The Splintering Process
Since the late 1980s I have been involved, in one form or another, in a Saturday morning traveling golf league. Originally I came as my Father’s guest a few times a season as a non-member, and then joining myself as a full-fledged paying member in 1993. I mention this because after I had been done with working summer jobs in Chicago, and college, and had made the conscious decision to take golf seriously enough as a hobby with a desire to improve, did my Dad ask me if I wanted to join the league. These were the summer months, but running opposite were the bowling leagues I was also involved with during the cold, harsh, 716 winters. Concurrent with this were my contributions to the softball team and league on Friday nights during the summers. I was a participant in all these organizations in one form or another for many years, and each one while drastically different in their focus contained a set of characters – a community onto itself.
The golf league was unique because it was a traveling league – not restricted by any one course. While we played a different course each Saturday they were the same courses on the schedule every year, and a few of them were doubled up on in order to flesh out the schedule.
The bowling leagues were of course under the houses of which they operated; so I knew where what bowling alley I was heading on each Monday and Thursday nights.
The softball league, the middle-aged league Friday night Rec-league was run by the town and huge in terms of scale. There weren’t enough softball diamonds for the league, and so the schedule had to also include diamonds at two different fire halls and the American Legion. It was up to the teams to look up the schedule to see which park diamond, or which firehall the game was being held – and which shift. There was a 6 p.m. and 7:15 p.m. shift of games on Friday, and this made the road leading to the park besieged by traffic. One had to drive by creeping along watchful for children or daydreaming adults as they crossed or walked along the road. Parking was such a premium that if one arrived late they were guaranteed of not finding a spot near their diamond, and forced to either park at the side of the road opposite the park, or in the far lot where one would need to lug their softball equipment across the park like a Tibetan excursion. With any luck you’d find a teammate also arriving for the game that could be drafted as a Sherpa. This was the scene each Friday from the time I was a boy until into the new millennium.
Golf, admittedly, was a little different, but these were my Father’s friends and co-workers who had joined the league. I was the young outsider. Still, you’d see the same faces every Saturday morning with only one or two exceptions over the course of the summer because someone didn’t sign up that week because of a family commitment – a wedding, a graduation, a birthday. It was understood that they’d return the following week, and anything they signed up for they showed up for. It was that simple. Which brings me to present day.
My generation in these clubs, these organizations and communities, came about from an interest in social activities. Generation X slowly replaced the Silent Generation in front of us, but it’s becoming increasingly noticeable based on community and organizational involvement that the Millennials and Generation Z are not replacing us. I confess I’ve done no research, no quantitative review of data to support my claim – I only have observational eye tests, and I’m willing to put good money on it that I’m correct. Across the board I’ve seen a steady decline in community activities and club attendance since the dawn of the current century. First with the softball league.
A couple weeks back it was a wonderfully warm, May, Friday evening. The sun burned bright – its rays slicing through the park as it slowly made its decent to the treeline, and bisecting empty diamonds. The park, with the exception of a few cars and children’s voices on the swings of the playground, was virtually a ghost town. Where is everyone? is what I thought. What has happened? Where is the traffic slowly creeping up and down the street? Where are the parked vehicles on the side of the road? Better still, why are the large lots almost empty. If it hadn’t been for the high pitched screaming sounds normally associated with children’s excess energy on the swing sets the park would have been a sea of tranquility. Where are the sounds of metallic strikes of balls hitting aluminum bats, the yelling of onlookers and the puffs of dust clouds when someone slides into a base? Where were the Sherpas hiking across the park carrying equipment for the 7:15 game? Where were these things? Over the previous twenty years these things slowly evaporated. It was a gradual process, too slow for the human eye to pick up on, like a receding waterfall, but time’s arrow is a straight one and during the course of it this was the inevitable outcome.
It has been no different with that Saturday morning golf league, but with one important caveat. We still have members, but in the preceding decade we’ve incurred a rash of quasi involvement. Specifically, players that sign up for Saturday morning golf and then are AWOL. You don’t know where they are. Book 28 golfers you may have 21 or 19 by Saturday morning. Some are no shows, and some call up and cancel late Friday evenings, or even worse at 2 a.m. when the Millennial or Generation Z falls out of the pub realizing they’re too hung over to play a round of golf in a league. This has caused much consternation among the course we book as it costs them money – they’ve booked X-amount of spots, and those are spots they could have sold, but were holding for us. This has reached a crescendo in 2024 that has forced us to crack down on the worse offenders of this behavior. If we hadn’t as an organization on these individuals we would run the risk of being blacklisted and unable to book future dates with the course. This is in such contrast to just fifteen years before when everyone who signed up – showed up, but Millennials and Generation Z see no such commitment as if everything, even working hours, are seemingly perpetually malleable and tentative.
A lot of this I think has come from the ever eroding sense of community, and that is a paradox of sorts. Since the advent of the smartphone and social media apps, constant interaction and connection the erroneous notion is that it is a uniting factor – that the technology has brought people and communities together when in fact it has done the reverse. Yes, people are posting pictures of their pets, lavish meals and their bucket list vacation, but and such fodder serves to keep existing friends and family in touch with everyone’s day-to-day lives, but it hasn’t served to bring anyone, particularly communities, together. The activities of posting photos of one’s Chicken Oscar served with asparagus dribbled with a light bearnaise sauce is a solitary act conducted in a silo; that is then shared out enmass to be given various thumbs up or comments. In many ways this is a onesided interaction that could be taken or left by the consumer on the other end. It is done and viewed by other voyeurs too timid to partake in in-person social activities that Generation X sought when they were the same age. This can be directly attributed to the technology itself. I didn’t have a smartphone growing up, and so in order to meet people and participate in anything it was done by joining like-minded individuals in clubs and organizations. The modern millennial or Gen-Z has never experienced such a technology void where meetings were conducted in-person, activities were done as a group, and pictures would have to be taken to be developed. By making things more convenient with phone cameras and social media everything is near virtually instant, and results in everyone being an island onto themselves. Oh yes, if they are slightly on the older end with their own children they may involve their offspring in soccer events and so forth, but those are generally activities for a younger age group that will fade as they get older. Lost in the wake of all this are the community organizations like the town Rec-Softball League meant specifically for them, not their children, and so it’s another club lost and a further erosion of the community as a whole.
The end result of all of this is the splintering process. This segmented reality, where everyone conducts their business independently and without social interaction, in the end results in a society of misfits. Those that struggle communicating when they eventually are thrust into engaging others as a group – not unlike a wallflower being pushed out onto the dance floor. They haven’t a clue on what to do next. This manifests itself in different ways, but a lack of communication is often the most common. They don’t know how to interact with others and so how can they write emails effectively, or address situations at work when they lack the skills to do so because their primary communication is more sterile – less personable. It is the end result of not having the social skills acquired from having spent time with others in any form of club. It isn’t the game of softball on a Friday night or a round of golf on a Saturday morning, it is the social aspect of those things. Knowing how to approach people, and sometimes knowing how to deal with the difficult ones. It can’t always be done in a vacuum, by email and text, in a safe silo void of consequences.
This splintering effect where clubs and organizations erode also manifests itself not just in a lack of community, but a lack of respect as well. Respect the club or the organization there will be a sense of obligation to it. One is less likely to go AWOL on a Saturday morning, or back out at the last minute. Everyone has emergencies for which they have to cancel, but why is it the same individuals every week? Is Mercury in retrograde or something? When there’s a lack of respect for the institution and those around you the foundation of the organization begins to crumble. Which in we’ve also seen in a larger national perspective. We are no longer a nation of, We the people…, but rather more like, I, the person…” Much of this shift in perspective has a lot to do with this transitional period between generations. The older leadership in leagues and clubs are now fading out, and they’re being replaced by a void. There is simply no one to pass the baton onto. As this trend continues expect more isolation, more entrenchment on views; not a coming together. No compromise. I have now come to expect to see the park void of cars on a Friday evening, and I confess that pangs me to a certain extent remembering the days long gone by. This is the end result of everyone being siloed, but still posting pics of their dinner.