People wish for community and community values, but they feel unable to effect the changes necessary to realize these values. Moreover, individuals are quick to see the benefits of community life, but they are slow to realize that those benefits can only be reaped to the extent that social contributions are sown. Freedom and individuality are not inborn givens. They are the results or the fruits of a consciously tended communal life. Mobility has contributed to social disintegration.
Associations are brief and unstable.
Time and persistence and communication are required to nourish genuine attachments, the basis of communal life. But the real problem, according to Dewey, is the failure to rethink old social ideas and presuppositions. As forces beyond our control direct affairs toward unimagined and unexpected outcomes, Americans hold onto worn-out ideas that have no power in directing experience. Old aims, old theories, old methods will not fit the present situation. The political situation needs to be reconstructed by a public that shares and communicates new symbols.