Back in the late 1990’s, while studying political science and public policy at the University of Southern Maine, I read an interesting article by Robert Putnam entitled, “Bowling Alone.”

While the genesis of the article looked back at the civic and social decline of the American society over the prior three decades, 1950s-1980s, much of what he observed back then, in my opinion, is compounding itself in today’s America.

In his article Putnam speaks of the breakdown of the civic community that was so much more engaged with one another in the 1950s and 1960s. I recall in my own youth, in those decades, how, as a society, we seemed to be a far more participatory community. My mother was in a bowling league, was a member of a local bridge club and was an active member of the local PTA. My father spent his off work time involved in community activities, coaching and umpiring little league.

We were brought up knowing our neighbors and sharing each other’s families. Everyone knew your name, as the theme song from “Cheers” proclaims.

Today we are witnessing a greater disassociation of the civic community that Putnam wrote about. We spend too much time talking at one another rather than talking to one another. The art of reflective listening has all but disappeared. We see it far too often on Face book posts, at public forums and more often than not, in Augusta and Washington, where the pillars of a civil society should be formed, but are not today!

There are many factors which cause this breakdown. Watch any group of people in any public or even private setting and 90 percent of them have their faces glued to the tiny electronic screen in their hand. Rather than speaking directly to one another, we text each other constantly, even romantic relationships today are ended via text messaging. Putnam’s essay focused his civil societal decline on the broadening of television programming. With so much more electronic interference in today’s world, it is no wonder our society is less than the civil society that Putnam reflected upon.

This decline in social and civic engagement has lead, in my opinion, to the building of political and psychological walls around our individual lives. The political unrest, the labeling of individuals based on party affiliation, rather than personal knowledge or association, has torn us further apart.

In the 1950’s and 60’s we had three basic national news outlets and each covered the various topics of the day in a fairly even-handed approach. You learned to appreciate all sides of an issue, whether you agreed with them or not. The news was not a place where political ideology was apparent.

Today we can choose the news outlet and political slant that serves our own viewpoint, without having to indulge the other side. Our numerous television news outlets, newspapers, radio, internet blogs, Face book feeds, Twitter exchanges, all come planned the way we determine we want to hear it. Much of today’s political discussions are but a regurgitation of that packaged rhetoric. Read any Face book post or Twitter Tweet and many references can be found that were drawn from one of these sources, no matter what side of the debate you are on. We don’t even care if the facts are true; if it was on the internet it must be true!

As I write this article we are once again, as a nation, grieving another senseless killing where a lone gunman, apparently disengaged from society, randomly and without malice of forethought, kills innocent people who, ironically, were all engaged in a civil, civic, community event, attending high school!

So many of these senseless events have played out the same, large gatherings of like-minded people, enjoying a similar and united experience, whether that be at a concert, a night club, at school or a company party, those attending were together in a unified experience that the lone gunman was compelled to disrupt for his own purpose of isolation and disassociation. How many times have we heard the recounts of “he was a loner, kept to himself, never spoke to anyone, disengaged?” So sad!

Over the next several weeks, or even months, as we ponder these events, let’s re-engage one another, discuss the facts, the missed opportunities and potential realistic solutions. There may be opportunities to restructure laws to help lower the risk of these types of events, not from an ideological perspective but from a more common, societal perspective. We won’t always necessarily agree one hundred percent of the time with each other, and that is OK, but if we listen to one another and talk it through we may find common ground from which to forge a better, more inclusive, civil society.

It’s time to start bowling together again!