Hobbies and Hobbyhorses
[Bruce Frohnen  03/07 09:23 AM]

The emailer who wrote about all kinds of hobbies being important sources of friendship ("Don't Permanently Park the Car") makes an excellent point.
These days we need to take community where we can find it. I'd like to add a rather large "BUT" to that, however. I've written several articles and part of a book on the problem of fake community. Much of this is aimed at people like the socialist/sociologist Robert Bellah who turns Alexis de Tocqueville's wonderful concern with our "habits of the heart" into an insipid call for all of us to live through political activism. But he did have his finger on something when he criticized "lifestyle enclaves." He pointed out what I think we all know, that some bonds are more important than others, and some are actually harmful. I don't mean that hot rod clubs are bad, but gangs certainly are, right? And a hot rod club, or any kind of hobby, is going to be less clearly and deeply good for us than common activities that are central to our lives. I'm not saying everything we do has to be somehow of cosmic importance — eating isn't, after all, all that intrinsically important, save as a way of staying alive and an opportunity for people to come together. But an awful lot of leisure activities ("just for fun") can be, well, shallow. There is a place for the pick-up basketball or baseball game where you don't necessarily know everyone with whom you play, or the concert where you may know no one in the audience with you. But just going to concerts, etc. makes for a superficial life. More important are activities that bring people together to actually talk and, as much as possible, share important aspects of their lives.