THE GREAT DISRUPTION: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order.

• Author: Waldman, Steven
• Position: Review

THE GREAT DISRUPTION: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order

By Francis Fukuyama

Free Press, $26

How crime, illegitimacy, and baby boomer demogrphic kindled a religious revival

After describing how society fell apart in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s (rising crime rates, illegitimacy, etc.), Francis Fukuyama asks, "Are we fated to slide into ever-increasing levels of social and moral disorder, or is there reason to expect the disruption is merely a temporary condition?" One has the feeling that Fukuyama started work on this book seven or eight years ago, before the crime rate plummetted and illegitimacy trends reversed, but didn't have the heart to rewrite his book around those important new facts. Nonetheless, there is much that is thoughtful and original in this book.

The first half is dedicated to Fukuyama's analysis of the "Great Disruption," the period when, to use the social science jargon, our supply of "social capital" diminished. Divorce rose, crime spread, and people became less trusting of their institutions and of each other. Fukuyama often seems on the edge of adopting the standard conservative "critique" (Fifties Good! Sixties Baaaad!) but his argument is actually more nuanced. Fukuyama, author of the controversial book The End of History, argues that the cause of the Great Disruption was not so much the liberal welfare state (as conservatives suggest) or income inequality (as liberals suggest) but something more fundamental: the technological revolution.

The normal explanations offered are not satisfactory, he notes, because many of these negative social trends occurred throughout the Western industrialized world--including countries with lots of welfare and those with little; those with great inequality and those with less; those with civil liberties protections for criminals and those without. So he searches for causes that were common to all Western industrialized nations.

One cause he identifies is the birth control pill. The pill, he argues, led to family breakup, one of the main causes of the Great Disruption. This happened not because oral contraceptives eroded the morals of women, but because they unleashed the natural piggishness of men. "Since the Pill and abortion permitted women for the first time to have sex without worrying about the consequences, men felt liberated from norms requiring them to look after the women whom they had gotten pregnant." Hence more illegitimacy. "What changed after the '50s was...