By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

I often receive more response to my columns offline than online. The name-calling favored by some who post online seems to discourage those who want to have more thoughtful conversations.

My last column was about the nature of community. It produced more offline response than when I first wrote it six years ago. It seems that many who grew up here, and many newcomers as well, would like to experience a greater sense of community—the former grieving its loss, and the latter wishing to recreate it.

A brief portion of that column dealt with the varying forces that contributed to community’s erosion in Somerville. One online respondent posted, “It’s important to note, though, that the process you’ve described occurred in nearly all urban areas in the US over the same time period, for similar reasons.”

Yes and no. During the time that today’s elders were kids, the density of interweaving relationship networks in Somerville was truly exceptional. Neighborhoods, churches, extended families, unions, fraternal organizations, youth sports leagues, political clubs, civic organizations, fraternal organizations, scouting, the Red Cross, PTA and other networks intertwined to weave a strong and resilient fabric of community. They provided multiple ways for people to know, understand, and rely on each other, even when those people disagreed.

A few other Boston-area communities were as tightly knit as Somerville. The West End, Charlestown, and Southie come immediately to mind. But they were exceptional.

Yet it’s true that community in post-World-War-II America did decline across America’s cities and towns, and for similar reasons. Numerous studies have documented this phenomenon. Perhaps the most widely noticed and discussed was Robert Putnam’s Bowing Alone: America’s Decline in Social Capital.

A political scientist at the JFK School, Putnam, was initially interested in understanding Americans’ widespread disengagement from political participation. His investigations found a parallel withdrawal in almost all forms of civic engagement.

He used bowling as both an indicator of, and a metaphor to explain, civic disengagement. He noted that since he was a teenage bowler in a small Ohio town, the number of Americans who bowl has increased, while the number of bowling leagues has decreased.

Those bowling alone don’t have the opportunity to engage in civic discussions, interact with people whom they would not otherwise encounter, share and challenge ideas, and get to know and be known by others as whole people.

Putnam extensively cited data sources such as the General Social Survey showing that participation in the kind of voluntary associations that once wove Somerville’s fabric of community had declined across the board.

Historically, participation in voluntary associations was the way that Americans came together in a society that was always poor in community. The nation was founded by British immigrants who were the least integrated into their own communities. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have left.

Subsequent arrivals were forced to leave their culture, language, customs, and family structure on the dock on pain of ridicule, denial of employment, and alienation of their kids’ affections.

Lacking strong bonds and conflict-resolution tools, antagonisms between groups and within communities were often resolved by a group or individual moving on. New land and opportunities were always emerging on the frontier.

A historical review of America’s political culture reveals a continual celebration of individualism, paired with a muted longing for the community that unchecked individualism makes impossible.

That longing is understandable. Since before we became fully human, we hominids have lived in community. It’s part of our DNA.

Americans fulfilled that need by forming voluntary associations. Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat who remains one of American political culture’s most insightful observers, wrote in the 1830s that, “Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations….religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive.”

He thought that participation in associations trained Americans to represent themselves effectively in a democracy as well as how to accommodate others who disagreed with them.

At the time that de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America, the United States was probably the freest society on earth, with Americans who weren’t slaves enjoying the greatest opportunity as individuals to improve their circumstances.

Two generations later, the United States entered a “gilded age” of oligarchy, constrained opportunity, and Jim Crow laws. But the progressive movement at the turn of the Century—led disproportionately by Republicans—and movements of the 1930s—led disproportionately by Democrats and socialists—reduced inequality, restored opportunity, and increased political participation. The medium for those movements was a multitude of voluntary economic, political, social, and religious associations.

Over the past 35 years, the United States has once again become an oligarchy, with the highest level of economic inequality in the developed world. The Wall Street Journal tells us that a poor child growing up in Canada, Japan, Australia, or anywhere in Western Europe has a better chance at prosperity than one growing up in the United States.

It’s probably no coincidence that the disintegration of relationship networks, voluntary associations and community has paralleled the growing concentration of wealth and power among fewer Americans, as well as increased divisiveness and gridlock in political life.

But the reasons to form voluntary associations that de Tocqueville observed almost 200 years ago exist aplenty today. And as Tip O’Neil famously observed, all politics are local.

There are as many reasons to get together as there are things to make better in our beloved city. Both old Somerville and newcomers have much to contribute.

A reborn community is in gestation. The price of admission to it is participation.