Below, I am providing a link to an Opinion essay by Matt Hongoltz-Hetling, published in the Saturday, December 6, 2025, edition of The New York Times. Online, the essay is titled, "This Centuries-Old Tradition Is Needed Now More Than Ever." In the hard-copy version, which is how I read the article, on a Saturday morning, the headline on the Hongoltz-Hetling essay is as follows: "Can The Potluck Cure America's Loneliness Crisis?"
Are you aware of this "Loneliness Crisis" that Hongoltz-Hetling is talking about? If not, a round of applause for you and the way you are living! I think there is one! And "loneliness" is not, of course, any late-breaking affliction. Back when I was an undergraduate, I vividly remember reading David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd, which was published in 1950. 2025 minus 1950 adds up to seventy-five years of loneliness, if you accept the reality of what both Riesman and Hongoltz-Hetling are talking about.
My prescription for a healthy politics - the kind of politics that ends up with genuine "self-government" - absolutely depends on small groups of people, meeting in "real life," and deciding, together, to make the applicable governmental bodies (national, state, and local) do what the citizens want.
"Loneliness," in other words, which dissociates individuals from the collective reality of our "common world," is death to what most people call "democracy."
So, set up and participate in frequent potluck meetings (and neighborhood barbeques in good weather will work, as well). That's a piece of "political" advice, but sociologists, from David Riesman on down, will totally agree that this is a good prescription for both individual and social good health. We are, truly, "in this [life] together," and we can find out that this is true, and can start acting, together, to accomplish the things we both want and need to do, after we take the time to sit down to eat with our friends and neighbors - and start talking all about it!
So, with thanks to Hongoltz-Hetling and his timely column, let's give three cheers for the potluck life!
Image Credit:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/27/opinion/potluck-community-loneliness.html
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