Democracy Means Paying Attention

I like what Bellah says on pg. 277- "And the simultaneous disinvestment in 'human resources' has already shows itself in the social decay of crime, addiction, cynicism, eroded civility, weakened education, and most shockingly, perhaps, in the pervasive indifference of youth to the world around them."
I think that what he is saying here is that we've invested far too much into things and not into people, and therefore, these are the consequences.  Instead of spending time, money, ourselves, in others and the things that really matter, and getting the most out of the "human resources" that we have, we've wasted a lot of effort investing in short term things that will give us some type of pleasure or entertainment right away.  Bellah demonstrates how much this hurts the United States and how much more we could be "cultivating" people and growing up such a better world if we took the time to engage in each other's lives rather than the isolation that Tocqueville even observed in the nineteenth century.