many modern workers, I find that only a small percentage of my job is now actually doing my job. The rest is performing a million acts of unpaid micro-labor that can easily add up to a full-time job in itself. Tweeting and sharing and schmoozing and blogging. Liking and commenting on others' tweets and shares and schmoozes and blogs. Ambivalently "maintaining a presence on social media," attempting to sell a semi-fictional, much more appealing version of myself in the vain hope that this might somehow help me sell some actual stuff at some unspecified future time.

The trick of doing this well, of course, is to act as if you aren't doing it at all - as if this is simply how you like to unwind in the evening, by sharing your views on pasta sauce with your 567,000 followers. Seeing the slick charm of successful online "influencers" spurs me to download e-courses on how to "crack Instagram" or "develop my personal brand story." But as soon as I hand over my credit card details, I am flooded with vague self-disgust. I instantly abandon the courses and revert to my usual business model - badgering and guilting my friends across a range of online platforms, employing the personal brand story of "pleeeeeeeeeeaassssee."

As my friend Helena (Buy her young adult novel! Available on Amazon!) puts it, buying, promoting or sharing your friend's "thing" is now a tax payable for modern friendship. But this expectation becomes its own monster. I find myself auditing my friends' loyalty based on their efforts. Who bought it? Who shared it on Facebook? Was it a share from the heart, or a "duty share" - with that telltale, torturous phrasing that squeaks past the minimum social requirement but deftly dissociates the sharer from the product: "My friend wrote a book - I haven't read it, but maybe you should."

In this cutthroat human marketplace, we are worth only as much as the sum of our metrics, so checking those metrics can become obsessive. What's my Amazon ranking? How many likes? How many retweets? How many followers? (The word "followers" is in itself a clear indicator of something psychologically unhealthy going on - the standard term for the people we now spend the bulk of our time with sounds less like a functioning human relationship than the P.R. materials of the Branch Davidians.)

Of course a fair chunk of this mass selling frenzy is motivated by money. With a collapsing middle class, as well as close to zero job security and none of the benefits associated with it, self-marketing has become, for many, a necessity in order to eat.

But what's more peculiar is just how imperfectly all this correlates with financial need or even greed. The sad truth is that many of us would probably make more money stacking shelves or working at the drive-through than selling our "thing." The real prize is deeper, more existential. What this is really about, for many of us, is a roaring black hole of psychological need.

After a couple of decades of constant advice to "follow our passions" and "live our dreams," for a certain type of relatively privileged modern freelancer, nothing less than total self-actualization at work now seems enough. But this leaves us with an angsty mismatch between personal expectation and economic reality. So we shackle our self-worth to the success of these projects - the book or blog post or range of crocheted stuffed penguins becomes a proxy for our very soul. In the new economy you can be your own boss and your own ugly bug brooch.

Kudos to whichever neoliberal masterminds came up with this system. They sell this infinitely seductive torture to us as "flexible working" or "being the C.E.O. of You!" and we jump at it, salivating, because on its best days, the freelance life really can be all of that.

But as long as we are happy to be paid for our labor in psychological rather than financial rewards, those at the top are delighted to comply. While we grub and scrabble and claw at one another chasing these tiny pellets of self-esteem, the bug-brooch barons still pocket the actual cash.

This is the future, and research suggests that it's a rat race that is already taking a severe toll on our psyches. A 2017 study suggests that this trend toward increasingly market-driven human interaction is making us paranoid, jittery, self-critical and judgmental.

Analyzing data from the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale from 1989 to 2016, the study's authors found a surprisingly large increase over this period in three distinct types of perfectionism: "Self-orientated," whereby we hold ourselves to increasingly unrealistic standards and judge ourselves harshly when we fail to meet them; "socially prescribed," in which we are convinced that other people judge us harshly; and "other-orientated," in which we get our revenge by judging them just as harshly. These elements of perfectionism positively correlate with mental health problems, including anxiety, depression and even suicide, which are also on the rise.

The authors describe this new-normal mind-set as a "sense of self overwhelmed by pathological worry and a fear of negative social evaluation." Hmm. Maybe I should make that my personal brand story.

Ruth Whippman is the author of "America the Anxious: Why Our Search for Happiness Is Driving Us Crazy and How to Find It for Real."

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Opinion | Everything Is for Sale Now. Even Us.

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Opinion The constant pressure to sell ourselves on every possible platform has produced its own brand of modern anxiety. By Ruth Whippman There is something about the consumer madness of the holiday season that makes me think of my friend Rebecca's mother. When I was in middle school, she had a side hustle selling acrylic-rhinestone bug brooches.

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Ian Grandjean, Simone Noronha, and more respond to the loneliness, introspection, and unexpected joys found in quarantine

Art from Isolation is a series Document Journal began at the start of the coronavirus quarantine in the US. The series presents artists of various disciplines who are processing and responding to this global predicament through their work. In its first two installments, we heard from photographers, and video and multimedia artists. Today, we present 11 illustrators and animators who have visualized the emotions and anxieties of their isolated experiences for Document. We hope you enjoy the work and the words, and that you consider doing some creating of your own, through whatever medium comes easiest : )-Liana Blum, Photo Director, Document Journal Ian Grandjean
Two virtual-reality films at the peak of cyberpunk, Strange Days (1995) and Johnny Mnemonic (1995), were a reference point for the narrative mood. In Strange Days, illegal MiniDisc-like devices used to play back recorded memories offer an escape from one's bleak reality. In Johnny Mnemonic, Nerve Attenuation Syndrome-a fictional disease caused by overexposure to technology-runs rampant in half the world's population. [William S.] Burroughs said that language is a virus from outer space. In Johnny Mnemonic, which is shot in the wake of the AIDS crisis, we see parallels drawn between technology as an extension of our social membrane and the dissolution of that membrane as facilitated by technology.

I was also thinking of the Japanese Hikikomori, a class of youth who suffer from extreme social withdrawal from society. How would a cluttered capsule-apartment appear as a still life? I was inspired by the graphics of late '90s European energy drinks, about the escapism of eXistenZ. A potential point where the physical body becomes an afterthought.
Danski Tang
I have been exploring the contrast of stillness and motion throughout my work. This is a snapshot of a woman doing house work beneath hot sunlight beaming through her door. The perspective in this piece mimics the placement of a camera lens, anticipating her action. The wide angle composition gives it a sense of loneliness and emptiness. The wine in her hand suggests her time in this space is also enjoyable. Dark tones are employed to create a voyeuristic atmosphere and evoke the experience of surreptitious observation.

Electronic screens have become our window to the outside world. We look into our devices to peek at others while they are perhaps doing the same to us.
danskitang.com Matt Reynolds
With the extra time available, I've started working on digital illustrations depicting little sci-fi tableaus that augment some aspect of contemporary events and culture. In this illustration I was imagining a spore-like contagion that's driven human civilization underground, only to periodically peek at the surface they've abandoned to their past. I was interested in packing this little frame with mysterious layers of history. There's a monument to some kind of conqueror figure but the monument has been vandalized or hidden from the public for some other unknown changing political tide. Making this piece in quarantine had me thinking a lot about not only being disconnected from other people, but also from history and the material artifacts that link us to a continuum of human civilization that we will probably lose to one cataclysmic event or the next. But how about this Spring weather!?
mattreynoldstreats.com Emily Bernstein
Cartooning is sort of a solitary practice, particularly because we cartoonists are poorly socialized as a rule. Because I can't really work with anyone on these-I submit a batch of 5-10 cartoons to the New Yorker every week-I really enjoy working next to other people. I'm lucky enough to have some other freelance friends nearby to create a kind of co-working community with, which has made this isolation particularly hard on me. I'm still producing, but I get really burnt out and low when I'm working alone all day. I'm trying to get by on FaceTimes and Zoom calls but it's just not the same. I never knew an introvert could have these kinds of feelings!!
emilycbernstein.com Muriel Ahmarani-Jaouich
My pictorial work is intuitive, process-based, and sensorial. In this work, I aim to connect to the genocidal memories of my grandparents. I liken this genocide to a burden, with an inability to escape from it. By engaging with the past, its spectres are brought into the present through my work. My painting process involves being guided by ghostly strokes. As the diaspora knows why it has been born away from its homeland, this longing-or as Freud termed it, melancholia-has surfaced in my work, symbolizing a devotion that has not been resolved. By keeping an open relationship with the past, melancholia has the ability to form new perspectives on something that has become lost.

I find myself revealing fragmented bodies and grotesque forms willed into existence by vigorous and wildly colorful brush strokes. I am interested in 'uglifying.' This iconography of the grotesque enables me to comment on the injustice. I flatten out the figures across the surface of the composition, built in order to make the image more pressing and intense. Volume is suggested through the juxtaposition of dabs of pure, saturated color as figures, shapes, and forms are deconstructed, on the brink of solidifying or dissolving as a memorial and political act.
Benjamin Lemoine
This piece started from my procedurally generated face that I built some days ago. The main idea behind Houdini, the software I use, is proceduralism. This means that instead of making a cake from scratch, you build a recipe and then let the computer do it. This allows a lot of possible variation and I think it's great for art directing too!

Normally I work alone and I like it. I can work when I want and organize my schedule as I need. When I work with others it's remotely because I live in a small town in the French alps so there is not much of an artistic scene here... all of my artistic contact comes from the web.

Isolation is important for me. It was during an isolation period when I was depressed and self-deprecating that I understood I was obsessed by the idea of producing images and I decided to build the rest of my life on this single task-because at least I had a goal.
blemoine.bigcartel.com Sarula Bao
[This work is] a pretty literal interpretation of physical isolation at least, and the emotions that come along with it. My sleep schedule has been absolutely ruined so I spend a lot of time at 4-5am by myself in the living room in the dark on my computer, talking to friends, working on something, or playing video games. It's difficult in many ways, and the pressure and grief of the pandemic, of the unemployment rate, of racism, threaten to overwhelm me, so I keep it at bay by distracting myself and doing whatever I can to continue to function. Those little things, small projects, cooking food, talking to friends, are so vitally important right now because they help us get by, so that's what I decided to draw.

My desk is a disaster: an orange plant that takes up a third of it, a zine shelf takes up another third, and the last third is piled high with books, 1099s, receipts, and empty food packaging so I don't even bother. I've been working on my iPad in the living room on a beige couch that is on the last legs of its life. It has three pillows on top of it and a yellow knitted blanket. As soon as you sit down your butt will be pulled towards the center and be sucked into the crack so usually I end up curled up in a position that is definitely bad for me. The couch is by a window, surrounded by a lot of plants, both hanging plants and big ones with leaves that get in my face if I lean on one side.
sarula-bao.com Daniel Zender
I wanted to emphasize the idea of distance emotionally and physically. I feel like my world is slowly detaching more and more from reality but I am trying to stay positive.

I have been doing a lot of 'crafts' lately-[my wife and I] made beads, I have been playing with Sculpey and wood carving, and I started a new series of illustrations based on the food I have been eating. In that way, isolation has opened up some new directions of work that I would have normally dismissed. I think embracing the limitations that are out of your control can help you make work that is unexpected and fresh.
danielzender.com Raul De Nieves
Saint George and the Dragon is a theme upon which I have composed many paintings during a span of over a decade. Its iconography has been the source of healing, strength, and self-revelation during my personal and artistic evolution. This abstract rendering focuses on patience and abundance. An understanding that form can create chaos and how we defeat our own personal battles.

[Aside from making art,] I'm giving myself the freedom to cook more often and talk on the phone with friends for long periods of time. I've also been meditating everyday and running around my local cemetery. I'm really trying to maintain a form of structure so that I don't fall into a realm of sadness.
Max Guther
Normally we would probably be sitting in the sunshine or in a bar sipping from some kind of refreshing drink right now, surrounded by people. While scenarios like this are ceasing to apply, we're trying to teach ourselves in isolation. There are a lot of things we currently miss with good reason however, these occurrences can be seen positive in some way. Facing a time where it feels like the world and everything in it has been pacified, we have to stop chasing around and deal with ourselves, listening to music and reading books, sitting on the desk and laying on the couch, or just being bored at times. Moments of self-reflection which contain a huge source of inspiration.
maxguther.de Simone Noronha
[Isolation] can be [a catalyst for creativity] if you are open to it, because it gives you a moment to sit with things. Being creative and making things, can be one way to process what's going on and how you feel. It's also a way to connect with others too, since we are all going through it.

I've been cooking quite a bit, much like everyone these days. More specifically, I'm making foods I grew up eating as a child. My mum gave me all these Indian recipes, and I've been making them on the regular, exclusively. There's even little treats I used to indulge in as a child (srikhand, fatayer, and shfeeha) that I've started making from scratch. This is one big source of comfort, and a little reminder of the last time I was safe.

I'm not much of a bread person so I won't be making sourdough anytime soon, but I've been making yogurt from cans of coconut milk that requires just as much time to ferment. The anticipation to see if it turns into yogurt or not is the most exciting part of my week.

I went freelance a week before all of New York went into quarantine, which means to say I started my own lockdown early. My apartment has always been more geared to work than living. But since I've been cooped up in here, I bought a few plants to keep me company, I've been growing scallions and rearranging all of my things constantly trying to find some semblance of optimization.
simonoronha.com

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Art From Isolation: 11 Illustrators visualize our new dystopian reality

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Ian Grandjean, Simone Noronha, and more respond to the loneliness, introspection, and unexpected joys found in quarantine Art from Isolation is a series Document Journal began at the start of the coronavirus quarantine in the US. The series presents artists of various disciplines who are processing and responding to this global predicament through their work.

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Australia - Importance of Community to Mental Health

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Australia - Importance of Community to Mental Health

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Authorised by the Australian Government, Canberra.

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Being part of a community can have a positive effect on mental health and wellbeing.

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Bowling Alone - The Impact of the Loss of Community

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Bowling Alone - The Impact of the Loss of Community

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Summary of

By Robert D. Putnam

Summary written by Brett Reeder, Conflict Research Consortium

Citation: Putnam, Robert D., 2000, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon & Schuster, New York, NY

Social capital refers to "the connections among individuals' social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them." (p 19) Much like the economic concepts of physical and human capital, the social networks of social capital are thought to have value. Bowling Alone empirically demonstrates a drop in social capital in contemporary America, identifies the cause and consequences of this drop, and suggests ways to improve social capital in the future.

Though social capital varies across many dimensions, according to Putnam. the most important distinction is between bridging (inclusive) and bonding (exclusive) social capital. Bonding social capital networks are inward-looking and tend to reinforce exclusive identities and homogenous groups. Examples of such networks include ethnic fraternal organizations and country clubs. On the other hand, bridging social capital networks are outward looking and include people across "diverse social cleavages." Examples of bridging social capital include the civil rights movement and youth service groups.

In general, bonding networks are most useful when specific reciprocity and mobilizing solidarity is necessary for "getting by" in oppressive situations. Bridging networks are good for linking to external assets and for information diffusion for the purpose of "getting ahead" of the status quo. As Putnam put it, "bonding social capital constitutes a kind of sociological superglue, whereas bridging social capital provides a sociological WD-40" (p 23). While useful for analytical purposes, this bonding/bridging distinction is not an "either or" category, but is rather a "more or less" dimension. That is, social capital can (and usually does) exist in both a bonding and a bridging forms simultaneously. For example: a black church may bond individuals based on race and religious belief, but bridge individuals across class lines.

Having described what social capital is, Putnam turns his attention to how it has changed over time by conducting a meta-analysis of a large body of data from various sources. In doing so, he identifies a dominant theme: "For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century a powerful tide bore Americans into ever deeper engagement in the life of their communities, but a few decades ago--silently, without warning--that tide reversed and we were overtaken by a treacherous rip current" (p 27). Thus, social capital increased in the US until the 1970s and then suddenly decreased right up to the present. This theme is consistent across seven separate measures of social capital, including: political participation, civic participation, religious participation, workplace networks, informal networks, mutual trust, and altruism.

Though most measures indicate a significant drop in social capital over the last three decades, Putman identifies four exceptions: an increase in volunteerism among youth, the growth in telecommunications, grassroots activity among evangelical conservatives, and an increase in self-help support. However, these exceptions do not offset the overall trend, indeed, by virtually every conceivable measure, social capital has eroded steadily and sometimes dramatically over the past two generations." (p 287)

To identify why this might be, Putnam looked to see "whether the declines in civic engagement (social capital) are correlated across time and space with certain social characteristics" (p 185). Once he identified a correlation, he applied three additional tests to ensure the validity of potential causal factors. First, all correlations he identified had to lack spuriousness. Second, the proposed explanatory factor had to change in the relevant way. Finally, the direction of causation (result vs. cause) was questioned. Using these standards, Putnam rejected several common explanations for the contemporary drop in social capital, none of which were found to have had a statistically significant effect. These included educational deficiency, destruction of the nuclear family, race and racism, big government and the welfare state, and market economics.

Additionally he identified four social characteristics that passed his tests of validity: pressures of time and money, mobility and sprawl, television, and generational differences. The lion's share (up to 50%) of the change in social capital over the last three decades is thought to be attributable to generational differences. People born in the 20s and 30s are significantly more socially connected than later generations, largely as a result of social habits and values developed during the "great mid-century cataclysm" or World War II. Generational differences are also synergistic with TV, as different generations have different habits regarding TV. As a whole, TV is thought to contribute up to 25%, the pressures of time and money, about 10%, and sprawl another 10% because it takes more time to get places. Sprawl is hence associated with increasing social segregation, and it disrupts community "boundedness". This leaves at least 15% unexplained.

But does it really matter that social capital is declining? Putnam argues that, indeed, it does, as social capital "has many features that help people translate aspirations into realities." (p 288) Putnam identifies five such features. First, social capital makes collective problems easier to resolve, as there is less opposition between parties. This results in improved social environments, such as safer and more productive neighborhoods. Second, it makes business transactions easier, since when people trust each other, there is less of a need to spend time and money enforcing contracts. As a result, economic prosperity increases generally. Third, social capital widens our awareness of our mutual connectivity. This can improve the quality of our civic and democratic institutions. Fourth, it helps to increase and speed up the flow of information, which, in turn, improves education and economic production. Finally, social capital improves our health and happiness through both psychological and biological processes which require human contact.

Unfortunately the effects of social capital are not always positive. Indeed, bonding social capital, in particular, can lead to destructive divisions within and between societies as groups develop a collective identity based largely on exclusion. But the "classical liberal argument" against community (or social capital networks) is its potential to restrict freedom and tolerance. Closely-linked communities (those with high social capital) can restrict individual freedoms through social pressure, especially if tolerance and freedom are not values of the community. Putnam acknowledges that this can happen, but it is not an inherent effect of social capital. In fact, he provides evidence to the contrary which suggests that, "Far from being incompatible, liberty and fraternity (or bonding social capital) are mutually supportive, and this remains true when we control for other factors" (p 356).

Another argument against community holds that social capital can encourage inequality by concentrating wealth in closed communities. Again, Putnam acknowledges that this can happen, but is not a necessary consequence of community or social capital. Instead he argues that while "[s]ocial inequalities may sometimes be embedded in social capital ...both across space and across time, equality and fraternity (bonding social capital) are strongly positively correlated." (p 358-359). Thus, while social capital can, at times, restrict freedom, and enhance inequality, it does not inherently do so. On the contrary, empirical evidence suggests that social capital, freedom, and equality are in general, mutually reinforcing.

But what can we do to improve our social capital? According to Putnam, we should first learn from the past where "lessons can be found in a period uncannily like our own" (p 367). The period he is referring to consists of roughly 1870-1915. During this time "dramatic technological, economic, and social change rendered obsolete a significant stock of social capital" (p 368) due to industrial revolution, urbanization, and waves of new immigration. In response, the leaders of the day re-developed social capital with an "extraordinary burst of social inventiveness and political reform" (p 368), which included the founding or refurbishing of most of our contemporary civic institutions such as the Boy Scouts, the NRA and the NAACP.

While the specific reforms of this time period "are no longer appropriate for our time...the practical, enthusiastic idealism of that era--and its achievements-- should inspire us" (p 401). In this vein, Putnam makes general suggestions in seven "spheres deserving special attention" with the intention of encouraging readers to develop contemporary innovative solutions.

1. First, he suggests educational reforms be undertaken, including improved civics education, well designed service learning programs, extra curricular activities and smaller schools.

2. He argues for a more family-oriented workplace which allows for the formation of social capital on the job.

3. He encourages further efforts at new urbanism.

4. He would like to see religion become both more influential and at the same time more tolerant.

5. The technologies that reinforce, rather than replace, face-to-face interaction should be encouraged.

6. Art and culture should become more interactive.

7. Finally, politics requires campaign reforms and a decentralization of power.

Conclusion

In this important book, Putnam demonstrates that social capital increased between 1900 and the late 1960s and then dramatically decreased, largely as a result of generational succession, television, urban sprawl and the increasing pressures of time and money. This has resulted in an increase in a variety of social problems ranging from ineffective education to economic strain, to social conflict between individuals as well as groups. The solution to these problems likely rests with re-developing social capital, much like was done in the Progressive Era (but with solutions designed for contemporary America).

Though not inherent to community development, such a project must take into account the potential of social capital to limit liberty and equality. This is particularly true when developing bonding social capital which is unfortunately much easier to develop than bridging social capital as, "Social capital is often most easily created in opposition to something or someone else." (p 361) While bonding social capital can help oppressed people to "get by" through solidarity, bridging social capital is required to "get ahead" through increased generalized norms of reciprocity. The development of innovative forms of such social capital is Putnam's ultimate challenge to the reader.

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Summary of "Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community"

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Summary of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community By Robert D. Putnam Summary written by Brett Reeder, Conflict Research Consortium Citation: Putnam, Robert D., 2000, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon & Schuster, New York, NY Social capital refers to "the connections among individuals' social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them."