AMERICANS CAN REVIVE NATION; IT'S TIME FOR OUR SPECTATOR SOCIETY TO FORESAKE SHALLOW PURSUITS IN ORDER TO REBUILD COMMUNITIES.

Byline: John T. Boal LOCAL VIEW

DESPITE the air-raid warnings of the ``Nation At Risk,'' ``Broken Window'' and ``Bowling Alone'' syndromes, as well as the recent rant from the National Commission on Civic Renewal on the decline in our civic health index, a resilient American population can still right itself.

Despite our daily dosages of road rage, techno rage and air rage, despite the coarsening of our conversations, despite a political system that has reduced itself to a wicked hybrid of performance art and despite all the other symptoms of a society in decline, we can change our course.

In fact, we've done it before. Just a century ago.

At the end of the 19th century, we had an accumulation of 30 to 40 years of technological change that withered away much of our social capital, according to Harvard Professor Robert Putnam, who wrote the infamous ``Bowling Alone'' article.

It was an American society that showed all the symptoms of a social capital deficiency, including concern about political corruption and disputes between the classes.

Nevertheless, during the first two decades of the 20th century, our society righted itself in one of the country's greatest bursts of innovation, a hopeful Putnam reports. ``Virtually all of the major civic institutions were created - the PTA, the YMCA, the Boy Scouts, the League of Women Voters, NAACP, the Urban League and so on. Virtually all were invented in response to earlier forms of social connectedness. And, I think we are poised to do a similar kind of thing now.''

Indeed, during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, there have been bursts of innovation, albeit quiet ones, in hundreds of common-sense and human projects, partnerships and programs that have created verifiable solutions in communities and schools around the nation.

The new PTAs and NAACPs could come from emerging groups such as Mad Dads, the Parent University, Educate the Children Foundation, Young Adult Police Commissioners, Renew America, First Night International, the Living Planet Campaign and scores of others that are lighting the flickering torches of civic, education and self-renewal.

Yet, unlike the 1890s, and perhaps the reason that this new generation of budding groups may not restock our social capital, is that in the 1990s we have become a society driven by the marketing masters of leisure and entertainment who know how to lead the critical mass of the population to the path of least resistance - i.e. to the next mega-movie, to ballparks and stadiums, to amusement parks, to sitcom finales or to queue up for the next Powerball.

We have become this massive spectator society that is constantly being seduced to hand over our brains and our wallets at the door.

Or we can take the cue of Harris Wofford, who co-founded the Peace Corps, heads the Corporation for National Service and urges, ``Let's crack the atom of civic power.''

The millennial showdown on whether or not history repeats itself and civil society returns, as it did in the early 1900s, will be determined by who wins the battle for the leisure time of the American public. But just imagine.

What if just 10 percent of the population cracked that atom of civic power and shifted from a passive, spectator society into one that watches only one hour of TV a day, instead of seven; sees only three movies a month, instead of six; attends only two concerts a year, instead of four; goes to only three sports events, instead of 10, and redirects that extra leisure time into rebuilding their communities with these new programs? Those in the 10 percent could dig in as volunteers for projects that protect the environment ad wildlife, and they could commit to partnerships that strengthen our educational system before, during and after a student's school day.

This possibility shouldn't be dismissed as a Utopian notion. Is it too much to ask 10 percent, or 27 million citizens, to cut back on their leisure and turn this pending civil disaster around by turning away from an unfulfilling era of being professional spectators and conspicuous consumers and beginning a new heads-up era of conspicuous caring?

If our forefathers had such a burst of innovation from the 19th to the 20th century, is it too much to ask - as we begin our countdown to the next century - that we also harness the human spirit and imagination to create scores of new circles of cooperation and pave a new road of uncommon alliances, such as teen-agers' joining Young Adult Police Commissioners in every community and being actively involved in policing themselves; low-income neighborhoods' banding together against slacker landlords in Small Claims Court; parents' learning how their children learn by attending a Parent University at every public school; and retired doctors' giving free health care to the working poor.

Can we fuel and expand these emerging infrastructures of a civil society and redirect our attention to finding civil solutions needed today and for the new millennium?

If our forefathers did it, certainly we can do it. And with the power of connecting technology, we can do it better.