Time for a classic image!

There’s multiple issues going on here, but it’s mostly an issue of correlation vs causation, quite easily explained by the above. The author shows their clear bias towards participating in religious communities, but that doesn’t mean we need to throw the baby out with the bath water (yay spiritual references).

I think one of the issues that the author recognizes, but perhaps doesn’t recognize the scope of, is the hyper-individualistic society we have come to grow here in the united states. People are spending more and more time at work and are working in ways which are increasingly more asocial. Holding a meeting over zoom is still holding a meeting, but we have ample evidence that more people do not receive the same kind of interpersonal connection over zoom and don’t get the same depth out of conversation over zoom as they do in person. As more and more jobs move remote and as jobs become less social as a way to optimize worker efficiency such as by allowing people to order at a kiosk or online or through a QR code to optimize time/efficiency and moving the worker further away from people, people are becoming more isolated.

In addition, we spend more and more of our time online. Social media allows you to connect to more people than you could in the past. Keeping up with your high school friends is now relatively trivial, but this also means that you’re keeping up through a medium which is more disconnected and less fulfilling in ways that once again we can measure. Dropping a message on someone’s profile wishing them a happy birthday is much more distant than calling them up on the phone or visiting them in person and this is reflected in our mental state and sense of fulfillment and happiness. This disconnect of society as a whole in terms of quality of social engagement caused through a shift of how we socialize is ultimately the problem that we are struggling with in modern society. A lot of the time spent socializing is of lower quality and thus people are often finding themselves disengaging with certain kinds of socialization (such as social media which is often filled with toxicity and hate, part of the ethos of why we wanted to start Beehaw) and engaging with other kinds of socialization such as by spending more time at work because parts of it are social or because they don’t know where else to spend their time.

Of important note the time spent socializing, regardless of the context and the amount of social connections and support someone has are what are directly correlated with better health outcomes and a longer life span. Religion often prioritizes time spent together and in person, which is one of several ways they do things right, but I think they are failing much like most of society on driving change at a systematic level. I’m not sure anyone can really accomplish that in the current environment as most of it is driven by a hyper-capitalistic society in which wealth disparities have been increasingly driving people downwards on Mazlov’s hierarchy, spending more time acquiring capital to meet their basic needs. Structural change in the form of unions or a government which represents the will and needs of the people may be the only way to systematically fix this.

As an aside, groups surrounding identity and offering communal support (often through anarchistic or socialistic means) are seeing a lot of growth in recent days. Queer communities are a great exemplar of the kind of communal activism that drives a healthy community and increases the mental health and state of it’s members. I’ve seen a lot of smaller communities based around hobbies and local art crop up in recent times as people struggle with a sense of community. I expect a cultural wave around this, shared struggle, the creation of unions and employee resource groups and collective activism and support in the next decade or more as conditions continue to worsen.

So do it then. Using discussion amongst religious people re how their communities might better serve all involved to take a swing at belief in the Divine is sloppy and lazy thinking. It might provide you and your kin with a moment of “Yeah, that’s telling them” catharsis but surely you can come up with a better and healthier way to nourish your own community.