Bowling Alone

As I read this piece on the state of America's civic involvement, I found myself wondering if I completely bought into what Putnam was saying. I agree that society is changing in major ways especially in areas of community involvement and the decline of certain communal organizations. To me I think this represents a shift in the values of society, and I think it's meant to grow and change as life changes. Being the science nerd that I am, I really liked his statement on comparing it to the first law of therodynamics. The involvement is just redistributed, not destroyed or created. In my opinion this is what happens, and I know he wasn't even using this as his arguement. He was stating how other people might argue, but I agreed with it. I think that the organizations and ways people are going to get involved will change and that doesn't mean the end of democracy. I guess we'll have to wait and see, but I didn't really see enough evidence to prove to me that the democratic system will collapse in America because of these changing trends. There was one issue I agreed with however and that was dealing with voting participation. It's important to have a society that is informed on the issues of the political spectrum so that they make informed decisions on which leader they want to lead the country. However today's issues have become much more complicated than they were in the past. A lot of debated issues require some background knowledge in science or another area and that frankly is just to much work for some people. Why would you want to learn about the processes behind stem cell research and then decide who to vote for after you formulate an opinion on whether you think it's right or wrong. This is a major issue in my opinion because it does represent somewhat of a threat to democracy. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out over the next few decades.