Paging Robert Putnam

Image by jurvetson via Flickr

I stumbled across this story on my own the other day and then saw it flagged again on Twitter yesterday. Gotta love the apathetic, capricious youth of today trope that seems to have attached itself to everyone under 35.

The decline of civic engagement is nothing new. Robert Putnam was wringing his hands about the phenomenon of diminishing social and political capital as far back as 1995. And it isn’t generational, I’d argue, but attitudinal. As individuals, our level of politicization waxes and wanes depending on the issue of the day and its immediate effect on our quality of life, the proximity of an election, how jaded we are about politicians and the political system and a host of other factors. Few of us live our lives in a state of constant politicization. Why should Gen Y be any different?

If, however, you’re really intent on faulting young ‘uns for their political apathy, you could most certainly ding many of them for not cannily connecting the dots between the issues of the day and their  own futures as would-be home-owning, tax-paying, flag-waving upstanding citizens. But again, until these issues actually hit you where you live, it’s human nature to let them slide in favor of the immediacy of, say, figuring out how in the hell you’re ever going to amass the resources and access the upwardly mobile opportunities required to eventually become a home-owning, tax-paying, flag-waving upstanding citizen and whether that’s even what you want in the first place.

Yeah, that youthful apathy. It’s a real killer, folks.