It’s a Sunday morning and I’m sitting in my lounge flicking through Netflix. A new documentary catches my eye and I decide to watch. 

I didn’t know when I pressed the button how much this one documentary would inform my view on both the importance of community in all of our lives and why, if we want to be happier, we should consider joining a club.

The title of this documentary is “Join or Die” and is based on the brilliant book “Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American Community” by renowned academic Robert D Putnam.

Interestingly Putnman’s work started not in his home of America, but in Italy in the early 1990’s. Putnam was looking at the time about what attributes makes a successful democracy and Italy was a great way to test this because of the way that Italy has devolved a decent amount of power into 20 unique regions.

Throughout his work in Italy, a trend started to emerge. Whilst Putnam looked at the data he found a trend he didn’t expect to emerge start to become obvious. His finding, and I’m trying to keep his deep academic research as simple as possible…

More clubs meant more societal, and often individual, success.

You see in the Italian regions with more clubs, societies and other ways to engage with our communities, the regional governments performed better. Individuals were better educated. They lived longer, healthier lives. Educational outcomes were better and there was less governmental corruption.

Next, Putnam wondered whether this was a distinctly Italian phenomenon or whether the principle of joining clubs could be applied to his home country. So, he started to research the impact of active involvement in community had in America.

In the documentary, Putnam (now in his eighties) comes across as a fascinating individual. Smart but still enduringly curious. Realistic but hopeful. A man who seems to have the ability to pull off a chinstrap beard with Aplomb, something I’m not convinced I’d be able to do!

In the film, Putnam talks about his research in America and the fact that there’s been a significant decline in “social capital” in the past few decades. The title of his book, Bowling alone, comes from the fact that in the US, many more people aren’t part of ten pin bowling teams, but instead hit the lanes individually instead with others.

Social capital in the book is defined in two different ways. Firstly “bonding social capital” is the strong ties of a group of people who are similar in several ways. This might include a number of shared interests, ethnicity or groups similar in belief.

Groups with “Bonding social capital” might include our families, our super close friends and groups bound by a lot of similarities.

There’s an advantage of hanging around with ‘people like us’. It gives us a sense of belonging, helps us understand we’re not alone in the world and get access to assistance and resources often when we need it the most.

However, part of the challenge of just being involved in communities with ‘people like us’ is that even our less constructive views about the world are confirmed, meaning that even if a particular world view isn’t helping us to be happier, the ‘group’ makes us believe it is the ‘right way’.

A particularly extreme example of this is the Ku Klux Klan, who undoubtedly was a ‘club’ of which the members benefitted from socially, but also clearly had a particularly negative impact on their wider communities.

That’s where “Bridging” social capital comes into play, where people of different cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds and ages, who may have certain factors in common but understand that there’s a lot to learn from people who have different backgrounds and beliefs.

This might mean a local book or art club, a group dedicated to a specific hobby or getting involved in your local ‘Big Lunch’, a UK based initiative supported by the Eden Project designed to help us become more cohesive communities.

The reality however is we’re likely to meet people who are different from us in the clubs and communities we join. It’s also the reality that it’s easier to join clubs where we share loads of common interests and beliefs, there is a clear link between wellbeing and being part of organisations with people who are different to you.

The reasons are simple. Being part of a gang where people are fundamentally different help you continue to learn, increases empathy, provides fresh perspectives and has been shown to increase self-esteem and emotional resilience.

There’s also been specific research (Berkman et al) showing that the more diverse our social networks, the longer and healthier we live.

During his American research, Putnam found two things…and this is where it gets really interesting!

Putman’s Italian research was replicated in the USA, showing that the principles applied in Europe also applied in America.

However not only did the “Bowling alone” research show that there’s a decent number of societal benefits to being part of a club, being a member of a club also gave you a number of personal benefits.

Being part of a club shows that being part of clubs or communities live longer, and because of the encouragement that being part of clubs often gives us to engage in a more diverse range of activities, healthier lifestyles.

There’s clear evidence that engaging with others in a communal setting makes us both less depressed and have higher levels of life satisfaction than if we don’t.

We’ve talked about health and happiness. Let’s talk about something else the evidence points to. Being part of a club has cognitive benefits. If we participate in discussions, or get involved with a hobby which stimulates the mind.

So, to put it plainly, clubs and the intellectual engagement they often give us result in slower cognitive decline.

So, clubs have an advantage. But here’s the big question…Do we need clubs instead of just being more social?

It’s clear that community wellbeing and social wellbeing are linked, however it’s a lot more than that. 

Clubs (or any other community) allow us to enhance one element of our lives which is fundamentally important in this “What happens next” stage of our lives…A sense of belonging.

Earlier in life a lot of community is provided by two things that are fundamentally changing in this period of our lives. Work and Family.

The reality is that for many of us work has provided us with a sense of community we potentially lose when we change our work environments.

However, probably the most important posse of our lives is also changing and evolving in this phase of our lives. Our families.

I’m always going to be Dad. My wife Cassie is always going to be mum. But, and maybe you can identify with this, if you’ve done your job right, your kids will become increasingly independent.

The time we spent with our family diminishes over time, and particularly later in our lives. Often, we don’t consider family as being community, but I’d suggest that it might be a useful perspective.

Firstly, community requires effort. So, instead of assuming that family is going to automatically there in our later lives, it might be worth thinking about the work we need to do to maintain the most important community in our lives.

Secondly, thinking about your family as a community means that we recognise the natural loss of this community as our kids get older. This might mean we need to consider how we replace this community with give us what we need. The elements of belonging we previously got from our children.

This doesn’t mean our family are going to be less important. They’re always going to be vital, and I know I consider my family as the most important gang in my life. However, knowing, recognising and accepting that you might be spending less time with your family as they get older may mean you take action to find the sense of belonging elsewhere.

So, the reality is that instead of bowling alone, we should really think about the clubs or communities we join and take action today to join ones which will give us all of the health advantages, make us feel like we belong and provide us with the opportunity to not “bowl alone”.