If you are concerned about America’s future, as I am, I highly recommend reading Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America, published in late May. It is the best book I’ve read on what ails the U.S. Beyond insights into how we arrived at our current state, it offers a hopeful vision for the future and positive steps that can be taken by individuals and by the government.
The author of Crisis of the Common Good is not an academic, historian, or sociologist but a sitting U.S. senator, Chris Murphy (D – Connecticut). Because he is a politician, I want to be clear that my endorsement of this book is not a partisan one. I care about good ideas, not party affiliation. I previously wrote an enthusiastic review of Them: Why We Hate Each Other and How to Heal — a book published in 2019 by then U.S. senator Ben Sasse (R – Nebraska) that covers remarkably similar ground. The fact that a conservative Republican and a liberal Democrat independently arrived at such closely-aligned diagnoses of what ails America should itself tell us something important: these are not partisan problems, and they will not yield to partisan solutions.
I don’t tend to pick up the latest book written by a politician. What piqued my interest, however, was the book’s subtitle that implies human connection has a role to play in our nation’s health and that it is worth pursuing with intention. For more than twenty years I have been consistently advocating for the need to increase positive human connection in the workplace as a means to address chronically dismal employee engagement and relationally-broken work environments whose negative effects spill over into our non-work lives. What perspective would Chris Murphy, a man who has spent the last twenty-seven years as a representative of the people — serving first in the Connecticut House then Senate, followed by three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012 — bring to the topic?
Quite frankly, as I read the book I was relieved and encouraged to see that a public figure has such a deep grasp of the issues he raises and writes about them with such clarity, supporting his arguments with hard evidence and data and bringing them to life through anecdotes of everyday people. Senator Murphy is a knowledgeable and intelligent man with a talent for analysis and communication.
I also want to acknowledge upfront that while Murphy is someone who looks to find common ground across the aisle, he has been a vocal critic of the current president. In the Introduction, Murphy states his opinion that Donald Trump is “a symptom, not the cause, of America’s spiritual unraveling.” He has strong things to say about President Trump and his impact, not surprisingly, but it is not the focus of the book.
Connection, the Common Good, and the Crisis
As I have argued, and make the case for in my book, Connection Culture, human connection is a superpower that makes people smarter, happier, more productive, and more resilient in coping with stress while insufficient human connection leaves people more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, addiction, suicide, and violence. My work has focused primarily on how leaders can cultivate connection within organizations — their teams, companies, and institutions.
Senator Murphy’s book powerfully complements that work by addressing the broader societal and policy dimensions of our disconnection crisis. Together, these perspectives suggest that rebuilding connection in America requires action at every level: in our workplaces, yes, but also in our neighborhoods, our governments, and our national culture.
In an interview with Katie Couric on May 26, 2026, Murphy phrased the crisis this way:
[The common good is] the idea that each one of us is healthier and happier if we live in a community that is also healthy and happy, in a country that has been taught over centuries, but particularly over the last few decades, that all that really matters is your individual health — maybe just your individual material health. In fact, what makes us happier and more fulfilled is when we’re doing well but our community is doing well too. And we increasingly live in both an economy and a culture that is selfish, that involves a kind of rapacious “me first” individualism that in the end, I think, leaves all of us feeling kind of empty and adrift.
Last year I wrote a private report on the state of America and what might be on the horizon. As I wrestled with “How did we get here?”, I identified a number of contributing factors, including rising spiritual and social isolation; the prevalence of chasing wealth, power, and status over valuing family and community; increased corruption; and the threat that addiction to technology crowds out time for in-person interactions. Murphy’s analysis contains many of these same themes.
Murphy captures the arc of our national drift with striking clarity: “Over the past fifty years, we have become a wealthier and more just country in many ways, but we have also retreated from shared prosperity, social contracts, and strong communities, building altars instead to profit, efficiency, consumer culture, technology, elite credentialism, and winner-takes-all politics that consecrates corruption.”
He frames these objects of worship, if you will, as cults that are harming America. Cult is an interesting word choice as it evokes a strong, sometimes blind, devotion on the part of followers to a belief, cause, or a leader or group of leaders when, in reality, the cult doesn’t deliver on its promises but only benefits those at the top. Murphy draws a distinction between striving to make a profit, embracing capitalism, and recognizing the reality of global trade with adopting the single-minded pursuit of profit as a dominant and driving force that has served to concentrate wealth (and power and influence) with a few and leaves many at a disadvantage. In the cult of profit, for example, a company is deemed successful if it is profitable even if it treats employees poorly and does not contribute positively to the community where it is located.
In the book, he identifies six areas to be aware of:
- The “Cult of Profit” and the harm done by prioritizing profit over people.
- The “Cult of Everywhere” and the harm done by widespread rootlessness, when people lack connection to a community.
- The “Cult of Technology” and the harm done by addiction to our devices.
- The “Cult of Consumption” and the harm done by focusing on accumulating possessions rather than connecting with and serving others.
- The “Cult of Credentialism” and the harm done when a college degree is unaffordable and then people are excluded from jobs they could perform well simply because they lack a college degree.
- The “Cult of Corruption” and the harm done by the dishonesty, cheating, and self-dealing that pervades many positions of power and influence today.
“Americans across the right-left divide share similar worries about our false cults,” Murphy writes, “and similar hope that we can undo their hold over our nation.”
What Can Be Done
Combatting disconnection and cultivating cultures of human connection in our homes, schools, workplaces, communities, and nation will help Americans thrive. It will take individual and collective effort.
Senator Murphy sees a role for government: breaking up the monopolies strangling our economy, regulating technologies that are, in his words, “polluting our children’s brains,” and rebuilding the public institutions — schools, libraries, parks, and transit — that once stitched communities together.
Importantly, Murphy argues that each of us has a role to play too. We have agency. We can decide that our neighbors’ well-being matters, not just our own, and reach out to get to know them. We can get involved with a local faith community, shop at local merchants and connect with the people who work there, coach youth sports, volunteer in the schools, and attend public meetings of our town government. Small acts of presence and investment, multiplied across millions of Americans, can begin to rebuild what has been lost.
Throughout the book, Murphy casts a vision of communities where people know one another and do life together — celebrating the good times and supporting each other through the inevitable difficult seasons we all face. He offers many practical ideas for how we can nurture these connections.
I’ve experienced this. Growing up, there were periods when my family moved frequently, making it difficult to form lasting connections with the people and communities around us. During those times, I felt alone. In contrast, my wife, Katie, and I have lived in our community for 27 years. I love that almost everywhere I go in town, I run into people I know. We raised two daughters here and have been deeply involved in our church, the schools, musical groups, and other community organizations. With friends, we have celebrated birthdays, weddings, school sports and plays, communions, baptisms, and B’nai Mitzvahs. We have served alongside others through our church and local YMCA, and we have been there for one another through the hard times — divorces, illnesses, and loss. We’ve been on the receiving end too. Katie is a four-time cancer survivor and I will be forever grateful for the many people in our community who prayed for our family, brought us meals, provided transportation for our daughters when I needed to be by Katie’s side, and offered countless other forms of support and encouragement. Their love in action forever bonded me to them and to our community.
Crisis of the Common Good, with its call to be motivated by “we” rather than only “me,” deeply resonated with me. Senator Murphy’s excellent book — and his voice on these issues — is just what America needs right now.
Photo by Andrew Moca on Unsplash
