The culture(s) we find ourselves in.

As with many people, I’m looking for reasons for the proliferation of mass shootings.  Not scapegoats, mind; there is nothing to gain by blaming Trump’s rhetoric or guns or video games, since even just the shootings over this past week defy any correlation with those easy answers.

(And anyone who says, “We must do something” isn’t part of the solution. Doing effective things helps; doing random non-causal things for the sake of doing “something” doesn’t.)

We need to look deeper into culture to see what has changed and how it could be affecting attitudes and actions that lead to such outcomes.  If it’s something that extends throughout this multifarious nation and leads to rampages from people of different locations, peer groups, political philosophies and ethnic identifications, it’s got to be something that’s present in all of those cases.  That means it’s pervasive, and that means that there are not, and will never be, easy fixes.

(Perhaps this is the spot for the necessary disclaimer: What I’m discussing below is pure hypothesis — unproven, though in my mind plausible — and could also very well be an obvious paradigm among sociologists.  But it’s something I came up with on my own, and seems to be a workable explanation.)

In every era prior to our own, “community” was defined geographically — not exclusively, obviously, and possibly not even overwhelmingly, but geography was always a significant component.  Association with other was of necessity influenced by, and in many cases bounded by, who you would physically encounter in the course of your activities.  While it’s generally true that you can’t pick your relatives, it was only a bit less true that you couldn’t pick your neighbors, at least not more often than every few years.

What this meant is that you necessarily rubbed shoulders with people with whom you didn’t share identical viewpoints or life stations; granted, communities would likely be generally homogeneous in broader cultural and religious terms, but there can still be a big difference in outlook and experience between an old farmer and a young farmer, or a postman and a blacksmith, or a schoolteacher and a preacher’s wife.  And it was expected that these disparate people would associate together in their geographic community.

But even more than that, it meant that individuals connected each other in more ways than one.  A young farmer and an old farmer might naturally associate deliberately because of their shared interest in local agriculture, but because of that association and geographic proximity, they would also be involved to a degree in the other facets of their life.  The old farmer would watch the young farmer’s children grow up; the young farmer would run into the older farmer at the general store while one was buying a broom and the other was selling eggs; one wife would borrow a cup of sugar or a canning pot from the other.  The druggist would remark on the customer’s new mustache.  The mailman would see the grandmother’s reaction to receiving a family letter, and later mention it in small talk with her at the church social.  The neighbors who share nothing but a fence would see and remark on each other’s back-yard gatherings, and strike up a conversation about city council candidates.

The point being, each individual connected with other individuals in more than one way.  There was more than a single pursuit or interest which was the limits of their commonality.

And then came community-building unbounded from geography, as characterized by the internet.

Now, anyone with any interest , unusual or not, can find a community of like minds on the internet. We’re not just talking about the classics like stamp collecting or comic books or a particular shade on the political spectrum.  Intentional celibacy? Sure.  Otherkin?  All over the place.  Egyptian-style beer brewing?  You got it.  Roy Orbison wrapped in cellophane?  Google it, I dare you.

Whether any of these is evil, or deviant, or a poor use of time, is irrelevant.  Some are; some aren’t. But apart from that, the fact is that these (a) intentional (b) ageographic communities are made up of people who only connect on their point of commonality.  The participants feel that their human need for social belonging is being sated, and it is as far as that goes; but their ONLY connection is that one shared interest for which the community exists.  None of the participants knows any other in a fuller sense — they don’t know each other’s faces, and depending on the rules of the forum, possibly not even their real name.  There’s certainly no knowledge of, and empathy for, weight struggles or child-rearing milestones or a faith journey or lawncare woes.

Which is why people can spend hours a day on “social” media, spending time interacting with like minds in intentional ageographic communities, and yet feel very literally isolated.  There are no secondary connections; there are, to coin a dreadful metaphor, none of the trace minerals which come from a more complete social diet.

Which suggests another pragmatic use for faith communities and neighborhood churches in American civic life, quite apart from truth claims and eschatological concerns (which I don’t dismiss, as I’m quite the believer).  The truth claim or doctrine would be that primary connection between the parishioners.  But in associating physically with those parishioners, I am drawn weekly into close quarters with a retired fire chief and a hospital project manager and a residential remodel contractor and a school district administrator and an X-ray technician and a retired airline pilot and a hardware salesman and a mental health office administrator and and and…  Because of the physical nature of the community, I’ve formed secondary connections to them, apart from and in addition to the primary one through a common religion; I would not have that if I interacted with them only through an intentional ageographic community.

So what does this mean for the solution?  Well, “solution” is probably too strong a word.  Just like knowing that the solution to tobacco-related lung cancer is “stop smoking,” there’s a big difference between knowing what the solution is, and getting it adopted by all involved.  But what YOU can do is…

• Get to know your geographic neighbors.  (Trust me, I’m as bad at this as anyone.)
• Plan to spend social time with other people physically.
• Go to church. (Couldn’t hurt. Really.)
• Serve others, physically and as part of the community.
• Teach your children to do all of the above.