Them

Why are people lonelier than ever when we live surrounded by technology and comfort? Ben Sasse argues that America faces not a political or economic crisis but a civic and relational one—an epidemic of disconnection. The book begins with sociologist Eric Klinenberg’s analysis of the 1995 Chicago heat wave, where isolated victims died alone while socially connected neighborhoods endured. That tragedy is symbolic of what Sasse calls our “loneliness epidemic:” a national loss of belonging that shortens lives, weakens democracy, and corrodes meaning.

The hidden epidemic

Loneliness does more than make you sad—it kills. Neurological studies by John Cacioppo and Julianne Holt-Lunstad show that social rejection activates the same pain centers as physical injury, flooding the body with stress hormones and weakening immunity. Sasse cites data comparing the health cost of prolonged isolation to smoking a pack a day. Diminished relationships aren’t just private misfortunes; they accumulate into a public-health threat, and behind the statistics are countless quiet deaths where community should have intervened.

Structural disconnection

The forces behind this are cultural and technological. Civic organizations have collapsed, work identities have fragmented, and family and faith institutions no longer provide stable belonging. When neighborhood leagues and Rotary Clubs faded, they took trust networks with them. Putnam’s Bowling Alone data show how Americans stopped “doing life together”—hosting fewer guests, volunteering less, and losing the informal oversight that made towns resilient. As these small bonds eroded, political tribalism filled the void.

Political symptoms of loneliness

Disconnected citizens often seek belonging through rage and identity politics. Sasse calls these “anti-tribes”—movements united mainly by hostility. Media models amplify this pattern because outrage sells; algorithms boost shaming and nutpicking over reason. The result is a citizenry that feels emotionally connected through shared contempt rather than shared purpose. Polititainment—angry talk shows and emotional news—is a counterfeit community born of dislocation.

The civic cure

The rest of the book sketches repair. Sasse argues we must rebuild habits of civic life—family structure, work with dignity, technologies under human control, and durable local attachment. He turns to the Founders and moral exemplars like Washington for guidance: constrain power, cultivate humility, defend free conscience, and live local. In a digital, mobile, and polarized age, belonging must be re-practiced deliberately through institutions and everyday acts of care.

Central message

America’s problem is not primarily political dysfunction—it’s relational decay. Rebuilding community through local habits and moral humility is how we preserve both health and liberty.

Across its arc, the book links personal well-being, work, family, media culture, and constitutional design to a single moral principle: human beings flourish through relationship. If we neglect the social fabric, even our prosperity and freedom will eventually collapse under the weight of isolation.

Sasse shows that the great underreported story of modern America is the decline of “social capital”—the web of relationships and trust that once made life locally resilient. Drawing on Robert Putnam’s research, he explains how countless informal associations—PTAs, churches, veterans’ groups—acted as civic glue. Their disappearance created vulnerability: when troubles arise, isolated people no longer have a safety net.

The scissors graph

Putnam’s scissors graph illustrates the widening gap between America’s privileged and struggling classes. College-educated families rebuilt social networks, while less-educated groups saw family breakdown and civic retreat. Out-of-wedlock births surged, and even simple hospitality—having friends over—fell dramatically. These cultural changes fractured community into two separate realities living side by side but no longer intertwined.

Why relationships matter

Social capital isn’t abstract—it’s babysitting swaps, shared meals, and local accountability. It’s what ensured that in Klinenberg’s Chicago study, connected neighborhoods survived heat waves. When this fabric weakens, social statistics reflect moral disorder and despair: suicide, addiction, and distrust rise. Sasse’s Fremont anecdotes about school gyms and hometown rituals dramatize what’s lost when these everyday interconnections vanish.

The parent lottery and early inequality

Children bear the brunt. Putnam’s “Goodnight Moon Gap” shows vocabulary and cognitive differences emerging from parental engagement long before school begins. Sasse calls this “the parent lottery”—a blunt reminder that stable two-parent families and community mentors provide protective margins for kids. When those margins disappear, chance replaces structure, and inequality compounds.

To restore civic resilience, Sasse advises beginning not with legislation but with local habit-building. Coaching, volunteering, and hosting neighbors regenerate the trust networks democracy depends upon. Doing ordinary things together, he insists, remains the most radical civic act you can perform.

Work once anchored both identity and social cohesion. Sasse warns that economic transformation now detaches people from purpose: automation and gig labor turn lifelong vocations into temporary projects. You may perform many “jobs,” but none may define your role in community. When work stops being a noun and becomes a verb, belonging frays.

Technological upheaval

He illustrates this with driver jobs, America’s most common occupation. Autonomous vehicles threaten millions of livelihoods, and McKinsey estimates half of existing economic activities are automatable. Yet history shows adaptation: when ATMs appeared, teller numbers rose because banks multiplied branches and upskilled roles. The lesson—automation reshapes work but also reshapes meaning.

Psychological and moral ground

Work is not only economic—it’s moral. Arthur Brooks’s research on dignity through usefulness underpins Sasse’s story of Rick Norat, an ex-con who found worth as a pest technician after hearing “we need you.” Losing that phrase undermines civic and spiritual health. In communities of idleness, despair festers, feeding addiction and social decay.

Preparing for flexibility

Sasse doesn’t romanticize industrial permanence; he urges adaptability with intentional discipline—lifelong learning, local ties, and relational anchors beyond workplace bonds. If jobs come and go, meaning must migrate to character, family, and service. Work as calling, not just paycheck, remains central to human dignity.

Ultimately, this section reframes economic anxiety as a spiritual test: in a fluid economy, you preserve identity not by clinging to old roles but by cultivating usefulness that binds you to others. The crisis of work is the crisis of connection itself.

Families form the foundation of civic health. Sasse argues that stable homes create the “margin for error” that buffers children against chaos. Using a racing metaphor, he explains: a track with shoulders lets you recover after mistakes. Families provide those shoulders—social and emotional safety zones enabling growth and resilience.

The Success Sequence

Sasse defends the so-called Success Sequence from Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill: finish high school, get a job, marry before kids. While not a cure-all for poverty, the sequence correlates strongly with upward mobility. Breakdown of family norms makes completing these steps harder, perpetuating poverty across generations. He cites data showing stark differences in birth timing and home stability between college-educated and less-educated parents.

Beyond blame

Sasse revisits debates from the Moynihan era to distinguish honest diagnosis from moral condemnation. The Coleman report and others showed how family structure influences educational outcomes—but acknowledging that isn’t victim-blaming. Instead, it’s prerequisite to repair. Policy cannot manufacture loving parents but can support cultural norms that promote family formation and mentorship rings around children.

Practical implications

Investing in families means reinforcing communities where children encounter many steady adults. Churches, schools, and local programs can act as the wider parenting network that compensates for absent margins. For you, it means prioritizing relational presence—being the adult who shows up consistently in young lives.

In a society that idolizes mobility and autonomy, family stands as a countercultural act of rooted interdependence. Rebuilding it, Sasse insists, is not nostalgia—it’s civic necessity.

To heal civic life, Sasse turns to constitutional philosophy. Echoing Madison’s Federalist No. 10, he argues that government must be built on realism about human nature. Factionalism is not curable through moral preaching; it must be contained by institutional design. Madison’s insight—“the latent causes of faction are sown in the nature of man”—justifies separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism. These structures are moral technology: ways to prevent passionate majorities from crushing dissent.

Anti-majoritarian guardrails

Anti-majoritarianism isn’t anti-democracy; it’s the protection of conscience rights from temporary majorities. The First Amendment, especially its religion and speech clauses, embodies this. By forbidding government from declaring theological or ideological truth, the founders kept moral debate decentralized—allowing local communities and citizens to reason freely.

Madisonian humility in practice

When you see politics through Madison’s lens, you stop pretending moral certainty deserves coercive power. Civic humility replaces moral crusade. Protecting the unpopular—especially their speech—becomes an act of constitutional fidelity. Sasse urges Americans to recover this habit through practice, not mere civics quizzes: respect the process even when you hate the outcome.

Lessons for today

In an era of hyperpartisan outrage and digital mobs, Madison’s realism becomes newly urgent. Our republic survives not by moral unanimity but by principled restraint. To keep space for genuine community, we must love limits as much as liberty.

Sasse reframes constitutional design as an ethical act—one that preserves room for disagreement, conscience, and ultimately friendship across difference.

Power invites arrogance, yet republics survive only through humility. Sasse uses George Washington’s life to illustrate how restraint sustains freedom. By resigning his commission after the Revolution and stepping down after two terms, Washington taught the country what real civic virtue looks like—service without self-exaltation.

Teaching by leaving

In contrast to monarchies, Washington modeled a deliberate exit. His voluntary retirement echoed the Roman Cincinnatus ideal—returning to plow rather than power. That act made republican culture tangible: institutions would govern, not personalities. Such restraint remains America’s unwritten civic curriculum.

Farewell warnings

Washington’s Farewell Address warned that factional revenge could mutate democracy into despotism. Sasse cites this as prophecy for modern partisan media wars. The alternate domination of one faction over another—amplified by Twitter and cable—fulfills Washington’s nightmare. The civic cure, again, is humility.

Making humility practical

For you, this means treating politics as temporary stewardship. Turn attention toward family, community service, and nonpolitical centers of life. When both leaders and citizens practice self-limiting behaviors—stepping back, listening, sharing credit—they reassert republican character.

Washington’s civic medicine

Humility is strength in republics: without it, even freedom’s institutions decay into spectacle and revenge.

Sasse invites you to cultivate this modesty daily—to lead by leaving and to rediscover purpose beyond politics, the way Washington did. That is how civic sanity returns.

Free speech and religious liberty are not mere rights but mechanisms for civic friendship. Sasse argues that persuasion, not coercion, is the lifeblood of self-government. Legal and cultural space for disagreement keeps love and truth possible. The First Amendment’s interlocking protections for press, assembly, religion, and petition form a shield against factional orthodoxy.

Modern campus crises

He recounts clashes at Yale and Middlebury, where dissent became danger zones and scholars like Erika Christakis and Allison Stanger were berated or injured. These stories reveal generational fragility—students mistaking discomfort for harm. Barack Obama’s call to embrace debate instead of cancellation echoes Sasse’s plea: a republic requires courage to hear what you dislike.

Spiritual humility in speech

Judge Learned Hand once said liberty lives in hearts “not too sure it is right.” Sasse repeats that wisdom: certainty breeds coercion, while humility fosters dialogue. The civil rights movement exemplified persuasion through nonviolence—Martin Luther King Jr. deployed all five First Amendment freedoms to awaken conscience, not suppress opponents.

How you live it

Start small. When offense arises, converse rather than cancel. Support institutions that promote debating ideas. Practice bravery by hearing opposing views. Legal rights mean little if citizens no longer value disagreement as moral exercise. The spirit of liberty starts at your dinner table and workplace before it appears in courts.

Sasse’s bottom line: freedom of conscience is the oxygen of community. Protect it not only by shouting your truth but by listening to another’s.

Technological wonder and peril define our age. Sasse explores the paradox: tools that connect also isolate. Smartphones, AI, and social platforms deliver convenience while corroding attention, sleep, and empathy. The question isn’t whether tech is good or evil—it’s whether you remain its master.

Addiction and design

Adam Alter’s research shows that digital devices exploit the brain’s reward circuits. Sasse notes that many Silicon Valley creators—like Steve Jobs—refused to give their children unrestricted gadget access. That hypocrisy reveals awareness: these products were engineered to be irresistible. He urges you to imitate their restraint before devices devour family and focus.

Balancing benefit and risk

Sasse surveys marvels like AlphaGo, Neuralink, and AI medicine but insists each advance raises moral design questions. When robots offer companionship, will you exchange empathy for convenience? When neural implants promise upgrades, what happens to autonomy? Technology magnifies both blessing and temptation.

Practical guardrails

His advice is concrete: try digital Sabbaths, keep phones out of bedrooms, mute notifications, adopt Yondr-style pouches at gatherings, and emulate Cal Newport’s deep work rhythm. Andy Crouch’s “tech-wise family” model—choosing human presence first—is central here. Do not flee innovation; tame it with intentional habits.

Guiding rule

Choose the life you want, then let technology serve that vision. Otherwise, the means will define your ends.

Technology can amplify loneliness or reknit it. Sasse’s challenge: make your devices servants of intentional community rather than masters of distraction.

To counter a transient culture, Sasse offers a vivid command: buy a cemetery plot. It’s symbolic obedience to place. Rooting yourself—committing to a community long enough to die there—fights the disposable ethos of mobility and perpetual optimization.

Embodied belonging

Humans are not abstract minds but embodied souls; places and rituals matter. Sasse tells the story of Jo, a locked-in patient cared for daily by Mr. Van Dee reading Scripture, and of a homeless burial garden that dignifies forgotten lives. These gestures restore meaning by honoring physical presence—a counterpoint to digital existence.

Contentment as spiritual antidote

Drawing on Ecclesiastes and Barry Schwartz’s “paradox of choice,” Sasse calls for satisficing—choosing what’s “mostly fine” instead of chasing endless optimization. Contentment lets relationships deepen because you stop treating life as a consumption puzzle. The simpler your menu of choices, the richer your human commitments.

Everyday anchoring actions

• Decide to stay put longer before moving again.
• Join local institutions—churches, PTAs, volunteer teams.
• Invest in small rituals: visiting elders, planting trees, attending funerals.

Moral of the plot

Community begins when you decide to belong somewhere—even unto death. Rootedness revives solidarity by making time and place sacred again.

Sasse’s appeal isn’t literal commerce—it’s metaphysical commitment: live as if permanence matters and people aren’t disposable. In mortality, you rediscover meaning.

Sasse concludes with a practical manifesto: rebuild civic life one inch at a time. The remedies are modest—reject anti-identities, place politics downstream from relationship, and live locally. These small shifts compound into national healing.

Reject anti-identities

When communities collapse, people define themselves by enemies. Sasse’s Nebraska sports story—old town rivalries melting into unity at a state game—illustrates how higher loyalties can displace hate. Make neighbor, parent, teammate primary; let party affiliation be secondary. Identity grounded in shared humanity outlasts anger.

Politics downstream from civics

Politics shouldn’t be your faith. When Sasse and Joe Donnelly shared water in dangerous terrain, survival trumped ideology—a snapshot of proper scale. Keep politics as protection for civic space, not the source of identity. Treat opponents as fellow citizens, not existential threats.

Live local

The daily antidote to alienation is neighborly action: log off, throw a ball, bake, volunteer, share meals. These mundane tasks regenerate trust more effectively than any national reform. If foreign adversaries exploit division, the counterweight is local unity.

Final takeaway

Reclaim our shared “we” not through slogans but through habits. Family and neighborhood are the training grounds of national renewal.

Sasse’s parting command is intensely simple: turn outrage off, turn compassion on, and practice local responsibility. The republic heals not through grand gestures but through faithful inches walked daily in community.