The Riverbed Has Run Dry, Yet Americans Are Still Drowning

the annual yearly review nobody asked for

“The lure of the river was irresistible.”

• David Herbert Donald, Lincoln, 1995

The everlasting appeal with Abraham Lincoln is sourced to something deeper than his miraculous administration. The 16th president was almost designed to be studied, as if he was fully submerged in mythos until a frame emerged 6-foot-4 and wiry with an oversized intellect to match.

Underappreciated, however, remains Lincoln’s affinity for adventure. Urged by the frontiersman’s innate drive to simply survive, he sought out seemingly every mean to earn a living. It was this push for life which earned him something larger than one; a momentous collection of stories and memories that by comparison relegate almost everyone else to nothing more than bone-filled skinsacks crawling towards an inevitable demise.

Historian David Herbert Donald imagined Lincoln’s formative years as a metaphor inseparable from the Sangamon River he cut his teeth on. Lincoln crafted a wooden raft from felled logs and began enterprising it by offering ferry rides and transporting goods from Indiana to Louisiana. But there was more than money to be made on the water, there was a personhood to achieve.

This is what Donald labeled “the lure of the river.” For all, American life sprints forward with a relentlessness married to both success and tragedy, desire and shortcoming. Through mountains, valleys, and fields, a promise sits on the wind, waiting for inhabitants to answer its call and fulfill the promise forged in our country’s conception - a birthright descended from such brave founders.

As a symbol, the river presents everything essential for claiming both identity and livelihood; two ideals welded so closely together that they epitomize what it means to be an American. There are dangers lurking in the muddy waters, but necessarily so, for the mantle of self-made man has to be earned, not given. And such hazard is lined with a lacy allure, as to remind us that the risk it ever worth it.

Lincoln heard this siren song and bravely answered its call, but the call is different for everyone. The lure of the river is much more than an impulse to make one’s own way in this nation. It is the instinctive yearning to abandon the variety of tools pacifying us into the facade of comfort. It winks images of the unforgettable into our mind’s eye, sliding fragments of peak humanity across our vision like a Tyco View-Master.

But what happens when we ignore this call? What happens when we fail to hear it at all? Despite a dialogue suggesting otherwise, the country isn’t losing religion. We’ve descended from our city upon a hill and settled down into the Idolatry of Idleness. There is a sickness among Humans - we no longer want to be them.

“What is difficult is to treat of the slow attrition of the soul by the conduct of life”

• Thornton Wilder, 1952

While doing research on the American Loneliness epidemic, I stumbled across an anthology in which Thornton Wilder participated. An expert on the subject, he once wrote about Henry David Thoreau’s battle with friendship and isolation, using it as a moment to reflect on the then (1950s) state of American camaraderie.

Wilder touched upon a type of spirit almost unrecognizable by the modern citizen. The young would spend their formative years among a community that knew them and knew them well, only to let loose the familial anchor and set sails for territory uncharted. He proclaimed, poignantly, that “individualism has its arrogance” and such a demeanor extends young men and women alike the confidence needed to cement their life in some place anew.

It was during this trial of personhood where Americans first truly learned of their ostensible insignificance. According to Wilder, American youth were “exceptionally aware of the multitude of the human race” and therefore loneliness was only “enhanced by his consciousness of those numbers.” We were once small fish in the biggest of ponds, Walden’s pond, perhaps.

Hence, Wilder espoused on what meaning can be found from Thoreau’s famous life of solitude. One can only find freedom when on one’s own; only extreme isolation begets total control of one’s life and thereby, liberation. Indeed, Wilder went as far as to claim that it is the “evil of community” which “renders us stupid—and cowardly.”

Americans were so apt to be with other Americans that they became dependent upon them to influence major decisions and lifestyles. This is where we learned to adhere to social dogma with a tenacity belying the populace’s conspiratorial nature. Amongst each other we lost a bit of ourselves, the individuality which makes us unique and meaningful contributors to society.

Wilder labeled those folks “the partial American.” What happened to them? They drowned, of course. But that American has been long gone and all that remains are bones that will prove to be almost unidentifiable to whichever archeologists dares to paint the story of a once great society.

The signals of current American isolation are as bewildering as they are unmistakable. Everywhere, the desire to stem the human engagement is upon us. We are the only caterpillars refusing to set free their wings. Flight seems far away now.

“ Authenticity becomes an essential element of hospitality experiences and guest satisfaction.”

• Baojun Gao and others, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 2022

The evidence of American solitude is overwhelming. I’ll touch upon various data point to demonstrate it, some more alarming than others. But first, a story of AirBnBs and how destructive they are.

There is a palpable wonder attached to staying at a hotel, especially in your youth. Knowing that scores of other families are running around the same lodging as yourself, all revved up with the excitement of a touristy location, injects a sense of sameness seamlessly meshing with the individuals’ memories they are about to make. Those days are waning, and quickly.

My first trip to Nashville was a storied escapade. Fresh out of college, my friends and I counted our money and piled into an old Hyundai with a GPS set to Nashville. None of us liked country music, but my uncle did something similar after his graduation and the idea of an unpredictable adventure was borrowed from him. I’ll save you the details and myself the career jeopardy by telling you that it was, indeed, epic.

Always a groomsmen and never the groom, I first returned to Nashville circa 2018 for a bachelor party. Although my second trip happened only a few short years after the first, the change was unmistakable. Nashville had been tinted green by both the money of affluent youngsters and their relative inexperienced lives. Throughout the city, homes were being bought by entrepreneurs, retrofitted into AirBnB dreamhouses and in doing so morphed Nashville into anything but a place for families and friends.

I’ve since traveled to many a destination witnessing the same wicked dance. Scottsdale, Austin, Newport, Atlanta. Austin again. Nashville once more. Residents in each city find themselves in tension - thankful for the injection of cash brought from outsiders but contemplating what the cost will be.

Local newspapers tell the story best.

From the Nashville Banner, Texas Monthly, and Arizona’s Family:

• How Downtown Nashville Morphed from Music City into Party City (2024)

• Inside the Bro-tastic Party Mansions Upending a Historic Austin Community (2023)

• Scottsdale seeks public’s thoughts in effort to stop short-term rental parties (2024)

But this isn’t a story about NIMBYism meeting financial demand. Rather, it is one about the perplexing lack of humanity despite people doing nothing but being remarkably happy around like-minded people.

Even when flying into a new world where customs, peoples, and landscape all await to be devoured, American youth are choosing solitude. The ascent of the AirBnB is an affront to what it means to be a person among others. With minor exceptions, there is nothing an AirBnB can offer that a hotel cannot.

Yet, the shift towards small group-isolation is undeniable. Rather than let others witness and partake in the debaucherous, unforgettable experience being forged, our youth is choosing to separate themselves from all others. It may seem like a minor note of nothingness in a world with more pressing issues, but the concept of removing yourself from society until ubers are called to reenter it is nothing short of troubling.

American youth have found a way to inculcate further among a select, homogenous few and almost entirely protect themselves from any impact, no matter how large or small, their fellow humans can impress upon them. Like hermit crabs, we have found another shell to crawl into until the big, scary world offers a chance at happiness too forceful to turn down. More than ever, we are forsaking the little moments where life is developed. We’re exchanging these chance encounters for curated, on-demand pleasures. The lure of the river has died, and with it, serendipity.

Authenticity has been deemed as what pushes travelers into AirBnBs. I gasped at the notion. The realness Americans seek can be most found in the heartbeat of a city, among the dive bars and street corners, in between those bustling to work and grabbing coffee breaks during it. Assuredly, it is not found in some townhouse on the outskirts of the city, isolated from the core of humanity but with a vantage point of it grand enough to make one feel as though they can feel its pulse from a distance.

The AirBnB has come to symbolize the destabilizing, depressing trend of American social atrophy. It is another tentacle of an on-demand culture allowing us to engage with others solely on our time - a notion incompatible with what our specie needs to flourish. Such interaction has been diluted and atomized then repackaged into a menu of isolation. Technologies have born a new breed, one where seclusion remains only a button away. Through attrition, we’ve slowly surrendered face-to-face encounters for literal “do-not-disturb” buttons.

“We go online because we are busy but end up spending more time with technology and less with each other. We defend connectivity as a way to be close, even as we effectively hide from each other. At the limit, we will settle for the inanimate, if that’s what it takes.”

• Shelley Turkel, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, 2011

Emerging technology is in disconcert with what it means to be human. While it has done wonders for physical health and comfort, these technologies have unquestionably wreaked havoc in social health.

Teens opt to watch strangers play video games online rather than play them together with friends. This is supported by the various studies, perhaps the most famous from the University of Michigan, which found teens and preteens are simply not seeing their friends as often as previous generations. Youth sports participation is plummeting. Teenage partying is plummeting. The most popular dream job amongst our young is YouTube streamer, a career that depends entirely on not seeing people in real life.

College, where one might go to pursue a career, is witnessing an implosion as well. Compared to 2023, enrollment has dropped over five percent and nearly ten percent with 19 and 20-year-olds. I find this particularly alarming. Everywhere in pop culture college is portrayed as the teens’ first gateway to unadulterated freedom; a dreamworld where drinking, sex, and mischief become not only possible, but expected.

Instead of perceiving their debt as an investment in themselves during a journey both intellectual and hedonistic, young adults are googling get-rich-quick schemes like drop shipping and crypto trading, likely from their mom’s basement and proffered through the phone. Perhaps a daring few will prop up the online courses market, but not before their camera is turned off and XBox turned on.

And if you do go to college, do not expect a friend to visit. The last time we saw such a high percentage of teens opt out of getting a license was in 2008. Understandable. The economy crashed and families did not have the money or pathway to even afford a car for their kid. But this year marks the first time since 2008 where the percentage of 17-year-olds with a license has dropped under 50 percent (43 percent, to be exact.)

Everybody should be panicking. Like a bird peering out of its nest, the default nature of a human teenager is to fly away from parental control. It is to rebel. The body is becoming adult and wanting to do adult things that the mind cannot handle, hence limitations like curfews and age-limits for drinking and sex. This made the driver’s license so coveted. It was an escape route that led youngsters away from their mellow-harshing overlords and into house parties. No more. Instead, parents - if only their kid’s location is permanently shared with them - allow their offspring to choose an unknown driver through the uber app; a sharp twist away from the daily local news reminder for parents: “It’s 6PM, do you know where your kids are?”

Attending college, obtaining a license, playing sports with friends and sowing wild oats through risky social behavior are momunmental moments in human development. These experiences profoundly shape who we are and what we value. This is not to say those experiences will not leave us bruised, but such scars are reminders of how to navigate a future adult world and ascertain the very best of humanity while avoiding setbacks or irreparable harm.

Yet, even the miniscule, daily interactions where being a human is practiced are being left behind. We wait for movies to become available on streaming apps, but on the occasion when one does visit the theater there is no need for human discussion. The tickets are bought online and whatever food you want can be grabbed and paid for at a kiosk. We’ve managed to fully disrespect a viewing medium born to showcase the very human intricacies we’re made of.

Humans can stomach value-menu monstrosities but no longer the small talk necessary while waiting in-line to place an order. Even uber-eats drivers and Amazon deliverers vacate the chance at interaction, instead texting photos of whatever package has been dropped at the doorstep.

There is one area specifically that caught me the most off guard. Lately, I’ve began therapy. It was done via telehealth. After one particularly exhausting session, I realized I was crying, alone in my room, as Dr. Jeff watched me through a computer. Unquestionably, telehealth therapy has done wonders. But is not the ideal, and the fact that perhaps the most personable, most intimate profession in the world has abandoned the core tenet of being with the patient should unnerve us all.

Forgive me, I should have suggested that sex-working is the most intimate profession. Even that job, however, has taken a turn for the worse. According to The National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, “between 2009 and 2018, the proportions of adolescents reporting no sexual activity, either alone or with partners, rose from 25.8 percent to 44.2 percent among young men and from 49.5 percent in 2009 to 74 percent among young women.”

There is no other way to say it: The. Horniest. People. Ever. Are. Not Having. Sex. This is the five alarm fire moment in American society. Sexual gratification has been offloaded and outsourced. Substituted in are OnlyFans accounts and porn sites now available literally wherever due to the mobile phone. Sex is on-demand now, just not in person, which tells you everything you need to know about the social state of America. To be clear, I’m not advocating for teenage sex, however, the lack of it should concern everyone.

“As some people joke, we may not possess free will, but we possess free won’t.”

• David Brooks, The Social Animal, 2011

There is a staggering amount of publications dedicated to proving why and how humans have claimed the mantle of the social creature. After all, orangutans, who some consider to be a closer human relative than chimps, spend most of their time alone. Why have humans chosen to bond together? Renowned author David Brooks attempted to answer the question back in 2011, before these trends were more pronounced.

His book is a story about how and why humans are propelled by internal, subconscious decisions to become the people they are. It was lauded at the time, but contains a fatal flaw. Brooks deployed two fictional characters as plot drivers to explain the neuroscience and psychosocial factors pushing us towards personhood. Even one of the world’s most notable pundits could not find the humans necessary to unveil this story.

He failed to realize that it was the common struggle for essentials that pushed humans into teaming together and developing socially. Hunting and gathering is done better in groups. Rooming together provides strength in numbers in the face of an outside threat. Sex is done better with a partner. Children can be watched by few while the others complete chores and other necessary tasks.

It is easy to see how being social was and is a human advantage. Now, however, there is no ostensible survival need for being social. Food is delivered without human interaction. Need clothes? Order it. Need housing? Google it. Apply online. Need to a paycheck to buy all of these things? Work from home.

And sex? Legalizing prostitution is the next progressive domino to fall, but until then there is a middle ground. Don’t fantasize about seeing your favorite influencer naked. Purchase the videos from OnlyFans. What’s more, there is a loophole to exploit. Film it and poof, prostitution becomes legal. I’ll let you google it yourself, but there is a definite trend of sex workers sending out casting calls to regular folks (read: fans) and the boys are lining up.

Perhaps humans are simply born social, like dolphins. But if the thirst to survive brought humans together, it surely transformed us into social beings. The safety cable tethering together survival and interaction is fraying, however, and rapidly so. There is little incentive to go out in the world anymore. Instead, we have had it brought to us. What happens when generations grow up in this on-demand culture and have no basis of a previous world to expose these simulacra? When and if this culture solidifies into normalcy, the species will be anything but.

“And in the end it is not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years."

• Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln’s early years, and indeed his later ones as well, even as he was battling depression, can best be observed as an insatiable thirst to be around people. Whether it was telling humorous stories to folks at the general store, captivating onlookers during debates and speeches, or simply passing the time during a ferry ride, Lincoln was gripped by being in the presence of others.

Such a notion is disappearing.

But what happens when it does? The social toll will be catastrophic. Being “too online” is disastrous. Hermits have been siloed into dangerous rabbit holes, like QAnon, which one in five Americans subscribe to, according to PRRI. What results? The millions of citizens who believe in a conspiracy claiming elites are grooming children for their sex and blood-deriven lifeforce had no qualms about reelecting a man liable for sexual assault and supported him when he put forth an all but confirmed rapist to be head of the judicial department.

That is but one example. It does not take much mental gymnastics to connect the rise of school shooters, anti-Semitism, and both xenophobic and transphobic violence to the dugouts we’ve buried ourselves in. The other side of the aisle guilty as well. The Left eschews any evidence suggesting their identity politics might be doing more hard than good. Only the few brave have dared remark that perhaps, giving puberty blockers to a 9-year-old, might not be a great idea. Fleshing out opinions on those subjects is no longer done in-person among peers, but in online spaces that thrive on fear mongering and the extreme.

This is not meant to be a political commentary, nevertheless the siloization of American life might have its greatest impact in that realm. We’ve become extreme because we live in the extreme. Being wittingly anti-social is extreme for human beings.

Representative Liberalism works best when the participants are vivacious and neighborly. It is through mutual experience and time spent together we find common ground, led there by a compass trained to use decency and rationality as its Polaris. The less we know each other, the more we assume we are like each other. Such reclusivity makes impossible the penetration of empathy necessary to move forward, as a nation, with the requisite compassion and pragmatism to uphold our Declaration’s almighty promise.

This toll will not only be felt politically and socially, however. There is a physical peril. Among the highest rates of those getting Alzheimer’s are pilots and ship captains, two professions who rely on gadgets to navigate their day-to-day and not people. Taxi drivers, bus drivers, and ambulance personnel are among the least likely to get the disease.

It appears as though human stimulation is the key for staving off Alzheimer’s. The hippocampus feeds on such interaction and it keeps that part of the brain healthy. The trio of authors behind The Social Hippocampus stated as such, suggesting that one of its functions is to maintain “a flexible map allowing adaptation to new social contexts.”

How hazardous this lifestyle is for our youth has been broadcasted largely. It is well known that over the last few years one in three teenage girls has considered self-harm. Thirteen percent of them have actually attempted suicide, that number being higher for our vulnerable LGBTQ and BIPOC communities. Forty percent of all teens, in 2023, had “experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.”

If there is one time in your life you should feel supreme optimism, it is when you are a young. Although tragedy and trauma touches many, the prospect of a future excites. This is the beauty of naivete. Awakenings await, sexually, academically, vocationally and socially. In other words, if the kids are feeling hopeless before the burdens of college debt, marital pressure, and a fucking through-the-roof mortgage, then we’ve failed them.

“Never mind your happiness; do your duty.”

- Will Durant

If you haven’t, read Will Durant. I have gotten away with pretending to know Philosophy and it is entirely due to his books. Within one of them you may find a quote such as the one above.

To be clear, ignore it if you are happy, which I am. Ignore it if you want to be happy, which you should. But all of us can agree that the lighthearted content of a time past has been battered and gnawed at by The Rise of the Curmudgeons. Fun cannot be fun anymore, nothing uplifting can happen without some faction cancelling it or turning it into another bullet-point along their manifesto.

I’m not exaggerating. Based on a 2022 Pew survey, 39 percent of Americans believe we’re currently “living in the end times.” This bucks a plethora of data points suggesting otherwise. The CDC reported that overdose deaths decreased for the first time since 2018. The murder rate had its largest decline in 20 years and obesity its largest in a decade. A record share of Americans (62 percent) own stocks and the market continually breaks record highs. According to McKinsey, “consumer optimism reached its highest level” since the Pandemic.

This isn’t to say things are peachy keen. I’d hate to be a woman in America today. Or a minority. Or trans. Or without a college degree. There are overpowering and veritable threat to those folks and I could have mentioned many more demographics at risk. I am not the right one to say it, and no one asked, but you are justified to feel that way. Of course, I am not all smiles neither, nor above the fray. I’m terminally online, have been yelled at by my roommate to “put the book down, come get a beer.” I’m just a guilty as anyone.

Regardless, everyone fortunate enough to be uncorrupted by the ills of modern adolescence owe our younger generation a duty. Bluntly, the older generations - the ruling class - are most responsible for the debacle we find ourselves in and deserve bulk of the blame. Whether it was by ignoring college tuition, the housing crisis, or the fallout from technology, they have forsaken any responsibility to hand down a better nation to their offspring. Shame on them.

Millenials and Gen X have the responsibility of tackling this problem. We are educated, and considering the reading and arithmetic scores of the upcoming generations, we may be the last group to be so. The mantle has fallen to us.

Achieving our goals of marriage, children, homeownership and relative financial freedom may seem harder to achieve. Granted. But we were the last generation blessed with a childhood where at least the possibility of happiness seemed within reach. And to be damn sure, we’re the last generation to actually have happiness as children.

In 2025, keep this thought in mind. Lead from the front. Be out. Do what is necessary to let a genuine smile flash across your face, and when it does, let it linger. Those younger than us are yearning for a muse of which they can paint a portrait of what could be their future.

Be merry in the streets. Leave bars as loudly as you’ve entered them and with partner in hand. Leave your home to get Wendy’s. Leave your bed to find another. Leave your apprehension to find comfort in the uncomfortable.

Remember, the kids always look to us. Let’s show them who we are. Let’s show them how to find the river.