You see a lot walking a dog at dawn - magnificent sunrises, stunning frosts, hot-air balloons and the occasional kangaroo.
Mostly solitary, when you do encounter someone, they tend to offer a greeting or pause for a chat.
But not everything is this socially reinforcing.
Take the other day in Griffith, an affluent locale in Canberra's inner south.
As I waited to cross the road, the first rays of a weak winter sun struggled to produce any warmth.
An icy late model SUV, having just started its journey, trundled past at barely above walking speed, its multi-tasking driver lowering his window just enough to feed out an empty cigarette packet. Right there, in the middle of the road.
"Oi!" I exclaimed reflexively, rudely puncturing the serenity.
I don't know exactly why, but his contempt felt almost performative - like a rejection of neighbourliness and a basic social norm.
It reminded me of another occasion just weeks back, when I'd watched a well-dressed woman returning to her car in nearby Manuka. She got in, started the engine, but then opened her door to carefully place a half-consumed take-away drink on the tarmac before driving off.
Who, I wondered, wants to live amongst refuse and trash - either their own or someone else's? More fundamental questions followed. Does this person feel community as the rest of us do?
If you wilfully litter, are you also the type of person who would scarper without leaving a note if you'd dented another person's car?
The more I considered it, the more these incidents suggested something deeper and portentous going on within what we imagine to be "our" society.
We have known for a long time that trust in democracy and its institutions has plummeted. But what if the signs of this breakdown are also detectable in such micro-aggressions. What if our abandonment of traditional parties is a tandem - or even secondary effect - of a more fundamental fracture in the realm of the personal?
Increasingly, it is not just our "leaders" that we hold in contempt, but each other, too. So, which came first?
A slew of surveys over recent years points to this with respondents reporting less contact and lower levels of trust in the people next-door.
"The declining frequency of interactions with neighbours has moved in lockstep with declines in social trust," wrote Thomas O'Rourke in 2023 for America's Institute of Family Studies.
"In the early 1970s, 46 per cent of Americans said that others could be trusted, whereas only 26 per cent of Americans say the same today."
European studies have found similar results, including a correlation between declining social participation, rising unhappiness, and the gravitation towards far-right populist parties.
Now consider the swollen support for One Nation - a fringe party that has existed for roughly three decades but which now attracts around 30 per cent of first preference vote-share in current national opinion polls.
New research from the ANUpoll suggests social fragmentation could be a major factor here, too.
Head of the ANU School of Politics and International Relations, Nicholas Biddle, notes that community trust is lower now than it was before the pandemic.
"Worryingly, interpersonal trust among Australians has fallen to 5.32 on a scale of 0 to 10, the lowest value recorded in ANUpoll during the 2020s", he said.
The poll of 3,500 respondents, directed three questions to this topic:
"All three underlying measures declined," said Professor Biddle, "with the sharpest fall in the proportion saying that most people can be trusted."
At a time when the virtue of social cohesion is frequently invoked, the evidence suggests it is in freefall. What is driving this truculent rejection of shared social purpose? Economic inequality is a central factor but abusive social media and opportunistic political behaviour are also key drivers.
Politicians who used to parade national-interest restraint now harvest social media likes and the notoriety on offer from using hateful invective and righteous anger. Civility has left the building.
"Who the f--- do you think you were for doing that?" thundered Republican Senator from Ohio, Bernie Moreno, to the 85-year-old Dr Anthony Fauci last week.
Republicans mercilessly attacked the former top health official during the hyper-aggressive inquiry into his advice during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Moreno's words were deliberate and performative. They were said on-the-record in an actual committee hearing of the United States Senate. They occasioned no rebuke or withdrawal. And in case anyone missed them, he posted them on X.
Also in recent days, the President of the United States used a live broadcast interview to tell Americans that on Iran, he was going to "beat the f---ing s--- out of them".
Just two years ago, self-describing conservatives, guardians of faith and family and tradition, would not have considered such vulgarity.
Moral bankruptcy, as Ernest Hemingway famously observed about financial ruin, occurs two ways: "Gradually, then suddenly".
