[lo_zamoyski]

Consider the following:

1. The chief unit and source of community is the family. The married couple, the family, have been deteriorating for some time. It shouldn't be surprising that the consequences would spread outward. Societies are a manner of extended family organized according to the principle of subsidiary.

2. American culture especially is hyperindividualistic. It conceives of people not as persons, but as individuals, which is to say, atomic units that might enter into various transactions, if it suits them. There is no sense of moral duties I did not consent to. There is no real sense of a common good that is a superior and prior good. If you deny the social nature of human beings, and conceive the social sphere as transactional, a sphere for odious exchanges and extraction and gorging, then why should we be surprised that social life has gone south?

3. A common culture binds people together and give them a common heritage, a language without which you cannot communicate. Culture is far more than that, and I do not mean to belittle or instrumentalize it (some are already instrumentalizing religion, which is not the purpose of religion, even if it has that effect). But with the decay of ethnic culture and its replacement with an empty corporate pop culture (note how much discussion revolves around the latest episode of a show), we are robbed of a common identity. This explains the identity crises in the US. Subcultures, racial ideologies, sexual ideologies, and so on are just attempted substitutes for ethnic identity. Given how unsuitable they are for this purpose, it is also unsurprising that people feel alienated from society, as there really is no real society, just some people coexisting.

4. What we call "religion" is a fancy word for worldview with a superlative highest good that is worshiped and a tradition orienting us in life and our ultimate end according to it. Everyone has a religion, in that sense, because someone takes something to be the ultimate good. It's impossible otherwise, because it is by means of the ultimate good that we understand and order all other goods in relation to it. The religion of the US is liberalism (as in Hobbes, Locke, and Mill, not any particular partisan affiliation; all American parties presuppose liberalism). In this liberal worldview, freedom as absence of constraint is worshiped, hence the preoccupation with "transgression" and "crossing boundaries" and so on. It is an evangelical religion, concerned with bringing the good news of liberal freedom to the world. Of course, as many throughout history have noted, freedom thus understood is a recipe for disaster, and not freedom in any real sense. To be free is to be able to do what is good as determined by your human nature, which is the same as saying the freedom to be what you objectively are, not in opposition to it. Thus, I am not free when I become a drug user, but I am free when I attain self-mastery and self-restraint, much as a man on horseback is more free as horseback rider when his horse is obedient to his rationally informed will. We are free to be what we are when we attain this mastery, in light of objective truth, over ourselves, our appetites, our passions, our intellects, our wills, etc., what we used to call virtue. The opposite, vice, is a recipe for misery and the worst kind of enslavement that can occur. In light of that, and given how indulgent we are, how our economies cater to and feed the worst with pornography, excessive food, buying stuff, and how, generally speaking, we worship consumption and embrace a view of life that consists of consuming (even people, sexually speaking, including in our imaginations and through various media), again, why the surprise that we are miserable? We are incapable of healthy relationships, and functioning as human beings. It takes effort to become human. It's not a given that just falls in your lap.

[lovethevoid]

> The chief unit and source of community is the family.

This view stems from Judeo-Christian beliefs. The very invention of marriage was a separation of community, where men wanted ownership of women and their children.

I also wonder if you're fully aware of how much you've attempted to repackage the original sin in your comment.

[clarity20]

Marriage goes way beyond the Jewish and Christian spheres. It's a far-reaching anthropological value. Strictly speaking it's a natural state, which means it isn't an invention. What we're missing most of all in contemporary times is an appreciation and acceptance of our contingency as beings. For want of this restful appreciation of what we really are, we have a tendency to become angst-ridden, semi-nihilistic types trying to find our bearings through acts of will and experiencing misery because we can never get there from here by traveling that path.

[anon291]

> This view stems from Judeo-Christian beliefs.

It's really not, as marriage is present in pre-Christian belief and in non-Christian traditions.

Does it look exactly like Christian marriage / family? No

But it does share common characteristics. There is a single man, and one or more women who bear his children. The man and woman have particular authorities over their children, and as the children grow there is a system to determine how they inherit their parent's resources, and then perhaps some duties they owe their parents.

We see this in the Roman paterfamilias system, the Confucian filial piety system, the various Indic philosophies, the ancient Egyptian family system, the Babylonian familial system, etc. Together these encompass the basis of the vast majority of civilization.

You're right that in hunter gatherer tribes they may have not even understood how reproduction works, but given that these social systems are not sophisticated enough to run our society, I'm happy to just ignore them. There were hunter gatherer tribes that believed that prince phillip was a god; they're not that sophisticated

[watwut]

Which communitarian society is less sexist? Best afaik, all the community minded societies are significantly more sexist. The individualism is one of the things that makes it easier to push and argue against it.

[Aerbil313]

Why do you think a recognization of the very human tendency to do stuff which harms either you or the society a remark for the unintuitive Christian concept of original sin?

[tbrownaw]

I think this would imply that non-Western societies (or even Western ones before the spread of Christianity) aren't organized out of families? Also, what is a "shotgun wedding" in this worldview?

[pjlegato]

Not at all. Family units are extremely widespread in cultures around the world, including those that have had little or no contact with Judeo-Christian beliefs. Nearly all cultures have them.

[anon291]

JD Vance talked about this a lot in his RNC speech. He says:

> You know, one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. And to be clear, America was indeed founded on brilliant ideas, like the rule of law and religious liberty. Things written into the fabric of our Constitution and our nation. But America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.

And he's right. America does have a culture and social norms that are particular to this nation. Ask any immigrant, like my own parents, and they will tell you stories of adapting to them (if they've assimilated properly).

And yet, many Americans refuse to acknowledge that these exist, and if they do, some work actively against it, to disestablish them, as if that'd be good for a country.

IMO, this is the cause of the great divide in this country. On one side you have people that think that social norms and culture should exist and be protected by the government (to an extent) and on the other you have those that believe the norms are harmful. To the former group, the various 'small' changes proposed by the latter group feel 'gross' because they reduce community cohesion, even if any one particular instance of letting go of a norm isn't going to cause that much trouble.

See all the debate on whether English should be a national language for a good illustration of this whole phenomenon independent of most of the culture war issues.

This is not to say that America has no ideas, but any group of people pursuing a common goal is not just the idea, it's also their culture. For example, I've worked at several companies competing in the same space, and despite having the same goal (dominate the industry), the cultures are extremely different, to the point where you feel comfortable in one, and uncomfortable in the other. That's how people are, and we should recognize and acknowledge that.

[the_gipsy]

You talk and sermon awfully much against individualism, shouldn't you quit being online and do some family or society work? Don't tell me you're done already, that would be hypocritical.

[clarity20]

I think he (she?) makes some good points about why community & social life are falling apart and what might be done about it.

[Aerbil313]

Why do you seem to consider surfing HN a vice or a sin?

[the_gipsy]

I don't?