Bowling

Bowling

Bowling is one of those social games that it often seems like people used to do. If you grew up exploring your grandparent's basement–odds are pretty good there was a bowling ball down there. It might have even had someone's initials stitched into the case. Bowling is one of those things that seems like a pre-text for getting together. Yes, of course, you are bowling while you are getting together–and some people are pretty good at it–but a bowling alley generally seems like a restaurant that mated with a bar that mated with an arcade, and smells like feet. Received wisdom is that people go there to be together more than they go there to bowl, per se. There are other group social games, clearly, so it's not the technical specifics of bowling that make it a restorative practice. It is the way you convene community.

It is telling that activities like bowling–social games, really–have experienced a precipitous decline in recent years. There is even a book, Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam, which chronicles declining social capital in the United States. In the book, he tracks declining connections in communities–of civic groups, bowling leagues, bridge clubs. Here is a link to a 7-minute interview with Professor Putnam about the book. Putnam points out the importance of regularly connecting with a group of people, seeing them periodically, and having accountability to them. He points out, somewhat bluntly, that if you want to cut your risk of dying in the next year by 50%, the simplest thing you can do is join some kind of group. If you want to cut the risk by 75%, join two groups. Connection phenomenology. See this entire deep learning platform.

These trends around the decline of social capital are very connected to the adoption of television, screens, social media. See Behavioral Addiction.