For what it's worth, I agree with you. The trouble seems to be that society doesn't really have a better alternative at this point. Discord has become the institution of our generation, at least for teens and 20-somethings. In past generations, it was church.
Church has been on my mind a lot. Religion is a tricky topic to bring up publicly, but regardless of how you feel about it, it's true that having a shared community context every Sunday is something that's hard to find a replacement for. After all, priests were the OG therapists. And after each session you felt like you made some progress, or at least that you got your sins off your back for a bit.
Regardless, religion of old is more or less gone, and it's not coming back. If there's an alternative, I imagine it might become pretty popular. But the digital age is moving us further apart; http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html seems even more prescient after covid moved us away from offices too.
I was adopted as an infant and baptized into the Catholic Church. My parents are active volunteers in the parish and attend regularly. They took me, my sister, and grandmother every Sunday and holy day.
At church I learned how much I am loved and valued by God. The priests and the faithful at Mass demonstrated that love to me in many ways. In Catholic school, these lessons were reinforced and again, demonstrated by religious sisters in habits with their strict rules and adorable Irish brogues, as well as celibate priests and deacons who were faculty and staff in my high school. Every one of these Catholic men and women under vows always treated me with utmost respect and upheld my dignity, always and everywhere.
When the abuse scandal broke I couldn't quite understand it, but I realized later that I'd been subjected to decades of trauma in my childhood, only at home by family members--women. The abuse I suffered was just as real but it was ignored and denied while people went after the priests and sisters who had loved me and shown so much solicitude for me and my classmates.
I'm coming to terms with that now and I'm beginning to explore the root causes of my mental illness--which incidentally became severe when I lived in Silicon Valley and had a high-paying consultant career.
Thankfully I returned to my faith in Christ, rather than rejecting Him, and I receive daily reminders of my dignity, my self-worth, and how much we are loved. And that's worth more than any Silicon Valley career.
I don't believe the digital age necessarily requires us to turn support into a commodity, though.
Beyond religion, we are much more individualist and busy mentally and emotionally. If it isn't one's immediate network being unavailable, odds are they themselves are. Neither of which is inherent to becoming more digital alone.
Like, do people even notice the advice we were given the last 2-3 decades? Of course we're more lonely collectively, it was practically a self-fulfilling prophecy.
What about climbing gyms, run clubs, book clubs, gardening clubs, bars/trivia, etc? If you're near a city, almost any of these will be an option. And if you're not, a high percentage of those people are probably still going to church. It seems there are still a lot of opportunities out there for regular communion with others.
Hobby clubs are better than nothing, but religions have much better structure to keep community members in check and check their mental health regularly.
It’s actually interesting if you look at the data, outside of the tech bubble Religion is only projected to grow due to a confluence of factors which include much higher fertility rates and increased mental health (might be coupled).
Religion of old is gone in some bubbles and more than thriving in others.
Church has been on my mind a lot. Religion is a tricky topic to bring up publicly, but regardless of how you feel about it, it's true that having a shared community context every Sunday is something that's hard to find a replacement for. After all, priests were the OG therapists. And after each session you felt like you made some progress, or at least that you got your sins off your back for a bit.
Regardless, religion of old is more or less gone, and it's not coming back. If there's an alternative, I imagine it might become pretty popular. But the digital age is moving us further apart; http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html seems even more prescient after covid moved us away from offices too.