The Frank Forum

  The importance of robust public spaces cannot be overstated.  I've always believed that the quest for social connection was, first and foremost, something that had to come about through a sort of internal spiritual awakening. That is, a collective understanding that we can not go it alone as purely self-maximizing individuals; we need each other. While I still believe that to be true, I do think that, in the past, I've downplayed the vital role of external environment and the affects it can have on us as social creatures.  People-friendly spaces, as opposed to sterile spaces devoid of engaging amenities, can facilitate social connection and much-needed weak-tie relationships .  It's pretty intuitive, actually: if people are not physically around each other, their prospects for social connection are not very good.  Public places in and of themselves, however, are not enough to combat our current plague of social atomization.  As Shawn McCaney writes for Go...

  I, like you, have a smartphone. Sometimes, though, I wish I didn't.  Up until my sophomore year of college, I used a Verizon Octane, a neat little flip-phone with a horizontal keyboard.  Verizon Octane Being a student in 2016, however, required me to use certain apps which I was unable to access on my clunky dumb-phone. So, out of necessity, I caved and purchased an iPhone SE. I was soon addicted. I downloaded every app from Instagram and Facebook, to games like Plants v. Zombies and The Sims. I have, like so many other people my age, become tethered to my phone.  But not everyone has capitulated. In an article for The Lamp , a thoughtful Catholic publication, Peter Tonguette describes himself as a "proud, almost-exclusive user of landline phone-service." It is mystifying to think that, in 2024, people can function without a smartphone. Peter doesn't disdain our contemporary smartphone culture; he just finds no need to abandon what is tried and true: the ole landl...

  It is important that we do not conflate loneliness and solitude; while the former connotes a sense of yearning and discontent, the latter describes a much-needed time of introspection and recombobulation.  A good communitarian will strike a healthy balance between extroversion and self-reflection. Without ample time to engage in solitude, we deprive ourselves of essential cognitive development. Before we express our outward-facing selves to others in the realm of civil society, we must first work to better understand and enhance our inner-beings. While the practice of solitude may seem simplistic, it can actually be quite arduous, requiring the self to, at times, drift into boredom and embrace that boredom as a naturally-occurring and integral component of being happily alone.  Sherry Turkle - in her important book, Reclaiming Conversation - writes that, "children can't develop the capacity for solitude if they don't have the experience of being 'bored' and then...

  How can we truly become, as the late Amitai Etzioni put it, a "community of communities?" Or, put differently, how can we reclaim a kind of patriotism that engenders feelings of togetherness and societal cohesion?  In an essay  for the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs , Walter Russell Mead extols the virtues of a Hamiltonian-inspired patriotism. "Then, as now," Mead writes, "Americans must embrace a duty of care toward one another... And just as individual Americans have duties and ties to their family members that they do not have to the public at large, they have obligations to their fellow citizens that do not extend to all humankind."  Conservatism today, in contrast to the kind of small-c conservatism embraced by Hamilton, is too often conflated with a obligation-free libertarianism. While the former puts emphasis on responsibility and duty, the latter jettisons all of that in favor of maximum autonomy and un-ordered liberty.  A country of...