Do you feel part of something bigger than yourself? Here’s a shocking fact: most Americans don’t. Only 38% of Americans today say ‘nationalism’ is ‘very important to them,’ only 39% say so about ‘religion, 30% about ‘having kids,’ and 27% about ‘community involvement.’
Juxtapose these trends of declining belief in anything at all with increasing rates of anxiety and depression. The resulting correlation is chilling. Since 2010, there has been a 134% increase in the number of US undergraduates diagnosed with anxiety, and a 104% in diagnosis for depression. An expert pollster’s view? “These differences are so dramatic, it paints a new and surprising portrait of a changing America.’’ His hypothesis? “Perhaps the toll of our political division, Covid and the lowest economic confidence in decades is having a startling effect on our core values.’’
My hypothesis? It’s much more simple. People need to believe in something than themselves. Of course, correlation is not causation, but data confirms generally what we understand instinctively: people need to feel part of something bigger than themselves. You are not enough.
As the antidote to loneliness and isolation, future-oriented tech people are trying to imagine new ways we can bring more community and belonging to our lives.
Take 2 examples: Balaji Srinivasan’s Network State and Praxis.
The Network State is meant to be the online successor of the nation state. It imagines an online community with a capacity for collective action and diplomatic recognition.
Tech-guru Antonio Garcia Martinez asks a very simple question about Srinivasan’s experiment: would anyone die for the Network State?
Probably not, Martinez answers:
Something more is also needed to build a state, whether of the network or regular variety. Our opinions alone, no matter how lit the resulting Twitter threads, simply aren’t equal to the task. Something must stir inside us that says: Here I will die so that my children may one day live.
Shared interests are not enough. They are too fickle and tenuous to bolster long-term social ties. As I’ve written, when deep, unchosen identities like People, Religion, Family, and Nationality recede, thin and temporary affiliations, like to Big Tech Company X or University Y, replace them.
And the problem with thin affiliations is that they’re temporary, individual and chosen, and therefore fickle. They lack roots and staying power, and the stuff needed to create and preserve an eternal people.
Praxis is a different attempt at statecraft. Aspiring to become the antidote to alienation, loss of institutional trust, and withdrawal from public life, Praxis paints a utopian vision for a self-sufficient paradise at the forefront of beauty, culture and the arts, “somewhere on the Mediterranean” with a lot of “talented people.”
“There is a void at the heart of our culture,” the company charter says, “a nihilism that has robbed us of our dreams.”
Sounds like a tough cookie to crack. What’s their solution? Their grand mission statement?
We want to live in communities that give us a sense of ownership and belonging, with people who share our values and dreams.
You know what that sounds like — where we see astonishing displays of ownership and belonging? It sounds like Israel, at once a place, culture, ethnicity and people, with a shared history and common destiny.
We have a people, and we’re part of it.
In writing about the recent protests that took Israel by storm, Daniel Gordis wrote in stunning prose that
It doesn’t matter whether you were for the reforms or against them…[W]hat you have seen play out in recent weeks has been an extraordinary exhibition of love of country, of devotion to Zionism, of almost completely violence-free protests by hundreds of thousands of people for three months…What you witnessed was the left-center adopting and embracing the flag, embracing and loving the country that many people thought they’d long since stopped caring about…You saw no looting. None. Zero. This was not Seattle or Portland. This was not about detesting any part of this country, or even Bibi for that matter—it was about a love of the Jewish people and its nation-state.
Ein lanu eretz aheret, said cardboard signs on Ayalon’s highway – we have no other land. They banged drums and waved Israeli flags; not other flags, but Israeli ones.
The wicked child on Passover — what’s his sin? It’s very simple. He asks, “What is this worship to you?” That’s all. That’s his sin. What’s so bad about that? He sounds curious and engaged! “He excludes himself from the collective and thus denies the Jewish faith,” the Haggadah says. “If he had been there in the Exodus, he would not have been saved.” His sin is viewing himself as separate, as Other — a false self-perception, where he does not include himself in the Jewish People.
During one of the protests, a friend and I saw another sign — Don’t touch my beautiful democracy — and that’s when it clicked. The sense of ownership and ‘skin in the game’ in Israel is astonishing. This is our country. We are here to stay.
We are not looking for anchors, we have one. We are not searching for identity, we have one. In the post-modern 21st century, that is anything but obvious. Indeed, it’s unique, contrarian even, and we ought to be…grateful.
Today, and every day, I celebrate being a Jew and Israeli. It’s not always easy. Some people hate us and…we often disagree. But at the end of the day, I am proud of belonging to a people that lives with joy, love, purpose and meaning.
May we always feel part of it.
After all, we’re so dang lucky, and it would be a shame to give that up.
Happy birthday Israel, 75 years young. Love you to the moon and back<3
I truly love reading your newsletters.
Keep them going 🤍