Who Will Be Our Next Nurses, Teachers, and Police Officers?
A social collapse is finally occurring that was predicted 20 years ago by social analysts like Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, author of The Dignity of Difference.
Photo by National Library of Medicine on Unsplash
On August 14, 2023, David Brooks penned How America Got Mean in the Atlantic Monthly, highlighting the ways in which Americans are more lonely, sad, isolated, and hopeless. That sense of despair is taking a meaner, nastier, and ruder turn.
Without being alarmist, I am more concerned that our democracy is heading toward an unnecessary collapse. America’s social infrastructure is in disarray.
America’s social infrastructure is defined as those shared public spaces that we as citizens have no choice but to inhabit together: schools, churches, hospitals, police departments, and the halls of government.
Our social institutions are rapidly decaying as public trust in them is falling off a cliff.
The political realm is now dominated, not by real policy discussions, but by nasty rhetoric and an endless stream of corruption accusations. Less than 20% of the public now expresses confidence in our governmental institutions.
“Our institutions are struggling to find nurses, police officers, teachers, and even pastors because their respective fields have become public battlegrounds. ”
Our schools and houses of worship are battle-worn from years of bickering over COVID, book bans, and politics.
Our institutions are struggling to find nurses, police officers, teachers, and even pastors because their respective fields have become public battlegrounds.
Local gathering places like grocery stores, movie theaters, schools, parks, and churches have become, not places of communal gathering, but scenes of mass violence.
This social collapse is unnecessary and completely avoidable.
The deteriorating spirit of cooperation in public spaces is due in part to the dissolution of relationships.
Neighbors have become strangers.
Suspicion and fear of one another are ruling the day.
Social Institutions Serve the Common Good
One might think that the solution to our fear of one another is avoidance. At some point though, each of us as citizens requires this social infrastructure to function. These social institutions act as mediating common grounds that serve, not our individual needs, but our common or collective good.
Each of us needs schools to teach, hospitals to heal, police to protect and serve, government to order civic life, and places of worship to lift our hearts to a higher purpose.
These public spaces function most smoothly, without controversy or gridlock, when diverse parties learn to work together, not just for selfish gain, but for the common good.
Our shared institutions would function much more smoothly if we learned to act covenantally toward one another. (See Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s The Dignity of Difference, p.148-153, to whom I am indebted for this distinction.)
Covenants are reserved for parties that know, love, trust, and express fidelity to one another. In a covenant, like a marriage, or even a neighborhood covenant, you seek a common good that includes the well-being of other parties and your own.
Covenants are the result of meaningful relationships.
Neighbors once were bound by unwritten covenants in which we watched out for one another and helped when someone was in need. We did not just care about our own home but we were concerned with the welfare of the neighborhood.
Today, neighbors have been reduced to strangers. Contracts, not covenants, are the market tools for mediating business between strangers. Their focus is on self-protection and penalties for non-compliance.
Covenantal relationships have now been rewritten into penalizing social contracts.
In contracts, you resort to self-protection and focus on winning at all costs. Matters of dispute are not handled amicably, but are settled by courts with verdicts and awards.
Far too many of our public conflicts will now be settled by a court.
When a court does not yield the result we desire, violence as a final measure emerges as an option.
Because covenantal bonds have eroded, neighbors now require the police to mediate conflicts.
Parents do not trust that schools and teachers have their children’s best interests at heart.
Our elections have descended into the nomination of candidates who seek retribution on our enemies. Working across the aisle in politics is viewed as a betrayal of voters, not an action that is in the best interest of the public.
Doctors, nurses, and health institutions now endure the constant suspicion of their health recommendations, especially as it relates to vaccines.
As relationships have vanished, the health and functioning of our public spaces has suffered. This is why no one wants to be a nurse, teacher, or a police officer.
This social corrosion has also been quickened by leaders who act scandalously and break further trust with the public. It seems that the more broken the institution, the more likely corrupt leaders emerge to lead.
Public spaces are no longer places of mutual trust and optimism but have become battlegrounds where fear and suspicion dominates.
Our social institutions are America’s shared public spaces. If we ever hope to rebuild the healthy functioning of our schools, government, churches, and health institutions, we better get to work on learning how to occupy these public spaces together.
This work for the common good will require trust, and trust is the fruit of relationships.
Our social infrastructure is unnecessarily collapsing. A social rebuild will take as much time as it takes for us to build relationships with one another and get back on the path of trust and collaboration for the common good.
How will we know the social infrastructure is being repaired? Little boys and girls will become men and women who want to serve the common good by becoming nurses, teachers, and police officers.
