Save democracy. Join a (running) club.

Or a book club, or a hiking club, or a debate club, or a cycling club, or a Taylor Swift club, or a poker club, or a coffee club, or a . . .

Midjourney generation

Can you save democracy by going for a group run? According to social scientist Robert Putnam, it definitely helps.

The social dynamic of joining other people for a walk, bike ride, or run is just what western democracy needs: more clubs of every type.

Here’s what you should know.

Over two decades ago, Putnam, a professor emeritus of public policy at Harvard, changed how we talk about society in his book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.

• He coined the phrase “social capital,” the networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate cooperation for mutual benefit within a community. 

Putnam laid out extensive data. Since the 1960s participation in various social, civic, and fraternal organizations deteriorated for a few reasons:

• Suburbanization, increased divorce rates, and dual-income households reduced the time and energy people could commit to community activities

• Technology changed how people spend their time and interact with others

• Rising economic inequality removed opportunities for different social groups to interact and build trust

The results were increased loneliness, declining health outcomes, and rising discontent among Americans.¹

Check out this C-Span clip of Putnam describing social capital during a panel moderated by President Bill Clinton in 2000 on the economy, civil society, and government.

The political implications are now clear. Eroded social capital reduced trust in government and public institutions. Society became more fragmented, more polarized. And political gridlock increased, making it much harder to build consensus.

Faced with dysfunction, Americans are disenchanted, vulnerable to both demagogues and nihilist disorderliness. Amid an American election more intense than any in my lifetime, it’s easy to be dismissive of American society’s prospects.²

But Robert Putnam is optimistic.

In an interview with Lulu Garcia-Narvarro for The New York Times, he discusses his most recent book Upswing, which charts the rise, fall, and potential revival of social capital in America. History shows we once increased social capital to high levels. And we can do it again.

It’s one of those conversations that hits you like espresso—bolting your attention, priming you for action. As I listened during an early morning run, jogging through the darkened streets of Oakland’s foothills, I felt a rising sense of purpose. You, I, we could make a big difference by just . . . bringing a few people together.

Here’s an excerpt that got me jazzed:

G-N: I would imagine that people come to you a lot, asking for solutions about how to feel less lonely on an individual level. And the thesis of this new documentary about your life is: Join a club. How does having fun in a running club, for example, translate to democracy? How does that small germ of social connection in a club then translate to “I believe in this whole experiment?”

RP: My work, and this movie, is designed to show you how it is that joining a club—even a trivial pinochle club or whatever—does help democracy. That’s what my work is designed to show. It’s only by connecting with other people that we generalize from our experience. In the running club, you learn that you can trust other people, and learn in a way what you need to do to maintain that trust.

G-N: The idea is that you’re running with someone, you learn that you can care for people and people can care for you, even people that are different, and therefore, you’re more likely to then trust that government and institutions are actually working to help you, too?

RP: Yes, but I would say that the causal sequence is you begin with trusting other people, and the trusting in other people produces a government that’s trustworthy. The virtue here is not trust, it’s trustworthiness.

So, join a club!

Any club! It doesn’t have to be a big, formal institution. It can be a group of folks that meet casually. And if you can’t find a club that interests you, why not start your own?

Here are some tips:

• Do what you love

  • Don’t set out to save the world; set out to have fun! Clubs share an interest, hobby, or common goal. Maybe that’s science-fiction, or coffee, or downhill mountain biking. Sharing your love for something with other people, makes that love even better.

• Keep it easy

  • You don’t need formal structures or elaborate by-laws. Stay casual. I think of my friend (and sub-4 miler) Richie Boulet, who hosts a board-game night every couple months at his house. It brings 6-7 folks together to play, banter, and drink a couple beers. There’s nothing official—we just play at his kitchen table and everyone leaves feeling better and maybe having met 1-2 new people.

• Build bridges, but keep it close

  • Communities of interest need something in common to last, an axis that brings different folks together and ties them closer. Putnam calls these two aspects bridging social capital, which connects individuals from different social groups, and bonding social capital, which provides emotional support and solidarity. That means the best clubs aren’t designed “to scale”. They’re designed to make common endeavors more enjoyable.

• Keep showing up

  • If you want to build a new community, you need to give it space to exist. And it’s on you to create that space. So keep showing up. Even if only 1 other person joins. Or no people. Or too many people. Keep showing up. Keep experimenting. Eventually, you’ll get it right.

Listen to the interview at The New York Times or wherever you listen to podcasts.

This year Join or Die, a documentary about America’s civic deterioration and Putnam’s work, is running in limited screenings around the country. Here’s where to watch.

Hat tip to Ryan Chan for sharing the Putnam interview in the Breakfast Club WhatsApp channel, which you can join by replying to this email.

Got a club you want to plug? Share it in the comments.

Tweets of the week

Parting thought

"Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations . . . In democratic countries, the science of association is the mother of science; the progress of all the rest depends upon the progress it has made."
— Alexis de Tocqueville

1. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). The relevant sections referenced above are pages 23-25, 216-218, 341-349, 359-361.

2. Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt off at the RNC and barely making a narrative ripple gives an indication of how wild the last couple weeks have been.